Why I decided to channel a Disney pirate for that particular moment, I don’t know, but it seemed to work on Azrael.
“Oh fine, I won’t eat you or your friends. Happy?”
I nodded.
“I’m not sure I’m happy,” Sol volunteered, raising her hand. “Depending on what’s entailed, I might be willing to give up a small piece of my soul for some of… that.” She gestured at all of Azrael’s currently female form.
Azrael’s face turned smug, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Everyone is, of course, free to do as they please. I just don’t want anyone becoming succubus food against their will.”
Azrael raised one hand into the air, and placed the other on their breast in a way that was more than a little seductive.
“I vow that I will only take souls from you four when you volunteer,” they said.
“Ok, can we finally get back to business here?” I was still unclear on why Azrael was here, but decided it wasn’t worth wasting any more time finding out. Seamus and I may have been cleared by MOME, thanks to Albert, but Trev was still on MOME’s most wanted list, and Sol was probably working her way up there, at this point. They could still be trying to track us down, and it was entirely possible that they had this house under surveillance. In fact, that was Trev’s primary objective, for now. As far as we knew, MOME had no idea where this house was, but that didn’t mean that they hadn’t figured it out since then.
I turned back to the house. At least Azrael’s appearance had thoroughly distracted me from the storm of emotions that looking at this place brought on.
“Trev?” I asked.
I didn’t need to clarify. Because, twins.
“I don’t detect any spells monitoring the place, but I can’t be sure about video and sound without my—”
“Here,” Sol said, handing Trev what looked like a small tablet.
“Thanks, but this doesn’t have—”
“Yes it does, Avito. I stole it. It’s yours.”
“How did you—”
“Long story,” Sol said.
I turned to look at her, wondering what the hell she’d been doing, going through Trev’s stuff, but she just looked slightly embarrassed, shuffled her feet, and shook her head.
Ok. Weird. It appeared that something had gone down between those two while Seamus and I were locked up.
“There’s a… no, got it. We’re all good. As long as Sol hasn’t tampered with this, we should be in the clear,” Trev said, with a decided edge to his voice.
“I only took it because—”
“Ok, you two. I get it. There are trust issues. Apparently, we need to do a group session or something, but we might have limited time before MOME catches onto us, so can we please just… do this?”
They both nodded, and I turned back to the red door.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered.
I lifted my leg, and had just angled my body to get the leverage I needed to kick the lock when it exploded in a ball of flame in front of me.
“THE FUCK, TREV?”
“You’ll just break your leg,” he said. “The deadbolt is probably thrown, so kicking it won’t work unless you’re strong enough to kick out the whole frame. It’s not a college dorm, Vic, it’s a house.”
I laughed. What else was I going to do? I had really been looking forward to inflicting some actual damage on the house, but Trev was probably right. Enhanced snow leopard strength aside, I was more likely to break myself than the door. Sometimes movies aren’t the best guides for real life; true story.
We all plowed inside and I did my best to ignore the actual look of the house. Everything was exactly as I’d left it, from my parents’ old coats hanging by the door to the forest green paint on the wall by the stairs. I didn’t bother looking in the living areas. I headed straight for the stairs, then turned left to wrap around to the master bedroom. My parents’ room.
I had tried packing their stuff up after they’d… when I'd known that they weren’t coming back. I thought it would probably be healthy, or whatever, but… I just couldn’t do it. Even the one time I went so far as to get a box ready, when I walked it to their room something had just felt wrong about it and I’d turned away at the door.
As I walked towards the door again, I got that same feeling, that something about what I was doing just wasn’t right.
Weird, because I had no intention of packing up their stuff. Just one thing in particular, and something they’d sent me to go get, no less.
The closer I got to the door, the stronger the feeling got. I stopped in my tracks.
Just out of curiosity, I took a few steps back.
Sure enough, the feeling of wrongness lessened.
I took a few steps forward.
The feeling of wrongness returned, full force.
“Well, that’s quirky,” I mumbled, then jumped a foot in the air when Azrael suddenly appeared at my side.
“What is?” they asked.
“Damn it, Azrael, you scared the crap out of me!”
“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to. I walk rather quietly.”
I looked the towering angelic figure over, trying not to roll my eyes.
“And dare I ask why stealth is on the list of natural traits for a succubus?”
“Easy. Predator evasion,” Azrael replied.
I raised an eyebrow at that.
“What predator can possibly be a match for you in this form?”
Azrael frowned.
“We are not the worst thing out there.”
I shrugged.
“I never said you were, but it seems like you’ve got a handful of advantages in this realm that would make it difficult for anything else to make a snack of you.”
I had used the term "snack" to be funny, but Azrael shuddered when I said it, and something about the way their skin paled made me wonder what could actually hurt this six-and-a-half-foot tall creature with a physique reminiscent of Greek statuary.
“I’m looking for something in there,” I said, not wanting to get too specific, since I still had no idea what Azrael was really doing here. “Mind keeping an eye on the door for me?” I asked. “Just in case anyone from MOME decides to pop in.”
Azrael nodded, and I walked to the door to my parents’ room, despite the creepy feeling in my stomach forcefully telling me that it was a bad idea.
I WAS FAIRLY certain that the aforementioned creepy feeling was thanks to a spell, or whatever they called instances of magic in this world, my world—fuck, a lifetime of reading fantasy novels should have prepared me for this, but so far nothing matched up with my fictional expectations and I didn’t even fully understand how magic worked here…. Whatever. I was going to go ahead and call whatever it was that was trying to repel me from my parents’ bedroom a spell, because I didn’t have a dictionary and no one was offering me free lessons on how this shit worked. Or if they were, we kept getting interrupted by people trying to kill us.
So this spell. It was making me want to turn right around and run in the other direction, but I was determined to get into my parents’ room today. Now that I had a guess as to what was making me feel like this, I was amazed that I’d never noticed it before, or rather, that I'd never suspected anything was weird about it. I had noticed it, I’d just thought that it was my gut response to packing up any of my parents’ things, or even looking through them. But now… now I was going in with my parents’ permission, or rather, at their request. So I shouldn’t be feeling the wrenching guilt that made me want to turn around before I even got to the door.
“Hey, Azrael?” I asked, on a hunch. “Would you mind walking towards this door for me and telling me… if there’s anything worth telling me?”
“That’s incredibly vague, Vic.”
“Yep. Trying not to skew the test results.”
“Fine. You just want me to walk towards the door?”
“Yep.”
“Alright.”
So they did. All
six-and-a-half feet of winged glory walked towards the door. And stopped about three feet in front of it.
“Odd,” Azrael mumbled, then walked all the way to the door and touched it. “Very odd.”
“Care to elaborate?” I asked.
Azrael stepped back from the door and returned to the post they’d been keeping at the top of the stairs.
“Mage spells rarely have any effect on me. My own magic in this realm is too strong for them to do much, but… I felt a twinge as I approached the door, and by the time I got to the door, I didn’t particularly want to touch it. Which is why I made myself touch it, just to be sure it wasn’t a compulsion taking effect. I was able to touch the door, so I guess not.”
I nodded.
“That what you were expecting?” Azrael asked.
“More or less,” I admitted.
And then I stepped forward, pushed past the feeling that was yelling at me not to go any closer, and turned the handle.
~~~
It was a bit anti-climactic to just find the room exactly as they’d left it. From the old kimonos they’d brought back from Japan with them, to my mom’s aging katana, to my dad’s old collection of Calvin and Hobbes books—none of it had moved an inch.
I don’t know what I’d expected, exactly, but dust collecting on all of my parents’ old stuff wasn’t really it. And it wasn’t even a creepy-haunted-house amount of dust. Just the regular no-one-has-lived-here-for-a-year-or-so’s amount of dust.
What was strange was that some of that dust was out of place, now that I took a second look at it.
That is to say, there were some fingerprints in the dust over on the bookshelf by the closet. That was weird, but the fingerprints only marked an empty space on the bookshelf. So, all that told me was that someone had been here recently and stolen a book. That was possibly really terrible news, but I didn’t know which book it was, and I doubted that it was my mom’s mysterious hidden journals. I didn’t think those were just going to be sitting out on a shelf. Besides, Mom had said "journals" plural, so there ought to be more than one slender volume missing between The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Good Omens, if that had been what someone had taken.
Still, I decided it was probably worth investigating. So I squatted in front of the shelf with the missing book and took a good look at the empty space. Then, just to be extra sure of things, I reached my hand into the cavity left by the absent tome.
And hit my fingers against something that made a crunching noise, followed by a whirring, followed by a creepy creaking noise that totally would have fit with a much thicker layer of dust.
And then the whole book shelf popped off the wall and started to recede into the floor.
Because of course it did.
Because my parents had whole secret lives that they’d never told me about.
But apparently had written down.
On paper.
Lots and lots of paper.
Seriously, so much paper.
Like, holy shit, Mom, how many trees did you kill just to document your life?
The entire shelf behind the shelf that had just tucked itself away like a prairie dog on ball bearings was just as large as the first and it was filled with journals!
“Nice taste, Mom,” I muttered, picking up one of the first volumes and noticing the nicely tooled leather cover.
I opened the cover and was quickly greeted by the date September 7th, 2000, in my mom’s familiar handwriting.
I shut the damned thing as fast as I could, but my eyes were still soaked before I could even put it back on the shelf. Barely able to see, I gave up trying and just sat there and let myself have a bit of a cry.
“Vic?” Azrael’s oddly British voice called from the doorway. “You alright, Luv?”
I wiped at my eyes so that I could actually see the angel lurking in the doorway.
“I think so. Just… probably haven’t finished grieving my parents, you know.”
“Ah… you lost them, did you?”
I sighed. Right. Azrael had no reason to know any of this yet.
“Yeah. It’s kind of a long story. The super short version is, I’m an orphan as of like six months ago.”
Azrael didn’t say anything else, but suddenly was seated beside me and enveloping me in the most comforting hug I think I’ve ever experienced.
Which was weird, coming from a creature I’d only met a couple of days before, who had never presented themself as being entirely cuddly before. Maybe it was the wings that were joining in on the act. Wrapping me up in a warm cocoon. Whatever it was, Azrael had just moved to my "always accept hugs" list.
“Thanks,” I muttered, still not letting go. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“I’m not entirely heartless, Luv. Besides, I was really just being nosy.”
I laughed at that.
“That may be true, but the hug helped. Is that succubus thing?”
“Nah. That’s pure squirrel demon, that is.”
I laughed again.
“I have a feeling I shouldn’t ask…”
“Ask all you like, I’m not telling. A demon has to keep some secrets, after all. Anyway, I’m glad I could help a bit. If only for a moment.”
I was about to reply, when I got a distinct whiff of smoke.
“Azrael? Do you sm—”
“Vic! GET OUT OF THERE! THERE’S A FIRE AND I CAN’T—”
Azrael and I were both on our feet before Trev could finish, but he was cut off anyway, and I had a terrified moment of panic before he sent a message to me mentally.
I’m fine, Vic. I was trying to fight the fire with my magic, but it’s not working. Just like the stuff back at the boat. I was breathing deep to yell for you and took in too much smoke. Not sure why I didn’t just start with this. Can you get out?
By then Azrael and I had reached the door and discovered that the landing was completely engulfed in flames.
Not by the stairs, I sent to Trev. We’ll try the window.
We?
Azrael’s with me.
And then I was too busy trying to open the nearest window in my parents’ bedroom to worry about much else.
The damned locks wouldn’t budge, and I had to suppose that a year’s worth of weather and humidity fluctuation, without any upkeep, had taken its toll on the hardware. Luckily, after my wereleopard strength proved unequal to the task, Azrael ripped both locks straight out of the wall.
“Not subtle, but functional,” I admitted.
“Come on, Luv. You first.”
I almost complied, but then I remembered my mom’s journals. The whole damned point of this mission, sitting on those shelves, and the flames that were now inside the doorway and not-so-slowly making their way towards the open window, which was now just feeding the fire with every gust of fresh oxygen that came through.
I sprinted to the hidden shelf.
“No time, Vic!” Azrael shouted from their spot by the window.
“I can’t just leave them!” I shouted back, because we had to shout over the roar of shit burning like oil-soaked paper around us now. I grabbed the volume that I’d first opened and the one next to it, and tried to grab a few more and tuck them under my arms. Then I got to the window and cursed loudly. Then I coughed a bunch.
“You have to get out of here now, Vic. The smoke will get you soon, even if the fire doesn’t.”
And the fire was quickly approaching, even if the smoke was going to kill me first, and damn it all. I was going to break a leg if I made this jump in human form.
“I need to shift. Are those things decorative?” I asked, gesturing to Azrael’s wings as best I could while trying to cover my nose and mouth with my shirt and shove journals into their arms.
Azrael just glared at me and took the books, all except one. That one I put on the windowsill just before calling on my snow leopard form, then picked it up in my mouth and leapt from the second story window into a small patch of scrub oaks.
I TURNED
BACK just in time to hear a scream come from inside the house and then see Azrael disappear from the window.
“Did she just go leaping through a wall of fire?” Seamus asked, from behind me.
I nodded, but kept my eyes glued to the window. It wasn't worth shifting back to human just to correct Seamus’ gendering of Azrael. After all, if he’d only ever seen their female aspect, why would he think differently? Besides, English is a bit stupid about gendering anyway.
It felt like a lifetime, but it was probably only about 90 seconds later when Azrael came flying out the window, carrying an unconscious Trevor, followed by a glorious full-panther-mode Soledad.
I let out an anxious roar, somewhat muffled by the journal still clenched between my teeth, and bounded over to them all, but Azrael just shooed me back.
“We have to get away from this house. I can’t stop the fire either, and this place isn’t going to be standing much longer.”
I swallowed the anguished wail that wanted to rise out of my throat, and instead just turned and ran up the longish driveway to where the trees opened onto the main road. I could already tell that everyone was behind me before I shifted back to human.
“Trev! Trev!” I shouted, running to Azrael’s side and putting my hands on my brother’s throat, desperate to feel a pulse.
It was there, strong and constant.
“Just too much smoke,” Azrael said. “I think he’ll be alright.”
“As you just reminded me, too much smoke can still kill you. He needs a doctor, or a healer, or whatever. Should we take him to the Tree of Life?”
Sol shifted to her human form.
“Too risky. MOME knows about the grove. He needs his girlfriend,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Rhelia’s healing gifts are well known,” she said. “If she’d been able to treat you after that MOME spell hit you, there might not have been any scarring.”
With Trev lying unconscious in Azrael’s arms, I didn’t waste time thinking about that, but instead focused on getting Trev to Rhelia.
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 31