“Don’t,” I said, sitting up and turning towards the corner of the room, where I found Sol still holding the upright against her with one arm, her other hand loosely holding the bow at her side.
“Sorry,” she said. “After you slept through all the shouting, I didn’t think this would wake you up.”
“Please don’t stop,” I said, before my brain could process the fact that Sol had mentioned shouting.
She started playing again before I could ask, and I didn’t stop her. The sound was entirely too pleasant, and watching her play turned out to be even more pleasant. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, since the wood stove was kicking out maximum heat, and the muscles of her arms as she fingered the strings and drew the bow across them was hypnotizing. Damn it. I was going to have to go jump in a snowbank or something. I stood up, suddenly conscious of how turned on I was, and decided it might be a good idea to let my cat out.
Saying nothing, because Sorry, Sol, I can’t stay and watch you play because it’s making me want to tear all of your clothes off and I feel that would be disrespectful of both you and the music wasn’t high on my list of things to say to other humans (if I didn't already have permission to tear the clothes off of them periodically), I walked out the small wooden door that led to mountainside beyond and thought about being a snow leopard until it went from memory to reality.
Running over and around snow, rocks, trees, and the occasional cliff was exhilarating and refreshing in a way that nothing else was. I felt free, and truly myself as I never did as a human. It was as though all of the backpacking, trail running, and rock climbing I had ever done had all been a pathetic attempt to achieve the true freedom of being a giant, mountain-climbing cat. I may have let out a few celebratory yowls. Perhaps a feline barbaric yawp.
I didn’t run for very long. Just enough to take care of some basic needs out of sight of the house and raise my respiratory rate a bit. I could cover so much ground in so little time in this form that I probably went for what my human form would have found to be a three hour hike, but I ran it in a handful of minutes. The terrain here was a bit gentler than a snow leopard was designed for and, as I headed back to the house, I suddenly had a very strong desire to travel to the Himalayas.
Ha! That was probably gonna have to wait.
I shifted back to my human form as I neared the tiny log cabin that was nestled on what was probably the only remotely level bit of mountainside for miles. I took a moment to once again appreciate that something about Gwen’s transfer of power made it so that I was always appropriately clothed in my human form. I was now wearing a pair of fleece lined jeans over long underwear and a soft cashmere sweater with a down vest over it. It wasn’t warm enough to linger on the mountainside for long, but it was perfect for the wood stove heated cabin, and adding a parka and some snow pants would make it a solid base for the Andes in springtime. I had no idea where the clothes had come from, but whoever had dressed me, I couldn’t fault their taste.
Ignoring Edik’s frozen form, doing my best not to look at his slightly anguished eyes, and feeling rather proud that I had managed to resist the urge to pee on him so far, I walked inside.
“Sorry,” I said to Sol, as I walked to the wood stove and moved the still-full kettle onto one of the burners there. She still had her head bent over the bass. “Had to pee,” I added.
She smiled and looked up from the bass, and when her yellow eyes caught mine my heart almost stopped.
“No worries, Gatita. You’d been asleep for a while.”
Which reminded me of her earlier statement and distracted me from the heat spreading through my body simply from having locked eyes with her. What the hell was up with that? “You said I slept through some shouting?”
She nodded and, finishing the last bar of whatever melody she was playing, sheathed her bow in its holster on the side of the instrument and leaned the massive thing against the wall in the corner after collapsing the foot.
“Albert and Trevor were getting into it over something. Not sure what, though. I think it had to do with your parents.”
Well, that was interesting.
“You didn’t hear any details?” I asked. That seemed weird, if they had been shouting.
“I heard everything, but I couldn’t understand most of it. Not sure what language it was, but it wasn’t English or Spanish.”
“Huh. Weird. Not sure what other language Trev speaks aside from Tibetan, but why would Albert speak Tibetan?”
“Hmmm… could have been Tibetan. I didn’t think of that, but I should have, considering the file I was given on you before my assignment. I knew your mom’s family was from Tibet. Anyway, it all started after they looked through that file you grabbed at MOME.”
“Which is why you assume it was about my parents,” I muttered, wondering what that file said. I hadn’t had a chance to look at it since stealing it out of the office in MOME, due to subsequently getting shoved into a pitch black dungeon, then participating in a daring escape, then getting kidnapped, then escaping again, and then almost beating a vampire to death and collapsing in a pseudo-coma… it had been a busy two days.
Seemingly reading my thoughts, Sol picked up one of the brightly colored cushions on the couch nearest where she had been playing, then produced a manila folder from underneath it.
“Here,” she said, handing it to me. “Thought you’d want to see it as soon as you could. Maybe figure out what the hell they were on about before they come back.”
“Where did they go, anyway?”
“Not sure. I kicked them out when they were being too damned loud and I thought they might wake you up. Seamus went off to water some trees not long before you woke up. The other two haven’t been gone an hour yet.”
I nodded absently at her answer as I stared at the manila folder in front of me, hesitating to actually open it. Would it carry any answers about my parents’ disappearance? Would it just confirm my newly budding suspicion that my parents were people I didn’t really know?
I think that was my biggest fear, really. I’d already been shocked as hell to find out that I was a snow leopard, and that my parents were a part of the world in which that was a normal thing to be… and yet, they had never told me any of it. As cool as it was to find out you can turn into a giant, badass feline, I did feel marginally betrayed on that front… and I couldn’t help but wonder if this folder would tell me a hundred more ways in which my parents weren’t the people I'd always thought they were. Was that why Trevor and Albert had been yelling?
Oh well, sitting here staring at the damned thing wasn’t going to get me anywhere, and wondering was worse than knowing one way or the other, that was for damned sure. So, I took a deep breath and flicked open the folder.
It took me a moment to adjust to the layout of the forms, as well as the fact that everything was in Spanish, but soon enough I was skimming the file efficiently enough to catch things that stood out. Probably the first thing that caught my eye was the fact that my last name was apparently NOT Marmot.
Ok. That really shouldn’t have been too surprising considering what I now knew about my parents and their attempts to hide me from MOME, but… damn it. Was anything I "knew" about my life the truth? Ok. Fine. So, apparently my mom’s last name was Milarepa… that was odd, that was a dude my mom used to tell stories about all the time when I was a kid but… ok… and now I was suddenly remembering a grandmother I’d completely forgotten about…. I could feel another headache coming on, and I wondered how much of my life had been erased by my parents’ attempts to protect me.
Dad’s last name had been McMarten. Boring. Still, according to our file here, my real last name was McMarten Milarepa. Well, bonus points to Mom for keeping her name, but that was a hell of a mouthful.
“I think I’ll keep Marmot,” I muttered, drawing a slight chuckle from the kitchen, where Sol had taken up the tea-making efforts I had abandoned after she’d distracted me with this manila bundle of angst.
No
t liking the pressure that was building up beneath my temples, I shifted quickly to snow leopard and then back to human. It worked, much as it had when I’d first found out about Trev. I came back to my human form with a clearer mind and no pain.
Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the whole new last name thing, not to mention vivid images of a shriveled, tiny woman with white hair and fierce, glowing eyes, I decided to refocus my efforts on the rest of the file. The next gut punch was less personal, but still pretty sharp, and explained, in my mind, why Trev and Albert had been shouting.
“Well, shit,” I muttered.
“What’d you find?” Sol asked.
“Albert used to work for MOME,” I said.
“What? Why was that in your parent’s file?”
“Because he was their instructor.”
“Instructor for what?” she asked.
Before I could reply with the "fucked if I know" that rested on my tongue, we heard shouts just outside the door to the cabin.
We both rushed towards the door, but it burst open before we got there. Seamus stood outside, looking out of breath and wide-eyed.
“The fucking vampire is loose,” he said, before collapsing to the floor.
HAVING QUICKLY DETERMINED that Seamus’ maladies were likely altitude-based rather than injury-based, I left him to Sol’s ministrations, rushing out through the door to discover Edik running faster than my eyes could easily track between the low trees and boulders that surrounded the cabin, dodging the spells that Albert was firing at him, and all the while shouting his innocence.
“I’m just searching for my daughter!” he cried, diving behind a large rock as yet another burst of… something nasty looking… shot from Albert’s extended hands.
“Yes, yes. So you’ve said,” Albert replied calmly, as though they were having a peaceful conversation in which Albert wasn’t trying to kill him. “But we really can’t have you running off to tell MOME where we are, can we? If you would just hold still. I’m only trying to restrain you.”
Huh. Whatever Albert was flinging at Edik looked like it was meant to do more than restrain, but hell, what did I know? Maybe the fact that it obliterated rock didn’t mean it would obliterate vampire… diamond skulls, and all that.
“MOME doesn’t have Renata, so I don’t have the slightest interest in helping them! You all know where she is! You must!”
He was forced to break in his pleading to dive behind yet another boulder, with Albert’s spell missing him by mere inches.
I couldn’t help but think that Albert was one to talk when it came to snitching us out to MOME, but as I had absolutely zero love for Edik, I didn’t mention it. Trev sat on a rock nearby, seeming completely unconcerned with the proceedings.
Did you find out what Albert was teaching our parents? I asked, since Albert seemed to have Edik distracted. I was more concerned with the possible threat that Albert posed than whatever bullshit Edik was spewing this time.
Trev raised an eyebrow in an expression visible even from twenty feet away.
You know about that? he asked.
I was just reading their file before Lord Sparkle Fang started stirring up trouble.
Albert was training them much in the same way that MOME was training me these past few years. His insistence that it wasn’t for nefarious purposes was what started the shouting match. Sorry if we woke you.
Does Albert speak Tibetan? I asked.
Yes. Which isn’t reassuring.
Why not?
Because it’s a bit of a coincidence isn’t it? That he speaks Tibetan when almost no one does. It’s not exactly a useful world language.
Does it have any magical uses? I asked.
Trev’s face turned carefully neutral, which worried me.
It might, he said. And I wasn’t sure if his hesitation was because he thought it unlikely, or because he knew more than he was willing to share.
Pretty sure I don’t like you hiding shit from me, I thought to Trevor just as I stepped towards where Albert was slowly blasting away at the last boulder that Edik had disappeared behind.
“Is that not a waste of your energy?” I asked, looking between him and the large chunks of boulder that were cascading to the ground, even as Edik whimpered audibly on the other side.
“That depends on your definition of waste,” Albert said, raising one side of his mouth in a decidedly non-cordial smirk. “Is it likely to help us capture him? No. Is it incredibly satisfying after years of putting up with his horse shite?”
He turned and continued to fire wave after wave of… whatever it was at the boulder and Edik.
It may make me a bad person, but I laughed. Edik really was an asshat, and after having dealt with him for less than a week I couldn’t blame Albert for wanting to take potshots at him. I can’t imagine how I would feel if I’d known him for years.
“Edik,” I shouted, over the sounds of spells slamming into rock and sending bits crumbling to the ground. “If you’d like Albert to give up on this whole blowing you to tiny bits thing, you could just agree to be restrained and answer a few questions.”
“How do I know you won’t just try to kill me as soon as you have me restrained?” he shouted from behind the boulder, without showing himself.
“Maybe because we have better things to do with our time?” I suggested.
Albert scoffed. “I don’t,” he muttered.
“Ok, fine. Maybe because you were frozen out here for a day already and no one killed you yet.”
“How do I know you won’t kill me as soon as you have whatever information you want?”
I looked to Albert, and then to Trev.
“I guess you don’t,” I replied after a while. “But you know that Albert’s perfectly willing to kill you if you do anything that makes him think you’re not cooperating, so why not give cooperating a try and see if it makes him feel a bit less homicidal, or vampicidal, or whatever?”
Hmm… this whole fantasy world within my normal world was going to need a vocabulary adjustment.
“Is there a Latin root for vampire?” I muttered, to no one in particular, while Edik was silent on the other side of the rock.
“Fine. I’ll talk.”
Edik stepped out from behind the boulder, but before he’d even gotten a full step away from it Albert blasted him with a spell that sent him careening into the granite behind him.
“Oh. Terribly sorry. Must have slipped!” Albert almost sang, stepping forward to restrain a nearly unconscious Edik.
I couldn’t decide if I wanted to laugh, or if I felt bad for Edik. If he’d been someone who hadn’t just spent the past few nights terrorizing me in my own home, I would certainly have leaned towards the latter, but as it was…
“Oops,” I said. “Well, Edik, you can hope that Albert has had his fun for the afternoon. In the meantime, we need to know what in the seven hells you’re doing here.”
As I spoke, Edik’s form became wrapped in some creepy tendril things that must have been under Albert’s control, because they certainly didn’t seem to be making any effort to be gentle with their captive. Edik still looked disturbingly handsome, despite being covered in dirt and flecks of granite. I kinda hated how he remained so aesthetically pleasing despite being such a complete and utter douchetart.
“I already told you. I am searching for my daughter,” Edik grunted, as the vine-like things that held him tightened their grip unnecessarily.
“Right. And why on earth do you think we know where she is?” I asked.
“Because she disappeared from MOME on the day that you and your friends destroyed the place. You must know where everyone went!”
Huh… I turned to look at Trevor, who was still perched on a boulder a few meters behind us. It had been his plan, his friends, his nemesis. His escape route…
“I might have some idea where most of the younger MOME detainees were headed, but I have no idea if your daughter is among them, or whether she’ll want to see you, if she is.”
I smiled. I was glad that was out in the open. It was difficult to imagine anyone being happy to see Edik, even his own daughter. Especially his own daughter, if what the mysterious B had said about him the other day had been true. It seemed as though B and Renata had gone through quite a bit of trouble to get away from Edik in the first place, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about helping him find her again. Maybe he was an abusive piece of trash. No, scratch that, he most definitely was an abusive piece of trash. The question was whether or not he was an abusive piece of trash with her.
“I’m her father,” Edik pleaded.
“I don’t care if you created her single-handedly from a piece of clay,” I replied. “If she doesn’t want to see you, that’s it. We will make damned sure that she isn’t subjected to your presence.”
“But the law—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what the law says, Edik. MOME, human, whatever. No law that forces children into the presence of their abusers gets any support from me.”
“I would never hurt her.” Edik’s tone was the most sincere I’d ever heard from him, but that didn’t change the fact that someone who thought that personal boundaries didn’t matter, just because he liked someone, probably didn’t have a very healthy definition of "hurt."
“There’s more than one way to hurt someone, Edik. If she doesn’t want to see you, she won’t see you. Period. If you can’t accept that, then we aren’t taking you anywhere near her.”
Edik nodded, though the way the blood vessels in his neck were bulging didn’t leave me feeling very confident about his willingness to comply. Whatever. I could flash Renata halfway across the world in the blink of an eye if I needed to.
“Whadya, think Trev? Should we take Mr. Sparkle Fang with us?”
Trev shrugged.
“I’d rather not, but… I suppose we probably shouldn’t abandon him here in the wilderness, especially with MOME HQ only a few hours' hike away…”
I thought about that for a good minute before agreeing.
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 17
