High Steaks

by Daniel Potter

  All in the demon's mind centered on the void, a black suction that opened back to its home plane that desired nothing more than the pain of a loved one's passing. Around it circled orbs of light - the souls of the magi it had obtained. Death, Lansky, Lady Ezial, and more I did not know. Victims of Lansky's battle against the tower?

  From each soul stretched a web of silver strands, out beyond the borders of the thing's mind. I extended claws O'Meara and I had forged. Claws as thin and fine as thoughts themselves. Back when Trevor had first been killed, the drain on my mind had triggered a defense mechanism and severed a similar strand. I had only thought about Trevor when reminded since, just as I had barely given much thought to my own parents over the last year. The Veil severed one's mortal connections after an awakening. The silver strands were connections between souls. That was what the hunger plane that drove the Tikoloshe exploited. Feasting on the heart of a beloved elder would bind an entire community. Presumably the Veil would smack them down if any one Tikoloshe tried to bind more than one's share, or perhaps the limit had been cultural. Whatever limited them there did not hold sway in Vegas.

  I did.

  I'm sorry, I whispered to the soul of Lady Ezial before swiping through the thick strands that bound her to the Blackwings. They snapped like guitar strings, the creature's hunger stretching them to breaking point. A tremor rippled through the thing's mind. Hurriedly, I sliced through the rest of the strands in a sweeping blow. Unmoored, the soul fell into the void and winked out of this existence.

  No! That is mine! The thought howled through the mindscape and tore at me like a tornado. The void loomed larger as I spun towards it. You will follow it to my home!

  Blindly, I lashed out. My paws touched something, and I clung to it. More strands. The wind - the hunger - ripped at my fur. It blew through me, whistling through my insides. Climbing, I found Lansky's soul, shining as if it were convinced he had been the sole light in the world. Emptiness burned in my belly as I reached it. The soul had a scent, of warm blood and meat. I gave it a lick to savor the flavor.

  Wouldn't it be better to eat it than to free it? A new voice slithered up my neck. It had none of the rage of the thing I had forced myself into. Look around you. It directed me towards the strands; they pulsed with the sweet flow of delicious life. Lansky was a no-good gangster whose greed drove him into dangerous waters. Take his soul for yourself and do good with it. No one needs to know you have it. There's no need to draw that much power from his connections. You can be subtle.

  My attention focused on the one strand that grew like a tree from Lansky's soul. His connection to Feather, stiff and stopped with the magic of O'Meara's and my stasis spell. I remembered the way she had gone into a blind frenzy of hunger and rage as her teeth became iron tusks. I laughed at the voice. Subtle. Yeah, right.

  The claws that shredded bonds of friendship or hatred barely scratched the surface of Feather's familiar bond.

  You can't sever this one. But you can EAT it! the hunger taunted as I felt my jaws fall open of their own accord, ready to swallow the soul like a snake swallowing an egg.

  I snapped a length of rivalry off Lansky's soul and tied it around my muzzle, holding it closed. Feather had killed Jet, Trevor, and probably countless others. I had no reason to save her.

  The hunger reached into my mind. That bond is so deep. You break it, and she'll surely die. That's why she wanted your power, was desperate for it. A way out. She had no choice in what she did. And in the final moments, she saved you. Surely that counts for something.

  The hunger's voice grew sickly sweet. Save her, redeem her. You are the only one who can.

  Yes. I had Lansky's soul halfway in my mouth before I realized I had moved. When I jerked away, the soul followed, but my ephemeral jaws refused to open. My stomach screamed at me to swallow. IT'S JUST FOOD! EAT IT! EAT IT! It is a deer. A sack of moving meat! Desperate, I pried at it with my claws.

  It tore. My claws pierced it as if it were a canvas sack. Light poured from the hole and into darkness. Memories glittered like grains of sand muddying waters. The light bubbled and evaporated before it reached the void.

  You have killed her now. And worse, you are wasting food. The hunger moaned, and my own stomach gnawed on my ribs, sending sharp spikes of pain slamming through my body. You must eat, or you will die. I am in you.

  Fuck you. Nobody tells me what to do. Not even my stomach. I spat out the empty sack of soul, already half-dissolved to nothing. I reached out and fell onto the next soul, rending it as I landed. The hunger howled as I leapt from web to web, shredding souls or whatever they were. My body grew heavier with every movement as the hunger tore at my own "muscles."

  I did not land on Death's soul so much as crash into it head first. Unlike all the others, it pushed back. Streamers of light grappled my wrists, pushing my soul-shredding claws away from its fragile surface. A network of glyphs glimmered as it thrashed.

  Use your teeth, the hunger suggested with sickly-sweet innocence as it reached into my jaws and forced them open, as if I were its puppet. I twisted my head away, my teeth snapping shut on emptiness. The struggle became a three-way wrestling match, the hunger trying to force me to bite Death's soul, while the soul struggled to keep both teeth and claws from piercing its skin. I put up a fight against both, snarling, clawing. But both the hunger and the soul were equally matched, so instead I focused on drawing a single blade back into myself and pushing it down my lashing tail.

  The hunger realized what I was doing an instant too late. Tendrils of it shot down my tail as the point emerged. I stung the struggling soul, and it squealed like an injured balloon. The milky glow jetted from the hole in the stream. The hunger's attention dissolved into panic. NO! I will not starve! NO! NO! NO!

  Buffet's closed! I hissed, rending Death's soul's skin to ribbons. He burst like a pimple, spraying memories and power in an explosion of energy. The hunger and I tumbled out into the blackness, spiraling down towards the vacuum of the hunger plane.

  The hunger clung to my bones and howled in defiance.

  Happy travels home! I thought at it before I bailed, jumping back through the link to my own body.

  I slipped into my meat with the comfort of pulling on a favorite T-shirt. Muscle and bone greeted me warmly as the hunger's wailing grew distant through the link. A smirk played on my lips as I recalled Mr. Bitey, a sort of mental jerk on a muscle that existed in a direction that normally did not.

  Nothing happened.

  I tried again.

  Nothing.

  Laughter crackled through the link before a sharp pull lurched through my mind. The laughter came again, as if it were right in my ear. No, no, no, no - I'm not going home alone! Kitty comes with!

  I opened my eyes to the blaze of an inferno. O'Meara stood at the foot of the stairs that led up to Death's throne, flames pouring from her outstretched hands and into a wall of fire. Behind the wall, the hunger thing roared in agony. The fire cast the casino in red-orange light, giving everything an infernal gleam. The bodies of the magi and familiars scattered around the floor had begun to writhe and moan.

  The lurch came again; the force of the hunger reached into my brain and pulled me forward several steps. I locked my forelimbs and latched my claws onto the carpet. My traitorous stomach burbled, twisting as if attempting to consume the rest of my internal organs. Feed me, it demanded. Feed us! Save us from the dark. It slithered within me, reaching, grasping for something not there.

  Rudy. It wanted Rudy. The thought triggered a vision of the squirrel, shining with that delicious soul light, brighter than all the magi combined. He pounded on the walls of my pocket, screaming, "Let me out of here! I'm too young to be swallowed!"

  I could cough him up and swallow him right back down. Nobody would have to know.

  Yes. We will be subtle. He will feed us for a very long time. We will all be one big happy family!

  The pressure on my brain eased as I tightened the pocket around Rudy. My tongue
played over teeth that were far longer than I remembered. A gagging noise clambered from my throat through closed teeth.

  HURK!

  Rudy shot out of my mouth and arced through the air. "Ewwwww!" he wailed as he crashed into a stack of poker chips on the roulette table. For a brief moment, he lay there like the world's largest hairball, fur looking wet and sticky.

  The hunger's rage turned acid on my internal organs, my own limbs dragging me toward the wall of flames.

  Rudy's body bolted upright. "YOU SWALLOWED ME! YOU ROTTEN CASHEW-HEADED CAT!" He lifted a chip over his head, eyes shining with murderous intent. "Now my tail is full of cat drool!" The first chip hit me right above the eye. "Take that! And that! And this!" Fortunately, Rudy's aim with casino chips wasn't quite as good as it was with nuts. Still, the majority of the projectiles were bouncing off my noggin. But each hit distracted me from wrestling with the hunger, and I found myself walking ever closer to O'Meara's fiery barrier. The heat grew to an uncomfortable point on my nose.

  "Rudy," I growled. "If you want to kill me, you'll have to do something about this hunger thing first."

  "What hunger thing?" Rudy paused his barrage, lowering his chip as he appeared to take in the situation. "Oh. Why isn't that thing dead already?"

  "Thomas!" O'Meara glanced at us over her shoulder. "Bind me! It's dying - we have to finish it off!"

  "I'm trying. It won't let go of the link!" I shouted back.

  "Then I will make it!" O'Meara turned back to the flame ,and it turned white hot.

  The hunger screamed inside my head and pulled me toward the flame, my whiskers wilting. You will burn with me! it screamed.

  "Thomas, stay away from that!" Rudy bounded down, grabbed my tail, and futilely tried to haul me in the opposite direction.

  I had no idea what to do. I had no tricks left. If O'Meara let down the wall, the hunger would pounce on all the magi. The only reason the hunger was still here was that it had latched on to me. I had become its anchor to this plane. Nothing this side of life would sever my bond with it now. I stared at the flame and wondered how much this would hurt.

  The air beside me stirred. Doug stood there. The black stones, which I had never before seen any trace of magic within, glowed with a silver light. A paw of his crossed in front of me, barring my way to the flame. "You have done enough, Thomas. There is no need to throw yourself on the Ashbringer's pyre."

  "You wanted to kill me before. Why would you save me now?" I hissed. The hunger urged me to bite him, which was the only reason I knew that would be a bad idea.

  "Because I came here to either destroy the Tikoloshe or bring them home. Ceres is still asleep, and I suggest we take care of this before we have a room full of confused magi to deal with." Doug's collar unlatched and spread like wings from his neck. His form flickered for an instant, the cheetah form faltering away to... something else entirely. The disguise slammed back down before I could parse the diverse shapes within beyond an impression of constant movement.

  O'Meara’s eyes caught mine. The green shimmered with the light of flame before her as she stared into my head. I had no need of the link to know that she wouldn't have allowed me to immolate myself.

  The wall of flame parted. The cheetah surged through the gap with a thunderclap. The spread collar became wings of lightning, stabbing into the howling darkness like jagged blades. The tension in my head immediately slackened as the hunger turned its attention to the cheetah. Limbs and maws flew at him, but they only met empty air. Doug did not dodge as such; he flowed, whirling about with greater dexterity than even Grace conjured. The silver light flashed, and great tears opened in the hunger, so wide that I could see the bone throne through the hole. The hunger slashed at Doug, but it was futile. The cat fought like the wind... no, he fought like a storm. The thought hit like a brilliant clap of thunder, and my perspective changed. The cheetah continued to dance like a puppet, but that's all it was. A distraction. The hunger faced a storm, a hurricane wielding that silver light, the stuff that binds all souls together as its lightning. The very stuff the hunger fed on. What could do that?

  Wetness hit my nose as it began to rain. In my mind's eye, I saw a sun-baked earth beginning to burst with life. Green stalks thrusting upward to meet the coming rain. A song of joy sang forth in a language I could not understand. I staggered as I realized what might know those connections. What could split the hunger of grief in twain?

  A god of rain and wind. A renewal of life and moving on from the death of the harsher seasons.

  The hunger wept as the pieces of it fell away, its hold on the reality slipping on the slickness of the rain. Mr. Bitey wiggled himself free of the hunger's grasp. Yet Mr. Bitey did not recoil to his usual resting place around my neck, instead threading around O'Meara's soul. We took a shared breath and savored the sweet scent of the rain as the last of the blackness, a tiny screaming swirl in the floor, popped from our existence.

  Doug appeared as he always had. In the blink of an eye and with a light whoosh of air, he stood over where the hunger had been, the stones of his collar dark once again. Yet Doug himself did not look the same. The spots moved over his hide with the speed of storm clouds on a windy day. He looked directly at me as he took a position at O'Meara's side. "You still have a knot. Give it to me."

  I coughed, bringing up the chunk of black tass that contained a flicker of Jet's soul. I placed it on the ground in front of me. "Is there a way to help him?"

  Doug flickered forward and shattered the stone with a single strike of his paw.

  Flinching back, I gave a hiss before O'Meara placed a restraining hand on my neck.

  Let them go, Thomas. Let them all go, O'Meara urged. The battle's done.

  Reluctantly, I leaned against O'Meara, all my joints suddenly very tired.

  "We do not have much time. All the magi are climbing toward waking, and we have things that must be discussed."

  A weight landed on my back. "We're all ears, stormy," Rudy hmphed.

  "I know you," O'Meara said. "You're one of the Dark Council."

  Doug snorted. "We're no darker than your Merlins, and the proper term in English is simply the Elders. Dark Council my foot."

  "So you're spying on us. Trying to get Ceres instated as a Merlin?" Rudy said flatly.

  He inclined his head in a yes. "As I said, I came to find our mutual problem and bring them home. I was too late by the time I discovered where they were, and Feather assured me they were long dead. I admit to some distraction." A smirk flashed at his muzzle and disappeared. "I did not realize that Lansky himself had become corrupted with their essence. After he killed Death, a person whom Ceres respected, it was all I could do to shield her from Lansky's attentions."

  The Elders use the Tikoloshe as weapons, O'Meara thought to herself. Probably more concerned with Lansky learning how they controlled them than with rescuing them.

  I mentally nodded. Doug certainly could have extended a paw to help us earlier if he had so chosen. "We kneecapped the hunger thing and you finished it off. Now you don't want us to blow your cover. Right?"

  "You all defeated it. All I did was prevent it from giving you a tour of its home plane."

  "Then why reveal yourself at all?"

  "Despite your association with her," Doug cast a disparaging look at O'Meara, "I now believe this city is better off with you in it."

  "You were going to kill us," O'Meara snapped, guilt and anger warring in her head in equal measure.

  "Perhaps." The cheetah grinned. "Judging from this, it may have been harder than my bond predicted. In return for saving you now, I'd like your silence in return."

  "Until it's otherwise convenient, right?" Rudy piped up. "We had a signed contract before! You backstabbed us once, buddy - how stupid do you think we are?"

  The cheetah's ears wilted, and he pawed at the ground. "I sincerely apologize for that. A misjudgment by both of us. It will not happen again."

  "And why's that?" I asked. "Ceres is still marinating in
a plane of pure ambition. She cannot help but seize any opportunity she perceives."

  "Because it is my home now. I am Ceres's familiar and enjoy our life together despite my other duties. We, the Elders, are not looking for revenge for the war. Merely preventing the next one. You can out me at any time, forcing Ceres and I to flee."

  Mistrust bubbled inside O'Meara, but I rolled my eyes. Fatigue had me in no state for fine negotiations "Fine. We'll keep what you are under our hats. You keep Ceres's schemes off the Grantsville folk."

  "And the next time someone thinks it's a fine idea putting a price on my partner's head, you remind them how that worked out this time," O'Meara added.

  Doug gave a single snort at that. "Gladly."

  47

  Did You Expect the Inquisition?

  Of all the magi, Ceres woke first. She clung to her familiar, watching us through sunken eyes as O'Meara busied herself setting up a water dispenser we had found in the hidden kitchen. None of the magi nor their familiars had had anything to drink or eat in twenty-four hours. Rudy and I brought water to the smaller familiars, administering drops of moisture through a straw. One frog who looked particularly dried out, we tossed into a water bottle.

  Murmured thanks from exhausted throats greeted us until O'Meara offered the inquisitors cups of water. The man with the embroidered red robe glared daggers at her before snatching a cup. After all his fellows had drained their cups, he stood, hand on his sword. His familiar, a white lynx, briefly covered his eyes with a paw before rising as well.

  "Mistress O'Meara." He wheezed and coughed. "You and your familiar are under arrest." It was so quiet that I might have pretended not to hear it.

  "I don't have a familiar. I have a partner," O'Meara corrected him, but otherwise did not stop from moving back to the cart to refill her tray. Images of violence glittered in her mind, but fatigue had begun to spill in. We needed someone to rebuild her internal organs soon, care she would not get from the Inquisition.