Strangely Familiar

by Cari Z.

  "Say something to me in Portuguese."

  He looked at her for a moment. “Você é linda."

  Three short words, and they sent a quiver down her spine. “What does that mean?"

  He smiled again. “That's for me to know. You asked me to speak, not translate.” He leaned back and stretched his shoulders, dropping the sandpaper. “I think this is finished for now.” He gestured to her. “Come, feel it."

  Feel a table? Cecily got down off the couch knee-walked the few feet to the table. She ran a hand lightly over the surface. It was warm, still warm from the sanding, and as smooth as silk beneath her fingertips. “Oh,” she whispered. She spread her palms out and made slow circles on the wood, closing her eyes. “It feels alive."

  "It is. Don't break it."

  Moment over. She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I won't break it!"

  "Your ... what's the expression ... track record, it isn't so good with tables."

  "You know, you're not cute,” she told him matter-of-factly. “Actually, you're filthy.” She reached out and wiped a finger down his forearm. “See? Covered with sawdust."

  "Then I suppose I should shower. Care to join me?"

  It was good she wasn't standing, because even the thought of being naked in a shower with Mauricio made her knees weak. Goddess, had it really been so long since she'd gotten any? “I've already showered today,” she managed at last.

  "True. Guess I'll go it alone, then.” He stood up, brushed his pants off and walked down the hall.

  Damn, he was just too sexy. Cecily got back on the couch and buried her nose in her networks. It wasn't a smart idea to become enamored of her familiar. He had driven her crazy when he hated her, but him liking her was extremely distracting as well. She needed to stay focused on her work. If she could take him on a job, show him how important her position was, perhaps he'd be more amenable to letting her place some spells of protection on him. She could feel that his presence made her castings more powerful, but who knew how strong they would be once she had his actual cooperation?

  She could hear the shower come to life. She could feel it in a weird way, a subtle sense of warmth. It was soothing. What she felt a moment later was not exactly soothing.

  A tingling feeling of pleasure began to build in her groin. Cecily glanced down at herself, shocked. What the hell was going on? Her blood began to pump faster and she became flushed as the pleasure increased. What the ... oh, no. He wasn't. No, he wasn't. The throb in her center told her that yes, he was. Mauricio was jacking off. He was taking himself in his hand under the hot water and stroking his length up and down, long and slow and ... fuck!

  She couldn't go and ask him to stop, that would be too embarrassing. Did he even know what he was doing to her? Probably he did, she had woken both of them up this morning with her own explosive orgasm. This was his revenge, subtle but intense. The mental images of him in the shower, coupled with the tingling feelings spreading through her body, were driving Cecily mad with lust. She lay back on the couch, squeezing her legs tightly together and covering her mouth with her hands as Mauricio's orgasm crested and broke, jetting through her body in powerful spasms, sending pleasure from the crest of her head to the tips of her toes.

  Cecily stayed supine until the water shut off, finally forcing herself off her back when she heard the door open. No way was she going to let him know how strongly he had affected her. She heard his footsteps coming back down the hall and tried to look cool, calm. She stared unseeing at her laptop's screen, watching for signs of activity. Not likely, nothing had bothered her neighborhood in over a month, and that was just an amateur sorcerer trying to summon a minor demon, easy to dismiss and apprehend.

  Mauricio stepped around in front of her and her heart nearly stopped. He hadn't put his shirt back on. He was ruddy from the hot water, his skin glowing like burnished bronze. There was no need for her imagination to fill in the blanks now, and she stared at him, rapt with awe. He was so beautiful, so defined, heavy with muscle and radiating something else, something she couldn't define, but that devoured her attention like a black hole devoured light. He intended that, of course, bastard. She didn't need to tell him how strongly he affected her. He looked over at her and smiled. Yeah, he knew.

  Well, she wasn't going to be used by him. The pendulum swung both ways. She couldn't take him for granted, and he couldn't take her for granted, either. Cecily ripped her gaze away from him and back to the screen. “So, are you going to sweep up, too?"

  He shrugged. “I suppose I should.” He squatted down beside the table, surveying it pensively for a moment, then crawled over next to her. “You know what that means.” He hovered by her hip, looking at her, smiling faintly. “I'll need to clean up again. I don't know if I can do that alone twice in one day."

  Cecily was about to toss a smart-ass remark his way, but the look on his face stopped her. It was a strange combination of bravado, faint traces of insecurity and something in his eyes that she could almost identify as hope. His eyes were so bright ... they pulled her in, drawing her closer. Was it possible that he had the same thoughts about her? Was he just trying to fulfill a need? Was it a little of both?

  Their faces were within inches of each other when the screen flashed. Years of training and the weight of her new status overruled her libido, and Cecily reluctantly turned her face back to the monitor. “We have something...” She stared at the screen and frowned. “Down by the river. Something big.” The energy signature was very faint, but the object itself seemed to be registering large. One or two things? It was hard to say. Maybe a water-spirit of some kind, with that faint a signature. “I need to go and check it out."

  Mauricio's expression smoothed into a blank. “Do you want me with you?"

  Prickly ground now. “If you want to come."

  "No spells on me."

  Cecily wanted to pound the cushions in frustration. “What is your problem with that? I just want to make sure you're safe!"

  "We shouldn't be wasting time,” he pointed out. “Promise me no spells and I'll go with you."

  "Goddess, fine!” Cecily pushed his shoulders, moving him back. It was a shift of about an inch, but it felt good psychologically. “No spells on you, and I'll try not to cast any through you, all right? I'll get my sword, and you, get some ... um, clothes."

  It was a cold, drizzly afternoon. That was good, it meant fewer people would be out and about. Cecily was dressed in dark clothes, durable and easy to move in. She'd pulled her hair back and cinched her sword belt around her waist. She brought the cell phone in her spell satchel as well, just in case she had trouble locating the energy. Mauricio loomed beside her, also in black, but wearing sweats. They were stretchy and easy to remove in a pinch, which they might well find themselves in. Those plus his sandals made for an odd combination, but at least he was with her.

  Cecily paused outside the building and focused, closing her eyes and honing in on the tremor the network had picked up. Her father had set the network up years ago, an elaborate series of electronic sensors modified to pick up thaumaturgic signatures, detecting magic users, magic creatures, and magical constructs. The signals it recognized, people like Cecily and her sisters, were accounted for and dismissed. One of their jobs was to investigate unaccounted tremors in the network. She felt it ... vaguely. The faint aching sensation in the front of her mind pulled her to the right, towards the water. She stepped forward blindly, absorbed in trying to follow it, trying to keep it from evaporating—

  Hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back off the curb as a cab screamed by in the road, missing her by a foot. She jerked with shock. “You don't need me for magic,” Mauricio said with disgust. “You need me for help crossing the street."

  Cecily was feeling embarrassed enough. “I don't need you for anything,” she snapped. “Now let me concentrate."

  Mauricio was muttering to himself in Portuguese, and this time Cecily didn't ask what he was saying. She closed her eyes again, briefl
y, straining for it and finally got the feeling again. She moved out, a little more carefully this time. It didn't take long to find the source of the tremor.

  The creature was moving slowly, slogging through the muck at the water's edge. All she could see of it was a pale head rising above the darkness of the river. The skin was whitish-blue, grey around the nose and eyes, and black threads suffused the mouth in a grotesque spider web extending down its neck. Eyes palled with death looked straight at her, and she could feel its awareness of her. Awareness, and sudden interest.

  "Draugr,” she whispered. “It's a draugr."

  "What is that?” Mauricio asked lowly. The creature was moving out of the water onto the shore, shuffling slowly towards them.

  "Draugr are the living dead, usually Scandinavian. I have no idea what one is doing here, but we should be able to take it...” Her voice trailed off as a second head, then a torso emerged from the water. Sightless but seeing, slow but unyielding. “Two draugr.” Then a third emerged, and the day turned from grey to black. “Three. Shit.” Cecily moved backwards and drew her saber. “They're immensely strong, and they don't give up unless you remove their heads. Everything else is temporary. Be careful."

  Mauricio snorted. “You be careful, little witch.” He stripped out of his clothes and changed in the space of a few heartbeats. He roared in his jaguar form and, moving with all the deadly grace that made him beautiful either way, he stalked his prey.

  Cecily focused on the second creature. Draugr were difficult to deal with. What was left of their minds was buried so deep that any spell designed to distract their thoughts wouldn't work. They didn't rely on their eyes, so nothing to blind them. In fact, very few spells worked well on the living dead, and most of them required a lot of set-up. They were slow, but once they got a hand on you, they would crush you to death.

  She activated her tracer, sending out a signal to any other witches listening that she needed help. This would be a purely physical battle, and the more to help even things out, the better. Her worry over Mauricio was short-lived; he moved behind the first draugr, leapt onto its back, and sank his massive teeth into the head, obviously trying to crush the skull. Arms flailed at him, but they couldn't get a grip. The second one had reached the shore, however, and Cecily suddenly had work of her own to do.

  She charged the draugr, ducking his clumsy blow and swinging her blade lightning-fast at his arm. She sheared the limb off at the elbow. Thank the Goddess their pieces didn't reanimate once you dismembered them. There was more than enough of him left to cause her trouble.

  The draugr lunged suddenly, letting gravity help it power into her as it swung with the other arm. She levered two cuts against its neck, but neither was deep enough to stop it. It barreled into her, ruining her balance. As she tried to recover the other arm came around. She got her sword up in time to remove three of the fingers, but the rest of the hand grabbed her wrist. It squeezed. Bones popped and crackled, and Cecily screamed with pain, dropping the sword. The draugr pulled her forward into its deadly embrace. Soon it would be squeezing, and then she would be dead.

  Gritting her teeth, she ignored the searing pain burning up her blade arm and used her free hand to pull out her dagger, sheathed and tied to her thigh. Cecily didn't like getting close enough to use a dagger, but in this case there was nothing for it. She jammed the point of it straight into the draugr's throat, then sliced in a full circle around his neck, cutting through tendons and muscles and grating against bone. Now that she had some room, she thrust the dagger in again, reaching for and finding vertebrae. It would be nearly impossible to saw through one, but maybe she would get lucky...

  She was lucky. Things moved in the right way, something gave, and then the spinal cord was severed. The draugr's head suddenly hung limp, his grip loosened and in a moment he was slumping to the ground. Cecily kept on cutting with the knife, furious and hurt, cutting until she was satisfied that the corpse wouldn't be getting up.

  "Cecily?” Mauricio was beside her in a moment, holding her waist as support. “Where are you hurt? Is it your arm?"

  "What happened to the third one?” she gasped.

  "I broke its neck, like with the first. Easy prey. What has happened to you?"

  "Look out!” she screamed suddenly as the third draugr rose to its feet from behind them. Mauricio was changing already, his half-formed face twisting in a snarl, but the massive hands of the draugr closed around his shoulders and threw him aside. His body flew over thirty feet, hitting a lamp post and slumping into a heap beneath it.

  "Fuck!” The pain reverberated through her whole body. She wanted to curse the fool for not letting her protect him, not letting her give him any defensive spells ... the draugr was moving towards him. “No!” She couldn't affect it easily with magic, but she could help him. She had to, promise or no promise. Cecily summoned a spell of evasion, chanting rapidly and hoping she had all the necessary reagents in her satchel. She released it towards him a moment before the draugr reached his prone form. Instantly he was gone, spirited away perhaps a hundred yards. It wasn't a spell you could really direct. She prayed it wouldn't send him into the river.

  Denied its kill, the draugr groaned gutturally. It turned back towards her, and for the first time that she had ever seen, it moved fast. Why had no one told her draugr could run when they wanted to? It was upon her in seconds, and she had no other spells prepared.

  Cecily lunged for her saber, the only thing that might still be of any use to her. Where was the backup? She was no good with the sword left-handed. Still, she raised it, and just had time to bring it to bear as the draugr slammed into her, knocking her onto her back. The blade penetrated through its belly and out its back, but it missed the spine.

  The draugr seemed to weigh a ton, and that weight was only increasing as it leaned forward. The saber's hilt pressed tightly against her ribcage. She gasped with breathless pain, then wished she hadn't, for the bile-churning smell of rotting flesh was mere inches away from her face now. The draugr grinned its terrible grin, the rotting face a hideous decaying mask of blackness and death. It's death, and soon hers, too. There was no more air, there was nothing but pain and pressure, bone-cracking, mind-searing pressure that wouldn't let her think, speak, cast a spell, not even cry...

  Teeth the length of her fingers appeared suddenly over the back of the draugr's head, teeth furrowing new channels next to the ones they had dug before, when Mauricio had almost killed it. The pressure lifted in one blessed moment, and then the pain swooped in. Cecily coughed once, tasted her own blood, and mercifully fell into unconsciousness.

  It felt like days had passed by the time she woke up again. Her eyes were gritty, and she tried to blink the sand away, wincing as she did so. Every movement seemed to send shocks of sharp pain up and down her body. Oh right, she had been squashed to the brink of suffocation. Where was she? Where was Mauricio? She reached out anxiously with her power, searching for that connection. She was tired, exhausted, and for a moment she couldn't feel it. Fear bolstered her mind and she looked again, and this time she could make it out. He was alive. He was all right.

  "Cecily?” Brigit was suddenly beside her, sitting on the bed. “Hey, girl!” She smoothed hair away from Cecily's face. She looked pale, ragged with lack of sleep and worry, but incredibly happy as well. “You're awake, thank the Goddess! How do you feel?"

  "My chest hurts,” she murmured hoarsely.

  "No kidding, you had three of your ribs broken and a collapsed lung. It was almost too late for the healers to do anything for you, we were about to take you to a regular hospital before you showed some improvement."

  "Where am I?"

  "Home, hon. You were in the glade for a while, but the healers thought you would rest better here. Mom and the rest of the crew are here, too. It's my turn to watch you."

  "Where's Mauricio?"

  "He's here.” She looked away for a moment, and then Cecily felt the end of the bed sag with a sudden heavy weight. Mauricio
was in his jaguar form. He stepped up next to her on the bed, lay down and settled his big, triangular head right by her shoulder. Reddish-brown eyes gazed at her from his imperturbable feline face, so regal, so noble—and then he licked her.

  "Ugh!” Cecily would have laughed, but it hurt too much. “Thank the Goddess you're okay.” She raised a slow hand towards him and he moved his head beneath it, letting her stroke him.

  "He's been in this form since you were hurt. It was kind of funny, watching Mom cuss him out. She got no satisfaction out of it at all, jaguars apparently don't care if you call them fucking bastards,” Brigit said with a half-smile. “Speaking of that, I'd better let them know you're awake. Get ready for a stampede."

  Cecily survived her family's visit, just barely. Her mother was almost hysterical with relief one moment and seething with anger the next, railing against Mauricio and Melinda and all the powers that be that had led her to be hurt. Nothing anyone could say would placate her, so they sat through it in silence. Her father patted her head awkwardly, her other sisters gave her gentle embraces. Cecily was too tired to stay awake long, and she fell asleep to the back and forth sounds of her family's voices and the comforting rumble of Mauricio's breathing beside her.

  Eventually the crowds thinned out. By the end of the week it was just her, Mauricio, and Brigit. Mauricio kept to his jaguar form, leaving her side only to eat and go for the occasional walk. The healers had done an excellent job with Cecily and her ribs were knitting fast. Her arm would take longer. Three of her wrist bones were broken and they had to cast her arm, but expected it to heal well. The bruising had gone down, to the point that her pale skin was purple instead of black, and the color in her fingers had diminished to a sickly yellow. Once she could manage herself in the shower, Brigit bowed out.

  "Call me if you need anything,” she said seriously as she put on her jacket. “There's a lot of food in the fridge, and plenty of meat for Mauricio. Oh, and Dad called. Turns out those draugr were imported by a Scandinavian drug lord to protect him from his enemies. Obviously things didn't go so well. He ended up dead and they were on the loose. Fortunately you found them before they killed anyone else."