Serpent's Kiss

by Thea Harrison

  He gave her a crooked smile in return, his cheek moving under her palm. “Earlier I was pretty convinced I was Alice in Wonderland. Come to think of it, I faded out of sight on a few people, so I was actually the Cheshire Cat as well. I don’t think channeling Don Quixote should pose any problems.”

  Amused, she said, “You’re not making any sense.”

  A dimple appeared beside his mobile, sensual mouth. “That is only because you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “I’ll give you one thing,” she told him. “That was actually a very Cheshire Cat thing to say.”

  “Now we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he told her. She started to let her hand fall away from his cheek. He caught it and pressed a kiss to her palm. He let go of both of her hands before she could react. Confused, warmed and somehow disappointed when he released her, she laced her hands together and held them stiffly in her lap. He said, “I’ll catch up on reading the rest of the research on my own. For now, I want you to tell me everything, even if it is conjecture or if you don’t understand it.”

  She frowned. “You say we should not waste time, but I don’t see how—”

  He overrode what she was about to say, his gaze stern. “You have to start trusting me a little bit. Not a lot. Not, I think, outside your comfort zone. But I am actually a very good investigator, and I’m quite experienced at deciding for myself what information might or might not be useful.” Then the sternness melted from his eyes. He gave her a coaxing smile. “And I can be so terribly charming while I do it. You’ll see. It’ll be fun.”

  Her mouth shut with an audible click of her teeth. “Oh for heaven’s sake, all right.”

  “Good, we’re making progress.” His expression as he regarded her was filled with such lazy, caressing warmth, she wanted to bask in it all night. He looked at her as if she were the only thing in the world that mattered. It was heady, exotic, dangerous, completely irrelevant stuff. She straightened her spine as she tried to drag her recalcitrant self back into line. “First, I want you to tell me what you experience when you have an episode.”

  “Episode episode episode,” she said with sudden venom. “Gods, how I’ve grown to hate that word.”

  “Oh-kay,” said Rune. He switched gears with apparent ease. “We’ll have to start calling it something else. You suffer from an extreme case of attention deficit disorder.”

  She glared at him and grumbled, “Whatever.”

  He suggested, “You kept the light on when you left the house.”

  No. He wasn’t funny. She would not dignify that either. Somewhere in the middle of her glare, she started to smile. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You fed the bats in your belfry? You went crazier than a shit-house rat.”

  “What?” Laughter burbled out of her. It felt strange, ebullient and light. She could not remember the last time she had laughed out loud, or why.

  “I know, they’re too long to say in the middle of a sentence,” he said with a grin. “I’m brainstorming here. You were just showing your Vegas, baby.”

  “You know, the word ‘episode’ doesn’t seem so bad anymore,” she said, still laughing. “I think we should stick with simple English.”

  “All right,” Rune said. His warm gaze lingered on her, the expression in them caressing. “Tell me about when you cracked out.”

  Cracked . . . She tried to glare at him again but she had lost the ability. The laughter had swept it away, along with her exhaustion and the lingering weight of discouragement.

  Then she sobered as she thought back to earlier that day, and Rune put a hand on her knee. Maybe he did it to offer comfort or encouragement. He seemed to like touching her. He did it so often. The weight of his hand was warm through the caftan, his long callused fingers cupping the joint of her knee. She decided she liked the feeling of his hand on her knee too. She allowed it to remain where it was. For now.

  “I was reading,” she said. “I put the book down and looked outside at the fading sunlight. Then I felt my Power flare. That’s what I call it, anyway.”

  He murmured, “You said it happens whenever you go into a fade.”

  “Yes. I never experienced menopause, but I wonder sometimes if hot flashes might be a little like that. It’s a good warning sign. If I can respond quickly enough, I can sometimes stave off an episode.”

  “Why do you suppose pain helps?”

  “I’m not sure. The shock of it seems to snap me back into sync, at least for a while.” She looked at him and bit her lip. “All right, I’ll confess. Maybe I didn’t want to tell you about the Power flares, or how the island seems to appear and disappear when it happens, because I didn’t want you to change your mind and leave. I don’t honestly know how safe it is to be around me when it happens. That is why everybody else has left, except for Rhoswen.”

  “Can they sense what is happening?” Rhoswen couldn’t, but he didn’t know how much of a yardstick she might be for this. Not only did she have relatively little Power or magic, she was also young.

  “No one has ever admitted to it.” Carling closed her eyes. “It frightens them.”

  “Well, good riddance to them.” His hand tightened on her. His gaze remained rock-steady. “But I’m not going to leave. I’m just glad you’re telling me now. Go on.”

  That look in his eyes pulled on her more powerfully than anything else she could remember. It made promises she had never heard before, things like he was unafraid and would stand by her, that she could rely on him no matter what.

  It said she was worth fighting for.

  She did not know if she believed that, but something burned at the back of her eyes at the thought that he might. She put her hands over his, her fingers squeezing tightly. “So my Power flared and I disassociated from reality. Do you remember how I said sometimes I go into the past, and sometimes I don’t know where I go?”

  He nodded. His stance and expression didn’t change, but somehow his attention sharpened.

  She said, “Today I went into the past. I keep cycling through early memories. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they held such defining moments for me. Maybe there isn’t a reason and it just happens.”

  He murmured, “Tell me about that early memory.”

  “Does it matter?” She cocked her head, studying him as much as he studied her.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Fair enough.” She shrugged. “I went back to when I was a child. I lived in a small village on the Nile. It was a very simple, primitive, poor life. We lived and breathed the cycles of the river. We fished and dried what we caught, and we planted and harvested grain. We were a day’s walk from Memphis. Of course it wasn’t called Memphis then.”

  Rune whispered, “Ineb Hedj.”

  “Yes.” Surprised, she gave him a smile. Sometimes it was an unutterable comfort to talk to other creatures at least as old as she was. So many things that had happened to her had occurred so long ago they had disappeared from history itself. They had become distant to her, like words on a page, a story that had happened to someone else, but this time she let herself drift back in actual memory as she said, “That day was quite eventful. I met a god and my life changed forever.”

  Rune appeared frozen. His hand was rigid as stone. Only his lips moved as he repeated, “You met a god.”

  “I was helping to harvest barley when I saw a giant winged lion flying overhead,” she murmured. “He shone copper and gold in the pale morning light. He was so beautiful I felt as if my soul left my body as I watched him, and he had the head of an eagle. . . .” Her gaze widened on Rune. “Of course,” she whispered. “Of course he was a gryphon.”

  His eyes were too full of the things he was feeling, a wildness and joy when she mentioned flight, and a certain sense of tragedy she couldn’t begin to comprehend. Bewildered, she watched his throat move as he swallowed. He said, “It was me, Carling.”

  She stared at him. “How can you know that for sure? It happened thousands of
years ago. You were the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I had never imagined anything like you, but to you, I was just another human child. I had to have been so forgettable.”

  “Khepri,” he said. His voice was soft. “You were never at any time in your life forgettable.”

  The sadness in his expression wrenched at her. She leaned toward him, touching his arm. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

  “Never mind that now,” he said. “This is your story. It’s important you tell it.”

  “All right.” She frowned but continued, “I don’t remember much else about our encounter. I remember the color of your hair. It shone golden in the sun, like the lion. You were very large and strange, and we talked for a while, but I was pretty much in shock and I didn’t retain any of what we said to each other. Then you left.”

  He looked down at their hands. “Do you remember how I left?”

  “No,” she said. “Did you take flight again? I wish I’d remembered that.”

  He shook his head but remained silent. He rubbed his thumb lightly against the edge of her kneecap and appeared to be concentrating on the small movement.

  “Well,” she said after a moment. “That same day soldiers from the city harvested our village for slaves. They took the young, the healthy and the pretty, and they killed anyone who tried to stop them. I saw them kill my father. It was terrible, of course. I was maybe seven years old. But I’ve had a long time to get over it, and the brutal fact is, I might have lived and died a very short life in the river mud if I hadn’t somehow been taken out of it. I never forgot seeing you flying overhead though.”

  He nodded, his head bent. After a moment he asked, “What made you change your name?”

  She gave an impatient shrug. “I took my freedom and I took control of my life, and then I took control of my identity as well. I wanted a more modern name, something that was wholly my own creation. Carling wasn’t that far off from Khepri, so it made the transition easy. One day it was time to bury that little slave girl. It actually was a bit of a relief.”

  His mouth tightened. “I wish I could have stayed to help you and your family.”

  She frowned. What had she said? He looked like he was in pain. “As I said, it happened a very long time ago.”

  He stood with such abruptness she sat back sharply. He met her gaze for one burning moment then his eyes slid away. “Sure it did,” he said. His voice had grown hoarse. “I’m going to take a break and stretch my legs. Let’s pick this up again in ten.”

  “If that’s what you need,” she said slowly.

  He gave her a curt nod and strode out of the room.

  She looked at the empty ottoman where Rune had sat and tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. The intensity of his turmoil was a hot, sharp weight that lingered in the room for several minutes after he had disappeared.

  It was obvious something was terribly wrong, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what.

  Rune tried to breathe as he made his way through the darkened house. A hot, invisible boulder crushed his chest. The adult Carling had looked at him with the same pleasure and wonder that the child Khepri had. Her face was even lovelier when it was washed clean of all cynicism and calculation, stripped of the distance she held between herself and the rest of the world.

  How could he look at her wonderful expression and tell her he had not met her in Egypt thousands of years in the past, but here just a few hours ago? What the hell had happened? Had it been an elaborate illusion her mind had created? How could he watch the most pleasure he had ever seen in her turn to horror as she realized how terribly her mind and magic—the two things she took the most pride in—had betrayed her?

  He couldn’t. She was facing the end of her life with such courage and a very real, if acerbic dignity and grace, and instead of facing it with her, he was running away like a craven coward. He felt self-disgust and disappointment, but he could also not make himself turn around and face her. Not yet. Not until he’d had a chance to react to what had happened, and he had cleared his head enough so he could be there for her, to add to the situation, as he had told Rhoswen, and not drag on Carling’s already overstrained resources.

  A light shone at the cracks of the kitchen doors. He found Rhoswen sitting at the table, her forehead propped in one hand as she watched Rasputin eat his dinner on the floor near the stove. Rhoswen looked up at his entrance.

  “I have to think and I need some air,” Rune told her. “Are you up to staying with Carling until I get back?”

  Rhoswen wiped her cheek. “Of course.”

  He paused. The Vampyre’s face was streaked from crying. He reined in his impulse to move, to get lost out in the night and take flight. He asked reluctantly, “Are you all right?”

  A small spark lightened her dull eyes. She nodded. “I’m sorry about earlier,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you’re standing head and shoulders above all the rest,” Rune told her. He sent a pointed glance around the empty kitchen.

  Rhoswen chuckled a little. “To be fair, some people would be here if they could.”

  “Like Duncan?”

  She nodded.

  He frowned as another thought occurred to him. There were no humans on the island. There was also no refrigeration. He asked, “How are you doing for sustenance?”

  “We have plenty of bloodwine. I won’t need fresh blood for a couple of weeks.”

  Bloodwine was exactly as the word sounded, blood that had been mixed with wine and bottled. Rune wasn’t exactly sure how it was made. All he knew was that the process involved a low-level alchemy and it required a wine with a high alcoholic content.

  Bloodwine did not have the capacity to mature over time as some wines could. At best, it might have a shelf life of two years, and it didn’t have the nutritive quality of fresh blood, but a Vampyre could survive on bloodwine for months at a time, and it could be used to supplement a fresh blood supply during lean times. Invented sometime in the mid-eleventh century, it was credited for how European Vampyres managed to survive the Black Death in the fourteenth century, when up to sixty percent of the human population had been killed.

  Rune’s frown deepened. As a succubus, Carling could take sustenance from the emotions from living creatures, but she’d had only Rhoswen and Rasputin on the island for company. He said, “What about Carling?”

  Rhoswen’s eyes filled. She said, “I’ve been trying to convince her to go back to San Francisco, but she won’t budge.”

  “You mean she was starving herself,” Rune growled. Eager to burn off the weight of the strange crushing sadness, his temper flashed quick and hot.

  “We’ve not been alone for more than a few days, and she’s been looking much better since you’ve arrived,” Rhoswen said. Rasputin finished his meal, and Rhoswen went to scoop the dog up. Rasputin tried to run away from her, but she was too fast for him. He gave her a leery look, his paws paddling at the air. She told the dog, “You’re such a little freak.”

  Rune nearly turned back to confront Carling, but if he did that, he knew he would also have to confront the speculative look she gave him as he left with such abruptness. Carling had given up by the time he had arrived, but he had already known that, and it was in the past. If she tried to give up again, he would kick her ass and make sure it hurt.

  Besides, he wasn’t ready to talk to her. He had too much to think about first, and he simply didn’t know what he could or should say.

  “I’m going to take a flight,” he said. “See if I can clear my head. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Okay,” Rhoswen said. She and Rasputin watched him leave.

  Take a flight. Clear his head.

  Yeah, like that had done him any good over the last couple of weeks.

  Still, a body had to try.

  As a Vampyre, Carling didn’t feel the cold like a normal human. That did not mean she couldn’t feel the lack of warmth. The spell of protection that allo
wed her to walk in the middle of a sunlit day was a great triumph, but at times the victory rang hollow because she would never again know the warm comfort of the sun on her skin.

  She craved warmth and light. Every house she owned had fireplaces in most of the rooms. Rune’s presence finally faded from the bedroom, leaving it feeling slightly damp, dark and empty. She crouched at the hearth to lay wood for a fire. She stacked plenty of wood. She wanted a big, cheerful bright blaze.

  She lit it, and hugged her knees as she watched the small new flames lick at the wood. With a sigh of relief, she let the protection spell fall away so that she could bask in the building warmth of the fire.

  What had caused Rune such inner turmoil? She stood abruptly, impatient with herself. It was useless to speculate. She couldn’t know what disturbed him until he chose to tell her. Waiting for him to return made her feel helpless, and she abhorred feeling helpless.

  She moved to her large east-facing windows and opened them. A restless breeze blew into the room and ruffled her hair as she looked out at a gigantic full moon. A witch’s moon. It would appear to decrease in size as it moved away from the horizon, but for now it hung impossibly huge over the ivory-tipped black ocean, its color rich champagne. The brightest jewel in the night sky, it hung as though from the pendant of a goddess’s necklace, the spray of stars surrounding it the filigree within which the jewel had been set.

  Ever since she had claimed the island, she had sketched the positions of the night stars throughout the seasons. It was an idle, useless hobby. She had never been able to determine if the stars were actually the same ones as seen from Earth. Their positions were too different in relation to each other. There would never be any satellite telescope to capture and compare deep-space imagery with that of Earth’s.