Serpentine

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "History."

  "Do you teach?"

  "No, I was a curator of antiquities at one point."

  "At a museum?" he asked.

  "Something like that." She smiled sweetly as she said it but kept a certain world-weariness in her expression that helped her look older than twenty.

  Bernardo turned to Ru, held out his hand, and said, "I can't wait to hear who you are."

  Ru gave a wider smile than I'd ever seen on him. "Dr. Wyatt Erwin, but I'm not a medical doctor either."

  "History?" Bernardo asked.

  "No, literature."

  "Which means he's spent his postcollege years asking people if they want fries with that," Rodina said.

  Bernardo looked from one to the other of them, and then at the rest of us. "I can't wait to hear all about what's new in your life, Anita."

  "I can't wait to tell you."

  "The luggage is starting to come through," Nicky said.

  "Great," I said, and I meant it. Luggage I understood. The last few minutes with our newest bodyguards, not so much.

  18

  WE HAD ALL the other suitcases in tow before we went to the room with the sign above it that read Luggage Claim. We showed our IDs and claimed our locked bags from the man in the room. Micah only had one gun in a lockbox with extra ammo, but the rest of us had at least one large equipment bag that was almost as long as I was tall. It took less time to get our weapons than to get our regular luggage.

  I let Nicky take one of my equipment bags so I could sling the other across one shoulder and still keep my hand free for my gun. Until we had a chance for everyone else to rearm in the parking lot or the car, Bernardo and I were still the only ones armed. As we stepped out into the blaze of sunshine outside the airport doors, it bothered me more than normal that we weren't all armed like a platoon. At least I'd remembered to put my sunglasses on this time.

  It was just a short crosswalk to the parking lot. Apparently, Bernardo had rented an SUV just before we landed so he could chauffeur us around. "Who dropped you off?" Micah asked.

  "The hotel has a car and a driver that you can use if no one else has reserved it. They had an opening to drop me at the airport, but then they were booked for the return trip," he said as he led the way through the open parking area and underneath a large covered area. He went directly to a white SUV without having to double-check the numbers on the parking slots. He'd scouted it before we landed.

  "Do you want to just load up the luggage and I'll drive you to the boat?" he asked as he opened the back of the SUV.

  "Boat?" I said.

  "Didn't anyone tell you Kirke Key is an island off the coast?"

  "Crap, they did. I just didn't put it together."

  He flashed a white smile in that dark face of his. "It's not like you to miss something that obvious, Anita."

  "It's been a hard year." I tried to make it light, but it didn't come out that way.

  "I'm sorry about Domino."

  I realized that he had met Domino on at least one case. "Thanks," I said. I didn't know what else to say, so I got very interested in loading the suitcase with my clothes into the open back of the SUV. He took the hint and let it go. Guy rules meant that unless I opened up, he wouldn't push. Sometimes guy rules were exactly what I wanted.

  Nicky put his equipment bag up next to my suitcase and started unlocking it. Bram moved so the view was blocked. Rodina and Ru got the hint and helped hide the fact that Nicky was getting his handgun and belt holster out. The three of them kept looking out at the empty parking structure while Nicky armed himself. Micah moved behind the wall of bodies and let them hide him while he opened his own lockbox and got his gun out. He had an inner pants holster, because his shirt wasn't as loose as Bernardo's or as patterned as Nicky's. Legally we could have armed ourselves in plain sight of the entire airport, but just because it's legal doesn't mean that people don't freak out about it, so it was just polite to be circumspect about it.

  Everyone but Nathaniel put on at least one gun. Everyone but Micah and Bram added knives. Yeah, that counted me. Guns could run out of ammo, but a sharp blade was always ready.

  When we were armed, we locked the cases back up, stowed everything in the back, and could have gotten in and driven away, except I was finally ready to talk to the newest members of our merry band.

  "What's with the pretending to be someone or something you're not?"

  Rodina and Ru looked first at each other and then at me. "We spent most of the last thousand years as spies. It's automatic to have a part to play," Rodina said.

  "That won't work this trip. You are bodyguards, period. Don't overcomplicate it."

  "How do we explain that we look like teenagers but you trust us enough to guard your back?"

  "We could tell the truth," Nicky said.

  "No," Rodina said.

  "No," Ru said.

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "If you wish to tell people that we are older than we look, that's fine, but we have lived in subterfuge for lifetimes, Anita. We are not ready to be completely open with strangers." She was as serious as I'd seen her since she arrived in America.

  "What do you think, Ru?" I asked.

  "Use the names on our passports and we will be your bodyguards." He was as serious as his sister.

  "Is it that uncomfortable for the two of you to be out as bodyguards?" Micah asked.

  "If you let us be part of your group but not obviously guarding you, then if we are attacked they will see we are delicate, young, and assume inexperienced. It would give us a few minutes' advantage while they underestimate Ru and me."

  "So the whole 'let's pretend to be doctors' wasn't just to be irritating and difficult?" I said.

  "We weren't pretending on the doctor part," she said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "We were in one city for a very long time," Rodina said.

  "We both have several academic degrees," Ru added.

  "Really?"

  They both nodded.

  "Is it really history and literature?" I asked.

  They nodded again.

  "Were you really a curator of antiquities?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  "At what museum?" Micah asked.

  "The vampire council's collection."

  We stared at her then. "I didn't know they had a museum," I said.

  "It wasn't a formal one, but vampires collect things. We keep souvenirs to remind us of the life we had, or might have had, or even souvenirs in the way that modern serial killers do."

  "You said we, but you're not a vampire," Bernardo said.

  She gave him the full weight of those black eyes. "Not in the way you mean, no, but then neither is Anita."

  "She's human and you're not that either."

  "You are the marshal the other officers have named Famine or Hunger." It wasn't exactly a question, but he answered it with a nod.

  "Do you really believe that Anita, who the marshals named War, is human?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "Completely human?" Rodina made it a question with the uplift of her voice.

  "I'm not sure what that means anymore," Bernardo said.

  She smiled, and her face finally held that teasing, almost cruel edge that was her usual expression. "That is either a diplomatic answer or an honest one."

  "It smells like the truth," Ru said.

  The two of them looked at me in unison, which was an unnerving habit I'd almost broken them of, because it unnerved me and it bothered them that I didn't like it. But sometimes they couldn't help it--the habit was too ingrained.

  "We are sorry to make you uncomfortable," Rodina said.

  "But we must find our place among you," Ru said, finishing his sister's thought.

  I looked at the two of them. "I guess it has been a big change for you coming to us in America."

  "If you make us behave as Nicky and Bram do, then when we are attacked they will try to take the four of us out first," Rodina said.


  "But if you let us hide," Ru said, "then they may leave us unharmed long enough for us to kill them and save the three of you."

  "You're twins, aren't you?" Bernardo said.

  They turned their heads to look at him as if there was one brain moving both of them. "No, we aren't twins," Ru said.

  "We were triplets until Ireland," Rodina said.

  "We had a brother," Ru said.

  "What happened to your brother?" Bernardo asked.

  "He died," she said.

  "He sacrificed himself to save Anita," Ru said.

  "He took a shotgun blast to the chest," I said.

  "Rodrigo saved Anita and me," Nathaniel said.

  Bernardo looked at him, at me, and then at what remained of the triplets. "So, you lost your brother, your triplet."

  They nodded.

  "That's hard."

  "Yes," Rodina said.

  "We miss him," Ru said, and then he looked at me. "I'm sorry that makes you feel bad, Anita, but the grief over Rowan's death deadens my ability to feel your pain."

  I almost asked who Rowan was, but Rodina said, "Rosemary, Rowan, and Rue Erwin were our names."

  She didn't want me to use Rodrigo's name any more than her real one. He was dead and she still wanted to help him hide his identity. It was a level of hiding in plain sight that I would never understand, but I didn't have to understand it, not really.

  "We'll need a cover story that makes more sense than either of the ones you told Bernardo in the airport," I said.

  Rodina smiled at me and then Ru echoed it. "Thank you, our queen."

  "First of all, you can't call me that on this trip. It'll give everything away."

  "As our queen wishes," Ru said. For a second I thought he might be joking, but he wasn't.

  19

  THE SUV LOOKED big until we tried to stuff all of us in it. Nicky rode shotgun because his shoulders squeezed us in the backseat, though since we had to unfold two extra seats just in front of the luggage, weren't they the backseat, and Micah and I were in the middle seat? Rodina and Nathaniel squeezed in the backest seats. Micah was pressed between me and Ru. Bram managed to get his six-foot-plus body folded between me and the door. There was a bodyguard for each of us so that if someone tried to hijack the car, everyone could be covered.

  Bernardo drove out of the parking area and we'd barely turned onto the next small road when the ocean was suddenly visible, shining and spreading out toward the horizon. I'd seen the ocean on the West Coast, up and down the East Coast, and in Ireland, but I'd never seen ocean that was this blue. It was aquamarine, turquoise, pale sapphire, as if God had ground up jewels and turned them into water.

  "Wow," I said, "I've never seen water that color before."

  "It gets even prettier as we drive up toward the Middle Keys," Bernardo said. He turned left, and I watched the shining water dotted with sailboats and motorboats, though some of them looked big enough to be called something else. How big does a boat have to be before you call it a ship?

  I settled back in the curve of Micah's arm and the back of the seat and looked out at my first Caribbean blue ocean. I suddenly felt like we really were on a vacation. We weren't on the road long before we turned left again onto the Overseas Highway, U.S. Route 1. "It's the only highway in the Keys," Bernardo said.

  "Must make it hard to get lost," I said. Small trees had closed around the highway, but even without the ocean visible you wouldn't have mistaken it for the Midwest or either coast. I wasn't sure what kind of trees were hugging the road, but they were unique enough that it felt foreign, as if it weren't America anymore, but someplace new. The short trees vanished, and now there was ocean on either side of the road, though one side was an overall pale turquoise green, and on the other side of the road it was as if the water was striped, pale turquoise, and then so many shades of blue, from sky blue to royal blue, cobalt, and finally a navy blue that was almost black. The darkest blue reminded me of Jean-Claude's eyes, and I was sad that he wasn't here.

  "The darkest blue looks like Jean-Claude's eyes," Nathaniel said from behind us.

  I turned so I could see him as I said, "I was thinking the same thing."

  "Even if he was with us, he could never see the ocean looking like this," Micah said.

  I turned back to look at him, pressed so close to him that I had to move my head back to focus on his face. "What do you mean?"

  "Sunlight," he said. "It doesn't look like this at night."

  "Oh," I said, "I knew that. I mean, I know, but . . ."

  "But you forgot anyway," he said, hugging me with the one arm around my shoulders and kissing me gently on the cheek.

  Bernardo said, "Did you forget that Jean-Claude was a vampire?"

  "Not exactly," I said. It seemed terribly sad that Jean-Claude could never see the ocean spread out to either side of the highway in shades of blue and green, shining in the sunlight.

  "He could see it on a video," Nathaniel said.

  I turned to give him a smile. "We could take a video and send it to him."

  "And pictures," Micah said, smiling.

  I nodded and cuddled my face against his.

  "You're really going to miss him," Bernardo said.

  I looked up from Micah to see Bernardo looking at us in the rearview mirror. "Why do you sound surprised?" I asked.

  He glanced back at the road and then back at us. "I see how you are with Micah and Nathaniel and I just don't know how there's more room for anyone else."

  "I figured of all people you'd understand being attracted to multiple people at once," I said.

  I caught his grin in the mirror before he turned back to watching the road. "I can be attracted to a lot of women at the same time. It's one of the reasons I've never been married. Monogamy just didn't seem reasonable when the world is full of so many beautiful, funny, smart women."

  "Thanks for adding the funny and smart part," I said.

  He laughed. "I don't just go for looks all the time."

  "Just most of the time," I said.

  "You really don't have room to throw stones at my glass house, Anita." He was still laughing as he said it, but I think he meant it.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

  Micah hugged me a little tighter. "Honey, you don't date unattractive people."

  "You date people because you find them attractive," I said.

  "Belle Morte would be happy with the men and most of the women in your life, Anita," Rodina said.

  "And she collects only the fairest of them all," Ru said.

  "They can't all be the fairest of them all," I said, glancing at him where he sat on the other side of Micah. I don't know if my irritation showed on my face or if he could feel it.

  "I'm sorry if that offended you, my queen."

  "It didn't offend me, Ru. It just didn't make me happy."

  "All I know is that you are unhappy with me and I would do anything to make you happy once more."

  "Don't say anything," I said.

  "But it is the truth."

  Nicky spoke from the front seat. "Anita tries not to think about what it means that we are her Brides."

  "Wait," Bernardo said, "I knew Nicky was your Bride, but are you saying that Ru is, too?"

  "And me," Rodina said from behind us.

  "So you're both part of the poly group?" Bernardo asked.

  "No," Rodina said.

  "Not yet," Ru said.

  I leaned around Micah and glared at Ru. "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "We are your Brides. That means that we serve you in any way necessary or desired by you."

  "I get that; so what?"

  "It's okay, Anita," Micah said, stroking his hand down my bare arm the way you'd soothe a horse or a dog.

  "Do you want them to be part of our polycule?" I asked, glaring at him, because my confusion was turning into anger and any target would do.

  "No, I really don't, no insult to either of them, but there are so many people in our pol
y group now that it's hard to know how to take care of all of them."

  "Then why are you trying to soothe me, after what Ru said?"

  "He's your Bride. Doesn't that mean that he's supposed to be willing to do anything for you?"

  "Yeah, but I didn't ask him to feed the ardeur with me. He's just here as security." I sounded angry, even to me.

  "If that is all you need from me, then I am happy to be of service," Ru said, leaning around Micah so he could see my face more clearly.

  "I just need you to protect Nathaniel, Micah, and me; that's it."

  "Of course," Ru said.

  "We have guarded queens before you and we will guard queens after you," Rodina said.

  Nicky said, "Is that a threat?"

  "No, just the truth. Before our first evil queen died, I thought we would guard her all our days. It has left me with doubts about the permanence of anything, or anyone."

  "The queen is dead, long live the queen," Ru said.

  "And that's not a threat?" I asked.

  He looked surprised, but then his face went back to unreadable blankness, which seemed to be his most common expression. "We would never threaten our dark queen."

  "I'm not even sure we're capable of threatening Anita," Rodina said.

  I glanced behind me at her. "What does that mean, Rodina?"

  "We must take care of you. We are compelled by your emotions more than our own. If you are unhappy, it is almost a physical pain until you are happy once more."

  "You are a pain in my ass a lot of the time, and that makes me unhappy."

  "I told you, Anita, I like being a pain in the ass. I even like the pain when you're unhappy with me sometimes."

  "Why?" Micah asked, glancing at her.

  "I think it helps me mourn our brother. I want to hurt, maybe even need to hurt, while I mourn."

  "I do not enjoy pain," Ru said.

  "I'd have totally pegged you for the submissive and Rodina as the dominant," I said.

  "You should know not to judge people like that, Anita. So many of us don't wear our kinks on our sleeves the way that Nathaniel and Nicky do. You don't."

  "We are not talking about our kinky preferences in the car like this," I said.

  "Does Mr. Spotted-Horse not know your preferences by now?" Ru asked.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

  "Both of you like beautiful lovers, you are polyamorous, and he stated that he wasn't monogamous. Why have you not explored the possibilities of each other? Since you work together, being lovers would be practical; it would help you feed the ardeur while you are being a marshal."

  I studied his face, because he was so serious. "I can't argue with your reasoning, but I'm just not that practical."