Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series

by Virginia McClain

  “I spend more time in the community gardens now, but when I first moved to Unterberg I became quite an avid crocheter,” said Torrence, without a trace of defensiveness in his voice.

  There was definitely a smile on his face now. I mean ok, if I’d seen a bull on Earth doing that I would have assumed it was about to vomit or something, but knowing that the brain behind the bull face was in full control of its expressions, and that it functioned in a bipedal society where facial expressions were a thing, that had to be a smile.

  “So, why does traveling through a pocket dimension tend to make most magic users, and especially shifters, nauseous?”

  I was trying to bring us back to our original digression, even as I reminded myself that we were in a damned hurry, because, honestly, I needed a minute for my guts to realign themselves, and I would take any information I could get that I didn’t have to wrestle out of people. It had been an uninformative few weeks and easy answers felt like a milkshake going down right about now.

  “The theory is that shifters have a difficult time bringing both of their selves along, as their animal form is in its own dimensional pocket, so bringing both along for one of these trips requires leaps of physics that aren’t particularly comfortable. As for most other magic users, no one is sure why it affects them adversely early on, but most of us grow used to it with practice.”

  “Interesting… I wonder how much of that is because most magic users probably have alternate forms they could reach for if they had the time and focus to access them. Maybe they get more comfortable with the shift as they grow more and more distant from their other forms.” Trev had explained the bit about all magic users having access to alternate forms in an attempt to fill the awkward silence while we had waited at Rhelia’s bedside after I’d felt well enough to get out of my own recovery bed. It may also have been his attempt to address our Mom’s suggestion to “teach her everything.” I won’t pretend I didn’t miss some of the content, because I was distracted by how distant Trev had felt ever since the whole accidentally-killing-his-mate incident, but the gist had been what I’d just explained; people were limited by their perceptions of how their own magic worked, not actually by their DNA.

  The ensuing expression on Torrence’s face made me think that cows must be really good at poker.

  “I’m surprised that you’ve been exposed to that theory. You have only been aware of our world for a few weeks, no?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’m getting a crash course, I guess you could say. So, does that mean you subscribe to the theory that all magic users can be shifters, and vice versa?” I asked.

  When Trev had explained it, he’d made it sound as though that theory was not widely accepted in the magical community. Most folks still held with the idea that you only had access to whatever magic you had “inherited.” Technically, they were right, it was just that when you looked back through every single ancestor you’d ever had, you really had just about the entirety of human (and magical) diversity to choose from. Thanks to the unique intersection of epigenetics and dark matter, all you had to do was focus long enough to unlock it. Apparently, when you ignored your pre-conceived notions and focused on what was actually in your DNA, you got… near infinite possibilities.

  Still, not knowing how Torrence felt about that idea, I tried to put my own poker face in place. I wasn’t sure how well I did. I probably just looked constipated.

  Torrence tilted his head noncommittally, but said nothing.

  Then a voice from somewhere beyond the foyer asked, “Torrence, are you going to bring our guests out of the entryway at any point this evening?”

  The vaguely familiar voice set tiny warning bells jangling in my mind.

  A moment later, a willow of a woman with yellow hair, long but elegantly pointed ears, and green skin barely visible underneath her off-white tunic and calfskin pants, walked through the hallway, stopping short of us by a few meters and wrinkling her nose in obvious disgust. Her violet eyes pulsed momentarily, and then we were all relieved of the smell of Sol’s rejected meals. I glanced cautiously at the floor, and confirmed that the mess was gone.

  That was when I first really took in our surroundings—aside from the shiny marble floor and the various bits of bull-person in front of me, that is. It was like my fear of taking too good a look at Sol’s opening volley (which I was still un-comfortably close to copying) had given me a kind of tunnel vision that blocked out everything but the furry face in front of me.

  Now, with the threat of witnessing someone else’s lost meal removed, my vision opened up to encompass a marble hallway that featured some rather bland painted landscapes trussed up in heavily gilded frames, along with a mirror large enough to serve a small rugby squad who all wanted to check their teeth at the same time.

  It was quite spacious and, despite the fact that it could easily have contained Sol’s entire mountain cabin, it appeared to be only the foyer.

  “Soledad, Seamus, Victoria, please come in,” said the woman, who I now recognized as Nethia, the one who had given the impression she was in charge of the Unterberg council the last time we’d been here.

  “Um… not that it’s any of my business, but are you here just to talk to us, or is this your home too?”

  “You’re correct. It’s none of your business.”

  I nodded.

  “Fair. Only, if anything, it looks like you live here rather than Torrence. I mean, stale art, flashy mirrors, marble… a general sense of trying too hard,” I continued, my tongue deciding that sass was appropriate even though Nethia could probably make me disappear from Unterberg with the sort of finality and discretion that it was generally unwise to provoke.

  “Will you come in?” she asked again, ignoring my commentary.

  I turned to look at Sol and Seamus, and caught Torrence rolling his eyes in a way that made me think that one of us was being ridiculous, but I wasn’t sure who.

  I looked at Sol, who, despite still being a bit off-color, looked like she was ready to bite Nethia for her condescending tone. I shook my head subtly. Pissing Nethia off verbally was one thing, sinking your teeth into her was another. We didn’t need an incident. In fact, from what little Rhelia had told us in her communique, Torrence might be one of the few people who could help us, and our current situation suggested he was unlikely to do so without Nethia’s say-so. When I turned and caught Seamus’ eye, he was staring fixedly at Nethia with something like awe. Or it might have been fear, it was hard to tell.

  “Look, we were in a bit of a hurry before we got sidetracked by Torrence here. We’d like to get back to what we were doing, but Torrence made it sound like some top-secret shit was about to go down, so… here we are. Want to tell us what the hell’s going on?” I asked.

  “That thing you’re doing here,” Torrence began, exchanging a glance with Nethia, “Would it happen to include searching for your dragon sister?”

  I shrugged.

  “My dragon sister?” I replied, deciding to play dumb. I wasn’t feeling overly generous now that Nethia had shown up. After all, Seamus had warned us not to trust the green lady, a description that fit Nethia all too well. And our whole mission with Rhelia was entirely secret—so secret that we didn’t even know exactly why she was in Unterberg—and I wasn’t convinced these two needed to know any of it yet. Rhelia had mentioned Torrence was a contact, but she didn’t say if he was someone she trusted.

  “The dragon sister everyone else believes is dead,” Nethia clarified.

  “What makes you think that she isn’t?” I asked.

  “The fact that she’s unconscious in the next room,” Nethia replied.

  And for some reason that was when Sol decided to shift to her panther form and launch herself at the willowy green woman’s throat.

  “SOL! ¡NO LA mates!”

  It was the best I could do in the time it took for Sol to turn into 300 lbs of snarling black fury and pin Nethia to the golden-veined marble floor. Sol’s jaw
s surrounded the all-too-delicate-looking green neck of the Unterberg council member, and for a moment I was certain that I was already too late, that the woman was dead, and that we were definitely going to Unterberg’s prison for this, or worse.

  Then I heard Nethia grunt.

  “Get this blasted beast OFF of me!”

  Sol growled, but didn’t move, and Torrence and I stood frozen where we were.

  Seamus was smiling, with his hands in his pockets, as though his friends habitually launched themselves at green-skinned, pointy-eared foreign dignitaries. Come to think of it, it was possible that they did. I didn’t really know what Seamus’ other friends were like, or how most werewolves interacted with other magical creatures.

  Meanwhile, I only had one guess as to what had prompted Sol to act like a man-eating cat from a cheap horror flick, assuming it wasn’t solely based on Seamus’ warning about Nethia—which was a possibility—but this situation was too precarious to do anything but go with my gut.

  “I think…” I began, even as I started edging my way towards the open archway that Nethia had been gesturing towards when she mentioned our unconscious friend, “…that I’m just going to go make sure that Rhelia is alright, while everyone else holds perfectly still.”

  Sol’s tail flicked in an enthusiastic twitch that repeated three times, making me think that I was onto something, and Seamus nodded like I had the right idea.

  “I really do suggest that you not move at all, Nethia, and I have a feeling the same goes for you, Torrence.”

  “Agreed,” Torrence said quietly, as I passed through the archway into what looked like a large living room.

  The room was furnished with daybeds, ornately carved to look like they were naturally occurring shrubberies that just happened to have soft cushions in them, and surrounded by walls full of more elaborate paintings in even more ornate frames, all circling a medium-sized raised koi pond covered with a plate of glass that turned it into a functional coffee table, with the added zing of some lazily circling koi fish.

  On the daybed directly across from me (leaving the koi pond between us, and the other daybeds to the left and right of me) lay an unconscious Rhelia. For a moment, the sight made my breathing hitch. I was in no state of mind to see Rhelia lying inert, so soon after her feigned death, but, luckily, after only a heartbeat or two, I saw her chest rise and fall. The sight broke the hold of whatever had been keeping my lungs and limbs from moving, and I ran to Rhelia’s side.

  Her pulse was normal, her breathing even, and her ebon, iridescent skin looked the way it usually did. Aside from the fact that she didn’t wake up when I touched her, or even when I shook her—gently at first and then more vigorously—she seemed fine.

  “She won’t wake up,” I half shouted across the room.

  Sol’s hearing was excellent in panther form, and Seamus had followed me as far as the entrance to the living area, but was still within view of Sol and her prey. I probably didn’t need to yell, but tell that to my barely-not-panicked brain.

  I heard a small yelp from Nethia’s direction and then, “I can wake her if you get this infernal cat off of me.”

  That was followed by another yelp.

  “I think you’ll have to figure out a way to wake her now, Nethia. From under the ‘infernal cat,’ if you really want to keep your throat,” I called back.

  I hoped Sol wasn’t drawing blood yet. I didn’t want to go to Unterberg’s prison, and I had no idea how Torrence would side in this thing if we wound up in front of the council again.

  Then I heard a gasp at my side, and all thoughts of the council were forgotten.

  Rhelia’s eyes blinked open, and instantly narrowed at the archway across from us.

  “Careful, Ssssol! She’ssss a Dragon Hunter!”

  “SHE’S A WHATTY-what now?” I asked, before my brain caught up and reminded me that the name was fairly self-explanatory.

  “Dragon Hunter. A group of people reviled by my own, assss you might imagine.”

  Rhelia had already gotten up and started crossing the room back to the ornate foyer, where Sol was hopefully not yet tearing out Nethia’s throat, so I was following her even as I asked inane questions.

  Seamus nodded, smiling, at Rhelia, and then stepped in behind me as I followed the irate weredragon into the foyer.

  “That seems like a really dumb hobby,” I sup-plied, as we walked through the archway and took in the tableau of Sol, still enveloping Nethia’s throat with her teeth, while pinning her to the marble floor with the entirety of her 300 pounds of feline fury. In other words, right where I’d left her. Torrence, good as his word, hadn’t moved an inch.

  Nethia looked as though she’d tried to move at least once, but had eventually learned the error of her ways. There was now a disturbing amount of feline saliva, along with some ugly looking scrapes, visible just to the sides of Sol’s jaws.

  “That issss an undersssstatement, Living Cat.”

  Rhelia’s use of my nickname caused some of the tension to leave my shoulders. As though her calling me something silly meant that maybe we weren’t necessarily watching our mission completely unravel in front of us. After all, she was the only one who knew exactly what our mission was.

  “So… dare I ask what kind of moron takes up Dragon Hunting?” I asked, glaring at Nethia in a way that I hoped conveyed my full disapproval.

  “Thesssse two moronssss,” Rhelia replied, gesturing in a way that encompassed both Nethia and Torrence. To be fair, that gesture encompassed Sol as well, but I thought it was safe to assume that was just positioning, and not because Sol was secretly a dragon killer.

  “That’s a lie!” Nethia shouted, or tried to shout, from between Sol’s jaws. “The Dragon Hunters were never more than a myth,” she said, with less force, thus sparing herself more scrapes from Sol’s teeth.

  “You rendered me unconscioussss assss ssssoon assss Torrencsssse told you I wassss inquiring about Dragon Hunterssss,” Rhelia countered. “And your magic may not be assss sssstrong assss you think it issss, becausssse I heard you assssking Torrencsssse why he revealed the truth to me even assss I wassss lossssing consssscioussssnessss.”

  “Ugh, you can turn off the accent, dragonling, it tires me,” Nethia grumbled from the floor.

  “All the more reasssson to keep ussssing it, then.”

  “You can turn off the accent?” I asked, completely derailed from the more important topics at hand.

  Rhelia just leveled a gaze at me that made it clear we were not talking about this right now.

  “I believe we owe you an explanation,” Torrence said, finally breaking the silence he’d kept since Sol had first pounced on Nethia.

  “No shit,” I replied, turning my gaze from Rhelia to him. “Better get started. I don’t know how long Sol can hold her jaws open like that.”

  Sol growled and flicked her tail. I wasn’t sure if she was agreeing with me, or objecting to the insult to her stamina. Either way, Torrence seemed to take it as his cue to get started.

  “I think we would all be more comfortable in the living room,” he hazarded, but Sol growled again at the suggestion, so he began talking even as Nethia whispered, “Torrence, don’t.”

  “Nethia and I were both members of the elite Dragon Hunters. We each have our reasons for not wanting anyone to know of our past, not least of which is that we all took oaths of secrecy when the Dragon Hunters disbanded. Just talking to you now may render our lives forfeit, but the alternative is taking your lives, and that is something I will not do. Though you should know—what we tell you now may make you targets for whatever members of the Dragon Hunters remain.”

  Rhelia and I exchanged a glance with Seamus, and Sol flicked her tail from her place atop Nethia.

  “Well, they can get in line,” I sighed. I mean, it wasn’t like it would matter, if we couldn’t stop Rebecca Dryer from blowing up the entire world.

  I looked at Rhelia again. “You think it likely they can help us?”

&
nbsp; Rhelia shrugged, but her face was as hard as the stone her skin resembled.

  “Unfortunately, I cannot think of anyone better suited to help find a missing cadre of dragons than those who used to make such their livelihood. It is why I came here. Though I admit that I did not expect to find out that Torrence and Nethia were Dragon Hunters themselves, I was merely hoping they could point me in the right direction.”

  I nodded, and worked very hard to swallow my comment about Rhelia’s sibilant accent disappearing.

  Torrence looked between us and then down to Nethia again.

  “Soledad, if I can extract an oath from her not to harm you or your friends, will you release Nethia?” he asked.

  Sol’s tail flicked, in what I took to be an affirmative, and Torrence must have taken it as one too.

  “Nethia, will you swear on your blood and mine not to harm these four individuals?”

  Nethia glared at Torrence with such vehemence that I half expected him to burst into flames.

  “Or do I need to bind you here and take them to my own apartments so that you cannot interfere?” he continued.

  Nethia sighed, and then nodded. I wondered what “binding” actually meant, if it was bad enough to make Nethia concede, but at least my question about living arrangements had finally been answered.

  “Your word, Nethia,” Torrence prompted.

  “I give you my word, Torrence.”

  Torrence just glared at Nethia for a long mo-ment, then she took a deep breath and tried again.

  “By your blood and mine, I give my oath that I will not harm Rhelia Wyvern, Soledad Sierra Oscura, Seamus Hunter, or Victoria Adelaide Marmot.”

  I felt a warm buzz in the air, while a smell like a desert thunderstorm permeated the room before fading suddenly.

  In a blink, Sol was standing in front of us wearing a tight fitting pair of jeans and a soft cotton shirt. She looked down at herself and smiled.

  “You’re so useful, Gatita.”

  I smiled in return.

  “I don’t even try.”