Aiden had set a log from a nearby stack into the fireplace and set it alight with a single touch—a handy little party trick. Once the fire had gotten going, we made ourselves comfortable on the sofa with a woolen blanket thrown over our knees and watched the fire crackle and pop as a light dusting of snow gathered on the windowpane.
I let myself sink into the crook of his arm, which he had hooked around me, and listened to the sound of his breathing, and the beating of his heart.
“I’m gonna fall asleep if we aren’t careful,” he said.
“That comfortable, huh?”
“Yeah… this is the most comfortable I’ve been in days.”
“Me too. I’m glad we had a chance to do this.”
“Sit in a quiet room with a fire?”
“The fire is good. But we haven’t spent any time since…”
“In a while, I know. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. Stuff’s been happening, you can’t be in fifty places at once.”
“I can’t even be in four places at once.” I turned my head up at him. “Does that bother you?”
He took a deep breath. “I said before it didn’t bother me, and I meant it. It helps that I like the other guys, too.”
“I can’t imagine what it must be like on your side of the fence. I guess that’s why I’m always checking in. I need to know you’re all okay.”
“You’re going to have to learn to believe us eventually.”
“Easier said than done.”
“I know, but you have to try, Lilith. We’re all in this with you, okay? Try to let it go for a while, I’m sure they’ll surprise you. Vik is smart, Raph is passionate, and Liam is loyal. You’ve picked a good bunch.”
“I didn’t pick you; you all picked me.”
Aiden shrugged. “Maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t matter because you’re one hell of a catch.”
I smiled a warm, sleepy smile. “Please, tell me more.”
“Well, it doesn’t take incredible powers of observation to see why Vik likes you. You’re smart, you’re inquisitive. You want to learn things, just like he does. Plus, he’s a self-proclaimed lad, he knows enough about sports, and he looks good in a polo-shirt.”
“That’s true, Vik has got a rocking bod…” And one hell of a hidden asset, I thought, but I couldn’t exactly say that. “What about Raph?”
“You and Raph are both adventurous people, open to new experiences and living life truly like it’s the only one we’ve got. You’re also both pretty chill, most of the time, but if someone messes with you, you’ll put them down.”
“You sound like you’ve got this all figured out. Funny, considering you didn’t even live in the mansion until I moved in.”
“I like knowing people. I feel like I have a knack.”
“You do. Alright, what about Liam? Why does he like me?”
He sighed. “Liam’s had a rough time with women. I’m not going to go into it, but he’s been hurt pretty bad before.”
“Oh… I didn’t know. Has he told you this?”
Aiden shook his head. “Just more of that demonic knowledge kicking in. Anyway, Liam’s looking for someone kind, and gentle; someone who will treat him the way he wants to treat others, and be treated in return.”
“I get that. And I guess I kinda knew that about him, too. He’s a good guy.”
“So, there you go. How satisfied is your ego right now?”
“I have room for desert. Why is it you like me?”
A sly smirk changed his face. “Oh, I’m only after you for your body. Didn’t I make that clear?”
“Asshole,” I said, nudging him with my elbow.
“You really wanna know why I like you?”
“I do.”
Aiden paused. “I have a few reasons, but the main one is… you saw something in me and went for it, and that took guts.”
“It can’t just be that.”
“No. I like you because you’re a challenge. You stand your ground, you don’t back down, you don’t let people walk over you.”
“Some might say that makes me stubborn.”
“Really? Why would they say that?” he asked, grinning.
I shoved him hard. “Asshole.”
“Anyway, that night when we kissed… I knew you liked the others too, knew they’d caught your eye somehow. I didn’t think I stood a chance. Raph’s stronger than I am, Vik’s cleverer, Liam’s better at using his powers than any of us, and Dante—”
My cheeks turned red. “Dante isn’t involved,” I said, my voice curt and short.
“If you say so. Anyway, you still kissed me first, and that meant something to me. It meant… everything, really.”
I nodded, shut my eyes, then let myself sink back into the heat of his body again. “I don’t think I ever, in a million years, could have anticipated something like this, that my life would turn to this.”
“I didn’t either. It’s just one of those things that blindsides you and leaves you reeling. I didn’t know what to do when I turned…”
“Oh yeah, we’ve never talked about that.”
“Because it’s boring.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. I really don’t know that much about your life before I met you.”
“That’s because there wasn’t one.”
“That’s… corny as all hell.”
“I know, but it’s also true. And if you really want me to tell you more about my life before we met, I will, but not tonight… right now I just want to lie here with you.”
The silence between us began to swell, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence; it was on in which we were both perfectly relaxed, safe, calm. “This was fun,” I said, “You know, as fun as it could have been, given the circumstances.”
“It isn’t over yet.”
“No?”
His fingertips slowly crawled along my shoulder, down my collar, and toward the top of my breasts. I felt my heart begin to race beneath his fingers. “Oh, I see what you’re doing there,” I said.
“What am I doing?”
I answered his question by sliding a hand along his thigh, slowly reaching for his crotch. “Are you going to keep playing innocent?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
His hand reached for of my breasts, and he gave it a soft squeeze that made me suck in a breath of air. Tingles burst through me, and unlike earlier, these were the good kinds of tingles; the ones I wanted to feel.
“Can I ask you a question?” he asked.
“Anything,” I said, shutting my eyes and surrendering myself to the sensation.
“Do you have a favorite?”
“A favorite?”
“Are you allowed to have one?”
I turned my eyes up at him and grinned. “Is that really a question you want to be asking, Aiden?”
“Yes,” he said, exhaling deeply. “I’m curious.”
“What if I plead the fifth?”
“We aren’t in the US right now.”
“I could make it up to you if I declined to answer.”
“And how would you do that?”
I searched for the button of his jeans. “I think I have an idea, but the choice is yours. I can answer the question, or…”
“I think I’ll allow you to plead the fifth… I don’t need to know anyway.”
The top button of his jeans came off, and my fingers found the zipper. “Good answer.”
Just then, the flames in the fireplace flickered brightly, so much so they stole my attention. Hot, wispy embers and ash erupted from the fireplace, as if a gust of wind had pushed out from behind the flames themselves. I put my hand up to shield my face, then went to stand. Another sudden gust of air hit, killing the flames entirely and plunging the room into darkness, but it wasn’t just wind that came at us this time—a dark mass shot out of the wall above the fireplace. Aiden shoved me aside and I slammed into the bookshelf on the far wall, making sure I avoided getting hit by the black shape that had come sp
illing into the room, but the figure crashed into Aiden instead with enough force to topple him up and over the back of the sofa.
“Aiden!” I yelled, concerned that he’d hurt himself going down, but the black figure was still in the room, and it hadn’t simply hit the ground and fallen over. Like a fly with broken wings, it staggered into the table, collapsed over it knocking the candle holder and the books over, then it crashed into one of the chairs before finally hitting the ground.
My heart was pounding at this point, hammering hard against my temples, in my hands, in my chest. Aiden squirmed on the floor, groaning, and I rushed toward him, to help him up, but I noticed as my eyes adjusted to the relative darkness that the shapeless figure on the ground wasn’t shapeless at all, but a man.
“Are you alright?” I asked Aiden as I came up beside him.
Aiden fought to get to his feet. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, “What the fuck was that?”
The man on the floor squirmed too, rolling to get on his back, then I saw his face despite the darkness. “Oh my God, Leo!”
I dashed toward him, throwing myself to my knees when I reached his side. The familiar, coppery smell of blood rose up to greet me as I got close, and I saw the shiny patches on his face where there was blood, fresh blood. “Lilith,” he managed to say, but he was having trouble speaking.
I pulled his suit open and touched his abdomen. As soon as I did, my hands were immediately covered warm, viscous liquid and came away sticky and wet. “Oh… shit…”
Aiden hit the lights, and I saw my hands weren’t just covered in blood—it was as if I had scarlet gloves on, and Leo was much worse. His clothes were run through. He had puncture wounds in his abdomen, his arms, and scratches along his face and neck. His skin was pale and cold, his eyes were droopy, and his breaths were short and rattled.
“Get help…” I said to Aiden, “Now!”
Aiden backed away slowly, then hurried out the door and ran down the corridor.
“Leo,” I said, pulling my shirt over my head and pressing it down on what I thought was the worst of the wounds, a stab wound on his stomach. “Can you hear me?”
His head lolled this way and that. He was struggling to hold onto his consciousness, I knew, and there was nothing I could do to help him, no healing magic I could use to save his life, or even stabilize his wounds. He had done his best to get here despite his severely wounded condition, and whether he lived or died would depend entirely on that, and nothing I or Aiden had done.
“Leo,” I said again, leaning close, “Please tell me you’re there.”
With a bloodied hand, he grabbed the side of my neck and pulled me close. He stared at me for an instant, his eyes wide, alert, and entirely coherent. “Don’t let me die,” he said.
The strength in his hand gave, and it flopped onto his chest. His eyes rolled back into his skull, and his head tilted onto its side. Frantic, panicked, I checked for a pulse. It was there, barely, but if there was one thing I had learned from the many episodes of Grey’s Anatomy I had watched, it was to never let a person dying of blood loss fall unconscious, and Leo just had.
CHAPTER THREE
Madeline stepped out of the infirmary with bags under her eyes, and a little less energy in her stride than usual. She was exhausted, that much was clear, but the look in her eyes was one of reassurance, calm, and as ever, grace under pressure.
“Leo is going to be okay,” Madeline said, “His wounds were grave, and I haven’t been able to heal them all, not even most of them, but he will recover, if slowly.”
“Thank you,” I said, “Is he awake?”
“Yes, but barely. If you want to speak to him, you should go quickly. He may not be awake much longer. He needs rest.”
I nodded. “Dante and the Keeper are on their way up, but I want to speak to him before they come back. Could you tell the others Leo’s okay?”
“I will.”
The others were waiting in the small lounge Aiden and I had been in. Leo had trashed it when he entered, and they had volunteered to clean the mess, and the blood. When Madeline was gone, I carefully opened the door to Leo’s bedroom, and found him resting on his bed.
I shut the infirmary door behind me, then locked it. I didn’t want anyone else coming in here, not under any circumstances. Walking over to where Leo lay, I noticed the clothes he had been wearing and bleeding into, were bunched up on the tiled floor in the corner of the room, splotches of crimson around the base of the pile.
Slowly, as if not wanting to wake a sleeper, I walked over the bed where Leo lay. He turned his head to the side and looked at me. His eyes were weak, he could barely keep them open, but he wasn’t covered in blood anymore.
“Hi,” I said.
“If you’ve come here to give me an I told you so…”
“I haven’t.”
“Good.” He turned his head to the other side and stared out of the small window.
“What happened to you, Leo?”
“What does it look like?”
“Look, I want to help you but you’re going to have to drop the attitude. You just got your ass handed to you, the least you can do is drop the sarcasm.”
“I was attacked,” he said, on the back of a sigh. “I went back to the warehouse to see if there was something we had missed, some clue that might point us in the right direction, and I was attacked.”
“By who?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, exactly, but there were vampires, maybe seven or eight of them. I don’t know how I made it out of there with my life.”
“Jesus.”
“He had nothing to do with this; this was all vampires. Maybe there was a mage, too, I don’t know exactly. What I do know is they were watching the place.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“It’s the only explanation I can think of.”
“Why would someone have been watching the place?”
“Just in case someone tried to do what I just did, maybe. Or maybe there was something in there they didn’t want me to find. Either way, the warehouse isn’t safe.”
“Didn’t they say anything?”
“No, they came in for the kill, fangs barred. I stuck it to three of them, turned the bastards to ash, but before I could do anything else, two more of them were on me, biting and clawing. I don’t know if there truly was a mage there, couldn’t see one, but my body wasn’t moving as fast as it should have been moving, and my magic was having trouble manifesting. I knew I wouldn’t have time to fight them and escape, so I chose to escape, but they kept hitting me… I couldn’t concentrate hard enough to get out, not before they got a few licks in of their own.”
“Licks? They almost tore you apart, Leo. What were you thinking going out there on your own? Another couple of seconds and you’d have been killed.”
“I know.”
“So, why’d you do it?”
“Because I work better on my own.”
“Bullshit. You almost got killed. How does this convince me that you work better on your own?”
“I don’t need to convince you of anything.”
“Maybe you don’t, but you’re out of commission now, you understand that? You’re confined to this bed until you recover, which means until then, we have to either figure this out without you, or wait until you’re better.”
“You’re not doing anything without me.”
“Really? And are you going to stop us? Leo, we’re supposed to be a team. All of us. But you’ve been marching to the beat of your own drum since I met you. It’s time to drop the act. This is bigger than anything you’ve ever been involved in, and it’s time to ask for help. We aren’t weaklings, but you are the strongest of us, and without you we don’t stand a chance.”
He stared at me for a long, hard minute, his expression stone. But then his face softened, not like stone, but like clay. “I’m sorry,” he said, and it floored me. I shook my head, stunned by what he had just said. “I made a mistake,” he co
ntinued, “I shouldn’t have gone on my own, and I should have told someone where I was going and why.”
“Leo… I just… I don’t understand. You brought Aiden and I to Henry and Covell’s apartment, why not bring us with you to the warehouse?”
“Because I didn’t think we’d run into trouble at the apartment. I knew we wouldn’t find them there, and knew no one would be watching the place. I knew it was safe.”
“You were protecting us…”
“I was.”
“That’s noble and everything, but it almost got you killed tonight, and the worst part is you didn’t find anything useful.”
He shook his head. “That’s not true. We know there are people watching the warehouse, and I refuse to believe they were waiting and hoping one of us would be stupid enough to go back there. There’s something we missed, something they’re protecting—something they can’t move.”
“Like what?”
“They must have some way of making that drug.”
“You mean like a machine or something?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense to me right now.”
“If what you’re saying is true, then we need to keep a closer eye on that place. Maybe I can—”
“Lilith, I’ve said no. I don’t want you going out there. Not right now.”
“You do realize we’ve done this dance before, right? You try to keep me locked in, I do what I want anyway.”
“This is different. I’m not trying to be an asshole this time.”
I arched an eyebrow. “So, you were trying last time?”
“Dammit, Lilith, you aren’t listening to me.”
When I realized he was being sincere, I swallowed, and allowed my expression to relax. “You really are just trying to protect us this time.”
“We don’t know what’s out there, but we know they’re watching, and they have numbers—more than we can deal with. For all I know they’re already watching the Alexandria.”
“So, what am I supposed to do? Just sit on my hands until you get better?”
“That’s exactly what I want you to do. I won’t risk you going out there and them getting their hands on you. You’re not only a woman, you’re a succubus. If they’re siphoning energy from supernaturals and harnessing into a drug, you’d be the best drug they’ll ever be able to get.”
Serpent's Bite: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (The Last Serpent Book 4) Page 2
