Her Psycho Beasts, page 24
part #3 of Her Vicious Beasts Series
“Of course,” Aurelia says, glancing at Scythe with see? eyes. “Thank you.”
We walk through the archway, me sniffing for slithery magics the entire time. Aurelia probably knows what it feels like more than me, so I just make sure nothing jumps out and tries to attack us. Uncle Ben makes a sharp turn into a room that has less light. Aurelia follows him right in.
It’s a bigger space, with black stones on the floor that feel softer on my bare feet than the other stone. There are two statues of women with serpent tails from the waist down, their hands out as if to say ‘stop’. The room beyond them is dark.
I don’t like the way it smells in here either.
“Wow,” Aurelia breathes, wandering forward to marvel at the statues like she’s Indiana Jones.
Lyle is the last to walk in.
There’s a click.
Everyone freezes.
“No one move,” Scythe rasps.
But it wasn’t my paws that did the clicking. I lunge at Uncle Ben, ripping open his shirt. Buttons go flying in all directions.
“I knew it!” I say, pointing at the curling black mark over his right man-boob.
Aurelia’s face pales in horror and she takes a step back away from him.
“Lyle, do not move!” Scythe commands harshly.
“I’m sorry,” Ben sobs, his shoulders shaking. “I’m so sorry, Lia. I had no choice.”
Chapter 46
Aurelia
“Don’t kill him,” I say quickly to my mates. I didn’t know which one of them would be first to try. “Please. Just don’t.”
“I deserve it, Aurelia,” Uncle Ben says, tears falling from both eyes. “I really do.”
I quickly decipher the contract on his pale, exposed chest. If I came to him for help, he’d have to lead me into whatever serpent trap was closest to hold me captive. My dad must have plenty such traps all around, including at Aunt Charlotte’s House. He’d really thought of everything and knew that if I was going to anyone for help, it would be Uncle Ben.
In being so kind to me, he’d made himself a target.
“You had no choice,” I say softly, tugging his shirt back over his chest. “The best thing you can do now is go back and not raise an alarm. Can you do that?”
Uncle Ben nods, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead.
Savage growls ferociously.
“There’s no further instruction in the serpent contract,” I say calmly. “He’s not bound to do anything else, so we can let him go.” I turn back to a sweating Uncle Ben. My kindest relative who was really out of his league in this dark business of my father. “Leave slowly. Don’t run, otherwise you’re dead,” I advise, noting the pure violence coiling around Savage.
Uncle Ben nods, moving slowly the way we’d come. “Unravel the serpent curse on the tile.” He nods to the stone Lyle has his right sneaker on. “Be careful, sweetheart. Read the signs. I’ll try and clear a path if you come out.”
I choose to ignore his choice of wording as he rounds the corner, and when the sound of his pounding feet fades away, I return my attention to Lyle’s foot. Savage follows me closely while Scythe and Eugene examine the room for other dangers.
“Luckily for us, I’ve actually heard of a trick like this,” I say, crouching down to examine the grey tile. “Rosalina used to tell me about the protections they had in the ancient Naga temples in India and South America. My great-grandfather must have been trying to replicate that.”
“Can you undo it, angel?” Lyle asks quietly.
The tile is unmarked to the naked eye, so I shift my eyes into their eagle version. The stone sharpens in new focus and shimmery, decades-old letters appear. The instructions must have been written in blood, I decide, because of the ruddy oxidised brown colour. Serpent spells work the same as a serpent blood contract—there is an agreement made, instructions, clauses, and consequences given. In some ways, they’re like poems laced with computer code.
“What happens if he steps off it?” Savage asks, his nose an inch away from the floor, delicately sniffing the stone.
“I imagine it’s like an IED,” Lyle says drolly. “As soon as I step off—”
“Boom!” Savage cackles.
But my father doesn’t want me dead.
The sound of rock grating on rock resounds about the chamber, making our heads snap up, looking for the source.
“Not boom,” Scythe says. “Look.”
He’s pointing at a thick ledge that lines that entire room just below ceiling level. A cobra, open-mouthed in rage, is angled right at Lyle. Its stone throat is hollow.
“Not boom,” I agree, looking back down at the serpent spell. “It looks like they’ll shoot venom at you.”
It would be enough to incapacitate me, but kill anyone else.
I’d been taught how to read these markings since I was a child, little puzzles written with paper and pen. I could construct one well enough, but to unravel one as complex as this? That’s a different story. There are six identical lines sandwiched between longer instructions—
Rock grinds on rock once again and I turn to see Eugene in the air, flapping next to a second serpent rotating to face us. A spear of anxiety shoots through me as my eagle eyes scan the ledge, looking for the fine lines in the stone that mark the presence of four more blocks with the potential to rotate towards us.
Six snakes.
And when the sixth snake turned it would likely trigger the shooting mechanism.
“They’re turning at one-minute intervals,” Lyle says quietly. “A safeguard against anyone that chooses not to move. You get hurt either way.”
Four minutes left and counting.
“Everyone, quiet!” I snap. I sit down in front of Lyle, crossing my legs and leaning right over to make sense of the spell.
So the rotating snakes explain the six identical instructions in the spell. The first is the trigger and the last line would be the instruction to shoot what I guessed was venom or some type of poison.
I take my fingernail and attempt to scratch off the instruction to trigger the movement of the first snake. But the blood has long since seeped into the stone and my fingernail doesn’t even make a dent in the markings.
Deletion won’t work.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Lyle’s power halos dangerously around him.
“Can’t Lyle use his telekinesis to push the stone down and step off it?” Savage asks.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t risk it,” I reply quickly. “The force would have to be exact.”
“Savage, come boost me up,” Scythe says, stepping up to the wall where the fourth serpent will appear any second. “I want to take a look at them.”
I don’t even bother looking at what they’re up to as Eugene gives a warning squawk, and five seconds later, rock grinds again.
So I can’t delete lines of the spell, but Uncle Ben thought that it is possible. My great grandfather probably had some safeguards in place in the event of someone setting it off by accident, right?
“What if we rip them off?” Savage grunts as Scythe clambers up his back to stand on his shoulders. “Lyle, can you yank them off?”
“Don’t!” I cry. “The spell will trigger if they’re tampered with.”
“What does it say will happen exactly?” Scythe asks. “It does smell like poison up here.”
I blink at the last line of the spell.
The fourth snake rotates into position, the sound grating on my ears.
“Baby, I love you,” Savage grunts, “but hurry the hell up.”
Two minutes. I have two minutes left to figure this fucking thing out.
“The last line of the spell,” I say in my calmest voice, “says that it’s going to trigger all six to… That symbol means ‘chaos’ or ‘anarchy’.”
The groaning of the rocks for the fifth time practically slices the air in two.
“You three should get out,” Lyle says. “Angel, you too.”
Uncle Ben’s serpent blood contract swims in my mind’s eye. Hurriedly, I raise my left hand and focus on shifting my fingers into wolf claws. Black fur erupts from my skin and my nails elongate and sharpen. Before I can think about it, I slice the pad of my right index finger open.
A crimson bead drips out and I mark the stone, making a messy version of the symbol cease/stop at the end of the instruction for the final snake.
The symbol absorbs into the stone, settling alongside the rest of the spell.
Relief washes through me.
“Of course it wanted blood!” I cry. “I did it!”
But Lyle doesn’t move his foot. Instead, Savage yanks me into his arms and runs out with me. Eugene squawks loudly in panic as he flees for the door alongside us. I try and twist to make sure Scythe and Lyle are right behind--
To see Lyle and Scythe diving for the door, as the sixth snake remains unmoving.
We all sigh in relief until a movement at the side of my eye makes my head snap up.
I don’t even get to shout as a seventh snake, hidden above the entrance, snaps forward on a silent hinge, it’s mouth open, shooting ancient darts in quick succession.
I should have suspected trickery from the start.
We all dive, Savage cushioning my landing with his own body allowing me to see Lyle batting away two fast-moving objects with his telekinesis—
And a dart catching Scythe right in the neck.
“No!” I scream.
Savage lets go of my twisting form as Lyle and Scythe stumble towards us. I leap up and catch Scythe, or rather, he stops when I place my hands on his chest. He reaches up to the old-fashioned feathered dart poking out of his neck.
“I can heal you,” I say, stopping his hand. “Wait.”
But there are feet pounding down the corridor behind us.
They know we’re here.
Chapter 47
Scythe
The dart in my neck immediately seeps venom into my system. I have no idea what type of snake venom it is, but I have a pretty good idea considering it was Aurelia’s great grandfather who put it there. It burns, sharp and fierce, where it sits in the thick muscle and luckily not the carotid artery so close by.
Aurelia’s eyes are wide and panicked when she tells me she can heal me. But the footsteps behind us need to be dealt with.
“Kill them,” I instruct Savage and Lyle.
They nod, darting behind me down the corridor. It was likely that Ben had failed to come up with a convincing lie about his absence from his guard post. He clearly loves Aurelia and wouldn’t have betrayed her if he could have avoided it. Even so, the only thing that kept him alive tonight was Aurelia’s request not to execute him.
Consciously lowering my heart rate to slow down the venom’s rate of movement towards my heart, I watch as Aurelia goes up on her tiptoes to reach my neck. But I’m about a foot taller than her and she can’t reach the dart.
On some primitive instinct, I bend down and pick her up, my hands cupping her hips. On her own instinct, her legs wrap around my waist, her hands coming around my shoulders.
Without warning, she rips out the dart and slams her mouth over my neck. I let out a groan, completely involuntary and wanton. Aurelia’s lips against my skin are velvet and soft, yet the pressure she’s applying is deliciously firm and determined. My hands slip around to cup her ass, giving her a seat and keeping her core close to me.
I know how well she can suck. Know how well she likes to suck me, and even here, with poison threatening my life, I can only think of her lips, her tongue, the movement of her thumbs around my neck, stroking our mating mark as if to reassure me. Her power bleeds through her mouth, oozing into my skin and penetrating the muscle, the vessels. It neutralises the poison and brings with it a pleasant sensation that goes right to my cock. My eyes flutter shut and I sway a little before slamming a hand against the wall and righting myself, keeping us upright. Her pussy pulses against my lower stomach, her heart rate jack-hammering against my chest.
Aurelia groans, her legs tightening around my hips, and I squeeze her flush against me.
“Let’s go,” Lyle says, suddenly striding past, the faint smell of blood lingering behind him.
“It won’t hurt her to swallow that?” Savage asks, stopping to peer at us.
“I’m immune to all venom,” Aurelia says into our minds.
“Okay, well…walk and suck,” Savage says, prodding me in the shoulder.
I tighten my arms around Aurelia and start walking, blinking hard to bring the world back into focus. My cock is hard and straining. Without the zipper of my regular business pants, obviously so.
“Almost done.” Her voice is husky in my mind.
A pang of disappointment syphons through my core as I follow my brothers down the corridor.
I can tell the exact moment that the venom is gone, but Aurelia doesn’t stop sucking. She’s consuming a little bit of my blood now, tasting it in the same way I’d once tasted her.
And although the shark in me thrashes, begging to take over, begging to make me mindless and empty our balls into her against this very stone wall, I ask quietly, “Are you a vampire now?”
She releases her vacuum on my neck with a slight pop, and when I turn to look at her, those perfect lips are wet, swollen and bright pink. A thing of dreams. A thing of nightmares.
Slowly, so slowly, I lower her down to the floor. “Thank you,” I say, suddenly unable to resist and kissing her lightly on the lips.
Her cheeks bloom pink before she whirls around and hurries after my brothers, my eyes tracking every movement of the parts of her body that I’d so reluctantly let go.
Her invisibility shield falling around our group feels like a warm blanket settling around my back. I’m still amazed by her ability to do this so effortlessly. The fact that she’d been doing it for years under her father’s instruction to do his work for him.
Now she’s using these very skills against his entire institution. I wonder if that angers him. Because not only is she using them, but she’s using them well. Xander has always thought of Aurelia as clumsy, but the truth is that she wields her power with the grace of the Wild Goddess herself. It’s clear she’s had a handle on it for some time, and clearer still that it came about from being under constant duress.
“I’m sniffing out the sciency stuff,” Savage says from ahead. Eugene is on his shoulder, his tiny beak raised, sniffing the air too.
“What is sciency stuff exactly?” Lyle asks. It’s funny how, not that long ago, he and Savage hated each other.
“You know, plastics and medicines and lab coats. Hand sanitiser. Blood.”
“Good bet,” Aurelia says. “Which way?”
We’ve come to a space with a staircase leading down on the right and a corridor leading left.
Savage heads down the stairs without another word.
None of us like this. The further down we go, the more difficult it will be to extract ourselves and Athena Boneweaver back out.
Lyle lets me pass him so he once again takes the rear as we’d planned, subtly sniffing me as if to check for the presence of poison. An air of satisfaction appears in his aura when he can’t find any of the offending substance.
We’re about halfway down this set of stairs when we hear low voices up ahead. Even with Aurelia’s scent shield surrounding us, the scent of serpent has been thick this entire time, so we knew there were people down here, attending to their prescribed nefarious duties.
Because nothing good ever happened in a beast’s home that had to be hidden in the dark, and these serpents are careful.
In our surveillance of the Naga mansion, it had taken us months to identify the employees coming in and out. Marduk and I realised that Mace had his people living down here for extended periods of time. They came in and out of black vans, the same staff on a rotating roster that varied between one and six weeks. That told me Mace was paranoid. He knows the possibility of people watching him is high, and so he keeps the movements of his staff unpredictable.
Thus, we expected to come across staff workspaces.
Sure enough, Savage warns us as we reach the end of the staircase and we stalk down a wide, well-lit corridor with walls made of glass.
Glass, so the master of the house can observe the prisoners kept inside the padded cells. Aurelia walks stiffly ahead of me, her head darting left and right as she realises that her father had kept prisoners under her home for her entire childhood. There are emaciated, gaunt-faced men and women of every order in the first five cells and they all smell of death. But the smell of brine penetrates Aurelia’s scent shield and reaches my nose too late so we get no warning before we come to it.
In the final cell sits an aquarium, though really, it’s a cell made of water. Ten feet by ten feet, and a single swimming shark shifter. A tiger shark, by the faint markings on his skin. By the look of his aura, dark grey with patches of sickly black, he’s been in here for some time. And by the scars and fresh wounds marring his sides and fins, they’ve been testing him. Nausea rolls through my gut and the horde around me suddenly roars their heinous chanting. My hands fly to my ears before I check myself and breathe, breathe, breathe.
My name is Scythe Kharkorous. I am real. My brother is Savage Fengari, my brother is Xander Drakos. My brother is Lyle Pardalia. I am real. The apparitions are not. I am real. They are not.
“We have to get him out,” Aurelia says above the lessening din.
I don’t realise that we’ve all stopped outside this window until she speaks close to me. Savage is staring at me with wariness, but it’s not him I’m worried about. It’s the sudden feeling of gratitude that’s spreading through my chest as I look upon my regina, her eyes upon the tiger shark, nothing but sadness and compassion rife within those ocean-blues.
I reach for her cheek, brushing it gently. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But— ”
Placing my fingers under her chin, I force her to look at me. To see that we cannot help beasts like this one. “We need to go, Aurelia.”
