“When you have finished admiring my home decor, would you mind telling me why on Earth you are here? You are supposed to be discerning what weapon of MOME's devising your parents were attempting to warn us about.”
At that reminder, I took a moment to look at the clock. Then I sat down at the nice, lightly stained pine table that held Siara’s bowl of soup.
“Hmm… right. I suppose that makes sense,” I muttered.
It was only an hour before I would be back with Albert, and Siara clearly wasn’t in the middle of rallying her troops, even though she should be, at least according to how things had played out in my earlier timeline. (Earlier? Ugh, talking about time once you'd started messing with it was hard. The last first time I did this? Maybe. Maybe that.)
When that vague statement and my wildly shifting thoughts simply earned me a cold stare from Siara, I tapped my fingers against the table for a moment, then added, “Siara, how quickly can you assemble a unit of 100 or so weredragons who are good at changing form mid-air?”
~~~
It was the next hour, watching myself (which was fucking trippy, by the way), Sol, Siara, and all the weredragons assembled outside of Rhelia’s home, that was the most trying. I had tucked myself into the darkened doorframe of a house across the path from Rhelia’s, as there was almost nothing I could do at this juncture. There was no point in shifting myself back to "the present" (an arbitrary distinction really, but one that I had to cling to for the moment, because I lacked a better term), when that would just exhaust me and I knew that I would need the energy soon. And the only thing that showing myself now would do is confuse the hell out of the me that was already here, along with all of the other people that me was already talking to. And I didn’t think it would do any good anyway, although a strong part of me wanted to take the me that was already here and tell her in advance what was about to happen. Just to spare her some of it… but I shook that thought away, and huddled close in the stucco archway of the tastefully designed home that sat quietly in the night across from Rhelia’s. One thing was for certain; if everything went as planned, I really needed to spend some time exploring the dragon realm. It was a truly lovely space, and I was extremely curious as to how and where they managed to design and build their homes.
~~~
In the final minutes before we were all about to group together and launch our attack, I saw a strange shadow on the house next door to Rhelia’s. Unable to discern what was causing it, I began to edge closer, but when I was halfway across the path, I ran into Siara.
“You should ride with me,” she said, pulling on my arm.
I gave her a puzzled look. The me that was already here was supposed to fly on her own because she needed to learn to fly without risking anyone else’s life, and so she would have the freedom to strike hard and fast against whoever was going to inject Trev. Siara knew this, she’d given me the damned assignment.
“I’m supposed to be on my own. I need to—”
“I’m certain the other you has that covered,” she replied, before I could finish.
My mouth was doing a solid impression of an oxygen-starved fish when she gently took me by the arm and led me away.
“I can drop you where you need to be,” she said, as we joined the ranks of weredragons circling up to be shifted by my earlier self.
I nodded dumbly, following after her, and didn’t bother to ask how she’d figured out that I was a future me, deciding that the less we discussed it the better, most likely. By the time earlier-me was ready to shift us all to La Paz, I’d forgotten entirely about the odd shadow.
SIARA LANDED QUICKLY and cleanly in a shadowed corner of La Plaza Murillo, depositing me without comment and taking off again almost in a single graceful movement. It made quite the contrast to the sunset-colored hot mess of a dragon who was currently banking wildly in the sky, trying desperately to learn how to fly in a brief handful of seconds—which is to say, me. Earlier-me, I guess. Though we were both getting pretty close to being present me, and I wondered what the hell was going to happen then? Would there be two of us forever, now? Did one of us have to die? Were there going to be infinite mes throughout the universe now? Were there already infinite mes throughout the universe? How the fuck did this shit work? Time travel was complicated.
It was also freaky as hell.
Here I was, crouched in the shadow of a large shrub, out of sight of most everyone, watching myself in dragon form—which, can I just say that I make a beautiful fucking dragon? I looked like somebody’s Pinterest board for the coolest possible dye jobs, but instead of just my hair my entire body was covered in gorgeous, shimmering scales that ranged from deep crimson to bright yellows and blues, and every shade of purple in between. Anyways, here I was, watching my dragon form careen wildly through the sky, knowing what it had felt like to go through every moment I was watching, but feeling like it was a distant memory, because so much had happened in between. I think I had only gone back a single day, but it felt like a century had passed since I’d held Rhelia, limp and lifeless, in my arms.
And now my stomach was churning as I watched myself dive steeply towards the ground, aimed straight for the person in the white hazmat suit. I’d been too busy watching my former self’s seemingly drunken flight pattern to even notice her appear at first, but she was there, and reaching out for Trev, even as my dragon form speared through the sky right for her.
Watching me hit the ground, and her, at such high velocity almost made me throw up, and I was weirdly grateful that I hadn’t eaten much in the dragon realm.
“NOOOOOO!” Trev screamed. “RHELIA!!!”
And then I was running forward, without making a conscious decision to do so, my legs pumping me out of the bushes and towards the spot where a hurt and confused earlier-dragon-me stared incredulously at a limp figure in a hazmat suit. And, suddenly, I was filled with the worst kind of dread. Had Rhelia lied to me? Had she volunteered for this because it was the only way we could figure out to keep Trev from dying?
A cold knot formed in my stomach, heavier than any lead ball, as I sprinted the last few steps between me and Rhelia. Then she was in my arms, and I was leaning over her, sobbing, and dragon-me was gone, and there was no other me here, which means I must have caught up to myself, but Rhelia still wasn’t moving.
“No,” I whispered, once more staring into her too-blank eyes, dread coiling through my entire body.
No! NO! It can’t be her! Why is it her? WHY? She would never have agreed to inject you. She wouldn’t! It can’t be her. It can’t be—
“Rhelia, why?”
She wouldn’t have done this. We had a plan. The plan made sense. She wouldn’t have lied to me. Why would she have lied to me?
Trev? What happened? Why is it her?
Could I go back and fix it again? How many redos did I get? What would it take to fix this?
“What do I do, Trev? What do I do? How do I make this right?”
How could I be here again? How could I be holding onto this limp, bleeding—
No, wait. I took better stock of my hands—they were dry. She was wearing a hazmat suit, but still… dragon teeth are huge. Could it all have been pooling inside?
I took a better look at the body of the woman I was holding. There were tears in the suit. There should have been holes throughout her entire body, but there was no blood. No blood anywhere.
Rhelia? I sent the tiniest whisper.
Convincsssse them, Living Cat, they musssst believe.
I sobbed. I let all the tears come. I could tell, somehow, that Rhelia had directed that thought only to me. She must have done something to cut herself off from Trevor…. Shit. Poor Trev. But for some reason Rhelia wanted everyone, even Trev, to think that she was dead, and she had sounded desperate. I didn’t know what her plan was, but the least I could do after all of this was help her out. So I let the tears come. All of them.
A year of grieving over parents who had turned out to be people I didn’t really k
now. Ten years of mourning a twin everyone else pretended was never there, and letting them make me forget. Shooting a man who was holding a gun to the temple of an innocent person. Being held captive by people who wanted me dead. Having a fucking lowlife vampire show up in my bedroom uninvited and having to fight him off. Watching that same vampire get decapitated by a vengeful succubus. Losing the only homes I’d ever known. Losing everything I owned. Seeing a woman I admired, respected, and liked die at my own hands, or at least believing that’s what had happened. It hadn’t been a great year, really, and I let it all come out. I mourned it all. Right there, in front of a hundred television cameras that had been brought to witness some devastating event, I cried like my soul had been torn out. I cried harder than I’d ever cried in my life.
And then had to pull myself together, because shit was about to hit multiple fans, and I couldn’t even keep track of them all. MOME agents were rushing towards us. Probably coming to inject Trev anyway, but they were going to have to race Trev, who was straining against his bonds, reaching for the damned syringe which had somehow managed to land barely a foot away from him.
Trev, no! It won’t just kill you, it will kill everyone in this city!
But Trev either wasn’t listening or didn’t care, and he was straining like a madman against the netting that held him in place. Damn it if he wasn’t inching his way closer and closer to that fucking space metal that was likely to kill us all and take the whole damned world down with it. I tried to scrabble sideways, with Rhelia still in my lap, but she was a lot heavier than a five-foot-nothing petite woman looked, and I wasn’t going to get there before Trev, damn it, unless I dumped Rhelia on the ground. If I did that, MOME might get to her before I did, and then we were just as screwed as if Trev got the syringe, because Rhelia would make an even bigger bang than Trev, and Gwendamnit, I needed some help!
Which was right when Sol pounced onto the backs of the two closest MOME agents and I decided I had enough time to drop Rhelia and launch myself at Trev, who already had his fucking fingertips on the syringe—and how did he even get down here, when he was supposed to be tied to the fucking statue? Did I knock him loose when I crash landed?
But I didn’t have time to figure out how he’d loosened his bonds enough to slide down to the ground, or to worry about anything at all, except diving at Trev to make sure that he didn’t jab anyone with that damned syringe.
And now we were fighting for the syringe like the Gwendamned climax in a freaking Bond flick.
TREVOR, DON’T DO THIS. I PROMISE EVERYTHING WILL BE OK, TREV. PLEASE, YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME.
I really hoped that no one else could hear me mentally shouting at Trev, but damn it, I had no other choice. He might have been restrained by that fucking Technetium netting, but he was thrashing like a madman. Probably in hopes of just accidentally spearing himself with the syringe, which, to be fair, there was a fairly high chance of at the moment.
Finally, I clamped my fingers around the syringe and pried it from his hand. For a brief moment, I was grateful that he was weakened from being trapped in that netting for days.
Then I took a good look and realized I wasn’t really all that grateful. His face was as pale as Albert’s, and he looked like he’d lost about twenty pounds. If I didn’t know any better, I would have guessed he’d been doing multiple rounds of chemo for the past six months.
“Take him and go, I’ve got the rest of these douchewhips.”
Sol was standing over Rhelia and assessing the next squad of MOME agents that were quickly approaching.
“You can’t take them all on your own,” I said. “Besides, I don’t know how to get him out of this netting, and I can’t shift him anywhere with it on.”
“Perhaps I can be of assistance with that,” said a British voice I hadn’t really been expecting to hear anytime soon.
“Albert?” I asked, looking up to find the grey-bearded man stooping over Trev’s other side. “Does this mean that you’ve already dealt with Rebecca?”
“I’m afraid not,” he replied, while doing something I couldn’t see to Trev’s bonds. “May I have that syringe, my dear?”
I hesitated. I won’t lie, I didn’t really trust this thing in anyone’s hands but my own. How could I be sure he wouldn’t just turn around and use it for something else? But then I heard MOME charging us in the background, Sol’s snarl as she resumed her panther form, and the battle cries of a few dragons as they dove to engage the enemy.
I handed Albert the syringe.
“If I am correct,” he said, taking the syringe and carefully removing the plunger so that the liquid within could be poured out, “pouring this liquid form of Technetium onto these bonds will make them at least partially malleable.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
Albert’s eyebrow arched, even as he remained focused on the task his hands were attending to.
“Then we might all die horribly, but what else is new, eh?”
I laughed. What can I say? My tolerance for dark humor had grown substantially over the past year.
“Ah there we are,” he said gently. And, before I could really tell what he was doing, he had somehow unwound the netting that surrounded Trev’s whole left side and then begun to pull him out.
I jumped up to help, grabbing him from the right, and in less than a minute we had Trev clear of the remains of the netting.
“Take them both, Vic. Take them both and go. We will deal with what remains of MOME here.”
This time I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed Trev by one arm, bent us both down to grab Rhelia with the other, and pulled us all to the safest place I knew, my heart breaking slightly at the knowledge that I was leaving Sol here to fight alone.
No, not alone. Backed by a hundred weredragons.
I saw her leap at a mage and tear into his shoulder, just as La Plaza de Murillo faded to blackness.
THE GLADE WAS quiet when we arrived, and I must have put us right in front of that scythe-holding oak tree that I had come to know as Life, because I could feel myself healing the moment I arrived. Indeed, I could see the color returning to Trev’s skin even as I reached past him to start getting Rhelia out of that damned hazmat suit.
“What are you doing, Vic? Leave her be. Can’t you just leave her in peace? Haven’t you done enough?”
Each of those words cut me like a physical blow that the Tree of Life could never heal, but I didn’t let them stop me.
“No, Trev. Not nearly enough, yet.”
The hazmat suit tore surprisingly easily. It made me wonder if it had really served the purpose it advertised. Of course, it would make sense that MOME wouldn’t have been too worried about actually protecting whoever they sent to inject Trev with that shit, as no amount of hazmat gear would stop that person from being atomized along with everything else in the vicinity, or worse. Still, it was weirdly harrowing to see how thin the suit was, and it crumbled as if it were cheap plastic that had been left in the sun too long.
YOU CAME JUST IN TIME.
I jumped, and sat up from where I’d been peeling at Rhelia’s suit to see that Life had decided to take his ambulatory shape and come for a visit.
“Did you need us?” I asked.
NO. IT IS THE OTHER WAY AROUND. YOU NEED ME. AND YOU HAVE CUT IT VERY CLOSE, AS THE HUMANS SAY.
“What do you me—” I started to ask, just as Trev collapsed beside me.
I AM DOING ALL I CAN FOR HIM, BUT IT WILL BE DIFFICULT. THE RADIATION HAS BEEN ATTACKING HIM FOR DAYS, IT WOULD SEEM.
“Radiation? But I thought the syringe was—”
IT WOULD HELP IF HE WERE NOT FIGHTING ME.
“Fighting you? He’s trying to keep you from healing him? Fuck. Trev!!!” I collapsed beside him and held his hands. “Trev, please. Don’t go. She’s not gone. She’s not, I swear. Please, you have to listen to me!”
But Trev’s eyes were closed, and his face, while pained, seemed absent. Like he wasn’t quite there. Not knowing what else to do, I
turned to Rhelia.
“Rhelia, now would be a great time to come back. We’re going to lose Trev. He thinks you're dead.”
YOU MEAN THAT ONE IS NOT DEAD?
I looked panicked between Life, standing over my brother, and Rhelia, lying prone on the ground.
Rhelia! You have to come back now. Trev is dying and he thinks you’re gone, so he’s not trying to save himself!
I am sssstuck, Living Cat. I did not craft thissss enchantment. I assssked her to leave a channel in placsssse sssso I could sssspeak with you. You will have to convincsssse Trev that I am sssstill here. Or elsssse remove thissss blassssted sssspell.
If you didn’t put it in place, who did? Who managed to visit you in there who was interested in helping?
Your Gwenhwyvar. She wassss very eager to be of assssisssstancsssse.
“Gwen! Gwen, we need you!”
SHE HAS BEEN RATHER BUSY TODAY. WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE WORLD, THAT SO MANY PEOPLE NEED GOOD FORTUNE AT ONCE?
I could think of a few things that would qualify, really. Of course, of course she was off helping with a battle to save half a million lives and overthrow a tyrant, rather than here with my entire world crashing down on me. That only made sense.
It still pissed me off, though. I knew Trev wasn’t going to believe anything I said now. I’d heard the pain and contempt in his voice when he’d accused me of "doing enough" to Rhelia. He blamed me for her death, not unreasonably, and he wasn’t about to listen to anything I said about her being alright until he could sense her living presence on the other side of their bond.
I realized, perhaps belatedly, that he and Rhelia shared a bond similar to the one that he and I shared. It was different, in that it wasn’t a bond forged since conception and reinforced through eighteen years of life, but it was a bond of love, and a mate bond, and being mated as a dragon, whatever that meant. It was strong, and Trev thought it was broken. Until he felt it in place again, there was nothing I could say that would convince him Rhelia wasn’t dead. And until he believed that, he was going to let radiation poisoning eat away his life.
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 37