“I’m sorry you’ve had a bad day, Mr. Oslo,” he said calmly, resting his hands on top his head. “But if you’d asked nicely instead of opening fire, maybe we could have found an arrangement that didn’t end with your men getting toasted and scattered all over the block. I’m sure we can still come to a compromise, however, if you’d just explain what this is all about.”
“It’s about you about to get shot,” Oslo snarled. “I don’t know what kind of line she fed you, buddy, but your lady friend there is a thief. Mr. Bixby doesn’t take kindly to thieves. Novalli here is about to discover exactly what happens to bad girls who steal from us, but there’s no reason you have to suffer, too.”
Julius snorted. “You don’t think I’ll just abandon her.”
“That wasn’t what I had in mind,” Oslo said, tightening his finger on the trigger.
The soft click of metal made Julius go still. He hadn’t been taking Oslo’s threat seriously up to this point. He was only a human, and Julius had been shot before as part of his training. It hurt like all get out, but a single shot was almost never fatal for a dragon. As the concept of a bullet ripping through his skull shifted from threat to incoming reality, though, Julius suddenly realized he had nothing to defend with. He couldn’t change shape, and his magic was drained dry. He was a shadow of his true self, practically human, and humans got killed by bullets all the time. But just as it occurred to him that he should probably try to dodge, or at least keep the man talking until he could come up with a better plan, Oslo let out a blood-curdling scream.
The gun and the Kosmolabe both fell to the grass as Oslo’s hands flew up to grab at his neck where Ghost was hanging with his claws latched in the soft flesh beneath the large man’s jaw. Unfortunately for Oslo, there was nothing to grab. His hands passed right through the cat’s transparent body as Ghost’s talons sunk in deeper, cutting deep into his flesh without wound or blood. And then, with a silent hiss, Ghost’s head snapped forward, biting deep into the big man’s neck with his small, sharp, vividly white teeth.
As the bite landed, Oslo’s scream faded to an echo, like he’d fallen down a well. Seconds later, the sound vanished completely, and Bixby’s second pitched forward, landing face-first in the trampled grass. Ghost released him before they hit, nimbly climbing over the big man’s shoulder as he collapsed on the ground. When Oslo’s body relaxed into its final rest, Ghost was sitting on his back between his shoulder blades, lashing his tail and looking very pleased with himself. He also looked slightly bigger, Julius noticed with shiver. Bigger and more solid, his body shimmering brighter than ever under the hazy sunlight.
“I don’t think that was a good thing.”
“What are you talking about?” Marci cried, jumping up to grab the Kosmolabe. “That was a great thing.” She grabbed Ghost next, hugging his glowing body to her chest. “Who’s my good kitty?”
Ghost gave her a nonplussed look and dropped out of her hold, passing through her arms like his namesake to land again on the dead man’s back. He opened his mouth when he hit, showing his teeth in a silent yowl, and Julius heard a rustle behind them as the cats began to appear.
They poured out of the hoarded house like a furry tide, hopping down from the collapsing roof and running up the basement stairs and wiggling through the shot-up windows. They came out of the garden as well, appearing from the underbrush like they’d popped out of thin air. Within seconds, the driveway was carpeted with hundreds of sickly, bony cats of every color, all riveted on the dead body Ghost was lording over like an emperor. They covered the downed mage as well. The broken man barely had a chance to cry out before he was buried under the hungry, meowing wave.
The sight was horrific enough to push Julius to his feet. But when he tried to take a shaky step toward where Marci was still standing next to her spirit cat in the middle of the mass, Ghost’s head snapped, his pale, glowing eyes locking on Julius’s as a soft, purring voice whispered in his mind.
Ours.
Julius jerked liked he’d been punched.
Ghost sat up a little straighter, swishing his fluffy white tail back and forth over Oslo’s enormous body. Our kill, the voice whispered again. Our feast. Leave.
“Marci,” Julius said, slightly frantic. “I think we’d better go.”
“What?” She looked up from the Kosmolabe she’d been cuddling and wrinkled her nose at the cats. “Oh, right. Just let me get my stuff.”
Julius glanced at the shot up house. “I don’t think there’s anything left to get,” he said, hobbling forward to grab her arm. “And I think we need to leave now.”
He couldn’t even see the bodies anymore. The part of the backyard where the men had fallen was now a solid mass of cats with Ghost looming over them like a specter. Just the sound of their eating was enough to make Julius want to gag, and the revulsion gave him the strength he needed to pull Marci away, skirting the edge of the cat feeding frenzy until they reached her car.
The old sedan now sported several new bullet holes and a killer burn mark from bumper to bumper on the driver’s side. The heat spell had actually melted through the headlight’s plastic cover in places, and the seats were full of glass from where the windows had either cracked or been shot out. But while the windshield had a huge crack running across it and a perfect bullet hole in the upper right corner, it was still mostly intact. Even more miraculous, the engine started when Julius hit the ignition, and he let out a breath of relief.
“Drive,” he said, brushing the glass out of the driver’s seat before plopping Marci down.
“Come on, Julius,” she said as he circled around to the passenger side. “They’re just cats.”
“That was not just cats,” he snapped, barely pausing to sweep the broken glass out of his own seat before jumping in. “Go.”
She glanced back at the house. “But my—”
“Go, Marci.”
She heaved an enormous sigh, but she obeyed, gunning the engine manually and pulling them out onto the street past the waves of cats that were still arriving.
“Gone?”
Mr. Bixby stood in the corner of his office, hunched over his phone like a boy hiding contraband. “What do you mean they’re gone?”
“I mean your team got trashed!” the young man on the other end of the phone cried. “But boss, you never saw anything like this. She was tossing guys around like they were nothing. Everyone she hit’s got third degree burns or worse, and we’re the lucky ones who got away. Oslo’s just dead. I don’t know what happened to the mage, but—”
“Stop.”
The kid shut up at once, and Bixby used the opportunity to take a calming breath and reminded himself that young guns could be as hysterical as teenage girls when they got spooked, and hysterical kids tended to exaggerate. “Let me make sure I have this right,” he said, calmly now. “You’re telling me that Oslo, my mage, and all the men I sent up to Detroit were beaten by one girl? Is this really the story you want me to believe?”
“I swear it’s the truth,” the kid said. “But the girl ain’t alone anymore. She’s got some kind of other weird mage with her, and they were doing all kinds of I don’t know what. And then a bunch of cats appeared, and it was super creepy, so the rest of us turned tail and—”
“Enough,” Bixby growled, rubbing his hand over his face. “So Oslo’s dead, my mage is unaccounted for, and everyone else just ran?”