Serpentine

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "Because you were both working," I said.

  "Yes," Bram said, leading us down a sidewalk with huge tropical plantings on either side.

  "It was a business trip; Nathaniel knew that. It was even his idea to come with me on it." Micah sounded irritated.

  "But this isn't a business trip and he's back at the pool by himself," I said.

  Micah sort of marched through all the pretty landscaping like he wasn't seeing any of it. It made me jiggle his hand in mine to make him glance at me. "If you go out there angry, this will be a fight. Is that what you want?"

  He stopped walking so abruptly that Bernardo almost ran into us. "Do you need some privacy?" he asked.

  Bram just stopped on the path like a good bodyguard. The really good ones could make you forget they were there.

  Micah shook his head and looked at me. His jaw was set in that determined line that could be anger or just stubbornness. Sometimes it helped get things done; sometimes it didn't. His stubbornness was like mine, part asset and part deficit, depending on the situation and what side of it you were standing on.

  I watched the tension ease in his face, felt it ease in his hand. "No, I don't want to fight with Nathaniel."

  "Good, me either."

  "I couldn't have just left Andy at the bar to lose everything. It's my job to help people like him."

  "It's not your job to be a taxi service for drunk strangers who are being self-destructive," I said.

  "So you agree with Nathaniel that I should have just left Andy to his issues?"

  "No, because if his secret comes out, then it endangers everyone else on the island, so I'm okay with helping him out this once."

  "Didn't his wife say that she'd called other people and they refused to go get him this time?" Bernardo asked.

  Micah looked up at him, and even through the sunglasses it wasn't entirely friendly.

  "Sorry if it's not my business."

  "Since you came to help us ride to the rescue, I'm okay with it," I said.

  Micah let out a sharp breath of air. "What's your point, Bernardo?"

  "The wife, Christy, called friends and family first, right?"

  "I suppose," Micah said.

  "People who would lose the most from the whole snake thing coming out, right?"

  Micah nodded.

  "But they were willing to let him hang in the wind. Ask yourself, how many times have they gone and gotten his ass? How many times have they cleaned him up and brought him home?"

  "A lot, probably," Micah said.

  "Not probably, Micah. They were willing to let the family secret out, to risk all of them, rather than go get Andy one more time. You only get to that point after years of this shit."

  "Are you speaking from experience?" I asked.

  "Not me, but my mom. It's why I ended up in foster care and why I stayed there until I was eighteen and could join the military."

  "I'm sorry, I didn't know," Micah said.

  "No one knows. I don't talk about it, but Nathaniel is up front about being an addict when he was on the streets. On one of his trips out to New Mexico for the wedding we talked. He has no sympathy for addicts that won't get help, especially ones that have a family and people depending on them."

  Micah sighed and hugged me. "Was I wrong to help Andy?"

  "I didn't say you were wrong," Bernardo said.

  I pulled back enough from the hug so I could see Micah's face. "It's not about right and wrong sometimes; it's about seeing everyone's point of view."

  "I'll add one thing for both of you," Bernardo said.

  We looked up at him, and there was a seriousness to his face that I'd never seen before, or not about this kind of stuff. "Sure," I said.

  "You are both serious white knights and serious sheepdogs, but you need to learn that there will always be people that need saving."

  "I know that," I said.

  "Then do you know that if you find a little happiness, people to love, that you should put them ahead of saving strangers? Not all the time--you both have your jobs--but from Nathaniel's point of view, this isn't a work trip, and this wasn't a work emergency. No one's life was in danger. There was no murder. This was an addict doing self-destructive shit, and last I checked that's not in either of your job descriptions."

  We stared at Bernardo and then at each other and then back at him. "Have you been saving this up?" I asked.

  "Like I said, Nathaniel and I talked."

  Micah looked at Bram, who was standing just down the path like he heard nothing. "Do you want to weigh in on this?"

  "Absolutely not."

  "I think that's Bram-speak for don't drag me into this," I said.

  Bram nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

  "Let's go to the pool and talk to our shared boy."

  Micah nodded. "Let's."

  Bram led the way down the sidewalk, having to push some of the plantings away with his hand or get hit in the face. Micah and I were short enough to go under all of it, but I heard Bernardo moving the big leaves overhead as he came behind us. Being short wasn't always bad.

  24

  THE POOL WAS crowded enough that I couldn't see any of our people at first. I finally spotted Rodina sitting at a table under an umbrella. She was still dressed in street clothes, probably because it's nearly impossible to hide weapons in a woman's bathing suit. There were far too many drinks at the table for just her, but where was everyone else?

  It was Bernardo who said, "There's Ted."

  I didn't recognize Edward at first glance, first because his short blond hair looked different wet, and second because he was wearing swimming trunks. I don't think I'd ever seen him with so much skin showing. I'd seen him shirtless years ago, but I didn't remember him being in this good a shape. He had a six-pack, which takes a hell of a lot of work and nutrition. He was forty, but watching him walk to the edge of the pool, I'd have put him in his early thirties, tops. I knew he'd started worrying a little about his age, because fighting monsters was all about being physically fit whether you were running away from them or chasing them down. Apparently, he'd taken that worry and hit the gym and nutrition even harder than in the past.

  Micah leaned in and whispered, "Most of the exotic dancers at Guilty Pleasures don't have abs that nice."

  "Yeah, who knew?"

  "You didn't know Edward looked that good out of his clothes?"

  I shrugged. "I've never seen him out of his clothes."

  A second man, whom I didn't recognize, came to stand beside Edward at the edge of the pool. The man had dark hair shaved close to his head, but not like military close, more like he was going bald, so he'd decided to shave it down rather than have that monkish fringe of hair. He wasn't fat by any means--he wasn't even exactly heavy--but he had enough body fat that he looked soft beside Edward's fierce leanness.

  Someone else I didn't know called out, "Go!"

  Edward leapt smoothly into the water. The dark-haired man followed a second later, not nearly as smoothly. Edward surfaced and started making for the opposite end of the pool in a strong Australian crawl, breathing easily with his strokes. I'd never truly mastered the stroke because I could never quite get my breathing in rhythm with my arms, so I ended up pretty much drowning myself when I tried it. I know, I know, it's supposed to be the easy stroke that everyone can do. The dark-haired man surfaced, gulping for air before he started doing a breaststroke that was surprisingly fast, closing in on Edward's lead rapidly. A dark-haired woman in a pink bikini was jumping up and down yelling, "Go, Paul, go!" Other women and some men who were already wet from the pool were yelling for Paul, too. Call it a hunch, but I was betting that the man racing Edward was named Paul.

  We had people yelling for Edward--well, Ted--too. Bernardo joined in the yelling of "Go, Ted!" I felt silly but added my voice to theirs.

  Paul didn't pass Edward, but he got within a body length before Edward reached the wall and a blond woman who looked like she was in her teens but was wearing a T-shirt over her bikini
that had Bride on it declared Edward the winner. It hadn't actually been that close. I mean, we could see from where we were standing at the halfway point that he'd won, but it was still gracious of her to declare him over Paul, who turned out to be her groom.

  "What's going on?" I asked.

  "You left the men unsupervised too long, Anita," Rodina said from the umbrella-covered table. I realized there were umbrellas in some of the drinks on the table, too.

  "What does that mean, I left them alone too long?'

  "You and Donna and the rest of the wives/girlfriends. You weren't here to be a civilizing influence and now they've challenged all the young studs to a swim meet."

  I raised my eyebrows at that. "A swim meet--really?"

  Edward came up to us, drying off his hair and upper body as he moved. Up close I could see a scar on his upper chest. I didn't normally notice it, but maybe the scar talk in New Mexico with Donna had made me notice it. I didn't know about any other scars, but I'd been with him when he took a wooden stake through the chest from a booby trap while we were trying to get a much younger Peter and Becca to safety. It had been the trip where I met them and Donna for the very first time.

  Edward/Ted said, "We figured that all you wimminfolk would be upset if we challenged them to an impromptu fight club. Besides, swimming is the only thing that almost negates a lycanthrope's supernatural strength and speed." He started with a thick accent, or he wouldn't have used the word wimminfolk, but by the time he finished he had no trace of any accent, just that perfect middle-of-nowhere-America voice that was either natural or training. He didn't usually forget his Ted accent in public like this. I'd noticed he was slipping more in New Mexico, too.

  "Does it really?" Micah asked.

  Edward gave him a long look out of his pale blue eyes. "Your tone says you know different, pardner." Just like that, Ted's thick, vaguely Texas, or somewhere southwestern, accent was back. Why did he keep slipping in and out of character? It wasn't like him.

  "Extra speed and strength seem to be across the board for most of us," Micah said.

  "You also have to know how to swim better than the man racing you," Edward said, and again he sounded like himself, not Ted. Then the accent returned with a vengeance as he said, "And none of your fellow shapeshifters have ever been much for swimming, or so they said." It wasn't like him to keep losing the accent in public. I might have tried to get Edward off to one side for a whispered question or two, but Micah said, "Look." I looked where he gestured and suddenly forgot all about Edward's Batman dilemma.

  A bevy of bikini-clad women parted like a curtain and Nathaniel and a blond man I didn't know were suddenly revealed, laughing and flirting with the women. Nathaniel flirted almost unconsciously, but he didn't usually turn it up this high unless he was onstage. The two men stalked to the far end of the pool, having to peel a brunette, a blond, and a redhead off of them like towels. I finally recognized the blond man; it was Ru. Out of his clothes he seemed taller, almost as tall as Nathaniel's five feet nine. In clothes he'd looked thin, delicate even; out of them he looked lean and muscular. He didn't bulk as nicely as Nathaniel did, but within the limits of his body type he was muscled everywhere that I could see. He was narrower through the hips than Nathaniel, but then Nathaniel was built like the male version of an old-fashioned pinup. Ru was built like a long-distance runner who hit the weight room. The leaner body type with its naturally lower body fat gave him one advantage; he had not a six-pack, but an eight-pack. No amount of exercise or diet will give you more than a six, but if you have the genetics for it, you can get an eight-pack. I'm told a ten-pack is possible, but I've never seen one in person. Nathaniel lost too much of his ass when he leaned down even for a six. He looked fabulous as he was. I didn't need to be able to trace my finger between the connective tissue of his abs to appreciate that he was beautiful. The gaggle of flirting women behind them was admiring both views pretty damn hard. I had time to be happy that Nathaniel was mine, and admit that Ru looked awesome, both of them in their body-hugging Speedos, purple and blue, respectively, and then they dived into the water and began to swim under the surface. I went to the edge of the pool with Micah's hand still in mine, so I had a better view. The flirting women did the same thing, but I couldn't really blame them. Who wouldn't want a better view?

  They were suspended in the water side by side, Nathaniel's hair flared out around his head like an auburn halo. Ru's short hair was thick enough, or long enough on top, to move slightly in the shining blue pool. They both came up out of the water at the same time, breaking the pool's surface in bright flashes of light where the sun hit the water. I heard their breaths gasp in, and then they were swimming side by side, and I realized they were racing. Nathaniel wasn't that competitive, and Ru hadn't seemed that competitive. Of course, Ru hadn't seemed flirtatious or even that social until now.

  The women trailed along the pool edge, some calling out Ru's alias, Wyatt, and others calling for Nathaniel. Micah gave a small frown and looked at me. I knew the look. If you left Nathaniel alone long enough, he usually picked up an admirer, and he didn't always discourage it, but this seemed more than usual. I wondered if it was the addition of Ru; maybe he was more of a flirt than we'd realized.

  A tall, lean man with skin the color of black coffee, wearing a slightly larger swimming suit, was standing at the end of the pool watching the two of them intently. His skin was so dark it was harder to see the muscle development, but it was there. He wasn't mine. Lieutenant Colonel Muhamad (Frankie) Franklin was one of Edward's oldest friends, though he knew him only as Ted Forrester, which was Edward's legal name and the one he'd entered the military with. You don't start out as Batman. So, oldest friend, but not that close; the close ones knew the secret.

  It was hard to tell from where we were standing who touched the wall first, but when they came out of the water breathing heavy and laughing, it was Nathaniel whom Frankie pointed at as the winner.

  "If you weren't taller than me, we'd have tied," Ru said.

  Nathaniel just nodded, grinning. He swept his hands through his hair to smooth it back from his face. I watched his handsome face laughing in the pool, that body that he worked so hard to maintain come dripping out of the water, and I knew that I'd come close to losing some or all of that beauty, because that's what the vampire had threatened: not just death but disfigurement, torture. The helplessness of that moment haunted me, and I hated that it did, but I couldn't seem to let it go. I couldn't even stuff it to the back of my head, where I'd been shoving other bad memories for years. The memories from Ireland lived right in the front of my head, so that everything filtered through them.

  Ru smoothed his hands through his own shorter hair, which seemed even brighter yellow wet. He was smiling and patting Nathaniel on the back, as if they were best buddies.

  Micah whispered, "What is going on?"

  I just shook my head and shrugged, because I had no idea.

  I lost sight of them then as the bevy of bikinis closed around them. A few men came in and got their women out of the group, some with grace and smiles, others obviously upset that the women were flirting a little too much. None of the men who pulled them away were in the same ballpark of handsome as either Nathaniel or Ru. I was prejudiced about Nathaniel, maybe, but it wasn't sentimentality that made me think it of the other man.

  Rodina came to stand next to us and spoke low. "Ru is very good at mirroring whomever he is with; it makes him a near perfect undercover spy. I told him to stay close to Nathaniel, and he has, but he's also imitated him a little too well. If one of you could claim Ru as well as Nathaniel as your lover, that would be most helpful. He's good at getting into these situations, but not at getting out of them."

  "I'm not claiming Ru," Micah said.

  She leaned toward me. "Before you refuse as well, Anita, let me add that if you don't play girlfriend for my brother, I'll be forced to do it."

  I turned and stared at her.

  "The look on your face, y
our feelings in my head: You find the thought of me playing his girlfriend almost as disturbing as I do; so happy neither of us finds incest fantasies enticing."

  "What do you want from me, Rodina?"

  "It's Morgan, and just help my brother, Wyatt, extract himself from his too-successful flirting. Morgan and Wyatt Erwin, because you wanted us old enough to teach undergrad, not be one, remember."

  They came padding barefoot toward us, smiling and talking excitedly to each other, as if they really were best friends. The redhead was on Nathaniel's arm, one brunette on Ru's, but another brunette had put herself between the two men, an arm through each of their arms. Nathaniel's lavender eyes had darkened with the exertion or the excitement of the competition so that they were the color of violets. It usually took sex to make his eyes that dark. Ru's eyes couldn't get any darker, but they were shiny with laughter and a joie de vivre that I didn't think he had in him.

  "Hi, pussycat. Hi, Wyatt," I said as they came up to us with the other women still in tow. I looked at Nathaniel's eyes a little closer and realized that they weren't darker from exercise; it was anger. He'd upped his flirting game with these strangers because he was pissed at us for abandoning him. I wasn't sure what to do to soothe the anger, extract him from the women, and make up for the fight that was threatening to happen, but Micah knew exactly what to do. He stepped forward and cupped his hands around the bottom of Nathaniel's face and kissed him like he meant it. Nathaniel extracted himself from the redhead like she didn't exist, putting his arm around Micah. He tried to extract himself from the brunette, but she seemed sort of frozen on his arm, as if she couldn't process the two men kissing. I always enjoyed seeing the men in my life kissing each other; the only thing better was when they were on either side of me in bed and kissed over me. The second brunette was staring openmouthed at them, too. She clung even harder to Ru's other arm. I wasn't sure if it was a possessive gesture or to steady her world. She'd thought she had a shot at one or both, and now half of the handsome duo was kissing another man. She didn't seem to have a fallback plan for this turn of events.