The Viper's Nest

by Tate James

  Grumbling under my breath about Austin not knowing sweet if it bit him on the ass, I dragged my heels into the den and found him sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of the fire, staring intently into Tyson’s feline eyes.

  “Hope we’re not interrupting?” I teased, and my words seemed to break whatever was going on between Mage and familiar because they both snapped their eyes to me simultaneously. The similarity ended there, though, as Austin rolled his emerald-green eyes and Tyson bounded toward me like he hadn’t seen me in weeks.

  “Oh, hey buddy,” I greeted him as his dinner plate–sized paws pushed me backward onto a couch, then he tried to climb his entire six-hundred-and-something-pound frame into my lap. “Come on, man,” I groaned, pushing him back to the floor firmly. “We’ve been over this. You’re not as small as you think you are.”

  Tyson looked up at me with a sad-as-hell look on his face, so I sighed and slid off the couch to sit on the floor beside him.

  “See, now we’re both on the floor. Happy?” I could hardly believe the one-sided conversations I had with that cat sometimes, but he genuinely did seem happier as he rolled on his back beside me, demanding a belly rub.

  As I obliged, I realised the twins were having a whispered debate on the other side of the room, which cut off abruptly when they noticed me staring.

  “Uh, something you want to share?” I prompted.

  Caleb looked to his brother, who just threw up his hands and muttered something about your fucking funeral.

  “I had an idea,” Cal informed me. Again.

  Giving him my very best “uh-huh, no shit, Sherlock” expression, or what I hoped was, I nodded. “So you already said, but go on...”

  “When you said just before about a blood spell to help you learn faster, and I said it didn’t work like that? Well, technically it could.” He looked so excited he was practically bouncing on his toes. “If Austin were to tattoo you with blood-ink, then you could—in theory—retain every lesson the first time it’s taught. I mean, it’d still mean Austin running through all the same stuff, but it’d be just once. Not, like... however many hundreds of times he is making you practice this stuff at the moment.”

  “Uh...” I glanced at Austin, who just wore the same vaguely annoyed look on his face. “Well, that sounds freaking amazing. Are you sure you’re up for that?”

  Caleb shrugged in a way that told me he wasn’t totally sure he was up for it, but I also sensed that my faith in his abilities would go a really long way in his confidence about magic.

  “Austin?” I asked, and he met my eyes for a long moment. We didn’t really need to exchange any more words than that, seeing as in a calm environment like this, our emotions were just right there on a silver platter for the other to examine.

  In that moment, he was worried and tense and annoyed? Maybe that he hadn’t thought of it? I wasn’t sure. Just because I could feel his moods didn’t mean I got any reasons behind them.

  Regardless, his main emotion was hope, and that was enough for me.

  “Let’s do it,” I agreed.

  Austin’s mouth turned down, but his overwhelming emotion was now concern, and concern I could handle. He was just being... protective. Or that’s what I was running with. Caleb, on the other hand, looked elated, and that in itself made the risks worthwhile.

  “I’ll grab my stuff,” Austin muttered, giving me a sharp look that clearly said I hope you know what you’re doing before leaving the room.

  “What are the risks in this?” I asked Caleb when we were alone once more, but he just shrugged.

  “Nothing really for you. If it doesn’t work, then you’ll just have another non-magic tattoo. Which, really isn’t the worst thing when it’s Austin’s work.” He paced in front of the fireplace, probably not even noticing he was doing it. For all his forced casualness, I could see the lines of tension in his face.

  “What about for you?” I prompted, not missing his phrasing that there was no risk for me.

  Caleb scrubbed a hand over his face, but it was Austin who replied for him, coming back into the den with his tattoo equipment in a small black case.

  “There’s no real risk for him either,” Aus informed me. “He’s just being a little bitch because it’s going to mean explaining more about his magic to you.”

  “Oh.” I frowned at Caleb and tried really hard not to be offended. “So... you don’t want to tell me more about it? That’s...” I trailed off, not really sure what the hell to say. Considering I shared everything with the guys these days and I was still stinging from the twins hiding their knowledge of magic from me... well, it sucked.

  “Yep,” Austin said under his breath as he unpacked his tools onto the coffee table. “I’d feel like that too. Even I’ve been open with you since Yoshi’s shop.”

  “Fuck off,” I chastised him. “Quit trying to interpret my feelings. We have an arrangement to ignore those, remember?”

  Actually on second thought, we had never discussed the arrangement. It was more... assumed.

  Austin gave me a funny look, and a small spike of amusement shocked through me. “Do we? I guess that explains some things then.”

  “Kitty Kat,” Caleb groaned, coming to perch on the edge of the couch and biting at his lip. “It’s not that I don’t trust you or anything. It’s just...”

  “It’s just what?” I pushed, trying not to sound defensive and hurt but probably failing miserably. “You don’t think I’ll understand? What happens when we bond, Cal? Isn’t this all information I should really have in advance?”

  Caleb stared back at me for a long moment, his mouth downturned and a deep furrow between his dark brows.

  “Moot point now, Princess,” Austin offered. “Come on, bro. I’m ready for you. Let’s get this spell done so we can accelerate these lessons. Ideally it’d be good if Christina can complete a few more bonds before we need to abandon this location.”

  Caleb nodded sharply and leaned forward to slide a blade out of an ankle sheath. He met my gaze briefly, then turned his down while he sliced a deep cut across the palm of his hand. Carefully, he then tipped his hand up and let the blood drip freely into each one of Austin’s open ink pots.

  As the blood hit the surfaces of each color, a flare of light glowed and dimmed on each one. I was so entranced watching the effect that Caleb’s blood was having on the inks that I didn’t notice the change in him until he was finished, withdrawing his bleeding hand from above the table, and curling his fist closed.

  “Cal,” I gasped, seeing exactly why he’d been so sure he’d need to explain things. No way in hell was I letting this one slide.

  “I know,” he growled in a husky voice, thick with emotion.

  “Give him a sec to get it under control,” Austin advised me quietly, placing a hand lightly on top of mine where it rested in Tyson’s neck fur.

  I didn’t dare blink. Instead, I watched with fascination while Caleb’s pupils slowly returned from reptilian slits to normal, circular, human pupils, and his elongated canine teeth shrank back up once more. Once the changes seemed to be reversed, he shut his eyes tightly for a moment and took a few long breaths before opening them again and looking at me.

  His gaze was so full of fear and self-loathing I could almost feel my heart breaking for him. He hated what he was, and I was the only one to blame for it. Well... me and Jonathan, seeing as he had orchestrated the car crash that had damn near killed Caleb and Wes.

  “Give me your hand,” I demanded in a harsh whisper, noticing that he still held it clenched tight. As far as I knew, Mages didn’t have the natural healing ability that the dragons did.

  Caleb did as I instructed, opening his palm out and letting me take it to heal the gash, then he wiped the excess blood off on a cloth his brother handed him.

  “Hit me,” Caleb said, eventually. “I’ll answer anything the NDA will allow me to.”

  Nodding slowly, I stared at him. Where did I even begin?

  “So... fangs, huh?
” Okay, so not the most intelligent question I’d ever phrased in my life. Austin snorted a laugh while I mentally cringed, and I smacked him in the arm. He was sitting on the floor beside me, finishing off whatever the fuck he was doing with the freshly blooded inks, so he was in easy reach for a swat.

  “Uh.” Caleb quirked a tiny smile. “Yeah. Fangs. I take it you saw the eye thing too?” I nodded, and he sighed. “Yeah. So, as a Blood Mage, I can create magic with blood. But it’s more than that. Blood is literally a source of power for me, so when I see or smell a lot of it, the uh, fangs happen.”

  Austin took my wrist in his hands and turned it over so that it was face up on the table in front of him. I spared him a quick glance, but was more interested in Caleb’s story. Besides, I actually did trust Austin not to tattoo a dick on me, so he could do whatever he wanted to get the spell done.

  “So, you’re a vampire?” I asked, feeling like that chick from those books. The one where the vampires sparkled in the sun, which, by the way, would be a pretty cool trick.

  Caleb gave me a tiny smile. “No. Not really. Sort of.”

  “Oh, that was as clear as mud.” I quirked an eyebrow at him as I felt the buzz of Austin’s needle on the inside of my wrist. “Care to elaborate?”

  “Blood Mages are technically where the legend of vampires came about. In the past there have been Mages who lost control of their desire for power and went a bit nuts. Publicly. Like Dracula or Vlad the Impaler, who were two separate guys by the way. Once they’d let their desires for power take over, they lost their minds and a whole bunch of people got slaughtered before they were taken out by the Ink Mage of the time.” Caleb ran a hand over his face once more, then wrinkled his nose. “Do you mind if I just go wash my hands quickly? I can still smell it...” I nodded, and he flashed me a quick smile before ducking out to the powder room.

  “Why haven’t you told me any of this?” I asked Austin in a quiet voice while he worked on my new tattoo.

  “Because it’s not my place to tell you. It’s his. Just because we’re twins doesn’t mean we’re not entitled to our own secrets.” His words were soft but chastising, and he was absolutely right. That was rude of me to expect he’d spill his brother’s secrets, but it had been a gut reaction. “Does it change how you feel for him?”

  I huffed a small snort. “You already know it doesn’t. I’m just getting really tired of everyone keeping secrets from me when you all demand I keep none from you. It’s a double standard, and it’s beginning to wear thin.”

  Austin paused, removing his needle from my skin as he met my gaze steadily. “I get it. We can’t change the past, but at least you know it won’t happen in the future. I couldn’t keep secrets from you now even if I wanted to.”

  “You couldn’t?” I repeated with a frown. That was news to me.

  “Honestly”—Austin clicked his tongue as he returned to his work—“you need to pay closer attention to your own magic.”

  Caleb reentered the room then, still wiping his damp hands off on a little pink hand towel before sitting back on the sofa and looking at me expectantly.

  “Okay, so what you’re saying is that vampires aren’t real?” I asked him, returning to our conversation and letting Austin’s odd statement slide. For now.

  Caleb shook his head slightly. “No, well, sort of. Vampires as you know them from stories were almost always a Blood Mage gone bad. There is a species of demon who feeds on blood and can turn humans, I think, but that’s about all I know. And that might have been made up for all I know. The source is known for spinning bullshit sometimes.”

  Austin chuckled, his warm breath tickling my skin as he worked. No prizes for guessing who the source of that one was. Apparently Austin was a bit of a shit stirrer as a kid.

  “So what else do you want to know?” Caleb prompted and I stared at the ceiling while I thought for a moment.

  “Are you getting better control of it now? I guess that makes sense now why Austin made you leave the room after Gray’s demise. But is this what you were so worried about?” I tilted my head as I looked back to him for an answer, and he blushed slightly.

  “Uh, yeah. Pretty much. All blood carries a certain level of magic from the owner of it... That room was bathed in your blood, and Kitty Kat, your blood is like nothing I have ever smelled before. It’s pure fucking magic, and you kind of get hurt a lot. So yeah, I’m getting better control with these lessons, but I’m still scared I’ll slip up and rip your throat out or something.” His voice was pitched low and drowning in raw emotion. I had no doubt that this was not something he’d discussed with any of the other guys... even Austin, if the surprise and concern I was picking up from him was any indication.

  “Well, then in that case, I am glad whatever you’re doing is helping But, I want to help too, if there is any way I can. Like... do you need to build an immunity to my blood in small doses or something like how Cleopatra did with snake venom?” I paused, realising what I’d just said and trying not to smile. Now is not the time for jokes, Kit.

  “Ha ha, funny.” Caleb rolled his eyes. “Because I’m the Viper? Ironic, isn’t it? That I hate snakes and yet...” He bared his teeth, comically indicating the fang situation, and I snorted a laugh.

  “Uh yeah, seeing as we are all sharing and shit”—I smiled apologetically—“I am pretty confident you will get a familiar. So... maybe work on the fear of snakes thing?”

  “I second that,” Austin contributed, wiping my wrist off with a cloth and placing his gun down on the table. “You’re all done, Princess. Shall we test it out?”

  My jaw dropped in surprise. “Just like that?” I raised my wrist to look at what he’d drawn for the spell. “No need for, like... chanting or runes or anything?”

  “Kitty Kat”—Caleb shook his head at me—“we’re the strongest Mages in existence. Chanting and runes on a little spell are for mages... lower case m. Don’t worry, you’ll learn.”

  I gave him a vague nod of acknowledgement but was still staring at my new tattoo, inspecting the delicate and intricate lines Austin had inked into my skin. It was a flower, a lily... I think. But it was mostly in shades of gray and black with the only color coming from the petals, which were shaded with a myriad of watercolor oranges and whites. Small spots of black crept out from the center, giving it an almost striped appearance.

  “Do you like it?” Austin asked quietly, and I jumped from my quiet focus on the design.

  “I love it,” I replied honestly, meeting his clear, green-eyed gaze. “What sort of flower is it?”

  “A lily,” he told me while he packed up his tools, confirming what I had guessed. I was no flower connoisseur, so really lily, rose, and sunflower were probably the extent of my guesses. “I’ll just go put this all away, and then we can test out the spell. It’ll be clear pretty soon if it’s working or not, given how crap you’ve been with these lessons this far.”

  I rolled my eyes as he left the room, but he was right. Caleb took my hand in his to look at the lily and made a small noise in his throat.

  “Pretty, huh?” I smiled, and he nodded.

  “Very,” he agreed. “Aus always did love tiger lilies.”

  Wait, what?

  “Tiger lily,” I repeated in a dry voice, narrowing my eyes at Austin when he walked back into the room. “Of course it’s a tiger lily.”

  For his part, Austin just shrugged unapologetically, and I got the distinct feeling of satisfaction from him as he stretched out a hand to help me up from the floor. That did remind me though, I still needed to get payback for my first tattoo. Caleb had already given me a great idea of how to do it too.

  “All right, I made the spell a temporary one, just in case there are any weird side effects. It’ll only last a month, and then we need to re-ink a new, stronger one if you want it to be a permanent thing.” Austin looked to both Caleb and I, and we both nodded our understanding. “I’ll teach you a new kiddie spell, and you can repeat it. If you get it right the first tim
e, the spell is clearly working. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I confirmed, then watched closely as he drew a symbol in the air and carefully enunciated some words in their mage language. Or was it Mage, with capital M? Compared to the last few lessons we’d had together, this time his actions and words seemed almost easy to follow, so it was no surprise when I was able to flawlessly execute the same spell seconds later.

  “Yay!” I screamed when the piece of paper lifted from the table and floated for a few seconds in front of us. “It worked!”

  “Thank the fucking gods,” Austin groaned. “This just made our lives a whole hell of a lot easier. Caleb, you want to stay for the lesson or take a time out?”

  His twin hesitated a moment. “Are you just going to be going over the basics one at a time?” Austin nodded. “I’m out then. That shit is boring as hell. I’ll bring you guys lunch later.”

  Smacking a quick kiss on my lips, he took off out of the den and left me to my magic lesson. This time, though, I was excited. Sure, it was probably going to be boring and monotonous, but without Austin losing his shit at me for being a slow learner or me losing my shit at him for being a shitty teacher... dare I hope this could even be enjoyable?

  Okay, that was probably taking it a bit far. But the future was looking just a little brighter for the surly Ink Mage and myself.

  “I bet you can’t teach me everything I need to know in a week,” I blurted out without really thinking about what I was saying. Austin’s brows raised in surprise, though, and I wasn’t going to take it back. He’d told me it took Yoshi close to eight years to teach him everything he knew now, so by saying a week, I was pretty damn confident he wouldn’t take the bet.

  “You’re on,” he smirked. “If you lose, you have to be my slave for a week.”

  My eyes widened, but I nodded. “Fine, but if you lose... I get to tattoo you with whatever I want.”

  Austin barked a sharp laugh and shook his head at me. “Done. But no sabotage, or I’ll know.” He tapped his temple, and I rolled my eyes at him. We really needed to work on blocking our damn emotions from each other too.