Page 55 of Rogue Familiar

So long as it didn’t get her killed. Ozana sighed sadly at his lack of response and snapped her fingers. Two more automatons stepped out of nowhere, going to aid the first. Since Jadren had the wit to observe this time, he saw how they had actually moved through a dense patch of air, only appearing to be transported from nothingness. More Elal wizardry, using spirits to mimic the air and hide their El-Adrel allies. That meant this group had arrived some time ago, to have surrounded him and Seliah so effectively. Dark arts only knew what Ozana had overheard before she decided to show herself.

More critical—did the people back at House Phel realize this possibility? Nic was savvy about Elal wizardry, but she might not have been privy to this particular application. And Alise was too young to have been initiated in all of the Elal defensive—and offensive—secrets. It wouldn’t take much to distract the trusting denizens of House Phel with some kind of feint, legal or otherwise, while spirits obscured the approach of a physical army. They’d be sitting ducks, happily quacking and dabbling or whatever it was ducks did. Jadren cursed himself. He should’ve realized Elal wouldn’t take his defeat at Gabriel Phel’s hands lightly. He’d want revenge.

Ozana positively twinkled at his catching up to what she’d no doubt known for ages. “It’s too bad, really, little brother, that you couldn’t ever figure out how to please Maman. Being in her confidence is so much better than not. Too late now, however, as she’s most displeased with you for absconding with your lovely present. However did you manage to escape?”

He bared his teeth at her, which was the most defiance he could muster under the circumstances. “You never could figure out how to sweettalk the house,” he gritted out, trying to sound insouciant, but the words definitely coming out pained. “She’s always hated you.”

The perfect oval of her pale, delicately freckled face began to spiderweb from the edges with the maroon of old blood and sibling rivalries. “The house!” she scoffed, a hint of a frustrated screech in her voice. “It’s not sentient, you know. That’s a bunch of superstitious claptrap. It’s just a building with magical elements, like any other enchanted artifact. You don’t talk to the thing!”

And she wondered why the house didn’t like her. Yes, the house—meaning the literal, physical House El-Adrel—could be a real bitch, mischievous, mercurial, and occasionally downright sadistic, but she also loved her denizens. At times, the house reminded Jadren of a cat whose loving affection included treating her people like mice to torment. You never knew when you’d get the purring, cuddling version of the house or the swat with claws extended that drew blood. But it did help if you knew how to pet cats. Or if you were at least willing to try. Ozana’s insistence on treating the house like an inanimate object without feelings had not endeared her to their childhood home.

“Remember when you got trapped in the atrium and the house changed the whole thing into a globe?” The memory cheered him enough that he could speak over the pain. Come to think of it, the chain was hurting less now. He was healing rapidly, thanks to the massive sex-infusion of Seliah’s magic. Stronger together, remember? This is why you wanted me for your familiar. Seliah’s words echoed annoyingly in his mind, emphasized by her mute glare at him from the confining embrace of the automaton.

“Then the globe detached itself from the rest of the house and rolled downhill,” he reminded Ozana gleefully. That had been truly fucking hysterical, his already startlingly malicious eight-year-old older sister had been tossed inside the rolling ball like a furious, red-furred rodent, beating her fists against the glass and screaming without sound. He’d been only five at the time—and sporting numerous cuts and bruises from Ozana playing scientist on him, a foreshadowing of things to come—and he’d fallen to the lush grass in fits of laughter, unable to catch his breath from the hilarity of it all. Their parents had been summoned by the panicked wizard-nanny and it had taken hours for their mother and father to charm the house into releasing Ozana.

Mostly it had been their father who’d got it done. The house resisted being leveraged by wizardry, even a wizard as powerful as their Maman, but it had a soft spot for the gentle, loving Fyrdo, which was probably how he’d managed to effect Jadren and Seliah’s escape from the labyrinthine laboratory where his mother had imprisoned them. No way would Jadren even hint at his father’s involvement in their escape, however. Hopefully Ozana’s apparent ignorance of how they’d escaped meant their mother hadn’t figured it out either. A relief to know, as a wizard could make a disobedient familiar’s life very, very unpleasant. Jadren met Seliah’s irate amber gaze and tried to send reassurance along their bond. “What more evidence do you need?” he taunted Ozana. “It took a special hate to do that to a kid.”

The spiderwebbing of maroon humiliated rage had blossomed into a full flush encompassing Ozana’s entire face. “That was not the house acting on its own. It was an embedded spell that I accidentally activated. The cursed place is riddled with layers upon layers of enchantments carelessly left behind by our wizard ancestors. The fact that the house is so resistant to wizardry is just proof of that.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Zany.” With the use of her hated childhood nickname, Ozana’s face purpled further. She always had been ridiculously easy to infuriate. A special gift of his. “You know that you’ll never be Lady El-Adrel if you can’t manage the house.”

“At least I have a shot at being Maman’s heir,” Ozana snarled, stalking closer to him. “Unlike you. She will be very pleased with me for returning her errant lab rat—and this potent familiar. You’ll see when you’re dead and the Phel familiar is mine. I will be a force to be reckoned with.”

“You sound like a villain from one of those books our nanny read to us. Hasn’t your reading material matured at all?” He didn’t bother pointing out the flaw in Ozana’s logic. She never had been much of a thinker, as evidenced by the fact that she’d never quite put together just how difficult Jadren was to kill. She was, however, an impulsive fireball of emotion, and he’d always known how to light her fuse.

With an incoherent screech, Ozana leapt on him, knocking him to the ground as she flailed at his face. Perfect. He whistled for Vale as he’d heard Gabriel do and, at the same time, fast-enchanted the tool he’d palmed. He stabbed the tool, a simple spike, into Ozana’s leg where she straddled him, then jabbed a second spike into her back above her heart—and fired his magic into it. The electric current sent Ozana into a paroxysm. With any luck, it would stop her heart, at least temporarily. The shock of his lightning fed back into his own nerves, which hurt, but his healing magic, nicely boosted by Seliah’s shimmering moon and cooling water, buffered the worst of it.

As Ozana lost consciousness, her magic vanished from the chain binding him, releasing its hold. She toppled over as he shrugged her and the chain off, his sister jerking spastically. The shock wouldn’t kill her, as she’d also inherited their mother’s resistance to injury—not to Jadren’s immortal extent and probably not even to their mother’s—though how much Ozana understood that about herself was debatable.

Jadren pushed up, a bit more rattled by that shock that he’d anticipated, though his head was clearing rapidly, and looked to Seliah. As he’d hoped, Vale had used his excellent horse-sense and charged the automaton holding Seliah. She had escaped its clutches and staggered away, the gag having fallen to the ground, and seemed to be watching in some astonishment as Vale trampled one automaton beneath his hooves while battling the other two.

The creations moved too ponderously to fight the excellently trained war horse, even with Vale laden with their bags, and they were shortly all piles of scrap metal. Seliah started when Jadren set a hand on her, her still mostly feral gaze swinging to him wildly. “It’s me,” he told her, stroking her back. “You’re safe now.”

Her eyes cleared somewhat, her stare a bit less full of animal panic. “Safe?” she squeaked. “This is what you call safe?”

He grinned at her, beyond relieved to see her regaining her equilibrium again so quickly. Good thing, as they needed to put a move on. “I’d say safe as houses, but… well, you’ve met House El-Adrel and she’s the last thing from safe. Fortunately she likes me much better than Zany here. I’d introduce you but…” He waved a hand at the satisfyingly incapacitated Ozana. “She’s a bit out of sorts.”

~16~

Selly loved Jadren’s resilience and darkly irrepressible humor—both no doubt key to his having survived everything that had been done to him with his sanity (relatively) intact—but at this particular moment, she wasn’t amused.

“That is your sister?” she ground out, not really a question, pointing at the auburn-haired woman still twitching on the grass. Green and brown smears sullied the striking woman’s once pristine white sheath dress and smoke wafted from her skin rather disconcertingly. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing that she didn’t deserve,” Jadren answered, a bit defensively. “We really didn’t need her carting us back to House El-Adrel.”

“Oh, I’m not arguing the result,” Selly said. “I’m just fascinated by this thing I didn’t know you could do. Also, if you could zap her like that, why you didn’t do it sooner.” Like before that bitch muzzled her, or before the metal monster nearly crushed her. She’d be all over bruises and she’d just been enjoying feeling fully healthy and rested again. Speaking of injuries, she went to check Vale. A few lacerations marred his glossy dark hide, mostly on his lower legs, but he seemed sound overall.

When she patted him comfortingly, he rolled his eyes wildly at her, clearly displeased by the repeated attacks by unnatural creatures. “You and me, both, buddy,” she said, stroking his long nose. He bumped her with it, blowing out a breath through his lips as he ducked his head, and she obligingly scratched the itchy spots between his ears and under his forelock.

“I’m sorry,” Jadren said, sounding genuinely contrite and putting his arms around her from behind, sandwiching her between horse and man in a most comforting way. He’d done this before, only with much more erotic intent, and she surprised herself at how it settled something deep inside her to be held this way. “I know you were afraid, but I had to wait for her to get close enough for me to jab her.” He took her hand and pressed a metal piece into her hand. “I had to make this on the fly and I wasn’t sure how well it would work.”

She edged back from Vale, just in case, and looked at the innocuous-seeming spike in her hand. “Will it… go off again?”

He chuckled and moved her hair aside to kiss her neck in that spot he’d discovered melted her with alarming speed. Indeed and against all practicality, given their circumstances, her blood leapt in eager response, desire shimmering through her.

“No,” Jadren murmured against her skin, nipping lightly, like a lightning bolt right there, zapping her arousal to the next level. She moaned and he echoed the sound, vibrating through her from his chest against her back, his hardening groin against her bottom. “It needs wizardry to work. Probably only mine, though I could maybe make one that anyone could use.”

“That would be handy,” she agreed in a throaty voice. Vale bumped her peremptorily in the stomach, shattering the mood. “Vale is right—we can’t dawdle.”

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