Serpent's Hold (The Last Serpent, Book 5)

by Morgan, Tansey

  “You know why I’m not doing it, why I refuse.”

  “Yes, because you’re being stupid and stubborn. We’ve been through this.”

  “It isn’t as simple as that.”

  I sighed. “I know it isn’t,” I said, and I produced the phial from my pocket.

  “What’s that?” he asked, eyeing the phial cautiously.

  “This is… non-negotiable.”

  His entire expression tightened. “Lilith… what did you do?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I trust you, but I don’t know if I trust that.”

  “Well… this was my idea, so I guess you should just trust that I know what I’m doing with this.”

  Dante tried to stand, but he was too weak and couldn’t move fast enough. Without much effort I was able to pull him back down to the bad and have him sit down. “Don’t do that,” I said, “Don’t put your walls up. I’m trying to help you.”

  “I don’t want that. I won’t accept it.”

  “Dante, it’s mine.”

  “Yours? What are you talking about?”

  “I made it for you.”

  “How could you have done that?”

  “It’s a long story, one you can’t involve Madeline in, just know that I did this for you, because I think it can work. All you have to do is accept the help I’m giving you.”

  Dante swallowed, grimacing from the soreness in his throat. “How do you even know it’ll work?”

  “Because I… I took some last night.”

  “What do you mean took some?”

  “Dante, I’d love to play twenty questions with you, but the questions are starting to get a little old, and we’re both running out of time here. Just know that last night I had to—had to—take some of the drug, and it had a similar effect on me than from when I feed normally. If I’m right, it won’t matter that the energy came from me, a succubus.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  “Then nothing happens, and this time tomorrow, you’re dead.”

  Dante clenched his jaw, and his eyes narrowed to slits. “No,” he said, “I’m not going to do it.”

  I pulled him close, and in the same movement pressed my lips against his, giving him as much warmth and encouragement as I could. When he tried to retreat, I pulled him harder for an even deeper kiss. This time, Dante didn’t resist. Maybe it was the heat of my skin against his, or the fact that he wasn’t as strong as I was in his weakened state, but he reciprocated as much as he could, breaking only to breathe.

  “Do you trust me?” I whispered into his mouth.

  “I want to,” he said, “I want to…”

  “Then trust me.”

  I kissed him again, this time edging his lips to part by lightly pressing my tongue against them, and as our lips and tongues found a rhythm, I carefully popped the cap on the phial, and brought it up to his chin. The mist immediately vacated the tube and slipped into his mouth, causing him to cling onto me and grip me tightly, fiercely. I could feel his breath against my shoulder, his heart beating against my chest, his fingers moving up and down my back as if he were trying to ground himself in something real.

  “Dante…” I said, “Say something…”

  But he couldn’t speak. He was still clinging to me as if he were adrift out at sea, and the I was the only thing keeping him above that dark, unknown ocean beneath him. Then I noticed something that made my heart start racing, and not out of fear or dread, but out of excitement. The color was starting to come back to his skin.

  When I had taken the drug, I had been able to set fire to a briefcase and the table beneath it. The drug had empowered me with some of a mage’s abilities, even if it was only for a moment. We had the same powers, which meant only one thing; the drug was feeding him, replenishing his body and his spirit just as I had hoped it would.

  Dante pulled away from me and stared into my eyes. “Lilith,” he said, with a voice that made me quiver. Dante’s voice, his real, authoritative voice. With each deep breath he took, more of his color and shape seemed to return to him. He didn’t just seem to get a little better, it was as if that single hit had brought him back up to full strength.

  “Talk to me,” I said, “What are you feeling?”

  “I… don’t know…”

  “Is it bad?”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s… you.”

  “Me?”

  Dante took my hand and kissed me so hard it took my breath away. His body was warm again, his touch as firm as his kiss, and when I rested my hand against his chest, I could feel his heart pounding beneath the skin, beating with intensity. I wrapped my arms around his neck and sank into the kiss while Dante, pressing his body against mine, urged me to lay on my back.

  Like a man who had been given a new lease on life, Dante tugged my pajama pants off and tossed them aside. He pressed himself against me and arched over me, gliding one of his hands up along one of my legs, then above to my hips and ribs as he kissed me. I ran my fingers through his hair, then gripped onto the back of his head as soon as his hand moved between my legs, letting off a soft, delighted sigh once his hand started to gently rub the warm, wet space there.

  He was gentle, and tender, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I turned around, got on all fours, and threw him a look across my shoulder. “Come here,” I said, “I want you to show me that you’re strong again, show me that this worked.”

  Dante came up behind me, knelt on the bed and, gripping onto my thighs, pressed his tongue against my warm, wet center. I bucked against the rhythm of his mouth, allowing the waves of pleasure to run through me every time the tip of his tongue touched my most delicate of places. With my head up, biting my lower lip as Dante found his rhythm, I gripped onto the sheets and moaned, begging him to go harder, and faster, until finally I reached my first climax.

  While I was still in the throes of my orgasm, Dante stood at the edge of the bed and entered me, eliciting another pleasurable moan to escape my mouth. Quickly he found some momentum, and as he pushed and moved with my body, I felt a second climax begin to bubble. Dante then snaked his fingers into my hair, twisted his hand into it, made a fist, and tugged my head back, and the sudden rush sent my body into overdrive.

  I cried out, then looked over my shoulder and saw him, proud and strong, shoulders glistening with sweat again but this time the sweat came from exertion, from his body working as it should have been, instead of the cold sweat of a sick man. Dante pulled my hips as his thrusts intensified, deepened, making me sigh just a little more with each one, so much so that my breaths were starting to come fast and hard.

  Dante’s climax came in a powerful rush that made my knees buckle. I groaned with him, my body shaking and trembling as my own climax reached its peak. I had never climaxed without having being properly touched before. That just wasn’t how my body worked. But something about this time, this moment with Dante, was different from every other time where I had been with a man, either before or after I became a succubus.

  We remained where we were for a time, resting, panting, throbbing, pulsing. When Dante pulled away from me, I turned around to look at him. He was entirely naked, standing in front of me, chest heaving, eyes bearing down on me with the heat of a thousand stars. He took my chin, pulled my face toward his, and kissed me like I had never been kissed before, and then lay down on the bed with me, where he held me against his body for a time.

  “I won’t do it again,” he said, after a while. I wasn’t sure how long.

  “Won’t do what?” I whispered into his mouth.

  “The drug… I won’t do it again. We have to find another way.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I left Dante in bed to rest after we were done, and once I was satisfied that my energy had in fact revived him. Revitalized or not, Dante needed space to rest after everything he’d been through, so I decided to leave him alone for a while and, in light of my successful experiment, go in search of Vikram. I had no idea if what I had jus
t attempted had ever been done before, but if there was anyone who would know the answer to that question, it was him. Not only that, he would appreciate what I had just done in a way few others could, being a man of science.

  I was lucky to find him in his room, sitting at his desk with a book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. He turned his head up to look at me when I walked in and set the book down on the desk.

  “Lilith,” he said, perhaps noticing the excitement on my face, “Is everything alright?”

  “Yeah, I think so anyway,” I said, shutting the door. “Can I talk to you? Am I interrupting something?”

  “Not at all, come in and sit down. What’s up?”

  I walked over to the bed and sat down facing him. “I have to tell you about something I did today.”

  “Sounds ominous, but alright.”

  “I know you’re going to be tempted to ask a ton of questions, but I’m going to ask you to just listen to me first, then you can ask whatever you want, okay?”

  Vikram nodded. “Should I be worried?”

  I shook my head. “Just patient, and without judgment.”

  “Okay, go right ahead, I’m listening.”

  I decided to start at the end. “Dante is better,” I said, and as soon as I saw the question bubbling on the tips of Vik’s lips, I put a finger up. “He was starving, had severely depleted his energy reserves on the last mission out, and he was probably on the brink of death. The only reason why he’s better now is because I was able to give him some of my own energy.”

  “How—?”

  “The way I was able to do that was by convincing Tom to distil some of my blood and create a small amount of the energy drug for me to give to him. I had a suspicion that would work, even if I couldn’t give him my own energy through sex… and it did. I don’t know what about the process of turning blood into pure energy allows an incubus to take energy from a succubus, but it works, and that’s… well, as you would say, that’s pretty significant.”

  I had stopped speaking, but Vik hadn’t said anything for a time, so I encouraged him with a slight nod. “Oh, right,” he said, “Sorry, I was waiting for you to completely finish.”

  “I have. Now you can fire off your own questions.”

  “Okay… so, just so I understand this, you were able to successfully feed Dante your own energy in the form of this drug, and he’s better now?”

  “It’s only temporary. He he’ll need to continue to do it if he wants to stay healthy.”

  “I don’t understand… why isn’t Dante feeding normally?”

  I turned my eyes up at him. “He doesn’t want to… hasn’t, not since he and I…”

  “Oh… that’s why he hasn’t been himself since he returned?”

  “He’s being stubborn. I told him to go out and feed, but he doesn’t want to sleep with anyone else; just me.”

  Vik smiled slightly.

  “What’s funny?” I asked.

  “No, it’s not funny. It’s quite romantic, really, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, romantic and stupid.”

  “Aren’t most romantic gestures generally stupid?”

  “Yeah, but not in a life threatening way. He could have died if he hadn’t fed, and knowing him he would have allowed that to happen before breaking whatever promise he made to himself.”

  “Or whatever promise he thought he had made to you.”

  “A promise I never asked him to make in the first place.”

  “Right, well, as long as the drug works, then Dante can keep his unspoken promise and also continue to remain healthy at the same time.”

  “That’s where the problem I have comes in.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Dante doesn’t want to take the drug. He refuses.”

  “But it works.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think that matters to him. I think he sees the whole thing as unnatural, and I kind of get it. I experienced the rush when I took the drug, and it also revitalized me, but I also don’t want to do it again. There’s something about the process that doesn’t feel right.”

  “And I understand that, but we’re talking about a little discomfort against life or death.”

  “Dante doesn’t see it that way, so this is why I’ve come to you.”

  Vikram shifted in his seat and leaned forward. “Alright, what is it?”

  “I need you to help me find another way.”

  “Another way for Dante to feed that doesn’t involve sex or the use of a drug?”

  “I don’t want you to just help me find another way, I want you to find a way for a succubus and an incubus to be able to feed one another. I feel like that’s the only way this is going to work.”

  “What you’re asking for…”

  “Is impossible, I know.”

  Vik shook his head. “No, it isn’t impossible.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Well, if you’d asked me before you ran this experiment if yours, then I would have told you that yes, it was impossible. But seeing as how your energy was able to feed him, then it isn’t that there’s something about you two that’s incompatible with the other; it has to be something else, a problem that’s, hopefully, solvable.”

  “I’m glad you’re optimistic about that.”

  “I am, and you should be too. I can’t promise results, but I’m going to try my hardest to figure this out. You know I love a good mystery.”

  I walked over to him and kissed him lightly on the forehead. “I know you do,” I said, “That’s why I came to you with this. You’re the only person I can trust with something like this. If there’s anything that can be done, like a ritual or a spell, I know you’ll be the one to figure it out.”

  Vikram rested his hands on my hips. “You know I would do anything for you. You also know that Dante is like family, and anything that helps him helps all of us.”

  “I can’t believe you’re being so understanding.”

  “You realize we all knew just how crazy you and Dante were for each other even before the two of you admitted it to yourselves, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  “Then this shouldn’t come as so much of a shock.”

  “I can’t help it. I’m asking you, a man who is already sharing me with three other men, to find a way to add another man into the equation, and you aren’t asking for anything else in return.”

  “I don’t need anything,” he said, kissing my stomach. “I have you.”

  I ran my hands through his hair. “Thank you, Vikram. I—”

  A knock at the door startled us both. I moved away from Vikram, opened the door, and found Leo standing there wearing his I’m going on a mission leather jacket. He arched an eyebrow at Vikram, who had come into view behind me.

  “I need you,” Leo said.

  “Right now?” I asked, “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “But, we just went out last night.”

  “Don’t you want to find out what happened?”

  I looked over my shoulder, and Vikram nodded. Turning to Leo, I said, “I do…”

  “So, get changed and meet me downstairs. Aiden will be there too. Vik, we may need you and the others, so be ready for us.”

  “Ready for what, exactly?” Vikram asked.

  “Ready for war.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “So, what exactly did you tell Eddie to make him into your informant?” I asked Leo.

  “I did the only thing a man can do when threats won’t work—I made him an offer.”

  “What kind of offer?”

  “Whatever he was being offered to keep his sources’ secret, I doubled it. You’d be surprised to find out just how quickly a low life’s allegiances change when the amount of money they’re being paid to keep said allegiances comes into question.”

  “So, you’re saying you bribed him?”

  “No, I’m saying I hired him. Eddie now works for me. I’d have been able
to make a little money out of the arrangement if you hadn’t burned his stash down, but there’s no use crying over spilled milk, is there?”

  “You’re telling me you would have allowed him to keep dealing that stuff?”

  Leo shrugged. “If only to round up more users and make them see the error of their ways.”

  I sighed deeply as I followed Leo down the hall and into the lounge, where Aiden, Liam, and Raph, were already waiting. It was clear he wasn’t going to give me any specifics, like, how much did he pay Eddie, how much was he getting paid before, and how Leo had enough money to pay for it all. But that wasn’t important right now—the important thing was, the gang was all here, and Leo had a plan.

  “Any reason why we’ve all been summoned?” Raphael asked.

  “Well, we found something the other night that’s going to help us put down the person responsible for creating and distributing the energy drug,” Leo said.

  “How’d you managed that?” Liam asked.

  “I was able to convince a dealer to turn on their source, then I followed the source and got him to give me the name of his supplier, as well as the usual drop-off point. I also got him to set up a meeting with the supplier to deliver more product. That meeting is happening tonight, in about an hour, only there won’t be a drug dealer waiting to receive the product, it’ll be us.”

  “Us and what army?”

  “Funny you should use that word. Didn’t I liken this to a war before we came down here?”

  “You did,” I said, “I still don’t exactly understand what you mean either.”

  “Okay, let me explain. When I was attacked the other night, three things became clear to me. Number one, I learned that we were dealing with a very ferocious enemy who doesn’t want their operation interfered with. The second thing I learned is that there are a lot of these fuckers in the mix. The third, and most important thing, however, is this; the vast majority of the people I encountered were vampires, except for one spell caster. At first I thought it was a mage, but considering we know Elroy is behind this, I now know that the spell caster is a warlock.”

  “How does that last fact help us?” Raphael asked. “Warlocks are psychic dark spots. I cannot influence him with my powers.”