“I said they couldn’t be trusted. I didn’t say they had no knowledge. My grandfather trained with human apothecaries, apprenticing and then enhancing everything he’d learned. It’s not the human spell crafting that I have a problem with. My issue is that they’re driven to do things that I will never understand. Malicious, evil things that make no sense ever and I just don’t think that they are responsible enough to handle the kind of power they attempt to wield.”
“And so you hate them for it?” Mina started walking toward another door at the back of the examination room. “Don’t you think that’s a bit hypocritical? You know, considering that everything you know came from the humans?”
“Like I said, my grandfather enhanced what he learned from the old world Pagans. And you know just as well as I do that times have changed. The human witches now are dabblers. They don’t take it seriously, they dilute the spells and invoke power that they have no idea how to wield. Then they get themselves into trouble and don’t know how to fix it.”
And yes. I hate them for it. I hate them for killing my mother with a spell she taught them. But that’s not what Mina wanted to hear. She didn’t want to know about his fucked up baggage. She wanted to paint him with a broad brush and pretend to understand who he was.
“They’re not all like that, you know,” Mina said. “I’ve met a lot of Pagans who—”
“Take the Sin Eaters for example.” Bas cut her off because he’d heard her argument before. The humans weren’t all bad. Some of them were capable of great things. Some of them were just as powerful as pure witches. Bas had yet to see it though. All he’d ever experienced was mediocre talent at best and malicious intent at worst. “Why self-sacrifice to the point of personal cost? Why devote yourself to that kind of life? Pain and early death for what? It makes no sense to me.”
“And I say again, you hate them for it. That’s obvious.” Mina opened the door to reveal a large room with a series of cages. “I’m not actually interested in your shitty beliefs or the rationale behind them. I’m letting you know that while you’re working with me, you’ll treat Angel with respect and courtesy. If I ever hear you say a bad thing to her or about her, I will cut you from my service.”
“Another threat?” Bas scoffed but he followed her into the next room.
“Just telling it like it is.” Mina flicked her hand toward the cages. “The cats are in here. Don’t get complacent. They’re pretty lethargic because of their illness but if they detect weakness, they’ll take advantage. Use their names. They like that. Don’t try to dose them with your powers. You’ll likely cause more damage that way. Bring one at a time.”
Bas scanned the cages, all clean and well-kept. There wasn’t a nasty odor either. She kept this place in good order and clearly gave a shit about these familiars.
“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted her.
She rolled her eyes, then left the room.
These cats were not the typical domestic house cat. While they did share some similar qualities, familiar cats were larger—much larger. The size of a medium sized dog. And they all had the same kind of eyes. A stunning mismatch, one aqua and one purple. They were cunning too—smarter and sentient in a way that normal cats weren’t. They had the same attitude problem though and they were fickle things at the best of times.
Bas’s mother’s familiar had been a cat. An old Tom who had the brightest orange tabby coat Bas had ever seen. He was a fierce protector and a gifted spell hunter. He was with Bas’s mother right until the end, braving the flames so that his mother wouldn’t die alone.
“Hey there, sweetie.” He approached the first cage where a snow white and tan spotted cat lay. She perked her head up at his approach. “Belle.” He read from the card next to her cage. “My name is Bas Frank. I’m going to take you for a check up.”
She meowed her indifference, not bothering to move at all when he opened the cage and scooped her up. He cradled her in his arms, stroking her behind the ears as he carried her toward the examination room.
“You’re a sweet girl, aren’t you?” he cooed.
The cat purred in response.
The Sin Eater was back, standing with Mina at the table.
Bas brought the cat over. “I’ll hold her while you give her the shot.”
“She’ll lash out at you,” Mina warned. “It’s better to put her on the table so we can hold her down.”
“Trust me. I know how to handle puss—”
Mina snapped her eyebrow up.
Bad time for a joke. This was so not the crowd for that. “Er, cats.”
“Suit yourself.” Mina spent some time checking the cat’s heartbeat and pulse rates, using her fingers to palpitate different areas. The cat seemed okay with her touch but it wasn’t purring any more. “She’s healing nicely. Angel.”
The Sin Eater moved closer, hands hidden by her cloak.
The cat turned toward her, moving her head to watch Angel’s movement, eyes narrowing slightly.
“Shhh, Belle.” Bas stroked the cat’s fur. He wasn’t going to lie, he had the urge to pulse the cat with some calming magic but he flicked his eyes up to Mina, who was watching him closely. “She’s scared.” And she was, her little body trembling.
“They don’t like the treatment.” Mina motioned for Angel to administer the dose. “You ready for this?”
“Ready for wha—” But Bas didn’t get a chance to finish that question.
Angel stuck the needle in. That didn’t seem to be the issue. It was once she pushed the plunger down that Belle totally lost her shit. She screeched, flipping around so that her front claws dug into Bas’s forearm and her back claws got purchase against his stomach.
“Motherfucker!” Bas yelled. Mistake number two.
The cat hissed, baring fangs that were more than an inch long, gleaming and suddenly deadly looking. Belle was pushing away from him, trying to escape, while at the same time, digging her claws in deeper.
The women were watching him, waiting, it seemed, for him to ask for help. Wonderful.
“Can I get a little help here?” Bas growled.
“Sure thing, Healer Frank.” Mina pulled something from her pocket and flung it out, covering the cat in what looked like a spider’s web of netting.
The second the net hit her fur, Belle went limp. Her eyes closing, all fight draining.
Bas sucked in a deep breath. “You had that this whole time?”
“Yep,” Mina said as she took the cat from his arms. “But you wanted to be a cowboy so I figured it was better to let you learn the hard way.”
Angel moved to him, her gnarled fingers out as if to touch the flesh the cat’s claws had torn.
Bas snarled and flinched away from her fingers. “Don’t—”
“Bas.” Mina’s warning tone stopped his protest. “You’ll need some ointment on those scratches or you’ll get an infection. Did she bite you? You’ll need a shot if she did.”
Bas grumbled down his anger. “Fine, whatever. No shot though. She didn’t bite.”
Angel motioned for him to follow her, which Bas did. Mina had already gone into the other room with Belle. She’d tricked him. Made him look like a fool just to prove a point.
“Ouch!”
Angel had started to dab on some witch hazel.
“That hurts!”
“It’ll hurt more, Healer Frank, if you get what those cats have got,” Angel said, her voice light, like she was having a good laugh over all of this.
“You’re enjoying my misery, aren’t you?”
“Not at all.” But her tone held a tingle of laugher and her cloak shook like she was snickering underneath it. She dabbed up the rest of the blood. Then, before he could stop her, she ran her fingers along the deep scratch.
He felt the pulse of her magic, a signature he was now familiar with. She’d dosed him in the ER and she was dosing him again. He made to shove away but she grabbed his arm with her other hand and held him in place, her grip unmovable. His skin heated
under her touch, not unpleasant but growing hotter with each pass of her fingers. When she was done, his whole left side was vibrating with her magic.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” Angel said and then stepped away, leaving him to mourn the loss of her touch…and then wonder why the hell he would.
6
The rest of the afternoon went by without another incident, mainly because Bas shut up and did as he was told. He was a strangely infuriating man. On the one hand, he obviously had an awful perception of human witches, which Mina could take personally but it wasn’t like she’d never experienced that kind of shit before. It’s a big reason why her father had warned her about discretion in her last conversation with him.
“Sweetheart, make a name for yourself on your own terms. You’re a capable and talented witch. Just as good, if not better than any Healer there. Enough time has passed that no one will remember me there at all.”
“Dad, I—”
“Don’t make the same mistake we did, sweetheart. Be discreet, be careful. I know you’ll make me proud.”
He hadn’t meant that Mina was a mistake, although there were times in her life when Mina felt that she was. The product of an interracial union, never to be accepted by the pure witches. Never feeling like she really fit in with the humans either. Her father was a loving man, but he’d lost a lot. His career, his reputation, and eventually his wife. He drank too much, he wallowed too long. He was depressed and inconsolable most days, then bitter and lashing out all the rest. That’s why she went out in the field for work in the first place. Escaping her childhood home had become a necessity for her sanity. There’s only so much self-pity she could take from the only man she’d ever looked up to.
But she heard what he was saying. She wasn’t stubborn enough to test it either. Witches at White Willow wouldn’t understand. Their prejudices ran deep.
As much as she’d like to tell Bas where to go, to let him know that every insult he threw around about human witches was a slap to her face, she would keep her secret to herself and abide by her father’s warning. Let his sins be a lesson to her. Sometimes coming out wasn’t worth the stress. Sometimes being outspoken cost too much.
She’d prove herself in other ways.
So Bas was a bigot, and had little tolerance for Sin Eaters. While his sentiments about Sin Eaters weren’t commonly held, it’s not like she’d never heard them before. Mostly though, the conversations she’d had about the self-sacrificing witches came with reverence and a desire to get close to them. For an educated witch, Bas’s hatred was shocking and deplorable.
And yet he had a capacity for compassion toward the familiars that she’d only ever seen in Croft, and she knew Croft was an anomaly—a big teddy bear of a man who wore his heart on his sleeve in all aspects of his life.
Bas’s tenderness for the dog did help tamp down some of her anger toward him but she didn’t expect him to last long in the Dungeon. She hoped that Croft wouldn’t be long in the field rescuing the Saviors. She preferred status quo and wasn’t a big fan of change. Anxiety was her constant companion, a vibration of nervous energy that had her thoughts spinning and her magic sputtering whenever it spiked. The sooner things got back to normal, the sooner her world would feel right again.
“I don’t like to use the sleeper net if I can help it,” Mina explained as she recaged Zeus. This cat was huge, bigger than the rest and most likely the alpha of their pack. He had a majestic face, like a lion, but his fur was a smoky black. And he was vicious, hissing and spitting, swatting just at close proximity, never mind trying to touch him while he was conscious. Mina hadn’t even bothered trying to let Bas retrieve him. Instead, she’d cast her net right through the bars of his cage, sedating Zeus before they attempted to remove him for a check over and shot. “It knocks them out for twelve hours on average. Not Zeus, though. He’ll be up and about in an hour.”
“So why’d you let it get that far with Belle?” Bas grumbled as he rubbed what was left of the scar on his arm.
Mina shrugged. “I wanted to see what you could do under pressure. And I knew Belle wouldn’t cause any serious damage.” She latched the cage. “Listen, Bas, if you’re going to work down here with me, you’ve got to be okay with getting your hands dirty…and scratched up. The ferals who are here are sick and scared. They lash out often and you can’t always reason with them. Some of them we can rehabilitate and rehome with witches in need, but others will never leave. Like most of these cats, Zeus in particular. Even with treatment for the poison, he’s likely too damaged to ever be safely placed with a witch family. I don’t know what his story is or where these guys all came from, but for most of them, White Willow is the last stop.”
“They live for a witch bond. If they can’t be rehabilitated then their lives will be without purpose.” Bas was watching Zeus like he was worried the cat would wake up any moment and scratch his eyeballs out.
Mina nodded. She’d heard of familiars who died of heartbreak or loneliness. Their sole purpose in life was to find a witch. Even the feral ones usually found someone to bond with. The fact that Zeus and his pack had been found roaming, ingesting toxic plants, meant something had gone horribly wrong for him at some stage of his life. Maybe his witch had died, or maybe he was cast out for something he’d done.
“If left untreated they’ll die anyway…painfully. This is the most compassionate way to let them live the rest of their lives, however short that might be.” Mina’s heart was heavy. “If there’s another way, I’m happy to hear it. These familiars carry too much baggage to devote one-on-one support to. There are just too many in need of help.” Mina did what she could but sometimes she thought it wasn’t enough. Scratch that, she knew it would never be enough. “This isn’t a death centre. There won’t be any talk of euthanizing a familiar while I’m in charge.”
“Putting a magical creature down is not something I’d stand by and watch either. Familiars are creatures to be cherished, not used and abused,” Bas said, an edge to his voice.
There it was, the tone that gave her pause. She studied him for a moment. He clearly felt the same way she did about the lives of these special animals. He was a paradox—that was for sure.
“I read your ledger list. You’ve got a lot of familiars in residence.”
She did. At the moment they had ten cats, five crows, two lizards, one monkey, bringing the total to nineteen with the dog Bas had saved. All with varying degrees of injury or illness. All with different temperaments, too. Getting them acclimated and living in peace in the sanctuary was going to be interesting.
“You and Healer McKinnon have got a handful to deal with.”
They walked out of the back room.
“You’re right, we do. We work twenty-four seven right now.” She laughed at the idea. Sometimes it seemed like they worked more than twenty-four hours just because her thoughts were always consumed with the animals and how to save them all. Even her dreams strayed toward the work she had to do.
“I noticed that there aren’t enough cages for the Saviors on the way so what are you going to do with all of them? What’s the plan?”
“I’ll show you.” She directed him to another set of doors on the other side of the main room. “The Dungeon is massive, the full length of this wing of the mansion. There are areas that I have yet to explore. There just isn’t enough time right now. Mother Stone has given me free reign down here. Not that anyone really knows what we’re doing.” She didn’t mean to sound bitter but sometimes she felt like she was being punished. Being in the Dungeon meant she was out of the way and it was clear that Mother Stone had yet to inform the rest of the hospital about the Familiar Clinic. It wasn’t even listed on the hospital’s website.
Bas quirked an eyebrow, picking up on her tone, no doubt. “It’s honorable work but I would imagine also thankless at times.” He raised his hand. “I’m not just saying that and I know it’s probably not something you hear often. Most witches feel threate
ned by familiars.” He rolled his eyes. “Don’t get me wrong—what happens upstairs is the real deal, and I’m not interested in working down here forever, but I get why you do.”
She cocked an eyebrow in his direction. Pompous ass. She didn’t need his approval and she wasn’t seeking affirmation. Still, hearing another witch actually acknowledge that her work had value was a rare thing. Even Croft, who was a devoted Healer, wanted more than anything to get the hell out of the Dungeon and back to caring for witches.
And it wasn’t totally thankless. The animals let her know they appreciated her care. Sometimes anyway.
“We’ve been here for a few weeks setting up as quickly as we can, but with only two of us working down here, it’s slow going.” She used a touch of power to open another set of doors. “This is the sanctuary.” She waved him into the space.
The sanctuary was a dream come true and Mother Stone had been relatively generous with her budget. Mina was able to use the best material available. The animals were kept inside via a second barrier, which was a mere shimmer of a wall past the doors. Beyond was a replica of the Dark Forest. Several huge oaks, wider than two burly men, were scattered about, completely fabricated by a few hefty spells, but lifelike and durable. She and Croft had worked for days to get the trees’ canopies to shoot into the vaulted ceilings, utilizing one of the decommissioned turrets that framed a wing of the mansion. There were bushes with giant leaves and grass all over too, also magically replicated and flowers which were real, the non-toxic variety, planted in dirt taken from the actual Dark Forest. Vivid blues, pinks, reds that she knew the animals would find appealing. The place smelled of moss and fresh air; an intermittent breeze fluttered throughout. The sanctuary pulsed with power and Mina felt a rush of pride looking over all the work she and Croft had done. She might be half-breed but when her magic was on, it was really on.
Feral Heart: A Witch Hospital Romance (The Witches of White Willow Book 2) Page 5
