"Stay here until I call for you,"
she thought at me as she popped open her car door.
"You should at least let me look for spells."
I bit back a grumble about how uncomfortable my position felt. No point to it—had she cared to know how it felt she could feel it. Although her concentration centered on the house, I kept my mind open to hers. I watched her walk up to the front door through her eyes. She glanced at the unkempt flowerbeds along the side of house, weeds starting to choke out the original occupants.
With some trepidation she walked onto the porch and rang the doorbell, resulting in an audible chime from inside the house. O'Meara counted the seconds, and after precisely thirty, a grinning face appeared in the long narrow window beside the door. A chill ran down our spines as O'Meara reached for her anchor, the warmth of her flames filling her. Dark memories bubbled, stirred to wakefulness by a glimpse of the face that dominated so many of them. I had recognized it too; the hair had greyed, but the face had the same strong jaw and cold grey eyes I had seen within O'Meara's nightmare back at the Archmagus's place. O'Meara had not been forthcoming on the nature of this guy on the way over.
The door swung open, revealing a man so massive that my mind immediately slapped him into a Zangief cosplay. A bit of dye to cover the grey and a beard and he wouldn't be far off. He wore jeans, and a loose flannel shirt hung off his broad shoulders. His wide grin seemed friendly as he held out his hands to O'Meara, not quite wide enough to request a hug but certainly ready to receive one. "Sammy girl! So good to see you!"
O'Meara visibly recoiled and stepped back out of range of his arms. "Good to see me?"
The arms fell away and he shrugged. "It’s always good to see one's apprentice. Even one who is ungrateful such as yourself. But! We are doing something that will make even you happy today."
O'Meara did not even try to hide the dubious look. "You were never someone who cared who you made happy or not, Whittaker. Certainly not me."
"You learned, did you not?"
"I learned far more from Cedrick than I ever did from you."
His massive hands rose up in a placating gesture. "You came here for a fight. Makes sense. It’s all you do well now. My fault. I bet the council's got your back against the wall. Calling for a head publicly while privately they're all glad the ol' bastard's dead. And if you can't produce a head, well, plenty of folk will settle for yours."
O'Meara nearly staggered back. "Since when do you follow politics?! Who the hell even talks to you?"
"I don't—that’s all as plain as day. It’s not complicated, darlin’. Just like how you came here to pin it all on me. Get me angry. Maybe you even win. I die and you've got a body that can't testify back. If you lose, well, I'm sure somebody on the council might take exception to that."
My stomach flipped as I saw this scenario as described surface in O'Meara's mind, already prefabricated. I couldn't quite grasp how hard she had considered it, but at least a little corner of her head regarded it as an acceptable outcome. I mentally growled at her.
“Witches ashes, Thomas, if I did half the things I thought about there’d be nothing but charred ground for miles around,”
she thought back.
"I have no death wish, Whittaker," O'Meara said stiffly. Whittaker’s eyes had gone cold, calculating, flitting up and down O'Meara’s body, looking for something. Whatever he sought, he found and smiled, warmth flowing back into his eyes.
"Nor do I." He stepped away from the door, revealing a solarium stacked with cardboard boxes. He gestured inward with a sweep of his hand. "Won't you come in, Inquisitor?"
O'Meara's wary eyes roamed the scene for threats, and I felt her debate sending for me, but she dismissed the idea. She walked forward into the house.
My tail had begun to tingle with pins and needles; the base of it ground against the door of the car. As soon as the door closed I sat up and took a breath. This drew a sharp rebuke from O'Meara as she inspected the piles of boxes beyond the door to the house. I politely told her to shove it. If there were eyes on me, I didn't feel them, and no way was I going let myself suffocate while she had tea with this star-crossed lumberjack of a magus.
She grumbled but didn't push the issue as I filled my lungs with air that hadn't been conditioned by decades-old carpets and car funk. The air around the house had a bit of a different taste to it than the office; certainly less car exhaust helped. There was plenty familiar about it too. That strange scent I had noted at the office licked at my nose, a bitter musk that set my brain tingling. Had Whittaker been lurking around the office?
Inside, Whittaker led O'Meara through a corridor of boxes to a worn set of wicker furniture. In the corner a huge mound of reddish brown fur watched her with red eyes under a furrowed brow. "Hello, Loki." O'Meara nodded at the bear and tried not to look at the large patch of furless hide that marred his shoulder—a burn scar.
Loki did not respond and continued to regard her—not quite a stare as he did blink, but the vibe wasn't at all friendly.
Whittaker gestured to a seat. "I'd offer you coffee but it’s"—he waved a hand at the boxes—"somewhere."
Various images of that same gentle-looking face, red and screaming, demanding coffee, rose in O'Meara’s mind, causing the ghost of Rex to play a brief game of whack-a-mole. O'Meara bit back a sarcastic remark before saying, "So you are leaving. Not waiting for the estate sale?"
"I think it’s best. We have nothing to bid that isn't already owed to the council. Nothing here without old Archibald. I’m guessin’ that most of us will follow after that." He smiled faintly. "Unless you happen to find a will, and even then I doubt it will make much difference. The council is drooling over the thought of getting their hands on whatever Archibald used to harvest all the tass he had access to."
"And you don't know what it is?"
His eyes flicked to the boxes. "No idea."
"If you want me to let you go, I need to scry both you and Loki's whereabouts within an hour of Archibald's murder."
The bear issued a deep growl. Whittaker’s face twitched. "O'Meara—"
"No, you clearly want out of here for some reason, and I cannot take your word. If it later turns out you’re lying, then I will be pilloried."
"Who's going to be the scryer? Ixey can't scry through a piece of glass," Whitaker replied.
Suddenly, gravity disappeared. My senses slammed back from O'Meara's perspective to find the world tumbling around me. My vision spun with shapes and colors without context. I hit something soft that wrapped around me and then felt the teeth of the gravel driveway. It didn't hurt. It was too sudden to hurt. Dazedly I chirped in surprise as something clapped down over my muzzle.
"Thomas!"
O'Meara’s voice exploded in my head, but I all I could respond back was a rising sense of panic.
"Got him! Thread the pole!" a gruff voice shouted.
"Go, go, go!" another voice growled, and the ground fell away. My limbs scrabbled to find purchase, ground or flesh it didn't matter, but my claws met only netting slipping between several toes. That bitter musk flared in my nostrils as the gravel raced under me. All of the dark mutterings of the others bubbled through my mind as it finally pieced together what was happening to me. Catnapped. I was getting catnapped! The fucking bastards were catnapping me!
The anger slammed into gear and with it adrenaline. A sound of hellish intensity tore out of me as I thrashed in earnest. Looking up from the ground I finally saw one of my captors. A huge beast ran somewhat awkwardly on two legs, thick black fur with russet red patches around his long muzzle. One thick hand wrapped around a pole that had been threaded through the webbing of the net surrounding my body. His other hand/paw strayed to the ground as he bore me down the hill towards a rusted pickup. Another huge hulk of a beast squatted in its bed. This beast grinned at me with the flattened face of not a wolf but a bulldog, with two yellow tusks jutting up past the bridge of his wide nose.
O'Meara behind burned with panic and impotent rage. An explosion echoed the sound of my impact on the flat bed. My legs finding purchase, I bounded up into the air, only be slammed back onto the truck by the huge beast, his hand swallowing my entire head. The truck rocked with heavy thumps as I heard the spraying of gravel before the wheels caught and the truck jerked forward. Howling erupted around me as I struggled against the vice grip on my head.
"Shut up, ya lot! Get the goddamn collar off!" A guttural voice ripped through my captors’ victory howl, prompting several thick hands to grope at my neck. Claws snared the chains hidden there. Several more pressed into my spine, pinning me down. Somewhere behind us O'Meara threw her car into reverse. The chain around my neck tightened, two lines contracting around my throat. I stopped breathing as one of them groaned with effort.
"No, no, no! You’re doing it wrong! You're strangling him."
"It’s no good, Pa!" The chain went slack, and I drank a lungful of air as fast as I could pull it through my nostrils.
"You’re too weak! Switch with me!" The pair counted to three. Two hands quickly replaced Pa's one.
"O'Meara! They’re trying to break the bond!"
I thought desperately through our link.
"Hang on, Thomas! I'm coming—"
Pa gave a grunt and the link went dead. The space in my mind where O’Meara had resided became a vacuum. It quickly filled with a crushing sort of pain. No specific wound to hurt, but rather a heavy thing that laid down on my head and lungs. I whimpered as it threaded through my limbs. I tried to scream, but it came out as nothing more than a depressed chirp.
"
Heh
, I doubt he'll have much fight in him now." A voice rumbled above me as I heard the chain crumple to the floor. "Hog-tie him—we've got a long drive."
"Sure, Pa."
I heard a distinctive ripping sound that could only be one thing and confirmed that the beasts on my back were true sadists. "Duct tape? Oh, come on. Can't you guys use rope or something?" I pleaded as a feeling of utter defeat overwhelmed me. My limbs felt like lead.
A laugh went up behind me. "Ropes are for boy scouts," one growled.
The group hog-tied me good. It clearly wasn't their first time at this rodeo. They slipped my head in a foul-smelling bag and then wrapped my legs together so tightly that my paws went numb within several minutes. I hissed at them, but couldn't be arsed to do much else and even that earned me a slap in the ribs with a growled warning to behave from the one they called Pa. The truck briefly stopped after about five minutes, and the metal frame groaned as one or two of the wolves departed. Definitely Pa was one of them.
The trip seemed to last a very long time. The wolves in the back with me didn't speak to each other. Perhaps they were too busy hanging their heads over the side and letting their tongues flap in the breeze. The pain of the broken bond ebbed, some of the weight easing, so I could lift my head with effort. But there was little point in exertion, taped up as I was. With time it wouldn't be impossible to work free, but the tape would ensure it would be a very painful experience.
The road got rougher as we went. I could smell the earthen dust of the road, and the increased vibration started giving my side a good pummeling. Worse, it made me aware of another problem.
"Hey, uh, wolf guys? Are we almost there? ‘Cuz your truck's tap-dancing on my bladder."
"Heh, fat chance, cat. This ain’t no movie, and I’m not falling for that. Hold it or don't. Not gunna do you any good."
"How long we gonna keep him wrapped up like that, Eagle?"
"Always the softy, ain’t ya, Noise. Living with that humie is dullin’ those teeth."
"Oh, like what I do is very different from the way you and Tallow spend your naked days in that cabin. I saw that satellite dish on the roof."
"Way different! We don't got humies for miles around!" It was an old argument. I could hear the deep ruts it was passing through. Something about Noise itched at my brain. I had an overwhelming desire to try to get a sniff at her.
"Shut up! Not in front of the 'guest,'" a second, new voice said, this one with a feminine growl. Perhaps this was Tallow?
The pressure in my loins gave me a sense of urgency beyond the black hole where O'Meara had been in my head. "Hey, the guest is curious about Noise's question."
"Shut up, cat." A fist popped me in the ribs, a sharp stick of pain that barely registered compared to the black hole of agony in my head. Nor did it compare with my certainty that the wolves were planning to sell me off to some wizard on the black market for familiars. The flip side of that was they probably wouldn't want to hurt me badly.
"I have a name, you know," my inner snark replied. I couldn’t bother with containing it.
Eagle grabbed the scruff of my neck and lifted my front half from the truck bed; the skin around my windpipe tightened. I could smell his hot death-filled breath through the bag. "Right now your name is Meat. Keep talking and it will be Dinner," he growled at me.
"Okay! Anything you say! You’re the boss!"
He snorted and started to lower me down. "That’s better."