Serpent's Revenge: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (The Last Serpent Book 6) by Tansey Morgan

Author:Tansey Morgan [Morgan, Tansey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Supernal Publishing
Published: 2018-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Isolda

Night had gathered, and the servant quarters were quiet, and still. The heady scent of cooked rice, tuna, prawns, and vegetables, marinated in a Mediterranean sauce, lingered in the air, reminding me of the hearty, delicious dinner Raphael had prepared for us. Outside, crickets were singing their night song while sprinklers sprayed the grounds, bringing up that fresh earth scent.

We had pulled the coffee table to the side of the living room, allowing Raphael a space large enough for him to sit in the lotus position, surrounded by lightly flickering, scented candles. He had removed his shirt, his eyes were closed, and his chest swayed softly with every deep breath he took. As I watched him, the part of me that could sense other people’s emotions thought he looked almost… empty. Like a shell. But that didn’t make sense, because I could also feel Raphael everywhere, all around me; a ghost trying to make itself known.

Dante, the only other person in the living room, was standing by the window with a view of the mansion. The grounds were dark, as was the exterior of the mansion itself, but individual bedroom lights were on here and there, one on the top floor, one on the second floor. Above it, thick clouds roiled quickly, threatening rain.

“He’s completely under, isn’t he?” I asked.

As if my voice had startled him, Dante glanced over at where I was standing, then at Raph. He nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“And can he… hear us?”

“If he’s done it right, he’ll be all around us at all times, covering every square inch of this estate.”

“That’s kind of incredible.” I caught a whiff of Raphael’s hair on the back of a sudden, delicate breeze, and the smell brought a smile to my face.

“If anyone we don’t know tries to get close to the mansion, we’ll know about it.”

“Won’t the wards keep them out anyway?”

“Yes, but we don’t know what kind of tricks these rats have up their sleeves. If they’re planning an attack, then the only thing we can assume is that they have a way of bypassing or stripping the mansion’s wards.”

“Do you really think they have that kind of power?”

“That’s just it. We don’t know what kind of power they have. We’re fighting a shadow in the dark.”

I walked across the room to where he was standing. “Not quite shadows—humans. We know that much, at least.”

Dante’s eyes returned to where they’d been fixed before we had started talking. I wondered what he thought he would see from here, staring at the back of the mansion, but then I realized he wasn’t really staring; he was waiting, like a snake waits for the rodent to cross its path. The door to the servant’s quarters stood only two feet away from where he was, easily within reach should he choose to make a break for it and launch himself into the night sky, and knowing Dante, he was hard-headed enough to do something like that, too, no matter how little we knew of what the cult’s capabilities truly were.

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