The Serpent and the Siren (No Other Gods #3)

Chapter One

“What does your mom think we’re doing?” they asked into my throat. The vibrations of their question-turned-kiss felt almost as good as whatever it was they were doing with their hands.

Don Henley strummed into the room with “The Boys of Summer” as I answered.

I arched toward them, guiding their hand further south. “Praying,” I said through a moan. “Watching Veggie Tales. Maybe that I’m proselytizing—” I was halfway through the word when my hips rolled off the bed.

I’d made out with boyfriends. I’d been felt up by Trevor in grade nine before panicking that God would send me to hell and ghosting him for the rest of my freshman year.

But this sweet, sweet torture was the buildup of eighteen years of questions.

My high, sharp intake of air matched the feather-soft brushes and decadent thrill I’d craved.

Grazing just above my panties, pleasure buzzed through me, stealing all of my wiseass remarks.

It was happening.

Years of friendship. Months of stolen kisses under the bleachers, in the back of my car, even once in the bread section of the grocery store.

It had culminated in a sleepover that had received surprisingly little pushback.

I was caught between my eighteenth birthday and my high school graduation—old enough to smoke cigarettes and die for my country, but not yet old enough to skip calculus.

Kirby and I wouldn’t be going to the same college.

We had no delusions of a relationship, of marriage, of houses, of children or love or forever.

But together, we were safe, we were curious, and we were excellent kissers.

I rubbed my legs together with little more control than a cricket desperately trying to make a sound, savoring my soaking need as I ached for another touch.

More than the tentative movement over wet cotton fabric.

I pulled them close, drinking in their kisses, our tongues working in tandem as they cupped my face.

I freed a hand to tug my panties down over my hips, kicking them off with a final flick, banishing them to the shadowy corner along with the unzipped backpacks, the empty bottles of soda, and the homework we weren’t doing.

“Are you sure?” Kirby asked.

I nodded eagerly. I was sure. The only sex I’d had was in my imagination, and I was ready to do something so much more than fantasize—particularly as guardian pirates and elves watched over me.

Maybe it was a cliché to want to lose your virginity before leaving for college.

Maybe we were playing with fire by doing it with our best friends and risking what it might do to the relationship.

But Don Henley had a point as the second verse powered through the room: We never would forget the night.

I stifled the mingled cry of victory and want as we crossed the threshold.

One finger at first, then two working in tandem.

Continuous check-ins—Is this okay? Can I add another?

Do you like this?—until we tumbled into murmurs over how good it felt, how wet I was, how desperately they wanted to taste me.

It was so deliciously hot right up until Kirby pulled up their hand and we realized in collective horror that it wasn’t pleasure that soaked the bed as their fingers dripped.

Blood.

Drenched in Eve’s curse for my first sexual encounter.

But it was Kirby, stained in crimson.

Something was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Past and present blurred into one, strung together by the common thread of far too much blood. Sweat prickled on my forehead as the ruby-red stain pulled me forward. That night had been the first and last time I’d wanted to see Kirby soaked in blood, but my hope had been a fool’s errand.

I wasn’t eighteen.

This wasn’t the summer before college.

I was in the middle of the veterinary hospital as a twenty-six-year-old woman, moments after being told that if I stood against the King of Heaven, my friends would pay the price, and my best friend was drenched in blood.

September 12, age 26

I’d taken a stand against their god—announced myself as the antichrist with intent to usher in the end of Heaven’s reign—and the clock was ticking.

The panic made it impossible to see. Everything was too bright. The colors were too vivid and muted all at once. I hated the hospital. I hated the fear that gripped me. I hated that I’d done this, that I was the reason Kirby’s life hung in the balance.

I stumbled in the hospital’s hallway, staring at the horrid crimson blossom—brown-black petals stemmed from the horrifying bloom across Kirby’s jade scrubs.

People scowled and stared. Someone was shouting at me.

Machines beeped their signs of life elsewhere in the hospital.

But I could only see the carnage before me.

I shoved my way forward, ears ringing, pain squeezing my heart as it thundered in my chest. The horrid, cold overhead lights cast a nightmarish glare of sickness and trauma over the hall as I moved, not caring who or what stood between me and my friend.

A frazzled woman dropped her clipboard, yelping as I narrowly avoided slamming into her.

I rounded the desk and pumped my arms, sneakers slapping on the linoleum as I closed the space between us.

I could see the whites of their eyes, the shock on their face.

I was too late. I was—

They started speaking a split second before I crashed into them. “Mar, what the hell? I was just pulled out of surgery by a call from Nia saying my dad was dead. You sent the worst liar to tell the least believable bullshit. What is—”

It was worse than I thought. They didn’t even realize they were dying.

I grabbed Kirby by the shoulders as I began searching for the wound. I grabbed the hem of their shirt, yanking at the top of their scrubs as I searched for the source of the attack. “Where is it!”

Kirby twisted away, smacking my hands. They tore the mask from their face, hair still under a scrub cap. I expected the fluorescent lights to reveal their chalky, bloodless coloring, but instead, their cheeks flushed with agitation and sweat. “Get off me, you freak! Let me shower off. I—”

“Silas!” I looked over my shoulder, searching for the angel. “Silas, Kirby is—”

A deep voice cautioned me. “Marlow, wait—”

“Useless,” I said, smacking him away. I had to focus on the flesh and blood of the now.

Kirby yanked my hair to the side, searching for evidence of a cordless headphone or unseen counterpart. I ignored them as they demanded, “Who is Silas? Mar, what’s wrong? Did you take something? For fuck’s sake, if you’ve been getting through your Pantheon books with lines of coke, I swear to God—”

“Don’t swear to God!” I practically shrieked.

The angel tried to get my attention once more. “They’re fine.”

Liar.

Silas grabbed my arm, forcing me to look at him. I struggled for a moment, but he held me firm until I went limp. He said, “Kirby is safe. They’re healthy. They’re covered in horse blood,” he said.

My throat bobbed. “You knew they were fine, and you still let me have a meltdown in the middle of the hospital.”

“I was just stopping the nurse you terrorized from calling security. We have roughly three minutes to get out of here before the police are the least of our worries.”

I looked both ways as if I’d see angels standing on both ends of the hall. “How do you know?”

He lifted a muscled forearm and unbuckled the leather clasps securing the white leather cuff to his wrists. It slid free, revealing a tattoo in a language I couldn’t understand that I was almost certain hadn’t been there before.

As I stared, the curious ink transformed. He tapped it twice.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“It’s in tongues,” he said. “The language of angels. It’s how we get our information.”

I flinched at the term that had been hurled at me from the pulpit. The shapes continued to shift, and with it, so did my understanding. Heavenly Amber Alerts, angelic text messaging, godly billboards and alarms were carved into their very skin.

A second image, one of Silas being cuffed by the Phoenicians as he’d been stripped of his powers, now made perfect sense. Heaven couldn’t help an angel they couldn’t reach.

“And it tells you—”

“Everything we need to know,” he said. “How far away ‘allies’ are so we know how long we have to wait for backup. It tells us our mission. It issues assignments. They have the same message I have, which means I haven’t fallen. Not officially.”

I sucked in a breath to argue, but he cut me off.

“We don’t have time for me to teach you a new language, but the others are closing in, and they know you’ve declared yourself the antichrist.”

I stared into Silas’s halo-gold eyes, searching for any signs of deception.

I found none. If he was telling the truth, I’d royally fucked up, and I had only moments to get my best friend out of the hospital, into my car, and far away from wherever the heavenly host could find them.

“Kirby.” I returned to them, pleading, “We have to go right now.”

Distant beeping wafted in from behind double doors.

I suppressed a gag at the iron scent and gods-knew-what-else that had leaked onto Kirby’s clothes.

They made no attempt to conceal their frustration as they said, “I am ten seconds out of surgery, Mar. I barely ditched my gloves and apron before you accosted me. Give me a second to shower off, and I’ll meet you by the lockers. ”

Silas’s eyes flared. He shook his head once. We were out of time.

My fingers tightened around Kirby’s arm, nails biting into their shoulder.

I needed them to see every drop of wild desperation coursing through me.

My voice was hoarse as I begged, “Please hear me when I tell you that nothing has ever mattered more than this. What do I have to say to get you in the car with me right now?”

“More than my dad dying?” Kirby asked, eyes narrowing.

“Yes.”