Feral Magic (2 page)

Geeze.

She stood back and fixed the baby gate in the open doorway. She didn't know if the cub could jump the gate or not. Both her cats could if they wanted to, but she'd promised a treat if they left the cub alone.  Her cats prized the rare times she doled out catnip. 

Then she spent a while online.  No news of a missing cub of anything in the Denver area, Colorado, or even the surrounding states.  She didn't bother searching for
otherwhere.
  No pics of a cub like the one snoring in her storage room.

Finally, she did a last check of the house and went to bed.  She'd downloaded all the professional numbers of the Denver Zoo, ready to start calling tomorrow morning.

She woke in the night to a baby wailing. 
What?

Staggering from bed, she went down the short hall to the storage room and rammed into the damn baby gate, scattering her cats – they must have been sitting on this side, watching.

A baby crying!  What was that awful smell?  One of her guys must be having diarrhea and missed the litter box.  Ewww.

She fumbled for the switch, and turned on the light

Blinked.  Stared.  Blinked and blinked again.

On the nasty, smelly, rug lay a human baby.  Male, with caramel-colored skin.

He turned his black-haired head and stared at her with amber eyes, stuck a small fist in his mouth and quieted.  And glowed.

Ferix Dimension

Delay, delay, more
delay
!  Dak snarled as he paced the dimensional portal room hewn from brown rock under the castle.  Smoothed walls showed murals of other worlds.  The portal itself was set in a large stone archway; the spell-control panel flickered with power.

His nephew, Favel, was gone.  Had crossed dimensions naturally, a talent inherited from Dak's late sister-in-law, the chieftess.

Now Dak was off to a planet not a part of the Dimensional Collective.  A planet he'd been informed had only
one unstable, erratic floating portal
, an unsupervised natural gate that moved across the world at whim.  He could only pray to Mother Moon that he'd arrive close to the place Favel had landed.

The idea of his baby nephew lost and alone in an alien world shivered Dak's nerves.

Not only Dak's, but all of the Dark Panther Klatch's.  One of his damnable in-laws had shown up from the Golden Panther Klatch, demanding to know the situation, causing the delay.  Handling the golden pantherman had taken hours of finesse that tried Dak's patience.

Rumor was leaking.  If their enemies found Favel first, they would kill him.

Kill Favel, blame Dak, blame the Dark Panther Klatch.

He couldn't – wouldn't – let that happen.  He'd stripped himself of the regency, the alpha status of his family, and that had been more disturbing than he'd expected.

But he was a tracker, and he was prepared.  His sister-in-law, the late chieftess, had made a torque, an electrum collar, keyed to the portal here in the Dark Panther's castle.  That artifact would bring a person under fifty pounds from one dimensional portal directly to safety here, without going through any hubs run by the Dimensional Collective.

And Dak had a red jewel the size of his hand, a portal locator.

Those, his best weapons, a large gold link chain for money, and a change of clothes were stowed in his satchel, and that item held invisible in the storage space in Dak's aura.  He rolled his shoulders, feeling the weight of it.

Now
he
had to travel through hubs to reach a gate that linked with the one on the benighted planet Earth.  A world he’d been told had few shapeshifters.  He had to find Favel before anyone else.

His scholarly cousin, certified as a portal keeper, waved a hand over the controls.  The static pale blue air in the arch wavered with magic as it tuned to a portal in one of the major dimensional hubs.

The image of a large white room solidified.  Many people moved in the background.  In the foreground stood a man wearing the bright blue of a portal keeper uniform.  He bowed.  "The portal is cleared for your use, Lord Dak."

Dak's cousin stepped forward to hug him.  "Blessed moonlight and luck to you, Dak."

"Thank you."

Then Dak stepped back from his kin and through the portal, leaving their world behind.

As soon as he was through, an attacker jumped him.

*~*~*

Brandy stared at the baby on the soiled rug in her storage room.  The smell ensured this wasn't a dream.  When she pressed the lever to release the gate, it stuck and she struggled with it, as usual.  That didn't seem dreamlike either.

She didn't think she was going crazy.  But she absolutely, positively had
not
picked up any baby anywhere in the last day.  She
had
picked up a cub.  A glowing cub that cats had told her smelled of
otherwhere
.  Right now she figured the cub, the baby, smelled mostly of shit.

The child took his fist from his mouth and his eyes got bigger and he whimpered, rolled and rocked to hands and knees.  She set the gate against the hallway wall.  Her cats vanished downstairs, maybe even fleeing outside through the cat door.

She walked up to the large, chunky baby.  Definitely not a newborn, not that she knew much about infants.  It had been years since her babysitting jobs.  She didn't think the kid – she'd call him Stanley, since an advertising jingle ran through her mind for rug cleaning – was older than a year.  And cubs might be bigger than human babies?

Cub.  Baby.  Shapeshifters were real.  Werepanthers, or lions...cats.  That was the only logical – logical! – explanation.

Making silly soothing noises that had him grinning at her and showing teeth that didn't quite look human, she carefully picked up the poop-smeared baby.  Stanley burbled as she took him to the bathroom.

She tried not to think that she held and bathed a baby boy.  She and Ross had just begun to talk about marriage and children before he'd left for Afghanistan.  Before he died.

She'd never wanted a baby until she'd met Ross, and this little guy wasn’t a bit like Ross.  Her lover had had dusty colored hair and gray eyes.

A long thirty minutes later, she diapered the cheerful baby with a frayed pink hand towel.  He'd been very good, was obviously a happy, well-cared-for baby.  So what the hell was he doing on the Colorado plains all by himself?

She turned on her bedroom nightlight and settled him against her as she sank into the rocking chair and rocked until they both fell asleep. Brandy woke when sharp claws prickled against her thighs.  The little guy was a cub again.

What was she going to do?  She couldn't take the cub to a zoo and she couldn't take the baby to...child services?

Who could she possibly tell that would believe her?  Even with the proof of Stanley?  She had no clue.  She was stuck with the impossible.

*~*~*

Dak went down, rolled with his attacker.  Female.  Big as he.  White-with-black-stripes tigerwoman in human form.  Enemy.

Ex-lover – Bretine.

Dak and Bretine moved across the terminal’s white flagstones.  He clipped her jaw and her head bounced against the rock floor.  She flung him away and he slammed against a wall.  Breath gasped out.  Neither of them much hurt.  Yet.

Bretine rolled to her feet and held up her hands.  "Just playing!" she caroled with a false smile.  "Interesting meeting you here, Dak."

The delay had cost him.  Dak figured he was lagging behind the rumor that Favel had gone missing now, dammit.  The Dark Panther Klatch's enemies, represented by Bretine, were on the baby's trail, hoping to find Favel and kill him first.

Dak's gums tingled as his fangs began to deploy.  He forced them back.  Instead he bowed, watching her.  "Still beautiful, as always," he rumbled.  Not quite a lie.  She was beautiful – tall, very nice muscles, full breasts and hips, her hair-mane a mixture of white and blond with black streaks.  Striking.  His gut tightened with revulsion he kept from his face.

They'd used each other for sex, had each tried to spy out a bit more about their clashing tribes.  He didn't know whether he'd made her more of an enemy when they'd ended the affair or not, but she had definitely made him and his more wary.  He couldn't entrust her with a smidgen of knowledge about baby Favel.

"Where do you go?" she asked.

"Sorry, no time."  He jerked a nod at her and took off running, weaving through the hub to a different portal than the first connection to Earth that he'd planned on, and lost her.  He hopped through various gates to bury his trail.  Once, through another portal, he saw Bretine.

Finally he made it to an obscure gate opening on Earth.  The portal keeper, an old and fussy lionman, said, "I do not like the looks of this portal."

Dak grunted, eyeballed the vision of night and soft moonlight wavering beyond the gateway.  Didn't matter whether it was dangerous or not.  He must find Favel!  He tipped the guy and stepped through.

And plummeted.  Too high even for his tough human form!  Calling on the setting moon's song, he wrenched himself
fast
into the panther shape that could survive the fall.

He lit and tumbled in a controlled roll along a rough and prickly-grassed, rock-strewn plain.  Then he sat and panted.  The portal transitions had been rough.  He couldn't gauge how long he'd been traveling, how far behind his nephew he was.  Pray the great Mother Moon that he was
ahead
of Bretine.

One last shivering, silvery note and the near-full moon set.  With the innate sense in the marrow of his bones, he knew it would be many hours before the moon rose.  Always easier to change form in moonlight.  Meanwhile, his human part rejoiced the sun would rise in a few hours.

He shook his head, but the dullness with a hint of dizzy didn't fade.  Rising to his paws, he gazed up at the misty trace of portal, not visible unless he blinked down his second set of nictitating lenses.  It seemed to be rising even higher.  Not good.  Appeared like it could vanish any moment, or fade to some other place on the planet.  He didn't even know how large this world was, or how peaceful.  Traveling in a strange land during war was a bitch.

Dak shook himself, freeing his mane, letting the breeze ruffle his fur.  That felt good.  Slowly he stretched from ears to tail tip.  His mind wasn't clear, but his body seemed fine.  He went to his clothes and satchel and stowed them again in the magical space in his aura.

Taking one step, and another, he cast for the scent of his nephew.  Harsh and nasty smells of machines permeated the air, the grass, the ground.  Terrible, unnatural smells.  He caught a trace of Favel and went up an incline to dirt by a rough pavement.  A smudge of Favel’s odor, then piss.  The angle of the urine showed the baby had been panther shaped.

Other smells.  Metal and rubber.  The rubber showed a pattern in the dirt, and Dak followed the design toward the direction of the city onto that hard, black pavement.  Scents and sight were more difficult to find on this substance.

A vibration under his feet.  Roaring – not animal – a klaxon blast that hurt his ears, huge lights rushed toward him.

He leapt back, but the giant metal box on wheels clipped him, sent him flying back.  Bad.  He tucked and hit and rolled.  Pain overwhelmed him and the stars went out.

Dak woke later in the night, flaky drool around his muzzle.  Blood sticky under him.  He lay still, bones broken.  No internal injuries.

If he could change to man-shape, then back to panther, he would heal faster as the change reshaped his cells.  But the moonlight was gone and changing would take hideous effort, both ways.  His skull hurt; so did his spine.  One of his back legs was broken.

He opened all his senses, reaching for the moon's song, its lambent light, the chill-fresh scent, the fizzy taste – and it was
easy
to feel here on Earth, even on the other side of the planet.  Almost as easy as Ferix dimension.  Maybe that's why Favel had been pulled here.  But the moon was down, no moonlight.

He didn't dare lie here long.  Didn't dare risk having humans find him. So he widened his nostrils to catch moon scent, cocked his ears for moon's song and slid out his tongue for the taste of it,
reached
for the moonlight on the other side of the world. Strained to absorb the few, distant stars' light.  Their energy sifted into him, and he
changed
.

Thrashing, he crooned as the power of the moon, the faint energy of the stars, coated his veins, his cells, himself with it, gilding him in silver.

 His muscles loosened and his bones stretched and blood fell from his eyes, sweated from his pores.  Pain ripped him.  Unconsciousness threatened and he fought it off with every pant.  His joints popped wetly and tendons twanged, muscles reformed.  Skin pushed through fur, his pelt shrinking to light and unprotective body hair.

Silver moonlight song energy.  White starlight.  Jewel-toned planets – eight.  Dark and brutal and crippled Earth power.  He used them all.

And he was man, and his soft flesh wounds healed at a price of lost body weight and dehydration.  Hunger tore at his stomach.  A rabbit ran close and he lurched and found himself on two slow feet, one leg still cracked, instead of four good and fast paws.

He wanted to rest, but the longer he did, the more he thought about the pain, the more he'd want to linger as human – gimpy human.  No choice, he had to change to panther, heal his injuries, find his nephew.  Gently he lowered himself to the ground.  He smelled prey.  Some sort of rodent and a good lot of them.  He salivated.  Reward for changing.

Once more he sent his senses out to the hidden moon, the twinkling stars, the planets orbiting the sun yet to rise, and this near-barren Earth.  Again he let the silver light coat him inside and out and yowled to add his voice to song, and transformed to panther.

Then he passed out. He came to consciousness hearing voices – Bretine arguing with a portal keeper, wanting to come through.  Dak barely breathed.  If he could hear and see them, they could do the same.  Finally, the keeper insisted Bretine wait for a few hours…and then the portal moved.