A Familiar Magic, page 17
“So then how is this home?” I was now thoroughly confused.
The corners of his mouth dipped down, his lips tightening. “This is how far our neighbors chased my mother after I turned sixteen.”
My mouth was now fully open; dropped wide enough to catch a whole host of nasty bugs. But coming across as impolite was the last thing I cared about. Chased. He said they chased his mom all the way out here. I couldn’t help but conjure images of raging villagers with pitchforks and torches. It sounded so…medieval.
“You better have a good reason for being out here, young man. And for why you brought her with you.”
I spun around at the intrusion and locked eyes with one pissed off familiar. She was striking; middle aged with rich blonde hair a few shades lighter than the tangled streaks that painted Bast’s curls. A quick glance showed she was strapped down with enough weapons to be an Amazon warrior. Small scars decorated her skin—visible even from here—and I knew instantly that those weapons weren’t just for show. She stomped her way over to us, breaking the small foliage in her path. I felt Bast shrink a little next to me, but he wore a grin on his face when I looked over.
“Hey, mom.”
I did a double take, eyes growing wider by the second. This was Bast’s mom? When he spoke of her, I pictured a gentle tabby that was bullied and now spent her days running a thrift store on the outskirts of town. Someone kind and gentle, quiet and sweet like Bast. The woman before me was none of those things. Her eyes pierced sharper than any weapon she had stashed on her and paired with the muscles flexing in her arms—no. This woman wasn’t soft. And there was no way she was a tabby. By the way she was stalking toward us like that, I’d bet all the money in my pocket she was a cougar. I fixed my face, which I’m sure was still frozen in disbelief, and tried a polite greeting.
“Hello, Ma’am. Thank yo—”
“I’m not going to ask again. What is she doing here?”
A blink. That was all I managed as I watched Bast’s mom barrel past me like I was nothing more than another weed for her to stomp on. Bast no longer grinned and all hope of me sleeping in something tonight besides another training uniform flew away with each harsh whisper.
“She just wants to buy some clothes,” Bast whined. “I didn’t think it would be this big a deal.”
His mom replied with a soft string of curses. “No, you didn’t think. She’s the Council Head’s daughter. What do you think her father would do to us if something happened to her? It’s not safe out here.”
“But—”
“Take her back, Bastion. Now.”
Bast’s mom marched past me again, not even sparing a glance as she went. When I could no longer hear her footsteps, I turned back around.
“So, she was nice.”
Red stained his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she’d be like that.”
I didn’t blame him. If I hadn’t witnessed their argument firsthand, I probably would have. But Bast looked absolutely mortified and I found myself growing more and more upset with his mom. He had a hard enough time making friends as it was. Did she treat everyone he brought home this way?
“Why was she so angry?” I asked, honestly confused.
“She doesn’t like that I brought you this close to the border.” He pointed behind me and sure enough, the stone wall rose above the trees. I couldn’t tell if the sight of it made me feel safe or trapped. “We have a hard enough time getting by as it is. If something were to happen to you out here, your father and the Council would exile us for sure.”
“But there’s no such thing as exile,” I countered.
His eyes flashed. “Exactly.”
The earth shook as I realized what he meant. The Council—my father—would kill Bast and his mother. Fuck. No wonder his mom looked torn between strangling him and marching me out of here herself. It felt like the ground was about to give way beneath me. It would be hard to have a friendship with Bast if his mother didn’t approve. Was I destined to be alone again? I deserved worse, I was sure, but…still. No one wanted to be alone.
“Kaya!” Bast snapped his fingers in my face.
I shook my head and realized I hadn’t imagined the ground moving. It really was.
“Not again,” I whined, and jumped over a deep crack splitting the bedrock.
The shaking wasn’t quite as bad as last time and I wondered if it had to do with our proximity to the barrier. I looked over at the wall, half expecting to see it riddled with holes or turned into a pile of rubble. What I saw instead sucked way worse.
“Imps!” I shouted and grabbed Bast’s arm to make sure he saw.
Imps were three foot tall, humanoid looking demons. They were lower ranking, usually moving in before a bigger, meaner boss. What they didn’t have in power, they made up for in spite. Their clawed, bird-like feet were strong enough to gut you with a single swipe and made it easy for them to scale the solid stone barrier like it wasn’t even there. It also made for a creepy sight. Those already over the wall angled their heads, listening. Sound was their strongest sense and your worst enemy. Even the smallest breath could be picked up by their long, pointed ears. And then you were truly fucked because the pair of horns on their head wasn’t just for show. They liked to get stabby. The second group crested the wall, their beaks snapping in glee when they caught site of us.
One or two Imps wasn’t a big deal, honestly. The problem was they liked to gather in large numbers, preferring to overwhelm their victims and pull them apart.
“What the hell are you two doing just standing there?” Bast’s mom bellowed from the door to the outpost. “Do you want to die today?”
We bolted. Every step brought us closer to the safety of the outpost, but also closer to the hoard of Imps now barreling down upon us. Thanks to a whole lot of luck, we reached the door first and Bast’s mom ushered us inside before anchoring the lock. The room was dark, the only light coming from the small cracks around the shuttered windows, but I still made out the rows and rows of shelves filled to the brim with clothes and other items. It was like if a pawn shop and a hoarder’s house had a baby. A more organized, useful baby.
“Take her downstairs, son. You know where the safe room is.”
Bast already pulled me aside as his mother started to strip off her weapons and clothes. Wood quaked beneath the onslaught of Imps; the walls visibly shuddering under the ferocity of their attack. The heavy door shook once. Twice. Then in a never-ending convulsion as if it were about to break apart from its hinges. The solid, thick plank across the threshold rattled and splintered and the bars over the windows groaned as they failed to keep out the little arms with clawed hands that reached through to break the glass. There was no time to go downstairs. The demons had arrived.
Bast’s mom thumped her fist three times on the floor. “We can’t let them get inside!” she shouted. “We’ll be overwhelmed!”
I hardly had time to wonder why she yelled at the floor when the door to downstairs burst open. Two burly men and one female rushed into the room, armed to the teeth and shouting orders.
“Check the windows!”
“Barricade them if you have to.”
“Why the hell aren’t you two downstairs yet?” That one was from Bast’s mom. She shared a look with one of the men, glared at us, and then shifted. A cougar. I knew it.
One of the men—the one with deep, ginger locks—shifted into a tiger without even taking his clothes off. Shredded cotton littered the floor, mixed in with the broken glass and chips of wood from the door.
“Why send us downstairs? You obviously need help.” I gestured at the ongoing destruction of the cabin.
I felt Bast wince beside me, but I wasn’t worried about pissing anyone off. I was more worried about surviving the afternoon.
“Let’s go.” Thick fingers gripped the back of my neck and pushed. “This battle is no place for children.”
I twisted to the side, glaring at the bossy voice who thought it was okay to get touchy. “Who the fuck are you?”
I didn’t appreciate being manhandled. Overrun by demons or not, he would feel my fist in his junk if he touched me again. The man had a buzzed head on a thick neck. He took a step closer but didn’t reach for me a second time. Probably reading the threat in my glare. With his jaw clenched, he motioned for the others to continue whatever they were doing. Maybe it was the stern disapproval radiating off his overly stiff shoulders, but I got the feeling this guy wasn’t used to having his orders questioned.
“I am Captain Cesar, and you, girl, are just a student. Meaning I outrank you.” I scoffed and he moved in. His speed caught me off guard and I backed into Bast. “You kids need to get your asses moving and do as I say. We can’t do what we need to do and worry about protecting you at the same time. Now get—”
The cabin trembled and cut off what he was about to say next. The woman in their company tossed a potion out of the broken window and the cabin moved again. I couldn’t hear what word of power she used, but I caught a glimpse of the second bottle she threw and knew the feel of the binding roots that would emerge. I remembered Auden telling me that potion only needed to touch the ground to work. By the sound of enraged snarls that echoed from outside, her potion was successful. The flutter of activity in the cabin ceased as they listened to the growing storm of pissed off demons. Bast’s mom and the tiger paced anxiously by the door, eager to tear into the enemy.
Minutes passed and the attack on the cabin slowly stopped. But I knew they were still out there. Two witches and familiars. Was that enough to handle what waited on the other side of that broken door?
Captain Cesar nodded once at the other witch and turned back to us. “Bolt that door behind us and get downstairs. That’s an order.”
One final hard look at us and the adults moved. After a swift peek through a hole in the door, they rushed outside. Bast lunged and slammed the battered plank back into place and slowly stepped back. We warily watched the door, ears attuned to any sound that would tell us their fates. When the sounds of fighting grew fainter and further away, we assumed the adults were successful. There was nothing left to do but wait. Once again, I lamented my stupidity at leaving my knife.
“Does your mom have any weapons stashed here?” I asked Bast, after a quick glance around the room offered no obvious choices. The witches picked up the knives she dropped before they left.
He laughed and pointed to the basement door. Funny. “Looks like we’ll be following Captain Cesar’s orders after all,” he snickered.
chapter sixteen
“There’s no way I’m going to cower downstairs while our people need help out there,” I growled. Bast nodded, like he already knew I wasn’t going to listen to the captain’s order. “We go down there, load up on whatever weapons we can, then go kick some demon ass.” I ticked off our objective as we moved around the cluttered storeroom floor.
It looked like there were plenty of clothes here I would have loved to buy, one hoodie in particular looked comfy as hell. But shopping was going to have to wait. Maybe after the adults saw how we could help, Bast’s mom would let me shop as a thank you.
“Why do we need weapons when we can shift?” Bast asked, stopping halfway across the room. He spun to face me, adorably confused. “You’re not planning on running out there like that, are you?”
A large blast from my right sent me airborne near to the ceiling, but gravity brought me back down just as quickly. Curled on my side, I gasped and tried to bring air into my bruised lungs. My ears rang and debris rained down, stinging as it hit my skin, but nothing felt broken. I searched for Bast in the now ruined cabin. Panic grew with every second I failed to spot him. I coughed, finally achieving a full breath only to choke on dust and crawled to where I spotted him. He was lucky enough to land against the wall with all the clothes.
I looked over at the door as I passed, terrified when I saw it no longer existed. The wood completely imploded and took a giant chunk of the wall with it. Outlined in the nonexistent doorway, was a man. Standing well over six feet, it was hard to tell where his skin ended and his armor began, both were jet black. Even his horned helmet. His chest armor, arm guards, and leg armor shined in the low light of the cabin, like a thick metal that even my claws wouldn’t put a dent in. Where is leg armor ended, his talons began; curving with a wicked sharpness that spoke of shredding and stabbing. All that was bad enough, but it wasn’t until he removed his helmet to reveal a reptilian like head bleached bone white that I knew we were well and truly screwed.
“Fuck,” I whispered, and crawled as fast as I could toward Bast. Using the mess of the ramshackle room, I kept hidden until I reached a mountain of clothes in the corner large enough for the both of us to hide behind.
The demon stopped just inside the hole in the wall and scanned the room. As his head moved from side to side, his skin changed. The rich, inky black faded in and out as the light struck it at different angles, going from dark to a faded shadow in the span of a breath.
“Shit. Oh, shit,” Bast breathed, his whole body shaking with fear.
I placed a hand on his shoulder, hoping to calm him. “Maybe we can sneak out behind him,” I whispered.
“That’s a Shade, Kaya,” Bast hissed. “We’re as good as dead.”
He wasn’t wrong and saying it out loud did nothing to curb the overwhelming dread growing inside me. Shades were at the top of the demon food chain. The fact that one made it through our barrier was very, very bad. If he could make it through, what else was lurking just outside our borders, waiting to come in? Worse, how many more of his kind were with him now?
The demon inhaled and the slits of his nose opened and closed as he scented the air.
“I can smell you, little familiarsss,” his voice ended on a hiss. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Bast and I looked at each other with panic in our eyes. We had less than minutes, heartbeats, before he found us. We were sitting ducks with no way to defend ourselves.
“We need weapons,” I whispered in his ear, scared the demon would still hear me.
Bast looked at me like I was crazy. “We are the weapons, but even we can’t defeat a Shade on our own.”
The demon’s boots made silent thuds against the wood floor, getting closer before stopping. Closer and then stop. I peeked over the clothes to find the Shade less than ten feet away, sniffing the air every couple steps. I grabbed Bast’s shirt and tugged, dragging him with me as we quietly tried to stay behind whatever we could to keep hidden. As the demon moved, we mirrored him. Getting to the door was my goal, but I wasn’t sure what would happen once we got outside. There was no chance of outrunning a Shade, especially out in the open. We were almost there. An arm’s reach away really, before the inevitable happened. My shoe caught on something in one of the debris piles, causing me to trip Bast. He crashed into me and down we went. Sprawled on the floor right in front of the exit, we both looked back at the demon who eyed us with a feral grin.
“Fuck.” I rolled and pulled Bast behind me. “Bast, go!”
He fought my hold until he stood beside me. “Like I’m going to leave you to face him alone.”
Tears gathered in my throat, both at his loyalty and the knowledge that we were both going to die here. Probably painfully. I picked up the nearest object, anything I could get my hands on, and started throwing. A shoe, broken wood, a thick iron nail; they all passed through him. The shade laughed, his skin smoky and transparent.
“That won’t work,” Bast growled, fur sprouting on his skin. “Only a familiar can injure a Shade in their shadow form.”
But a Shade couldn’t retaliate in that form, the shadows causing his hands to go right through matter just like my weapons went right through him. He had to solidify if he wanted to attack. If I timed it right, I could hurt him. Thinking I ran out of weapons, the Shade’s skin darkened to black. I fingered the broken glass in my hand, waiting for just the right moment...I threw it the second his skin stopped moving, aiming for his eye. It sliced his cheek instead and the sound that came out of him next told me our time was up.
“Shift, Kaya!”
I heard the alarm in Bast’s voice once he realized I stood there. He couldn’t tell I was trying. That I’d thrown every ounce of my fear, and strength, and desperation at that little door inside my mind. The one that’s been sealed shut since the first time I shifted last year. Nothing I did worked. My inner cat pushed from the other side and I could feel her fear, as potent as mine, but there was a mental block I just couldn’t get over, even while I stared death in the face.
“I can’t!” I sobbed and sank to my knees.
The sound of cloth tearing had me turning and I looked back at the largest, darkest wolf I’ve ever seen standing where Bast had been only moments before. His head stood taller than my shoulders and his paws were almost as big as my face, with claws to match. His teeth were bared, but not at me, at the demon still stalking us. Even knowing death stood just out of reach, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I mean, he was a wolf. Never in the history of our people has anyone, ever, shifted into a canine. Suddenly, many things about his life made sense.
I got to my feet, ready to fight and die by his side. “If we survive this, you and I are going to have one hell of a talk.”
We faced the Shade together. I crouched, nails lengthening and eyes splitting in the only form of the shift my messed-up mind would allow. The demon laughed.
“I’m not impressed.” His voice sounded like smoke and suffering, like something that sneaks up from behind and strangles the life out of you. “I’ve heard of you, Little Familiar.” I choked on a laugh, doubtful that this monster had ever heard of me. “The one who doesn’t shift.” This time I gulped. “And yet you’ve somehow managed to kill many of my brethren. Interesting.”
I wouldn’t call it interesting at all. I’d call it survival. But I didn’t have time to stop and think about how or why this demon heard of me, Bast moved. Taking advantage of the Shade’s distraction, he lunged and sank his teeth into the demon’s arm between the pieces of armor. Where the Shade’s skin was once see-through, it was now solid and leaking black ichor. What Bast said was true, the Shade’s magic didn’t work against us. The demon’s blood flung about the room as he shook his arm, trying to dislodge the wolf’s massive teeth. Before he could strike at Bast, I joined in, my own claws extended and aiming for the soft spot where the demon’s neck met his shoulder.
