Serpent's Kiss (6 page)

She looked at the transparent sunshine slanting in the air in front of her. It spilled everywhere, a wealth of light more extravagant than a king’s treasure and deadlier than nightshade. She dropped the protective shield of Power she kept wrapped perpetually around her like a cloak. The shield allowed her to walk in the full light of day. Without it, she would burn to death just like any other Vampyre would.

She did not remember the pleasure of basking in the warm sun. She remembered the fact of it, but not the sensation. Had it been anything like basking in the warm glow of a fire? That was how she imagined it was, anyway.

Now all the sun promised her was pain and immolation.

Setting her teeth, she held out a hand and touched the sunshine.

Agony seared her. She saw smoke rise from her skin and smelled her own scorched flesh. A split second was almost more than she could bear. Any longer exposure and her hand would burst into flames. She snatched her hand away and looked at the blisters that had formed along the fingers and the back. The blisters began to heal as she watched.

She braced herself and bathed her other hand in the molten light.

A deep familiar voice swore nearby. Someone grabbed her arm in a powerful grip and shoved her, armchair and all, several feet back from the sunshine. The chair’s wooden legs scraped along the floor. She blinked until her vision cleared.

Rune crouched in front of her, the long broad muscles of his shoulders bunched. He held her by the wrists. Shaking with pain, her fingers curled, she tried to pull free but he refused to let her go. Strong as she was, he was stronger. Extreme emotion darkened his gaze, and his handsome face was settled in lines of severity. The skin around his taut mouth whitened as he watched the blisters on her hands fade.

Carling regarded him wearily. After her emotional storm earlier and the twin jolts of agony, she didn’t know if she had the energy to face Rune’s particular brand of volcanic energy. His presence blasted her hypersensitive nerves.

“Sorry about that,” Rune said, his voice controlled and even. His rigid grip on her arms relaxed and became gentle. “I had a knee-jerk reaction when I saw your hand burning. Does it help?”

Her weary look turned speculative. His control was not as reassuring as it might otherwise have been, coupled as it was with the violent upheaval she could sense roiling through his emotions. “What do you mean, does it help? Has someone been talking out of turn? I told you to go. What are you still doing here?”

“Yes, someone has been talking,” said Rune. “I know everything, or at least I know everything that Rhoswen knows.” He let his hands slip down her arms to clasp her fingers with care. “Come on, tell me. Why were you burning yourself?”

She looked over his broad shoulders toward the daylight, and chose not to struggle for the return of her hands. His were warm and callused, broad-palmed and long-fingered. “Sometimes the pain helps me to fight off an episode.”

“Rhoswen called it fading. Is that what it’s like?”

“Not really,” she said. “It is a disassociation from reality. Sometimes I go into the past. Sometimes I don’t know where I go.”

Rune eased one of her hands into her lap and released it. He took the long dark fall of her hair and smoothed it behind one of her shoulders.

Her eyelids lowered and she glanced sidelong at his hand. This Wyr had temerity, she would give him that. An impulse to violence flickered through her. She had struck at him once. Maybe she would again. Her gaze lifted to his face. Four pale lines still scored one lean cheek. They would be gone in another half hour or so.

She could see in his eyes that he knew her impulse to violence was there. That did not stop him from reaching higher to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear, stroking along the delicate shell of flesh. He touched her as he had earlier, as if he thought she was exquisite beyond all words, his expression calm, unafraid. It bewildered her. Why would he do such a thing? Why did his touch cause her to feel such a dark violent pain?

Why was her other hand still resting in his?

“I do not think you are a very sensible man,” she murmured.

“No doubt you are correct,” he replied. “ And I am still here because I have to ask you a question. Why do you have a dog?”

“Rhoswen has asked me that many times,” she said. “I don’t know why. He was hurt badly when we found him. He was down to almost half his body weight, so the vet thought he had been a stray for a while, and then he had been hit by a car. Even though he is so tiny, he has a ferocious spark of a spirit. He was broken all over and he just wouldn’t die.” She shrugged. “And I brought him home.”

Rune’s gaze was too keen as he inspected her face. What did he think he saw in her? “And now you cook him chicken,” he said.

“He’s so happy to eat,” she said. She looked down. Her hand was still in Rune’s. He was rubbing her healed fingers with his thumb. “Dancing fit-to-be-tied happy.”

“I must say, he’s got a point there,” said Rune with a lopsided smile.

“I’ve been trying to remember what it’s like to be hungry,” Carling said. “I cook the chicken, and I smell it and l say to myself, this is food.” She whispered, “I think I’m trying to remember what it is like to be alive before I die.”

Her words ghosted through the silence in the room.

Rune was still crouching at her feet like a great lion. His presence was more intense than a fire’s. He had not only warmed her through, she felt nourished and revitalized. He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them. “I would far rather try to find a way to keep you alive before you die,” he said.

She stirred. “Rune,” she said.

His fierce gaze captured and held hers. “You threw away that favor I owed you.”

“I did worse than that,” she said. She touched his cheek with a finger. “And I may do worse again.”

He rolled his eyes. What a remarkably handsome man he was. “So what,” he said. “I kissed you and you slapped me. What an utter heroine you are.”

“You have got to be joking,” she said.

“Utter. Heroine.”

She leaned forward, so she could better stare him down. “You wear the most god-awful clothes. Look at you, with your jeans torn out at the knees. Who would want to wear a T-shirt like that, with a hairy man in spectacles on it? It’s ridiculous.”

“Don’t be knocking my Jerry Garcia threads,” Rune said. His strong-boned features were creased in a sharp, catlike smile. “You’re one to talk, the way you run around in those Egyptian caftans without a single stitch of clothing on underneath. Lady, I’ve been watching you and I can tell.”

“You’ve been watching me ever since I walked out of the river,” she whispered. “I could tell.”

“I haven’t been able to look away,” he whispered back, “because you are stunning. In fact, you can go ahead and slap me again if you want. Let’s get it over with, because I think I’m going to have to kiss you again, and it is so fucking worth it.”

The desire was back. It roared out of him, or out of her. She wasn’t sure, she couldn’t tell. He leaned forward, and she sat back sharply and put a restraining hand against the hard broad muscles of his chest. “Rune,” she said again, her voice cold and clear. “Stop.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why? You were totally with me in that kiss.”

“And you’re a fool.” She shoved him hard. It sent him sprawling back several feet, in the full spill of the morning sunshine. He propped himself back on his hands and looked at her in assessment, a great powerful beauty of a man, with rich suntanned skin stretched over a long, sinuous gracefully muscled body. It hurt to look at him.

She stood and stepped right up to the edge of the sunshine, and his lazy smile vanished. He sprang to his feet faster than she had ever seen him move, and he put his body between her and the sunlight.

“Look at us,” she said. Her face and eyes were hard. She gestured at them both, at him standing bathed in the light and her in the shadow. “This is why. And one of us is dying.”

“I take it back,” Rune said. “You’re not an utter heroine. You’re a drama queen.” He smacked her in the shoulders with the flat of his hands and knocked her back a step. She stared at him in shock as he stepped from the sunlight into the shadow. “Well, would you look at that. It’s a perfectly permeable line. You can cross it too when you’ve got yourself shielded.”

“How dare you?” she hissed.

“People always forget I have this side to me. I don’t know why. You might be surprised at what I would dare,” Rune said. He advanced on her, his expression blazing. “What did you think? Were you just going to sit out here on your lonesome island and pass away?”

He looked furious, magnificent. The sight of him clawed at her. She blurred with her deadly speed and struck at him, and she was shocked anew as he knocked the blow away. Holy gods, he was fast.

“I’ve got news for you, princess,” he snarled. “It’s time for you to wake the fuck up and do something about saving your own life.”

“Do you think I have not tried?” she shouted. Rage blinded her. She struck at him again, and this time managed to hit him in the chest. “You impudent son of a bitch. I have been researching this for almost two centuries. I have dosed myself with my own healing potions, and they’ve worked for a while but now they don’t. I don’t know
WHAT ELSE TO DO
.”

She spun away and drove herself forward, wild to get away from him.

He sucked in a breath and lunged to snatch her against his chest.

She froze as she realized what she had done. She had almost plunged unshielded into the full light of day.

She stared at the line she had nearly crossed. Rune wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her so tight she felt his heartbeat thudding against the skin between her shoulder blades. They were both breathing heavily.

“That was remarkably idiotic of me,” she said. She had to clear her throat before she could get the words out. “Thankfully I am not often this stupid or I wouldn’t have survived for so long.”

She recast the shield spell and Power shimmered over her skin.

He must have felt her cast the spell, but he made no move to let her go. Instead he laid his head on her shoulder.

He said in her hair, “I still owe you a favor.”

She sighed. “You don’t owe me a thing,” she said. “You are perfectly free, as nature intended you to be.”

“Then forget about the damn favor,” said Rune. “I’m still going to stay. We’re going to find a way to make this better, because Carling, I am not ready for you to go gentle into that good night.”

She held herself tense as she considered his words. Could she summon the energy and interest to live when she had grown accustomed to the thought of dying? What could Rune do that she hadn’t already done? She was a sorceress at the top of her game, but no matter how old or accomplished she was, he was still a creature that was far older. He might well know of things or think of options she hadn’t tried.

The tension flowed out of her body, and she rested back against him in tacit acceptance.

“I have not gone gently anywhere,” Carling said as she turned her head to put her cheek against his. “I don’t know why death should be any different.”

FOUR

R
une held still as he savored the feel of Carling’s pliant body in his arms, her cool cheek pressed against his.

She tingled along all of his senses. The weight of her curved body rested in his arms, and her skin felt unbelievably soft against his own weather-beaten cheek. The spiced fragrance she wore plucked at his imagination with images of distant places, and underneath that, she carried the delicious, sexy scent of an aroused woman. The clever dangerous volatility of her mind roused him to razor-sharp alertness, and the smoky hint of her Power brushed along his like a sleek black cat winding around his ankles. It made his claws itch to come out. He wanted to take the delicate lobe of her ear between his teeth and suckle at it. He wanted to claw at the walls.

He knew he had to curb this fascination he had developed for her. In fact, as soon as he had an opening in his hectic schedule, he planned to get right on that. There were so many reasons for him to do so it made him tired just to think of listing them all. Carling’s little gesture between light and shadow might have pissed him off, but that symbolism also held all the weight of the complex differences between them in terms of race, lifestyle and political allegiance.

He also knew he had not been wrong. He could still feel the sensuous length of her arms as they had wound around his neck earlier. She had kissed him back and she had liked it too much. That was the reason for the shock he had seen in her eyes, and it had everything to do with why she had slapped him.

And she was dying. Everything inside him shouted in outraged denial against it. It didn’t seem possible. All the evidence pointed to her being in perfect health. Her energy was too vibrant, too vital.

Not only that, she had been a fact of his existence for far too long. At first she had been a vague rumor he had heard about a desert tribal queen in North Sahara. Then she had become a reputation, as she rose in rank within the Vampyre communities of the ancient Mediterranean. During these last few centuries in North America, as various Powers in the Elder Races carved out their political niches and geographic boundaries, she had become a reality in power-brokering inter-demesne relations.

He sensed her intention as she began to move. He let her go before she had a chance to think he held her for even a moment too long.

His mind sharpened into crystalline lines of logic as he turned to the issue at hand. He said, “I would like to know what steps you’ve taken and what research you’ve done. There’s no point in going over ground you’ve already covered.”

“Of course,” Carling said. She frowned as she considered him. Then she apparently came to some decision. She told him, “Come with me.”

He fell into step beside her. She led him a different way through the house. Rhoswen had disappeared with the dog, perhaps to rest. While Vampyres could and often did remain awake throughout the day, sometimes for days at a time, it was typically as much a strain on them as staying up all night was for most humans.

Carling led him out the back through a bright sun-drenched vegetable garden, where overripe tomatoes, green peppers and cucumbers spilled to the ground. She took him down a short path to a stone cottage nestled in a copse of eucalyptus and palm trees. He could feel the Power in the building as they drew close. It was saturated with a sense of her feminine presence.

She stopped at the arched wooden door, took hold of the door handle, and spoke a word. There was the small sound of a metallic click. She pushed the door open.

She said, “I have another office in my town house in the city, but I prefer to work on magic or Power-related issues here, where I can better control the consequences of any unforeseen events and there aren’t so many other people around.” She gestured in invitation.

He stepped inside and looked around with acute interest. The cottage was bigger than he had first thought. It looked clean and airy with polished oak floors. The main room and short hallway were painted a mellow sage green, with cream trim. Two armchairs were pulled in front of a fireplace, and there was also a wooden table and benches, clean bare countertops, a wood stove, a sink and cabinets.

Carling strode down a short hallway, and he followed her past a small modern-looking blue-tiled bathroom and two other rooms, one painted a warm orange and the other a rich gold. Both rooms held tall wooden bookshelves that were filled with books. Rune caught a glimpse of one shelf that was comprised of cubbyholes that looked to be filled with scrolls of papyrus. He was quite sure he was looking at one of the rarest collections of magic lore in the world, amassed, no doubt, over many centuries of patient research and effort.

Carling stepped into a third room where a mahogany desk and leather chair were placed strategically near French-style doors. The room’s neutral tones brought the eye immediately to the small private walled courtyard, where a brilliant profusion of flowering plants burgeoned just on the other side of the doors. The rest of the room was filled with file cabinets and what appeared to be a large old wooden wardrobe carved with symbols that seemed to shimmer. The front doors had a metal lock that was tarnished with age.

When he looked at the carved wardrobe, something crept along the edges of his mind. It was a dark oily perversion of a feeling. His lip lifted in an instinctive snarl.

Carling slammed her fist into the wood as she walked past and said, “Shut up.”

The whispering stopped abruptly.

Well, now that was just too much to pass up without comment. He didn’t even try. He said, “What’s in the wardrobe?”

She glanced at him. “Books that don’t behave.”

Misbehaving books? Not bothering to hide his skepticism, he said, “Uh-huh.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look and went back to the wardrobe to unlock it with another Power-filled word. Then she opened the doors wide, stepped to one side and gestured with a snappy flip of her fingers. “See for yourself.”

The interior was filled with shelves, and what certainly did appear to be books. Rune stepped closer, angling his head in order to read the spines. There weren’t any titles printed on the spines. These books were hand-stitched and very old.

That one—was that . . . ? The whispering started again, very low, at the edge of his consciousness. He reached out and Carling grabbed him by the wrist. After the first hard squeeze, she pushed him away gently.

“These should only be handled with gloves,” she said.

“Their magic is too dark and invasive.”

“You make them sound infectious,” he said. He glanced at her. “That one is not made of leather.”

“Well,” she said, “it is a certain kind of leather.”

His eyebrows plummeted in a fierce frown and his nostrils pinched in distaste. “Your magic doesn’t feel black like this.”

“That’s because it isn’t.” She shut and locked the doors again. “I’ve made my fair share of mistakes over the centuries, but I’m glad to say turning to Powers that black hasn’t been one of them. They demand too high a level of sacrifice. They eat everything you give them and then they take your soul as well.”

“Then why do you keep these?”

The look Carling gave him at that had turned quizzical. She walked to her desk. “Do you not study the tools your enemies use?”

He folded his arms across his chest and frowned. “Yes, but generally those tools are not . . . infectious.”

“Where would treatment methods for the Ebola virus be if it were not studied? This is no different and, believe me, I take precautions. Thankfully the need to consult those resources is rare, which is why they sometimes get restless. Things that are made with black magic are hungry and they are never satisfied.”

“You talk about them as though they’re sentient.” He glared at the cabinet, the hackles raised at the back of his neck.

“I think they are, at least semi-sentient. Something lingers of their creators, along with something of the souls of the victims that were sacrificed in their creation.” She sat at the desk and opened the lowest drawer, which was unlocked. He could see it contained files labeled in a neat hand. She pulled out a few notebooks and closed the drawer. “This is the distillation of the last few centuries of work I’ve done on trying to find a way to halt the progression of Vampyrism.”

He regarded her with a keen gaze. “And halting the progression of the disease is more preferable than finding a cure, because a cure would make you human again?”

“Theoretically. Unfortunately too much of this is still theoretical, because there really is no known cure. And there are serious issues and questions should a ‘cure’ ever be found.” She handed the notebooks to him.

He opened the top notebook to look at the first page. It was written in the same neat hand that had created the file labels. “I would want to know how a cure would be tested,” he remarked. “And where, and on whom.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps a big medical facility with a focus on research might take it on, like Johns Hopkins University. There might be enough Vampyres who are unhappy enough that they would be willing to take some risks, but there has been no code of ethics developed for clinical trials because there’s nothing that has been successfully developed enough to test.”

“What are the other issues that need considering?” he asked.

She regarded him for a moment, as if collecting her thoughts. Then she said, “What are the consequences of a potential cure? Could a ‘cured’ Vampyre be turned again, and if so, what would be the results? Or would it be irreversible for a Vampyre, like Vampyrism is now for humans? Would a Vampyre simply revert back to being human? What would be the state of their health when they reverted? Would they become as they were before? Some Vampyres were terminally ill from other diseases before they were turned. Or would there be other complications such as, for example, advanced or accelerated aging, or a compromised immune system? And would those complications increase in severity according to the age of the Vampyre involved?”

He shook his head. “In those scenarios, the cure would quite literally kill you.”

“Yes.” Carling gathered her long dark hair together and twisted it into a long rope that she wound into a knot. She pinned the knot into place with two pencils from the desk, her movements fast and economical.

Rune’s gaze lingered on the heavy sable-colored twist of hair lying on Carling’s elegant neck. He wanted to see her pin her hair up again, and he fought a sudden puerile urge to pluck out the pencils. Her hair would spill down that hourglass back, the silken ends splashing like midnight water against the womanly swell of her trim, shapely ass. She would give him that quick annoyed look of hers, or maybe she would be angrier. Maybe she would try to slap him again, and he would catch her wrist and yank her to him . . .

Arousal sank sharpened claws into him and dug in deep. His body hardened and he turned away to hide it.

Walking over to the French doors, he opened the top notebook and flipped through it then took a quick look at the others. There were perhaps two hundred and fifty pages, all told, which was concise, given the amount of time and effort she had put into the research. She had called it a “distillation,” which would have meant at some point she had gone through it all and stripped out everything extraneous.

He went back to the first notebook and read a few lines. He tapped a finger on the page and murmured, “This is not light reading.”

“I could summarize verbally for you,” said Carling. “But I don’t recommend it.”

He didn’t want to listen to any verbal summary before he’d had a chance to look at the details of her research and come to his own conclusions, but he was curious about her reasoning, so he asked, “Why not?”

She gave him a bitter smile. “I no longer trust my mind and neither should you.”

The pain in her dark eyes was terrible. He noted the stiff way she held herself and knew better than to offer a physical gesture of comfort. He took a deep breath and let it out slow and easy. “Fair enough,” he said after a moment. “Do you want me to read it here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. Her gaze flickered and fell away. She looked out the window at the small courtyard. “We have the island to ourselves. You may read wherever you are comfortable.”

“All right.” He willed her to let her rigid spine relax, for the pain to ease away. More to distract her than from any real sense of hunger, he said, “Got any more of that chicken you cook for the dog?”

R
une was just too . . . something.

In the kitchen, Carling shoved several large pieces of cooking flesh around in the skillet and glared at them. For the second time that day, the warm scent and sizzling sounds of browning chicken filled the air.

He was too what? What were the words that should go next?

She glanced over her shoulder at him. Just by sitting at the massive country-style table in the industrial-sized kitchen, he made the room and furniture look almost normal. With those long legs and wide shoulders, that lean torso and his typical quick strong, confident stride, he dominated every room he entered.

He was definitely too large. Check.

His head was bent over the first notebook. He rested his forehead on the heel of one hand as he read. His shoulder-long hair had dried from his morning swim. The careless tousled length made her want to get her hairbrush and smooth the tangles out. His tanned, chiseled features were intent. The sharp high blades of his cheekbones were balanced by the strong straight nose, a strong lean chin that had something of a stubborn bent to it, and that elegant cut mouth of his that was so wise in sensuality.

Well, he was obviously too handsome. He was the rock star of the Wyr, famed throughout not only the Elder Races but also the human society for his good looks, so all right, goddammit, check.

Fine lines framed the corners of his eyes and that sinful mouth. She thought of how those lips felt as they hardened over hers, how he had speared into her with the hot thrust of his tongue. She let her eyes drift shut as arousal pierced her body with an intensity that brought along with it a new wave of shock. Just the memory of that one kiss shook her to her foundations.