Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(98)

Carling bit back a smile. “I have been in close contact with Rune for quite a while, and he’s like a furnace.”

The medusa looked down. “I imagine so. He cares for you a great deal.” There was a trace of wistfulness in Seremela’s voice, and more than a trace in her emotions.

Carling’s impulse to smile faded. She said quietly, “I am his mate. The timing is inconvenient.”

The medusa’s head came up. Her eyes had gone wide with a stricken compassion. “Oh gods, this is doubly difficult then.”

“Yes.”

Seremela sighed. “Physically you appear just fine, Councillor. Your Power is very interesting to me, but since we’ve just met, I have no way to gauge or assess it. All I know is it hasn’t fluctuated while I have been in your presence. And I wish I could take blood and do some testing, but I don’t have medical privileges at any facilities here.”

Carling said, “At its root, Vampyrism is a blood condition, so it seems highly probable that any original venom would have been hemotoxic in nature.”

“That’s what I think too,” said Seremela.

Carling said, “Ingesting blood is also the only way Vampyres can take in nourishment, at least until they hit the stage I’m in.”

“If it’s all about the blood, then my guess is that blood will also hold the key.”

All about the blood. Carling nodded thoughtfully. She knew very well that feelings weren’t scientific, but it felt right to her, felt true.

Seremela studied her. “And you haven’t taken in any physical nourishment in almost two hundred years?”

“That’s correct,” Carling said. “Drinking blood began to make me violently ill. Let me tell you, throwing up gouts of blood is not a pleasant experience.”

Seremela winced. “I imagine not. Did your succubus abilities appear before or after you lost your ability to tolerate ingesting blood?”

“Some time afterward. I went through a couple of weeks of feeling weak and lethargic, and I ached all over,” Carling told her. She set aside the bathrobe and dressed again in the jeans and flirty T-shirt. “It reminded me a little of when I was first turned, actually. I would get hungry and try to drink, and then it would all come back up again. I finally lost the desire to try. Then some time later I realized I could sense what other living creatures were feeling. The stronger the emotion, the more revitalized I felt. By then I had heard stories of the oldest of us becoming succubi, otherwise I would have been more frightened than I was.”

Seremela sat down in the bedroom’s chair. “It sounds possible that becoming a succubus was a defense response from your mutated immune system. You lost the ability to process your normal form of nourishment, and your body responded accordingly.”

“It certainly sounds possible,” Carling said. She liked how the doctor processed information.

“If this progression is as logical as cause-and-effect, if we could find some physical nourishment that you could tolerate, we might be able to put you into a holding pattern,” Seremela said. “We need to get you into some kind of remission. Perhaps we can’t achieve an absence of all symptoms, but we need to at least try to halt any advancement. It could buy us some much-needed time.”

“That’s an excellent point,” Carling said slowly. “I’ll keep it mind. In the meantime, why don’t you take a little blood and I’ll put it in stasis. That will preserve it until you can get it refrigerated properly.”

“Excellent,” Seremela said with satisfaction.

After the medusa had drawn a vial and Carling had spelled it, she turned to her leather bag to open it and pull out the tube containing the papyri scrolls of her sketches of Python. She took them over to a dresser and beckoned Seremela over as she unrolled them on the dresser’s flat surface.

The medusa breathed, “These are incredible.”

Carling watched the other woman’s face as she reached out to touch the edge of the top scroll with reverence. Seremela’s pleasure was like a keen, bright light. Carling said, “I want you to take these.”

Seremela’s eyes went wide. Both she and all her head snakes looked so shocked, Carling had to bite back the sudden urge to chuckle.

“I couldn’t accept these,” Seremela said. Then, in a stricken whimper, “Could I?”

“Of course you could,” Carling said. “Talking with you has been incredibly helpful. It’s been a comfort as well.”

“It’s been a privilege to meet you and help in any way I can.” Seremela touched the edge of the top sketch again. “You shouldn’t feel like you need to give these to me.”

“Consider it my way of saying thanks,” Carling said. “And honestly I think you’ll enjoy them so much more than I do. I haven’t thought about or looked at them in centuries, until Python came up in conversation with Rune.”

“This is a hell of a thank-you,” Seremela said. “Rune had mentioned something about paying me for my travel expenses and my time. If I do accept these sketches, I don’t want to hear any more talk of payment. All right?”

Carling said, “If that’s the way you need to give yourself permission to enjoy them, I’m not going to argue with you.”

Seremela laughed and clapped her hands. “Then thank you, yes, I accept.”