Off Leash (Freelance Familiars Book 1) (15 page)

Bonded!
the thing shrieked in my head.
How? No! Don't tell! Don't tell!
It vanished abruptly, leaving me stunned and my head ringing like a gong.

"Thomas?"
I could feel her racing down the hall towards me.

I
hadn't really decided to tell O'Meara what had happened. I had planned to tell her I had just been upset at the wholesale destruction of my life. I wanted to get a feeling for what O'Meara thought first. But as it turns out, it’s really, really tough to lie to somebody you have a telepathic connection with. When O'Meara asked what happened, my brain just vomited up the entire scene wholesale.

She made a squeak of surprise, and fear flooded back from the link.
"A dragon. Here. In my town."
Her mind went click as dozen of memories slammed together into an epiphany. She fell onto the chair, grabbed handfuls of hair and yanked. “Oh, bloody flaming fireballs!
"Of course it makes sense.”
Dread struck her mind like a gong.
"Scrags is right—this auction is going to be a bloody war if that gets on the auction block."

"That thing is certainly not anything I would call a dragon. I'd term it an Eldritch Horror if it wasn't clearly begging me to help it."

"Well, we better hurry up and free it, then."

Shock showed plainly on O’Meara’s face.
"You can't possibly think—"

"I am. It’s in pain, O'Meara. It’s been in horrible agony for decades, and nothing deserves that."

"Thomas, that thing could flatten the entire town if it wanted to. Dragons are responsible for some of the largest disasters in history."
Images flooded me of people screaming as buildings shook down around their heads. San Francisco's last big earthquake.
"We can't risk that thing getting loose because if it decides to take revenge it won't just be the magi in town, Thomas—it will be everyone within town."
Her fear was wild and untamed, a giant thing.

"It just wants out, O'Meara. Either we have to let it go or put it out of its misery. It’s being tortured!"

She blinked slowly, trying to make me understand.
"Thomas, it isn't human or anything approaching an understanding of human. It’s a monster from the unknown. They're born of the void. Dragons have flattened entire sects of magi for no reason. It’s a monster. And for the Archmagus to leave it so that it’s starting to worry at its bonds, then that just goes to show how irresponsible he became. I've got to let the council know of this. It’s just too big to allow it to be simply auctioned off. It’s got to go to somebody who's able to reinforce the bonds."

My mouth fell open, listening to her thoughts, the pure earnestness of them. I spoke in a low hiss: "O'Meara, was that memory not clear enough to you? Can you not feel that agony?"

She sighed. "It’s just attempting to manipulate you, Thomas. Taking advantage of your naiveté. Beings from beyond are very tricky to deal with for that reason."

"Oh? And I suppose you’d consider all this important work?" I growled, gesturing at the papers around us, slamming the awareness of what I found through the link. She flinched under the force of it, and shot me a wary look before she started unpacking it. I watched her face intensely, saw the slight widening of her eyes and watched her bottom lip curl into her mouth, and she bit down on it with her teeth. She pulled her head away to the side and looked at a spot on the floor. She tried to crush the spark of joy, of awe. But I caught it before she had the good sense to shut the link.

"I'm sorry, Thomas." Her voice flat. "Let me look. Maybe he was just charting your life." She stood and turned towards the wall.

I spat out a sawing growl as my blood went hot. This man, this magus had slowly ruined my life, and she, she had thought it had been a good thing? "Is this what you're all like? Everything that's not part of your world is something to be farmed? You think I should just be happy to be on this side of the fence because now I’m sorta of a person? You're all like plantation owners who think they saved their black slaves by ripping them out of their country and home."

O'Meara anger flared as she spun on her heel, eyes blazing with hot red energy. "It’s
not
slavery. It’s nothing like that! How can you even say that with the bond? After you experienced it?"

"It’s not about the bond, O'Meara! Don't change the subject!"

"Thomas, you think I'm the only one who's desperate for a familiar? There are more people surviving awakening than ever before. Look at this from our perspective. That’s countless talent going to waste! There is a wide world beyond the mundane, and it’s the magi who protect it."

"Protect what?" I spat. "All I see is you all fighting each other. Sabrina and you jockeying for points. Sociopathic politics. People are not resources you can mine! This was wrong! Torturing that dragon is wrong too."

O'Meara’s fist burst into flame, and she drove it into the wall with a thud. "This isn't your mundane country with your refined ideals here, Thomas. The council isn't some democracy where there are rights! Mundanes are resources, just like tass, and every magi.” The fist extinguished, but the papers under it smoldered.

"Personally I gotta agree with the cougar. Sorry cub, you got screwed." Scrags’s small body sat in the doorway. Both O'Meara and I blinked at him as he returned our gazes with a Cheshire grin, showcasing an impossible number of teeth in his tiny head. "Ya two are a pair, barely bonded and already the honeymoon's over. I’d watch ya for hours, but it wouldn't do for O'Meara to burn down the house before the auction."

"How long have you been sitting there?" O'Meara's voice was scandalized.

Scrags's smile didn't change. "Since you started shouting at each other."

"And why do you agree with me?" I asked.

"Cause it’s all bullshit, laddie. You've been in it for what? A day and you already know how rotten the smell is. Archibald and I attempted to clean house fifty years ago and got our crumples kicked in. Why do you think we'd be in a town that's got about as much magic as three-week-old Jell-O?"

O'Meara humphed.
"They attempted to clean house via sundering the Veil and nearly killing the entire council."

I blinked and the small cat smirked. "I'm sure they've raised O'Meara there on a different diet of the truth. We had an excellent arbiter. Sentencing us to death would have meant revealing just how corrupt the council had gotten, so the whole thing was hushed up. Archibald even kept his vote via proxy, despite this exile." Scrags kept looking at me as if I should know precisely what that meant before shifting his gaze to O'Meara. "You canna run to the council if you want, but I'm sure most of them know about Lendra. They might be a wee bit grumpy if they know you know. I'm praying to the great expanse that a few will backstab the others over it. That would be nice." His grin returned.

"Where is the dragon stored, Scrags? I want to see those bindings." O'Meara drew herself up to her full height and towered over the kitten-sized familiar.

Scrags's grin widened. The angles of his teeth were not confined by normal physics, and I got the feeling that this tiny creature could swallow me whole if he so desired. "Don't know—my bond is broken so my memory is a wee scrambled at the moment. Although, were something to happen to me, the bonds might snap instantly."

"Scrags, this is not something to play games with."

"Archibald captured it long before I kicked me big brother off me mum's teat. The chains held fine."

"But you moved him."

Scrags started cleaning a paw with a disinterest. "How about a different game, O'Meara? I really would have preferred that you hadn't found out about Lendra, but mebbe Archibald had planned on that." He shot me a look of annoyance. "Getting the majority of the council saps by releasing him probably was a bit too much to hope for anyway. So let’s try this one on for size. Find me Archibald's killer before the auction or I have Lendra wipe out the entire town as a condition for its release."

"Did I fall into a comic book when I wasn't looking?" I said, scoffing. although I kept my eyes peeled for the fourth wall.

"You think I'm joking?"

"Joke or not, that’s ridiculous."

"Would you prefer I target Angelica alone, then?"

That hit me like a brick. "What?! Why? She doesn't have anything to do with this!"

"But she’s got everything to do with you, however, and it’s you I'm attempting to motivate here. O'Meara may be weak, but you’re a mewling kitten, having an existential crisis every five minutes about your lack of thumbs."

"But it’s your fault!”

"Aye, you've been the side project that's kept Archibald sane for the last year. His final gift to the magi world, how to cause and control the changeling process. Of course, he never realized that this amount of fate manipulation required so much tass that nobody but the richest of houses could fund the process. And they can afford the cream of TAU anyway, so fat lot of good it does anyone. But you should have seen the way the old man pulled and sculpted your anchors—still a genius even though he kept trying to turn on the light bulbs with matches."

"And that's supposed to make it okay? Are you expecting me to thank you for this?"

"Naaw. But you might think of your body as a charitable contribution to the elderly." The little cat radiated smug.

I growled at him and felt O'Meara’s hand press on my shoulder. "He's baiting you, Thomas—he's suffering from post-bond trauma. This usually involves some level of death wish."

"Ha! This cub couldn't get one claw in me if he tried. I've still got my perks."

"Do you have a point, Scrags?" O'Meara said as she knelt to encircle my neck with an arm.

"Ha, I’m just givin’ the lad a piece of advice, Mrs. Inquisitor. Good for him to see all the ugly now and know it goes well beyond your addled mind, O’Meara.” O’Meara’s rising anger matched my own, but her grip on me only tightened as a hiss escaped from my lips. Scrags’s fury flitted to me; green spittle fell from his lips and bubbled on the carpet. “Ya wanna change it? Well, you’re free to spend your blood, sweat and tears on your own damn time."

"I don't work for you."

"Yeah, you do. You’re bonded with the inquisitor there, and her job is yours. So get the righteous stick out of your ass and get to work." He turned and made to pad away.

"And when do you answer for what you and Archibald did to me?"

He stopped but didn't turn around. "Maybe you should talk to Angelica before you make up your mind about that." He dashed off down the hallway.

Angelica!
The thought hit me, finally, that he knew what and who she was! "Wait!" The word was strangled by my own growl. I sprang out into the hallway to find it both empty and disorientingly shorter. The tiny cat was nowhere to be seen. The hallway ended with a window to my right and stretched only about thirty feet before reaching the junction between the library and the kitchen lab.
"The hell?"

O'Meara came up behind me and placed a gentle hand on my head. I jerked away from it and reared back to peer into the window. I could see little but the near side of the surrounding fence.
"It’s time for us to go, Thomas. We've been shunted out of the folded space."
The image of Scrags slamming the door in our faces made it clear what that meant. I ignored her, poking my head into the kitchen and then the library. No Scrags.
"Thomas,"
she pleaded as she squatted down to my level. I circled back and sat down in front of her, well out of arm’s reach.

"I'm still mad at you too,"
I thought at her, but far more than that swirled around my head. Worry about Angelica blossomed anew. Angelica’s symbol was a W, and it had been surrounded by V’s.

O'Meara smiled at me sadly.
"I know and I'm sorry. But he is right. We have to get back to work. And we've gotten what we came here for."

I looked down at my big, clumsy and useless paws.
"When do I get my justice?"

"You don't. It’s not a crime, Thomas. Any magi you ask will say that Archibald did you a favor. Did you look at the charts? Your awakening might have happened anyway, and if it had on its own you very well could have been a talking donkey. I've seen inside your head, Thomas, and it’s not really the loss of thumbs that bothers you. It's having to serve some ambition other than your own."

I turned away.

"And he even gave you a mechanism to maintain some autonomy—that collar,"
she thought to me.

"That doesn't give him the right! That’s like buying somebody a wheelchair after you've broken their legs."

O'Meara chuckled.

I sat and stewed for a moment. I had been deported to a foreign country, stripped of my humanity and denied the freedom to choose my own path. And this was supposedly made up for by being able to see the world without the filter of modern society, where a cat can threaten the life of my girlfriend as a motivation tool without consequence? And there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do about it. Not here and not now. I couldn't back out of the contract. I could feel the weight of it around my neck. It had gravity. It had been my choice, my decision, and turning my back on it now would leave both O'Meara and me adrift.