“Ms. Marmot! Do you wish to visit the principals’ office again?”
“Actually, yes. I have a number of questions for him.” I startled even myself with that one.
It was small consolation that the new kid at the table in front of me seemed to find my little display amusing, as I watched Ms. Rebuke’s face take on a deep shade of vermillion. While my brain tried to regain control of my tongue, I drowsily wondered what she would do next. Since I’d just asked to be sent to the principal’s office, the threat of sending me there lost much of its weight. On the other hand, allowing me to remain in the classroom would undermine her authority.
I briefly regretted having challenged the woman’s authority, until I remembered that I’d never actually done anything to set her off except answer her questions on the first day of class, when she had seemed to hate me instantly for no reason. I wasn’t proud of undermining her authority in her own classroom, but I was happy to demonstrate to her that it wasn’t a good idea to go around being horrible to people for no reason.
“GO. TO. MR. BUMBLEBEE’S. OFFICE. IMMEDIATELY!”
Her face was so red by the time she spoke that I was surprised not to see steam exuding from her ears like a Warner Bros cartoon. I stood up and shouldered my backpack.
Just as I reached the front of the room and turned towards the door, I heard a voice mutter, “Incidi!” and felt something sting my shoulder. I turned to find the new kid pinning Ms. Rebuke’s arms to her sides and… snarling?
I inspected my shoulder, but found nothing wrong with it. The young woman, who looked like a younger version of Zoe from Firefly, left Rebuke where she was and came to usher me out the door and take a look at my shoulder.
“Looks like she missed,” she said, once we were on the other side of the classroom door.
“Um… I felt something hit my shoulder, but… well, I feel fine otherwise.” I was struggling to string a sentence together. This girl was gorgeous, and everywhere she touched me felt like my skin was on fire. I’d never found a woman attractive before, but my body didn’t seem to give a damn about that small detail.
“So she did hit you? Why aren’t you cut, then?”
“I’m not sure. What did she throw at me?” I asked.
The young woman’s eyebrows raised in confusion. For a moment, she seemed as though she were about to reply, but then she looked around the hallway and shook her head.
“Let’s just say the fact that it didn’t cut you is… interesting,” was all she said, in the end.
I nodded, even though I had no idea what I was agreeing with.
“Well, I’d better get to Mr. Bumblebee’s office, I suppose.” I may have started unexpectedly giving lip to teachers, but I wasn’t about to start ignoring direct orders to go see the principal.
The Zoe look-alike tilted her head as though she expected me to do precisely that.
“You really respect her authority?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“I need to talk to him, anyway.”
It was true. I had been meaning to talk to him sometime today about what I could do to keep Edik away from me, even if the police weren’t going to cooperate. Just because either I, or the world, was going insane didn’t mean I had to put up with Edik’s bullshit.
I turned again and headed down the hall, not sure what had just happened or why it seemed so important. Not to mention why I was mesmerized by the eyes of a woman I’d just met.
“HEY! WAIT!” CAME the voice of the woman whose hands made my skin tingle.
“What?” I asked, turning slightly as I kept walking towards Albert’s office.
“We need to talk,” she said, her strides keeping pace with mine, even though she was a good three inches shorter than I was. Or would have been, if her black, combat-style boots hadn’t had a two-inch heel.
“About what?” I asked, trying to focus on the hallway walls instead of on the warmth creeping up my skin as she drew closer.
“We shouldn’t talk about it here,” she said, grabbing my wrist.
The surge of warmth that spread up my arm and shot straight to my core was enough to stop me in my tracks. I swallowed, staring at where her hand touched my wrist, expecting to see… something that explained the reaction I was feeling, but it was just her skin touching mine.
“That’s… weird,” she said, clearing her throat and dropping my wrist.
“What exactly—”
Before I could ask any of the five million questions that jumped into my head, a familiar voice interrupted me.
“Vic, hey! I got to English late and heard you were sent to Bumblebee’s office again. Need company?”
Seamus was a surprisingly welcome sight. I wouldn’t have thought that seeing someone who had only recently revealed to me that he was a werewolf would make me feel less anxious, but I had to admit that, after the chaos of finding Edik waiting for me in first period physics and then being attacked by a teacher not five minutes into second period… Seamus’ friendly, open expression made a few of the knots in my neck and shoulders relax.
“Go away, pup,” the new girl snarled. “I have something important to discuss with her.”
“The fuck?” I asked, my brain unable to keep my tongue from spewing forth whatever it conjured. “Why are you talking to him that way?”
“I don’t play with dogs,” she replied, as if that somehow explained things.
“I have no idea what you mean, but Seamus is my friend and he’s walking me to the principal’s office, so if you ‘don’t play with dogs’ I guess that means you can take a long walk off a short pier.”
I grabbed Seamus’ arm, did my best to ignore the heat that coursed through me when I touched his skin, and dragged us both in the direction of the principal’s office.
What the fuck is with me today? Has sleep deprivation made me the horniest person on the planet? It’s like I can’t touch people without wanting to jump their bones.
Seamus looked smug enough that I almost turned back to talk to the new kid. If he was getting possessive, then this friendship was going to be over before it even started. Ugh. I was probably reading too much into it. My brain was still fried from last night. There was too much bullshit going on. It wasn’t even lunch time yet, and I was sooo done with this day.
Just as I had that thought, the new kid caught up to us and grabbed my arm again, but this time I ignored the fireworks inside me and kept trucking.
“Wait! Vic, stop walking! I need to talk to you about your brother.”
Well, fuck. That did it. I shook free of her arm, let go of Seamus’ elbow, turned towards the nearest exit, and ran.
I DON’T HAVE a brother. I don’t have a brother. I don’t have a brother.
Of course, you’d think, if I really didn’t have a brother, that having said non-existent brother mentioned wouldn’t be giving me a fucking panic attack. So, then, you’d wonder why I was sprinting—not walking, not running, SPRINTING, as fast as my limbs could propel me— out the nearest exit and into the street.
I stopped when I felt sunlight on my skin, inhaling a breath of clear Northern Arizona air while I took a moment to try to figure out why some new girl bringing up a brother I didn’t have made me want to run away in a blind panic.
And then I instantly forgot about that, because a wolf and a panther came slamming out of the door I’d just sprinted through and before I could tell my brain not to panic, that the wolf was probably just Seamus, I was sprinting again, as fast I could, towards home.
Part of my brain was taking this moment to remind me that running away from predators was a terrible idea, especially ones that had decent land speed, but it was too late. My limbs were already pumping, my blood was filled with adrenaline, and I was headed flat-out for home.
It belatedly occurred to me that leading wild animals to my house might not be the best idea, and I ducked down a side street lined with tiny wooden houses and lawns in various stages of disarray, hoping to distract or lose them.<
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They must have slowed a bit, because I didn’t see them as I made yet another turn that would take me one more block out of my way before I beelined it back to my place.
By the time I reached my cul-de-sac there were no large predators in sight, and I had regained enough calm to convince myself that the wolf must have been Seamus, and thus it was unlikely that I was in any real danger. Still, try convincing your brain of that when you’re staring at over three hundred pounds of raging panther and wolf running you down.
I took a deep breath as I approached my house, trying to let its barely familiar teal wood paneling and cedar-shingled roof bring me some kind of calm. I willed the pines that surrounded the property to lend me some strength, and hoped, rather desperately, that I was done with crazy for the day. I didn’t even care that I was officially skipping more than half of the school day.
As I neared the front porch, I had almost convinced myself that I could go upstairs and rest for the remainder of the day, when a form appeared on my doorstep that made my blood run cold.
“My darling Victoria!”
“Fuck you, Eric,” I muttered, getting ready to fight.
IT WAS PROBABLY childish to take delight in calling someone by a name they hated, but if anyone deserved it, the sparkle-fanged douche-canoe standing on my top step did.
Edik wasted no time in violating my personal space.
“Darling Victoria,” he exclaimed again, reaching for me even as I settled into a fighting stance, “I’ve missed you since this mo—”
He didn’t get to finish, because the moment his hand reached my shoulder I peeled it off of me and turned with him so that his weight and my momentum acted to take his center of gravity. Then I leaned with him and dropped my own center of gravity so that he had no choice but to launch head over heels into the scrub oak that adorned my front stoop.
“Victoria, how—”
I never heard what he was going to ask then, because at that exact moment three hundred pounds of black feline fury slammed into him and started tearing him up.
I had been preparing my next round of defense, but the arrival of unexpected feline backup gave me pause. Would the panther attack me, too, if I joined in? Was it here to help me, or just happy to attack whatever looked tasty?
My hesitation dissipated when a familiar snarl came from near my elbow and Seamus-as-wolf launched himself into the panther-diamond-toothed-asshat-melee happening in my scrub oak.
The panther seemed to be doing its best to coordinate its attacks with Seamus’, although it was clear that Seamus didn’t have much experience fighting with help, or maybe even fighting at all, as he kept getting in the panther’s way.
That decided me, especially when Edik took a bite out of Seamus’ shoulder and he started bleeding solidly from a gaping wound.
The panther and wolf were both attacking low, so while Edik dealt with them, I went in high, planning to start a series of kicks to Edik’s head and shoulders, since he was preoccupied guarding his lower half and wouldn’t have a chance to grab my legs. It would have been a solid plan of attack too, if Seamus hadn’t lurched sideways and fallen into my planted leg, just after I’d shifted my weight and started the arc of a high kick. Too committed to the move to regain my balance, I toppled forward, and Edik didn’t hesitate to catch me and wrap one arm around my throat.
“I do not like your friendth, Victoria,” he mumbled into my ear, and I saw out of the corner of my eye that his clear, sparkly canines were entirely too long, and dripping somebody’s blood.
I was already struggling against his hold, trying to gain enough purchase to let me knee him in the groin, or administer another head-butt, but he was holding me tight against him with one insanely strong arm, while still fighting the dodging and weaving panther with the other.
Seamus seemed to be losing steam, but he managed to get in one last lunge, causing the panther to shift course at the last second, and me to scream as the panther’s teeth found the meat of my calf instead of whatever else they’d been aiming for.
And then the world went insane.
Suddenly my vision was reporting to my brain in a way that did not compute. Everything looked like I’d upped the frames per second rate on my video console, and the world was… not quite the right color. Moreover, my feet were no longer touching the ground.
I tried to scream, because Edik was now actually strangling me, since I couldn’t find purchase on the ground beneath me, and I was suspended in his arms by the neck, but all that came out was a strange growl.
The fuck?
Panicked, I scrambled against Edik with everything I had, and was amazed when I felt claws unsheathe and drag against flesh. Edik screamed in agony and jumped away, releasing me, even as I turned and pivoted mid-air so that I landed on…
…all four legs?
Seriously. What. The. Fuck?
I barely noticed that Edik was running screaming into the neighbor’s yard. I was too busy trying to figure out what in the seven hells had happened to me.
“Is your door locked?” a voice asked from nearby.
I turned, and saw the gorgeous new girl standing completely naked on my front step.
I tried to answer her, but a purr was all that escaped me.
Really, a purr? I mean, yeah, she was hot as hell, but I was just trying to say the door was open.
When that failed, I swayed my head up and down.
She stepped forward, turned the handle, and gestured inside.
“Come on, we shouldn’t let anyone see us like this if we can help it.”
Baffled by what the hell had just happened to my life, I followed a naked new girl and a limping Seamus-wolf into my house.
AS SOON AS the door closed behind us I looked from Seamus to the new girl and back again, hoping that my face—whatever it looked like now—conveyed the full weight of my "what the everlasting fuck?!" attitude.
Seamus shifted back to human form and I had to take a moment to regain my composure.
What the hell? Did I seriously just lick my paw?
I stared at it in bafflement, not sure how to process any of this. I had paws. Four of them. They were large, seriously large… they splayed wide when I walked, and they were white, with maybe a hint of grey and some light spotting.
Curiosity getting the better of me, I padded upstairs to my bedroom, pushed my way past the door, and swung around to stand in front of the full-length mirror that hung down the back of it.
I sat down, stunned.
I was a snow leopard.
A snow leopard.
A motherfucking SNOW LEOPARD!!!
This was awesome!!!
I ran down the stairs, taking them in leaps, and landed excitedly at the bottom.
“I’M A FUCKING SNOW LEOPARD!” I screamed.
And then I looked down.
“Damn it. I’m human again.”
Heat rose to my cheeks as I looked at Seamus and the new girl standing naked in my kitchen and realized that I, too, was bereft of clothing. I worked hard to tamp down the surge of attraction I felt for both of them. Chill out, body, now is REALLY not the time! I turned metaphorical tail and ran upstairs again. Halfway up the stairs I realized that my clothes were probably lying in a pile on my front step, but I was soooo not going back downstairs and outside butt naked to get them. I headed to my room instead.
When I came back down I was fully clothed, and I carried a baggy pair of sweats and a t-shirt for Seamus and an extra pair of jeans and a tank top for the new girl.
“You’re both welcome to stay naked if you’re… er… more comfortable that way, but… well, in case you’re not, I brought some clothes down.”
I tried not to blush while I handed the clothes out.
“I didn’t realize snow leopards were so shy,” the new girl said, taking the clothes but not looking like she was in any rush to put them on.
Seamus cleared his throat, and I was relieved to see he’d put the pants on immediately.
“She wasn’t raised in a were community,” he said, as if that explained everything.
I shrugged.
“Seriously, I have nothing against nudity, I just… I wasn’t comfortable, so I thought I’d offer you the same amenities. You’re welcome to stay as you are…. What’s your name, by the way?”
“I’m Sol,” she said, extending her hand to shake mine. “Short for Soledad.”
“Nice to meet you, Sol,” I said, returning the handshake. “This is Seamus.”
Seamus reached his hand out and Sol sneered at it briefly, then looked away.
“Wow,” I said, not liking where this was going. “That was shitty. What’s your problem?”
Apparently I was all out of diplomacy for the day.
Sol shrugged and walked out of the room holding the jeans and tank I’d brought her. She didn’t head for the door, so I didn’t think she was leaving. I assumed she had just decided to change out of sight. Why she bothered, when she’d just been standing naked in front of us for five minutes, was anyone’s guess.
“What the fuck was that, Seamus?” I asked, as soon as she was gone.
“I don’t think she likes me,” he said, glaring after Sol’s retreating form.
“Clearly not. That’s not what I mean. What the fuck just happened out there?!” I gestured wildly to the front door.
“Oh that,” he said. “Looks like you found your were form.”
“My what? What does that mean?”
“Well, as you so accurately shouted when you got down the stairs, you’re a motherfucking snow leopard.”
His smile was entirely too smug for my liking.
“What does that mean? How is that even possible? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!”
Of course that moment, the moment when I was basically falling into full-blown panic mode, was the moment that Sol came back from the bathroom.
“Gatita, don’t worry. Nothing is wrong, you’re just doing what you’re supposed to do. You’re a were, just like me, somewhat like your doggy pal here. You have an animal form that you can call on at will. Although, I will admit, it usually takes us a while longer to learn how to call and dismiss our animal selves so quickly. You seem particularly adept at it.”
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 6
