Marking Territory (Freelance Familiars Book 2)

by Daniel Potter

  Veronicas all around me hissed with anger. Diplomacy was clearly not my middle name, at least with this crowd.

  Still, a few were listening. I stalked toward one, hoping Veronica's compassion was among them. She had to have compassion; she loved her Cabal members, particularly Rinoa. She wouldn't be having this breakdown otherwise. Entwining myself around a Veronica whose skin had pinkish tint, I purred my pitch. "Grantsville is getting strangled, and there are thousands of people who need help, who need their homes protected. You can do something unrelentingly good for a change if you help me."

  That Veronica pushed me away, but I found myself in the arms of another.

  Regret spoke. "They are all doomed anyway. The Veil will reject them now and will probably attempt to kill all the mundanes in town."

  "We have to at least stop Jules' machine! Stop the planes from grinding together," I snapped.

  The Veronica holding me whispered, "We can do better. With a bit of tass, a pathway to Las Vegas could be opened. There the mundanes could get their bearings and then trickle out slowly. The Veil won't smash anyone."

  Fear spouted forth dozens objections, but I didn't hear them. The Veronica who held me had started scratching my ear and the sensation made the world go sideways. Each stroke felt more solid than the last, as Veronica's pieces coalesced in a single mind. I drowned out her doubts and fears with the constant purring engine of my vibrating throat.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I opened my eyes to find two thin arms wrapped around my neck. Veronica and I shared a tender moment until I made the mistake of breathing in through my nose. Our minds open, we both gagged as one. Horrified, Veronica tried to scramble to her feet and promptly fell over. I broke her fall, but catching isn't something I can do well anymore.

  "What's wrong with my legs?" Veronica voice was a harsh croak.

  Oh, they're probably fine. Something to do with not eating for a week, I told her mentally.

  A week? Veronica held her hands out in front of her. They resembled little more than a thin covering of skin over bone. Her entire countenance was similar to that of Ambition's, though Ambition had smelled better. She turned her hands over and looked over her body. Her eyes filled with tears as she realized exactly what all the stains on her dress were. Dry heaves racked her body as she frantically stripped out of her clothes. "I can't let them see me like this! I can't let anyone see me like this!" As soon as the clothes were off she started making a circle in the hut’s dirt floor. After she finished she dragged herself over to her position at the circle and looked at me expectantly. When I didn't budge, she made a huff of annoyance and gestured opposite to her, the familiar's position at the circle. Well, get on with it. You are my familiar, are you not? You do know how this works. Right?

  I opened my mouth to try to breathe without smelling anything. It made it worse. We aren't doing any magic until you get some food in your stomach and hold it down.

  Don't be ridiculous! I need a dress and at least some perfume before I go out there.

  I gave her a level look. The woman couldn't even stand without assistance and wanted to do a summoning. I'd been a bit busy to paw through her memories, but I had more than a hunch that summoning wasn't her strong point. No, I told her.

  Her jaw dropped. You are my familiar!

  We're bonded, an agreement I can break at any time. You asked me to help you. I'm helping. It was a little more complicated than that. Technically I couldn't break the bond until she, or at least the part of her that was still Neelius, admitted that I'd helped her. If she stonewalled me, I'd be stuck for a good long while. Course, she'd also accepted my want to save Grantsville, so at least I had that. I padded over and offered her the handle of my harness. They'll be impressed enough to see you upright. Trust me.

  She commanded me to say, "You flea-bitten litter brain! My mistress will not expose herself to any magi!" Confused, I quirked an eyebrow. Veronica's anger wilted as a fresh wave of grief washed over her. Apparently she had frequently fed her former familiar his snarky lines.

  I chuckled without mirth. Sorry, but I'm not a sock puppet either.

  She grabbed the harness' handle, not to stand but to sob into my side. Thoughts of Neelius tumbled through her mind. The bird had been very different from the front he'd put up and bent himself six ways to Wednesday to make her happy. I let it wash over me and gave her the shoulder she needed. Sometime later, after she forced herself to stop crying, she spoke to me. What are you? A furry shrink from hell?

  I was a librarian. Although it appears that maybe with this freelance familiar gig I better read a few books on counseling.

  She snorted at that, a wet, phlegmy sound. You're doing it all wrong. I never cried on my therapist.

  Maybe it was the wrong therapy, I said as I nosed her, urging her to stand.

  She made another plea to help her summon clothing, which I promised to consider if she stood up. Eagerly, she hauled herself onto her feet.

  Great! Now put your game face on! I thought at her, and then batted the door open with a paw.

  Veronica's back immediately went rigid. You are a terrible, awful and no good familiar! she thought-screamed at me as she fought to put a smile on her wasted face.

  Is that why the rest of the Cabal uses canines? You expect them to all roll over for you? I tried hard not to call Neelius a doormat. Veronica's anger and embarrassment were focusing her at the moment. Inducing true rage wouldn't be helpful.

  "Veronica?" Dorothy's voice drifted through the doorway as I pulled Veronica through. Dorothy and Naomi stood outside the ashen circle. Dorothy blinked as if she didn't believe her eyes, while Naomi fell to her knees, her hands pressed together in a sort of prayer. She looked to the sky and mouthed the words 'thank you.'

  "None of that, Naomi!" Veronica snapped. "This cat has no halo. His help isn't free." She pushed herself up to her full height. Naked, sporting skin so thin that I counted every rib she possessed, Veronica still managed to clothe herself with authority. "However, the price is one we will not object to." The violent images flowing in her mind were hardly ladylike, but I wouldn't argue that Jules needed a swift kick to the groin. "Now, where is Rinoa?"

  Both of the Blackwings glanced at each other. A grimace flashed over Naomi, while Dorothy's mouth sported a smirk as she turned back. Naomi spoke first, cutting Dorothy off. "We sent her away."

  "Bring her back then. We are not leaving her here. I want to speak to her."

  Dorothy's smirk died.

  Rudy, who sat in between the two women, flicked his tail as he watched. "I'll get her," he said, and then bounded into the fire-lit wood.

  Nobody said anything after I lost sight of the squirrel's bounding tail. Veronica remained standing, although it took all her concentration. Dramatic much? I asked as I repositioned myself so she could more easily lean on me. Despite her height, the woman had no weight to her at all. You guys are as bad as the werewolves.

  I cannot lead if I allow them to mother me to death. I'm going to fall, but damn it, not until I'm good and ready.

  I gritted my teeth and siphoned some of the exhaustion that flowed through her mind. The thick blackness of it rolled across my eyelids and weighed them down. Veronica straightened, pushing the sag from her posture as footsteps approached. Rinoa appeared, Rudy on her shoulder, Tack hiding behind her with ears as droopy as his tail. His mistress' shoulders slumped until she saw Veronica. Defiance sparked in her eyes as she scanned her leader's form up and down. Her lips pressed together as she rolled her shoulders and straighten her posture. She walked until she stood within arm's reach of Veronica. Rinoa’s aura was sparking, like fiddling with the trigger of her gun.

  Rinoa’s eyes searched mine for a moment before returning to Veronica's face. "I'm impressed. I'm not sure who deserves the credit though. I felt so bad when I saw you break, when I saw you did feel. But... seeing you stand like that, I'm angry all over again."

  Veronica's hand cracked against her cheek. The blow staggered Rinoa
, but she caught herself and spun back to Veronica, fists clenched, aura crackling with torrents of energy. A trickle of ruby blood ran down her cheek where the dry skin had split open from the force of the blow.

  Veronica's teeth ground together. It appeared to the outside that she was baring her teeth, but in truth the clenching was her last ditch effort to keep her mask of control from cracking. She saw no anger in Rinoa's eyes, but the pure seething hatred cut her down to the core. She hadn't seen it before, blinded to it and it hurt in equal measure to the loss of her best friend. "That was for Neelius." She let out a shaky breath through her teeth before sucking back in. "And he deserves far more vengeance than that, but that’s all he's going to get."

  Confusion glittered in Rinoa's eyes. Both she and Tack cocked their heads, unsure if they'd heard correctly. "That's it?"

  "I forgive you," Veronica said quickly, forcing the words out before she lost the courage to say them.

  "What?" Dorothy whispered in a tone of disbelief that was just as clear as on Rinoa's face.

  Veronica's mask of dignity cracked as a stuttering sob worked its way from her throat. Oh gods, not yet. Please not yet. I'm such an ugly crier. Help me please. I have to say more.

  I pressed warmth into her, wrapping her mind in the memories of hugs I'd received. She lacked very many of her own. Keep going, I urged.

  Veronica wrested control of her vocal chords back from her emotions and looked into Rinoa's eyes. "I forgive you!" She shouted the words, and with them a weight lifted from her entire soul. She smiled. "There will be no inquisition into his death."

  Rinoa's jaw dropped. Tack whimpered, pawing nervously into the ground.

  Veronica's mind whirled in circles as she groped for words. "Nobody's innocent, Rinoa. You cannot give me Neelius back, and I can't give you back the stage you loved. I can’t give anyone back what I destroyed to awaken each of you." Her voice cracked. "I did it…" She groped for a reasons. Because I wanted a cabal, her ambition supplied. Because awakening outweighs the pain, her pride declared. I needed a family, whispered her mothering instinct. Each reason seemed as effective as toilet paper in the face of the hurricane of her imagination where she walked in each the women's shoes.

  In Veronica’s mind, Rinoa's face echoed into her memory, back in the shack a week ago soon after they'd first been banished into this blasted land. Rinoa and Veronica faced each other in the same way, tears flooded Veronica’s vision.

  "You don’t understand! I grieve every day for the stage, to feel myself in front of a crowd, to taste that energy. No amount of magic ever makes the fact you ruined me ever go away! I think of how it could have been every moment. I wanted revenge for that. I thought making you hurt would make this damn pining go away! And it didn’t!"

  Veronica had laughed at Rinoa's innocence because Veronica actually did understand, understood perfectly. A magus had done the same to her, and how she had hated her. In that moment she'd finally seen herself and the monstrous things she'd done to all of her Cabal.

  In the face of seeing herself clearly, Veronica had shattered into a whirling storm of self-reflection and now threatened to do so again as individual pieces of her tried to break away, to hide from the words burbling up from a part of her that she'd forgotten. In groping for stability, she flung our bond wide. Her mind clung to mine. I wrapped myself around her, squeezing, trying to hold her together. Physically, she wobbled, stepping toward Rinoa, away from my side. "I'm—" She fell.

  Rinoa stepped forward and caught her.

  Veronica clung to Rinoa with desperate strength as the two woman sunk to their knees. "I'm sorry," Veronica whispered before she gave in and sobbed, pressing her face to the younger woman's shoulder. At first Rinoa knelt there, stiff and awkward as Veronica bawled, holding her as if she were a crying stranger in a bar. But as decades of pent-up tears flooded out of Veronica, Rinoa began to sniffle, her eyes blinking back her own tears as her grip tightened around Veronica. Tack let loose a long, mournful howl.

  I shut my eyes against my own tears but found the auras of everyone burning bright in the darkness, all rolling with a storm of emotion. All the magi and familiars were connected into a web of silver thread that I'd never seen before.

  Beside Dorothy, Fee lay down in the dirt, clapping two paws over her muzzle. She shook with effort, but as Tack sounded again, Fee threw back her head to echo the howl of mourning. As Morie joined in, all four of the magi wept. The threads flared between them as bursts of emotions flowed through the web. Flashes of memories burst in my mind’s eye but were neither mine nor Veronica's. The web pulsed like a heavy bass beat as the dogs' separate howls synched into a song of mourning. Not for Neelius only, the pack mate, the leader when the Blackwings flocked, but the experiences of all four pairs unspooling between them, without words, without images. The notes of each life flowed along the threads. Not of friendship, but of shared experience and loss. Human voices joined the canine one by one. A note of guilt sang out and was echoed by forgiveness and became motes of light that danced among the strands webbing. The howls becoming a stage for them to play upon. The song grew a gravity of its own, and I couldn't resist. My screams tore through the melody. The song rippled and bucked until wings beat through the music. The screech of a black eagle answered us from everywhere within the weavings. The silver threads began to pull away from the women, folding like a spider's origami in on itself. Wings took shape, then a body. It opened its beak to scream with Neelius' voice.

  No one sang anymore, but the song continued as the silver Eagle before us gained size and strength even as we felt the pieces of him lodged within Veronica's mind like shattered glass melt away. It bowed to her.

  Veronica reached out, but she could no more touch it than you can catch hope in a jar.

  It spread its wings and they reached beyond the confines of the reality we resided. This wasn't Neelius. This bird wasn't dead. It'd been born. Through us, through the world we sat in, it took flight and launched itself into the beyond.

  Everyone looked at each other with mutual wonder.

  The sun on this hellscape had set and a pale moon rose in the sky.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I awoke to a harsh tugging at the stubs of my whiskers. My eyes opened to Rudy looming right in front of my nose. He smelled delicious.

  "Congratulations! You’re singing broke the sun!"

  "Uh, hrm… Did it?" I replied, licking my chops. How long had it been since I had actual meat and not the overly salty jerky?

  Rudy, eyeing my mouth, moved a bit to the side. "Yeah, it’s been like ten hours! And it hasn't come back!" Rudy tapped the phone slung over his back.

  Groaning, I forced myself into a sitting position. The only light to see by was cast by the moon. The forest had gone silent and dead. Fragments of the previous night bobbed up into my consciousness, and my muzzy brain began to piece them together. I didn't believe them. It made no sense. The Blackwings, magi and familiars, slept peacefully, the canines curled against their mistresses. I felt a pang of guilt that I'd awoken several feet away from my new client. She lay alone in the chill air, her back against a tree that hadn't been there before. It pushed from the dusty soil between Veronica and Rinoa, its unburnt wood white as bone in the silver moonlight. The trunk extended eight feet into the air before splitting in twain, becoming two thick branches that curved out and back, calling to mind wings in flight. Smaller branches reached out like skeletal pinions, bowing under the weight of green banana-like structures that hung from every single one.

  I stared at the tree, then looked to the squirrel. "What the hell happened?"

  Rudy shrugged. "You all had a very loud cry? Then you all fell over. Maybe it’s a pack thing."

  "What about the bird?" I asked. "Did you see the bird?"

  Rudy scratched his ear. "Bird?"

  "Never mind," I muttered and rose to my feet. I added it to the pile of mysteries accumulating in my head.

  Rudy nodded. "You know, if the whole freelance
familiar thing doesn't work out, I think you might have a future in group therapy!"

  I snorted. "I don't think I had much to do with last night. Something about the nature of this place."

  "Well, something's keeping them all sleeping!" Rudy hrmpfed. "And we ran out of cashews days ago!"

  I smirked. "I'm not out of meat yet."

  "Cats..." he chattered. "Wake them up and let’s get us home before your stomach embarks on a murderous rampage!"

  I didn't see a problem with that plan. Whatever held the magi in dreamland would be no match for the roughness of my tongue.

  As a side note, very dusty, very stressed people taste terrible.

  ***

  Magi like to say that magic can do anything, given time, skill and tass. O'Meara generally said you could cludge it together if you had two of those. Turned out she forgot an essential element: health. It took two days for Veronica to recover enough strength to focus on anything and at least two more to construct a spell. Veronica knew how to move the Blackwings within the plane, but creating tunnels between planes wasn't within her experience. The theory had been there within her head, moldering in her many memories of listening to lectures from her own mistress, but the gap between theory and practice proved wide. By the time the four magi finally cracked it, thanks to Naomi, Rudy's magic iPhone batteries had finally given up the ghost.

  Everyone cheered as the portal crackled to life outside the hut.

  "Now remember the first thing about returning home," Veronica lectured beside the portal. "Food and water. Our bodies will attempt to replace any alien matters as soon as possible. If we can't replace the water quickly, we'll come down with traveler's sickness and it will be impossible to raise a finger against Jules and his cronies." Veronica had gotten far less formal in the preceding days. She stayed mostly naked, a loose bind around her chest and a loin cloth, all formed from strips of Naomi and Dorothy's dresses. None of them were exactly fit for society. Rudy and I weren't much better. Our coats were patchy with burnt fur.