Serpent's Kiss

by Thea Harrison

  The tiger-cub Carling would make such a delectable morsel for some dark vengeful thing to devour.

  What if she simply disappeared?

  Could the universe flex in such a way to accept Carling’s death, and absorb all that that might change? Might he turn around one day to discover that she had vanished like she had never existed? If that happened, no one would know she was gone—no one except perhaps him, since he still remembered how cruelly Carling had been whipped in the first timeline.

  Or maybe, if she died and the past was changed to that profound extent, he would not remember her either. He might become oblivious Rune, living out his life in New York. He would never see her walking naked out of the glimmering river, the droplets of water sparkling like diamonds on her nude body. He would never give her that first sizzling kiss, or hear her rusty, surprised laugh, or take her on the floor with such savage need she would scream into his mouth and claw at him as she took him too.

  Gods have mercy.

  “We’ve got to stop these episodes from happening,” she said, so clearly her thoughts had run along a similar vein to all the possible consequences of what they had done.

  “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “But before we do, Carling, I’ve got to go back again one more time.”

  “Why?”

  He opened his eyes to find her looking at him as if he were a madman. He didn’t blame her. He felt like a madman. “If I can get through to your past, something else might be able to get through too. The younger Carling doesn’t know to protect herself. She has to be warned.”

  A prickling chill ran down her spine. Her mind raced as she tried to find fault with his logic, but she couldn’t.

  What a dangerous game we are playing, you and I, she thought as she stared at his tense face. We are meddling in the past and with each other, and I think I barely have an understanding of all the things we may have set in motion.

  She set her jaw. “All right,” she said. “You go back, one more time to see if you can warn me. If I’m too young to understand, you’ll have to go back again until I’m not. But you can’t change anything else, do you hear me? If you see something happening that makes you uncomfortable, walk away.”

  “I might change you again just by talking to you,” he said.

  You’ve already changed me in the most profound way possible, she thought, and the change has nothing to do with traveling in time.

  “I accept that risk,” she said. “And I take responsibility for it.”

  “You may not remember that.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You may not remember any of this.”

  Her expression held steady. In his imagination, he could see her wearing that same expression as she sent thousands of men to die in battle. “If it comes to it,” she said, “then we will have to accept that too.”

  Rune tossed back a hotel-sized bottle of Glenlivet and moodily spun his iPhone in circles on the coffee table as he watched CNN on mute in the suite living room. Closed captioning ran underneath scenes of Egypt’s famous pyramids, telling the tale of a sudden earthquake that cracked the foundation of Djoser’s temple at the one true gate to the funeral complex. Accompanying scenes showed the gaping hole that ran into the earth. The dust still hung over the site, and the surrounding ancient structure was reduced to rubble. Rune thought of all the warning tales of Djinn offering favors, and the horror short story “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs. Be careful what you wish for, because the consequences can be a freak-out bitch. Fuck, yeah.

  The knife sat on the coffee table in front of him, beside the cell phone. He picked it up and played with it, trying to pry open the various blades. The straight blade snapped off, but he got the pliers out partially.

  He told himself he wasn’t surprised. He had been telling himself that since the Djinn dropped the knife off, and it was even true in a way. Then he looked at the scenes on CNN and the knife in his hands, and he felt his own kind of internal earthquake again.

  He unscrewed another hotel bottle of liquor, a pretty blue bottle of SKYY vodka this time, and drank it down. He listened absently as Carling made the phone calls she needed to make from the bedroom. First she called Duncan to tell him a truncated version of recent events. She refrained from mentioning any of the more dangerous details and just simply said that she and Rune were following up on research leads on a possible cure. She also told Duncan she had let Rhoswen go, and while Rhoswen could still have access to the account Carling had set up for her, she was no longer authorized to act on Carling’s behalf.

  Then Carling called Julian.

  That was the phone call Rune had been waiting to overhear. He stopped playing with the knife as he pictured Julian Regillus on the other end of the phone line. Julian had been turned at the height of the Roman Empire. Serving under the Emperor Hadrian, he had been a distinguished general in a military culture that had once been described as quite like the Marines “but much nastier.” The Vampyre’s Power had a sharp potency that was characteristic of all aged Vampyres. There was nothing pretty or soft about him. His scarred six-foot-tall frame was packed with the heavy muscles of a man who had spent his life at war. He had short black hair with a sprinkle of salt at the temples and a face that carried forcefulness like a bullet, coupled with the kind of sharp intelligence needed to pull the trigger.

  Rune thought of the times he had seen Carling and Julian together. Their relationship had been a matter of idle speculation over the years. Rune thought they had probably been lovers once, perhaps as long ago as when Carling had turned Julian, but that was a guess based purely on the intimacy that was often created between Vampyre and progeny, not based on any evidence he had seen. Whether or not they had been lovers, any embers from that pairing had died out long ago. Now Carling and Julian treated each other with the cool courtesy of business associates.

  Rune force-fed that thought to the insane creature that tried to take over his head again, and this time he managed to keep the creature contained. He was glad he didn’t have to face Julian at that moment, because if the other male had actually been present, Rune didn’t think he could have.

  “Julian,” Carling said. A pause. Her voice turned icily meticulous. “I am well aware of what we had agreed, but things have changed. The Wyr sentinel Rune and I are pursuing a line of research that is proving to be fruitful—”

  Rune gripped the ends of the knife in both hands at the silence that followed.

  When Carling next spoke, the iciness in her voice had turned into a whip. “You are my child,” she said to the King of the Nightkind. “My creation. I am not yours. I am not coming to you for permission to do anything. You may support me in this last endeavor or you may choose to believe I am chasing desperate dreams to my death. I don’t give a fuck either way. What you may not do is interfere with me or try to dictate my actions.”

  He could hear the quiet click in the other room as Carling gently placed the phone receiver back in its cradle.

  Rune lived in a brawl of an atmosphere where profanity was casual, used often and ignored for the most part. Hearing profanity come from Carling, who almost never swore, was somehow shocking, and it lent an odd, raw kind of intimacy to the conversation.

  The knife snapped in his hands. He looked down at the pieces. He had bent it so much the time-stressed riveted joints had broken.

  It wasn’t enough violence for him. He wanted to do damage to something else. Preferably to something with an aquiline Roman profile that said ouch.

  He looked out the open French doors as he waited for Carling to step out of the bedroom. She didn’t. It was turning to early evening. Icarus had once again caught fire and was falling to the western horizon. Outside, much of the mist from earlier had burned away. What was left behind was a heavy haze that blanketed both land and sea, and turned the peaks of the Golden Gate Bridge into unearthly spires. Rune knew of an indigenous people who believed that when it was foggy, the veil between worlds became thin, and the spirits of ancestors and other things walked
more freely on this land. Maybe they were right. Maybe he was one of those spirits, walking between the worlds.

  He really needed to call Dragos now.

  But then Carling’s Power rippled over the scene.

  Instead of daylight, this time the passageway opened to a dark velvet sketch of night that overlaid the bright sunlit suite like a nightmare. He caught the heavy, humid scent of the river and the acrid hint of burning incense.

  He stood and stared at the open bedroom door, his hands knotted in fists. Then he grabbed his sheathed knives. He walked to the bedroom. He studied every step he took, every nuance of the experience. He reached the bent place in the crossover passage, the turnaround that led to a different page. It rested on a singular point that was so precise it felt smaller than the tip of a pin. It would be so easy to lose track of that one tiny place, that single moment, in the infinite cascade of all the other moments in time. He tried hard to memorize the turnaround place, just in case he needed it in order to get back.

  That is, if he could figure out how to use it. To his frustration, the turnaround place melted away from him, just as every moment in the present did when it slipped into the past.

  He went much more cautiously than he had the first two times.

  Because what happened in Vegas didn’t always stay in Vegas, baby.

  Here Carling was, at another cusp.

  Each time she reached one of these places, she lost her life. The first time was her childhood life by the river. It always happened by the river.

  The second time, she lost her life as a slave, and she went down on her knees every day to offer incense and say prayers of thanks to the strange golden god who claimed he was no god. But he had a sigil for a name, and with a murderous blow and a kiss to her forehead, he had killed the slave Khepri and remade her into Carling, the treasured goddaughter of one of the most powerful priests in the two lands.

  Because of Rune’s edict, she had enjoyed much more time to herself than almost any other woman she knew, and her father-priest Akil was as good as his word and educated her as well as any man. At twenty-two summers, she had studied maat, the order of the universe, and the three types of sentient beings that were made up of the gods, the living, and the dead. She had been privileged to study heka as well, or “the ability to make things happen by indirect means,” and because she had access to temple libraries, she learned many of the spells that were formally known only by the priests.

  Many of those priests were pompous, politically dangerous windbags. She watched them utter spells and perform religious rites, and they seemed like ridiculous buffoons. Sometimes they yelled the spells at the top of their lungs, as if shouting and waving their arms would draw the gods’ attention.

  She could have told them: no matter how loudly or theatrically they prayed, the spells did not work if they did not have kneph, the sacred breath that breathed life into things and gave them form. Only when one had this Power could one awaken the true movement that lived in the spells and hope to call on the gods.

  Carling had always had kneph, although she had not always known what to call it. When she cast a spell, it worked, although as a woman, it was heretical for her to claim as much, so she kept her studies on a scholarly note and the knowledge of her abilities private. And even though she was treated as a favored goddaughter, she was not a female of noble birth, so she could not become a Servant of God.

  She never wanted to be a Servant, anyway, because the female priestesses sang an infernal amount but seemed to do precious little else of note. Carling had no intention of spending her life warbling like a songbird in a cage.

  So out of boredom as much as anything else, she had agreed when Akil came to her with a politically brilliant match. It was past time for her to leave the restrictions of this city that was so devoted to the dead, and commence with living her own life. On the morrow, she would go to a minor desert king who had asked for her hand in marriage. Then she would see what she could make of the man.

  It was a sensible thing to do, and the offer exceedingly advantageous for a woman who had once been a slave. She should be thrilled. The king was much older than she, but his breath was not too horrible and he was utterly smitten with her. He had other wives, of course, and many slaves as concubines, but he had not taken any of them as his queen. Yet.

  And here she was, like Osiris, dying and being reborn again. She was wrapped in a robe against the chill of the river mist that crept over Ineb Hedj’s famous white walls. The night was as rich and wild as wine singing in her blood, and she should be happy and excited. Instead she was drowning in restlessness and confusion. She was about to start on her new life and learn new things. She, who had never been with a man, would be with a man tomorrow night.

  A man who was much older, his breath not too horrible.

  Her own breath choked in her throat. She wanted . . . she wanted something. She did not know what she wanted, but she wanted it badly. The world was so strange and big, and ferociously beautiful. She wanted . . . she wanted her soul to fly out of her chest again from sheer wonder, as it had when she had been a child.

  So she cast her first real spell in secret in the courtyard under the crescent moon’s pale smile while her elderly father-priest and the rest of the household slept. She created the words for the spell and crafted them with care, and she burned incense, and gave offerings of milk and honey to Atum, and Bat, and especially to Amunet, the “female hidden one.” And then she whispered those crafted words with her breath of Power, and felt them curl into the night along with the smell of expensive frankincense.

  I give thanks to the gods

  Both seen and unseen

  Who move through all the worlds.

  I give thanks for their eternal wisdom

  And the sacred gift of my heart’s desire . . .

  For surely the gods would know better than she what to make of this hot, beautiful grief, the gods who had, after all, created her with such a fierce, lonesome soul.

  What a wretchedness she had created. Bah. Her fool eyes were dripping. She sniffed, hugging herself, and wiped at her face with the back of one hand.

  Then a wind blew through the reeds and grasses, and it brought with it a scent of fiery Power. Something walked toward her. It moved quietly, but its presence spread absolute silence in the incense-perfumed night. A crocodile hissed from the nearby riverbank, and then there was a splash as it sped away.

  Carling reached for the copper knife she had laid at her feet. It was not wise to move unguarded through the night, and she never traveled even to the household courtyard without a weapon. Calm but wary, she backed toward the door.

  By the crescent moon’s thin, delicate light, a god in black appeared. A god, who claimed he was not a god, great and golden-haired and so intensely formed, his ka or life force boiled the air around him.

  Carling dropped the knife, staring.

  The night was not made for his vivid colors. He was best seen in the hot bright light of day. Copper, yellow, gold, bronze, and the fierce warmth of his ageless lion’s eyes.

  Yes, that was it. That was exactly how she remembered it. Her soul, winging out of her body, and flying eagerly toward him.

  “Rune,” she whispered. Her own Atum, who rose from the water to wing his way to the stars and complete the world.

  The first time she had seen him, he had been smiling and playful. The second time he had been in a killing fury. This time she saw him made a Powerful three, which was its own completion. Three times, a heka number. His unearthly face held a troubled severity, and then it lightened into something altogether different as he saw her, something strange that had to do with the way men looked at women. Whatever that strange thing was, it had her heart racing and her hands shaking and her thighs feeling heavy and full.

  “Khepri,” he said. His voice was deeper, wilder than she remembered. Or maybe she heard him better now that she was older.

  Smiling, she walked toward him, this man who held her soul. �
��I chose another name when my slave life ended,” she said. “I am Carling now. I should have known you would come.”

  He smiled back at her as she reached him. “Why is that?”

  “You always come when I die,” she said.

  • • •

  Shock smashed a fist in Rune’s gut.

  You always come when I die.

  Before he knew it, he had dropped his own knives and grabbed her by the shoulders. Her head fell back and she stared at him, and he castigated himself furiously, Careful, asshole. She’s a fragile human now. He made himself cup her slender arms carefully, feeling her pliable warm flesh under his fingers, and he studied her face.

  She had undeniably grown into a woman, but she was too young to be the Carling that had taken the serpent’s kiss, he guessed by as much as seven or eight years. Her face was more rounded, less carved, but she still had the same gorgeous long dark eyes, the fabulous cheekbones, that outrageous mouth. She looked at him with all the open bloom of wonder in her face, and her scent held a fragrance unlike any other.

  Spiky, beautiful girl. The most beautiful girl in the world.

  “What do you mean, I always come when you die?” Rune whispered. His heart had yet to recover from that one. She had not shaved her head, as so many early Egyptians had. Her long dark hair fell to her narrow waist in dozens of small meticulous braids. He touched one of the braids at her temple and traced it as it fell away from her face.

  “You came the first time, when my life by the river ended,” Carling told him. Inside, she was stricken. He was touching her, his hand to her shoulder, his hand to her hair. She had no idea something could be so utterly lovely as a simple touch. She had to work to get the rest of the words out. “Then you came again and ended my life as a slave. Tonight is my last night in this life in Ineb Hedj. Tomorrow I go to another life, away from here.”

  Rune stroked her petal-soft cheek with a light finger. “Is that a good thing?”