Off Leash (Freelance Familiars Book 1) (29 page)

Rudy leapt on my neck and made the connection.
"Why the hell are we here? I thought we'd be driving to O'Meara's."

"Nope. I want to get this done before she can stop me."
I hadn't meant to tell him, but clearly I wanted to tell somebody.

"Stop you?"

"There's a dragon in this park, and I aim to let it out."
With that I hooked my paw under the shifter and moved the needle on the dash to R. The Caddy started inching back without any gas. My body was large enough to reach the pedals, but I couldn't hit the gas, steer and get my head high enough see the road in front of me. A nine-foot tall statue, however, would be very different.

"A dragon? You're serious?"

"You are serious! There is a dragon here?"

"Archibald caught it about a hundred years ago. He's been pulling pieces off it and using it to fuel his magic. If we don't let it out, then some other magus is going to do the same for another hundred."

A silence followed as I carefully lined the car up with the chain across the gap in the fence. Not having Rudy in the pedal well made this a bit tricky.

"Okay. Got it. How do we get it out?"

I froze for a split second, momentarily forgetting that the car was still rolling. I shifted the car into park and winced at the crunch of the gears.
"You're cool with this?"
I had a very strong urge to look the squirrel in the eye but couldn’t get the right angle with him clinging to my neck.

"Dude, I get it. I've
seen
what magi do with somebody's who's made of tass."
I felt the squirrel shiver.

"Floor it then, but get ready to break."
I shifted the car to D.

A moment.
"Wha— Oh! On it!"
Rudy raced down to the pedals and threw his entire body into the gas. The sedan jerked forward like a startled rabbit, nearly knocking my paws off the steering wheel. We roared across the parking lot, the ancient automatic shifting through two gears before we hit the chain. It popped from the posts, ripping the timbers open as the anchor bolts were torn free. Then the seat below me bucked, catapulting me into the padded ceiling with a bone-echoing
whump
!

I fell but didn't seem to hit the seat as the car launched into the air beyond the fence. I finally slammed into the seat as the car hit the bottom of the hill. "Brake! Brake!" I yelled as the force drove me into the foot well.

"I'm trying!" I heard Rudy's chitter and felt his claws rake at my leg. "Git off my tail!"

I shifted and heard the engine rev, as my foot snagged the gas. The car accelerated, only to slam my already tenderized noggin into the steering wheel as Rudy threw himself on the brake. Our heads muddled from the force of the impact, it took several stop and start cycles before I managed to disentangle my feet from the pedals and crawl out of the well. We probably looked like a teenager's first time with a stick shift.

After much cursing and registering that my hearing had recovered enough to hear Rudy if he shouted at me, we lined the car up with the granite statue, backing it all the way across the soccer field. Under the headlights of the car, I saw no glimmer of magic on the statue itself, but there was clearly a ring of something around it. Dark and greenish, it certainly wasn't a ward like I had seen before. This was subtle. Had I not been looking for magic, I would have missed it entirely. It flickered in the corner of my eye as I stared at the statue.

Rudy looked a bit worse for wear, sitting on the dashboard and wincing as he ran his paws up and down his tail. A single beady eye watched me. "So it’s in the statue?" I heard him say over the firework-induced dial tone that had taken up residence inside my head.

"Yeah, that’s what it said." I leapt out the window.

"
Hey!
Where you going?"

"I'm going to ask it not to kill us when we let it out. And to find something to weigh down the gas pedal with." My bruises were getting bruised. Being inside of a car crashing into a stone statue was not on my bucket list filed under survival.

"Oh! Good plan!" He gave me a victory sign with his paw. "A brick will be best!" Again I wondered just how long the squirrel had been around.

I shook the thought away as I walked up to the shadow ring around the statue. I sat down and stared at the monument. It did not look magical. The only glimmer of light was the pale moonlight bouncing off the general's pitted mustache. He had not been well maintained. Moss and lichen had invaded the cracks that the assault of many winters had worked into the stone. Of course, if you were trying to hide something like a dragon, you probably wanted to make the prison as subtle as possible. If the statue had been a geyser of magic, then the secret wouldn't keep long. I stared at the statue a while longer, but no layer of complexity peeled away before my eyes like the wards. There simply was nothing to dig into.

Except the ring at my feet. It was doing a bad job at being subtle now. I looked at that. It wasn't Archibald's spell. That much was clear. Like all spells placed on objects, it was built in layers, each one stretching farther and farther into a direction that was neither up nor down but a new angle entirely.

This as Sabrina and Cornealius's. The Archmagus' runes all ran in straight lines; these were more waving, running in a sort sinusoidal curve. They were much simpler than the wards on either magus’ house, and I did not get the sensation of sheer danger from it. An alarm perhaps. But what would set it off? Surely just moving across it wouldn't do it; during the day there had to be a good two hundred people in this park. Two hundred normal people, which I was no longer one of.

I didn't dare cross that line, not until we were ready. Instead I looked at the face of the statue. "Dragon, I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can, give me some sort of sign."

Nothing happened. The statue stared impassively in the direction of the car. I wondered how far O'Meara was now. Three hours had to be nearly up, between the birth and the wolves and the drive over to the park. When this was all over, I wanted a watch.

"Well, if you can't give me a sign, then just listen. We're going to try to free you. I don't know if knocking down the statue will be enough, but that’s all I got. If it does work, well, it would be nice if you didn't hurt anybody on the other side of the Veil. They're not a part of this. Maybe I'm naive and I'm just opening up a Pandora's box here, but you’ve got to start somewhere."

A purple flash flared above the statue and the shape of Cornealius materialized on the statue's head. "That you are a dangerous fool will surprise no one, Thomas," he hissed.

I started and glared up at Cornealius on the statue. "Hey, I didn't cross the damn circle! That's cheating!"

Cornealius just shook his head. "You know absolutely nothing about magic. It’s your damn stubbornness that’s gotten you killed. I tried so many ways to avoid this. If you'd just gone along with the TAU or Cyndi or bonded anybody other than O'Meara, it would have been fine."

I started to back away from the statue and Cornealius, who was wrapped around the statue's neck like a scarf. He appeared relaxed and unhurried and still managed to be threatening. Where the hell was Sabrina? I tried to scan the area with my peripheral vision, but nothing moved other than the leaves in the breeze. I tried to put on a brave face, trying not to remember just how large Cornealius could be if he wanted to. It didn't work. My brain started cataloging places to run to. "Kill me here and everyone will find out about your treasure.”

He laughed. "It’s way past time for secrets, cub—tonight is all about possession. But even your precocious O'Meara will thank us for stopping you. Every magus in the region is dependent on this spot for tass in one way or another."

"You two know what’s best for everyone, don’t you?”

"So—" The roar of an engine cut him off, and his eyes widened as they flicked between me and the car. Whenever he had started listening in, he had missed Rudy's presence entirely. The car's wheels spun on the grass and in a second they caught, shooting forward across the field. Cornealius's face contorted into a mask of panic as he leapt from his perch, his skin aflame with a green glow. He hit the ground with enough mass that I felt the impact under my feet, landing just to the left of the car's path.

"
Banzai!
" Rudy flung himself out the driver-side window as the car roared into the space between Cornealius and me. I got a face full of squirrel and heard the sickening crunch of bone followed by the sharp crack of metal and stone. Rudy quickly used my ears to scramble onto the back of my head before I could give voice to my protest.

The car lay on its roof twenty feet beyond the statue, wheels still spinning as the engine choked and sputtered. Cornealius, now the size of a stretched-out draft horse, leaned against the statue, his face a grimace of pain. His left foreleg seemed to sport several new joints as it hung from his shoulder. Blood bubbled from his nose. In the distance I could hear two engines screaming as they approached. At first glance, I thought the statue had escaped unharmed, but then I realized the general's outstretched sword had disappeared, and indeed the statue's left arm had been snapped off from the elbow. An angry orange ichor from the stump of the arm was slowly beading up on the stone.

“Well, that’s poetic karma for ya, Scrags,” I muttered to myself.

Cornealius spat blood onto the ground. "Bloody idiots." His ears twitched, and one zeroed in on the leaking stump, his eyes widening. "You had better hope Sabrina is strong enough to patch this, or you've just killed the entire town. Not that you care for anything but your own hide."

I growled back, “Says the guy who killed someone over a power source.”

“Archibald was a senile idiot, deadlocking the council while the council should be preparing for war!”

“Still murder,” I growled. The engines were getting closer, one far louder than the other, less like an engine and more like a rocket. A light grew on the horizon. Below my feet I felt the ground stir. Doubt flared in my mind. Had I been duped? Nervous, I started to pace around the oversize weasel, circling towards his injured side.

Cornealius's eyes narrowed as they followed me, but he made no effort to move; he only breathed.

The light was almost on us now, reflected on the windows of the nearby houses.
"Is he right, Rudy?"
I thought at the squirrel as I felt his mind brush my chain.

"Maybe. The Veil should protect the munds. It’s a flaming dragon, Thomas. Everybody dies."

The source of the light tore around a corner down the street, and O'Meara's Porsche burst into view, sporting a ten-foot cone of flame out of its rear. I heard the high-pitched scream of a woman as the car screeched into the parking lot, its flame dying away. O'Meara burst from the car almost before it stopped moving. Ixey followed from the passenger side, wobbling unsteadily and looking green.

"Thomas!" O'Meara vaulted the fence and ran down the hill into the field, directly towards me. With a heavy lunge, Cornealius threw himself between O'Meara and me.

"Stay back, O'Meara!" he snapped. O'Meara skidded to a stop, her hands filling with fire.

"Out of the way!" she snarled. A flash of light and heat hit my eyeballs. A blink and the grass all around Cornealius was gone, replaced with black charred dirt. Cornealius stood unmoved. This only infuriated O'Meara further. "Damn you!" Her eyes burst into individual suns as she drew forth so much power that her outline was lost within the pulsing light of her energy.

Ixey looked down from the fence of the parking lot reaching towards O’Meara. “Mistress,
no
!”

A purple spot bloomed behind Ixey, and before I could shout a warning, tendrils of yellow force burst from it, seizing her from behind. They wrapped themselves around Ixey's head and forcibly twisted it to look away from O'Meara. Another plucked the lizard from her shoulder and flung the poor thing off into the playground. A green puff of energy burst out of Ixey and dissipated. The purple resolved into Sabrina, her teeth gritted in concentration, the yellow tendrils extending from her left hand. In her other she held a staff of pure shadow. "
O'Meara, stop!
"

O'Meara spun, sending a focused jet of intense heat and hatred at Sabrina. A black beam from the staff met it not two feet from her head. The blackness engulfed the heat jet, eating it like a black hole. Flame spewed off in random directions. "Thomas! Run!"

"O'Meara!
This is not the time to fight!
" Sabrina screeched, her arm starting to shake under the sustained assault. "There's a dragon to deal with!"

O'Meara did not halt her assault as she pulled the sword from her belt, runes glowing along the length of the blade. “Then yield!” The blade twirled, sending projectiles arcing from the tip of the sword and hailing down onto Sabrina.

Sabrina spun, dropping Ixey and sending tendrils of power slicing up at the oncoming bolts, batting them from the air. One got through, slicing through Sabrina’s grandmotherly bun. She hissed invective that I didn’t catch as I searched for a way to use the time O’Meara had given me.