Waking the Serpent

by Jane Kindred

  Chapter 25

  They’d managed to sleep past noon. Rafe knew there’d be hell to pay with Phoebe’s sisters when they finally made an appearance, so he prolonged it as much as possible by dragging Phoebe with him into the shower stall. Which turned out not to be the wisest move he’d ever made. Seeing Phoebe slick and wet, with the soap and water slithering over her breasts and stomach and down her back into the crack of her ass, he found his cock springing to attention once more.

  Just as he considered suggesting they step out of the shower and get back into bed, Phoebe dropped to her knees on the tiled floor of the shower and took him in her mouth. With a groan, Rafe braced one palm against the tiled wall and the other against the glass door, trying to keep himself upright. He’d rarely allowed a woman to suck his cock. The act was too laden with issues of dominance for him, not to mention the futility of someone trying to make him come that ultimately frustrated and annoyed both parties.

  But despite the fact that Phoebe was on her knees, there was nothing submissive about the way she was swallowing him. She seemed to be relishing the taste—something he found unfathomable—and her soft humming noises left no doubt she was enjoying herself.

  It couldn’t hurt to let her give it a go, though he doubted even if he could come from oral stimulation that he’d be able to do it standing in a shower—and so soon after the first time he’d managed to do it with a woman at all. Then again, if she kept up that particular motion with her tongue, all bets were off.

  Phoebe’s hands were braced against his thighs. She slid them up along his hips, caressing his lower abs, which made his cock twitch in her mouth, and then moving them around to his lower back. The tattoo shouldn’t have extended that far, but he felt it slithering under her hands, as though the ink were growing—as though the skin on his back was in fact the slippery, scaly skin of a snake.

  He had the almost out-of-body sensation again as he realized he was nearing climax, the feeling of lightness, as if he could fly. With a stifled groan, he let go, letting Phoebe have it all. He wasn’t sure about the protocol here. He’d never come in a woman’s mouth. What if she wasn’t expecting that? What if she didn’t want that in her mouth? Rafe clutched her shoulder with one hand as she made it clear that not only didn’t she mind, she was eager for it, happily swallowing against him as he shot into her.

  He’d squeezed his eyes shut as he’d started to come and he opened them now to watch Phoebe with amazement. But in the mirror over the sink, his reflection caught his eye. Blurred by steam, the image was nevertheless unmistakable: at his shoulders, the glittering sheen of feathers marked the outline of folded wings.

  “Holy shit.”

  Phoebe let go of him, looking up in concern. Rafe reached down and took her hands to help her up, drawing her against him.

  “The quetzal.” He brushed her wet hair out of her eyes with amazement. “It’s awake. I’m awake.”

  * * *

  The physical manifestation of the quetzal appeared to be something Rafe could control at will if he concentrated hard enough, but it was difficult to maintain. Sexual release obviously worked as a catalyst for it. Or maybe just Phoebe’s touch. He wasn’t sure. But he looked forward to doing some experimenting to find out.

  His appearance returned to normal as he made a conscious effort to breathe deeply and focus on suppressing it. But they couldn’t put off emerging from the bedroom any longer. Not wanting to walk around in front of Phoebe’s sisters in his boxers, Rafe put on his undershirt with his suit pants and they exited the room, bracing for the expected ribbing. But Theia and Rhea had decided to act as if nothing was amiss.

  They’d apparently gone to the grocery store while Rafe and Phoebe were sleeping, acquiring all manner of sugared breakfast cereals and milk, displayed on the breakfast bar along with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, toast and three kinds of pastries. Rafe tried not to blush thinking of what he and Phoebe had been doing as the twins were whipping up this feast.

  Apparently he failed at that, as Phoebe rose on tiptoe and whispered at his ear, “I love it when the tips of your ears turn pink.” Which pretty much turned everything else pink.

  Theia had taken up residence in the papasan chair by the window—effectively designating her the Puddleglum petter—while Rhea lingered over what looked like a second bowl of Frosty Charms.

  “Help yourselves.” Rhea waved at the bounty. “We weren’t sure what you’d want.”

  “Yeah, right.” Theia snorted. “Rhea wanted everything.”

  Rhea glared at her twin before turning back to Phoebe. “How’s your head? Feeling better?”

  Phoebe rolled her eyes with a groan of exasperation. “Oh, just get it over with. Yes, we did it. Several times, in fact. Are you happy?”

  Rhea went back to her cereal. “Wow. Over sharing.”

  Phoebe shook her head, handing Rafe a cup of coffee. “You two are monsters.”

  “Hey, what did I do?” Theia smiled sweetly. “I’m just over here...petting the pussy.”

  Phoebe finished pouring a coffee for herself and stirred in some milk. “I hate you, Theia Dawn.” She took a sip and started loading up her plate.

  Rhea filled her mouth with cereal and looked across the room at Theia. “Shouldn’t she be less cranky after riding the hobby horse all night?”

  “Well, she is out of practice.”

  “Oh, my God.” Phoebe jabbed her fork in the air at both of them. “Stop it right now.” The stern look was upstaged by the fact that the fork happened to have a sausage at the end of it.

  Rafe tried not to laugh as he kept his head lowered over his coffee mug.

  “Don’t encourage them.” Phoebe was still holding out the sausage and Rafe couldn’t help it. He bit off the end. Ignoring her look of outrage, he bent and kissed her.

  Rhea raised her hand for a high-five as Rafe straightened. “Welcome to the family, bro. You fit right in.” When Rafe went in for the hand-slap, Phoebe, buttering a piece of toast, made a low growl in her throat.

  She shook her head with a look of resignation. “I knew this would happen. God is punishing me for leaving the church.”

  Rafe watched her, leaning back against the sink as she ate her breakfast, pretending to be mad at the sisters she obviously adored, dark ponytail dripping on her shoulder. At that moment he knew without a doubt he was going to marry this woman.

  Rafe almost choked on his eggs. Whoa. Getting a little ahead of yourself there. He tried to rein in his thoughts. First time you come with a woman and you’re picking out a damn ring. He busied himself with his plate, trying to ignore his warming ears.

  When he glanced up again, Phoebe was pressing her fingers to her temple as she set her plate on the counter.

  Rafe set his own plate on the bar. “Are you okay?”

  “Goddammit.” She gritted her teeth. “Not now.”

  “Shade,” the twins said together. But Rafe didn’t need them to tell him a shade was here. Rafe could see it.

  A handsome woman just beyond middle-age seemed to be sharing the space where Phoebe stood, faded red hair styled as it must have been in life, and her fingernails expensively manicured. “What are you staring at, darling?” The sultry, smoke-edged voice came out of Phoebe’s mouth, but it was clearly Lila’s shade that was speaking. She put her hand on her hip, and Phoebe mirrored the gesture. “You look surprised to see me. What’s the matter? Not what you expected?”

  He realized she’d said those last words on her own, no longer animating Phoebe, who stumbled back against the sink and out of phase with her. “How are you doing that?”

  “Doing what?” Phoebe’s voice was tinged with annoyance.

  “Not you,” he said. “Lila.”

  “She’s gone already. Thankfully.”

  “Not exactly.”

  Lila
moved toward him, lips curled in a knowing smile.

  Phoebe stopped rubbing her temples and looked up. “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s standing right in front of you.”

  “She’s what?”

  Rhea slipped off the stool beside him. “Dude, you’re freaking me out.”

  Lila stopped in front of Rafe. “Tezcatlipoca will be pleased your goddess has finally woken you, quetzal.” She ran an incorporeal nail down his chest, leaving a trail of goose bumps in the wake of her not-quite touch.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Phoebe pushed away from the counter. “What’s what supposed to mean?”

  “I’m talking to Lila.”

  Lila took a step back and appraised him. “I wish I could see your wings. But perhaps he’ll let us see them before he does it.”

  Despite knowing she had no corporeal form, he took a step toward her. “Does what?”

  “Clips them, pretty bird. Thanks to my tumbling your goddess into your arms, you have what Tezcatlipoca desires to take from you. He’ll have your vision and your power, as he’s wanted all along.”

  “The hell he will.” Rafe grabbed at her arm in a futile gesture as she started to fade. “Wait. Tell me one thing. Who is Tezcatlipoca? Tell me the name of the necromancer.”

  “His name is Tloque Nahuaque. The Lord of the Near and the Nigh.” With that, she was gone.

  Phoebe rubbed her arms, seeming to sense the shade’s departure. “What did she say?”

  “Gibberish. More stupid, arrogant games.” He wasn’t about to tell her Lila had led them into a trap. That consummating his desire with Phoebe had been exactly what the necromancer wanted.

  “I mean about the necromancer. Is it Carter?”

  Every time she said Hamilton’s first name, it grated on him, though he knew there was nothing between them. “She wouldn’t answer.”

  Theia approached the kitchen behind him. “How come you could see her?”

  Phoebe’s eyes echoed the question.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The quetzal,” said Phoebe. “You’re awake.”

  The necromancer might have engineered Rafe’s awakening for his own purposes, but now that Rafe was awake, he’d have Rafe’s power to deal with—whatever that power was. And Rafe had no intention of letting the necromancer win.

  * * *

  With Phoebe and her sisters, Rafe went over the list of enhanced abilities he was aware of: transformation into Quetzalcoatl’s nagual—and possibly into the embodiment of Quetzalcoatl himself—the ability to see and hear shades, and, after some experimentation, it seemed he had enhanced strength when he concentrated on allowing the quetzal to manifest. Which might have accounted for his abilities with Phoebe in the bedroom, but he wasn’t about to bring that up.

  While the Carlisle sisters debated the likelihood of Hamilton being the necromancer and how they could go about proving it, Rafe formulated a plan. The necromancer must know Rafe’s “quetzal” had awoken. If he hadn’t somehow sensed it himself, Lila would have revealed it to him by now. If Hamilton was the necromancer—and it seemed improbable that it could be anyone else—he’d be seeking a way to take Rafe’s power as soon as possible. Rafe needed to fight the bastard on his own turf, while Hamilton still thought Rafe was in the dark.

  Making excuses to Phoebe about needing to change his clothes—which was true; he was incredibly tired of wearing this suit—Rafe fortified the protection around the property and headed back to his house, promising to return before dinner. Knowing Lila had only been luring Phoebe into danger to bring the two of them together, he wasn’t as worried about Phoebe’s safety, but it couldn’t hurt to take precautions.

  After he’d stripped out of the suit, he took the opportunity to test his abilities once more, invoking Quetzalcoatl at his altar. As with the first time he’d experienced the movement of the tattoo, he had to draw blood before anything happened, but this time the wings—his wings—manifested almost without effort. Rafe stared at himself in the full-length mirror, flexing the muscles in his shoulders and back connected to these new limbs and watching the light play on the iridescent teal of his feathers as they rose and fell with his breath.

  His skin felt different on his back, as though the tattoo had grown immensely, and Rafe turned in front of the mirror. The wings were even more impressive from this angle—and his back was covered in the iridescent scales of a snake. It wasn’t so much that the tattoo had grown as it was, as Phoebe had said, that he’d “become” the tattoo. The scarlet center traversed his spine, fading out into purple before becoming the blue-green of the resplendent quetzal feathers. Mercifully, there were no matching tail feathers sticking out of his ass. He wasn’t sure he could have coped with that.

  His phone rang and Rafe’s muscles tensed, causing the feathers to extend outward, like a wild animal trying to make itself bigger in the face of an enemy. The ringtone was Hamilton’s.

  He walked to the bed with the wings still pennant and picked up the phone. “Rafe Diamante.”

  “Rafael, it’s Carter Hanson Hamilton.”

  Rafe resisted the urge to smash the phone against the wall—not because of who it was, but because it was so goddamned annoying that the asshole insisted on making himself sound like a law firm.

  “I have some paperwork I need you to sign as executor to your father’s will. Can we meet in about an hour?”

  It was exactly the opportunity Rafe had been waiting for, but he didn’t want to seem too eager. “Can it wait? I was about to hop in the shower. I have dinner plans.”

  “With Phoebe? How is she?”

  “She’s fine. Just some bumps and bruises. Doctor says she has a mild concussion.”

  “She’s lucky. That could have been so much worse.” Yeah, I bet it could have, you son of a bitch. “I’m not sure this can wait, though. It’s not just the paperwork. I don’t want to go into it over the phone, but I think I have some information about your father’s death. Something that may be a link to his killer.”

  Rafe had to take a few steadying breaths. Of course Hamilton had information. If he was the necromancer, he was the one who’d poisoned him. “What kind of information?”

  “Like I said, I’d rather discuss it in person. But a link to your father’s killer is a link to Barbara Fisher’s killer. There may be light at the end of this tunnel.” Yeah, asshole, and it’s calling to you to step into it.

  Rafe spoke casually. “Okay. Why don’t you come over to my place?”

  “Actually, I’m at your father’s house. Can you drive up?”

  What the hell was Hamilton doing at his father’s house? Rafe had a twinge of misgiving, but the house belonged to him now. It was still his home territory.

  “Sure. Be there in an hour.”

  It took him nearly that long to get his quetzal manifestation under control enough to dress. Rafe took his time on the drive. Let Hamilton wait. Maybe he’d start to sweat, wondering if he’d hooked Rafe, after all. Still an hour from sunset, storm clouds rolling in as he took the twisting drive made the sky appear darker than late afternoon. It was coming down hard by the time Rafe reached the planned community that consisted of less than a dozen sprawling mansions. There was really no other word for them.

  He parked beside Hamilton’s Mercedes and stared at the door, recalling the last time he’d walked through it.

  Hamilton opened it and nodded to him.

  Time to roll.

  Chapter 26

  Hamilton started to pour two glasses of cognac after Rafe followed him into his father’s den, but he wasn’t about to accept anything the lawyer offered. Instead, Rafe suggested brewing a pot of tea. His father had been almost as much of a tea snob as he’d been a whisky snob, and there were some exquisite varieties in his tea
cabinet.

  As he warmed his hands around a smoky cup of aged Lapsang Earl Grey, Rafe pretended to believe Hamilton’s story. A sex worker had supposedly come forward to say she’d been paid to bring Rafael Sr. an expensive bottle of vintage Scotch whisky on the night he died.

  Hamilton dropped a cube of sugar into his teacup and stirred it lightly. “She spoke to me anonymously from a payphone, but she had enough details about the Scotch—it was a rare vintage—that it can’t be a scam. She also hinted she knew who else had been at Barbara Fisher’s place on the night she was killed.” He set his spoon aside and sipped appreciatively. “But she’s promised to call again to discuss her terms. I’m certain we can make a deal.”

  “A deal.” Rafe poured himself a second cup, breathing in notes of pinewood and tobacco. “What exactly is she expecting to get?”

  “She wants immunity. And before you say no, let me remind you she claims not to have known the Scotch was poisoned. Someone offered her a lot of money to deliver it, so she didn’t ask questions.”

  Rafe reached for the cream. “And you think my father had a prostitute up here that night. That he hired her from the service Fisher worked for.” It was a preposterous story, even if Rafe hadn’t already been onto him. His father had never expressed anything but scorn for the idea of “paying for it.”

  “There were some significant funds your father couldn’t account for—that’s what I was driving up here to talk to him about that morning—and his financial records show a number of extravagant gifts to women he met only briefly. As a matter of fact, a scandal was about to break that he’d used taxpayer funds for some of those gifts.”

  Hamilton was starting to piss him off and the smug look on his face made Rafe suspect the slimy bastard knew exactly what was going on here, pushing Rafe’s buttons in the lead-up to his attack. He was done playing Hamilton’s game. Time to go on the offensive.

  Rafe finished his tea and set the cup on the table, staring Hamilton down. “I think we both know why you really wanted me to come here tonight.”