I felt a foot connect with my ribcage, just as I heard a human cry out in surprise, and knew that someone must have tripped over me. I could only hope that it was one of the MOME mages and not Sol or Trev.
A flash of flame to my left caught my attention and I ran towards it, desperate to get to Trevor before MOME got ahold of him.
When I reached him, he was diving repeatedly at a mage who kept shooting what looked like nets of magic at him from the end of a wand. He would dodge and attack her all in the same move, over and over again, and part of me wondered if she was just meant to be a distraction while some other mage came at him from a different angle.
Apparently, my guess was spot on. Suddenly, a second net made out of light flew towards Trevor, just as he swooped away from the first mage he’d been dodging. It looked like the second net was about to enclose him, but just before it hit him, the flames that enveloped his phoenix form flared brighter. When they faded back to their normal glow, the light net was nowhere to be seen.
I briefly wondered how many types of spells he could burn through, but then I was close enough to leap through the air and collide with the giant bird that was my brother. I didn’t wait for us to land before I shifted us to the clearing with the Tree of Life.
We landed hard in the leaves and dirt that made up the clearing, and I saw that Seamus had shifted to human and was making his way towards the Tree of Life itself. I didn’t wait to see how angry Trevor was with me for interfering, I shifted back to the grounds at the house.
I found Sol cornered by three mages, and I wasn’t sure how to get to her without getting us both killed. She was backed into an alcove created around an impressive statuary, and she must have just arrived there, because I couldn’t see a reason for the mages not to have killed her already, if they’d had the time and inclination.
Not knowing what else to do, I climbed the closest shrub and gained as much elevation as possible. When I launched myself at Sol, it was from the height of about fifteen feet, and I sailed easily over the heads of the three mages that had her pinned into that corner. Unfortunately, I wasn’t faster than the mages had been at preparing their spells, and three of them hit Sol at once, just before I did. I didn’t wait for the breath to return to my body after the impact of slamming into her from fifteen feet away, I just shifted us to the clearing as quickly as I could.
When we materialized in front of the Tree of Life, Sol wasn’t breathing.
I SPRANG AWAY from her, my nimble snow leopard form leaping away backwards even as I pulled on the human part of me and transitioned to walking on two legs.
The lack of my weight on her chest did not make her start breathing.
I instantly fell to her side.
“LIFE!” I cried, as I knelt next to her prone, furry form. Her glossy black coat was slick with blood.
“LIFE!”
Suddenly, the towering form of the Tree of Life loomed behind me. Right now, the scythe was particularly off-putting.
“Heal her!”
IT IS TOO LATE. HER LIFE FORCE IS GONE.
“No. Damn it, Life! What good are you, if you can’t save people who have only been dead for five seconds? There are regular humans who can do that!”
PERHAPS YOU SHOULD TAKE HER TO THEM, THEN.
“But she was killed by magic! I don’t know what a hospital can even do for her.”
Life just stared at me.
“Fuck this!”
Tears streamed down as I turned to the one person who had never failed me yet.
“Trev, please.”
He looked at me like he didn’t understand at first, but then, slowly, he must have realized what I was asking.
“Please,” I begged, unable to let Sol die, for all that I’d only known her for a handful of days. I wasn't sure that he could truly do anything, but clung to the hope that some of the myths were true. I’d spent the past week getting a crash course in living fantasy, and damn it, if the naked lady in the woods who claimed to be my narrator turned out to actually be a goddess, the guy in my English class turned out to be a werewolf, and the guy stalking me in my fucking bedroom turned out to be a vampire, then surely this miracle was possible.
Please, please, dear Gwen, let it be possible.
Trev nodded, though he looked far from confident. He reached down and set both of his hands on Sol’s prone form.
And then flames consumed her.
SEAMUS, TREV, AND I watched the flames consume Sol’s body, and I struggled to remind myself that she was technically dead, so the flames weren’t hurting her. But damned if it didn’t look like the flames were hurting her. Her body convulsed repeatedly, and I was extremely thankful that the fire was too bright for us to make out what was being done to her flesh.
Gwen damn it, if all that was left after this was a charred corpse, I was going to feel like a first rate asshole. Not to mention, I would probably never forgive myself for having gotten Sol killed to begin with.
I felt an arm wrap around my shoulder and turned to see Seamus still staring at the flaming body on the ground, but leaning against me as though he needed the support as much as I did.
“She doesn’t even like you,” I said, unsure about the devastation that registered in his eyes, but mainly just saying the first words that came to mind.
One corner of his mouth turned up.
“She was raised to hate wolves. Someone in her family is an asshole, certainly, but she apologized for all that last night, when we were at the house before you and Trev got there.”
“Bonded over almost dying together?” I asked. He nodded.
“You guys make out?” I asked.
“I don’t think Sol’s into me that way,” he replied, still leaning against me, still watching the flames.
“You’re using the present tense,” I whispered. “You think she’s still in there?”
Seamus nodded, his eyes flickering with reflected phoenix fire.
I turned back to the flames, finally letting out a deep breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
As if my breath were a gale force wind, the flames around Sol extinguished.
“Well, that was intense,” said a calm, slightly accented voice, from the ground.
“Sol!?” the three of us shouted, jumping forward. I knelt at her side and grabbed her hand, doing my best to ignore the pulse of sexual heat that coursed through me at the contact.
“What the fuck just happened?” she asked.
I looked around the glade at Seamus and Trev, as if to confirm that my mind wasn’t fucking with me and that I was really seeing a whole, living, distractingly naked Soledad lying on the ground in front of me.
Seamus and Trev were crying, but also laughing and smiling, so I had to assume that I wasn’t hallucinating the whole thing.
“Um… the bad guys killed you, and then Trev brought you back.”
I HELPED.
“And Life helped,” I added, laughing and sobbing at the same time, not wanting to piss off the tree, even though he’d claimed he couldn’t do anything to start with.
Sol laughed, and then sat up. I thought really hard about her being fully dressed, and was somewhat surprised to see her clothed a moment later.
“¿Qué demonios?” she asked.
“Um… I think that was my Gwen powers acting up.” I carefully did not mention that I found naked Sol decidedly distracting. For one thing, I was embarrassed not to have more self-control, and for another, I didn’t want to weird out my friends and make them think I was objectifying them.
“How did that even work?” Seamus asked, looking between Trev and Sol as though he expected either of them to burst into flames at any moment.
“It has never worked before,” Trev said, looking both bewildered and a bit sad. “Maybe having the Tree of Life here was the difference, but… yeah. Phoenix fire is supposed to lead to rebirth, so… it was a last ditch effort.”
I took a moment to be appropriately horrified that Trev had needed to try
that trick before, and then another moment to mourn the fact that it hadn’t worked. Then I got back to the business of being amazed at what he’d done.
“Why did you get all the cool powers?” I asked, giving him a teasing push.
“Dude, Vic, you turn into a snow leopard and can move people through time and space in the blink of an eye,” he replied, leveling me with his best "srsly" face.
“Yeah, but only because a goddess decided to turn me into one of her minions. You were born with this!”
Trev shook his head.
“Sort of… there’s a lot more that any of us could do. The dark matter inside each of us is more raw potential than a set of genetically predetermined ‘powers.’ MOME, and everyone else, have perpetuated the myth that people can’t access power in ways they weren’t born to, but that’s a lie. Shifters can use their powers to access spells if they train the right way, and a mage could call on an animal form if they practiced hard enough. Regular humans could probably access a spell or two, if they trained enough. They have to have some amount of dark matter, or else Vampires wouldn’t use them for snacks.”
And in that one statement, Trev had told me more about the magical world than I’d learned in the past week. I looked to Seamus and Sol for confirmation, but they both had their eyebrows pinned to their hairlines as though Trev had just claimed that vivisecting puppies was a good time.
“Trev, why do Seamus and Sol look like you just kicked them in the face?”
“Probably because no one in our world wants to talk about how similar shifters and mages are, and how our powers are the same at the root.”
“And why do you know so much about this taboo subject?” I prodded.
“It’s what MOME was training me in, before I escaped.”
“And it’s the reason we really shouldn’t be discussing things here,” said a vaguely familiar British voice from the edge of the clearing. I wrinkled my nose at the cloying smell of weed and realized who it must be.
“Mr. Bumblebee?” I asked, turning towards the voice.
“Please, Victoria, I believe I asked you to call me Albert.”
“Yes. Sorry, Albert. It’s been… a long few days since then.”
“Vic?” Trev asked, looking as though he was ready to attack the newcomer at any moment. Indeed, Sol had already jumped to her feet, and she and Seamus both looked ready to fight as well.
“Um… team, this is Albert Bumblebee. He knew my parents.”
I had made a split second decision that I didn’t necessarily want Albert to know who Trevor was, assuming he didn’t already, so I didn’t bother to explain that my parents were also Trev’s.
You don’t trust him? Trev asked, having noticed the exclusion.
I don’t know. Maybe? It’s hard to say. He hasn’t given me reason not to, but… where MOME is concerned, can we really trust anyone?
Fair point.
“It's only a matter of time until MOME decides to try their luck here. I’m afraid the Tree of Life isn’t entirely a secret.”
“Vic, can you take us somewhere?” Seamus asked. I could tell that he was doing his best not to share too much about my newfound powers with Albert, but I was at a loss as to how we were going to keep him from finding out as soon as I actually shifted in front of him.
“I think I’ve got enough energy for one more shift, thanks to Life here, but where do we go? We can’t go to my place, that’s the first place they’ll look now.”
“We could try my place,” Seamus suggested, but I was shaking my head as soon as he’d said it.
“Too risky. They’ve probably figured out who you are by now. It’s not worth putting your family at risk. We should probably get out of the state if we can.”
Sol sighed.
“You know where to take us, Gatita.”
I looked at her. She had a point. Assuming that MOME hadn’t somehow discovered her cabin since the last time we were there—which didn’t seem at all likely, since they’d only discovered that she was working against them in the past half hour or so—I stepped forward and grabbed Sol and Trevor’s hands. Seamus took Sol’s other hand, and I focused on a mental image of Sol’s little wood cabin on a Bolivian mountainside, willing us all to be there instead of here, even as the image came into focus in my mind.
Then an arm wrapped around my chest, and I heard Albert shout, “Damn it all, how did he find us!”
The world went black.
WHEN I OPENED my eyes, we stood on the side of a mountain in a blizzard so thick that I could barely see the small log cabin that stood less than a meter away. Yet I ignored the slashing cold that battered me, as well as the warmth that lay within easy reach, and instead focused on beating the ever-living crap out of the creepy, undead dickwad who had his arm around my chest.
“Victoria, wait!” Edik shouted.
I did not wait. I pulled on my snow leopard form and set about inserting my three-inch claws into his undead flesh.
“Aghhhhhh!!! Victoria, stop!”
Spoiler alert—I didn’t stop.
I was so fucking sick of Edik showing up in my life and screwing things up. In particular, I was sick of him touching me as though he had any right to do so, in any way, ever. A rage coursed through me that I hadn’t known I was capable of as I slashed at him again and again, slicing through the flesh of the forearms he feebly held in front of his face as protection.
I roared, my whole feline body shaking with fury, and slashed at him again and again.
“Victoria, please! I’m only seeking my daughter.”
And what did I care if that was true? His daughter probably never wanted to see him again. She probably hated him with every fiber of her being. Maybe she wanted him dead.
Maybe I was projecting…
That last thought didn’t occur to me until multiple sets of arms worked to restrain me, and Trev whispered into my furry ear, “It’s ok, Vic. We won’t let him touch you again. Maybe let him live. Just for a minute…”
I snarled, and did my best to take another swipe at Edik, but Sol’s arms were wrapped around my shoulders, holding my front legs against me, and I couldn’t get at him without possibly slicing her up, which I wasn’t willing to do.
I shifted back to human form, fully clothed thanks to Gwen’s bonus powers, and without saying a word, I turned, brushing three sets of arms away from me, and strode into the cabin.
As soon as I stepped inside my legs gave out from under me.
~~~
“You’ve overtaxed your magical reserves,” said a British accent that I was beginning to recognize.
“What is Albert doing here?” I asked the room, which was still spinning above me.
“He hitched a ride along with Sir Sparkle Brains,” Trev muttered.
“I only hitched a ride because of Sir Sparkle Brains, as you call him. You’d made it clear enough that you didn’t wish to have me with you, but when I saw him latch onto Victoria, I thought I would offer my services at vampire disabling.”
I couldn’t see Albert, because I was too busy trying to get the ceiling to stop rotating.
“Well, you do seem to have a knack for it,” Seamus admitted from somewhere by my feet.
“Where is Mr. McStabbyTeeth?” I asked.
“He’s outside in the snow, looking for all the world like a miniature statue of David.” That was Sol.
“Huh?” My brain really wasn’t up to the task of well… probably even basic addition at this point, let alone trying to unravel references to Italian statuary and biblical figures.
“Albert froze him or something, and he’s pale enough that he kind of looks like marble anyway. He’s out there collecting snow,” Trevor’s voice added.
“Not that he doesn’t deserve to freeze to death, but… I assume that he won’t?” I asked.
“Nope. Unfortunately, vamps don’t need warmth to survive,” Sol replied, sounding truly disappointed.
I blinked, unsure if I was relieved or disappointed at the ne
ws that he would survive the cold. Unable to make up my mind, I took a moment to appreciate that the ceiling was now mostly stationary.
“So, how long before I can shift us again?” I asked.
For a long moment no one replied. Or maybe I fell asleep briefly, it was hard to tell.
“Probably not for a day or two. It depends on how much you’ve been practicing.”
That was Albert’s voice again, and I still couldn’t convince my head to turn and look at anyone, so I didn’t have the benefit of facial expressions to help me figure out if that was meant to be an admonishment or not.
“Considering that I’ve only had most of these powers for a day or two, it is safe to say I’ve hardly practiced at all. If it weren’t for the Tree of Life I’d probably be dead already. Twice.”
Albert began to object, although whether he was going to protest the idea that I’d only had magic for two days, or the fact that the Tree of Life had saved me twice already, I didn’t know, because Sol cut him off.
“You need rest, regardless,” Sol said, and it sounded like she was fussing with the wood stove while she spoke. “MOME doesn’t know about this. So as long as Edik and Gramps here don’t turn us in, we should be safe while you rest up.”
“And what do we do with Edik?” I asked. “Leave him sitting outside like a statue?”
Sol chuckled. “Sure. The cabin could use some decoration. We can have Albert unfreeze him once you’re rested enough to shift us all away if he pulls anything sketchy.”
That sounded like as good a plan as any, and before anyone had a chance to suggest an alternative, I fell into a deep sleep.
I WOKE UP to a deep thrum that reverberated all the way down my spine. Not wanting to do anything that might make that pleasant feeling stop, I waited a few minutes before opening my eyes. After a few blissful minutes of just listening, I felt sufficiently awake to realize that the sound was that of an upright bass being bowed. Or at least that was my best guess, since I’d noticed an upright bass in Sol’s cabin before, hadn’t seen any other string instruments lying around, and knew that whatever it was, it sounded like nothing I’d heard before. I opened my eyes and the sound stopped.
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 16