High Steaks

by Daniel Potter

  Stupid cat, was her first coherent thought. Don't give me any of your “not allowed to die” bullshit. If I had given you a half second more you would have done something equally risky and stupid. Her arms threaded around my neck and squeezed. It's you who's not allowed to die, mister “let's change the world.” Angry at me? Get used to pulling me back from the brink, cause every time the world makes a bullet with your name on it, I'm going to take it for you. Do you understand me now?

  The force of her conviction stunned me as surely as a blow to the head. Fingers curled around my muzzle and gently pulled it until we were eye to eye and nose to nose. Her green eyes barely contained the flame of her anchor. Memories of Rex and the other familiars played out behind them, a frothy mix of love, possession, and ironclad unwillingness to live without me.

  I recoiled, afraid. O'Meara, I'm not worth that! I sputtered, trying to twist away. She allowed me to break eye contact but only to pull me deeper into a hug so my head rested on her shoulder. The battle harness prevented her from petting me, so she settled for scratching my left ear.

  If I told you I'd obey you, would you send me away? O'Meara asked.

  Never! The force of my own thought surprised me. A purr rumbled in my throat as I leaned against her. Here I was, the only familiar who could bond and rebond at will, perfectly happy in the arms of a cranky fire magus. This wasn't supposed to be a “love at first bond” story, I grumped.

  O'Meara rewarded me with her hearty chuckle. "Too bad. Oh, and I wouldn't listen to that order anyway."

  A snort of laughter forced out my nose. "Good! Because I don't think I could handle an obedient bodyguard." I kissed her cheek with the roughness of my tongue.

  "Ow!" she exclaimed, twisting her head away. "You'll take my cheek off with that!" We laughed, and I gave her a headbutt and got a noogie in return.

  "Ahem!" a high-pitched voice rang out, and suddenly we both remembered that we were sitting in front of a giant snake head in an underground security facility. And that wetness we both felt had been blood. Rudy stood about two feet away from us, tail flicking back and forth with impatience. "If you two are done being all mushy-mushy, could you help me out here?" He held out his right forelimb, which past the elbow looked more like a wet noodle than an arm.

  My eyes bugged. O'Meara and I rushed to disentangle ourselves. "How'd you do that?" I asked as O'Meara hurried to draw a circle.

  He shrugged. "I had to stop the antimagic round from exiting the tube somehow."

  "So you stuck your hand down the barrel?!" My voice was so high with horror that I sounded like a rodent.

  "Precisely! I wasn't going to use my tail. Now, could you make with the magical mojo? This really smarts!" he said, flashing a grimace of pain as he hobbled into the circle O'Meara had drawn.

  "It probably won't be usable after we do this," O'Meara cautioned.

  "Yeah, yeah, I know the bones are all pulped. I know a guy who knows a gal to put it right later. Just make it so I'm not screaming inside my head."

  We nodded and got to work. Bones regrew in Rudy's forelimb just fine, but his paw had a bad case of all bones and no joints.

  Rudy swung it around after the sneezing fit passed. "Well, it might be okay for slapping somebody's nose off!" He waved the stiffened limb in my general direction.

  I rolled my eyes and turned back to the vault door. "All right. Time to do what we came for."

  "Roger!" Rudy leapt onto my back and started digging around in pouches in the battle harness. At first, I thought he was fishing out more explosives, but O'Meara pulled the U-shaped bomb out of her bag. Then, after turning an ear toward him, I heard the crunching.

  "Rudy!" I scolded.

  He popped out of a pocket, his cheeks stuffed with cashews. "Sowwy!" He pulled out an airplane packet of nuts and offered them towards O'Meara. "Fat heelew pell muawks yew zoo fungee." When she refused, he pulled a nut from his mouth and took the largest nibble I've ever seen.

  O'Meara looked down at the scar tissue in her belly, wondering if she still had a functional kidney.

  Time, tass, and skill, I thought at her. Once we get in the vault, we'll at least have one of those.

  O'Meara pulled herself back to the present and pointed to the bomb in her hand. "All right, Rudy, what do we do with this?"

  "We open up the vault with it." Rudy hopped toward the vault door, careful not to use his bad leg. "As long as we position it right. Did we remember a tripod?"

  "Tripod? What tripod?" O'Meara and I said simultaneously.

  Rudy slapped himself with a paw. "The tripod you were supposed to bring! Unless you'd like to hold it in your teeth when I set it off!"

  "You never mentioned a tripod!" I said, peering around for options.

  "Well... I was high! You guys shouldn't ask me to make bombs when I'm high. It's not exactly good for safe handling, ya know."

  "You're sure you're not high now?" I asked.

  "Nuts, no!" he giggled. "I mean, maybe. You did have an ancient ghost muck with my mind. Anyway, the bomb's slightly underpowered. That's why I did the U-shape, for double-barrel perfection, but we still need to line it up right."

  "Where do we put it?" O'Meara hobbled after us, one hand clutching her stomach.

  "'Bout boob level on you, three feet from the door. Angled slightly downwards. Too far back and the blast will only dent it, too close and the hole we punch will be a tight squeeze for anybody not squirrel sized," Rudy said.

  We took inventory. The security pit had been full of desks, but they had been mostly smashed by Snits. Our best bet would be raiding the back offices for furniture. O'Meara was in rough shape for any lifting. Not really wanting to take the time to telekinetically float out a stack of office furniture, I hit on a different idea.

  I paced four feet from the door and channeled O'Meara's power down into my paws. Then I dug, or more pawed, at the ground until the concrete started slipping under my paws like red putty. Once it became scoopable, then I built a sizable pile of slightly molten concrete. When I had finished, I found O'Meara watching me with her hands on her hips.

  "You want to balance a bomb on a pile of superheated rock? Real genius, Thomas," O'Meara said.

  "He's had worse ideas," Rudy commented.

  I hmphed and rolled my eyes. "We cool the rock first."

  "I don't do cooling, Thomas, you know that," O'Meara said.

  "That's why we're going to use the waste basket as a bucket and a faucet in the bathroom down the hall." I grinned.

  Rudy laughed. "Dude, you are so carrying your own bucket."

  After several trips, my rock pile had cooled enough that Rudy could stand on it without needing the heat ward, although he did a slight dance as he carefully settled the bomb into position.

  "Where do we stand, Rudy?" O'Meara asked through gritted teeth. The euphoria of the healing had faded, and her body had slowly realized that several internal organs had gone missing. I really hoped Death had a magic first aid kit in that vault. I'll be fine, Thomas, she projected at me and scratched my ears for good measure. Stop worrying.

  "As long as you're not in front of it or holding it, we should be good," Rudy said. "Get ready to run for it; the wards won't stay open long." O'Meara and I were watching from about five feet back from the bomb. She swung the spell ripper up between us and the bomb for a measure of security. Neither of us were in a hurry to get closer.

  "There works, too." Rudy came over and climbed up onto O'Meara's arm so I could see the screen of his iPhone - a cartoon T-plunger. "Ready for the light show?" His tail buffeted my nose as he placed his paw on the plunger.

  We huddled behind the shield as close as we could. "Group hug," I muttered.

  "Just do it," O'Meara grunted as she tensed her muscles for the coming sprint.

  "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Rudy swiped.

  Light blossomed with the sharp sting of a full-body slap.

  "Go, go, go, go!" O'Meara was up and moving a moment before the concussive force roared into us. She s
taggered, bouncing her shoulder off the wall of the hallway, but kept going. I ran after her.

  The vault door had been blown open like punched-through tinfoil. The outer ward had been shattered, the shards scattered as they dissolved back into the ether. But the inner ward had a rapidly closing hole. O'Meara had blocked our link, but jagged agony pulsed through us each time one of her boots struck the floor.

  "Gun it!" Rudy shouted from O'Meara's shoulder as she dived through. I followed on her heels.

  A scream of agony split the air. O'Meara rolled onto her side, clutching at her wounded stomach and curling into a fetal position.

  "O'Meara!" I ran over and nosed my bond. She spat out a torrent of obscenities.

  I tore open the link and shouted into it. "O'Meara!" Pain surged out on me like a rain of glass shards.

  I'll be fine in a minute. It's simply pain from the meatball way we healed me. Its only flesh, Thomas, easy enough to fix. Get the tass, she urged, pushing me away.

  A sharp tugging on my ear drew my attention from O'Meara with a snarl. "What?!"

  "Duuuuude!" Rudy hissed.

  I looked and then stared.

  Tass.

  A mountain of Tass stood before me, piled against the back wall like a damn dragon hoard. Tass of all types, the majority locked in poker chips but plenty in raw, useable forms: piles of crystals, otherworldly fruits, and a set of rag dolls with four eyes and no mouths were there.

  We had made it to the mother lode.

  44

  Hauling It In

  Death clearly knew how to stock a vault with magical riches. Unfortunately, it was all behind another ward. Nothing like the ones we had just blasted through, this one was thin and delicate, like glass composed of spun sugar. No barrier to anything at all, but a warning. It advertised what it was connected to. If it broke, you would activate the throne.

  It sat on top of the pile of riches, carved from a single piece of obsidian. It was the simplest of shapes while still being recognizable as a chair; blocky, as if it had been exported from the Flintstones. It had no decoration or ornamentation save for a single phrase in white block letters, stenciled near the top of its high back.

  DEATH WILL COME FOR YOU.

  I studied the lettering for a moment. "Yep. Death has a tendency to do that," I concluded.

  Rudy sniggered. "Death the magus probably thought the real thing would leave him alone."

  There was no helping it; all the tass stood behind that ward. The only bit of tass I still had contained Jet's soul. Considering all those crystals that had been sitting on Lansky's shelf, I'd be willing to bet that using the tainted tass was what corrupted him in the first place. "Let's hope that the real thing is only claiming Lansky tonight."

  I batted the ward aside, and foci within the chair burst into life. I recognized the glow of a teleport spell.

  Neither Death nor his body appeared as the spell fizzled.

  "Rudy, see if you can find any foci that are useful." I stepped forward and began to gulp down tass, starting with the crystals, doing my best impression of a goat in a bank vault. The throne continued to pulse, runes cycling deep within its blackness, emitting an eerie hum.

  I'd moved from the gems to a pile of purply-red mushrooms when Rudy called out. He'd been hopping around the piles of tass beside the throne, strewn mostly with weapons of all types. His paws were tugging on the hilt of a sword buried in a column of poker chips. A hilt that looked very familiar.

  "Check... it!... out!" Rudy called in between tugs on the pommel with all the squirrelly strength he could muster.

  An Inquisitorial sword! O'Meara's thoughts surged with hope, and she made an attempt to stand.

  Does it have a healing function? I asked her.

  Yes, but more importantly, it has a wonderful pain-blocking function.

  On it! I responded and shifted toward the sword, intending to pull it out with my teeth.

  The throne pulsed as my mouth closed on the pommel, and the hum deepened to an angry buzz as the space within the seat twisted.

  "STAND DOWN! YOU CAN NOT HOL-" Lansky's voice boomed as he appeared in a blaze of purple light. He stood on the seat, thrusting a black staff towards the ceiling. Black eyes blinked as he cut off his threat, staff drooping in his hand. Iron fangs nearly disappeared behind his lips as the mouth drew into an O.

  That had worked far too quickly! I forced myself back into motion and tugged the sword free from the pile of chips. The movement drew the vampire magus's eyes to me.

  "You!" he screeched with delight, no doubt happy to find something familiar on which to focus all that rage pulsing in his head. "Where is my Feather?!" The staff came around to point at me. I did a barrel roll to the side as a black bolt lanced through the spot where I had been standing.

  O'Meara was rapidly trying to piece together what the hell the glowing throne was doing. Something about how Lansky must be holding on to a piece of Death's soul for the throne to call him here. I was bit busy.

  "Give her back!" he screamed with the manic tones of an enraged monkey as I stumble-slid down the pile of riches.

  A mouth full of sword prevented me from saying something witty at that point. Fortunately, Rudy was there to fill in the gaps.

  "Over our dead bodies, you bitter almond-addled tail-chopper!" Rudy cried. Which was the opposite of what I had been planning to say.

  "Happy to oblige!" the magus growled as I reached the bottom and dived for cover behind a crate of tass-filled poker chips. Black magic struck the barrier, and I did not die. Turns out a wall of solid tass is pretty good cover. The crate shuddered under the assault but held. By comparison, the wall that the previous bolt had struck was melting away into a bubbling gray ooze.

  "Line me up a shot! I'll hit him with the antiward rocket. Then we can shoot him!" Rudy said as he hauled himself back into his battle station.

  O'Meara had a different idea. Get me that sword, Thomas! I can take him with that. Without Feather, he can't do anything complex. Just get me back on my feet.

  Boy, at that moment, I wished for a human arm. O'Meara lay twenty feet away; I could have tossed her the sword and then given the crazed mage a second target to worry about. Throwing things was the most unnatural motion for a feline.

  I tried anyway. Sticking the sword's blade between my paws, I adjusted my grip and hucked that sword as hard as I could, snapping my neck around in an arc. I released the sword, and it launched into the air.

  The blade spun, catching the yellow glow of the aged fluorescent lighting. The blade struck the floor and clattered along the ground, ten feet from O'Meara's outstretched hand.

  Yet I had been moving while the sword flew, sending out my little thumb spell as a tiny ball of kinetic force. It struck the blade and sent it sliding out of the way of another black bolt. Still short. O'Meara began to roll toward it and out of cover.

  "Now there is a heart you'll miss, cat!" Lansky called.

  "Oh, no, you don't!" I popped my torso out around the box's edge, opposite to where O'Meara lay.

  Pop! The firework arced towards Lansky's head. His rod, mid-spell sequence and aimed directly at me, jerked upwards as he attempted to bat the projectile from the air. Blasted vampiric reflexes, he hit it, too, smacking the firework high up into the air, where it would have exploded harmlessly if it hadn't turned into a boulder the size of a VW bus.

  "Heee!" Rudy cried out as the rock fell. "Matter bomb numba one!"

  I charged out of my cover, jumped over the pool of bubbling black goo, and delivered the sword into O'Meara's hand with a well-placed swipe.

  Crack!

  The sound split the air as I skidded next to O'Meara. The stone fell in two halves, one on either side of Lansky, who had his fist raised in the air. The two halves of the boulders rolled to either side of the treasure pile. The black staff had fallen to his feet, and a spiderwebbing of cracks decorated his kinetic wards.

  Wards he could not repair without Feather.

  No time for words
. Thoughts flickered between O'Meara and me as we coated my teeth with solid tass from the pile. I charged.

  "What? Oh! Geronimo!" Rudy cried as the battle harness erupted into the chatter of automatic gunfire. The bullets pinged off the wards. Lansky flailed his arms, flinging a multihued glob of magic in my direction. I leapt over it. Two impacts jarred my paws, the first from his spindly shoulders, the second as I pinned him to the floor. In between them, my teeth found his throat. I bit down; his ward shattered like a candy shell. Foulness squirted down my throat, coating the inside of my mouth. He shifted, flesh tearing, slipping out of my claws.

  "Get back!" The booted foot slammed into my head, materializing inches from my eye. I spun sideways as my own kinetic shield flared. The muscles in my neck twinged, but the ward had absorbed enough of the blow that my head remained attached. The world lurched sideways as I staggered back, desperate to regain my bearings.

  "You can't kill me," the magus spat, his voice whistling out of his torn-out windpipe. He jabbed a skeletal finger in my direction, the black aura jerking it as if it were a puppet's. "I am beyond life! The council will bow to me as the One Merlin."

  The man was very dead. I spat blood and ichor onto the ground. "You damned Feather, just as you damned yourself, Lansky. That plane will consume you first." I smiled, watching O'Meara stand up behind him, her torso already aglow with healing energies as she raised the Inquisitorial sword high. The blade blazed with half a dozen different energies.

  I love it when they like to talk, she thought before unleashing a torrent of hellish energy.

  Lansky whipped around, his aura dancing with dozens of blue hues. White light met O'Meara's attack in a pyromantic display. "You think the tower didn't try that one already? Ha!"

  "The tower never had you flanked, you mother nutter!" Rudy shouted. I looked down to see him holding the black staff up to his shoulder as if it were the world's longest bazooka. "Somnum exterreri!" His voice was a high-pitched cackle. A black bolt shot at Lansky.

  The former man channeled more and tried to smack it away, with one hand still blocking O'Meara's beam. The bolt splattered all over his arm instead. His arm boiled away to a stub at the shoulder in a second. He stared at it, wide dead eyes disbelieving. Rudy fired again, and this one struck him in the chest.