Serpent's Bite: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (The Last Serpent Book 4)

by Tansey Morgan

  “And locked down in here,” Leo said. Everyone turned to look at him. “We have no idea if there are others working with Elroy and Tom. For all we know there are others involved, and we’re stuck in here with them.”

  “We can’t assume that,” Madeline said, “The moment we let paranoia dictate our actions is the moment we start turning on each other, and that must be one of the things these people want—to see the supernatural community turn on itself, and then pick off the stragglers.”

  “I don’t think it’s paranoia,” I said, “They were talking about how Tom had failed to recruit me… they’re bringing people into their cause, so we need to assume that anyone’s in on it.”

  “I agree,” Dante said, “I think we should try and root them out. If Lilith’s blood is potent or easy to work with, then they’ll try to get her again.”

  “They’ll try and get you, too,” Leo said to Dante.

  “I don’t know if it works like that. Incubi and succubi are cut from the same cloth, but there are differences. In any case, what I am is widely known, and they’ve never come for me. There must be something special about Lilith’s blood, something unique.”

  “Then we will work on that assumption,” Madeline said. “Meanwhile, the best thing to do is wall up and make sure we don’t expose ourselves to attack, from within or without.”

  “Isn’t anyone else tired of just sitting around?” I asked. “It feels like all I’ve been doing ever since my initiation is reacting to attack upon attack. I’m sick of it. I want to take the fight to someone and show them I won’t just sit around, hoping others will protect me.”

  “The trick right now is to not do anything rash. I’m not suggesting we do nothing—we need to figure out if there are more people involved than just Tom and Elroy. That’ll require an internal investigation.”

  “Meanwhile, the two people we know did this to me are out there somewhere, either trying to find a way to get me in their hands again, or simply rounding up other supernaturals to squeeze power out of. And the real kicker is, Tom is a recruiter, which means he knows what he’s doing when it comes to putting the moves on prospective supernaturals. We can’t just sit here. That’s exactly what they’re counting on.”

  “And yet, our choices are entirely depleted. You can’t move, and Leo is lucky he didn’t hurt himself further when he tried to help you. I know you’re frustrated, Lilith, but I can’t grant you your pound of flesh just yet. Not until we know that the Alexandria herself is safe from internal threats.”

  I bit my lip and looked away. “I trusted him,” I said, “I really did, and he betrayed me.” “He violated me. He took something from me. And now I want to make him pay—both of them.”

  Dante squeezed my hand. “And you will, but first I’m going to find out if anyone here is working with them. If they are, they’re going to wish they weren’t.” He then let go of my hand and marched out of the room.

  “I’m going to go with him,” Madeline said, “If you need anything, just let us know.”

  I nodded. “Thank you,” I said.

  Madeline smiled at me, then followed Dante, leaving me and Leo alone in the infirmary.

  “That looks painful,” I said to him.

  He checked his abdomen. The shirt he was wearing was stained red, but the bleeding looked like it had stopped. “I’ve had worse,” he said.

  “Thank you, Leo… I know I’ve said it before, but—”

  He put his hand up. “Save it. You don’t need to keep thanking me for something I would have done for anyone.”

  “I believe that. You like people thinking you’re the world’s biggest dickhead, but I know you’ve got a good heart.”

  “And if you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”

  I smiled at him, only barely. He didn’t return it. Instead, he turned around and headed out of the room, never mind the recently reopened wound on his abdomen.

  I let my head rest on the pillow, and the room stopped spinning, but the headache remained. I didn’t think that would ever go away; not until I had regenerated more of my blood supply. A sigh escaped my mouth, and I slowly let my eyes shut, but I opened them again at the sound of the infirmary door opening. Kyle was there, and for one crazed moment as he approached the bed, I thought he was one of them, here to finish the job.

  But he wasn’t.

  “Kyle…” I said, “What is it?”

  He swallowed. “I think I can bring one of them back.”

  “What?” I asked, shaking my head.

  “Tom, or Elroy… I said I think I can bring one of them back here, but I’ll need your help to do it.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “What did you just say?” I asked.

  Kyle sighed. “I really don’t have time to repeat myself, so just listen and let’s get this right the first time.”

  I nodded. “How can you get one of them back?”

  “It’s complicated… you know how some people say I know a guy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I know a spirit.”

  “That’s the weirdest thing anyone’s ever said to me, but if you think you can do what you’re saying you can do, then we need to do it, right?”

  “You haven’t even heard what doing it is going to require.”

  “I don’t care. There’s nothing I’d like more than to get one of those bastards back here and tear into them for what they’ve done.”

  “I know, but don’t you—”

  “Kyle, I’m in, okay? You don’t have to warn me. Whatever it is, I’ll be able to deal with it as long as you just tell me what it is I have to do.”

  He nodded, reluctantly, then looked around the room for potential eavesdroppers, even though the infirmary was empty. “If we’re going to do this, then we need to act fast. I can bring the spirit I need through quickly, but the magic trail those warlocks left behind when they teleported out of the Alexandria won’t last forever.”

  I struggled to stand, grunting a little, but managing.

  “Are you sure you can do this?” Kyle asked.

  I stretched out, causing my back to click. “Trust me, I’m as strong as an ox right now. Where do we start?”

  “Upstairs.”

  I nodded and gestured for Kyle to lead us out of the room. I followed him through the Alexandria’s halls, which were fuller and louder than I had ever seen them before. Clearly the school suddenly being locked down was cause for students to flood the hallways and swap gossip, churn the rumor mill; all of that stuff. I tried not looking anyone in the eyes as I went past them as we made our way upstairs, however, a thought crossed my mind, and it seemed to cross Kyle’s too, at the same time, because he stopped and turned around to look at me. “Should we get help?” he asked.

  “I was thinking about that… and I’m going to say no.”

  “Why did I know you were going to refuse help?”

  “Hear me out.”

  He put his hands on his hips, an all too familiar mannerism—one of my own. “I’m listening.”

  “Madeline will never go for what we’re about to do, will she?”

  “No.”

  “Because it’s dangerous, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And because because we have no idea what either Tom or Elroy are exactly capable of.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, now, what if I told you that I didn’t think Tom would put up much of a fight?”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because I remember the look on his face when I started tearing the place up… he’s scared of me. I don’t know why, but he is. Maybe he’s not as powerful as his mentor is, maybe his magic won’t be as effective on me, and he knows it. Elroy is a seasoned warlock, we don’t want him, and if you think you can bring either of them through, then just bring Tom.”

  “That’s a big if.”

  “Well, you’d better make it a small if. This is your plan, and it’s only going to work if the only person that comes
through whatever portal you’re going to open is Tom. If Elroy comes through, I’m not sure we’ll be able to handle it.”

  “If he comes through, then he’ll just teleport us both out with him.”

  “That’s assuming he can. If he could, he’d have taken me when he had the chance. But still, I’d rather take my chances with the apprentice than the master, don’t you think?”

  Kyle nodded. “So, we do this quickly.”

  “Agreed.”

  We reached the door to the room and had no trouble opening it. For one crazed moment I had thought someone may have locked it, and had gone as far as to try and figure out how to unlock it without having to ask for a key, but when Kyle pushed it open, the worry went away. Inside, the room was much as I had left it—trashed—only it wasn’t as bad as I remembered, probably because I wasn’t really concentrating on what I was knocking over with my wingspan. In the air was the metallic, tangy scent of blood, my blood. The packs and phials had been removed, but the room didn’t seem to forget the smell.

  Kyle stepped through first. I followed and shut the door behind me once inside.

  “Well?” I asked, “Now what happens?”

  “Will you hush?” Kyle asked, “Magic is an art; you can’t rush it.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  “Because it’s fucking true! Now be quiet so I can figure out which of these magic fingerprints belongs to Elroy.”

  To me, it looked like Kyle was walking around the room like a dog, literally sniffing out whatever it was that needed sniffing out. I would have found it hilarious, if the situation wasn’t entirely serious. After a few short minutes, Kyle seemed to hone in on exactly what he needed to find.

  “This is it,” Kyle said, “It has to be.”

  “That’s where he was when he disappeared,” I said.

  “Good, then I’ve found him.”

  “What about Tom?”

  “I can fish Tom’s essence out from this mess too. The spirit should be able to bring just him back.”

  “And if it can’t?”

  “Then we’re shit out of luck, but at least we haven’t hurt anyone getting here.”

  “Alright, do what you have to do and let’s make it fast. I don’t want to waste another second in here.”

  I had noticed a spattering of dry blood on the table from when the rapid growth of my wings and my sudden movement had caused the IV in my arm to pull out unexpectedly, sending a quick arc of blood across the room. The sight, and smell, of it made me nauseous. There was something about seeing your own blood spilled that seemed to have the power to turn your innards upside down.

  “I’m going to need you to give me some space,” Kyle said.

  I stepped into the corner of the room while Kyle moved to an area where he had nothing but clear space. He then put both of his hands up and turned his palms outward. An instant later, his palms began to glow with orange-yellow light. Patterns appeared around them, sigils I thought I recognized but couldn’t understand, floating in midair. Kyle started mumbling, muttering inaudibly to himself. An instant later, a phantom wind filled the room, causing the curtains to flutter despite all of the windows, and the door, being shut.

  Just then, a loud tearing sound erupted through the room. Purple light spilled out all over Kyle, light coming from some kind of hole that seemed to be floating in mid-air, crackling with magic and power. I shielded my eyes from it, but also moved around the room to get a better look. What I saw was something I never thought I would ever see with my own eyes; some kind of vortex, a swirling maelstrom of color, and inside of it, there was life.

  Kyle, still with his hands up, palms facing this vortex, began to speak in a language I couldn’t understand, and then something—a formless, bodiless being—began to talk back, its voice ethereal, graceful, and almost feminine to my human ears, but possessed of a kind of intelligence neither I nor any other human would ever have.

  “I need you to get ready,” Kyle said.

  “Ready?” I asked, “Ready for what?”

  “Ready to take this thing down.”

  “What!”

  Kyle beckoned at the light, and a dark, almost bodiless entity came spilling out of the vortex and threw itself at him, crashing into his chest like an inky, black wave that sent Kyle sprawling. The vortex shut with a sound akin to a thunderclap, but the spirit, the thing attacking Kyle, was still in the room, alternating between coiling like a snake, and striking, but every time it struck, it seemed to hit a shield of orange light and hiss.

  “What are you waiting for?” Kyle yelled, “Attack it!”

  “With what?”

  “Your hands!”

  I turned my eyes down to look at my hands, and I hadn’t realized until now, but they were glowing, just like Kyle’s were, a light that seemed to come out from inside. Sensing this strange, alien power working through me gave me the push I needed. I yelled loudly and charged at the coiling mass of black ink, leaping over the back of a sofa and reaching for the core of its form with outstretched hands. When I touched it, my hands hissed and gave off steam, as if they were red hot and I had just dipped them in a bucket of water, but I had grabbed something that felt substantial enough.

  The only question now was, what the hell was I supposed to do with it?

  “This thing is like a fish!” I yelled, “It’s trying to break free!”

  “No shit!” Kyle said, fighting to get to his feet. He spoke in that language of his again, and the circlet of symbols surrounding his hands glowed brightly, then changed. The spirits in my hands shrieked like a vampire exposed to sunlight, and wriggled so hard it managed to break free from my grasp, but by now Kyle had hit it with whatever magic he had needed to, because the spirit was flopping around the room like a fly with broken wings, smashing into a wall, then into a bookshelf, and then toppling over a table.

  And just like that, the room was still.

  “Did we… kill it?” I asked, panting.

  “You can’t kill a spirit,” Kyle said, brushing the hair out of his eyes, “You can only stun them, and maybe piss them off.”

  “Which did we do?”

  “We’ll find out in a second, won’t we?”

  Kyle walked over to where the spirit lay, a black, inky cloud spread across the floor, tendrils flowing listlessly like sea flowers underwater, reacting to the current.

  “Looks like we stunned it,” Kyle said.

  “Yeah… only why did we have to do that?”

  “Because spirits don’t do anything for free. You either offer them something, or you beat them into submission.”

  “Couldn’t we have offered it something?”

  “We don’t have time, just make sure no one is coming.”

  Kyle was right, we didn’t have the time. We needed to get Tom, and we needed to get him while he was still complacent, confident that we wouldn’t try anything like this. I hurried to the door to the room, opened it, and scanned the corridor and the set of stairs at the end for signs of movement, but it was quiet; at least it was for now. If Leo had detected the teleportation spell Elroy had used to get away, then someone had detected the hole Kyle had just punched between two worlds.

  I shut the door and watched him coax the spirit to stand, then speak to it. The spirit, which took on a vaguely humanoid shape—a human made of black ink and smoke—nodded once, slowly, and then hovered across the room to the spot where Elroy had used his magic to get away from me. I turned my eyes at the hallway again, still quiet, and by the time I turned to look at the spirit, it was gone.

  “Kyle?” I asked.

  “Just wait,” he said.

  “Where’d the spirit go?”

  “Could you just be patient?”

  “I want to be patient, but I know there are people coming up here right now—I can sense it—and if that thing isn’t quick enough on the draw we’re going to get found out before we’ve done what we came here to do.”

  “In which case, no harm no fo
ul, now will you calm—”

  The spirit exploded back into the room, torrents of darkness funneling out of a pinprick hole, creating the very same humanoid shape I had seen it take a moment ago. The darkness shivered when it was completely through, then it evaporated, leaving a human being standing in its place, pale, white, and shaking all over.

  “Welcome back, Tom.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Everyone who was anyone was present in the room when Tom was ready to be questioned. Madeline, the Keeper, Dante, Leo—they had even let Kyle stay and watch, though only after I had insisted. It had, after all, been thanks to him and his magic that Tom had been brought back in the first place, otherwise we would all still be no closer to finding answers.

  Tom, meanwhile, in the face of the opposition in front of him, had gone entirely pale, and jittery. He looked every bit like the frightened little animal he should be, watching helplessly, his hands bound by ringlets of floating, magic light—a strange hex Madeline herself had placed on him to keep him sitting down, and preventing him from using magic—, while the predators decided what part of him to eat first, and who would get the honor of the first bite.

  That was, of course, always going to be the Alpha of the pack—Leo.

  Leo, who was still hurt, squared up to Tom who was sitting down on a chair, and took a deep breath. “You know why you’re here,” Leo said, “So, how about you make things much easier on yourself and just tell us what you and Elroy were doing to Lilith?”

  “I’m not going to tell you anything,” Tom said, but the wobble in his voice suggested otherwise.

  “But let me make one thing perfectly clear, warlock. It’ll take me less than a second to kill you, if I wanted to, and all of the people in this room wouldn’t be able to stop me. Then, do you know what’d happen after?”

  Tom shook his head, his hair soaked with sweat flopping from side to side across his forehead. “No,” he said.

  “That’s right, nothing will happen to me because they all think you’re a treacherous little rat anyway. Madeline might chew me out, but as I’ve said before, I don’t mind getting chewed out if it means I can sleep easy at night, and I’ll sleep easy knowing the son of a bitch responsible for the exploitation of innocent people is dead.”