Hurricane #24: The Cage (Patreon)

“There’s the gyro place down the street.”

Sarah looked over at the coyote from where she sprawled on the hotel suite’s couch. “Again?”

Serrano shrugged, looking through the closet at the few clothes she had with her—a smaller set than before, after losing both shirts and pants in transformations. “It’s good.” She’d gotten her bra and panties back on, but nothing else yet.

They’d been back about a half-hour, after returning to their normal sizes—and shape, in Serrano’s case—and teleporting straight back into the hotel room. “It’s weird how being unclothed felt right as a giant taur, but the instant I flipped back to bipedal, I felt naked.”

“You look good that way.”

Serrano paused as she started to pull on jeans, looking back at the wolf with her brows raised, then grinned. “Wait, are you flirting with me?”

“That’s not—no.” Sarah’s ears colored. “Just, you know, observing.”

“Okay.” She couldn’t help but keep grinning as she finished dressing. “I’ll take it as a compliment either way.”

“You should.” Sarah cleared her throat. “I hope most of the onlookers failed to recognize you.” She rubbed her chin and smiled wryly. “Maybe we should go to a gyro place in another town.”

“Hmm. You think that’s going to be a problem?” Serrano pulled on a T-shirt.

“A problem if your neighbors recognize you as the woman who destroyed the leasing office and trampled the office manager? Just a little.”

“I’m not sure most of my neighbors would recognize me now. At forty feet tall with four legs, I look entirely different.”

“Your logic fails to convince.”

A sharp rapping sounded at the door. Both women tensed, looking at one another.

“Miss Layotl!” Irsaw called, sounding urgent. “If you’re in there, open the door now, please. We haven’t much time.”

Serrano walked to the door and unlocked it.

The hyena strode in quickly, setting a wooden box down on the table. “Thank you.” They nodded to the wolf. “Miss Wylde.”

The wolf narrowed her eyes. “How’d you find us?”

“Campus security monitors Mensura’s police radio frequencies. We have an, ah, understanding with the local government regarding certain incidents. Simply put, they’re poorly equipped to handle giants, magicians, unorthodox science, and the like. They do, however, insist they have a legal obligation to investigate such matters when they’re both within their jurisdiction and reported by multiple witnesses.”

Serrano cleared her throat. “Matters like…?”

“By ‘not having much time’, Miss Layotl, I meant we don’t have time for you pretending you don’t know what we’re talking about.”

“So the police are on their way here.”

“Yes.”

“Great.” Sarah cracked her knuckles.

Irsaw turned to look at her. “As palpable as your enthusiasm for mayhem is, Miss Wylde, allow me to try something else first.”

“Like what?”

The hyena walked back to the wooden box and lifted a latch on its top. One of the long sides retracted, revealing the wall of an iron cage. “Convince them we’ve taken care of the problem.” They twisted a dial on the back of the box, and blue lightning crackled around it—and around Sarah and Serrano.

Serrano barked as her vision went blue, too, hearing Sarah echo it in a short, staccato howl. Then the floor dropped out, a feeling like an elevator plunging at a speed just short of free fall.

As the colors cleared and her vision swam back fuzzily, the coyote saw exactly what she was afraid she would: iron bars ahead of her. “Dammit, Irsaw!”

The hyena’s face came into view as they leaned down. At this scale difference, they weren’t any less attractive, but they were considerably more intimidating. “They’ll be here any second. Please do trust me enough not to try to break out.”

“I can’t,” Sarah hissed through clenched teeth. Serrano glanced over at her. The wolf sounded—nervous, staring at the hyena. No, at the bars.

“I know, Miss Wylde. But whatever powers Miss Layotl, it’s not faerie magic, so—”

A sharp rap sounded at the door. “Mensura Police!”

Irsaw straightened up. “Again,” they murmured, “please do trust me.” They strode toward the door and unlocked it.

One officer, a fox, immediately pushed his way into the room, with a jackal and a tiger behind him. They all wore black military-style uniforms; the tiger had a rifle.

“Well.” The jackal crossed his arms, staring at Irsaw. “Why am I not surprised you’re here.”

“This is my beat, as I believe you would say, Officer Rappini. As it is yours. I’m charmed to see you, too.”

The tiger had crouched down, staring open-mouthed at the little women in the cage. Rappini’s gaze followed his, then flicked back to Irsaw. “So I can presume these are the ones who destroyed the Riverwalk Apartments leasing office.”

“I can’t stop you from presuming anything.” Irsaw clasped their hands in front of them. “But given the nature of the, ah, rather outlandish claims the campus security office was made aware of, it seems prudent for us to question your potential suspects first, does it not? If it’s not in our purvey, then as always, we’ll return them.”

“I’ve heard that before. Every time.” Rappini crossed his arms, ears going back. “Yet somehow, suspects you question never get turned back over to us. All we ever hear is, ‘the college has taken care of it.’”

Irsaw waved a hand at the cage. “If these two women are somehow responsible—which I sincerely doubt, since it seems unlikely that whatever truly happened could have happened the way those witnesses described—”

“People have it on video,” the tiger protested.

Irsaw raised their brows. “Are you certain? Can you pull it up now? Let’s see if it looks like either one of them.”

Serrano winced, rubbing her forehead. “That would just sink us,” she muttered to Sarah. “I’m trying to trust them, but—Sarah?”

The wolf wasn’t listening. She stared straight ahead, stock still, ears folded flat. “Cold iron,” she murmured, voice quavering.

“I—what?” Serrano squinted. She had heard that faeries didn’t like that, hadn’t she? But Sarah was so…so delightfully overpowered. How could that be a weakness?

The tiger was flipping through his phone, looking confident, then confused, then irritated.

“Hmm?” Irsaw prompted.

“They’re—they’re all blurry and—and weird. They weren’t when I saw them just a few minutes ago, I swear.”

Rappini sighed. “Of course they are.”

“As I was saying,” Irsaw continued blithely, “if these two women are somehow responsible, we’ll get to the bottom of it all.”

“The college will take care of it.”

Irsaw beamed. “You have our word, Officer Rappini.”

The jackal looked away, baring his teeth less in anger than in obvious frustration. “Fine,” he said after a few seconds had passed. “But I expect you to give us a full report before releasing them, so we can question them properly if necessary.”

“We always do.”

“Do you?” Rappini shook his head, then motioned for the other officers to follow him out of the room.

Irsaw waited a few seconds after the door was closed, then locked it and sat down in a chair facing the tiny portable jail. “Now. Ladies, let’s chat.”

Sarah stared. “What? Let us out!”

“We’re not college students or staff,” Serrano added. “We’re not in your jurisdiction.”

The hyena folded their hands. “Technically, no. But problems in Mensura that involve giants or magic are naturally assumed to be directly or indirectly involved with the school. That means what you do out here reflects on us, as unfair as that might be. Furthermore, Miss Layotl, we’re already involved with your…situation, so while we may not be responsible for your actions, we’ll be seen as party to them.”

“I’m learning about my powers,” Serrano growled. “You do not want to make me break out of here.”

“And you’d rather not make me give that box a good shake. Perhaps instead of exchanging threats, you could simply tell me what happened.”

Serrano gritted her teeth. She was pretty sure she could break out of the box, but so far, every time she’d called up her powers there’d been a host of weather effects along for the ride. Destroying half the hotel with lightning or tornadoes or shit would not go over well. “I wanted to question Ward, my apartment manager, who’s been in on everything with this Sark guy. I need to be able to learn how to stop him from draining the energy in the weather system away through me. If I’m the real life Maxwell’s Demon for the hydrological cycle, I need to be able to hold that valve closed. But I don’t know how.”

“But why would your apartment manager be able to help you with that? I doubt they’ve shared that much information with him.”

The coyote could feel Sarah’s told-you-so gaze boring into the side of her face. “He might know someone who knows someone, right? And I think he did, kind of. The mercenaries he called are higher up the food chain than he is.”

“Mmm. And was this Mr. Ward one of the casualties in this morning’s adventure?”

“Yeah, I stepped on him.”

Irsaw stared intently at her. “Accidentally, I trust.”

She cleared her throat. “Let’s go with that.”

“Let’s. And the other casualty?”

“The other leasing agent,” Sarah muttered. “He’s not technically dead.”

“What is he, technically?”

“A rubber squeaky toy.”

Irsaw rubbed their forehead.

“Professor Irsaw, you have to let us back out.” Serrano held on to the bars of the cage, looking up at the hyena. “Those mercenaries are acting as double agents for us now, and they’re coming back here tomorrow to meet with us.”

The hyena’s brows lifted. “So you’re saying that in addition to the police knowing where you are and harboring well-founded suspicions toward you, local forces employed by this otherworldly Mr. Sark also know where you are.”

“We just told them to leave a message for her.” Serrano pointed at the wolf, who still looked distressed, standing toward the back of the cage far from the bars.

“Then I’m absolutely not letting you out here. You’re both coming back to the campus with me, as much for your own safety as for the school’s interests. Not to mention the safety of uninvolved hotel guests.”

“Come on, these bozos faced us this morning, and they’re not going to try anything. The biggest danger is that they blow us off.”

Irsaw shook their head. “You’re assuming they’re more frightened of your wrath than that of their employer. Given what they’ve been employed to do, we can’t rely on that assumption.”

Serrano sighed. “At least let us walk with you.”

“With all respect, Miss Layotl, I think it’s best for all concerned if I don’t take that risk.” The hyena straightened, then turned another dial on the box. Cushioned benches unfolded from the back wall. “Do fasten your seatbelts before I pick you up.”