High Steaks (Freelance Familiars Book 3)

by Daniel Potter

  I snorted, seeing how it really worked for the first time. The magi did protect humanity, but as a side effect of gathering magical resources for themselves. A sense of duty to the mundanes was entirely absent beyond the vague leftover morality that it is a bad thing to slaughter humans. Outside of Vegas and other shallowings, that morality was backed up by the Veil's enforcement. "It's a devil-you-know arrangement."

  "Exactamungo! Give the cat a can of cashews so he can give them to me!" He pulled a peanut from his cheek, nibbled at it, and shoved it back. "Seriously, I'd kill for some cashews."

  "And you sided with Archibald when he tried to kill the council and plunge the magi world into chaos - why?"

  "That council needs a reboot. Medoci had been on it since Morganna killed Merlin. Ghenna's been dripping entrails over their table for nearly two hundred years. The council's full of old ideas, and worse, old imaginations."

  "So you'd prefer Ceres and Doug sit on it?"

  "You bet your nuts on it! Sure, Ceres and Doug are right bastards, but none of those spell dogs were starving or twitching. You don't find kindness in this town without digging. Lesser evils. All 'bout lesser evils."

  "We have arrived, sirs," the capy bro announced. The stop was so smooth I barely felt it. You could not tell that the steering wheel and the pedals were being operated independently at all.

  "Maybe you should poke sleeping beauty over there?" Rudy suggested.

  "Nah, let her sleep. You'll have to ward off the cougaress all by your lonesome." I smiled, offering my friend his usual perch.

  "Battle time!" Rudy dived back into his nylon harness. He made a show of checking his weapons: firecrackers, a long sewing needle, and a stemless bottle rocket.

  "I miss your mecha," I commented as he took his seat.

  "Dude, so do I. But ’tis better to have mecha-ed once than to have never mecha-ed at all. Come on, let's go see if Trevor left tracks."

  The door popped open, and I was greeted by the barrels of half a dozen cameras, plus the lenses of four times as many phones. Doing my part for the tourism industry, I strutted up the stairs and through a door held open by a doorman. Said doorman's eyes looked like they were about to pop out and hit me as I went past. "Feather's going to want to know who walked in the door," he whispered as I passed. I had wondered if the staff might mistake me for Feather, but having a squirrel on my back probably prevented confusion.

  "Maybe she's in a meeting?" Rudy mused after no tawny beauty emerged immediately from the crowd we weaved through. "We can pop in the kitchens, ask about Trevor, and get out of here."

  "Or perhaps he's a bit smarter than that and wants to get permission first?" a voice growled to our left from thin air. I couldn't even glimpse a trace of magic as an invisible presence rubbed scent on my whiskers. Gods, she smelled pretty. So pretty.

  "Permission is so boring!" Rudy shifted to my right, leaning away from Feather's voice.

  "Is living boring, rodent?" Feather said. Her warmth against my side guided us toward an empty bar advertising delicious shrimp cocktails.

  "Phawww, I doubt the rats that live in the kitchen have your permission. The only reason you even know I'm here is that you secretly admire this big fluffy tail," Rudy countered.

  Feather made that wet-sounding cough that was the prelude to a hairball. "You realize that if he wasn't with you, I'd have eaten him already, don't you?"

  "Rudy makes people want to eat him all the time. It's sort of a talent of his," I said, not entirely sure if Feather was kidding or not. "Funnily enough, nobody's actually succeeded at that," I added as a warning. So far, I'd seen Rudy use only trickery to foil felines, but surely if he'd been around for hundreds of years, he had a few aces I didn't know about.

  "I've seen the Facebook gallery. The camera doesn't do you justice, Thomas." She appeared, fading into existence like a bad TV special effect, a sly smile on her thin lips. I caught a wave of her scent on my tongue, as if it had been bottled by her spell. My eyes couldn't resist tracking along the supple curve of her spine.

  "All right! I'll take the hint. By your leave, Lady of Pointy Teeth, I'll go school some newbs on your poker tables. Be careful," Rudy hissed into my ear before using it as a launchpad.

  Feather watched him go. "He better not cheat in my house."

  "Rudy is a completely honest player," I assured her, thinking of all the cards stashed in the vinyl of the cheap card table in the Stables. I decided not to add, "unless you give him time to plan."

  "And I'm a baby bird fresh out of the nest. Squirrels are worse than coyotes; they exist to watch the forest burn."

  "I'm sure both of those characterizations are based on species stereotypes," I said, only half kidding and trying to forget how gleefully Rudy had burned down my house. Fortunately, it had been a rental.

  Two wine glasses rimmed with large shrimp were placed in front of us, far more than those in the staging area and freshly de-tailed. Feather sucked down a wet morsel as if it were a fat noodle. "You are so young."

  My ears folded back as I braced for another lecture about how might makes right and how justice for mere mortals is silly.

  Instead, I got a kiss. A playful lick that smelled of fish. It sent a little spark all the way down to the tip of my tail. I attacked the cocktail to try to cool the sudden warmth I felt in my chest. Not to mention avoid making any of the disastrous jokes about older women that were knocking around in my head. I could feel the prickle of her gaze on my fur, the sensation of a familiar doing a deep scry on me.

  "Well, you don't taste like a dragon-made thing. Then again, that collar really isn't Archibald's work. He did fine, delicate work, but nothing on that level. Medoci in his prime, or maybe an original Merlin, could pull off what I can see of it. But I know the tip of an iceberg when I see one."

  I tried not to get defensive. I needed at least one of the casino magnates in my corner. If I needed to submit myself to an occasional probe to get on Feather's good side, then I'd have to let her. "I didn't lie to Death. It is dragon work."

  "Show me. Break that bond you hold while I watch."

  I eyed her suspiciously. "No. The last time I did that, I got jumped by Oric, who took me on a tour of the Vegas air space." I slid a tendril of awareness back to O'Meara's mind and found it frothing with dark memories. A nightmare held her, but it wouldn't take much to wake her, at least.

  She chuckled darkly. "Maybe that bit about the dragon was true. But you cannot stand up to Death at all. It gave you no power of your own, did it?" Her amber eyes held mine, weighing my soul somehow.

  "Death can spin on a stick. Ceres and all the others will find I'm a difficult cat to kill." A growl crept into my voice. "I'm here to discuss a few things with your kitchen staff about a friend of mine who went missing a few days ago. That's all. After Death's little game plays out, then we can talk about reverse engineering how my bond works."

  "You actually believe you'll win? Ceres and Doug won't come alone. They'll bring a cabal of trained battle magi." She flicked a shrimp into her mouth and chewed it slowly.

  "Oh, does that mean you and Lansky aren't tempted by the McGuffin that Death is waving around?"

  "Ghenna's little booklet of secrets? Ha! Death's little games are beneath us. The Council of Merlins are still paying us back what we loaned them for their African excursion. If Ghenna had anything on us, she would have used it long before her disappearance. Ceres will hunt you because she's ambitious. House Morganna will hunt you because they are desperate for any edge. Then Death will gleefully hoist your head on a pike and laugh at them all."

  "Why be neutral? You standing by my side in that hunt would certainly send a message about Death's bullying. If I die, then so does my bond."

  She finished the last of her shrimp, and I realized that I had only eaten a few of mine. "Let me show you something. Follow me." Without waiting for an answer, she pushed off the bar and headed into the crowd.

  I slurped down the rest of the slimy white meat and followed.
She zigzagged through the crowd and through a hotel exit, where we emerged into the casino's parking garage. Which did not make much sense architecturally. I stopped and scried, confirming that, like Death's magi casino, the Monte Carlo existed in bent space. No wonder mortals got lost in it.

  Feather gave me a brief smile before continuing on through the lanes of cars. My hackles rose as I realized we were moving towards the soft golden glow of wards. Wards that contained the red aura of a slumbering O'Meara.

  26

  Feather-Light Games

  Hopping up on a car confirmed that the white, bullet-ridden Capy Bro's limo sat inside a nest of wards. O'Meara! I thought-shouted down into my link.

  Nothing coherent responded. I dived through the bond. O'Meara's mind bubbled with activity, but a thin blue force held it within her subconscious. There was simply no conscious thought whatsoever. Not sleep; a coma.

  "Let her go!" A roar tore from my throat as I slammed back into my body. "You are not damseling my magus!"

  She hopped on to a nearby white Honda Fit. "Tsk, tsk. Maybe you should have been paying more attention to your magus? Or made sure she had some basic wards up before her nap? For someone without any House to object to charges, it's very sloppy behavior." Feather radiated smugness from every follicle of her body.

  "Let her go, Feather! We can talk about the bond after you let her go." A hiss accented my words, but my rage was mostly self-directed. I'd let her little flirtations distract me and drive off Rudy, once again assuming some sort of common decency among magi.

  "I don't want to talk. I want a demonstration. This is my town, Thomas, and I don't back impotent tricksters. Let's see some of that mojo that you scared Death off with, kitten."

  "Let her go and I'll show you some major mojo."

  "Oh, I don't doubt that. You know what they called her during the war? The Ashbringer. That was all that was left after she fought. Acres of black ash were all that remained of villages and armies both. Her troops were the Burnt Legion. They marched into battle already covered in soot. I bet the pair of you are a very formidable team in a fight."

  Attempting to not be obvious about it, I bored into the working of the wards. They had been solidly constructed and bolstered with a bit of tass anchored to a silver wire that surrounded the limo. They did not project down into the concrete. Break the wire and the ward would collapse.

  "I'm waiting, Thomas," Feather sing-songed and faded out of sight.

  "There he is!" A new voice echoed through the garage. I turned to see a group of five men with very shiny black shoes burst out of the door I had come in. One of them carried a small dog by the handle of a harness and burst into blue light. Two of the other men had telescoping poles with wire nooses at the end.

  "And who are those guys?" I asked.

  A disembodied purr rolled out around me. "That's a question. If you have any power at all, they're lunch. If you're a puffed-up kitten, then they're here to make sure you're put into a safe place."

  Biting back a string of useless curses, I dived off the car I stood on and raced down the aisle. Desperately, I took stock of what I had. A gun stored in an interdimensional gullet, a very minor telekinetic spell, and who knew how many fireworks were stuffed in the pocket of my harness. Flinging myself under a glitzed-out Humvee, I tried to catch my breath and make a plan. If I could get the M80 out, light it, and blow a small crater in the concrete, then I could use either my paw or my thumb spell to break the ward.

  "Bark! There he is! Bark! Bark!" A miniature Doberman Pinscher had rounded a tire five cars away. Each high-pitched bark propelled his little body backwards with the recoil. "Get him! Get him!"

  The human-shaped aura behind him lit up with yellow and blue light. In my color-coded vision, he drew on his anchor and manifested kinetic energy. "Box him in!" the same voice that had sworn earlier hollered.

  Cursing, I rolled out from under the Hummer and looked for the exit. Or what I thought to be an exit. No human or miniature dog was going to outrun me. I arrived at the gate and skidded to a stop as it slammed down far faster than it should have. Feather's Cheshire Cat grin flashed at me from inside the guard's booth. "Oops! The parking garage is closed for filming. I want your best action-hero performance. I've got tape a-rolling," she taunted and faded out. The spell she used hid both her body and her magic, which was supposed to be impossible.

  I had no time for banter as the pulsing aura behind me launched a wave of kinetic energy down the lane. I leapt out of the way onto an SUV roof, and it crashed into the gate, snapping the board from the toll booth and rattling the metal barrier.

  "Give it up!" the magus hollered as his men threaded through the cars two by two. "We're here for your protection." Each noose holder paired with a large man gripping an extended blackjack. Nonlethal weapons and a magus with a dog. Feather was right; if I couldn't get myself out of this box, then playing Death's game would be a stupid sort of suicide.

  My claws gripped the roof of the SUV below me. Too bad I couldn't return the courtesy.

  The magus threw out his hand and sent out a thin whip of energy, but it sailed harmlessly over my head. "Swing and a miss!" I declared. "Try a foot lower." Dogs smell magic, but cats see it. There is a reason magi prefer cats. First, you can see spells being flung at them, and second, you can see where you flung your own spell.

  The second lash was lower. I dodged it by lying down and starting to groom my paw. "Second strike. One more and you're out," I said, focusing really hard on getting a tangle between my toes.

  The goon squad had positioned themselves on either side of me and appeared to be coordinating a charge. Mr. Lead Goon looked like he was charging up for a final move, pouring kinetic energy into both of his fists as the little dog barked in my general direction. Deciding that staying in place for the next shot would be bad, I slipped myself off the back of the car. A pair of goons charged me: a Mr. Hoop, followed closely by a Mr. Blackjack. I batted the hoop away and crunched down on the offered arm. The gold halo lit around me as the other man's blackjack smashed into my harness ward.

  Green lit up my vision. I jumped away before the summoning triggered. The man screamed as writhing vines exploded from the green glow in his breast pocket. In less than a second, both goons and the car I had been standing on had been swallowed up by a giant Koosh ball of plant matter.

  "Okay, that was creative. I'll give you that. Let's call that a ball," I shouted out before I ran between a line of cars. I had thought the hoop guys were distractions from the magus. Clearly it was the other way around. "Still two strikes," I said, playing to a certain invisible cat that I knew was the real audience of this little duel. Wonder what she promised the sausage on legs for capturing me?

  "Hah HA! I seeeeee you!" the little dog sang out as the magus struck, the energy slamming into the cars on either side of me. I kissed the pavement as the truck and the SUV slammed into each other with the sound of cracking glass and screeching alarms. Shooting forward on my belly, propelled by my hind legs, I made a mental note to not groom myself. I'd need a bath. Motor oil and my tongue do not get along.

  The dog howled, and the magus hit the cars again. This time they exploded, sending metal and glass raining down around me. I hid myself behind a smart car. It was actually short enough that I could hide my front paws and back paws in separate wheel wells so the midget dog couldn't see my feet.

  "He's over there! Bark! That way."

  I heard the slow crunch of glass under expensive shoes coming my way, then a softer sound off to my right, away from the goons. Feather. Her paws were silent on concrete, but the glass was a different story.

  Hoping I had a moment, I closed my eyes and opened myself to the magic around me. I'm very good at scrying magic, but when I go deep, I only see magic, and I'm liable to walk headlong into mundane but very solid objects - as if the world becomes ridden with well-polished glass doors and walls.

  I saw the magus and his dog by the foci on his harness and the remaining pair of m
en by the exploding tangleweed foci. Against the glare of the casino magics, I could see a dark spot about twenty feet away, hovering where the hood of a car had been in my normal sight. The little dog was running back and forth but not straying far from his magus. Smart dog.

  "There he is!" I opened my eyes to see the remaining hoop guy pointing at me down the lane. He charged with his head down. The plant focus was clutched in his left hand. "Block him off!" the man hollered, his buddy running up the other lane.

  I ran. Wide cushions of yellow energy crashed down onto the lane but were easy to avoid. I turned the corner and skidded to a stop, settling myself into a crouch. I had to time this just right.

  As the goon crossed in front of Feather's perch, I launched myself. The man didn't even get a quarter way into a curse as my paws slammed into his chest. Instinct drove my teeth for his neck, but they closed around something small and metallic that glowed green to my mind's eye. With a brutal jerk of my neck, I spit the focus away.

  Right at Feather.

  Her scream was music to my ears. She reappeared at the edge of the vine ball. Her claws dug into the roof of a car as she fought against being pulled deeper into the plant.

  "Manuel! Get it off me!"

  The one remaining goon was charging for the casino exit.

  "Still fun and games?" I asked. The barrage of kinetic spells had stopped. The magus had scooped up his familiar and was running towards us. The expression on his face was one of pure humiliation and terror. I decided he was no longer a threat.

  "You idiot!" she hissed back. "Now you'll have the entire House's attention."

  Purple flashed. "Not the entire House. But you do have mine." Magus Lansky stepped forward out of a bend in space.

  27

  So Rude!