The hell... Jack wondered darkly. How could he have known that...? Could he be one of those Beasts Dougan Feltcher is s'pposed to have hired? He hadn't expected something so obviously matching the name, but he knew all too well that appearances could be changed by powerful enough magic. And with the rumors that followed those assassins...
Do not be silly. A deep, yet smoothly feminine voice said in his mind. He scented you, what do you expect of a being with that nose?
So he did then. Jack thought irritably, wishing he'd thought of that. He studied Morriganus from the corner of his eye, swallowing another mouthful of beer. The fox had turned back to his own drink with a thoughtful look (as near as Jack could tell, being unused to reading animal expressions.) Jack didn't think Morriganus had taken his attention entirely off him either. More than likely the fox was just another oddity like himself, and he certainly wasn't a Bay native with those clothes. Still, feeling him out a little wouldn't hurt.
I would advise against hexing him. Shima spoke, sensing his thoughts before he'd fully formed them.
Jack frowned. Why not? Just enough to-
Beastfolk do not always respond the same way as humans. You've never tried it on one like him.
Jack returned a thought of irritation, his eye sliding back to Morriganus. "Food here any good? or do you know?" He asked.
"No. This place is new to me as well." Morriganus said, tilting his head, a glint in his eye. He was running a thick silver chain between his paws, and a spark of oily blue light seemed to drip from link to link as he moved it. Jack knew hypnosis magic when he saw it, though it had been years since he's been on the receiving end.
"Nice, but does it go with evening wear?" He said, moving his eye from the chain and keeping it fixedly on Morriganus's face. Shima nudged him with a sharp, warning feeling. He hadn't been wrong after all, something was up with this fox. Jack felt a sense of power rise through him, and he didn't try to stop it.
---
Morriganus frowned inwardly, feeling uncomfortable as he met Jack's intense eye. "Just a pretty thing, from my land." He said, twitching his ears and shrugging a little. This human was familiar with his magic, well enough to jest about it. Morriganus started to slip the chain back into a pocket, wondering if he dared to make an escape. He could probably make it home but he'd end up Tathos knew where, if the storm didn't tear him apart during the trip.
His paw stopped halfway to his pocket. He saw Jack's dark brown eye become flecked with streaks of bright gold, the human's gaze suddenly filled with a will stronger than his own. Before he even knew it Morriganus was caught and held fast under the hex. Who he was, his accidental arrival, visions of his homeland. He watched them dimly as they flashed through his mind in a few moments, aware but uncaring. Then the questioning went deeper, where he had come from, what he was after. The trap sprung, Morriganus recoiled and shut his eyes, suddenly himself again. His paw went to the slim handle of his soulstealer, drawing it in a flash and opening his eyes
The human still had his eye shut, a pained and shocked expression on his face. Morriganus grinned a little at his good fortune. That human might have some magic, but he didn't know that the agents of the queen were given special immunity against magical interrogation. Morriganus didn't have to aim his weapon at this range, he simply pointed and fired. A needle of green light shot from the crystal mounted on the oddly styled copper raygun, hitting Jack high in the chest. The human jerked back and slid off the barstool.
Morriganus got up from his own and stood, pointing the raygun harmlessly at the floor. "Only mid-range stun." He said loudly, in case anyone thought he'd killed the human and thought to restrain him. "My apologies, it had to be done."
---
But Jack was far from stunned, at least in the physical sense. Shocked, confused, and with a terrible headache from having Shima's power fed back into itself by Morriganus's mindtrap, but not truly incapacitated. Shima had taken nearly as bad of a hit, he felt sure, but since she didn't have physical sensed to dampen or hurt it only made her very, very angry. He couldn't help but agree.
Her strength and power and anger rippled through him, and with little coherent will of his own he found himself lost in it, aware enough only to know that he was losing control and had no hope of getting it back. He was up on his knees, a flick of motion pulled off the coat and shoulder rig. Everything else was close enough to his skin to change. Visibly, everything about him seemed to blur like a heat shimmer gone mad. He felt something similar, blurring between one body and another, one mind in forefront to another.
One moment a worn-looking man had knelt between two barstools. Now a Bengal tigress stood chest-high to Morriganus and three feet from him, a loud harsh snarl baring yellowed two-inch fangs, unsheathed claws digging grooves into the wood floor as she tensed to spring.
---
Morriganus reflexively aimed the soulstealer at the tigress, his paw jerking the the slide back to maximum power in panic. Partly it was bravery and training that kept him standing there, but mostly it was terror that made him forget how to run. The rational part of his mind knew that turning the soulstealer up that high without letting it cool from the first shot might well make the raygun explode, but by the look in the beast's eye, he and a number of others were going to die if he didn't.