The Serpent Waits

by Bill Hiatt

  The others joined in. They weren’t nearly as talented as Taliesin and Magnus, but somehow the sounds blended into a whole that was far better than the sum of its parts. Listening to that music, I could believe magic was real.

  The lyre’s glow was even brighter now, and it was spreading out to engulf the singers. My whole body tingled as my arms had earlier.

  Lucas was dancing just outside the circle, but his moves owed little to his Julliard ballet training. They were skillful, but there was also something primal about them, something that made my heart beat faster, that made me want Lucas to make love to me. The weakness of my limbs was fading, and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to run to him.

  His eyes glowed like lightning, and pale fire burst from each step he took, creating a ring of fire around the inner circle.

  “That isn’t what usually happens,” said Khalid. He sounded worried, but I didn’t care. I could feel Lucas and I pressing together naked, even though I knew it was a mental sensation, not a physical one.

  The lyre glow covered me as well now. It embraced me, it called to me with an ancient rhythm that could not be denied. Yet it was not the rhythm created by Taliesin.

  Even though we were inside, I felt the wind blowing on me, more and more strongly. No, not just on me. It was blowing upon everyone in the room.

  The light from the lyre was changing, becoming more like sunlight. It should have blinded me, but it didn’t. I stood in its radiance, and I knew my destiny.

  “Tal!” yelled Florence. “You have to stop! Something’s wrong!”

  The music didn’t stop, though. It couldn’t stop. It was my bridal song. My divine groom was coming. I could feel him. Lucas was just a vessel. He to whom I was truly pledged was far greater.

  I was barely aware of the screaming. Stan was screaming in Hebrew.

  No, not Stan—David. I recognized the language, for it was the tongue of those who had once been in slavery in Egypt. He was calling for the spell to end, but even though he tried to pull away from it, he could not. It was too powerful for that.

  Khalid flew at the circle in an attempt to break it. He was thrown back and became tangled in Lucas’s fire, but he was not burned, for he had not lied about being fireproof.

  Dr. Florence stretched forth her hands, and from them poured streams of water to quench the fire, but her water dissipated as steam.

  The sunlight was coming now not from the circle of the lyre, but from me. It was the blessing of my betrothed. It was his power, and it would not be denied.

  “Stop!” roared a voice from Lucas that was not his own. His feet stumbled, then halted, but I could still feel the power within me.

  “Stop, Amenirdis, daughter and sister of pharaohs, God’s Wife of Amun! Stop!”

  Lucas moved haltingly toward me, and I knew that he was not the vessel of Amun. Someone else was within him.

  “I am Chango,” said the voice, more quietly now. “I should not manifest in this world in this way anymore. Nor should your lord, Amun. By calling for him as you have, with so much power bent to your will, you have nearly rent the natural order. Desist! Desist! The price to pay for this may already be more than you can bear.”

  I heard the lyre crash to the floor. I saw its glow extinguished. I felt the aching emptiness left by the end of the song, the end of the rhythm. The sunlight coming from me faded, and the winds stilled. I felt myself fading away as well…

  What the hell? I had tumbled out of bed and landed on the floor, flushed, shaking, and breathing so fast I was on the verge of hyperventilating.

  Khalid took my quivering hand. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  Dr. Florence put her hand on my forehead again.

  “This isn’t good,” she mumbled, but aside from being a little rattled, I felt fine.

  Carla had rushed over to help her friends, most of whom were on their knees or lying on the floor.

  Khalid shook his head in disbelief. “How could this happen? I’ve never seen anything like this before—and I’ve seen a lot.” He noticed Shar lying on the ground, seemingly unconscious, let go of my hand, and ran to him.

  Taliesin managed to stagger to Lucas, who was still conscious, but just barely. “What was that?”

  Despite being too far away, I could somehow hear his whisper, as if the air carried it to me by magic. “That…that was Chango, but it wasn’t a voluntary possession. He just…exploded into me. It wasn’t voluntary for him, either. Something drew him here. She drew him here.”

  “Who is she?” asked Taliesin. He sounded afraid.

  “Chango thinks she’s Amenirdis the First, sister of Pharaoh Piye, King of Kush who founded the 25th Dynasty in Egypt.”

  “That doesn’t explain the fireworks,” said Carrie Winn, shaken, but not quite hard enough to get rid of her irritability.

  “Chango knows. She held an office called God’s Wife of Amun, as you heard. That’s a woman with a special connection to one of the most powerful Egyptian gods, Amun, the Hidden One who is present in the wind and in all things hidden. Through union with Ra, he became Amun-Ra and also ruled the sun, as well as being king of the gods.”

  “The ancient false gods can’t meddle in the affairs of humans anymore.” The words came from Stan’s lips, but the voice didn’t sound like Stan’s.

  “God left loopholes to allow for human free will,” said Taliesin. “After all, that’s how we were able to visit the Olympians to retrieve the Lyre of Orpheus.”

  “And now we know what one of the Egyptian loopholes is,” said Lucas. “A descendant of the pharaohs or a reincarnation of one can commune with the old gods and apparently channel their power.”

  “That doesn’t explain the…violence of the response,” said Carla as she helped Gordy to his feet.

  “From what I could tell from Chango, we stumbled into that,” said Lucas. “We channeled so much power in our attempt to block the changes going on in Amy that we drew the attention of the Amenirdis persona, and before we had cast the spell, she emerged. We were connecting to Amy to do the casting, and Amenirdis must have exploited that connection. She caught us by surprise, grabbed that power, and reached out toward what she thought was Amun. That was her mistake. What she was really feeling was my link to Chango, and that’s who she pulled through.

  “That shouldn’t have been possible. It frightened even Chango—and he doesn’t scare easily. It could mean other ancient forces might be brought into the world—and they won’t all be as benevolent as he is.”

  “What…what does all this mean?” I asked. My memory of the last few minutes had significant gaps. I had a hard time making sense of what I was hearing.

  Taliesin looked at me sadly. “It means the choice I tried to give you doesn’t exist anymore. You’re one of us now, whether you like it or not.”

  Down the Rabbit Hole

  Aside from Carrie Winn, it was getting harder and harder to dislike these people. Dr. Florence, who insisted I call her Viviane, spent a tremendous amount of time making sure I was all right, as did Carla. At one time or another, each of the others hovered for a while, clearly concerned, even the ones to whom I hadn’t been properly introduced.

  Considering most of them had been knocked unconscious or nearly so during the recent turmoil, it said a lot that they seemed more concerned about me than themselves.

  Anyway, it was hard to write off what had just happened, even though I couldn’t remember parts of it, as a simple hallucination. A good reporter wouldn’t force the facts to fit a theory. It was time for me to be the best reporter I could be.

  Did this mean I was going to trust Winn and her cohorts blindly? No. Even if there were such a thing as magic, that didn’t mean they were necessarily the good guys. I needed to examine their actions without letting preconceived judgment cloud my analysis.

  Taliesin, who insisted I call him Tal, had been running around as if a dam was about to burst, and the only way to stop it was to plug every single crack with his own finger
s. Even he checked on me a couple of times. When he finally dropped by for a longer conversation, it was to grill me. In his place, I would have done the same.

  “What convinced you to come here?” he asked me. “I know you’re a reporter, but what drew your attention?”

  “There were a lot of things here that didn’t make sense to me.”

  “Why were you looking, though? You’re based in Los Angeles. What drew your attention to a little town in Santa Barbara county?”

  I started to explain some of the things that didn’t make sense to me, but he cut me off.

  “I’m well aware there are things about us that would look odd to an outsider—but most outsiders never notice them. Why did you?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.” Suspicion started to nibble at me again. “Are you trying to get me to divulge a source? You know I can’t ethically do that.”

  He gave me another of his soul-piercing stares. “Dennis McBride.”

  Tal wasn’t so hard to dislike after all.

  “Are you…reading my mind again? You have no right.”

  When I raised my voice, Khalid, looking concerned, wandered over in our direction.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I don’t think you get how serious a problem this is. You don’t know how easy it would be for Amenirdis to take control of you—and keep it.

  “It’s not just you who is at risk, either. We have no way of knowing what Amenirdis’s agenda is or how much power she has, but we could have been badly injured or killed while we were trying to help you—”

  “Which I didn’t ask you to do.”

  “Would you have had us let you writhe in pain while Amenirdis forced her way to the surface?”

  “Stop yelling,” said Khalid. He patted me on the shoulder.

  “I’m not yelling,” said Tal. “I just…it’s very important for Amy to realize how serious this is.”

  “Amy’s been through a lot,” said Carla, who must have been standing closer than I thought. By now the whole group was gravitating in our direction. “You know what that’s like. She needs patience.”

  “We have a respite right now, but we don’t know how long it’s going to last,” said Tal. “We’re on completely unfamiliar ground.”

  “Not for the first time—but we’ve always managed before,” said Carla.

  Turning to me, she said, “I’ve already mentioned how the sorceress Alcina took control of me. For days, I was in her clutches, knowing what was happening, but unable to do anything about it. You don’t want to be stuck in that situation. In order to prevent that from happening, we need more information. There’s so much we don’t know.”

  “If it helps, I didn’t pull a normal source out of your mind,” said Tal.

  I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Dennis McBride died in 2016 during a battle against vampires. I don’t know who you were talking to, but it wasn’t really him.”

  “But I met him in person.” The whole disappearing motel experience shuddered its way back through my mind. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell Tal the whole story, but it came rushing out.

  “This is more serious than I thought,” said Tal. “Is there any reason McBride would be earthbound and hostile?” he asked Winn.

  “None I know of,” she replied without a second’s hesitation.

  “Jimmie, can you check and see if this really is McBride?” asked Tal.

  “On it,” said Jimmie. He moved to a corner of the room and closed his eyes.

  “Is he a medium?” I asked. I used to believe all mediums were frauds—but recent events were forcing me to rethink that.

  “Even better,” said Khalid. “He’s sensitive to the dead because he was dead himself once. Then he got resurrected.”

  I was torn between my reporter’s curiosity and a little voice in my head that was screaming nonstop that everyone around me was crazy. The reporter’s curiosity won out, but by then, Jimmie had already returned.

  “I’m not feeling McBride, and I checked for other hostile presences, too. Whatever was messing with Amy, I don’t think it was a ghost.”

  “Unfortunately, that still leaves a lot of other supernatural possibilities,” said Tal. “You said you met him in Orcutt, right? Some of us should go there and check this out.”

  “Road trip!” yelled Khalid gleefully.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?” asked Shar, glaring at him.

  “Oh, yeah, because algebra is way more important than keeping Amy safe,” Khalid said, giving me a wink in the process.

  “He’s missed most of the day already,” said Tal. “If need be, he can bilocate tomorrow.”

  Most of the day? I was uncomfortably reminded that I’d lost track of time. I was also reminded of how many obvious questions I was missing. “Bilocate?”

  Tal looked a little less tense and smiled. “I’ll bet you discovered instances in which one of us seemed to be in two places at the same time.” He held up his right hand to show a ring I hadn’t noticed before. “These little gadgets are the reason. You see, we actually can be in two places simultaneously.”

  I thought there was nothing left that could surprise me. I was wrong.

  “Sadly, we’ve become…more conspicuous than we would have liked in the supernatural community,” said Tal. “There’s hardly a week in which someone doesn’t try to steal from us, control us, attack the town, or kill us. We can’t ignore those attempts, but none of us would have lives if that’s all we ever dealt with.

  “We had other solutions, but they proved unsatisfactory. It took three years, but we finally developed the right kind of magic—with considerable help from our allies.”

  Khalid jumped up. “It works like this,” he said, pressing on the ring. A multicolored mist billowed up next to him, gradually resolving itself into an exact double of the teenager, including his clothes—but minus the bow strapped to his back.

  “It doesn’t duplicate magic items, but it duplicates everything else, including me, exactly,” the two Khalids said in unison. “Which one is the real me? We both are!”

  “But I’m the better looking one,” said the new Khalid, winking at me as he did so.

  “Are there any side-effects?” I asked. I should have been more skeptical, but if this was a trick of some kind, it was pulled off flawlessly.

  “None we’ve found,” said Tal. “There are some dangers, though. Because the double is really the same person as the original, if the double dies, the original dies as well. Fortunately, if the double is close to death, he or she can dissolve before death comes.

  “There are also some limitations. No one can have more than one double at a time, and we can’t stay too close to our doubles for too long, or they dissolve spontaneously. That prevents us from doubling up during a fight, but it doesn’t interfere with the double’s primary purpose—to replace us when we need to deal with the latest crisis.”

  “But isn’t the double living your life while you fight all the battles?” I asked.

  “Because each of us is essentially the same person as our double, we all have access to the memories and experiences of those doubles, just as they have access to ours.”

  “So I can date two girls at the same time and remember both dates,” said the Khalids in unison.

  “Fathers, lock up your daughters,” said Gordy. His smirk was wider than usual.

  “Well, since you’ve bilocated anyway, one of you can start on the homework,” said Shar. “I mean it.”

  Faced with Shar’s determined stare, one of the Khalids shuffled off to do homework. The other one yelled “Road trip!” again at the top of his lungs.

  “You’d think you never got to go anywhere,” said Shar. “You’ve been all over the world, as well as in several others.”

  Khalid grinned mischievously. “The trips where I had to sneak along invisibly don’t count.”

  Shar ruffled his hair. “Well, you don’t have to sneak on this one—unless you’re
getting on Amy’s nerves.”

  “No,” I said. “Khalid’s presence is…soothing.” If he could take all the weirdness in stride at his age, why couldn’t I?

  Shar smiled. “I believe that’s the first time he’s ever been called that.”

  “We need to move while we still have daylight,” said Tal. “Amy, I should ask if you feel up to coming. It would be helpful if you could.”

  “I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do.”

  “Perhaps we should all go,” said Stan. “I think this is more than just a routine supernatural intrusion.”

  Despite the last few hours, I still wasn’t sure routine and supernatural belonged in the same sentence.

  “Sounds pretty minor to me,” said Winn. “A midrange sorcerer working solo could easily have set up the kind of illusions Amy’s describing.”

  “Agreed—but why target Amy?” asked Stan. “Doesn’t it seem unbelievable that someone just happened to pick a person who’s the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian religious leader?”

  “She is a reporter,” said Winn, glancing in my direction, her expression betraying her continued irritation with me. “Someone wanted to give us trouble by prodding her to investigate.”

  “That could be partly true,” conceded Stan. “But no ordinary reporters have given us any trouble in the past. We always spot them and make sure they don’t get too close to the truth. Someone with emerging magic like Amy is a whole different level of problem—no offense.”

  “None taken,” I said. I wanted to ask how they could keep a reporter away from the truth—professional curiosity—but it didn’t seem like the right moment.

  “Here’s what I think happened,” said Stan. “Someone has been researching us—I mean someone besides Amy. Someone from the supernatural community. Someone who knows we don’t have any experts on ancient Egypt among us. Someone who knows Egyptian magic well and knows how we’d deal with someone like Amy who’s in trouble.”

  Tal’s eyes narrowed. “You think whoever it is wanted us to try to keep Amy’s power from emerging?”