Circus of the Damned - Laurell K. Hamilton [84]
But she wasn’t a vampire. I didn’t know what the hell she was, but I knew what she wasn’t. I glanced at Inger. He didn’t look happy.
“Shouldn’t we be going?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. He backed towards the front door and I backed behind him. Neither of us took our eyes off the fanged beauty slinking down the hall towards us.
She moved in a liquid run that was almost too fast to follow. Lycanthropes could move like that, but that wasn’t what she was, either.
She was around Inger and coming for me. I gave up being cool and sort of ran backwards towards the front door. But she was too fast for me, too fast for any human.
She grabbed my right forearm. She looked puzzled. She could feel the knife sheath on my arm. She didn’t seem to know what it was. Bully for me.
“What are you?” My voice was steady. Not afraid. Heap big vampire slayer. Yeah, right.
She opened her mouth wider, tongue caressing the fangs. The fangs were longer than a vampire’s; she’d never be able to close her mouth around them.
“Where do the fangs go when you close your mouth?” I said.
She blinked at me, the smile slipping away from her face. She ran her tongue over them, then they folded back into the roof of her mouth.
“Retractable fangs. Cool,” I said.
Her face was very solemn. “I’m glad you enjoyed the show, but there’s so much more to see.” The fangs unfolded again. She widened her jaws, almost a yawn, flashing the fangs nicely in the dim beams of sunlight that got around the drapes.
“Mr. Oliver will not like you threatening her,” Inger said.
“He grows weak, sentimental.” Her fingers dug into my arm stronger than she should have been.
She was holding my right arm, so I couldn’t go for the gun. The knives were out for similar reasons. Maybe I should wear more guns.
She hissed at me, a violent explosion of air that no human throat ever made. The tongue that flicked out was forked.
“Sweet Jesus, what are you?”
She laughed, but it didn’t sound right now; maybe the split tongue. Her pupils had narrowed to slits; her irises turned a golden yellow while I watched.
I tugged on my arm but her fingers were like steel. I dropped to the floor. She lowered my arm but didn’t let go.
I leaned back on my left side, drew my legs up under me, and kicked her right kneecap with everything I had. The leg crumpled. She screamed and fell to the floor, but she let my arm go.
Something was happening to her legs. They seemed to be growing together, the skin spreading. I’d never seen anything like it, and I didn’t want to now.
“Melanie, what are you doing?” The voice was behind us. Oliver stood in the hallway just short of the brighter light of the living room. His voice was the sound of rocks falling, trees breaking. A storm that was just words but seemed to cut and slash.
The thing on the floor cringed from the voice. Her lower body was becoming serpentine. A snake of some kind. Jesus.
“She’s a lamia,” I said softly. I backed away, putting the outside door to my back, hand on the door knob. “I thought they were extinct.”
“She is the last one,” Oliver said. “I keep her with me because I fear what she would do, left to her own desires.”
“Your creature that you can call, what is it?” I asked.
He sighed, and I felt the years of sadness in that one sound. A regret too deep for words. “Snakes, I can call snakes.”
I nodded my head. “Sure.” I opened the door and backed out onto the sunny porch. No one tried to stop me.
The door shut behind me and after a few minutes Inger came out. He was stiff with anger. “We most humbly apologize for her. She is an animal.”
“Oliver needs to keep her on a tighter leash.”
“He tries.”
I nodded. I knew about trying. Doing your best, but anything that could control a lamia could play mind games with me all day, and I might never know it. How much of my trust and good wishes was