High Steaks (Freelance Familiars Book 3)

by Daniel Potter

  E=MC squared, I thought back.

  O'Meara's only response to that was a very queasy stomach as we watched Rudy laboriously wrap the entire thing in black electrical tape.

  "There! All done. One vault-ward puncher-througher," Rudy declared as he cut the last of the tape with an X-Acto knife. "This will be like that time -" Rudy paused and then grinned. "Nope, this isn't gonna be like any other time. This," he patted the bomb affectionately, "is going to be so loud the munds are gonna hear it."

  "We're ready, then?"

  "Can you two summon me up a box with a T-shaped plunger? That will make it super sweet! Do this Wile E. Coyote-style." Rudy nearly bounced.

  O'Meara knelt down and very gingerly picked up the U-bomb. "Sorry, Rudy, you'll have to do without the box." Technically, this bomb was less powerful than the one we had used to blow a hole in Lansky's vault, but the thing gave off an aura that couldn't be denied. The first bomb had been a tool. This, given the fact you could aim it, was very definitely a weapon.

  "No prob. I've got an app." Rudy pulled his phone out, swiped and prodded it a few times, then displayed the screen to us. A cartoon T-plunger displayed on the screen. "I don't even need Wi-Fi."

  42

  Slumber Party with a Snake

  I watched the battle from the back seat of O'Meara's Porsche, wind whipping the backs of my ears. Huge worm-like creatures infested the surface of the council's tower like caterpillars swarming a tree. Smaller bugs swarmed around the spire's roof like flies over a dung pile. Bright beams lanced out from the rooftops, lancing through dozens, but more were pouring out of a dark spot that had replaced the sun. Someone is still fighting up there, I observed, craning my head this way and that as O'Meara snaked the car through empty streets. Apparently, the magical residents of Las Vegas had decided to shelter in place.

  "Then we've still got a chance of this working." O'Meara stomped on the gas as we entered a straightway.

  "What you talking about?" Rudy clung to his perch on the battle harness in the small of my back. "All I can hear is a lot of magic."

  I relayed what I was seeing, with the beams of power fending off the swarmers.

  Rudy chittered. "Could we wait until after the council gets et? That would solve so many problems!"

  "And then we have a hunger-plane vampire lord with access to the stuff in the forbidden vault. I don't consider that an improvement, do you?" O'Meara said as we fishtailed around the corner onto a wide road, whooping with glee inside her head. "Hang on! Here comes the fun part!"

  Against my better judgment, I turned around and peered forwards. When O'Meara combined fun with driving, it was usually better to look at all the things the car had missed instead of all the objects we were about to smash into. Her foot stomped on the gas, and the world flew into motion.

  The engine howled as O'Meara threaded through sparse and cautious traffic. My heart beat against my teeth as she ripped between the lanes, the pitch of the car's song deepening as she slid through the gears. Flashing red and blue pierced the darkness ahead, illuminating the towering silhouette that was the MGM Grand. In that moment, I realized we'd been driving on the strip itself. Vegas's neon glory had gone completely dark.

  Yet I had no time to appreciate the symbolism or even the magnitude of what a darkened strip meant. Those lights were attached to very solid police vehicles that formed a ring around the entrance of the MGM. O'Meara's foot did not leave the gas. "Please keep your tails, noses, and whiskers inside the ride at all times!" she crowed before slapping her hand over a crystal knob behind the stick shift and channeling sunfire down into the car.

  I ducked down and bit my tail to keep it from lashing. Peeking through O'Meara's eyes, white-hot plasma erupted across the hood as we beelined for the entrance. Cops were bailing out of the cars in front of us. O'Meara's sense extended through the car; with a flick of power, we all lurched into the air. My stomach got left behind as the car executed a swan dive right into the pavement.

  Gloop! And we were encased in the red glow of molten rock flowing over the cab of the car. We'd warded the car against heat, and I felt none of the thousands of degrees that existed a foot beyond my nose. Still, as I watched the rock go by, I found myself wishing we had taken the time to put the top up this time. Can you imagine the effort of attempting to get molten rock out of your fur? It'd be worse than gum.

  Not that I'd have to imagine. The stuff started flowing into the car as soon as we stopped directly under the vault. O'Meara brought us as close as she could. Never meant to be exposed to air, the ward seethed with malignant energy while red-hot magma slowly dripped over the windows. Rudy jumped up on the top of the driver's seat, paws clutching at the fire ward focus O'Meara and I had crafted while he had made the bomb. "Uh! I'm feeling a little toasty! You guys sure I can swim in this stuff?"

  "Yes, just set the-" A glowing gob of molten concrete hit O'Meara in the face, dripping through the ward. Her head snapped back against the headrest as I rushed to paw the bowling ball-size glob off her. It hit the floor of the back seat with a heavy thwump. Meanwhile, the rain was just getting started. Death's vault apparently wasn't warded against heat at all. While we couldn't be harmed by the heat, we could still drown in the molten rock.

  "New plan, Rudy! We're going in from the front!" I declared as O'Meara injected new sunfire into the tunneling focus. The car bucked as it started to move. O'Meara's mind held the building's plan as we continued to move beneath the building's foundation. Abruptly, the ward above our heads disappeared, but O'Meara drove the car some distance before pulling a U-turn with a slow-motion corkscrew. "All right, boys. We're about to stick our noses into Death's security area. Which is probably filled with people. I can contain the heat and slam it back into the stone, but in the meantime, you two need to keep any brave souls from charging the car and getting themselves vaporized into their component atoms."

  "Got it!" Rudy crouched down and hunched his shoulders as if he were a five-pound professional linebacker. "Stop anyone stupid enough to run towards searing death. Can do."

  "Just trying to minimize casualties," O'Meara muttered as she set the car inching forward, questing for the underground chamber. I extended myself through her senses, feeling the heat slipping into the material ahead and falling away as it melted. The flavor of it changed suddenly, and it fell away much faster than the stone. Steel, O'Meara tutored me as she desperately fought to rein in the fire before - BANG!

  A shock shuddered through us as the superheated shell around the car pierced the wall. O'Meara grunted with effort to keep the heat from turning the underground room into a kiln. Slowly, she swung the passenger side around, bringing the car in sideways. "Go!" she breathed, and Rudy popped the door latch. I nosed the latch on the passenger seat back, pushed it forward, and shot out of the car.

  The room stank of people, of their breath and sweat, but nothing moved to greet or protest our dramatic entrance from the searing light behind us. The room shone with the brilliant glow of the plasma shield, illuminating a security center of sorts. We stood on a raised walkway looking down on rows of desks packed with LCD monitors. Death's security people, all in identical black suits, tooth-white shirts, and broad red ties either slumped over their desks or lay on the floor. Not a single one moved. They all barely breathed. One lady lay in the path of the car, and I dragged her out of the way across the smooth marble floor. Salty tracks lined her face; she had run out of tears hours ago, her shirt stained brown from the puddle of coffee she had lain in.

  "Talk about a slumber party," Rudy commented as I vaulted the railing and jumped down into the security pit.

  The stink was far worse below. "Smells more like a pissing match," I muttered as I pushed and dragged limp bodies from their desks. Fortunately, the suits were well made and didn't rip much in my teeth.

  The walkway wasn't wide enough to fit the Porsche, so I had to clear a parking space on the floor. Nobody protested the treatment. Once everyone had been moved out of the way, O'Me
ara nosed the blazing hood into the room, melted the walkway into a ramp, and drove down into the security pit. The assembled desks and computers liquefied on contact. The most pungent flavor available in the air was that of aerosolized plastic as O'Meara dispersed the heat back into the tunnel we had created. The light of the room faded to the dull red glow of the molten rock we had come through and the strange light of about thirty monitors displaying nothing but a black screen.

  Plenty of light for me to see by. On the wall opposite was a bank of wide elevator doors. To the left, a door-lined corridor extended, with a small sign declaring that the farthest door held a restroom. From the right, a huge vault door beckoned us. Inset about thirty feet away from the security setup, it seemed to leer at me, the various levers and dials on its surface approaching a crude approximation of a face.

  "I feel a little bit like Indiana Jones in the first movie," I said, eyeing the vault door and the rippling wards beyond its steel surface.

  "It's not a tomb yet," Rudy responded. "I think." He waved his paw underneath the nose of an aging behemoth of a man.

  "This issss Death'sss tomb," a voice hissed from everywhere at once.

  "Well, sure, but that's way upstairs and in a pocket dimension." Rudy had pried open the man's eyelid with a dexterous foot and was shining his iPhone's flashlight into it. O'Meara and I closed ranks. She hefted our looted sword and spell ripper while I peered around us for magics, but besides the crackling wards of the vault, I only saw gloom.

  "This entire casino will s-ssstand as a monument to Death. Leave now, and tell others it isss forbidden." The voice had a familiar cadence despite its unearthly echo.

  "Snits?" I asked, remembering the nervous cobra that had coiled around Death's arms. "You're still alive?"

  "No." The space around us buckled in a brilliant flare of purple as two fangs the size of swords stabbed at O'Meara from thin air. O'Meara's blade flickered as she threw herself back. The right fang split in twain.

  A howl of pain vibrated through our very reality as the air above Rudy rippled with purple haze. The squirrel dived out of the way as Snits's tail flashed down on to the hapless employee like a scaled tree trunk. O'Meara let loose with a scorching beam, but it glanced off scales as the tail slithered back off to nothingness.

  Ssstop dodging. Snits's voice had a note of tired annoyance.

  "Okay! Let's chat, then!" Rudy called. "Antimagic round number one!" I heard the whir of the battle harness and the pop of a potato gun. A bright ward of purple and gold crackled into existence around us in a ten-foot radius. "Choke on that, Snits!"

  The ward rang out as something hit it, but it held.

  O'Meara, how the hell is Snits not overcome with grief?

  Because this isn't Snits, probably some sort of construct designed to look like him, O'Meara thought back, her mind loaded with wards effective against extradimensional entities. Nearly all of them required more tass than we had left after the bomb. Glimmers of purple filled the air around us in scale-like patterns, as if the snake was brushing up against our reality but not risking sticking his snoot all the way in.

  "Come on, Snits. We just need to get in that vault and then we'll be out of your scales," I said calmly, although my brain was helpfully replaying how close those fangs came to skewering O'Meara.

  Snits's head flickered into existence in front of the doorway. He looked alive to me, except that his head was large enough to block most of the doorway. "No one takes anything from Death's tomb. These lives and riches are tribute to his greatness."

  "So you're planning on hanging around here for eternity? That sounds like fun," I said.

  Snits hissed. "You know nothing, you petulant puma."

  "I know there are about three hundred magi and familiars upstairs which you have to let us rescue. They're not dead. We have to stop Lansky! Are you interested in revenge?"

  The snake emitted a small hiss of laughter. "Revenge? I'm free, after over two hundred years. I have no desire for revenge. Lansky can have his Las Vegas; he can drink the council dry. But this place is Death's monument. Death waits for all within it."

  See? Definite construct. He'll be eating his own tail if he thinks too hard, O'Meara thought.

  Rudy, however, wasn't on mine and O'Meara's private channel. He chittered. "Yeah, Death's dead, so now everybody else's gotta die? Your head's packed with peanuts. You two still owe me favors - you remember those?"

  A smile played at the corners of the snake's mouth. "You are a little late to collect. I owe you nothing. I am dead. I am free from all obligations except one. After this memento is forgotten dust, I shall be free to wander where I please."

  That seals it. He has to be a construct; nobody actually thinking would accept that deal. I think I have a way to deal with this. Circle up with me. O'Meara reached for her anchor and found nothing.

  Antimagic ward, I reminded her as I stared at the snake, hoping my sight would reveal some flaw in the snake's defenses. He was a construct of sorts, a web of glittering glyphs and dark runes, that appeared to be magi-made. Yet the way they flowed about the body brought to mind a circulation system. In the center of his head stood a web of silver strands. Something about the way the strands swooped evoked the dance of the Weaver when that giant spider spirit had slammed an escaping soul back into its body. She'd caught the soul in a similar web. I had no doubt that, construct or not, Death had determined that his revenge against Snits and his family would continue long after his death. If we could damage that web, then the snake might fall apart.

  Snits watched me back, a forked tongue as thick as a fire hose occasionally flicking out of his mouth. I'd never been entirely sure how snakes perceived magic, as I heard different things from different sources. Some claimed they saw it just like cats; others said they smelled magic with their tongues like dogs. But I had no doubt that Snits could see the edges of Rudy's ward beginning to fray. The trick we'd used against Feather required more tass than we had left over from Rudy's bomb.

  I've got an idea. O'Meara squared her shoulders and stepped outside the ward. Instantly, a fang erupted from her gut.

  43

  Velocity of a Laden Cougar

  "O'Meara!" I screamed even as I comprehended what she was doing. Her aura blazed as her hands clamped around that fang and channeled the heat of a sun down through its root. Burning pain erupted through the link as O'Meara disappeared in a flash of purple.

  Snits and O'Meara blinked back into existence on the other side of the room. For less than a second, I saw them; flames were pouring out of Snits's eyes as he flailed about, attempting to dislodge the fire magus. They disappeared then reappeared for even less time in the center of the room. In my mind, O'Meara screamed with both pain and determination.

  "She's got him now!" Rudy cried, hopping up and down on my back as they flickered in and out of our dimension, seemingly at random. The snake seemed to be in its death throes, but if he died in the wrong place then O'Meara could be stranded in a different reality.

  I dropped to a crouch. "Rudy! Get ready to blow antimagic bomb number two!"

  "What? Oh, yeah!" The battle harness whirred. "Roger!"

  Studying the patterns of the snake's movements, I took a moment to imagine his movement through fourth-dimensional space. A manmade creature, he would largely be constructed in three-dimensional space. He always appeared from the left to the right. It only looked like randomness in this plane. It is one thing to build a spell with it in front of you, but it is quite another to picture an entire direction that you were born ignorant of in your head. "Rudy! What's the delay on that fuse? I need to know exactly." Snits was orbiting a single point. We had to time it exactly.

  "'Bout a second and a half!"

  What's the velocity of a laden cougar mid-pounce? my mind mocked me. Too many variables for me to balance in my head. O'Meara disappeared, and I leapt toward the middle of the room on instinct. My paws skittered over white scales and snagged on the edge of the flaming eye socket. The wor
ld went dark, light, and rainbow as we flashed through nearby realities. "Blow it now!" I called as we circled back into ours.

  "Gotta get the timing right!" Rudy called back. The world darkened to shadows.

  Pop. A squeak of pain.

  Light.

  Rainbow.

  Golden purple flashed as we reentered our reality, and a hidden wall hit every atom of my being at once as the axis of the fourth dimension that we had been spinning on abruptly ceased to be. Gravity provided a second blow as it rediscovered the giant head we were riding and slammed us into the security pit. I screamed as burning agony flooded into me. That was until I realized it wasn't mine.

  "O'Meara!" I scrabbled off the smoking head and out of the ward, where my bond still clutched at the fang impaling her stomach. Around it, her midsection looked like a hot dog that had been forgotten on the grill.

  She managed to smile at me. "I think I burned... most of the poison out." Her pain melted away as her eyes unfocused.

  No! I slammed my paws onto her shoulders and concentrated, diving into her rapidly unspooling mind and pulling together the healing spell between us. Together, we poured the life energy down into her, forcing the flesh to push the charred remains of most of her intestines out of her stomach.

  I stumbled back, nearly tripping over the soccer ball-sized mass of crunchy flesh that had been pushed out of her body. The destroyed desks and charred scales began to spin. "Why would you do that?" I sputtered, the realization that she'd nearly died skewering my heart and intestines at the same time. "How could you be so reckless?"

  O'Meara's only response was to turn on to her side and cough up a great volume of black mucus. Then she followed it up with a sneezing fit.

  "Fuuuuck," I sighed. Crawling on my belly, I managed to wedge my body beneath hers and pushed her up to a sitting position. Her hands grabbed handfuls of fur, and she clung to me like a castaway to a floating plank in the middle of the ocean. She continued to cough, sneeze, and spit.