Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series

by Virginia McClain

  Rhelia turned on her heel again, marching from the room. Trev and I hurried to follow.

  Dare I ask what the fuck just happened? I sent to Trev.

  “I will explain it shortly, Living Cat.”

  “Damn. I really need to work on not broadcasting to the whole damned room.”

  “Yessss, you do. But even sssstill you cannot hide your thoughtssss from me.”

  “Well, that’s discouraging,” I muttered.

  “It’s kind of her specialty, Vic.”

  Trev sounded like he was trying to make me feel better, and I snuck a glance at him to find him grinning from ear to ear.

  “You don’t seem upset about this turn of events.”

  “We just got out of a ten year prison sentence. What’s to be upset about?”

  “Nothing, but… were we seriously in danger of going to prison, just for showing up here with some asshats following us?”

  It was Rhelia who answered, and I couldn’t help but notice that she seemed unable to repress a smile of her own.

  “For leading MOME officers through a hidden seam into Unterberg, the council would gladly have killed you, if they thought you’d done it on purpose. As it is, a ten year sentence was relatively light, considering how many MOME agents are still unaccounted for on the streets here now. Plus, your sentence would have had the bonus of luring the MOME agents to Regnadevarg, the most defensible hold in the entire city. The council will be… disappointed that they were forced to let you go. I imagine they will be contacting my Matriarch immediately to ensure that I am not lying.”

  “I’m not sure that explanation made any sense to me, but if they thought you were lying, why wouldn’t they just confront you about it right there, while they still had us?”

  Rhelia’s smile only grew.

  “It will take very careful wording to confirm the truth with my Matriarch without starting a diplomatic incident, as it is. They could never have confronted me openly without risking war with the dragons.”

  “I have definitely missed a few key details,” I mumbled.

  “Worry not, Living Cat. You are a dragon ssssisssster now, you will learn all that you need to learn in good time.”

  I looked hopelessly between Rhelia and Trev.

  “Well, at least this answers my question about whether or not Rhelia was the girlfriend you were talking about,” I said.

  That only made Rhelia and Trev laugh so loudly that the walls almost shook, as we descended an ornately decorated staircase that covered the distance from whatever they called the drizzle palace that housed the council into an open square full of people, pigeons, and…

  “Fuck. MOME agents,” Trev muttered, just before bursting into flames.

  OF COURSE, WHEN Trev bursts into flames it’s not as disconcerting as it would be if someone else were to do it. After all, when someone spends half of their time as a flaming bird anyway, random combustion is par for the course. But that didn’t mean I was used to it. Still, surprising as it might have been, it was nothing compared to seeing Rhelia become a dragon large enough to fill the entire square.

  I tried to shout “holy fuck!” but the words were swallowed as I was dragged involuntarily into my snow leopard form. I didn’t waste time being pissed about it, because I was too busy trying to figure out where the dragon ended and the bad guys began, so I could whoop a little bit of MOME ass. As it happened though, Trev and I were surrounded by ebon scales that shone with the same silvery iridescence that coated Rhelia’s skin, and I couldn’t find a single gap between us and the bad guys.

  Of course, Trev, in his fiery, winged form, wasn’t hampered by the circle of serpent that enclosed us. He just shot into the sky straight above us and started circling.

  Do not engage, little onessss, Rhelia’s voice spoke directly into my (and I assumed Trevor’s) mind, even as I was trying to gain purchase on her scales in order to launch myself over the heap of dragon tail that lay between me and the MOME agents.

  What’s up with the overprotective act? I asked Trev, who was now diving for a patch of cobbled square next to me, as a streak of some nasty-looking spell flew through the air he’d occupied only a moment earlier.

  There are some rules of dragonkind that make it very tricky for us to fight MOME now that Rhelia has declared us kin, Trev replied, as he landed beside me.

  So why’d you shift to phoenix and start calling attention to yourself? I asked, genuinely curious.

  Well, now that they’ve very clearly shot at me, in full view of witnesses, Rhelia can claim she was defending her kin if it ever comes up. They violated the treaty first, so her Matriarch will be forced to acknowledge that she was provoked.

  I decided that dragon politics were complicated and that I’d ask more questions later, then tried to focus on what was going on in the square outside of our little circle of serpent. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see shit, and all I could hear was what sounded like a jet engine roaring to life periodically, and a few truly agonized screams.

  A few moments later the smell of barbecue filled the square, and I tried not to retch as my brain attached the meaning of burning meat smell to the sudden quiet that now surrounded us, and its significance.

  “Umm… I think I might throw up,” I muttered, not even noticing that I’d returned to human form, along with Trev and Rhelia beside me. I closed my eyes before I could take in the heinous scene that I was sure was waiting for me, and swallowed hard.

  “You are so weak of constitution, Living Cat? Do you think the agents of MOME would have spared you from an equally gruesome fate?”

  I expected the next breath I took to be laced with an even more disconcerting smell of charred meat, but when it instead came with the smell of crisp, clean air, I decided to risk opening my eyes. There was a giant scorch mark before us, but there was no trace of flesh left, only a few tiny wisps of ash that were already blowing away on the wind.

  “Well, that was cleaner than I expected,” I said, as the churning that my stomach had been doing earlier was replaced with a leaden feeling instead. The MOME agents were still deader than dead, and I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about that, even though Rhelia was probably right about the fate they had planned for me, but at least I wasn’t staring at barbecued human. I supposed the one whiff I'd caught of charring flesh was just what the wind had still carried from the instant in which the deed had been done.

  Rhelia stared at me for a moment, as though she were trying to decide whether or not she should be insulted, so I tried to compose my features.

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t think you're monstrous for destroying the people who were attacking someone you love. I just… I’m not used to killing people, and I was expecting to see charred human remains everywhere, so… forgive me if it takes me some time to adjust. And… I can’t promise I’ll ever be ok with the whole killing people thing, even if they deserve it. It’s just… really final.”

  To my shock, Rhelia smiled, wrapping me in an embrace.

  “You will make an exsssscellent dragon,” she said, delivering a quick kiss on my cheek before letting me go.

  Since I had no idea what that meant, I decided to change the subject.

  “So, how do we find everyone else?”

  Rhelia smiled. “Follow me.”

  I’M NOT SURE what I’d expected when Rhelia had told us to follow her, then strode purposefully through the large cobbled square that she’d just left half-scorched and drifting in the ash of immolated MOME agents, but her leading us to a meticulously maintained, topiary filled garden that took up as much space as the palace behind us, walking into the center of what appeared to be a solid tree larger than even the biggest sequoia I’d ever seen photos of, and disappearing save for a single ebon-skinned hand that reached out and beckoned us to follow, was not it.

  I didn’t even have time to take in the details of the green space that surrounded us before Trev pushed me forward and I was stumbling, reaching for Rhelia’s hand out of a desperate wish n
ot to fall, more than anything else. Her slender fingers caught mine with a strength that seemed far beyond their scope, supporting me without even dipping under my sudden weight. Trev followed close behind, with a hand still on my shoulder, and I wondered if we were really standing in the middle of a tree, or if we were just in some dark space that could have been anywhere. The faint glow from Rhelia’s skin was the only light in the space, but it did nothing to illuminate whatever surrounded us, only made her faintly visible in the darkness and made me able to see my own hand in hers.

  Before I could ask where we were, or what we were doing, Rhelia made a strange hissing sound that resembled no language that I had ever heard before, then moved her hands as if she were parting an invisible curtain.

  Only, suddenly, the curtain wasn’t invisible, it was a giant, shimmering, shuddering thing, like aurora borealis in a tangible form, and she was parting it, and Trev was pushing me while Rhelia pulled me with her other hand and… then it was all gone, and we were standing in the middle of a green meadow dotted with wildflowers, surrounded by snowcapped peaks.

  “Where in the seven hells—” I was cut off by a great shadow eclipsing the sun, as a dragon's head filled my vision so completely that I thought the entire sky had been swallowed.

  “Child, what in the realms have you done?” The dragon's head—presumably attached to a body, but I couldn’t see that far—asked, blinking a reptilian eye so large it could easily have been the moon.

  “I thought we were agreed that I wassss no longer a child, Vereneth,” Rhelia said, from where she stood next to me.

  “I thought so as well, but you have brought strangers into this realm twice today, and I can sense that these two carry something more ominous with them than the mere status of refugees.” The dragon sniffed as it spoke.

  Its giant slitted nostrils, curving at the top of its enormous snout, flared and smoked, as a second set of eyelids—perpendicular to the first set I’d noticed—opened and closed twice. I tried to take in more details of the giant creature, since I hadn’t been able to see most of Rhelia properly the one time that she had shown her dragon form in front of me, but I could barely process what I was seeing I was so awed by its massive eye and cavernous mouth—which contained a deadly array of teeth so large they might as well have been marble columns. It had horns that rose from its head, twisting and curving like the most enormous junipers I’d ever seen. They were similarly silvered, and, indeed, the dragon itself was a deep bronze color, like a mix of aged wood and burnished metal.

  “Thesssse two aren’t refugeessss, they are dragon kin,” Rhelia replied, her chin held high in defiance.

  The giant serpent before us turned away and released a gout of flame so hot, I felt my eyebrows singe away, even from a distance of a hundred feet from where it had released its ire.

  “That will take some explaining,” it said tersely, when it turned back to us. I wondered briefly if I’d soiled myself. I’d certainly felt scared enough, but I must have been dehydrated and underfed, because my pants appeared to be dry.

  “Then let ussss meet with the elderssss sssso I do not need to repeat mysssself,” Rhelia replied.

  ~~~

  If Vereneth had made me want to wet myself, the circle of elders made me wish I’d never been born. I didn’t know if the dragons had some enchantment on them that induced fear in all who viewed them, or if it was just my body’s natural reaction to being confronted with a predator that so clearly outmatched me, but I found it difficult to look any of them in the eye, or even stare directly at them for long. The only thing that allowed me to see more than an eyeball of any of the behemoths was my vantage point atop a giant column, or maybe it was a tiny but very tall plateau, it was difficult to say. At any rate, I was at least a hundred feet up on a natural platform, along with Trev and Rhelia, and we were surrounded by about thirty dragons, each the size of a cruise liner, a few of them larger than shipping freighters. I had asked where Sol, Seamus, Albert and the refugees were, as we’d made our way to… whatever this column thing was, but I’d only gotten a few vague assurances that they were nearby and safe before I’d been distracted by the most terrifying sight of my life.

  I hated myself for the fear that coursed through my body, because I had always considered myself a dragon person. I mean… every time I read a fantasy book, I hoped there would be dragons in it. And if there were dragons, I wanted them to be good guys, or at least neutral. I hated the stories in which dragons were unthinking menaces. If a fantasy author wanted my money, then dragons needed to at least be thoughtful and compelling villains. Books in which humans and dragons worked together were my favorite, although I wasn’t overly fond of the ones where humans treated dragons like horses. I’d never been particularly keen on the idea of dragons being tame and loyal beasts. It seemed unlikely that an apex predator could ever find humans useful enough for that to be a good deal.

  So, the fact that I was nearly pissing myself just looking at these creatures made me feel like the world’s biggest fraud. After a childhood of imagining how cool it would be to meet a real dragon, back when I was still convinced they existed, my response now made my cheeks warm with humiliation. I mean sure, they were giant and imposing creatures that could kill me with a single bite, or perhaps even an accidental sneeze, but they were clearly beings who could be reasoned with. So there was no need for me to be standing atop a tower of rock shaking like a reed in a strong wind.

  “You can sssstop your glamorssss,” Rhelia, still in human form, called out from her perch beside me.

  My head snapped to attention. The thirty behemoths that formed a giant circle around us all grumbled.

  “You would dare to frighten my family ssssoooo, without causssse?” Rhelia asked. The grumbling cut off abruptly, replaced by a silence that sounded like it might break with bloodshed.

  “Your family?” a thunderous voice from directly across the circle boomed. It came from a dragon covered from snout to tail in glinting silver scales.

  Rhelia inclined her head deferentially for a moment before replying.

  “Trevor Marmot issss my mate, and hissss ssssisssster issss therefore my ssssisssster.”

  The uproar that followed that announcement made me long for the silence that had greeted her last statement, but I noticed that the fear that had encompassed me earlier had fled. I was able to stand at my full height and look every one of those giants in the eye.

  “Were they enchanting me to fear them?” I asked Trev, over my shoulder.

  “Not just you, I was about to poop my pants,” Trev admitted, in a stage whisper.

  I would have laughed, but Rhelia looked like she was about to go hulk on someone’s ass, and I didn’t want to miss the show.

  “You dare quesssstion my choicsssse of mate?” She didn’t shout, but her voice thundered from where we stood atop the raised bit of earth that held us, and I wondered if she was magnifying it magically, or if it was simply the acoustics of where we stood. Regardless, all thirty of the voices that had been grumbling in unison now quieted.

  “Rhelia, you are young to make such a choice at all, and… a human? Do you wish to spend so much of your existence alone?”

  That was a different dragon, one covered in scales of jade, but almost as large as the silver behemoth that had spoken earlier.

  “Not a mere human, a phoenixssss. And if I am old enough to rissssk my life for our realm, then I am old enough to choosssse whom to sssspend that life with.”

  “So… you guys are more than just dating, huh?” I asked Trev, out of the corner of my mouth. Communicating telepathically seemed like a terrible idea, since Rhelia could always hear me and I had no idea whether her fellow dragons shared that ability or not. They might easily hear us where we were, but I was tired of not knowing what was going on, and if thirty dragons were about to decide to kill me, I wanted to know why.

  Trev chuckled, but it was Rhelia who replied.

  “Ssssisssster, I will exssssplain all of the dr
agon cusssstomssss that you musssst know ssssoon enough, but know that dragonssss mate for life, and we live a very long time.”

  “Yikes,” I muttered. “No shopping around first?”

  Rhelia smiled, turning to face me fully. I was once again entranced by the way her ebon skin and iridescent sheen caught the light of the sun.

  “We are allowed to ‘shop around,’ assss you ssssay, and often we live our whole livessss without choossssing a mate, but when we find ssssomeone worthy, we treassssure it beyond all thingssss.”

  “Sounds stifling,” I quipped.

  “No one ssssaid we cannot have loverssss,” she replied, smirking before turning back to the elders that encircled us.

  I stared at Trev for a moment, but he just shook his head at me and wrapped his fingers in Rhelia’s.

  Ok. Score one for the dragons. Boy, did I have a million questions about how their society worked. In particular, why it was such a big deal to pick a mate if you could still be polyamorous?

  It’s mostly about having kids, Trev sent to me.

  Well, that just launched a thousand other questions.

  “You have served us well, Rhelia, and we appreciate all that you have done for this realm, which is why we would hate to see you squander yourself with a human who can do so little to serve your family,” said the silver dragon.

  “You act assss though the deed issss not already done,” Rhelia said.

  I was about to snickeringly ask if “the deed” was what I thought it was (because, yeah, sometimes I have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old), but then Rhelia slid into her enormous serpentine self, and Trev went with her, transforming into his phoenix form. Both of them launched skyward, leaving me behind on the earthen pedestal as they careened through the sky, dancing together in an intricate pattern that brought tears to my eyes. Trev seemed somehow magnified by the dance, and his phoenix form loomed larger than I had ever seen it, until he appeared to almost match the size of Rhelia in all her ebon-scaled, iridescent glory. They twined round each other, weaving in and out of patterns that looked as though they’d been rehearsed for hundreds of years. If I hadn’t known that Trev was exactly as old as I was (give or take a few minutes), I would have thought them ancient partners.