Page 24 of A Serpent in the Garden

I don’t say this lightly. I wouldn’t let him die if I could change it, but I can’t. I’m limited in here. I can run, we can run, but that’s the best we can hope for. Do you think she’s incapable of climbing? She’s playing with you.

“Your blood flows quickly,” she called, like the trilling of a sparrow. “You needn’t be afraid. Won’t you let me help you?”

The fig leaves murmured a traitorous song as Serich drew back the arrow. He shifted to get a better opening, but she looked up at the same time.

Of course she was beautiful, even with a streak of dirt across one sharp cheekbone. That was her weapon, just like her lethal hands, her hypnosis. A finely carved nose with chiseled, flaring nostrils, a red rosebud mouth pursed in icy humor. Her eyes were garnet flames, glowing as though from a contained hellfire inside her body. And they were locked on Serich. I might have been another branch upon the fig for all the notice she paid me.

“Well,” she said playfully, leaning against the tree with her arms crossed over her chest, loose-boned with amusement. “You’re very handsome, aren’t you?”

Her effect was instantaneous. Serich’s warm amber eyes went blank, the shutters behind them drawn.

Run, It said. Will you make me force you?

“Hop down and see me,” she said, her eyes glowing like coal. “It isn’t safe out here.”

The bow dropped from Serich’s hands and spiraled through the air before clattering to the tree roots.

My hand snared around his bicep. “Serich, close your eyes. Stay with me.”

She tilted her head like a bird, gazing up at us. Hands clasped behind her back, she smiled, innocent as a child. One bare foot twisted behind the other, her tattered, dirty skirt swishing at her knees. “He can’t hear you right now.”

And Serich was swinging his legs off the side of the branch to jump down to meet her, slipping through my grasp like water.

“Serich!” I screamed, but I didn’t exist to him anymore.

He’s lost, It said. But you don’t have to be. I don’t like to have to compel you, but I will if you make me.

If you’re not going to help him, then shut up, I snapped, and dropped from the branch after Serich.

My knees buckled on impact, the contents exploding out of my satchel as it thumped beside me. She’d wrapped herself sinuously around Serich, brushing the dried dirt from his face, whispering some monstrous sweet nothings in his ear. I started forward, the arrow in my hand. I needed a clear sight to her eyes, but Serich was in the way.

I didn’t even see her leg flash out to kick me. One moment I was standing and then suddenly I was airborne, smashing into the tree trunk. The impact rattled my teeth, stole my breath, a jolt of pain rushing through me from the hard landing. My knives jangled at my hips, utterly useless against a succubus.

I was so insignificant that she couldn’t be bothered to kill me immediately. She would get around to me at some point. When she felt like it.

I felt that dismissal like a brand.

She could be saving you for one of her brothers! Would you please just run?

I care about him. I staggered to my feet. I don’t expect you to understand.

I care about you, It snarled back. I care about what will become of US.

She didn’t seem to want to break eye contact with Serich. Would he come back to himself if it were disrupted? I rushed her again, tried burying the head of my arrow in her back. It left a hole in her ragged dress but glanced off her skin without so much as a scratch. Blindly, she reached out, grabbed me by the throat and sent me sprawling to the ground twenty feet away.

Give me strength, I said, pushing myself up on my creaking elbows, gasping from the power of those fingers around my windpipe. I need to get him away from her.

She has her arms around him! On my best day I don’t have her strength.

You won’t even try?

That must have shamed him. I felt his grudging frost, felt him cast me into that dark locked room he lived inside. My arms lifted, quick as lightning. They reached out for Serich, who budged, though only marginally. But it was enough to make the succubus flash an angry look our way. A human wouldn’t have been able to make an impression at all.

It’s not going to work. His voice rang oddly back to me as I waited backstage. Will you listen to reason now?

“What are you?” she hissed, peeling herself from a vacant Serich’s side.

You have to do something, I said. Distract her. Let her come close, try to blind her. You can buy us time enough to run.