The Serpent Waits

by Bill Hiatt

  By the time we reached the sitting room, I was out of breath. To my relief, Ceridwen was alive and right there in front of us. She looked just as anxious as her daughter, though.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Tal.

  “See for yourself,” said Ceridwen. “Morfran! Come out!”

  Morfran stepped through the door that led to the guest bedrooms. He was the hairy mess he had been before, except that he seemed even more self-conscious about it than when we first met.

  “What happened?” asked Lucas.

  “The curse was detached from Morfran, but not broken,” said Ceridwen. “Remember how Hafez had scraped it off himself and contained it? That particular spell did not survive his death. The moment his heart beat its last, the curse was free—and it sought out Morfran.

  Nancy came through the door and tried to put her arm around Morfran. He pulled away and would not look at her.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she mumbled to him.

  “How could it not?” asked Morfran. “Having tasted your love, I have no desire for your pity.”

  “Let’s not panic just yet,” said Tal. “We got it off him once before, and as for containment, we have the staff now. Anything Hafez could have done we should be able to replicate.”

  Tal closed his eyes and reached out with his mind to summon the others. “Everybody’s in good enough shape to travel. They’ll be back here in a minute.”

  Another portal opened, and the rest of the group emerged from it as fast as they could.

  “We will do everything we can,” said Viviane in her most reassuring tone.

  “I don’t understand this at all,” said Tal, staring at the curse as it writhed in the corner. “We can pry it off of him and use Shar’s sword to keep it away, but we can’t destroy it.”

  Magnus shook his head. “Yeah, even with the power of the staff augmented by the power of the lyre, we still can’t nuke it.”

  “Every spell can be undone,” said Ceridwen. “We’ve tried brute force, and that hasn’t worked. Perhaps if we knew who cast it and how, we would make more headway.”

  “I reached out to Sophia a while ago,” said Viviane. “She has nothing right now. She’ll let you know if she sees anything that could be useful.”

  “Perhaps the time has come to accept my fate,” said Morfran. “I spent most of my life thinking the curse would never be broken. I can…reconcile myself to that again.”

  He was so beautiful that, if I hadn’t already given my heart to Lucas, I would have found his appeal irresistible. How could someone like that reconcile himself to being ugly forever?

  “If we take the staff to Sophia, she’ll be able to see things in other universes, right?” asked Magnus. “How about finding a universe with no Morfran in it and pushing the curse into it?”

  “That’s clever,” said Tal. “It’s also too risky. We know from throwing the curse at Hafez that if it isn’t attached to Morfran, it might attach itself to someone else.”

  “What if we left my sword here, with Mofran?” I hadn’t known Shar long, but I could tell that the sword was like an extension of his own body to him. Morfran knew it, too.

  “I could never accept so great a sacrifice. I’ve heard enough of your stories to know that the sword has saved you and your friends many times. I will not have any of your blood on my hands.”

  “Besides, don’t forget that the sword is technically on loan to you, Shar,” said Viviane. “We’re in the habit of assuming that its owner will never ask for its return, but we can’t take that for granted.

  “However, other magic objects exist in our world—and probably here as well that might accomplish the same thing. Lancelot’s ring, for example, is said to make its wearer impervious to spells.”

  “That was lost long ago in this world,” said Ceridwen.

  “The best we can do at the moment is imprison the curse as well as we can and hope it doesn’t escape,” said Tal. “In the meantime, Ceridwen, you can continue your research. Sophia will help. Eventually, the two of you will find a way to break the curse.”

  Ceridwen stared at the imprisoned curse for a moment. “It seems to eat away at any spell that contains it. Once you’re gone, I’ll try to maintain the spell, but it will be difficult.”

  “Mother, you’ve already lost more than twenty years in Hafez’s prison. I can’t ask you to become a prisoner of my curse.” Morfran dropped Shar’s sword on the ground, and the curse exploded toward him, only barely restrained by the spell Tal and Magnus had crafted.

  “Are you sure about this?” asked Nancy.

  “It’s the only way to be certain the curse doesn’t harm other people. I’d grown used to it. I can again.”

  I could hear the curse screaming in my mind as it clawed at the barrier between itself and Morfran. It would never rest until it was attached to him once more.

  “At least this time, you won’t have to do it alone,” said Nancy, putting her arm around him.

  “What do you mean?” Morfran tried to pull away from her again. “How could you stay with me once I looked—”

  “Do you think my love is based only on your looks?” asked Nancy. “I’ll admit they drew me to you at first, but you are so much more than that.”

  “Be sure about this,” said Tal. “Once we leave here, we’ll be securing the staff in the vault of the Orders of the Lady of the Lake to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. We won’t be able to return.”

  Nancy shrugged. “I have no family. I’ll miss my friends, but not more than I’d miss Morfran if I left here. This world is similar enough to ours for me to feel at home. Of course, it would help to have a job.” She looked at Ceridwen.

  Ceridwen, choked up, didn’t answer at first. “You are welcome to be part of my security detail. If you want something else, I can set that up, too.”

  Morfran pulled her back to him. “Are you sure? You might be stuck with a monster forever.”

  She kissed him. “I’ll be stuck with an angel. I can live with his being hairy.”

  The curse lashed out at the barrier so hard that the thud of the impact sounded physical.

  Tal looked more confused than I’d ever seen him.

  “It’s all right,” said Ceridwen. “Do as he says.”

  “Stand back,” said Tal. He released the spell, and the curse flew across the room, engulfing Morfran like a toxic cloud propelled by a hurricane. When the cloud faded, Morfran was once again the beast on two legs we had first met.

  Nancy grabbed him. “Just in case you didn’t really believe me, we’re going to make love as soon as we say our good-byes.”

  “I think they’re going for the record,” Lucas whispered in my ear. “We’ve got our work cut out for us if we intend to catch up.”

  Homecoming Surprise

  “He’s gone?” asked Tal. “Are you sure?”

  “I couldn’t have missed his magic signature—or the staff’s, for that matter,” said Viviane. “Magnus left, and he took the staff with him. He also left a note.”

  She handed Tal the paper, and he read it as if it were the announcement of his doom.

  “Magnus says he knows he doesn’t fit in here and never will. He’s gone to seek a place he can call his own.”

  “With a staff that enables him to reach other universes? I don’t like the sound of that,” said Shar.

  “And he’ll use it,” said Tal. “Not so long ago, he asked me if he could use the staff to find a world in which Eva wasn’t in a relationship. We were so busy afterward that I forgot all about it. Damn. I should have transferred the staff to the custody of the Ladies of the Lake the moment we got back.”

  “Are we going to track him down?” asked Gordy.

  “Without the staff, we don’t have any way of tracking him or following him,” said Tal.

  “No one can create new magic faster than you can,” said Carla. “If you’re worried about what he’s going to do—”

  “I’d be more worried about multiplying the w
ays people could breach those barriers. And before anyone suggests it, no, we aren’t going hunting for this world’s equivalent of the staff—if such a thing even exists, it needs to stay buried wherever it is. As much as I don’t like the idea of Magnus roaming around out there, there are people far worse. The best we can is hope is that Magnus has the sense to avoid doing too much damage.”

  Gordy snorted. “Yeah, that’ll be the day.”

  “I should have seen this coming,” said Eva. “I should have done something.”

  “There’s nothing you could have done,” said Jimmie, hugging her. “Magnus wouldn’t have settled for anything less than your love.”

  “Maybe this will be a good thing,” said Tal, though his tone suggested he doubted his own words. “Magnus isn’t happy here. He hasn’t been for a long time.

  “Dark magic was his origin,” said Viviane. “But he’s moved beyond that. Sure, he’s annoying, he’s immature—but he isn’t evil. Not any more. He’s done his share of good.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Gordy. “Think we’ll ever see him again?”

  “Quite probably,” said Tal. “I just hope it’s not when universes are collapsing because of something he’s done.”

  “Are you going back to LA?” asked Lucas as he pulled his shirt off. His muscles rippled invitingly.

  “Too far away from you,” I said, giving him my best smile. “Anyway, it’s harder to report the news when you are the news, even if your role is secret. I’ve already resigned. I’m taking the job Vanora offered me as Carrie Winn’s new press secretary.”

  “As long as you’re happy with that, that’s good,” said Lucas. “I’d hate to think I was just a one-night stand.”

  I knew Lucas was kidding—but there was truth behind his words. I hadn’t known him that long, yet it felt as if I had known him forever.

  That feeling was reinforced when I joined him in bed. At the risk of sounding sappy, it was as if we were meant to be together.

  Amenirdis had promised to give us privacy, but I felt her, and so did Lucas. Though she had found a way to seal herself off from what I was experiencing, something of her echoed in me. As we made love, I fanned Lucas with her winds. I warmed him with her rays of sun. It was as if we were making love on the bank of the Nile rather than in Lucas’s Santa Brígida apartment.

  Even stranger, I felt Chango, who made a point of never intruding into Lucas’s body. He wasn’t really there. Like Amenirdis with me, though, he echoed through Lucas. His fire burned in my blood. His lightning sizzled up every nerve. His dance enlivened the rhythms of our lovemaking.

  If I had any doubts Lucas and I were meant to be together, they dissolved in his fervent embrace.

  About the Author

  As far back as he can remember, Bill Hiatt had a love for reading so intense that he eventually ended up owning over eight thousand books--not counting e-books! He has also loved to write for almost that long. As an English teacher, he had little time to write, though he always felt there were stories within him that longed to get out, and he did manage to publish a few books near the end of his teaching career. Now that he is retired from teaching, the stories are even more anxious to get out into the world, and they will not be denied.

  For more information, visit

  https://www.billhiatt.com

  Other Books and Booklets by Bill Hiatt

  Spell Weaver Series

  (Shorts set in the Spell Weaver universe are inserted where they belong in the storyline but are not numbered.)

  “Echoes of My Past Lives” (0)

  Living with Your Past Selves (1)

  Divided against Yourselves (2)

  Hidden among Yourselves (3)

  “Destiny or Madness”

  “Angel Feather”

  Evil within Yourselves (4)

  We Walk in Darkness (5)

  Separated from Yourselves (6)

  When Parallels Collide Series

  The Serpent Waits (1)

  Different Dragons Series

  Different Lee (1)

  Soul Switch (2)

  Soul Salvager Series

  Haunted by the Devil (1, also includes The Devil Hath the Power, originally published separately)

  Mythology Book (hybrid mythology text/young adult urban fantasy)

  A Dream Come True: An Entertaining Way

  for Students to Learn Greek Mythology

  Anthologies

  [The name(s) of the piece(s) by Bill Hiatt are in parentheses following the anthology name.]

  Anthologies of the Heart, Book 1: Where Dreams and Visions Live

  (“The Sea of Dreams”)

  Flash Flood 2: Monster Maelstrom, A Flash Fiction Halloween Anthology

  (“In the Eye of the Beholder”)

  Flash Flood 3: Christmas in Love, A Flash Fiction Anthology

  (“Naughty or Nice?” and “Entertaining Unawares”)

  Hidden Worlds, Volume 1: Unknown, a Sci-Fi and Fantasy Anthology

  (“The Worm Turns” and “Abandoned”)

  Great Tomes Series, Book 6: The Great Tome of Magicians, Necromancers, and Mystics

  (“Green Wounds”)

  Education-related Titles

  “A Parent’s Guide to Parent-Teacher Communications”

  “A Teacher’s Survival Guide for Writing College Recommendations”

  “Poisoned by Politics: What’s Wrong with

  Education Reform and How To Fix It”