Devil's Gate (Elder Races #4.6)(2)

She rubbed her forehead tiredly. The medusae believed that each medusa was born with a drop of poison in their souls. The poison turned into the medusa’s Adversary, the dark voice that whispered doubts and fears in one’s own thoughts. The measure of one’s strength was determined by how well one withstood one’s internal Adversary. Seremela tried to overcome that negative voice, but her own Adversary had a lot of ammunition to use against her.

She forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. There was no reason to procrastinate any longer by pretending that she was waiting to hear back from her bosses. Many employers were very understanding about family emergencies—at least the first time. And Carling and Rune were much better than many other employers. They had gone out of their way to show her how much they valued her.

She sighed, tossed her phone onto the coffee table and went to pack a carry-on. Seriously, when she found Vetta, she was going to wring that girl’s neck. That’d solve any potential problems with further confrontation or conflict. It wouldn’t cure Camilla of her neediness or get Seremela a life outside of work, but that was okay, it would make room for taking care of the rest. Lots and lots of lovely room.

A knock sounded on her apartment door. The nictating membrane on her eyes snapped shut in surprise, and she paused, bras clutched in one hand and undies in the other. Dropping the filmy, colorful handfuls of underwear into her open case, she hurried to the door and peered out the peephole.

A dark haired man stood on the other side of her door, looking like he had just stepped out of an issue of GQ magazine. He stood in a casual stance, hands in the pockets of a hand-stitched linen summer suit, the jacket unbuttoned. Every expensive line of the tailored clothes emphasized his lean, well shaped body. His sleek dark hair, layered in a razor cut, fell on his forehead as though he had just run his fingers through it. His eyes were just as dark as his hair and glittered with intelligence. In contrast his skin was the pale ivory of a man who never saw any sunlight.

Because if he did, he would vanish in a blaze of fire.

Duncan Turner, internationally famous lawyer and the youngest progeny of one of the most Powerful Vampyres in the world, stood on her doorstep? In midmorning?

Once her nictating membranes started they wouldn’t stop. They snapped open. Shut again. Open again. Shut again. It was a medusa’s version of nervous hiccups.

She jerked her head back and rubbed at her eyes quickly to make them stop. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that several of her snakes were trying to look through the peephole, pushing each other out of the way.

She grabbed at her snakes, gathering them up frantically. They kept sliding out of her hands, trying to get back to the peephole.

Forget about dating. This is why I don’t play poker, she thought. Because I have so many tells, and they’re all so opinionated.

Duncan knocked on the door again, making her jump. “Seremela?” he called. “Are you home?”

Even through the door, his rich, baritone voice sent shivers down her skin. Her agitation sent all her snakes undulating.

For crying out loud, stop it! she told them telepathically. Out loud, she said, “Yes, I—I’m home! Hold on just a moment. I’ll be right with you!”

Now all of her snakes were trying to look out the door. They knew Duncan was outside too. They liked Duncan. A lot.

“Calm down, damn it,” she hissed out loud.

As usual, they ignored her. Some elderly medusae were famous for their control over their head snakes, and everything they did or said was a graceful symphony of coordinated movement.

Not Seremela. Oh no, hers never paid attention to a word she said to them, and she had long since given up hope of exerting any true control over them. They were like a pack of poorly trained poodles.

“Seremela?” Duncan said.

He sounded…complex, but then he always sounded complex, the flavors and notes in his voice as layered as a fine, aged wine. He was a master of nuance and one of the sharpest legal minds in the world, and—and she admired him so damn much, it tied her up in knots.

And it didn’t help in the slightest that his voice, like actors Alan Rickman or Liam Neeson, was spellbindingly beautiful. According to Carling, Duncan rarely made court appearances any longer, but when he did, other lawyers, judges and legal professionals from different demesnes traveled from all over the world just to hear him speak.

Now he sounded divided between amusement and worry.

“Everything’s all right,” she called out as she patted the door. That was a stupid thing to say, especially in the face of her family emergency. If she could, she would climb in bed and pull the covers over her head. Over all their heads. “You just caught me by surprise. Hold on a moment.”

“Take your time,” he said.

His voice. Swear to gods, she was pretty sure he could bring her to orgasm just by talking.

That thought did nothing to help her present a cool, collected attitude of her own, nor did it help to calm down her excited little head freaks. She threw up her hands and dashed across the apartment, back to her bedroom where she grabbed a scarf and wound it around the snakes with quick expertise, starting at the back of her head.

The normal life span for medusae was around 450-500 years, and their snakes grew longer and more poisonous as they aged. Infants and small children had snakes as small as their fingers, the poison from their bites about as irritating as a mosquito bite, while elders had snakes that often trailed a foot or so along the ground. A single bite from the snake of an elder could make a grown human very sick, and multiple bites would cause almost certain death to several races.