Serpentine

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "You had to be in your late twenties by then," Micah said.

  He laughed. "I wasn't twenty; I was already dead by the time I met him." With that he went into the bathroom and did a few minutes of blow-drying with a diffuser, so it wouldn't damage his curls. He was already wearing five keep-in hair care products to tame the nearly waist-length curls. Without all the product, his hair would almost do the white man's 'fro like mine and Micah's.

  Micah turned to me while we listened to the blow-dryer. "Did you know that Asher was his first man?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes," Nathaniel mumbled sleepily, sliding off Micah's thigh so he could bury himself deeper into the covers, between us.

  Jean-Claude came back out with his hair mostly dry and his curls laid in careful disarray. He got a short velvet jacket out of the wardrobe and pulled the white lace of his sleeves through, so it spilled out of the end of the jacket sleeves in a graceful fall around his slender, strong hands. He stopped in front of the full-length mirror in the corner, settling the open lace of the collar out over the black velvet of the jacket so that it lay just so and the cameo had pride of place at his neck. I knew he liked the necklace, but he was wearing it tonight for me, so I could see it on his neck. It was one of the moments when I began to understand why he wanted me to wear his ring.

  He stalked toward the bed in the new boots and the rest looking like someone's wet dream, or maybe it was just my wet dream. Either way it made me smile as he came to the edge of the bed and kissed Micah first, and then had to climb up on the bed to lean past him to kiss Nathaniel, who drew a bare arm out of the covers to wrap around Jean-Claude and draw him down to the bed across Micah's lap.

  "Non, mon chaton, I must go to work."

  "Stay," Nathaniel said in a sleepy, happy voice that had made me late for work more than once.

  Jean-Claude laughed, and Micah helped him get free by putting himself in the way of the entwining arms of our shared boy. Jean-Claude got to knees and hands and leaned across the men to kiss me. We'd just started pressing into the kiss, my hand on the edge of his face to help steady myself, when arms came up around us both and tried to drag us down to the bed. We opened our eyes to find Nathaniel doing his sleepy, teasing best to pull us down to the bed. I let him pull me close, but Jean-Claude pulled away laughing and slipped gracefully off the bed.

  "I will come back and allow you to pull me into your warm nest after my meeting, but it will not be a short meeting, so sleep and I will wake you when I return."

  Nathaniel made sleepy, happy noises and curled back under the covers. Micah called out to Jean-Claude as he went for the door. "We may try to talk to Melanie tonight in between shows."

  Jean-Claude looked back with his hand on the door. "Remember that Melanie is thousands of years old and has never been human. It makes her arrogant, among other things."

  "We'll take security with us," Micah said.

  "You have little choice in that, with the new security regimen." Jean-Claude said it like he wasn't entirely happy with it either. "But I was not thinking of that. You wish information from Melanie, if she has it to share. I was merely reminding you that she might not respond to your questions in the way you expect. If you wish to learn what she knows, you must keep her uniqueness in mind."

  "I've dealt with her before. She didn't seem that different for questioning," I said.

  "She was still trapped as the animal to call of a vampire and was not the master of herself as she is now."

  I thought about that for a second or two. "Point taken."

  "I would ask you to wait until I can help you question her, since I have more experience dealing with her day to day, but I know you are both too impatient to wait, so I will not ask it of you."

  "Sorry, but you're right," I said.

  "I did not doubt I was right, ma petite, and now I truly must go. This has been a wonderful respite, and I go forth to this tedious but necessary meeting with renewed vigor and enthusiasm." He blew us kisses and left.

  I looked at Micah across the bed. "Do you feel full of renewed vigor and enthusiasm?" I asked.

  He thought about it for a moment and then smiled. "I do, actually."

  That made me smile. "Good, me, too."

  He grinned.

  Nathaniel reached up and tried to pull us both down into his nest of covers. "Stop sitting up and lie down with me."

  "We're going to go talk to Melanie and see if she knows anything to help the shapeshifters in Florida," I said.

  That made him blink awake. "I thought I dreamed that part."

  "No," Micah said.

  "I'll come with you." He sat up, wiping his hand across his eyes.

  "You enjoy your postcoital nap; we'll come back and join you after we talk to her," I said.

  He shook his head. "When's the last time you talked to Melanie?"

  "Years, like right after we killed her master and Jean-Claude gave her the job."

  "I've talked to her a lot more than that. I'll come help you talk to her."

  "Why are you and Jean-Claude both so worried about us talking to her?"

  "Not worried, just the two of you are too blunt sometimes; you have to sweet-talk Melanie."

  "Are you friends with her?" I asked.

  "No, but we used to be fuck buddies."

  That made both Micah and me stare at him.

  "What? Why the looks from both of you?" Nathaniel asked.

  "I don't know," I said. "I just remember her as unpleasant. I mean, she did try to kill me."

  "Weren't you trying to kill her, too?"

  "Not technically, but since she was his animal to call, me killing her master could have killed her."

  Nathaniel shook his head and started crawling out of the covers. "You'll treat her like a suspect and that will get you nowhere."

  "How long ago were you and she fuck buddies?" Micah asked.

  "Four or five years ago." He crawled off the bed and went to the wardrobe for some of the clothes that we all left there.

  "So, before you started dating Anita."

  "Before I was even Anita's pomme de sang. I was a good little apple of blood and treated it like the relationship I was hoping it would turn into." He pulled out a pair of black jeans and a matching T-shirt.

  We were both still in the bed watching him. I wasn't sure why, but knowing that he'd slept with Melanie bothered me. I knew he'd slept with a lot of people, but this one bugged me.

  He stopped with the jeans on, the shirt still in his hands, and looked at us. "What is wrong? Melanie is a beautiful woman and I didn't belong to anyone back then, so I could fuck who I wanted, and I did."

  "I know," I said, "but Melanie, I mean . . ."

  "Is it because she's a lamia?" he asked.

  I thought about that for a moment. Was that my issue? I hoped not, because that would be shitty and racially horrible. Would it make me a racist or a species-ist? "I don't think that's what's bothering me. I think I just find her creepy, and she tried to kill me and damn near succeeded, and she can turn human men into these half-snake creepy things, so the thought of willingly having sex with her sort of creeps me."

  "Fair enough," he said, as he slid the T-shirt over his head.

  "I think it's the first time you've said you were lovers with someone that tried to kill one of us. I think that's what's bothering me."

  "Jean-Claude gave her a job at the Circus. I figured if he trusted her enough to get her a green card, then she was trustworthy enough to date. I'm saying date, because both of you seem to tense up every time I say we were fuck buddies."

  "Sorry, but the level of casual really bothers me," I said.

  "It doesn't bother you, Anita; it confuses you," he said.

  "True."

  "Now, are the two of you going to get dressed so we can question Melanie, or can I get undressed and climb back into bed, because I would way rather cuddle up for a post-sex nap."

  "It sounds better to me, too," I said.

  "And me, but I wa
nt to know if Melanie knows anything that can help us," Micah said.

  "Then get dressed, but I'll warn you that once we've talked to her I may be so wide-awake that I'll need more sex before I can nap again."

  "Oh darn," I said.

  "I think we can manage that," Micah said, smiling.

  "So, get up and get dressed, so we can come back and get undressed and fuck like bunnies."

  Micah and I both laughed out loud at the phrasing and the look on Nathaniel's face that went with it. We'd question the lamia and then we'd come back and fuck like bunnies.

  11

  I TEXTED NICKY and Micah texted Bram to let them know we were going to be on the move soon. We also let them know that Nathaniel was going to be with us, so they could bodyguard appropriately.

  Nicky was showered, changed, and ready at the door for us. He'd brought Rodina and Ru along, looking like smaller, freckled shadows of each other. They looked delicate standing next to Nicky, and since they were both inches taller than me, I must have looked tiny beside him. Rodina and Ru looked like they were in their late teens--twenty would be stretching it--but they were centuries older than Jean-Claude and had once been personal guards to the Mother of All Darkness, the Evil Queen of the old vampire council, though R and R were the only two of the Harlequin I'd ever heard call her that as if it were her title. They thought I was their new evil queen since I'd killed their old one. I wasn't sure about the evil part, but I'd stopped arguing that I was the heir to the power of Mommy Darkest. To the victor go the spoils and all that shit.

  "Bram is en route," Nicky said, and he was every bit the bodyguard in charge of my safety; the man who had kissed me so passionately in the bedroom was gone until he wasn't on the job again.

  Rodina quirked a smile at me; her curly blond hair had grown out enough to touch the lower part of her face. She'd put a streak of pink in the almost white-blond curls. It was wash-out dye, so that if she needed to blend in again she could get rid of it. It was the third color she'd tried a streak of in the last few months; once she realized that we didn't have any restrictions on what our guards did with their hair or body, she'd started experimenting. She and Ru were both pale blonds with light enough skin that they had a dusting of golden freckles across their cheeks and noses. You expected blue eyes with all that, but their eyes were black, as in a brown so dark that you couldn't tell where their pupils stopped and their irises started. Rodina used black eyeliner to emphasize the improbable eye color and had even persuaded her twin brother Ru to use guy-liner; that, coupled with the all-black clothing they wore, made them look very Goth. The first time I'd remarked on that, Ru had said, "No, we're from Wales." I gave up trying to explain that I hadn't meant Visigoths, because he kept trying to talk real history instead of modern cultural references.

  "You aren't happy to see us," Rodina said. "Would you prefer someone else in our places?"

  She was right, and she felt what I was feeling just like Nicky did, and for the same reason. All three of them were my Brides--Brides of Anita instead of Brides of Dracula--and all for similar reasons, because I'd been desperately trying to save myself or save the people I loved, or both. When I met R and R in Ireland, they'd been R, R, and R, triplets, but their brother, Rodrigo, had given his life to save ours. It was good that he'd sacrificed himself, because it had saved me from killing him for killing Domino. Being able to turn him into a Bride had changed him from would-be assassin and kidnapper to rescuer. If I hadn't been able to work that bit of magic, then Nathaniel would have lost a lot more than just his hair. So why wasn't I happy to see them as our bodyguards? Because it was like Nathaniel's short hair; every time I saw what was left of the triplets, I was reminded about what had happened in Ireland, or what had almost happened, and I didn't love the twins the way I did Nicky. I'd figured out how the Bride thing worked by then, and I hadn't accidently bound myself to them emotionally the way I had with Nicky. I was free to remember that they would have happily tortured Nathaniel and me to death if I hadn't been powerful enough to mind-fuck them. It made it hard for me to like them. The fact that Ru looked exactly like his dead brother, who had done horrible things to me, didn't help either.

  "I'm working my issues about how we met in Ireland, but I'm not there yet," I said.

  Nathaniel walked up and put an arm across each one's shoulders. His black T-shirt, black jeans, and black boots matched their outfits, except their boots were less club and more SWAT. The three of them were within an inch of the same height. Rodina and Ru put an arm around Nathaniel's waist as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Rodina even managed a smile, suddenly looking as young as her body did; even her posture changed.

  "I've started requesting them for my guard detail," he said, smiling at me, his face leaning down so that he and Rodina posed for a minute like a high school couple. Even Ru being a slightly less comfortable third wheel was very high school, or maybe college.

  "I didn't know that," I said.

  "Neither did I," Micah said.

  "You've both been traveling a lot," Nicky said.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Why have you been traveling so much?" Rodina asked, voice friendly and unfriendly all at the same time.

  "I do not think that is what she means, Sister," Ru said, his voice far more uncertain than his sister's usually was.

  "Nathaniel, why request them?" I said.

  "Because we won in Ireland, Anita. I know bad things happened, awful things, but we won, and you keep acting like we lost."

  "We are like trophies to Nathaniel," Rodina said, "trophies of victory like slaves brought back after a war." If she resented being brought back as a "slave," her voice and face didn't show it. Her body language stayed friendly and open as she stood there holding Nathaniel.

  I resisted an urge to tell her to stop touching him. Ru stepped away so he wasn't touching Nathaniel, but she didn't. Nicky was compelled to keep me happy, and Ru seemed to be as well. It should have worked the same with Rodina, but she liked pushing limits, and she didn't seem as invested in keeping me happy. Nicky said it actually caused him pain to have me near him and unhappy. Maybe Rodina was a masochist.

  Nathaniel looked at her. "Do you really think I treat you like a slave, or are you just trying to get a reaction?"

  She looked at him, really looked at him as if it mattered to her. The hard-edged teasing fell away for a few minutes. "No, but you do see us as living trophies of your victory."

  He drew away from her, or tried to, but she held on a little and I realized that he mattered to her more than I'd thought. What else had I missed while I was at work?

  Ru said, "She doesn't mean that as a bad thing, Nathaniel. She just means that you look at us and see that you fought and won."

  "Ru and I like being your victory march," she said. She turned those dark eyes to me and said, "It's better than being Anita's funeral dirge."

  "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

  "You never look at us without remembering the death of your weretiger, and you never look at Nathaniel's shortened hair without remembering what might have happened. You are haunted in your mind and heart by it. Warriors do not let fear steal their victory after they have won, Anita, and that is what you are doing."

  "I don't need a lecture from you."

  "You need it from someone," she said.

  "That's not your call."

  "I'm sorry you lost your lover in Ireland, but has it occurred to you that Ru and I lost our brother there?"

  I had a moment of not knowing what to show on my face, because I didn't usually think of it that way. "I'm sorry if you're mourning him."

  "If? After a thousand years you mourn enemies, Anita. He was our brother, our triplet; we shared a womb together; you can't imagine the bond that forged between us."

  "One close enough that when I mind-fucked Rodrigo it fucked all three of you. So, yeah, I have some idea how close the bond was." I still sounded unsympathetic.

  "Rodrigo stepped between y
ou and a shotgun blast. He died to save you and Nathaniel." She finally sounded angry.

  "Yeah, and I'm grateful for that, I really am, but Rodrigo killed Domino in front of me and made me drink his blood. I don't know how to forgive that, Rodina."

  "It was stupid and cruel. Rodrigo could be like that sometimes," she said.

  "He gave his life to redeem his mistake," Ru said.

  "No, he gave his life because once I made you my Brides he had to do everything he could to keep me happy and alive. You all did; you all still do."

  "We are well aware that we are tied to you in a way that should not be possible. We are part of the Harlequin. Even you should not have been able to make us into your Brides. Our ties to our vampire master should have kept us safe from that particular insult."

  "Your master didn't have enough juice to keep me out of your heads."

  "No, he didn't, and that is why we know you are the true heir to our dead queen." She didn't sound happy about the fact.

  And just like that I didn't know what to say to her. I never seemed to know what to say to either of them. If Rodrigo had not forced Domino's blood down my throat, then I wouldn't have been powerful enough to roll his mind. He had accidently fulfilled the prophecy of me "marrying" one of the clan tigers, because the prophecy didn't mean marrying for life; it meant taking in their life, their essence. One cruel act had given me the fuel I needed to save us. If Domino had not died, if Rodrigo hadn't tried to terrorize me with the blood of my dead lover, then Nathaniel and I would have died in Ireland. Not just died, but died by torture, like serial-killer-worthy torture. Rodina was right: I couldn't let it go, couldn't get past how narrow the escape had been. I was stuck with the thought that Domino's death and Rodrigo's cruelty had saved the day; that two events that I would have given almost anything to change had saved Nathaniel's life and mine. I hated that, hated it so much. It made me want to hate Rodina and Ru, as if I could blame them for it all and that would make it better.

  Micah touched my arm, and I fought the urge to pull away from him. I was so angry, and I so wanted to be angry at someone. I wanted a target, so badly, but I knew better than to take it out on Micah. He hadn't even been in Ireland. None of this was his fault. No, I'd been the one who'd endangered Nathaniel, not him.

  "What have I missed?" Bram asked.