Marking Territory (Freelance Familiars Book 2)

by Daniel Potter

  Behind me, Noise stood, peering through a single side of a pair of binoculars that she held between her thumb and forefinger. Her other finger stuck out as if she held a fancy tea cup. "They've all got guns, big ones. Shit. And shovels. I've got a crew mining ahead, but if that doesn't work..."

  Dorothy suddenly stood beside me. "Fee and I will stop them." She stepped onto the rail and leaped off the silo, regaining her winged form with a flare of her focus.

  Alarm coursed through Veronica and she burst into her human form, human arms now pinwheeling for balance. "Dorothy wait!" I moved forward to stop her from falling, but she stabilized, finding balance on the thin metal railing. Dorothy didn't hear or chose not to hear as they winged out parallel to the road. "Impatient! Always so impatient," Veronica fumed. She hopped off the railing and turned to the rest of us. "We need to gather tass quickly if we're going to get through any wards."

  As if in answer, purple flared in the distance so brightly it was as if a purple sun prepared to rise over the horizon. The light reached up into the sky and seemed to latch onto something there. Veronica stilled as I passed the image to her and set her mind bubbling with the possibilities as to what the technomagi were doing. None of the possibilities were good.

  "Actually!" Rudy piped up from his perch on Noise's shoulder. "I've got something that might help with wards." He leapt to my back and started rooting around in one of the pockets of my harness before pulling out a quarter stick of dynamite wrapped in gold foil, otherwise known as an M80 firecracker. The squirrel grinned.

  "How long has that been in there?" I cried, disturbed by the proximity of an explosive to my kidneys. I imaged just what would have happened if a fire mite had crawled into the pocket.

  Rudy waved a paw dismissively. "Just since we went to tree-hell. It was a backup plan for getting back. With the right circle, one of these babies can blow a hole straight through space-time."

  "AND you didn't tell me? We could have escaped that prison plane a week earlier!"

  "Dude, as fun as that place was, trust me, randomly falling through space and time is a lot less fun. That’s how I met the Weaver. Besides, I only got the one left. I was saving it for a special occasion."

  "Then there is no reason to delay. Dorothy will serve as a distraction. We fly now," Veronica said and nodded at Naomi and Morie. The younger magus took out a piece of silver string and laid it around me, forming a circle.

  I saw Veronica's intention and plan. I couldn't protest. There was no time. Instead I asked Naomi, "How much is this going to hurt? And what about Dorothy?"

  As if in answer Veronica gripped the rail behind her.

  Naomi said, "Stay as still as possible," then she knelt in front of me, touching her hands to the string. Morie took up position behind me. Her aura flared like a column of propane flame.

  I'd known agony when I met the dragon. Nothing compared to the searing torture that it'd been put through. Yet that ultimately had been someone else's pain. As the fire claimed my body, it was as if every single bone I had shattered while my own muscles sought to strangle me. The world went white, to red and finally to black. When I opened my eyes, the world had been spilt in twain.

  "DON'T TRY TO MOVE. YOU'RE IN SHOCK!" a giant over me thundered. The giant flared into blue flame and enormous eagle wings extended from the flame. The eagle screeched and terror lanced down my spine.

  HAWK! HAWK! HAWK! Something in my head screamed at me. I found my own voice and croaked in terror. My legs moved, but they moved wrong, the muscles backwards. The world lurched and then I was seized by the talons of that huge bird.

  Veronica curled into my mind, pushing away the last vestiges of the pain. Calm down. It's okay. It's all part of the plan, remember?

  Naomi couldn't turn into a bird big enough to carry a cougar. And they had no time for me to learn how to fly, so with me in her talons and Rudy on her back, Naomi lifted into the air and flew toward the park where Jules and Jowls were getting ready to murder more people.

  I shut my eyes against both the sight of the ground and the vertigo of seeing the world through non-binocular eyes. My arms, my wings, spasmed, wanting to stretch open. The way the air tore at my feathers was wrong, so wrong. I needed to face into the wind.

  I opened one eye to see the Blackwings behind us. Veronica, Rinoa, Tack and Morie surfed in the wake of the eagle as it tore through the air. My flock. A euphoric feeling of belonging rang through my head like a gong.

  Before I could even process that, the ground approached. It was rather hard. I barely had time to get my legs under me before an icepick seemed to split my head open.

  "Hold him! Hold him!" Someone said before the pain burst my eardrums and the outside world shattered under the weight of the agony.

  I'm sorry. I forgot it hurts so much without the focus, Veronica's thoughts drifted over me as she stroked my side.

  I couldn't even manage to grumble at her. The pain disappeared, leaving only exhaustion. Relief coursed through me as Veronica stroked my own fur. A little voice in me protested that thought. You're human, you big dolt! Don't you remember? I tossed that voice back into the recesses of my mind. At the moment all I wanted to do was enjoy the warmth of my magus and the feeling of her fingers running through the few patches of fur that weren't singed or tangled.

  "Veronica!" a voice spoke. "You don't have time to cuddle. That's why we flew."

  "Give him a minute more. Forcing a cat's mind into a crow's head is a bit disorienting."

  Veronica scratched my ears as I fought down a purr. After putting me through all that, she didn't deserve a purr. I wasn't some canine who'd instantly forgive any slight. Forgiveness was going to cost her some mighty fine slabs of meat after all this was over. Yes indeed!

  I popped open one of my eyes and revised my previous thought. She owed me a pile of prime rib IF we survived this. Jules had been busy! We'd landed in a sheltered area in sight of what had been the front entrance to the park. The gate had been replaced with ten-foot-high wall of gleaming metal. Golden gems were set into the top of it every ten feet or so, declaring that this area was well protected. Opening the other eye, I found the actual gate by locating the road that seemed to vanish into the wall. Behind the wall loomed a stout tower about four stories high, which by Grantsville standards made it the tallest building in the land. Rectangular in shape, steel panels had been riveted to the skeleton Noise constructed. Four spikes jutted up at the sky from the four corners of the roof, which crackled with purple energy and projected it upwards. Above it the sky itself appeared to be slowly bending.

  How had they built this compound within a week? I stood and looked at the wards. They were simple but dangerous. The amount of amperage they would channel through the body of anyone or thing that touched that wall would ruin anyone's day.

  Amateur jobs, Veronica commented as she hauled herself to her feet.

  Can you get through them without the bomb?

  Of course. But if we want to get in there before that tower does whatever it's starting to do, then absolutely not. Veronica fiddled with a bracelet on her wrist. Blackness swelled from within it, engulfing her hand before forming into a long black blade. I'd seen Sabrina summon a similar weapon when she had fought O'Meara. The world dimmed around it. Veronica approved of my dread. It is not a nice weapon, but it is effective.

  Veronica directed my attention to Rinoa and Naomi, who were sitting a few feet away, kneeling over a tangle of silver thread. Morie, Tack and Rudy circled around them anxiously. "No No no!" Rudy chided them. "It’s gotta be lit before you throw it. I've got tass laced through the wick. If it doesn't burn, the main charge won't go off! Then all we'll get is a dent!"

  The two magi huffed in annoyance. The dogs ran off into the woods and returned a brief moment later with two branches that could have served as walking sticks. Each magi took one gingerly, careful of the angry red blisters on the wood.

  Rinoa looked in our direction. "We're ready."

  Veronica bit her
cheek so hard I felt the pain. And I... felt numb. This entire month seemed unreal. People I'd trusted, backed and laughed with had killed hundreds of people and were preparing to murder thousands. For what? A place in history? How had this gone so wrong?

  Veronica placed her hand on my head. The technomagi are scared, Thomas. They stumbled into a crime that will be a death sentence to them. They are doing whatever they can to survive.

  Somehow I'd thought you'd be bitterer at them for banishing you and your Cabal into that hell. You're the last person I thought would be sympathetic.

  Bitterness is Rinoa's department. If things had gone differently, you would be storming my stronghold with them at your side. Had Rinoa not taught me that ambition has its own costs, I would have let the munds die, although I think Rinoa would have tried to stop me and maybe Naomi. That is my hindsight hope. She twirled the sword in her hand. I do not want to kill Jules and his friends. I want to save them.

  "Do it," Veronica said out loud to the others. Hoisting the thread into the air on two sticks, the string unfurled into a web with the tass-laden firecracker in the middle. Rinoa and Naomi charged across the road, each with a stick in-hand, and drove them into ground a foot from the wall. Naomi's form blurred into that of a bird as soon as her stick stabbed into the ground, but Rinoa stayed, struggling to light the fuse with an uncooperative Zippo.

  "Rotten Peanuts!" Rudy charged across the road as a klaxon sounded. Glowing eyes peered over the wall by the time Rudy had made it to the webbing.

  It begins! Help me, Thomas! Veronica gripped either side of my head as the circuit between us formed. She flung her conscious down her thread as I braced her in mine. She slammed back into her body a second later full of energy as the bots on the wall were leveling large caliber weapons at Rinoa. The fuse caught as Veronica flung a small metal disk infused with black energy into the air. Shots rang out. Rinoa dived into her bird form and they missed. The disk, the lid of some canned good, landed on the road on its edge, three bullet sized holes in it, Veronica’s magic had redirected the shots. The fuse disappeared into the firecracker and it glowed with a piercing white light.

  "TAKE—"

  BOOOOM! The firecracker exploded in a horizontal column of white flame. It roared both into the wall and back into the forest. I blinked against the brightness and it was gone.

  "...Cover," Rudy finished, looking at the lopsided hole that had been burnt through the wall. The ward that protected it had popped in a spray of golden sparks.

  "Right girls! We're going to shut down that tower! Follow me," Veronica ordered. Activating another focus on a chain around her left wrist that cast a shell of thin black light around her, Veronica walked unhurriedly toward the opening in the wall. I trotted next to her, and we passed through the wall together.

  There were a lot of robots. They weren't all armed. Most looked at us fairly quizzically, their arms full of bundles of construction materials. Still, there were an impressive number of guns pointed at us. I stopped counting at twenty. Sandra stood on a balcony about one story up, her arms enmeshed in a control panel of some type. Her head was shaved and she wore a cap bursting with electronics. She glared down at me with a feral curl to her lips. "STOP RIGHT THERE OR I WILL SHOOT YOU DEAD!" she called out, her voice echoed out from speakers that hung from the corners of the building.

  "Fire a single shot and I will cleave your skull in twain from here," Veronica replied.

  "YOU WOULDN'T DARE!"

  "You're not a magus, dearie. Why don't you and your friends power this down and we discuss the terms of your surrender to the Inquisition?" Veronica asked in a sweet voice.

  Sandra smiled, wide and mad. "THERE IS NO SURRENDER TO THE INQUISITION!"

  I groaned. "Is this the part when you fling cows at us and then threaten to taunt us again?"

  The world flickered as the air surrounding us came alive with bullets. Then in the distance, in the shadow of the building, I caught sight of a purple flare. Incoming! I thought at Veronica.

  See it. The black sword spun out and parried the purple lance of a displacement spell.

  The trio were huddled at the corners of the building, Tom on the left, with Richard and Harry to the right. Two more dots of energy appeared, but Veronica's blade ate the spells as if they were nothing, as easy as a Jedi parrying storm trooper fire. Indeed, the blade seemed to draw the beams to it..

  "This is useless!" Veronica called out. Yet the technomagi were undeterred and fired beam after beam at us amid the chatter of the rifle fire. Veronica didn't have to move the sword far to parry the blasts, but their mere existence began to sap her limited strength. We'd rested some and gotten food, but all of the Blackwings were still half-starved, a fact that Richard, Harry and Tom angled to take advantage of.

  This would usually be the point where Rudy came and saved our butts.

  I think your squirrel friend is out of tricks, but Naomi is not! Abruptly the gunfire stopped, the blackness surrounding us fading to something I could see through. And I saw Sandra above with a face full of bird: a crow and a falcon. Sandra arms flailed, but Naomi's form shifted to a shape something akin to a dinosaur and tore the electro-studded cap from her head.

  One down! Stay close. Charge the one on the left. Veronica crowed through our link.

  We charged forward, jumping over the mound of bullets that had piled up around us. Well, she charged. Veronica's sprint wasn't much more than a trot for me. I could have closed the distance in a third of the time, but staying within the bullet shield seemed prudent. Jules' creepy summoned soldiers could still be around.

  A flash of blue behind us heralded Rinoa's entrance to the fight. A chorus of ear-shattering blasts stopped the other two technomagi from firing their displacement spells. Veronica's sprint faded into a triumphant march toward Tom as he continued to fire at us in vain, each shot sucked into Veronica's sword like a noodle.

  "Give it up, Tom!" I called. I didn't really expect him to. Tom had struck me as the least moral of the trio.

  Yet when he nodded, put the displacement cannon on the ground and raised his hands over his head, I found myself reevaluating.

  "Alright! You got me!" he said. "This has gone terribly pear-shaped, you know."

  Veronica breathed a sigh of relief. "At least one of you is sensible. Really, this was over as soon as we breeched your wards. Turn around and put your hands behind your back. Thomas, if he channels, bite off his balls."

  There were devices that could prevent a Magus from channeling. Unfortunately, we didn't have any of those.

  Veronica pulled out a pair of zip ties instead. This isn't the one that can shock me? Veronica thought as her sword dissipated back into her wrist jewelry.

  No, he can't. He channels circuit concepts.

  Veronica snorted. No worries there then. She knelt to secure the ties. "Tell your famil- bond-mates to surrender."

  "They're down already." He flared, twisting slightly as he grabbed Veronica's hand. I sunk my teeth into his thigh as Veronica's black sword burst through his belly.

  But too late.

  Alien diagrams came flooding into my mind. Resistant to the ampers, serial capacity; nonsensical words and jumbled engineering terms spiraling up to fill me. I closed the link, but Veronica slumped to the side, eyes wide with shock.

  "Gotcha," Tom coughed. "And they all called my anchor useless." Then he fell over like he lacked a bone in his body.

  "Why the fuck did you do that?" I shouted at him, but the technomagus was gone. So was the bullet shield.

  The world went purple and the sky disappeared.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Jowls' voice echoed out over the loud speaker. "You can all cease the hostilities. House Technomagi has won a fabulous victory!"

  Yeah, fabulous, I thought to myself, looking at the blood pooling around Tom. Veronica had pulled a knife from her pocket and was scrawling mathematical nonsense in the dirt with it.

  I stared up at the sky. There were no stars, no moon, no
sun, simply blackness. The only points of illumination were several spotlights anchored to and around the building to aid with all-hours construction. Within the tower a harsh purple light blossomed. Staring into the dark of my eyelids, I saw Jules on the third floor of his tower, bent over a crisscross of magical circuitry. Surrounding him were the green outlines of his summoned soldiers.

  That’s where the soldiers had gone. He'd pulled them back to protect his own ass. I needed to get the drop on him.

  "RINOA!" I roared. "BLOW ALL THE LIGHTS."

  No answer.

  In a moment of horror, I realized I couldn't see her. Had they gotten everybody else?

  "Rinoa," Jowls voice crackled out of the loud speakers. "That’s the chick with the colored hair, right? I don't see her aura, kitten. No wait, I see her. She's been shifted sideways by the trio's little toys. Would you like her back, Thomas? Perhaps a little medical attention for Veronica there? It is over."

  A squad of three soldiers broke off from the group upstairs. Rinoa was gone, but I could still see Naomi on the other side of the building. Her outline was larger than it had been, glowing with the power of her anchor. Jowls could probably see her as well as I could. Had they bothered with actual cameras? I looked back at Veronica, a magus probably more powerful than Jules, reduced to desperately scratching symbols in the dirt. I opened the link a crack, but her brain was like a progressive metal concert composed of mad math.

  My best chance was going to be taking out those soldiers before they shot Naomi. They looked to be traveling down in a circular pattern, a spiral staircase perhaps. I crept around the far corner of the building as Naomi rounded the other side with Morie and Tack at her feet. She'd taken the form of a wingless harpy, her taloned hands cradling one of the trio's displacement cannons. Our eyes met and we nodded. I had no idea what we were nodding about, other than a vague "hey, I see you."

  I gently unhooked myself from Veronica's mind. Understanding the circumstances, Mr. Bity didn't materialize and immediately touched himself to Naomi's consciousness with an offer. Temporary binding for this operation. Naomi's eyes widened and Morie's ears went back for a moment, but they nodded.