Serpent's Kiss

by Thea Harrison

  She ground her teeth. How dare he lecture her? “If you ever try to do anything to restrict my movements again, you’ll find out I know how to hold a grudge too,” she said between her teeth. “In fact, I have a real talent for it.”

  “I’m sure you do,” he said. “Goddammit.”

  In a startlingly humanlike gesture of exasperation, he shook his head and shifted his body off of her. He did not deign to glance down as he carefully pulled his claws out of the sod and shifted his paws to one side. She watched as he did it. Those retractable claws were curved like scimitars and sharp enough to pierce steel. He settled on the ground beside her and looked out over the water, a predatory leviathan wearing a ferocious frown.

  She didn’t move. She looked up at him again, at that broad, strong feline chest to the long, graceful, strong column of his neck, and she lost whatever she had been about to say. Even though they were no longer touching, the great, heavy sprawling length of his body radiated warmth that began to sink into her bones.

  Time passed and as she calmed, her perspective shifted. His severe, silent contemplation of the ocean and sky suddenly made her feel impetuous and oddly young. Or perhaps it was not so very odd. To him, she was young. What an amazing thought. When he wore his T-shirt and ragged jeans in his human form, and he made wisecracks in modern slang, he lived much more in the moment than she did. The weight of passing years did not press on him. He had no mortality.

  In the process of scooping her out of a dead fall and pinning her down, Rune had not given her so much as the equivalent of a paper cut. She remembered how he had gently kissed her forehead before he had left her child-self, and burning tears filled her eyes again.

  “I gave you permission to go back,” she whispered. “I didn’t give you permission to change me.”

  The gryphon bowed his head, and somehow that giant fierce eagle managed to look humble and chagrined. “I heard the whip,” he confessed in a quiet, pained voice. “And I heard you cry out, and I couldn’t think. All I knew was I couldn’t let that lash fall on you again.”

  The tears spilled over, sliding down her temples to soak into her hair. She glanced at his immense paws again. She hadn’t seen him kill the priest who had been whipping her, but she had seen the priest’s body afterward. The broken corpse had been in ribbons, its bones split apart. She reached out to touch one paw. “Okay,” she said unsteadily. “Okay. But I don’t remember what happened to me before you did that.”

  He sighed and lifted up his mammoth wings to resettle them more comfortably into place along the sleek arch of his muscled back. Only then did he lift his head enough to look at her. “I don’t believe I have the Power to change you,” he said, still in that quiet, careful voice. “Not you, not your soul or spirit, or your ba, if you will. We don’t yet know what the rest of it means.”

  She gave in to impulse and rolled over to sink her fingers into the fur at his breast. The fur was as thick and soft as it looked. Underneath, his hot skin was a tight cloak over muscles that were so massive they were as much of a shock to feel as they were to look at. She ran her hand upward through the fur, reaching the place where it gave way to a luxuriant burst of soft, small feathers. The feathers lengthened and darkened until they lay in a sleek bronze cap over his neck and head.

  He began to purr as she petted him. The sound rumbled through her body. She raked her fingernails gently through the thick fur and soft profusion of feathers. He lay naturally in the position known in heraldry as the lion couchant, relaxed but alert as Carling studied him.

  How could he not believe he had the Power to change her? What thrummed under her fingertips was indescribable. She realized how much of Rune’s personality came from his catlike sense of play. In his gryphon form, he revealed something much more ancient and unknowable.

  How could he exist as two creatures melded into one? He said he had an affinity for crossovers and between places. She had nodded and thought she understood. Now as she stared at him, she didn’t think she had understood anything.

  The Power of the between places roared in his body. By its very definition it was a transformative force filled with tension and dynamic movement. Yet instead of the tension tearing him apart, he contained it, the transformative force held steady as a rock by his immortal spirit, and the Power that required was unimaginable to her. It seemed the very definition of impossibility.

  A mysterious, magical riddle.

  With that realization, she had an epiphany.

  “The mystery is written in your form,” she said. “Your body is the rune.”

  His massive head tilted. He regarded her with a gaze made tranquil by the bright sun and the limitless sky.

  She said in wonder, “You are the riddle.”

  “Of course I am,” said the gryphon.

  She rolled onto her knees and, since he appeared willing to indulge her scrutiny, she continued with her exploration of his fabulous body. It brought such simple pleasure, she found it soothing. She ran her hands along the huge graceful arc of one wing. His primary feathers were the darkest bronze. They held glints of gold in the sun. She stroked along the vane of one feather. It was as long as her torso.

  “Do you ever lose these?” she asked. The feather felt so strong, it might have been made out of metal.

  “Sometimes,” Rune said. “Not often.”

  “Next time you lose one, think of me at the Festival of the Masque or at Christmas,” she told him. The Elder Races celebrated the seven primal powers at winter solstice with an annual event called the Masque of the Gods. While the Masque was traditionally a dance, it was also a time to exchange gifts, much like Christmas or Hanukkah.

  He craned his neck to give her a skeptical look. “And give you something of mine you can spell during one of your shit fits?”

  She looked at him with wide eyes. “I would never use a gift to spell someone.”

  His incredible lion-colored eyes narrowed. The gryphon said, “I think your pants are on fire.”

  She burst out laughing. She conceded, “Perhaps they might be a little singed around the hem.” Part of her was in shock that she could laugh at all, or that they had achieved such a strong turnaround of feeling in such a short amount of time.

  She settled the feather gently back into place, and Rune shimmered and changed into the form of a man. He sat cross-legged on the ground, and her hands rested on his wide shoulder. He was the same creature. That incredible Power still roared under her fingertips. His tanned skin radiated heat. All the colors of his Wyr form streaked through his hair.

  She wasn’t ready to stop touching him just because he had decided it was time to change forms. She fussed at his tousled shoulder-length hair, running her fingers through the length to smooth out the tangles.

  “Don’t you ever comb this mess?” she grumbled. It was gorgeous. She refused to say that. It was bad enough she’d already slipped and called his gryphon form stunning. “Or wear jeans that don’t have holes in them?”

  “I’ll buy new jeans when I get back to the city, just for you.” He turned his face into her hands and closed his eyes. She bit her lips and let her hands flow around him, her fingers framing those warm, lean features that were so handsome they made her chest ache.

  “I’m scared,” she said. The words fell out of her mouth, and more tumbled out after. “Before I wasn’t letting myself feel anything. I’d gotten to a place where I accepted what was happening, and I was ready for it to be over with, but now I’m feeling everything again. I’m feeling too much, and I’m really, really scared.”

  His arms came around her as she talked. He pulled her down and around, until she sat sprawled across his lap. Her head remembered the perfect fit in the hollow of his neck and shoulder, and she burrowed back into that place. He held her with his whole body, one hand cupping her head. She felt strange, surrounded by his strength. She felt breakable, and somehow cherished. One of her arms crept around his neck, and she found herself clinging to him.

  “
It’s all right,” he said, and for a moment she thought he was uttering stupid platitudes. “It’s all right to be scared. This is scary stuff.”

  “I’d rather face monsters,” she muttered. She buried her face in the warm skin at his neck and inhaled his clean masculine scent. “Monsters are easy. This isn’t easy.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he whispered. He rocked her a little.

  There they were again, the strange new feelings he prompted in her, the sense of all her doors and barriers opening inside. Even though her caftan kept her covered down to her ankles, she felt naked and exposed. “I don’t know how to cope with the thought of my memories changing,” she breathed. “Even when I’ve lost everything and everyone, I always knew I could rely on myself. Now I don’t even have that. I don’t know what to rely on.”

  “Rely on me,” said Rune. He pressed his lips to the fragile skin at her temple. “Listen to me. I am not sorry I saved you from that whipping or tried to make a horrible situation better for you, but I am profoundly sorry I did it without thinking through the real consequences of what might happen. Still, I do not believe that you—you at your essence—have changed. And you know that things must change if you are to survive, correct?”

  She nodded.

  “You could try to surrender to the experience and let change happen.”

  “Change or die?” she said.

  “Yes. Change or die.”

  “You might have noticed, I don’t do surrender very well,” she told him in a dry voice.

  “No, I don’t either.” He sighed and was silent a moment. Then he asked, “Did you choose to become a Vampyre, or were you turned against your will?”

  She shivered. She did not know this person huddled against Rune’s chest. She said, “I chose it. In fact, I heard rumors and went in search of it.”

  She felt him nod. He told her, “You embraced a change once that was so profound, it altered the definition of your existence. You can do it again if you have to.”

  “I was a lot younger then,” she muttered.

  His chest moved in a quiet chuckle. “Now you have experience to help guide you. Think back to that time and how you embraced the change. I have faith in you. I know you can do it.”

  She soaked in his humor as she rested against his body’s support. When had his every move become important to her? How had she let that happen? She asked, “Why do you have that kind of faith in me? What did I do to deserve it?”

  His chuckle turned into an outright laugh, the husky sound vibrating against her cheek. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that when everyone around you had a lifespan of perhaps forty years if they were lucky, you outlived them all by over four and a half thousand. You survived the rise and decline of the Egyptian, the Roman and the Islamic Empires. The gods only know what you did for shits and giggles during the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition. And you were one of the principal architects for how the Elder Races demesnes interact and coexist with the U. S. government.”

  “You did all of that too,” she muttered. She plucked one of her long hairs off his black T-shirt. “The Spanish Inquisition, shits and giggles and whatever.”

  He captured her hand and brought it to his mouth to kiss her fingers. He said, “Yes, but there is a fundamental difference between us. I only did what was already in my nature, and lived. You were human. You not only transcended your nature, you found ways to excel through some of the most misogynistic times in human history. It is incomprehensible to me how you can have such a sense of pride, but no real sense of self-worth.”

  “Well,” she said with a frown. “I don’t think people like me very much.”

  She hadn’t meant it as a joke, so she was startled when Rune clutched her tight and guffawed. He leaned back to look at her with dancing eyes. The impact of his handsome face laughing full bore into hers was a sucker punch she hadn’t seen coming. She struggled to find some sense of inner equilibrium and failed utterly. The sight of him filled her to the brim, and all she could do was cling to him and stare.

  Rune told her, “You know the real reason why I snatched you up when you went over the cliff? I knew you were about to swim the ocean. I was just saving Tokyo, baby.”

  She shrugged with a blank expression. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  His expectant expression turned to disappointment. He said, “I just called you Godzilla?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course you did. Your reference to Tokyo made it so obvious. No doubt I should have picked up on it immediately, just as I should have known the identity of the hairy man with spectacles on that awful T-shirt of yours.”

  “Clearly, this is a teasing session that has not gotten off on the right foot,” he said. “You’ve got to start watching old monster movies on TV. Oh, and football. Otherwise we’re going to run out of things to talk about.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be sure to get right on that.”

  “Actually,” he confided with an intimate smile, “I was more afraid you would melt when you hit the water.”

  She pointed at him. “I got that one. You think I don’t know people have nicknamed me the Wicked Witch of the West?”

  He grinned and kissed the tip of her finger. “And a very accomplished lady she was too, if a bit combative.”

  “You’re ridiculous.” Somehow her hand slipped, and she stroked his face. She felt like she could spend forever like this, resting against his long sprawling body, talking and laughing in the lazy, late afternoon. She might not be able to feel the warmth of the sun directly on her skin, but she could feel how it warmed Rune’s, and the heat from his body sank into hers.

  The laughter in Rune’s face died away, and was replaced with an expression that was edged and raw. His gaze darkened and fell below hers, his mouth level and unsmiling. Realization pulsed. He was watching her with such hunger it was a palpable force. She licked her lips and saw in the flicker deep in his eyes that he tracked the movement.

  He was going to kiss her, and she wanted it. Gods, she wanted it, full-bodied and openmouthed, both of them tearing into each other like there was no tomorrow, because there really might not be a tomorrow, and all they had was here and now.

  This was such a fleeting treasure, this sense of ephemeral beauty, this gorgeous, impossible ache that came when the passions of the spirit turned flesh. This was what it meant to be alive and to be human, to cup the abundant, champagne light of a goddess’s pendant in one’s hands but never be allowed to grasp hold of it.

  She took a breath and trembled.

  He turned his head and looked away, and the light flowed out of her empty hands. The muscles in his lean jaw flexed. He said, “Are you ready to get serious again?”

  She let her hand fall from his lean cheek. Disappointment tasted like ashes. She had done that to him. First she had struck him so hard and cruelly, she had drawn blood. Then she had knocked him away with such violence, she sent him sprawling to the ground. She had spelled and threatened him too, whereas he had shown her nothing but generosity and kindness.

  An accomplished lady, she was, if a bit combative.

  Really, it was for the best. She had no time for inconvenient attraction, or the luxury to explore strange new feelings or indulge in lazy sun-filled afternoons. If something didn’t happen to change the normal course of events, soon she would have no time at all.

  “Of course,” she said, her voice toneless. She pushed off of his lap. She told herself she was not further disappointed when he let her go.

  He stood and held a hand out to her. She took it, and he lifted her to her feet. The wind and their struggle had tangled her waist-length hair. She gathered it up impatiently, wound it into a messy knot and tucked the end into the knot itself to anchor it away from her face. Rune watched her, his hands resting on lean hips, his expression inscrutable.

  “Do you remember the conversation we had just as you were fading?” Rune asked.

  T
he question knocked her out of her preoccupation. She focused, thinking back. Oh yes. Sometimes I think I hate you, she’d said. She’d forgotten to add that to her list of things she’d done to him. She had to hand it to herself. She had quite a bag of tricks, and none of them were charms. She rubbed her forehead. “Look, I’m sorry about what I—”

  He interrupted, his tone impatient. “Do you remember what I said? Because I don’t think you do. I think you were already gone.”

  She shook her head, her mind a blank.

  He watched her expression closely. “I told you I figured out what was bothering me. I said, what if Vampyrism is not a disease? What if it’s something else?”

  “Something else?” Her eyes widened.

  “Your research chronicles the history beautifully,” Rune said. “Reading through it, I got to watch it all happen in fast-forward. But you were immersed in it. You lived it all at a much slower pace. You were part of the scientific discussion in the nineteenth century with brilliant scientists who were engaged in cutting-edge medicine. It all made so much sense at the time that now virtually everybody accepts the premise to be true. Vampyrism has so many characteristics of a blood-borne pathogen, but Carling, to me you seem perfectly healthy.”

  “How can that be?” She struggled to absorb what he was saying. He kept taking hold of the ground and yanking it out from underneath her, like a magician yanking away a tablecloth set for dinner. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he told her. “At least I’m sure of what I sense. Wyr have highly developed instincts and senses—and the older the Wyr, the more sensitive they are. The older Wyr can smell sickness and infections, tainted food, and many poisons undetectable to others. To me, you do not carry any scent of disease. You have the characteristic tinge to your scent that all Vampyres have, but I do not register that as an unhealthy scent.”