She’d entered my house stealthily, and I just know it was the little leopard who taught her how to pick locks. She’d done it brilliantly too, no doubt thinking that any motion sensors inside the house wouldn’t pick up her sneaky invisible shield. Except I had motion detectors on all the doors and windows, and when my phone pinged a warning, I got it out to check the hidden cameras all along the townhouse. It showed nothing, of course. But all I had to do was turn on the thermal imaging and there she was. In the most perfect silhouette, my snakelet crept along, snooping at my things.
Naturally, I was honoured.
My physical needs are minimal. Have been since I was cast out by my adopted family as soon as my animus had made itself known. I’d had to survive on nothing for so long. Old habits die hard, and once Mace brought me to the ‘new world,’ I’d not felt the need for anything exactly material. Mace called my ways ‘ascetic,’ and it had always amused him that a boy who’d comefrom so little, like himself, never wanted for anything more by way of physical possessions.
But he doesn’t understand what I do.
And I think Aurelia may be the only creature who understands it too. Who has the right to. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been fascinated by her. As I’d watched her go through my townhouse, I’d wondered what went on in that brain of hers. What thoughts she was turning over and what conclusions she was drawing. It only felt right to show her something clear that night in her dreams. And naturally, it made her return. Made her want to knowmore.
Presently, she follows us high and back in the air, but I know she’s there. My skin prickles in awareness of her. My dark soul cries out with longing that I snuff out and put away, making my fangs snap out of my gums. I lick a drop of venom off a sharp point, savouring my own toxic taste. “Continue on without me,” I say to Natalia, my driver tonight. “I have business to attend to.”
“Yes, General,” she says obediently.
I pull down the window and dissolve into the night, slowly gaining height to make sure my snakelet sees me deviating from the road.
Shall we play a little game?
It doesn’t take long to lead her to the gritty part of the city, where a choice nighttime venue lies nestled between two strip clubs. I sense her caution, but nothing about this should be new to her. Reconstituting into human form as I land, I can barely contain myself. The two burly python guards at the door bow as they see me, and a smaller green tree snake hands me a neatly rolled joint. “Good evening, General,” he says, lighting it for me.
I straighten, exhaling smoke into the air. “And what a good one it issss,” I hiss. Sauntering inside, the darkness engulfs me, the dramatic smoke machine humming away in the distance, so that when I walk through the entry corridor and out into theopen space beyond, it looks like I’ve stumbled upon a dream. Or a pretty nightmare.
The sign on the door says, in dripping toxic green:We drop our fangs, and you drop your panties.
A mixture of animalia and humans writhes on the dance floor and couches within, most of them with some type of face covering. Anonymity is encouraged at Club Venom, and the mixture of masks, shimmery veils, and balaclavas under the strobe lights create the perfect place for a mysterious and secret fuck. As soon as midnight hits, the place transforms into something from the devil’s dreams. The other orders might make a show of hating serpents out in the open, but when it comes to their dirtiest fantasies, they come to us for fangs and fulfilment.
The crowd parts like the sea for me as I stroll through it, exhaling smoke above their heads, to the roped-off VIP area off the side. It works as a stage some nights; other nights, it’s just a place for the generals to watch with their own animas. Relaxation time for us all is becoming scarce these days, so the black velvet couches sit empty and waiting for me. A bikini-clad working girl nods at me before un-latching the rope and letting me through. After a word, she runs off to fetch me a drink, and I sit. And wait.
I can sense when she enters the building, as I always have. Even with all of her shields in place, even without my thermal sensors, that golden presence—wild like the gods who made us and powerful like nature herself—is always so clear to me. It’s changed with time as she’s come into herself. Her power when I’d first laid eyes on her isnothingcompared to her power now.
Pretending to watch the crowd, I turn my face away from the snakelet. I can tell without looking at the time that it’s approaching midnight. Beasts have shifted into serpent form, clothes have come off, and a woman with bare breasts triesto catch my gaze. She carries a banana python around her shoulders and grinds her hips into the girl standing behind her. As I watch them, she runs her tongue over white teeth, her lips, black like her hair, curving up into a seductive smile.
I note that my snakelet has paused off to the side. Smirking, I raise a hand and beckon to both women. They look at each other in surprise and make their way over to me. Settling back into the couch, I spread my legs out, awaiting them. The two serpent animas approach me with their necks bared, getting on their knees before the bisecting rope. Wrists come out, baring the black cursive ‘B’. The attendant allows them in, and they shuffle forward.
One glance at the snakelet tells me she’s stalked forwards so much she’s almost at the rope herself, and now she’s producing enough heat to make her light up my thermal vision. I chuckle, beckoning to the first woman to get onto my lap. “Your hair reminds me of someone,” I say, rubbing some strands between my fingers.
“Really?” she purrs. “Who? Is she pretty?”
“She’s ethereal,” I murmur, turning the woman’s face to the side. She closes her eyes, enjoying the attention I’m rarely known to give to any female. I turn her face back and lean towards her ever so slowly.
A hissing voice I love so much slides into my mind, sharp as any fang.“Don’t you fucking dare.”
The anima suddenly tumbles from my lap, landing on the floor with a thud. She then proceeds to slide off the stage along with the other woman, both of them getting dumped into the receded pit below the stage. It’s then that the rest of the lights in the place turn off, leaving only laser green strobe lights in the pitch black.
A snakelet-sized weight drops into my lap, and a small hand bands my neck as her voice whispers across my lips. “Trying to make me jealous, Lord Basilisk?”
My fangs extend in arousal. “Not at all. Just a usual Friday night for me, snakelet.”
“Liar,” she hisses, her power thrumming around me like a boa constrictor’s muscled grip. She reveals herself, naked and supreme in my lap, and my pulse races, its beat almost in time with the music. “Gods, you are stunning.”
The hand around my throat squeezes before she drags a tongue up my right fang. I let out a cursed moan, my hands coming around her waist to hold her close. Aurelia’s fangs slide down from her gums, the white points coming to rest on her full, delicious lower lip. She looks at me with flaming hot desire and anger in her bluest eyes before she leans down and strikes me right in the neck.
My body slumps back under her ministrations, my eyes fluttering shut as her lips and fangs attack me, those dangerous points injecting toxic venom right into my bloodstream. Her unique venom burns through my veins, and under my thundering heart, it delivers its nectar to my entire body. For the first time in my life, I feel the effects of a serpent’s paralysis.
Chapter 48
Aurelia
Ateensy, delicious sense of power trickles through me as I pump venom into Ghoul’s firm neck. My tongue draws a circle over his flesh as my fangs enjoy the sensation of finally being embedded in living flesh.
