In this excerpt from Book 2 – Bargain With Fate, Brady is spying in the form of a mouse. I did tell you SAGE is a fantasy, right?
Even as Darcy said this, pain stabbed Brady’s back. A soft weight, like a feather-bed studded with needles, pressed him to the floor.
He felt a blast of hot air from above and a deep vibration through the pain. Elsie’s tortoiseshell cat, Trenel, had him. The tortoiseshell dropped from the chest to the floor beside it. Brady rolled limply, as Trenel scooped him out.
“What is it?” said Darcy. “A mouse? Well, you’re good for something, after all.”
Brady squeaked. Trenel softly squashed him again.
“This was a bad house to come to, pest,” said Darcy. “We have protection against your kind. Now, you get what you deserve for nibbling what others have earned and fouling what others have stored. Play with it, Trenel, but don’t let it get away.”
Darcy settled back to watch the sport.
Trenel’s teeth were terribly close; his breath came out in bursts of savage purrs.
It would be so easy, Brady thought, to turn to a dog and give his captor a lasting shock.
That would mean giving up a secret to Darcy, though, and that was a last resort.
The cat lay down and curled his paws around his victim, as if cuddling him. He stuck his nose into the embrace and sniffed.
“Don’t — please don’t!” Brady thought, assuming that his squeals and chitterings were the mouse-shape’s translation. “I’m not a mouse, I’m Brady! You know me!”
Trenel froze. He growled, clashed his teeth within a whisker’s width of Brady, and pulled back. He crouched, tail lashing. Then he leapt, turned in mid-air, streaked across the room, and bit Darcy through the ankle of his soft house-boots.
Darcy yelped and threw his leg into the air, then stomped back down and kicked at the cat with his other foot. Trenel sprang out of his reach, sauntered back to the Brady-mouse, and sat on him, eyes slitted in satisfaction.
Still don’t have a solid release date for SAGE Book 1 – The Fall of Onagros. I’ll let you know when I do. š
A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: What would your main character do if he or she saw a cat after a mouse?
MA
