Serpent's Kiss (9 page)

The girl said something in a shaky, high voice, the liquidsounding words alien and unintelligible.

For a few moments his frozen brain refused to respond. Then, like flexing an unused muscle, his mind made sense of what she had said to him. She had spoken in a long-dead language.

“Are you Atum?”

Atum, to the ancient Egyptians, was the god of creation, the being from which all other deities came. Rune shook his head and fumbled to find the words and the concepts for a reply that this version of Carling might understand.

“No,” he said, trying with all his might to project comfort and reassurance into his voice. Whether this was reality or illusion could be discovered later. At this point it didn’t matter—gods, he just hoped the child Carling didn’t bolt and run from him. “I am something different.”

The girl pointed with a shaky hand. “But I saw you come out of the water.”

Rune turned to look where she pointed. The river wound out of sight. Atum, according to the myth, rose out of a primordial watery abyss that circled the world. When Rune had changed into his Wyr form and launched into the air, from a distance it must have appeared that he had come out of the water.

He repeated, gently, “I am not a god. I am something else.”

He did not expect her to believe him. She had just seen him fly in his gryphon form. To her, how could he be anything else? The early religions were filled with such things, as the Wyr shapeshifted and began to interact with humankind. Egypt’s pantheon of gods was especially filled with human/animal forms.

He was useless at human things, but if he had to guess, he would place this Carling at under ten years of age. Was this really what she had been like as a child, or was this a projection of her mind? Was this who she thought she had once been? Simple wonder made her intelligent eyes shine. She was so delicate, the sight of her caught at the back of his throat. She was the merest infant. She had the whole of a very long, strange, and what must have been an often difficult life ahead of her. This Carling couldn’t possibly understand any of that.

Moving slowly and easily, he crouched into a squat so he didn’t tower over her. She shivered when he moved but still she did not break and run. Such a brave baby. He cleared his throat. “What’s your name, darling?”

Darling. He used the English word. He knew of no direct equivalent in the ancient Egyptian language.

In a classic childish gesture of self-consciousness, she lifted one of her narrow shoulders toward her ear as she gave him a small smile. “Khepri,” she whispered.

Rune tumbled head over heels in love. He laughed a little breathlessly, feeling like a mule had just kicked him in the chest. “Khepri,” he repeated. If he remembered right, the word meant morning sun. “It’s a beautiful name.” He pointed in the direction of the cluster of small buildings near the river’s edge. “Does your family live there?”

She nodded. Curiosity overcame her wonder, and she dared to sidle a few steps closer. “What is your name?”

His breath caught. He willed her to trust him and come closer. “I am called Rune.”

He watched her mouth form the strange word as she tried it out silently. She would have been a quick child and would have rarely needed to be told something twice. He wondered when she would have taken on the more anglicized name of Carling, and what the reasons had been behind the change.

He gestured toward the bundle of grain and the knife. “You are harvesting.”

She looked at the bundle and heaved an aggrieved sigh. “It is hard work. I would rather fish.”

He grinned. “Where does your village take its grain?”

She pointed north, downriver. “Ineb Hedj,” she told him. She added, proudly, “It is a very great place.”

Ineb Hedj. The White Walls. The city had been named for the dam that surrounded it and successfully kept the Nile at bay, one of the first of its kind in human history. Established around 3,000 BCE and sitting twelve miles from the Mediterranean coast, the city had a long, illustrious history. Eventually it would be called Memphis. At one point it had been the largest city in the world. Khepri was right, it was a very great place.

He heard the rhythmic strike of hoofbeats in the distance, and remembered the men on horseback that he had glimpsed earlier when he was airborne. If Khepri’s village was able to get grain into Ineb Hedj, the city could not be more than a day’s walk away. Probably the riders came from the city.

He smiled. Everything about this child enchanted him, from the way she pulled at her lower lip with thumb and forefinger to how she stood with one dirty foot balanced on top of the other. How had she come from such a poor, obscure beginning to become one of the most Powerful rulers in the Elder Races?

He asked, “Have you been to Ineb Hedj?”

She shook her head. “I am not allowed.”

“That will change some day,” he said.

Khepri looked in the direction of the hoof beats. She asked, “Do you hear that?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Something is happening.” She looked excited and disturbed all over again.

The village must be far enough from the city for the men on horseback to be an event. He frowned and straightened to look north. Khepri moved closer to stand by his side.

Villagers emerged from the huts as the riders appeared. No one noticed Rune or looked in their direction. They were all staring at the approaching riders. Rune set his jaw. He did not like the look of how the riders held their spears, or their aggressive speed.

He put a hand on Khepri’s shoulder. She felt so fragile underneath his fingers, her bones as light and slender as a bird’s. She gave him a frowning look.

“Listen, darling,” he said. He kept his tone quiet and easy. “I think we should step into the field and hide in the grain, just until we know what those men want.”

Or at least that’s what he tried to say to her. Even as the words came out of his mouth, the solid feel of her shoulder melted from underneath his touch. He made an instinctive attempt to grab hold of her. His fingers clenched in an empty fist. Khepri stared at his fist and reached for it with small brown fingers that had gone transparent. Her hand passed through his. Her face tilted up. They stared at each other.

Rune sent a swift glance around. The outline of a room had appeared, sketched over the hot desert afternoon. A vertical line of curtain slashed through the riders who had lifted their spears. The rider in the lead took aim and threw his spear at the nearest villager, a slender middle-aged male. The spear’s copper head emerged from the man’s back in an explosion of liquid crimson.

Ah, hell no.

He glanced down at Khepri and saw her lips move on another word. He recognized it even though he couldn’t hear her. Papa. She opened her mouth wide to scream.

No
, dammit. Whatever was really happening—memory, illusion or reality—he did not want to leave the child this way, not now, not yet. He tried to lunge in front of her so she couldn’t see anything else the riders did. He tried to scoop her up and run away with her, but she passed through his arms, as insubstantial as a ghost.

Khepri and the rest of the desert scene faded from sight. He sensed again a kind of passage, that peculiar bent, goingaround-a-corner feeling, but no matter how his mind tried to grasp hold of the concept, it slid away.

Then he stood sweating in a large cool, darkened bedroom. A king-sized four-poster bed dominated one wall. A sitting area with armchairs, footstools and side tables was set up on the other side of the room, in front of a comfortable-looking, well-used fireplace.

Carling sat in one of the armchairs, an open book resting on one of the chair’s arms. Rasputin had leaped onto her lap and was licking at her cheeks. Rhoswen knelt on the floor beside her, gripping her by the hand and saying her name. With a grimace, Carling nudged the dog away from her face. Rasputin switched to licking her hand as he wagged his tail frantically. Carling caught sight of Rune. She looked at him, at the dog and at Rhoswen as though she had never seen any of them before.

She said, “Something’s happened.”

C
arling struggled against a feeling of disorientation. She had been trying to read a rather mangled history of the Dark Ages, finding the author alternatively amusing and irritating. The last thing she remembered was putting down her book as she looked at the late-afternoon sunshine, and now her bedroom was in near-complete darkness. Despite her best effort to stave it off, apparently she had faded again.

Distress weighted the air. Rasputin was always disturbed whenever she had an episode. How the dog sensed what was happening, she didn’t have a clue. She gave up trying to calm him and simply clamped her hand down on the back of the dog’s neck to contain his frantic wriggling body in one spot.

There was never any ambiguity about Rhoswen’s upset either. When Carling faded, it invariably threw the other Vampyre into a panic, which was why Carling had put off telling her about the episodes she’d had on the trip to Adriyel.

While Rhoswen’s panic was tiring, it wasn’t anything new. Carling’s attention switched to the source of the sharp, fierce emotions in the room. Rune flared against her mind’s eye like an aggressive, violent infrared volcano. He was breathing heavily, and he smelled of sharp male sweat and exertion. What had happened to him?

As she stared, he seemed to collect himself. He walked over to her with every appearance of calm, but of course she knew better.

“All right,” Rune said. “What’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She frowned as she tried to reach for the elusive feeling, but it had already melted away. “Something did,” she insisted. “Something shifted.”

Rhoswen started a tearful babble. Carling was so weary of dealing with the younger Vampyre’s self-involvement she simply covered her eyes with one hand.

Rune snapped sharply, “Rhoswen, stop it.”

Rhoswen’s babble cut off in midsentence. She looked at Rune in affronted astonishment.

He told her, his voice hard, “Nobody needs that kind of excess right now. If you cannot add to the situation, get out.”

Carling’s eyebrows rose behind her hand. She was almost inclined to laugh.

Rhoswen’s reply sounded strangled. “I’ll—feed the dog his supper and take him out.”

Carling touched Rhoswen’s hand and told her, “Thank you.”

Rhoswen sniffed and nodded. She scooped Rasputin off Carling’s lap and left with her head lowered.

Rune waited until the younger Vampyre was gone. Then he began to pace around the room. He kept his movements controlled in a slow prowl, as though he would give the appearance of relaxation, but the hot corona of violence that surrounded him all but obliterated her ability to see or sense anything else in the room.

He asked in an even voice, “The episodes aren’t painful, are they? Are you in any discomfort?”

“No,” she said. “I’m just tired.”

She was more than just tired. She was mortally exhausted. Not even the remarkable vitality of Rune’s powerful emotions could energize her this time. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept, or even just rested enough to become refreshed. It was all part of the progression of the disease: one lost the ability to take in physical nourishment and began to feed off emotions, and after a few centuries, one became unable to sleep and the episodes increased. She wrapped her arms around herself and huddled in one corner of the armchair.

Rune gave her a sharp, searching glance. He stopped at one of the side tables to light an oil lamp. It flooded the sitting area with soft light. He glanced at a windup clock on the fireplace mantel and continued on his prowl. “Rhoswen woke up earlier and came to check on you. The sun had not yet set, so you may have slipped into the fade at any time from late afternoon to early evening. It’s almost midnight now. Is that a typical length of time for one of these episodes?”

“They vary,” she murmured. “I recently had one that lasted a couple of days. It sounds like this one only lasted hours.”

“All right.” He stopped in front of the large windows and looked out. He went still, then muttered to himself, “Interesting.”

She regarded him wearily. As fascinating as she found him, right now she wanted nothing more than for him to go away and leave her alone. “What?”

He looked back at her. “Your windows face the east.”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. She caught how his attention diverted to the small movement. A strange expression crossed his lean tanned features, and a sharp emotion like pain pierced him.

She told him, “I like to look at the morning sun.”

“Khepri,” he whispered.

Icy shock rippled over her skin as she heard him utter a word that no one had spoken to her in millennia. “
What
did you just say?”

He walked to the other armchair and leaned his folded arms across its high back as he watched her with unswerving intensity. “The San Francisco Bay was visible earlier,” Rune said. “Now it isn’t. I was outside when it appeared just before sunset, which sounds very close to the time when you might have faded. Is that a coincidence?” He paused to give her a chance to respond. She said nothing. “Not?”

She admitted reluctantly, “Maybe not.”

He straightened and folded his arms across his chest. He did not look pleased. “It appears we have a lot to discuss.”

“We sure as hell do,” said Carling.

SIX

S
he glared at him. “How did you know to say that . . . word?” She felt so exposed and off balance she could not even admit out loud that Khepri was a name, much less confess that it had been her name, so long ago she had literally been a different creature. She could not imagine how Rune, of all people, would have heard of it.

Rune made an impatient gesture with one hand. “I’ll get to that in a minute. Why didn’t you say anything about a connection between what was happening to you and what was happening to the island?”

“Because I don’t understand why it’s happening,” she snapped. “I’m not even sure there is a connection.”

He snapped back, “Don’t lie to me. I said I would help you, but I cannot do that if you do not come clean about everything you think is happening.”

“I didn’t ask you to stay,” she said, her tone clipped.

His anger detonated. The force of it was like an invisible air bag inflating, pushing her back into her seat. “Do you really want to go there? Because based on what I’ve read so far, you’ve done great working on your own all this time. I’m sure you’re going to turn things around any second now before you
fucking die
in as soon as a couple of
fucking weeks
.”

She let her head fall back against the chair. “Fine. There may be a connection. The island started to become visible when I began to have the episodes.” She discovered she was breathing hard and forced herself to stop. She told him, “But I can’t figure out what would link the two things together, so I still don’t understand why it happens.”

“May be a connection. May be a connection?” Bloody hell. A chill rippled down his spine. If Carling’s episodes were so Powerful they affected the land around her, what else might she be affecting? What could her episodes do to the world around her when she wasn’t in an Other land? He ran an impatient, long-fingered hand through his tousled hair. “Did you have any episodes on the trip to Adriyel?”

“A few,” she admitted reluctantly.

His sharp gaze stabbed her. “I don’t remember any anomalies occurring in the landscape, and I sure as hell didn’t . . . well, I didn’t sense anything remotely like what happened here today.”

She shrugged and shook her head. “We can’t even be sure there is a correlation.
If
there is, Adriyel is still one of the largest Other lands in the Northern Hemisphere, with several crossover passages not only to Earth but also to Other lands. I think it would take something of unimaginable size and scope to affect it. This island is one of the smallest known Other lands with just the one crossover passage. And as far as you’re concerned, you were never around when I went into a fade. I was close to one when Niniane was kidnapped and Tiago injured, but focusing on healing Tiago helped me to stave it off for a time. By the time it hit, I was back in our encampment ‘resting.’ I had another one earlier at the hotel, but I don’t think you had arrived in Chicago yet.”

His jaw tightened. “I’ve got about a hundred pages left to read of your research. Is any of this in your notes?”

Her gaze fell from his. She said, “No.”

After a moment he said between his teeth, “Much as I would like to, we’re not going to waste time on having a conversation about why the hell not.”

She said stiffly, “There was no point in writing it down. It’s neither scientific nor productive to state this thing seems to happen, and at the same time this other, apparently unrelated event also seems to happen, and I don’t understand any of it.”

He looked incredulous. “Out of all of what is going on, being scientific is what matters the most to you?”

Her brief flare of anger faded. She rubbed her face. She said with a sigh, “It matters that I leave behind the best work that I can, so hopefully someone can move forward with the research. Then maybe they can find a cure or some way to halt the progression of the disease in a way that I haven’t been able to. It will not do anybody any good to leave behind fruitless speculation that contains, in the end, more desperation than sense.”

Silence spread through the room. It was filled with such tension, her muscles clenched. Rune pushed off the back of the chair and came around. She watched him warily as he scooped up one of the ottomans, placed it in front of her and sat down on it. Her expression chilled as he reached for her hand, but she allowed it. For the moment.

He looked down at her fingers, and she did too. They appeared so slender and delicate in his much larger, squarepalmed hand. Appearances were deceiving. She had lost count of the number of creatures she had killed with her bare hands.

Rune’s anger and aggression had vanished. She wished she could find a way to keep the sight of his lean, handsome face from hurting what was left of her tired, useless heart. The emotion was just another thing she didn’t understand about herself, and she didn’t know how to make it stop. She wished she had the ability to make the most of this fleeting time because it would be gone all too soon. She wanted to regard Rune’s male beauty in a way it deserved, with simple pleasure.

When Rune spoke next, his voice had gentled. “You have become too used to the thought of dying.”

She did not bother to dignify that with a verbal response. Instead she lifted an eyebrow.

He told her, “I know, but take what I say seriously, Carling. I think the mind-set may lead to some sloppy thinking. You no longer have the luxury of centuries or even years ahead of you for research. You can’t afford to be passive or silent about things right now just because they don’t make sense to you.”

She regarded him for a moment. Then she shocked them both, as she lifted her free hand and laid it against his warm, lean cheek. He froze, his gaze startled.

“I think you’re a good man,” she said. As old as she was, she had met far too few of those over the years. As a woman of Power, she had tended to attract men of ambition. Not that ambition was necessarily a bad thing, but it tended to skew ethics and perspectives. In the end there had never been anyone secure enough in his own power to not feel threatened by hers, nor anyone who was more interested in her than in meeting his own agenda. And there had never been anyone strong enough to make her believe in him beyond all else. She smiled at Rune. “I appreciate that you want to help me, and I am happy to try to fight for my life. But I’m afraid you may be tilting at windmills here.”

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.”