Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series

by Virginia McClain

  Except that her cuffs up the side of my head were getting difficult to ignore. I was just considering ways to retaliate the next time she hit me, when I heard Trev’s voice in my head.

  We’re in, Vic. Rhelia has the location. Head southwest to the next major intersection of corridors, then turn right.

  Roger that.

  “Are you taking me to the dungeons or what?” I said aloud, as Sol readied another blow. “You’re a lot of talk for someone who isn’t even taking me to interrogation.”

  “Shut up,” Sol grumbled.

  Basement, sub-section six, Trev relayed mentally.

  I tripped then, and Sol had to bend down to catch me, so that her face was right next to mine.

  “Basement, sub-section six,” I whispered, while she was there.

  Hopefully, with no one right next to us, and Trev dutifully pointing the security cameras elsewhere, no one would notice.

  I let Sol drag me down the hall, while my brain wandered for a moment to how strange it was that Gwen always showed up just in time to cast a major illusion spell for us before any major mission. I mean, seriously, she almost never missed the chance. This was the first time I’d thought of it, and I would bet money that if I tried to PLAN on Gwen showing up at the last minute to cast such a spell it would never work out, but still, it was weird how consistent she was.

  I am the Goddess of fortune, my dear.

  Odd. That had sounded like Gwen’s voice, but I’d never had Gwen’s voice in my head before.

  I hear you whenever you think of me, Vic, but I rarely answer. You seem unusually troubled, though, so I thought I would check in.

  Strange that she thought I was more troubled than usual. I mean, I was just thinking about her consistently random timing for saving our butts, she was a literal deus ex machina, and that was kind of funny when you thought about it.

  You are so desperately trying not to think about what you are about to do, that I can sense your distress even from here.

  Well, I think I’m doing a pretty good job coping, all things considered, I thought reproachfully.

  Yes. You are admirably placing one foot in front of the other and marching directly into the lion’s den. It is to be respected. I should warn you, though, I’m rather busy at the moment. There are many threads being pulled right now. I can’t promise to be there if you need me. I strongly recommend solving this one yourself, if at all possible.

  There was something more important than Rebecca Dryer possibly destroying the entire universe by injecting an incredibly powerful weredragon with technetium right now? Hot damn. The shit must really be about to hit the fan on a global level.

  You have no idea, dear. There’s a reason that I have one of my best agents assigned to this mission in my place.

  Oh? Who did you send?

  I could feel relief wash over me as the meaning of Gwen’s words sank in. Someone with Gwen’s powers would be here. Someone Gwen trusted. Gwen didn’t always get the little things right, like personal space, or freedom of choice, but she had yet to screw up any of the big things, like letting us die. I sensed some of the tension in my shoulders release for a moment, until Gwen’s voice in my mind said, You, Vic. I sent you.

  Me? What? How am I possibly your best agent? I just started. I have no idea what I’m doing, I—

  Have managed to keep everyone you love from dying on multiple occasions. I have complete faith in you. Must go, there’s a Russian leader that is in desperate need of being knocked off his horse.

  Gwen?

  Hello?

  Did you seriously just ditch me to knock Putin on his ass?

  Gwen didn’t reply, and I wondered if she was just deflecting my curiosity with a weird story, or if it was actually somehow important to maintaining the fabric of the universe that she knock Russian dictators on their butts. Honestly, with Gwen it was impossible to know. One thing was clear—I was on my own.

  I took a deep breath as Sol shoved me into an elevator, mashed in a security code I recited to her via Trev’s voice in my mind, and then hit the button for the bottom.

  Gwen believed in me. That had to count for something. Besides, our plan wasn’t completely crazy. The things that could go wrong were fairly unlikely at this point, and even if things went wrong, the chances that events would lead to Siara getting injected with technetium here inside the MOME facility were pretty low. The people guarding her would have to be incredibly stupid for that to happen.

  “NO, NO, NO. Put. That. Down. You won’t just kill her, you’ll kill all of us, along with everyone in this whole city, and possibly the entire earth. Seriously. Stop freaking out. Just put the needle down.” I was doing my best not to shout, but I was going to fail any second now.

  “You’re lying! MOME wouldn’t risk that! Why would they give us these suits if that were true? This suit wouldn’t protect us against what you’re describing. They wouldn’t protect us at all.”

  I decided that shouting, “No shit, Sherlock! They don’t care about you, and killing you is just part of their fucking evil scheme,” wasn’t going to help defuse the situation. Instead, I opted for putting my hands at my sides, palms out, and trying to use my calmest voice possible. I tried to look the shaky young man in the eyes, even through the thin rubber hazmat suit that enveloped him, but it was hard to see him behind the flickering light that reflected off the clear part covering his face.

  “It’s possible that MOME have decided to sacrifice a few for the sake of the many,” I hedged, hoping that the dude an inch away from killing us all wasn’t completely devoid of reason. “But let’s say I’m wrong. Let’s say all it’s going to do is kill the woman you have your arm around. Does she really deserve to die right now? Is that really your call? Do you really think your bosses want her injected right here without any witnesses? Didn’t they order for her to be taken up for a public execution?”

  Dude just blinked at me for a full ten seconds before shuffling backwards again, as we both heard the shouts and scuffling of Sol fighting the other guards farther up the passage. With Trev and Rhelia’s help, we’d managed to avoid every single MOME employee on the way down here. Then, not long after we’d descended past eggshell painted walls, linoleum floors, and cheap fluorescent lights into coarse stone everything and torch sconces, we’d basically smacked face first into Siara’s entourage, which had appeared to be in the process of taking her to the surface in order to inject her somewhere more public than the dungeon below a secret facility. We must have come upon them right after they’d grabbed her, because I could see the metal bars that marked the very same dungeon I’d been kept in during my “stay” here, just behind the guy who had a needle three centimeters from Siara’s neck.

  Trev had warned us that they were coming up, but not with enough time to hide before they reached us. Regardless, we didn’t want them making it out of here. It seemed unlikely that their reinforcements would come from inside the dungeon, and as long as we were still inside these stone walls, no one could use their dark matter. Sol and I had both been trained to fight without magic, but past experience suggested most MOME officers weren’t.

  So, pressing what little advantage we had, Sol had engaged the guards at the front of the line and I had sprinted to the back to try to get Siara away from the two MOME agents in hazmat suits who were dragging her shackled form through the dark stone halls. If I hadn’t known for a fact that Rhelia wasn’t in Phoenix I would have had a brief panic attack thinking that she had somehow been captured. I almost did anyway, until I remembered that Siara was a dead ringer for her granddaughter, down to the iridescence of her ebon skin. The only difference between them that I could see was that Siara’s eyes were green instead of yellow. I tried to calm my breathing even as I ran down the tunnel. There were no other prisoners in sight, so I had to assume that Emil wasn’t a part of today’s entertainment.

  I had a fair bit of momentum going when I skidded to a stop in front of Siara’s guards, so I’d used that to turn and kick
the first guard in the head hard enough that he bounced off the wall and slumped to the ground before he’d even really known what was going on. The second guy had pulled Siara in front of him like a hostage and put the needle uncomfortably close to her neck.

  Now, as I watched this panicky minion who apparently had never bothered to question his evil overlords before, the needle’s point dipped dangerously close to Siara’s skin. I wondered if he’d been the one assigned to inject her with technetium once they reached the surface, or if they’d all been equipped with syringes just in case things went south. The latter thought was truly terrifying, but I couldn’t imagine how else this trembling cowpie of a human being could possibly have reached the conclusion that he ought to inject technetium into a weredragon inside of his own employer’s U.S. headquarters.

  My palms were already sweating from resisting the urge to launch myself at this rubber-wrapped asshat, but I dug my nails into my palms as I did my best not to raise my arms and shout threatening things at him as well. One false sway of the wrist and that needle would be in her neck. From there, all it would take would be—

  Oh. Fuck.

  In the blink of an eye, all my worst nightmares were realized. That needle entering the skin of one of the most powerful weredragons in the world was going to erase everything. Everything. Everyone I loved most in the world was right here in this building, and injecting Siara with a dose of technetium would likely destroy the entirety of the Phoenix metro area. Almost five million people gone in the blink of an eye, along with maybe the entire earth, but especially my brother and my two best friends. I didn’t have time to process what I was doing. Didn’t really have time to think anything, but the options were pretty simple: Option 1: Do nothing and let everyone I care about, including myself, die horribly, along with many people I didn’t even know. Option 2: Launch myself at the asshat holding the needle and the woman he was trying to kill, reach for whatever magic I could, and hope it made things better. I didn’t really see how it could make anything worse.

  I heard multiple people yelling as I leapt the short distance between me and my target, but I couldn’t really process anything that was being said. My eyes were focused on Siara’s pupils, which told me all that I needed to know, and I saw them dilate with the shock of the needle puncturing her skin, and perhaps the feeling of technetium entering her veins. I barely noticed as hazmat moron pushed himself away from her, as if that would somehow save him. As if the flimsy rubber that covered him could serve as any kind of protection from what he’d just done. I certainly didn’t process any of the shouts from around me. I did my best to ignore Trev’s mental cry of my name, as I threw myself on top of Siara and reached with everything in me for what I hoped would be there.

  Just barely there. Just the edge of time. A fold in the fabric of space. I pulled.

  Blackness took over.

  WHEN I OPENED my eyes, lying on my back in the sands of a narrow red canyon, looking up at a small stretch of orange sky, I almost cried with relief. Instead, my body did one weirder and I started laughing hysterically. I guess thinking you were about to die, along with everyone you love, and then not, can do that to you.

  “How are we alive?” Siara asked.

  I almost countered that I wasn’t entirely sure that we were, but then I rose up to my elbows and took in just how rough she looked—raven hair a curled, matted mess, skin a shade of charcoal rather than the deep ebony it normally was, reptilian irises still dilated and sclera red from… well, from the shit we were still going through, I supposed.

  “How do you feel?” I asked. When Siara simply stared at me, I realized that maybe she really needed an answer to her question before she could answer mine. “I’m not 100% positive, but my understanding is that there is something about this canyon that completely suppresses dark matter. Not just mostly, like the dungeon at MOME, but completely.”

  “But why would that stop the Technetium from blowing me up?”

  “Well, keep in mind I didn’t really plan this, I just dove at you and hoped like hell my subconscious brain knew what it was doing. But now that we’re here and I can think about it, my best guess is that the Technetium can’t react with the dark matter because it’s being so suppressed it might as well not be in your blood stream.”

  “So… I’m trapped here?”

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe. Sure beats dying and taking the whole world down with you though, doesn’t it?” I said, collapsing to the floor of the canyon again as I realized just how fucking lucky I’d been.

  I giggled again.

  “You find this funny?” Siara asked, allowing her own legs to give out and joining me on the sandy canyon floor.

  I shook my head as the giggles turned into raucous laughter once more.

  “Nope,” I said when I could manage enough air. “I just think my body and brain are freaking out about how close we came to dying just now.”

  Siara lay down and looked at the sky.

  “Why is the sky orange?” she asked.

  “No idea. That wasn’t part of my orientation. And before you ask, no, I have no clue why it smells like sulphur here either. Or why the sun is purple, not that you can see the sun right now. Also, we probably need to get on our feet as soon as possible because the floods here happen every few hours and we need to find somewhere for you to not drown while you’re here.”

  I got up and started brushing the sand off of my legs.

  Siara remained lying down.

  “Now isn’t a great time for a nap, Siara,” I said.

  “Perhaps I should simply remain here and let the waters take me,” she replied.

  I sighed.

  “Right. I guess living in this canyon for the remainder of what is likely to be a few more centuries of life probably doesn’t appeal much. I get that.”

  “Do you, child? Do you understand the eternity that faces most of dragon-kind? Rhelia and my family are not just weredragons, we have ancestors who are pure dragons as well. That is why we look as we do, and not as you do. We are likely to live for millennia, if nothing brings us down before then.”

  I forced my mouth closed and tried to breathe through my nose.

  “Ok. Did not know that, but it explains a lot, thanks. However, it doesn’t change what I was about to say.”

  “Which was?”

  “Which was that if you let the flash floods carry you to the bottom of the canyon, I have it on good authority that MOME has a net or something that catches people and zaps them back to the facility we just left.”

  “Which means that I would be returned to a place where my dark matter would once more engage with the Technetium in my blood?”

  “Yep. And then you’re right back to killing everyone in Phoenix and possibly the world.”

  Siara sighed and then stood up and punched the canyon wall. The resounding crack, and the shudder that reverberated the canyon, was even more startling than the revelation of the lifespan of dragon kind. I looked up to see if we were about to be killed by rock fall, but luckily, aside from the cracks that radiated away from the impact point of Siara’s fist, everything looked stable.

  “What are the chances that being dead would prevent the Technetium from having its desired effect?” she asked.

  I wondered when I had suddenly become an expert on Technetium and its reactions with dark matter, or why Siara thought I knew more about it than she did, but then I remembered Trev talking about how some of the oldest magical beings had the hardest time coming to terms with the science behind dark matter manipulation. For them, the powers they wielded had always been innate and natural. You could do what you could do, and you couldn’t do what you couldn’t do, and you didn’t question the gifts you’d been given or lacked. You simply lived your life breathing magic and sweating spells, and didn’t question how any of it all fit together. According to him, anyway. I wasn’t sure that Siara was particularly tied to tradition, or even averse to knowing how dark matter worked. Still, it made s
ense that after however many centuries, or millennia she might have already lived with magic just working without having to worry about the how and why, she might want help sorting out how these new ideas worked, and more importantly, what they meant right now.

  “I mean, again, I’m just guessing here, but I would think that the moment your blood, laced with Technetium, returned to a place where the dark matter was no longer suppressed, the two would mix and react, annihilating… everything within a very large radius, possibly taking the whole universe down with it, especially considering how close this seam would be when you exploded.”

  “You don’t have to preface everything you say with the fact that you are just guessing. I have internalized the fact that you are not an expert in this particular subject, but you are the closest that I have to an expert at the moment.”

  I nodded and sighed. That was still a lot of pressure, but at least Siara acknowledged that I was mostly talking out of my ass.

  “Look, I don’t know what the long term solution is, but there must be something other than, ‘Live here in this canyon for the rest of your very long existence.’ We just have to figure out what that is. In the meantime, we need to find you a place that won’t let you get swept away with the next flood.”

  “Where did you go when you escaped?”

  “I climbed to the top of the canyon after removing my manacles and shit,” which made me do a double take when I looked at Siara. “Where are your manacles, by the way?” I asked.

  She looked at her wrists and ankles and then tilted her head to one side.

  “No idea. They have not been here since we arrived. Though they were certainly keeping me from destroying that dimwitted MOME agent in the dungeons.”

  “Weird.”

  “How did you arrive here the first time?” Siara asked.