Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series

by Virginia McClain

  I shrugged.

  “I didn’t really expect him to show up, so it’s not like I could have gotten the gun loaded fast enough to be useful. And I really wasn’t lying—I do hate guns. But we both saw the vision. The assholes in there are going to try to kill your moms, or us, or both, and we can’t use magic against them. Of course, that should mean they can’t use magic against us, either.”

  “Which means that they probably have guns too.”

  I nodded. “Shitty, but better than taking a pointy stick to a gun fight.”

  Seamus sighed.

  He held up his phone and swiped to the lock screen. On it was a photo of two happy-looking women hugging a slightly bashful-looking Seamus in wolf form. One of them looked just like him, but thinner, and with shorter hair. The other was much paler, with freckled skin and long, curly red hair.

  I smiled.

  “Alexandra is the redhead, Rowan is the one who shares my dashing good looks. Don’t shoot either of them, ok?” he said, sounding stern.

  I nodded.

  “Definitely not.”

  Then I thumbed off the safety with my right hand, grabbed his hand with my left, and shifted us both to his front porch.

  ~~~

  “Open up, douchetarts, or I come in shooting,” I shouted, raising my Glock to chest level on the door and shoving Seamus behind me.

  “How did they—”

  “SILENCE!”

  Both those voices had come from inside. Oh good. Dissension among the ranks, perhaps? That might help us out.

  When the door popped open, I had my gun trained straight at the chest of a six-foot-tall man who was holding one of the women Seamus had just showed me on his cell phone homescreen by the throat, with a gun leveled at her temple.

  It was incredibly tempting to aim high and put a hole in the pale douchetart’s forehead, but I didn’t want to risk giving him enough time to shoot Rowan. Which meant that we were at a bit of an impasse.

  Luckily, he seemed to come from the Bond School of Villainy. He was feeling chatty.

  “You shouldn’t play with guns, little girl,” the man said, condescension dripping from his voice as he gestured at me with his 9mm.

  As soon as he pulled the barrel away from Rowan’s head, I pulled the trigger. I didn’t aim at his forehead, tempting though it had been. I shot him straight in the chest. Center of mass, so even if I didn’t hit his heart, I would likely pierce a lung or something. I wasn’t really trying to kill him, though that was a likely outcome, but I needed him down and I wasn’t willing to risk him shooting any of the people I cared about, myself included.

  He clearly hadn’t been expecting me to pull the trigger. He didn’t return fire. No surprise there. The 9mm he had been holding slid from his hand and he clutched at the newly created hole in his chest, blood seeping past his fingers. His body dropped to the floor in counterpoint to the bile rising in my throat.

  I wasted no time stepping forward and using my foot to push the 9mm behind me, towards Seamus, while also pulling Seamus’ mom clear of the doorway. I managed not to puke while I did it, but barely.

  This is why I fucking hate guns. They are not for screwing around. Mages apparently didn’t respect them properly. Or this guy hadn’t. You don’t wave guns around to try to get your way when you don’t know how to use them, or when you think you’ll just intimidate someone else who is also armed.

  “Anyone else?” I said, gun still raised, finger resting on the trigger guard, stepping forward so that I blocked line of sight from the cabin to both Seamus and Rowan. I could hear her sobbing loudly, but she wasn’t screaming, and she hadn’t thrown up yet. I was thankful for that. If she threw up, I was certain I would too.

  The remaining people in the room were all in various stages of shock, as the tall mage I’d shot lay bleeding, now unconscious, across the threshold. He must have been the one in charge, because no one else seemed inclined to step up.

  I quickly assessed the room. There were five more mages, and one woman who matched the other one in the photo on Seamus’ phone. They all seemed to be unarmed. Even the woman who was restraining Alexandra didn’t seem to have a weapon on her. Perhaps she was the null.

  “Anyone else have a gun they want to wave about? Anyone else not understand how easy it is for me to kill you with this?”

  I didn’t gesture wildly about the room, but I kept the gun up and ready, my finger on the trigger guard, the safety still off.

  I was starting to get angry. It might have been the shock of just having shot someone, or rage that I had needed to shoot someone in order to protect people I cared about, or it could have been the fact that this was yet more evidence that MOME didn’t give a fuck about justice, and only cared about eliminating threats to its own power. Also, MOME allowed complete douchetarts to lead missions that involved abducting civilians, and Gwendamnit, I really needed to take a few deep breaths before I started to shoot holes in the wall.

  “Your null is canceling whatever shields you might normally have against bullets, and on top of that, you can’t even fight back with magic right now. We have all the guns, and you have nothing, so I suggest you give me Alexandra there, and I will put this damned thing away so we can all just get back to our lives. If you hurry, you may even have a chance to keep Captain Asshat here from bleeding to death.”

  No one moved.

  “Fine. Alexandra, can you walk?” I asked.

  She paled, but nodded and began to stand.

  “If anyone but Alexandra moves, I will shoot them,” I added, just for good measure.

  No one else moved.

  See? When you prove up front that you are a) capable of, and b) willing to, shoot someone, people don’t fuck around. If you’re not willing to shoot someone, don’t wave a gun around. Coercion with a gun certainly can work, since enough people are terrified of them, especially if they themselves are unarmed, but then there are the other people carrying guns who will just shoot you the moment you hesitate. And in a state like Arizona, where a five-year-old can basically buy an Uzi, why would you risk it?

  It seemed like it took Alexandra an hour to cross the small hardwood floor between where she had been held to where the barely breathing body of the man who had opened the door now lay. Without lowering the gun or looking away from the five remaining mages, I sidestepped, so that she could climb over Captain Asshat and out the door.

  “I really wish you assholes would just leave me and my family alone,” I said, backing myself carefully out over the too-still body of Captain Asshat and onto the front porch. I closed the door, which thankfully had remained unblocked, and finally lowered the gun, putting the safety on. Then I wiped the tears from my face.

  “Hold on tight,” I said, wrapping Seamus and his moms in a bear hug, after tucking the gun into the holster I’d worn to bring it here. I might have imagined it, but I thought all three of them grimaced slightly when I touched them. I couldn’t really blame them, but it still hurt.

  I tried to ignore the wretched feeling in my stomach, and reached through time and space for the one thing in the universe that still felt like home.

  “TREV?”

  I must have fainted after I shifted everyone back to that tiny island near Fiji, but sure enough, the thing that had drawn me there swayed gently in front of my eyes.

  “You dead, sis?” Trev asked, his golden eyes dancing in the sunlight, the cerulean sky behind him clear as crystal.

  “Yep.”

  “Well, too bad. I need you in this world.”

  I smiled, and was pleased to note that it didn’t hurt to do so. Nor did it hurt to breathe in the salt-scented air that caressed us. In fact, I just felt a bit tired and mildly sore, like I’d gone for an extra long trail run the day before, on a steeper than usual mountain.

  “Is everyone else here?” I asked, deciding it was safe to maybe sit up.

  Trev nodded. “Seamus and his moms are over by the fire with Sol.”

  “A fire in the middle of t
he day?” I asked, taking another look at the sun glittering off the waves that crashed against the white sand shore stretching away from us in both directions.

  “It seemed like a nice enough distraction.” Trev shrugged.

  “Is everyone ok?”

  “They seem pretty shaken, but mostly alright. How are you?”

  I really didn’t want to answer that question, and wasn’t sure what to say anyway, so I decided to go with a change of subject. “Any luck with Mom and Dad’s boat?”

  Trev was sitting on the sand beside me, the lines of concern on his face receding somewhat when I managed to keep my balance while sitting.

  “Negative,” he replied, sighing. “I don’t know what it was supposed to tell us, besides the fact that Seamus’ moms were in trouble, but that seems like something he might have gotten a vision about anywhere… doesn’t really seem to me like ‘answers.’”

  “Yeah. That’d be a stretch even for a prophecy, I’d think. We could ask Seamus…” I hesitated. “Maybe you could ask Seamus if that makes sense for a message from a seer.”

  Trev quirked an eyebrow at me.

  “Why wouldn’t you ask Seamus?”

  I sighed and closed my eyes, not feeling brave enough to watch Trev’s face while I confessed.

  “Because I don’t know if he wants to talk to me anymore, after seeing me shoot someone in the chest.”

  You don’t have to hide from me, Vic. I’ve done a few things I’m not terribly proud of in order to keep MOME from hurting people.

  When I opened my eyes and dared a look at his face, he looked sincere, and sounded it too, as he continued, “I know it probably makes you sick, and that’s fine. That’s healthy, but… it’s not your fault that MOME forced you into violence to protect yourself.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” I asked, my voice a bit desperate. “Couldn’t I have talked them into handing over Seamus’ moms? Offered myself in exchange? Something? What if I hadn’t taken a gun with me?”

  “If you hadn’t taken a gun with you, you would either all be captured by MOME right now, or Seamus’ moms would be dead. There’s no way that MOME would have negotiated with you and held up their end of the deal. They either would have harmed Seamus’ family anyway, or they would have kept you all prisoner.”

  “And is that so bad? What if we were all prisoners? How bad would that be? At least no one would be dead.”

  Apparently, my unconscious mind had been hard at work on drumming up all the toughest questions while I was passed out. I wanted to agree with Trev. I wanted to be angry with MOME, hell I was angry with them. I was furious with the asshole I’d shot, because he’d made it seem like the only sensible option in a deadly situation… but I was still sure that it was wrong. That if I were a better person, or a more powerful shifter, or something, I wouldn’t have had to shoot that man.

  “There is some possibility that he might not have shot anyone. Maybe he would just have locked all four of you up. I think it’s a very slim chance, Vic, since he had a gun pointed at Rowan’s head, but for argument’s sake let’s say there was a chance. What then? What happens after you, Seamus, and Seamus’ moms are locked up by MOME?”

  I shrugged, as my brain just reminded me over and over again that at least I wouldn’t have shot anyone in the chest, but Trev just kept talking.

  “Do you think that Sol, Rhelia, and I would have just let that slide? Do you think we would have just left you guys in MOME custody to rot, or worse? We would have come after you, Vic. As sure as the sun rises in the morning, we would have come after you. And how many of us would still be standing at the end of that?”

  My head was starting to hurt and tears were pouring down my cheeks, so I didn’t say anything, just stood up and started walking, not paying attention to where I was going, just walking, away from Trev. Away from everyone else. Away from all the people who hadn’t pulled the trigger of a gun that was pointed at someone else’s chest a few hours ago.

  Of course I wound up in front of Mom and Dad’s boat.

  Because the universe hates me.

  Because I wasn’t fucking crying hard enough as it was.

  Because dragon seers are sneaky pieces of shit.

  Barely able to see through the tears, and feeling like I was going to throw up and faint all at once if I didn’t just sit down, I collapsed face-first against the deck, which lay at a forty-five degree angle to the sand. Unable to comfort myself in any way, I cried.

  And cried.

  And cried some more.

  Because sometimes you cry so long you forget why you’re crying, so then you think of reasons you might need to cry, and you’re suddenly flooded with things, some small—a stupid comment about how ‘exotic’ you look, some huge—shooting someone in the chest, being assaulted in your own home, your parents dying—that have hurt you in the past year or more, and you just need to keep crying until you sort of mentally go through the entire checklist and start to feel better.

  I don’t even know how long I’d been there when I heard footsteps in the sand behind me. It seemed like hours, but it might have only been minutes.

  “Feel any better?” Trev asked.

  I nodded, using the hem of my shirt to wipe some of the snot from my face.

  “I think I had been holding that in for a while,” I admitted.

  Trev stepped closer and I briefly felt his hand rest on my shoulder as he leaned his side against the boat, and—

  It was then that a shriek like a dying banshee tore at my ears, and seemed to tear at the very fabric of time and space. It was followed by a deafening clap, like the end note of a lightning strike.

  Then our mother stood in front of us, half hidden in the shadows of the galley, with her right arm wrapped around our father. They both looked… pale.

  “Hey Vic,” my mom said, her voice sounding tired.

  “Mom?!” I stuttered, my voice barely audible.

  “Hey Trev.” This time my mom’s voice sounded ready to break. Trev and I both started to take a step forward to reach for our parents, but Mom’s voice was urgent.

  “Don’t let go of the boat!”

  We both stopped in our tracks.

  “If you’re watching this,” she said, taking a deep breath, “then we’re dead, which sucks, but isn’t too surprising in the grand scheme of things. More importantly, it means you two have found each other.”

  And here she took a moment to wipe away a few tears.

  “Which makes all of this worthwhile, if you ask me.”

  I looked between them both, my mom and dad, dead, I’d thought. Dead, she’d just said. But why was I seeing them? Why did it look like they were standing right in front of me? Was it a hologram? Was it some quirky mage message? What the fuck was going on? And why couldn’t I hug my parents?

  “Mom,” I started, but she just kept on talking, as though I hadn’t said anything.

  “If you two are back together, then there’s literally nothing that MOME can do to us that isn’t worth it.”

  My dad was nodding fervently, but was crying too hard to say anything. I could feel Trev trembling beside me, and I wanted to throw both of my arms around him, but Mom had said not to let go of the boat. Would this message disappear? Would we ever be able to see it again? I couldn’t risk it, and I figured Trevor would understand.

  “We don’t have much time. They’ve been catching up with us since we left Cape Town and we don’t have much longer to try our last gambit, which, if you’re watching this, probably didn’t work, but who knows. Maybe you’ll never see this, or maybe they’ll only catch us years from now. There’s no guaranteeing that any of this will play out the way we hope it will, even you two seeing this. Maybe especially that. We’re counting on Vic’s persistence, and MOME’s greed, and hoping beyond hope that Trev… Trev, that they left something of you in there, that they didn’t erase our sweet mischievous boy…. You’re so much smarter than they are, sweetie. We just have to hope that you remember it at all the most
important times.”

  She stopped to wipe her nose and eyes. Dad had already hidden his face in her shoulder.

  “I’m rambling,” she said, taking another deep breath. “You need to know the truth. Both of you. It’ll have to be the Cliff’s Notes, I’m afraid, because this storm is picking up and we have to get going, but… they’re after us because of what we know. Because we know what they’re planning to do, and how they’re planning to do it. It’s…”

  A loud thud sounded on the hull, and my parents both looked at each other.

  “Gods damn it!” my mom shouted. “It’s an army, Vic. Trevor will likely understand exactly what kind of army, and even how they’re making it. It’s why they took him. Vic, it’s an army of people like you and Trevor. Like me and your dad. They’re using all the misfits of the magical world and training them, but they’re not training them to help them, they’re training them to use them. We think—damn it!”

  There was another large noise in the background, and my dad hugged my mom furiously, gave her one kiss, turned towards us and said, “I love you both, and I always have.”

  Then he turned his tear-streaked face towards whatever lay behind him, disappearing from sight.

  “They’re here. That’s not just the storm anymore. We have to go,” my mom continued, tears rising to her eyes. “We suspect that they’re also preparing a weapon, but we don’t have proof.”

  She turned to me then, and it felt like she was looking straight into my soul, even though this was by all appearances some kind of recording.

  “Vic, you need to find my journals. I can’t say more than that, in case… just find them. They’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

  Then she turned and looked to where Trevor was standing beside me, and I could only assume she pierced him with the same stare she’d just used on me.

  “Trevor, you could be the key to stopping all of this. With all that you’ve probably learned… Teach Vic. Teach her everything. Between the two of you, you can make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Families shouldn’t be torn apart like this, and MOME shouldn’t get to take over the world.”