FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 4

The afternoon sun was full against the side of Meriah's cottage when she woke, little beams of light making their way through the thick curtains, even with them drawn tight over the windows. She'd been awake for a while, though, and when the sunlight finally kissed her face, she sighed and sat up in her bed, throwing the light sheet off her body and to the floor. There wasn't any way she was going to find any more rest today, so she might as well get up and start taking care of the things that needed doing.

A quick look around the cottage told her that she was alone, as it should be. Since she'd talked with James the night before, she could still feel him in the back of her mind, though he was distant and quiet. It was that way all through the night, with his presence there, just at the very edge of her perception. And it was driving her crazy. She wasn't alone in her head any more, and that alone was enough to have her on the verge of a panic attack for a little while.

She wasn't a social creature. Her cottage was at the edge of the estate on the border with the forest, and she always liked it that way. She didn't have anything in common with the other Mrr'tani, and even less with the few humans on the estate. The Mrr'tani saw her as just another fixture, and the humans as just another servant. Neither one held her interest for long. The woods outside her cottage was what drew her attention and her interest. But now, even in her own head, she couldn't find solitude.

But what was more disturbing to her, the thing that set her teeth on edge more than anything else that she'd noticed over the last day, was the fact that it was starting to feel normal, like it was something that should be there. There was a hole in her that was being filled, little by little, with these other voices and feelings. With Rose and Jacques, it felt like a temporary thing, a placeholder, there only because she happened to be near them. But it felt different with James. She couldn't figure out what it was with the old Mrr'tani, but there was a connection that went past the distance that separated them. It was as if he belonged in that little slot in her mind. A puzzle piece that had finally found its place.

She couldn't help but focus on it for longer and longer every time she noticed it, wondering if he felt her poking at that connection, or if he'd learned to tune it out. Since he was one of the ones that knew what it felt like, perhaps he'd been able to develop a defense to it. And perhaps he could teach her.

A little ray of hope broke through her thoughts and she smiled. If anyone was going to know how to deal with this stuff, it would probably be James, and if he'd felt her poking and prodding all through the night, he'd probably be in the same frame of mind as her, ready to get rid of it and make it quiet down. It was time to go talk a little more with him.

Mind made up, she hopped out of bed. It didn't take her long to dress, since all of her clothing was simple, functional and comfortable. She slid her feet into her usual shoes, and with a second thought, she strapped her hunting knife to her belt. She wasn't intending to take it, but something in the back of her mind told her that it would be a good idea today. She hadn't survived this long as gamekeeper without listening to the little things that her mind and body told her, so she didn't ignore this hint, either.

With a look over her shoulder to make sure that every fire was out and that everything was where it was supposed to be, she turned and walked out of the house. The door shut firmly behind her and she started up the road. Even though James' mind link was still present regardless of the distance she was from him, she could tell that proximity made it grow stronger, just like the others. As she came around the corner to his usual field, she could feel the link brighten and clarify and she started to taste more and more of his feelings. He wasn't guarding today, and she could feel a depth of emotion that she wasn't used to. When she focused on it, it was like diving through a multiple-layered pool.

Along the top was his usual affable and optimistic self, the attitude and persona that he always presented to the world. Beneath that, there was a core of steel, surrounding something that he would never let anyone close to. Except he'd told her about his past, and she knew exactly what he hid from the world and from the other Mrr'tani. The steel emotions surrounding that were his determination to never allow himself to be used like that again, and also his refusal to allow anyone to see or know who and what he was before he came to the estate. But over all of it, there was a haze of unease. She didn't taste it as fear like she did with Jacques and the Master. It was more subtle than that. It was just enough to make her fur start to stand up, but not enough to be fully called anxiety, either.

She was still tasting it when she arrived at James' lean-to on the far side of the field. It was still strong, but she could tell that he wasn't going to be in his house. The link was still too far away. Sighing in frustration, she turned and looked back over the field. There was nothing around her to tell her where he might have gone. She closed her eyes and focused on the link, bringing it to the front of her mind, more than she'd ever let any of the links, and with a certainty that she'd never known before, she started walking again, back across the field and towards the main house. She knew where he was.

The house looked slightly different in her view under the afternoon sun, and she wondered what it was that was so different. The walls were the same as they'd been since she remembered first seeing them, and the day under which they stood was quite similar to the day before, even with the quality of light. But something felt more ominous. Then she noticed that the feeling had the same quality as the haze in her link to James. She wasn't just seeing the house through her eyes and her feelings, but seeing through the filter of James' feelings as well. Was this how he saw all of the world? With a haze of foreboding and possible malice?

She realized that wasn't the case for when she looked away from the main house and back towards her cottage, the feeling went away and her vision cleared. But every time her eyes returned to the huge house, it returned. With a start, she remembered that James was not born on the estate and that he'd had other owners and masters before he came to serve the Master. Experiences as he was describing to her the night before were sure to leave a mark on him. Perhaps she was seeing things through the eyes of that experience.

It wasn't until then that she realized she'd stopped walking, the feeling of foreboding stopping her in her tracks. Her breath was quick through her muzzle and she could feel her hands shaking. But the feelings were still one removed. She never had any unpleasant experiences in the main house, and she knew that the feelings weren't hers. They were coming from the link. What had happened to James that he feared this place so?

She forced herself to keep walking and she pushed the link back to the back of her mind once again. She knew that she'd find James in the main house, so she didn't need it clouding her perceptions any more. Just like that, the haze cleared and the feelings were all hers again. The main house looked the same as it always had, and she could see the Mistress walking along the upper hall, doing whatever it was that she did in the afternoons. The smell of fresh pastry wafted on the breeze with a hint of lemon. Rose must be making her famous and delicious lemon puffs. Meriah's mouth watered with the memory of the sweet and very tart desserts. If she got there soon, she could get one as it was cooling before she went off in search of James.

That thought put a spring in her step and instead of forcing herself to walk to the house, she was practically skipping down the road, looking forward to a little of Rose's baking.

All those thoughts came to a screeching halt, though, when she opened the door of the kitchen. The smell of pastry was stronger, but it was overlaid by the pungent smell of burnt sugar and smoke hung in the air. It burned her nose and her lungs and she coughed, trying to clear it from her muzzle. She left the door flung open to vent the kitchen and looked around, feeling her fur starting to rise as her heart thudded. Rose never burned anything. That was unthinkable. She made her way to the oven, finding it hard to see anything through the smoke, and when she found it, she hit the switch that turned everything off. She didn't bother opening the door, that would only put more smoke in the air more quickly. She needed to find the windows.

She traced her way around the room along the familiar edges of tables, barking her shin on an overturned chair on her way, and when she found the window she was looking for, she threw it wide, letting the cross breeze start to clear out the smoke of the burned pastry. While she waited for that, she reached down to pull the chair back upright. When her hand clenched around the leg of the tall chair, she noticed something sticky against her fingers. She set the chair fully upright before she let it go and looked down at her hand. Something deep, dark red coated her fingers. It was thick and sticky, almost like the gelatin filling that Rose used in her puffs. She lifted her hand to her nose and took a deep sniff, expecting raspberry or cherry, but instead the acrid tang of copper and iron filled her nose. She knew the scent intimately and her eyes widened in shock.

Blood.

She dropped to her knees, bringing her head beneath the clearing smoke and found the edge of the puddle. There was so much on the floor that there was no way whoever was bleeding was still alive, yet she still had to try to find someone. Maybe there was more than one. As she crawled across the stone floor, she felt another feeling next to James in the back of her mind. It was faint and very distant, but it was familiar. It was Rose. With a dread that was almost palpable, she focused on the new feeling. There was none of her usual good-natured humor, just a very quiet and very still peace of mind. And beneath that, there was a fear that made Meriah shake and the hair on her tail stand full up. Something was very, very wrong.

She picked up the pace and started crawling faster, frantically trying to find what had made the puddle of blood in the middle of the floor, but afraid that she already knew what, and who, it was. The smoke was clearing more and more, and it didn't take her long to find Rose laying on the floor almost beneath the large table. Meriah stopped for only a moment while she tried to make sense of the scene. Her friend lay on the floor with her hand clasped around her neck. Meriah could just barely discern movement in the other Mrr'tani's chest, the slight rise and fall of breathing. Her ears heard a deep gurgling sound with every movement of her chest.

"Rose!" Meriah cried, crawling to her side.

She gathered the older woman's head in her hands and tapped her forehead with a long finger.

"Wake up, Rose," she commanded.

Rose didn't stir, so she tapped even harder, then finally extended her claws and gave a firm pinch to Rose's ear. That finally woke her and her eyes opened and focused on Meriah.

"Meriah," she muttered, the gurgling sound even louder.

"I'm here, Rose."

"No. Meriah. No." Rose shook her head as she mumbled words that didn't make sense. Meriah frowned and tried to understand. Rose's link in her mind was almost frantic with panic. The panic overrode everything but one other feeling. Love. Love for her.

"Don't talk, Rose. The Master will know what to do," Meriah said. She was certain that he would, since he had the access to the advanced medical devices that the humans used to keep themselves patched up. They would fix Rose's injuries easily.

"Mustn't find you," Rose muttered. She reached up and pressed her paw against Meriah's whiskers. When she did, Meriah's breath caught in a stifled gasp as she saw the damage. Rose's throat had been cut from one side to the other and Meriah could see the gleaming white bone of her spine when Rose's head leaned back into her arms. The link started to fade even faster and Meriah tried to press her own hands over the wound, even though she knew that she didn't have long enough to even find the master. This was a killing wound.

"Run." Rose's breath rattled with the final word and her hand fell from Meriah's face. Her chest no longer moved with breath and even the warm spill of her blood on Meriah's hands stilled as the link winked out in her mind. There was a force, though, behind the dying link that took her breath from her, and she gasped with the sheer intensity of it. It bordered on pain, but it was a pain that was so deep and so dark that she couldn't even begin to feel all of it. A part of her mind was simply not there any longer, and for a moment, she thought it would have hurt less if her arm had been removed.

She was too stunned to even move her eyes from Rose's still form. But in that moment of Rose's link ceasing, there was a glimpse of something else. Another familiar spark that she couldn't feel before, but that was now in the forefront of her mind with a clarity she'd never had before. Jacques. This feeling was triumphant, exultant. And next to Jacques, she could feel something totally alien. It felt so different from her own mind that at first she wanted to throw it from her. The touch of this new link was so disturbing and so divergent that for a moment, it disrupted both Jacques and James' links.

With a bit of focus, she was able to bring it into closer harmony and really look at it and she looked up with physical eyes in surprise. It was the Master. She had no doubt. The alien feeling was such that it had to be a human in her mind, and the only one that she knew that felt anywhere near this was the Master. There was almost as much fear in his link as there was in Rose's before she died, and beside that fear was a hatred unlike any that Meriah had ever felt. A hatred born of trust betrayed.

Jacques' link opened further in her head and she knew that he'd sensed her in his mind. There was a momentary curiosity and then she could feel him beckoning her to him. It wasn't something that she could hear in words, but she could feel the tug in her mind, something that was almost impossible to resist. She could feel it pulling at the little sockets in her mind and she stood, leaving Rose's body on the floor. Her body moved as if she wasn't in control of it any longer, the irresistible pull calling to her. But then it found the socket that was Rose's and for a split second it hesitated. That was all the time that Meriah needed to push the link to the back of her mind, buoyed by the feelings that the pull aroused in her mind when it probed that painful spot.

She stopped mid-stride on her way to the door and turned her head away from the doorway. She could still feel his call in the back of his mind, but it was something she could resist, something she could ignore. Her eyes found Rose's still form and she gazed at it a moment longer. The one word stuck in her mind, and it warred with her reaction to go and avenge her friend and save her Master. Rose had told her to run, but she would not slink cowardly back into the night. Besides, she thought to herself, where would she go? There was only so much space beneath the dome, and outside of it, nothing could survive. The only way that this would end would be with her and Jacques, whether that was here in the main house or some dark and dreary night in the middle of the forest. She'd tasted Jacques' mind and she knew that he wouldn't stop until he found her. That much was certain.

She set her jaw and started towards the door again, pausing before she went through to draw the knife from the sheath on her ankle. She never left her home without a blade, less as a weapon and more as a tool. There was always something around the estate that could benefit from a sharp edge. Today, though, it was a weapon, and she knew exactly how to use it. When she held it, it became an extension of herself, and that would serve her well. The call in the back of her mind strengthened as Jacques link recovered from the push that she'd given.

"Don't worry, Jacques, I'm coming," she said to the empty room. At the same time, she closed her eyes and focused on the words, sending the feeling of them down the link to where she felt his mind. The call eased and she felt a glow of eager satisfaction replacing it. At least she knew now that the link went both ways.

Her feet made no sound on the stairs as she ascended. The house was huge and she didn't know for sure where Jacques had taken the Master, but she figured that if she was in his place, she would have taken them to the inner sanctum. The Master's room. Very few Mrr'tani knew where it was in the building, only the ones that the Master trusted implicitly. It was a security precaution that all the humans used to keep their Mrr'tani servants from finding them easily when they slept. At least, that's what some of the other Mrr'tani had told her. She used to wonder why the Master had to worry, but she no longer did. Jacques would know where it was because he was the Master's manservant. Meriah knew because she was practically hand-raised by the Master in this very house.

With careful footsteps, she made her way to the very center of the house. The doors that would usually be closed for the day stood wide open, gaping and coaxing her onward with the disturbing feeling of everything being out of place. Her link to Jacques got stronger with every step she took, and so too, did her link with the Master. She could feel the rage and the hate, as well as the fear, and with the taste of that fear, she knew that it wasn't his fear for his own safety, it was a fear for someone else. Perhaps the Mistress. But then she tasted the link again and she had to admit the truth, it was fear for her.

She wouldn't fear. She would face this feral down, and she would make her Master proud of her. That thought and the determination that came with it subsumed everything else in her mind, and it pushed the links into the background, leaving only her cool, calm, collected thoughts in the foreground of her mind. This was what she always felt when she struck the final blow in a hunt. The eerie nothingness of a crystal clear and utterly empty mind.

She turned the corner and stepped into the Master's chambers, her skilled hunting eyes taking in everything that they could. The Master was in the far corner of the room, hugging the Mistress in his arms and holding her. She was shuddering and shaking and Meriah's ears brought the sound of sobbing. James was in another corner of the room, laid out on the floor not moving. She paused for only a split second, wondering if he was dead, but then she felt his mind in hers, the link just as strong as ever, and she saw his chest rise with an indrawn breath. His mind felt relaxed and she knew that she couldn't count on him for any help, that he was insensate to the world.

In the center of the room, near the Mistress' large and elegant wooden bedframe, Jacques stood facing the door with a look of smug satisfaction on his weathered, ugly face. The smile seemed to make the worn-down old Mrr'tani look fouler than she remembered from seeing him in her cottage. She could feel his satisfaction pounding against the back of her mind like a thunderstorm, and it made her eyes cross with the strength of the feelings. She took a breath and shoved it back down, using a touch at Rose's empty space as a way to focus her mind. This...thing had killed Rose, and she wasn't going to let him push that out of her head.

"Meriah!" Jacques crowed, "So happy you could join us."

Meriah said nothing, looking him directly in the eye, something she learned from one of the laborers was a way to show challenge.

"The Master," Jacques spat the word, "doesn't know what a gold mine he has in you, little kitten. But I knew the minute I saw you."

"Let them go," Meriah said. Could he hear her heart beating a thousand times a minute? It felt like anyone that looked at her could hear it, could see it pressing against her chest trying to beat its way out into the world. But her voice sounded like someone else, a confident and sure someone.

"Let them go?" Jacques asked, his tone mocking hers. "Why would I do that? Your Master fights against the Allied Planets. He gives haven to runaways. Oh, no. He'll face his own judgment."

Meriah didn't let the revelation pull her eyes away from Jacques. She didn't know that the Master sympathized with the notchers, but it hardly mattered. None of the Mrr'tani who found themselves in his care ever ran away again.

"Why are you doing this, Jacques? Has the Master given you offense? Have I?"

Jacques laughed, the sound was like spikes of metal digging into her ears, high pitched and wild. "No, kitten. I am here for you! You are the one that will give me my ticket to freedom."

Meriah frowned. She could feel the link to James strengthening and his mind starting to come around. If she could keep him talking long enough, then he'd be able to help her.

"You live beneath the dome, Jacques. That is all the freedom we can ask for."

"You really believe this is freedom? You stupid, naive kit. You couldn't possibly know. You've never seen life outside of this place."

Jacques took a step towards her and she matched it with one of her own, bringing herself closer to him. She would not back down from this traitor.

"But don't worry. You'll see soon enough. They're on their way, my employers. They'll come collect you and then I'll be a free Mrr'tani."

"Collect me?" Meriah asked, taking another step. "What do they want with me?"

"Could it be that you don't know?" Jacques frowned and looked at her with a more intense scrutiny. "Do you really not sense it? You're a Mother, little kitten. Young and untrained, but you have more power now than any I've ever seen."

"James told me already, Jacques," Meriah said, watching.

The moment she was watching for arrived. Jacques eyes flickered to James' still form in in the corner and Meriah leapt from where she stood, knife and arm held in front of her, aimed perfectly to stab the old Mrr'tani through the heart. She saw his eyes move back to her and she felt the tinge of fear start at the very edge of her link with him and she let out a triumphant cry.

He was too fast by less than a second. Just before her flying body reached his and she could cut him open like one of her prey animals, he reached up with an outstretched hand. She felt the pleasure along with him down the link when his hand closed around her neck, jerking her painfully to a stop. His hand tightened around her throat and she felt his claws starting to pierce the skin. Little warm rivulets flowed down her neck, matting her fur as she struggled and kicked, fighting for breath.

"No!" he shouted. "If I have to knock you senseless and send you to them in a little box, that's what I'll do!"

Jacques flexed his arm and Meriah found herself flying through the air. She hit head-first against the wall and her vision blurred and the figures in the room swam about her, far too many for what she had originally counted in the room. She managed to get herself to her knees and her hands held her head as she shook it, trying to clear her vision. When she looked back up, Jacques was crossing the room towards her again. A crimson drop landed on the pristine white carpet. Her blood, flowing from the wounds in her neck.

She had enough time to get to her feet before he was on her again, his hand against her forehead and another against her neck. With the one around her neck, he pinned her against the wall, lifting her up off of her feet to his own eye level. The hand on her forehead curled and took hold of her fur and one ear, bending and crushing it painfully in his grasp. Then he shoved backwards and the world erupted in white-hot pain once again.

She knew that she wouldn't be able to stay conscious for much longer, and she was determined to at least do something. She reached up with both hands and her claws opened Jacques' arm in long, deep stripes. She felt his blood splatter her face and she bared her fangs in a roar of defiance. He didn't let go, though, and his only reaction was to pull her head forward and shove it once again into the wall.

That hit left Meriah unable to work her arms or her legs, and she felt them go limp by her side, her addled brain trying to find some way to fight back, to make him let her go, but there was black starting to come in on the sides of her vision, narrowing the field to only Jacques' pale yellow eyes staring straight into hers. She knew that she'd lost and there was nothing she could do, so she waited for the black to consume her entirely.

There was something else, though, besides the black and the yellow eyes. James' link flared to life again, brighter and stronger than any she'd ever felt. It was like he was standing right next to her. She was sharing the moment with him, and it was his throat Jacques' hand was around, and it was his eyes that the traitor looked into.

Then another light in the darkness, the Master. His link flared as well and his presence invaded her mind. Then another and another. Little pricks of light that started in the part of her mind where the links always started, flaring to bright and vibrant life as her own slowly faded. Tens, hundreds, thousands. More than she could count, and she knew almost every one of them. They were the Mrr'tani beneath the dome. Not one was left out, from the old, senile Robert to the young kitten that hadn't reached its naming ceremony yet, she could feel them all there. They were all linked to her, all a part of her, and she reached out her own link to all of them.

When she touched them, she felt strength returning, and then moving beyond what she'd ever felt before. She could see the world through any eyes she chose, could feel the world from a million different fingers. She could hear the sounds of a million different birds in a million different ears. And she stood in the center of it all, the guide, the focus. There was so much power that she could never have even tried to contain it all, and it all flowed into her as she saw Jacques' eyes widen in surprise.

He was there, too. The traitor. She could feel his fear now, and she fed on it, drinking it down like the Master's mead. She wanted it. She wanted him to be scared, and she wanted him to hurt. There was nothing physical she could do to him, she knew, but she could focus the power that was flowing all around her. The power of thousands of living, breathing beings, all concentrated into her. She looked down her link at Jacques, felt her presence flow into her mind, and she looked through his eyes. She saw her own, always so very blue, now turned to blood red while the whites had faced to pitch black. Her pupils were merely slits and there was a look of such hatred on her face. She felt him trying to drop her and she held his hand there with her mind, maintaining the physical contact while she felt the panic rising.

That was what she wanted, all she needed. For him to feel utterly helpless. To feel what he had inspired in Rose, and the Master, the Mistress and in her. She let go of something inside her and let the power flow fast and free from her to Jacques, filling him with all of it until he could take no more, and then she shoved more inside. She could hear his screams somewhere in the distance, but they were unimportant, something of the physical world that had no power here. She forced and she pushed until she felt he would burst. And then she poured herself in as well, and the darkness overtook her.

--

When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring up into the Master's face full of concern and fear. She sat straight up with a panicked gasp and looked around the room. James was still in the corner, rubbing the back of his head, and she felt his link back to normal. The Mistress was nowhere to be seen, and she felt the Master's gentle hands on her shoulders.

"You shouldn't move so fast. Your head," he said, probing along the back of her skull with his fingers.

She winched when he found the growing lump. The back of her head felt like one large ache and it only made it worse when he poked at it.

"I'm fine. Where's Jacques?"

She looked over the Master's shoulder at the form on the floor. Jacques lay upright, eyes open. Or at least what would have been his eyes. Gore streaked down his face and blood pooled beneath his head, still seeping from his eyes, his ears, and his mouth. She looked away quickly before the sight had her gagging. She could feel something sticky in her whiskers and in the fur of her hands.

The last image she could remember had been of her face through Jacques' eyes, and she shuddered with the memory.

"May I use a mirror, please, Master?" she asked quietly.

The Master nodded and stood, returning quickly with a small mirror from the bathroom. Meriah held it up to her face and finally found the courage to open her eyes. They were hers again, but the ice blue was still ringed with red and the black was still seeping out of the sides, returning to the normal white. She lowered the mirror and everything finally crashed in on her. Her body shook with sobs as the fear and the stress finally died away and she could finally let herself feel.

The Master took her in his arms, and though it was fainter now, she could feel his concern and his love for her. She threw her arms around him and clung to him as the rest of the links opened again. She knew she wasn't supposed to, but she couldn't stop herself from hanging on to him as the only thing floating in a sea of change. She could still feel every last Mrr'tani, all of them there at the edge of her consciousness, some brighter, like James, and some dimmer like Rose had been.

She opened her eyes and found herself off the ground in the Master's arms. He carried her to his own bed and laid her down on top of the blankets. Then he touched her forehead as he had when she was a kit, stroking the fur behind her ears. "Rest, Meriah. You're going to need it."

She felt her eyes closing, and though she had a thousand questions, she couldn't remain awake any longer and she drifted into the black once again where it was finally, blessedly quiet.