Venomous Secrets

by Anne Renwick

  “Their deaths were necessary,” Helena spat, shifting to brace her now-tilting lover. “All of them. But enough of that. We are leaving all this behind. As you’ve interrupted my packing, you’ll complete it for me.” She slid her lips over her lover’s neck. “Hand it over, or I’ll lighten my load.”

  The lamia wore a plain gown suitable for travel. Carruthers, however, wore nothing save a loosely belted dressing gown. She’d been elsewhere, preparing to leave when they entered her underground lair.

  Had she already made plans to abandon him? How essential was the lord to her reproductive plans?

  Regardless, cooperation was the wise approach.

  Until a better opportunity presented itself.

  Cait lifted the pituitary extractor, dropping it back inside the carpet bag and held it out.

  “My daughter as well,” Helena instructed, unmoving.

  Slowly, Jack lowered into a crouch beside the altar, then opened the water-tight refrigerated case Cait handed him. Inside lay broad swathes of oiled canvas, the kind one might use to transport large biological specimens. He lifted the lid off the aquarium and set it aside. The scent of ethyl alcohol rose into the air.

  “Why take a failed attempt back to Greece?” He rocked back on his heels, buying time. How strong was a lamia? How long before she tired of a grown man’s weight? Could she be provoked into rash behavior? His next words sought to elicit answers to all his questions. “What value is such a mutant?”

  “My daughter is a queen, not a monster,” Helena hissed. “She will be buried with respect and reverence.”

  “I disagree.” He tipped his head at the cabinet. “She is but one of many failed attempts.”

  “Each is a tiny miracle of conception,” Helena countered. “But I failed them by ignoring the old ways. Many life forces are required to sustain the development of a drakonourá. Traditional rituals must be observed, lest a queen not draw first breath.”

  Jack lifted the snake-tailed infant from her preservative bath, laid her gently upon the cloth, and—sparing only a moment to marvel at the tangible evidence of myth—carefully wrapped the water-resistant fabric about her, securing arms and tail.

  “You prey upon men,” Cait said. “Seduction for the purpose of reproduction.” Via incremental shifts, his wife advanced upon Helena. “But feed upon the flesh—brains—of young women to sustain your development, a task made easier by the device Dr. Thrakos built. How is that traditional?”

  “Who are you, snake charmer, to judge when you know so little of your own heritage?” the lamia sneered.

  “I’m resistant to venom.” Cait lifted a shoulder. “What more is there I need to know?”

  “Oh, my love,” Carruthers murmured, his head lolling upon Helena’s shoulder. “It’s true, then. You killed a woman? In our home?”

  “Your home.” Helena’s voice hardened. “My sister’s home. Not mine. Never mine.”

  “I’ve offered a million apologies. It’s only that—”

  “Life is not fair.” Insincere, oft-repeated words spoken from between clenched teeth. “My sister fell pregnant first. You required an heir. Hence the marriage. I understand. You are forgiven.”

  Jack lifted eyebrows. How long had she been spooning the lord such pacifying drivel? Carruthers couldn’t possibly believe her, could he?

  Yet they’d found him here.

  In the lamia’s lair. In her bed.

  Which begged the question. “Why this family, why Carruthers?”

  “Why?” The sharp tips of fangs appeared as Helena’s lips parted in a sneering smile. “We came for revenge, stayed because male lamia are as rare as dragon’s teeth. And the birth of a drakonourá changed everything.”

  Not to mention aligning themselves with Carruthers and friends brought societal power and the means to acquire riches. At least until he and Cait had paid a particularly destructive visit to their northern operations. But he declined to introduce the topic.

  Helena shifted behind Carruthers, directing a narrow-eyed gaze at Cait. His wife had slowly but steadily shifted in the lamia’s direction. “That’s close enough, snake charmer. Set the bag down.”

  The holy well kept the lamia at a safe distance from them, but Helena’s position before the door also blocked the only exit from this medieval chamber of horrors. She had to be dealt with before they handed over her possessions, lest she lock them in this room, never to be seen or heard from again.

  “Revenge?” he prompted.

  Helena’s smile was cold. “Incest. Taboo in your culture, save perhaps among your so-called royals. What better way to pollute a lineage, to horrify the patriarch who promised our mother much, then abandoned her, their daughters, without care?”

  “You—” Carruthers gagged. He shook his head, twisting in his lover’s arms. “Are you implying that my father… that we are—”

  “Family,” Helena finished, her voice ice cold. “Sister with brother. Daughter with father. Infertility surmounted, and the first male lamiae in centuries conceived and born. The merging of lineages has produced the miraculous.” Spiritual reverence illuminated her face as she turned her lover’s face toward hers. “Together, you and I produced a drakonourá, a queen among the Lamian. How could we abandon such goddess-given gifts?”

  “You’re my… sister?” Carruthers struggled in her embrace.

  Adoration fell away. “Half,” she spat back, tightening her grip upon him. “As is your wife.”

  Carruthers turned a queasy shade of green, sputtering. “But… why?”

  An untold number of drugs circulated through the lordling’s veins and arteries.

  Jack offered the simplest of explanations. “Revenge. Reproduction. Money.”

  Three sisters, three goals.

  All but one death due to Helena’s efforts to conceive a very specific, rare mythological creature.

  No. Not so mythological. The evidence lay all about them.

  Lamia. Drakonourá, a daughter who would, had she lived, have been a queen among her people, elevating Helena into the annals of Lamian history.

  “She killed your father, Carruthers,” Cait said. “Peel the wool from your eyes.”

  “Do you regret delaying your departure?” Jack asked. “How critical is your half-brother to your plans, your final evening upon our ancient soil?” He placed the infant in the case, snapped it closed. Standing, he held the case over the cool, clear water of the holy well between them. “Did you call upon London’s naiads to bestow a blessing? Will they help you now?”

  “Do not!” Helena screamed, pushing Carruthers before her. A hasty and desperate bargain. “His life for my child!”

  An interesting choice. The lamia clearly valued proof of her reproductive abilities above that of the lord’s loins. Did another half-brother await her back home in Greece?

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Cait balance on the balls of her feet.

  Jack waggled the case and taunted, “You prize a dead infant more than her father?”

  With narrowed eyes, the lamia spat back, “He is replaceable. I am not.”

  Helena moved, and Cait squeezed the trigger.

  Zwing. Thwack.

  Dammit. She’d missed.

  Again.

  But not for lack of aim.

  The lamia was far too agile, too aware, and the second dart landed in the lordling’s hip.

  Carruthers howled.

  “A third dart will kill him,” Jack warned.

  “Replaceable,” Helena repeated, taking a sinuous step forward.

  “There’s a solution to all this.” Cait caught his eye, held his gaze as she waggled the TTX pistol in her grip.

  Trust me.

  He’d witnessed firsthand her recovery from multiple deadly bites. A lamia. Several morphophídia. Not to mention three direct hits by successive TTX darts.

  On that matter, he’d managed to pin a dart in Helena herself at the zoo only a few hours past. Much as he hated Cait’s plan, it was viable tact
ic.

  He gave the slightest of nods, and his glorious wife lunged, arms wide, flinging herself bodily against the lamia.

  Arms wrapped about Helena’s waist, Cait planted a heel and twisted, wrenching the lord from his lover’s arms and presenting Jack with a clean target.

  He tossed the case aside, aimed his TTX weapon and fired—all while Carruthers crumpled to the floor, boneless.

  Zwing. Thwack.

  Zwing. Thwack.

  Zwing. Thwack.

  All three darts emptied from their chambers.

  Whimpering, Carruthers belly-crawled for the door.

  Helena and Cait crashed into the side of the antique cabinet with such force that the jars within slid across the wooden shelving and toppled over the edge. Glass shattered upon the ground, its sharp sounds accompanied by the wet thuds of tailed specimens landing in pools of ethyl alcohol upon the stone floor.

  Two darts had struck Cait.

  But one had lodged itself in the backside of Helena’s shoulder. She leapt to her feet and yanked it free, howling. “If the drakonourá within me has been harmed—”

  With one hand against the wall to brace herself, Cait lifted her other arm, TTX pistol still in hand.

  Thwack.

  A third dart struck Lamian flesh.

  Slam! The heavy wooden door closed.

  Click.

  Locked? By Carruthers?

  Jack leapt past the well, swearing as he yanked upon the iron door handle. Dammit, they were trapped.

  Helena fell sideways, caught herself upon the desk. “Fools.” She snatched up the lantern, lifted it above her head, over the spreading pool of flammable ethyl alcohol.

  Shit. She meant to set them aflame. Between the alcohol and ancient wood, a task easily accomplished.

  “You’ve made a grave mistake.” The lamia’s eyes grew glassy, her posture loosened. “Cursed is London.” Her fingers uncurled, and both he and Cait dove for the falling lantern.

  Cait snatched it from the air, stopping its downward plummet.

  But Helena—unsteady upon her feet—refused to die quietly. And Jack had made a fatal mistake, fearing fire and rushing close.

  As the lamia fell to her knees, she lashed out, snagged his ankle with talons of iron. She bit through fabric into flesh, sinking her fangs deep into the muscle of his calf.

  “No!” Cait cried.

  He shoved at the lamia’s shoulders, wrenching his leg free, but the damage was done. Tendrils of pain spread up his leg, over his hip, and across his torso, wrapping the entirety of his body in agony. The bite had been no simple nip, but a full envenomation intended to kill.

  Flat upon her back, Helena laughed up at them baring teeth in a bloodstained smile. As tetrodotoxin flooded her system, she knocked the lantern from Cait’s hand and sent it careening into the pool of alcohol upon the floor. A final diabolical act.

  There was a crash, then a whoosh. Fumes filled the air. Greedy for fuel, flames ignited across the alcohol, rushing outward. They clawed at the old wood of the cabinet, then crawled upward with staggering speed to lick at the thick timber beams overhead.

  His knees gave out. A slow collapse that stretched, as if time hung, suspended. He watched as the blazing room swirled and twisted around him, gripping his skull as his headache exploded, reaching new heights at the very moment his vision contracted.

  “Jack!” Cait’s cry met his ears.

  Nausea clawed at his innards. He had no memory of landing upon the floor, but her hands were under his arms, pulling him away from the flames, unwilling to admit defeat.

  “Antivenin.” Her voice all but a shout above the crackle and snap of flames devouring wood. “We still have a vial.”

  But could she administer it in time? Uncontrolled flames would soon swallow the ceiling. What value his own life if both of them failed to survive its collapse?

  Surviving the inferno took priority.

  He caught at Cait’s sleeve, forcing the words out on a hoarse exhale. “The pool.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Panic leapt into her throat.

  Venom and fire. Two immediate threats, two obvious solutions.

  How to accomplish both simultaneously?

  “Antivenin,” she huffed, dragging Jack’s solid weight over broken glass to the edge of the spring, worrying as she eyed its depths. “You need it now, but the flames—”

  Corpse candles, the altar. Hooking her fingers under its edge, she hauled it away from the holy well, muttering as alcohol sloshed against the sides of the vessel on its surface. Overhead, the fire snapped, ravenous, at the five-hundred-year-old beams whilst throwing sparks at the old, abandoned barrels stacked in the corner. Smoke billowed and, with it, the nauseating stench of burning flesh.

  Water was the only thing that would save theirs.

  “I’ll try—” He heaved himself onto his side, rolling toward the holy well.

  “No.” Too easily, she stopped him with the flat of her hand. “Not yet.”

  Even if he managed to lower himself into the water, the venom in his system would soon steal his consciousness. If his grip loosened, if his head nodded—

  Her fingers flew as she unhooked her bustle, dunked it in the well and tossed the sodden fabric over Helena’s carpet bag. She yanked Jack’s coat from his shoulders, pulling it free to repeat the process.

  “Here’s the plan,” she coughed. “Water first.” She tore a long, wide strip from the hem of her petticoat and wrapped it around Jack’s chest, knotting it securely. “Antivenin second.”

  “If it fails—” he wheezed.

  “It won’t.” No other outcome was acceptable. She unhooked her belt, set the antivenin case within arm’s reach. “Three morphophídia attacked Dr. Thrakos, and he left the zoo breathing, did he not?”

  “Widows are assigned…” he wheezed, “missions.”

  She fought to keep the tremor out of her voice. “We’ll be working those together.”

  Once they were in the water, she would need access to a prominent vein. She took a firm grasp upon the cuff of his sleeve and ripped the cloth past the crook of his elbow.

  Crash. The desk collapsed and burst into flame, well on its way to becoming a heap of embers.

  Cait laid beside him, tying the ends of her make-shift strap about her own waist before swinging their legs into the cool water. “Wrap your arms about my neck,” she ordered. “Hold on as long as you’re able.”

  Together they slid neck-deep into its depths. She dunked them once—as protection against sparks—but felt nothing beneath her toes, not even the hint of a ledge which might support them. Thank aether the well was narrow. Legs spread, she dug the toes of her boots into the rough walls of the spring and braced her elbows upon the carved stone ledge.

  Not an ideal position from which to fill a syringe, but needs must. With shaking fingers that managed to be both hot and cold at once, she unlatched the case.

  “Do not… let duchess…” Face pressed to her shoulder, he dragged in air, “tell duke otherwise.”

  Against her back, she felt the rise and fall of Jack’s chest, reassuring despite his slurred words, ones that belonged in a last will and testament, not a conversation.

  “Enough dark thoughts.” Cait pulled the syringe from her case, screwed in the needle. Disappearance and death beneath a theater was not an option. It wasn’t happening. She refused to— “Shit.”

  Fear reached past her ribs to grip her heart as shards of glass met her fingertips, followed by a certain dampness. Despite the rigid case walls and soft inner lining, the vial of antivenin had shattered. When? Impossible to know. Possibly during a struggle with Helena.

  Not that it mattered.

  “Cait?” His breath was soft at the back of her neck.

  Wood crackled as it blistered the roughly-hewn beams above. A loud snap rent the air, and a chunk of burning wood dropped, crashing onto the floor only a few feet away. A glance told her the fire had breached the ceiling. Or, more ac
curately, the sub-flooring for whatever theater space lay above.

  “Small problem.” Her mind whirled. It was impossible to ever fully imagine the details of such a crisis or the strange circumstances under which emergency actions would need to be taken, yet such were upon her. Them. “Change of plans.”

  Thank aether the syringe was intact.

  Her legs shook with the effort of holding them both in place as she splashed alcohol over her own arm. Blinking against the ash that clouded her vision, she slid the needle into her vein, then slowly pulled backward upon the plunger, watching as a deep red filled the glass barrel.

  The direct transfer of blood held a multitude of poorly understood risks, all of which revolved around the possibility that a transfusion could make a patient’s condition worse, rather than better. Physicians reserved such therapy only for those whose lives careened at ever-increasing speeds toward death.

  Conversations with her sister-in-law—and subsequent experiments—indicated that mixing whole blood products from two different, non-compatible individuals carried a high risk of causing red blood cells to agglutinate, to clump. As a result, it was suspected that the reaction had something to do with the presence or absence of proteins on the cell surface of erythrocytes.

  Which was the entire purpose to the Haimatos Separation Machine. The device removed whole cells from blood, collecting only the plasma—the yellowish part of her blood that held the antivenin—thus rendering the product safe for all.

  The very first test of her plasma with any associated risks had been upon Dr. Thrakos. It had worked. At the time, she’d been downright gleeful to finally have a willing test subject and not the slightest of ethical barriers to prevent her from implementing an immediate investigative case study.

  And the outcome had been successful.

  Now resentment bubbled up at the memory. A precious vial wasted on a disreputable, morally corrupt scientist. The second vial, shattered. Leaving her without a treatment for the man who had, in the space of days, transformed her existence and stolen the better part of her heart. An organ that now pumped his only hope of survival through her veins.