Serpent's Kiss, Page 2

  It was huge, the biggest snake he’d ever seen. It might have weighed as much as Thorolf did, which was impressive. As its eyes glinted with malice, he knew he’d seen a snake this big only once before.

  In this very apartment.

  When Chen had attacked him.

  He’d never been able to find it later, much less ensure it was evicted or dead. Viv had said that Thailand’s jungles were thick with snakes and told him not to worry about it. Thorolf hadn’t liked that reasoning one bit, and now he liked it less. The snake was back, or maybe it had never left.

  And it was after him.

  He cast a quick glance over the apartment and was somewhat relieved. There was no sign of Viv, which was good. Thorolf would have a hard enough time defending himself in his current state.

  He scrambled backward, only realizing then that the snake had already wrapped itself around his leg. The snake’s coils tightened, squeezing his calf and holding him captive. It opened its mouth, as if to laugh at him.

  Thorolf tumbled out of the bed and fell on his butt, knocking over Viv’s cute little nightstand from the flea market. The table and lamp crashed to the floor, and he dreaded that she’d cry. He hated when she cried. The snake dove for him even as Thorolf tried to crawl away and its weight landed on his chest.

  It was incredibly heavy, heavy enough to knock the breath out of him. Thorolf grabbed it and flung its head against the wall. The snake hit the plaster and hissed in fury. Thorolf reached to free himself from the snake’s coils with both hands, blood running from one. He caught one coil and ripped it away, but the snake launched itself toward him again.

  Its weight knocked him off balance, but Thorolf kept fighting against its grip on his leg. Looking away was his mistake: the snake struck in that instant. He winced as its fangs sank deeply into his arm. He saw the cold glitter of its eyes but reached for its head again, determined to get it off him.

  No sooner had his hand closed over its cold skin than he felt a strange languor steal through his body. A chill was emanating from the bite, spreading over his skin, so he knew the serpent’s toxin was paralyzing him. Even the bite looked wrong, because it was turning his skin dark. Thorolf had time to open his mouth, but he never made a scream. Numbness claimed his body and began to seep into his thoughts. He only managed to make a choking sound before he couldn’t make any noise at all. His eyes closed despite his efforts and he felt himself fall limply to the floor. The snake’s weight left him, its coils releasing his leg, but it was impossible to escape.

  Chen’s familiar laugh echoed in Thorolf’s ears, a sound of triumph that didn’t bode well. It would have been bad enough if the old Slayer had killed him, but Thorolf knew Chen would have more devious plans for him than that. He remembered the brand that Chen had burned against the neck of the shadow dragons he’d enslaved, remembered how the old Slayer had tried to brand him, too, and felt sick with dread. It wasn’t as if he could defend himself, not like the last time, not when he was like this. The brand had been shattered, but Thorolf wouldn’t have put it past Chen to have forged it new.

  He was in very deep trouble, and outcast from his fellow Pyr, the only ones who could have helped him.

  It appeared that Thorolf had made his last mistake.

  * * *

  That night, Niall Talbot, the Dreamwalker of the Pyr, dreamed. He was in the dream of another Pyr, he had to be, because the scene was completely unfamiliar to him. Niall glimpsed pine trees and mountains, an icy length of water—and a village consumed by flames. He was flying toward the devastation, seeing what another Pyr had once seen. He felt the Pyr’s horror and his fear of what he’d discover. His heart was thundering, and he flew with reckless power. He descended toward the flames and caught a scent that he knew better than his own heart.

  Astrid was alive.

  That was his thought, filled with relief and hope. The Pyr followed the scent and found her, outside the village, bound to a large rock like an offering to the gods. Niall was shocked but the Pyr was not. He’d expected worse.

  Worse? The woman was burned badly, bruised and muddy. Niall saw that she’d had stones thrown at her, because they were around her feet, stained with her blood. Her body had been broken before the attack that had left her burned.

  Niall wondered where he was, and what this woman had done. The Pyr whose dream he shared saw only the woman’s beauty and kindness, his heart aching that she had paid this price. Niall could glimpse how pretty she had been, even though the mud, blood and the burns. She caught her breath at the Pyr’s arrival, her fear tangible, but he shifted shape in a shimmer of brilliant blue.

  Why did the scene smell like Pyr as well as Slayer? Niall had a bad feeling. What was left of the village and the woman’s clothing looked primitive, maybe medieval, and there was certainly no industry in the valley. In what era was he? Before the late middle ages, there had been no Slayers, per se, Niall knew that, but he didn’t doubt his keen sense of smell.

  He supposed there had always been those of his kind with darkness in their blood, even if they hadn’t been given a name yet.

  The Pyr fell to his knees before the woman, pushed her hair back from her ravaged face with a shaking hand, and bowed his head, overwhelmed to find her like this.

  My Astrid.

  “All I did was love you,” she whispered, the words barely audible. Her lips were cracked and it had to be painful for her to speak. She coughed then, blood leaking from the corner of her mouth. “Who would have guessed that would cost so much,” she murmured before her eyes closed. A tear leaked from her eye and meandered down her cheek, even as she stilled forever.

  She was dead. A fury filled the other Pyr as he realized as much, then he tipped back his head to roar. He shifted shape at the same time, taking flight with power. Niall felt his pain and his betrayal, and his conviction that his own kind had done this, to teach him a lesson.

  It was one he would never forget.

  Niall awakened with a start, shaking, horrified and sickened by the stench of burned flesh. He could have been in that village still, the air filled with smoke, the dead woman bound and burned before him. “Astrid,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with another Pyr’s pain.

  “Who?” his partner Rox demanded, bracing herself on her elbow to look down at him in the darkness. She spoke softly, probably not wanting to awaken their twin sons. Kyle and Nolan were just over a year old and finally sleeping with some predictability.

  Niall realized that he was in New York, safe in bed with Rox in their apartment over her tattoo shop. The familiar lights and sounds of the city outside the window reassured him. He could hear his sons sleeping in the next room, but couldn’t keep from pulling Rox close. His heart was racing and his mouth dry.

  Astrid.

  “Who’s Astrid?” Rox murmured into his ear.

  “I don’t know,” Niall admitted, even as the shards of the dream faded from his mind. The pain of betrayal lingered though, like a bitter taste on his tongue. “I don’t remember.”

  “Whose dream was it?”

  “I don’t know.” Niall shook his head. “I couldn’t see. I could only feel.” He shuddered again and tried to think. “No one has ever talked about an Astrid.” He frowned, fighting to recall details, even as Rox reached for the notepad she kept by the bed for exactly this purpose. “‘All I did was love you.’ That’s what she said before she died. He was furious at what she’d endured.”

  “Because he hadn’t defended her?”

  Niall shook his head. “Because he believed the Pyr were responsible for her death. That they were teaching him a lesson.”

  Rox made a note then shook her head. “That doesn’t sound very much like the Pyr defending humans as one of the treasures of the earth.”

  “No,” Niall admitted with frustration. “It doesn’t. But it’s gone already. I can’t remember more.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t Pyr,” Rox suggested, nestling beside him again.

  “If he was Slayer, he
wouldn’t have loved anyone other than himself,” Niall murmured. “And even if he was Slayer, the Pyr wouldn’t have murdered a woman because of him.”

  “Other Slayers then?” Rox suggested.

  “I don’t think that’s what he meant.” Niall shook his head. “Even if it happened before we used the term Slayer, we still would have been aware of wickedness in our own kind. He thought it was the good Pyr. I felt his conviction!” He shoved his hand through his hair. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe more of it will come to you later.”

  Niall didn’t sleep, though. He knew in his heart that it had been the dream of a Pyr and that the experience had influenced his fellow dragon shifter for good. He also knew that he had to be experiencing the dream for a reason.

  Astrid. Niall breathed her name and saw her in his mind’s eye for the barest moment. She was fair with blue eyes, tall and slender. Those trees and mountains could have been Scandinavia. Maybe it was one of Erik’s relations. He’d come from that part of the world. Niall would ask the leader of the Pyr about it the next day.

  He wished he could remember more detail, but he had to make do with what the dream brought to him. He rolled over and caught Rox close, breathing deeply of her scent and fiercely glad that she was safe beside him. The dream made him feel vulnerable and made him fear for those he loved.

  What would he do, if he found Rox in such a state and believed his fellows were responsible? Niall didn’t even want to think about that. It wouldn’t be a friendly discussion, that was for sure. He slowed his breathing and exhaled a steady stream of dragonsmoke, strengthening the protective barrier that already encircled his lair and the precious treasures that were his partner and sons.

  On this night, he couldn’t have too many defenses.

  Niall didn’t realize then that Rox would fill a notebook with his recurring dreams of the other Pyr’s last moments with Astrid. He would have that same nightmare every single night for the next twenty-two months, except that it became more violent and the Pyr’s reaction more vehement each and every time. It was as if the Pyr’s fury was being steadily fed to become greater and more consuming.

  And yet, over those same months, he didn’t manage to find a single Pyr who had been loved by an Astrid.

  Much less understand why the dream was so persistent.

  Chapter One

  Bangkok—April 15, 2014

  It wasn’t right.

  The city Thorolf knew as home didn’t look right. It made no sense that it had changed so much in just one night. The evening before he’d drunk some vile concoction, nearly killing himself on a dare from Viv, and by morning, the world had changed drastically. He couldn’t understand it.

  He was also feeling jumpy. Maybe it was the hangover, but he’d never had one like this. A single phrase repeated itself incessantly in his thoughts: it could happen again. It terrified him, even though he refused to explore his memory of whatever had happened. The past was over and done. He’d made his choices.

  No matter how many times he told himself as much, his conviction continued to grow. Thorolf couldn’t let the same thing happen again. He felt a strange need to find Viv so he could defend her. He should never have left her, even though he didn’t remember doing so. She wasn’t his destined mate, but she was his lover and companion. He’d never been anxious when they were apart—Viv was good at taking care of herself—but that had suddenly changed.

  Maybe it was the pain. He ached all over, his skin burning from head to toe. The torment grew with every step he took and he was sure his skin was inflamed. It was as if he’d gotten a new tattoo while he was drunk—which wasn’t out of the question—but this one burned as a new tattoo never should. Had he gone to some hole where they didn’t change the needles? Did he have an infection?

  How could all of his skin be affected?

  Thorolf didn’t know, but the pain was driving him crazy. He checked out his forearms as he walked and didn’t like the look of the spirals that were traced all over them. The moron had even tattooed over top of the blue dragon tattoo that Rox had put on the back of his left hand. What kind of loser would obliterate a masterpiece like that dragon, obscuring it with this kind of meaningless scribble? The spirals were all over his arms and hands, and from the burning sensation of his skin, all over the rest of his body, too.

  Just how drunk had he been for some jerk to take advantage of him this much?

  Thorolf felt a new anger against losers who called themselves tattoo artists but were incompetent idiots, a rage that surprised him with its intensity. All the same, he couldn’t deny its persuasive power. The pain and anger melted with the fury, as well as that fear that something bad could happen again. He blamed his fellow Pyr.

  The Pyr had cheated him.

  The Pyr had stolen from him.

  He couldn’t work it through, but he had to find Viv.

  Thorolf walked a street that should have been familiar, unable to account for how much had suddenly changed. The signs were different. The businesses were different. The bikes darting through the foot traffic were louder and faster. More people had cellphones than he remembered, as if some technological genie had showered the city with expensive new devices. The phones were bigger, too, with more elaborate displays. Maybe it was a market test. He was starving, but his favorite chicken place was closed and boarded up, an injustice that unsettled him even more.

  Maybe he wasn’t in Bangkok, after all.

  The sky was dark and becoming darker, even though it was mid-afternoon. Thorolf crossed an alley, which gave him a sudden view of the sky, and he saw that the sun was being obscured. An eclipse! Thorolf didn’t remember that there was going to be one: in fact, he’d been sure that the next total eclipse was years away. He stopped to stare for a long moment, breaking every sensible rule by looking straight at the sun, but there was no mistaking the eclipse for what it was. That shadow crept steadily across the sun, blocking it and turning the light to a strange orange color.

  A total eclipse, and he hadn’t known it was coming.

  Yet he was Pyr, and a total eclipse often sparked a firestorm. Eclipses were important to dragon shape shifters, and he wasn’t that lax about his responsibility to his fellows. Firestorms could require the help of all the Pyr, to ensure that the dragon shifter in question successfully defended and courted his destined mate.

  Thorolf always knew when there was going to be an eclipse, but not this one. He had a very bad feeling about that. He strode quickly toward the apartment he shared with Viv.

  As the sun was plunged into darkness, he felt the spark of the firestorm ignite somewhere in the world. He closed his eyes as its heat sent a welcome surge through his body, driving a chill from his bones. It even eased the pain of that stupid new tattoo, and soothed his concern about evil repeating itself. He breathed deeply of it, wishing it could be his own.

  The firestorm was close. Could it be Sloane’s? Was the Apothecary in Bangkok? What other Pyr were in Bangkok?

  The heat of firestorm grew with every step he took. The firestorm was really close, a tangible golden heat in his vicinity. The fact that there was a firestorm, though, meant that Pyr and Slayers would gather.

  And Viv could pay the price.

  It could happen again. Thorolf remembered the smell of Astrid’s burned flesh all too clearly and the sight of her body damaged beyond healing. He saw the betrayal and disappointment in her eyes once more and heard her whispered last words. The worst part was that his fellow Pyr had been responsible.

  It could only happen again over his dead body.

  Thorolf broke into a run. He had to find Viv!

  Smart people took one look at him and scurried out of his path, casting fearful glances backward. He was comparatively tall in this city, and his fair hair made him stand out. Thorolf felt his body hovering on the cusp of change and wondered if his eyes had shifted to dragon eyes as yet. There probably was a glow of pale blue around his body, a mark of his intent to shift. H
e forcibly calmed himself, pushing back the insistent urge to change shape, trying to corral his growing fear.

  It only pissed Erik off when Thorolf changed to dragon form in public. He could do with not pissing off the leader of the Pyr any more than he already had.

  Thorolf arrived in the street where the apartment was located and narrowed his eyes against the changes he noticed there. Did it matter if the used bookstore had become an internet cafe? Did it matter if the old noodle shop was gone, or that the beggar who was always on the corner had disappeared? No! The only thing that mattered was Viv. He inhaled deeply, but even his keen Pyr senses couldn’t discern Viv’s presence.

  Had they taken her away?

  Was he too late?

  Fear had him taking the stairs three at a time. Thorolf kicked in the door and shouted for Viv, hearing his own fear. The door swung back hard enough to slam into the wall behind and the wooden frame shattered. He frowned as he surveyed the apartment.

  It looked so different that he checked the number on the door.

  This was the apartment but where was Viv?

  Had he failed his lover?

  Again?

  A nude man who emerged from the bathroom, brushing his teeth, his expression astonished.

  “Where’s Viv?” Thorolf demanded.

  “Who?”

  This human had to know where she was. She’d lived in this very apartment with Thorolf until the day before. That this man should lie only meant he was one of those wicked humans, like the one who had cursed him with this tattoo. He must be in league with the Pyr.

  Just like the humans who had tied Astrid down and stoned her.

  Anger flooded through Thorolf. Viv couldn’t die because of his failure. He took one step and seized the man by the throat. He lifted him off the floor and slammed the man back into the wall. The toothbrush fell to the floor as the man’s eyes widened in terror and his legs flailed as he gasped for air.