Serpent's Touch (Serpent's Touch 1)

AMIRA

The beast was hanging in his chains. I knew better to believe he was simply sleeping. I now doubted he was simply a beast, too.

Roaming my gaze over his body, I picked out the visual signs of a man within the animal. And the more I looked, the more of them I found. The features of a man smoothly merged with those of an animal. It looked natural, as if both were a part of one person—a werewolf.

Keeping a safe distance, I poked him in the arm with the diadem.

“The black thorns in this crown are werewolves’ claws,” I said. “The white ones are their teeth. Both are just like yours.” I paused, trying to gauge whether he understood me or even heard me. His eyes remained closed. “You’re a werewolf, aren’t you? From Nerifir?”

His eyelids, trimmed with thick black eyelashes, fluttered open. Red flashed within. His top lip curled, bearing long, needle-sharp teeth. A growl resonated through his chest.

I shrank back, dropping the crown. He was bone-chillingly terrifying. Everything inside me urged me to flee. But he was my one and only chance. I forced my feet to stay where they were. Pressing my hands to my chest, I tried to calm my racing heart.

“Can you speak?” I ventured a question.

His chest rose and fell with heavy breathing. He made no sound in reply.

I took in the uneven patches of fur, the front paws that looked so much like hands, his feet that were more like clawed wolf paws, the face with features of both a human and a beast. Whatever had been done to him wasn’t natural, even for the magical being that he was. He seemed to have stuck between two forms.

Dez had been giving him two substances—the yellow powder he’d sprinkled on his food and the gel he’d put on his wounds. He obviously did it for a reason. I needed to find out exactly what each substance did to this creature.

He might be suffering more than I realized.

Compassion squeezed my heart like a steel band. It helped me conquer the fear. I took from my pockets another portion of tainted meat I’d sourced from the kitchen and the jar with the fragrant gel.

“Dez said to give you both daily. I’ve given you neither because I don’t know what they’ll do to you. Which one will help you speak?”

He licked his lips with the long dark tongue, the lethal saliva dripping from his fangs as he stared at the meat.

“This?” I glanced at the meat suspiciously. Maybe he was just too hungry to think rationally? “Dez laced it with something, a yellow powder. Are you sure that’s what you want?”

He appeared to struggle, hesitating, then shifted his crimson stare to the jar.

“This? Will this help you speak?”

He released a roar. It sounded soft, not aggressive. He was trying to communicate with me, not scare me.

I shoved the package with meat back in my pocket, then came closer, holding the jar.

He drew in some air, sniffing me, then yanked on the chains, snapping his teeth. Saliva dripped to the floor, scorching the ground.

Fear jolted me. I leaped back, evading his teeth. Sentient or not, he could hurt me.

He could kill me.

I kept my distance, figuring out what to do. Dez had said to smear the gel on the spikes of the collar. It would then get into the beast’s bloodstream. The werewolf’s wrists caught my attention. Rubbed raw under the manacles, they were but open wounds.

“This should work,” I muttered under my breath.

Staying away from his teeth, I opened the jar and smeared the gel on his wounds under the iron, both wrists and ankles.

He groaned and gritted his teeth at the gel’s contact with his exposed flesh.

“Sorry it hurts.” I tried to be as gentle as possible.

He leaned his head back against the frame and groaned again. This time, the sound held more contentment than pain.

“Better?” I asked with hope.

He breathed deeply, and I watched him…change.

His maw shortened, the fangs shrinking to hide behind his lips. His skin turned from gray to pale. It shimmered as the black fur slipped under it, disappearing completely from most of his body.

The fur turned to a tousled mop of dark hair on his head, a generous sprinkle of it on his chest, and a nest of dark curls in his groin area. There wasn’t nearly enough of it left between his thighs to fully conceal his…um, sizable “male equipment.”

I averted my eyes. “You’ve changed.”

He turned to me. Red leached from his irises, replaced by serene gray.

“Thank you, Amira.” The words came in a dry croak.

He spoke!

Of course he spoke. He looked like a person now. There was nothing left of the beast. Only the color of his hair was the same as his fur used to be.

And he knew my name. Which meant he must’ve been listening to the conversations around him all along.

“The yellow powder brings out the beast in me,” he explained. “The womora gel impedes it. Dez uses both, to keep me in between.”

That must be torturous.

Something clanked deep in the tent somewhere, and I froze. The bracks were tearing down the tents on Madame’s orders.

“They’re packing up to move,” I said in a low whisper. “They’ll be here soon. We need to hurry. Quick, tell me how to open a portal to Nerifir.”

He gazed at me, his eyes still slightly unfocused.

“You don’t open a portal.” His voice was raspy, with a soft purr of a French accent. “You find one.”

He knew! I released a contented breath. I’d guessed correctly. He was from Nerifir, and he knew how to get there.

“You weren’t abducted straight from Nerifir, were you?”

He shook his head. “No. I came to this world on my own, long ago. The portal I used is near Paris, France.”

That explained his accent. As Kyllen had told me, the first language the fae heard when coming to this world became their mother tongue. The werewolf’s first language must have been French.

Oh, this was real. I could bring Kyllen home. Tingles of anticipation scattered along my arms.

“Listen.” The man eagerly shifted in his restraints. “I’ll tell you everything I know, but you need to answer some of my questions, too. Deal?”

Deals could be dangerous when made with fae. But I felt ready to make one with Kyllen. For that, I needed the werewolf to tell me all about the portal. I just had to negotiate carefully and state my terms clearly.

“If you take me to the portal, I’ll set you free.” A rush of adrenaline coursed hot through my veins. I could do this. I would set him free. Dez had given me the key to his collar and chains. It’d be like stealing the prisoner from under Madame’s nose.

Thrill shot through me at the thought. Fear would no longer stop me.

“How would you free me?” the werewolf asked suspiciously.

“The key for your collar is the same that opens the locks on your restraints. But I’ll only have the key until we move.”

He winced, either in discomfort or concentration. “Move where?”

“To Europe. England first, then France.”

It occurred to me that since the portal was near Paris, it’d be convenient to stay with the menagerie until we got to France. I knew so little about traveling on my own.

However, if the werewolf took my offer and I released him, I’d have to get out of here as soon as possible, too. I harbored no illusions. Madame wouldn’t let me live if I released her VIP act. Radax wouldn’t be safe from her wrath, either.

The prisoner yanked at the chains, looking alarmed. “I can’t go to Europe. I have…someone I need to protect in this country. Let me go, and I’ll tell you exactly how to find the portal. I’ll also tell you the rules of traveling through one.”

“There are rules?” A wave of concern washed over me.

He nodded. “Rule number one. Once you cross the River of Mists that connects the worlds, you will never be able to come back to this time or place. If you cross back to Earth, you may end up a month in the past from now or a thousand years into the future. There is just no way to predict with any certainty.”

I drew in a shuddering breath. Now I vaguely remembered overhearing bracks talk about something like that once. Back then, I didn’t understand what that meant. Now, worry spiked in me anew. Kyllen wanted to return to his world, his family, and the throne that waited for him. What would he think about going too far back into the past or too much forward into the future?

“Who’s going with you?” the werewolf asked.

I threw him a cautious glance, unsure if I should tell him about Kyllen. If this failed, I wanted neither Radax nor Kyllen to deal with the consequences. “Does it matter?”

“It does. Your travel companion has everything to do with rule number two that I haven’t mentioned yet.”

“What is rule number two?” I frowned.

“I need you to answer my questions first.”

Faint sounds of shuffling and packing came through the canvas walls again. The bracks were nearby. We needed to hurry, but a deal was a deal.

“Fine, what do you need to know?”

It turned out he had many questions.

First, he wanted to know about the siren man Zeph, whom Madame had in her possession last year. Zeph must be his friend, and the werewolf appeared to be really worried about him. But Zeph had escaped about two months earlier. I truthfully answered every question the werewolf asked about him.

“What do you know about Madame’s trade to supply her menagerie?” the werewolf asked me next.

I didn’t have much to tell him about that. Madame had her bracks bring her many things from Nerifir. But I didn’t know how she paid for them. She didn’t involve me in that part of her business.

He asked me about the dragon-man statue Madame had. It was a life-size depiction of a winged man sitting on a piece of rock carved from obsidian stone. I dusted it as part of my cleaning duties at the menagerie.

A sudden understanding chilled me. “He is not just a statue, is he?”

“Nothing is what it seems,” he echoed Radax’s words to me.

The world of menagerie was not just full of shadows. It crawled with lies.

The werewolf grew visibly more impatient the closer the noise of the bracks’ tearing down the tents moved. “Can you unlock the manacles now, please? I’ll have to get out before they come here.”

I took the key out of my pocket but didn’t unlock him yet, remembering I was dealing with a fae. “You haven’t told me how to get to the portal. What is rule number two?”

“Right.” He winced, stretching his neck and shoulders. “On your own, you can only cross back to the world where you came from. To travel to Nerifir, you’ll need a fae or a brack to accompany you, someone who is native to that world.”

“I won’t be alone.” I realized that since he’d been listening to my conversation with Radax, he must know about Kyllen already.

“I’ll have Kyllen with me,” I said. “I’m not leaving him here.”

A loud noise of something heavy being dropped startled us both into silence. The noise was followed by bracks’ yelling.

“Amira, please hurry,” he pleaded, urgently rattling with his chains. “I’ll talk as you unlock.”

The time was running out. I dropped to my knees to release his ankles.

“Listen carefully,” he said. “Once you make it to Paris, take the train to Parc des Brouillards, just outside of the city. It’s a private property, be careful when getting in. There’re guards.” He winced, as if he’d met them personally and the memories still bothered him. “The portal only opens for about twenty minutes at three o’clock every morning. It’s a small cloud of mist over the water of the pond, at the back of the park. It’s very easy to miss, but it’d be pink, like the River itself.”

Trying to commit his every word to memory, I unlocked his arms next.

He stumbled away from the frame, unsteady on his feet. I tensed, half-expecting him to lunge at me, now that he was free from the restraints. He was a tall man, looking strong even after all the tortures Dez had put him through. No longer a beast, he could still be dangerous.

Thankfully, he showed no interest in attacking me. He swayed, then got hold of the side rail of the frame, steadying himself.

“Is the portal there every day?” I asked.

“It should be. The flow of the River of Mists changes, but very slowly. It’s been over forty years since I was in Parc des Brouillards last, but it would take centuries or even millennia for the River to alter its course enough for a portal to disappear.”

“How do you know all of this?”

He released a long breath, glancing at the exit from the room. “Let’s just say I spent some time with the goddess when she used to be a more benevolent creature, inclined to share things with me.”

He was obviously talking about Madame. Though it was hard for me to imagine her ever being “benevolent.” He must know her personally, and not just as her prisoner.

Not that it mattered. The werewolf upheld his part of the deal. He told me all about the portal. Now, I just needed to get back to Kyllen. Then, we could make a run for it.

“Be careful when crossing to Nerifir, Amira,” the werewolf warned. “There’s enough danger and hostility in that world, maybe even more than in this one.”

What choice did I really have?

“I can’t stay here.”

He gave me a concerned look. Compassion floated in his clear gray eyes. “I wish I could come to Paris with you to help you get to the portal, but I can’t. I have to stay in this country. The minute my escape is discovered, Ghata will send bracks to hurt an innocent woman simply because they believe I care about her. I need to make sure she’s safe.”

“I see.” I nodded in understanding, well familiar with Madame’s ways. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll manage.” I had to.

He stepped closer and placed his hands on my shoulders. I flinched at the touch of a stranger but didn’t move away. Maybe I trusted him too quickly, but he seemed like someone worthy of my trust.

“Stay with the menagerie until you get to Paris,” he instructed. “I’ve sold all of my properties there but one.” He gave me the address of what he said was a townhouse where he used to live. “In the main bedroom, under a loose floorboard under the bed, I have a safe box with some money. Remember the lock code.” He slowly said the string of letters and numbers in the order that opened the built-in safe box, then made me repeat it. “Take as much as you think you’ll need—all of it if you have to.”

He didn’t need to do that. Giving me money was not a part of our deal. But I didn’t have a penny in this world or any other. Now, money meant freedom. Freedom to go anywhere. Freedom to run.

My heart tightened with emotion at his kindness.

“Thank you.” I worried my lip between my teeth, mulling over an idea about what to do next. He’d been kind to me, and I wanted to repay him somehow. “You know, I can buy you some time to get to your woman.”

“How?”

I ran to the canvas wall in front of his frame. The crate where the bracks were planning to transport him to London stood there, ready for him. It was nearly identical to Kyllen’s. “Help me load your frame with restraints in here.”

“Why?” he asked but did as I said.

Fae were inhumanly strong. But his time in restraints had obviously weakened him. His legs shook, and he still staggered on his feet. Together, however, we managed to drag the frame to the crate and shove it in.

“I’ll throw some of these in there, too.” I grabbed one of the sandbags piled up behind the canvas walls. The bracks used them to hold down the bottom edge of the tents’ outer walls. The weight of the bags would make up for the missing werewolf inside the crate.

When the frame and a few bags were in there, I lowered the crate’s lid back in place, closing it. “I’ll hammer a few nails into it when you’re gone. Then I’ll tell them you’ve been loaded.”

No one would know the werewolf was gone until we arrived in England. By then, it’d be too late. It would buy me some time, too. I can stay with the menagerie, travel to England at Madame’s expense, and reunite with Kyllen.

“Will they believe that you managed to load me all on your own?” The werewolf’s expression remained skeptical.

I nodded confidently. If there was anything I’d learned during my life in the menagerie, it was how the bracks’ minds worked.

“Nerkan is with the group of bracks who are loading the truck outside of the main tent, and Vuk is with those who are breaking down the tents from the inside.” I gestured in the direction of the shuffling, rustling, and clunking that had been steadily getting closer. “I’ll tell Vuk that Nerkan loaded you. Then I’ll tell Nerkan that Vuk did it. Both are too lazy to break into the crate to check. They’d just be too happy to know that it’s done—less work for them.”

His dark eyebrows rose. He seemed impressed. “Thank you for thinking of that.”

The sound of voices and feet shuffling appeared to be coming from right behind the next partition now. We needed to leave before they discovered us here.

“They’ll be coming here next,” I whispered, creeping away from the noise along the canvas wall. “Come.”

I slipped under a fabric flap, gesturing for him to follow. The strings of lights high under the ceiling of the massive tent struggled to illuminate this space, separated by several rooms and walls from the center.

“Here.” I yanked up the fabric of one of the outside walls. Fresh air rushed in, chilling my feet. “The fair ended. There are no bracks or people on this side right now. But you’ll have to climb over the chain-link fence to get out.”

Even in his weakened state, I didn’t think that would be a problem for a werewolf. Besides, he appeared to be getting stronger by the minute. Whether that was the effect of the womora gel I’d put on his wounds or the lack of the yellow powder in his system, I didn’t know. Most likely, it was the combination of both.

He gently touched my hand. “Well, goodbye, Amira. Thank you for everything. Good luck, and may you find your happiness in Nerifir.”

I nodded awkwardly.

“Good luck to you, too…” I hesitated for a fraction of a moment. “What’s your name?”

I’d never asked that from anyone before Kyllen. Names meant friends. And one could not afford to have friends at the menagerie. But this was not the first rule I’d broken. The werewolf had been kind to me, and I didn’t want to remember him as simply “a werewolf.” I wanted to have his name.

“It’s Lero.” He smiled.

I nodded again. “Be careful out there, Lero.”

He crouched by the opening that led outside. His bare backside came into my view.

“Um… Do you need any clothes?” I asked, wondering if I could steal a pair of bracks’ pants for him.

“No.” He chuckled, slipping under the canvas. “I’ll have lots of fur to keep me warm soon.”

Then I remembered. Tonight was a full moon.

As I stood inside the tent, listening for the sounds of bracks packing, a long howl rolled through the night from a distance.

The werewolf ran free.