Charming (20 page)

A
pparently being legally dead takes a while to come back from, even for a naga. Parth’s heart started beating again, but he stayed unconscious while I dragged his inert scaly form to the urn room by the ankles, and I wasn’t particularly gentle. Kimi wasn’t particularly quiet either. He also stayed under while Sig fetched an eight-foot boar spear from one room and Molly fetched some chains and manacles from another.

“What kind of collection did those manacles come from?” I wondered.

Molly blushed and refused to answer.

It’s hard to bind shape-shifters, but Parth’s wrists and ankles weren’t all that much smaller in his human form than in his half-snake one, and I fastened the manacles so tightly that they ought to at least slow him down. His flesh was so oily and malleable, though, that I doubted any physical restraints would hold him long. I also knotted the chains around his chest and throat in such a way that he couldn’t stretch or burst them without centering all the pressure on his windpipe. When I was done we placed him on the sliding tray of the crematory oven.

Thankfully I’d had to use a fully automated furnace that was run with a PC once before, in Alaska, and it didn’t take me long to figure out how to manually operate this one through the user interface. That might also have had something to do with the fact that this time I wasn’t in a funeral home that I’d broken into with a windigo’s body wrapped in plastic. I went ahead and turned Parth’s furnace on.

Next I took my Swiss Army knife out of my jean jacket and extended the four-inch blade. Then I peeled my jacket and shirt off and wrapped my right hand in the wet shirt before draping the rest over Parth’s face so a damp layer of fabric was between my hand and possible blood spray. Clenching the casing of the knife through the fabric, I positioned the tip of the blade over Parth’s ear canal.

“What are you…” Kimi started to protest, but her words ended in a scream as I drove the blade into Parth’s left ear.

Parth still didn’t wake up, but his heartbeat picked up and his body convulsed.

“John?” Molly said questioningly.

“Relax, he’s fine. It’s an old knight’s trick for regenerators with psychic abilities,” I explained, careful not to let any blood drip onto me as I pulled the shirt away and tossed it aside. The red knife handle remained jutting out of Parth’s ear. “His brain is already resealing and rerouting connections around the blade. In a few minutes his speech and memory will be unimpaired, but he won’t be able to concentrate enough to move water around or hypnotize any of you for a while.”

With psychic creatures who can’t regenerate, knights will sometimes drive steel tacks into their skulls to disrupt their focus, but I decided to keep that information to myself.

“Is that really necessary?” Sig asked carefully.

“Yes,” I said.

Sig nodded and changed the subject. “You seem pretty familiar with nagas.”

“I met one once before when I spent a few years in India,” I said.

“Sightseeing?” she asked lightly.

“You could call it that,” I said. “I did visit the Taj Mahal.”

Sig nodded again, then looked over to where Kimi was edging closer to the Mauser dangling loosely at Molly’s side. “Don’t,” she said firmly.

Molly and Kimi both started and jumped away from each other.

“Sig, what are you planning?” Kimi asked fearfully.

Sig debated whether to answer for a long moment. “I’m going to try to avoid killing Parth,” she said at last. “The best thing you can do is believe that I’m trying to save him and let me concentrate.”

“If you don’t want to kill him, just don’t,” Kimi said in a rising whimper. “This is insane.”

Sig shook her head sadly. “If you really want to be a part of Parth’s world, Kimi, you’re going to have to start learning the rules. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to explain them to you right now, so I’m telling you as your friend: keep your mouth closed and listen. Please.”

“But how do I…”

“Shut the hell up, Kimi,” Sig said, not unkindly. “If you say one more word, I’m going to knock you out.” This was presented as a simple statement of fact, with neither reluctance nor eagerness.

Kimi shut the hell up.

We waited awhile longer. Parth’s eyes still didn’t flutter. His breathing didn’t change. His heart rate stayed consistent. The heat began to build and become slightly uncomfortable as the
furnace came to life with loud violent clanking noises, but no one suggested turning it off.

I started peeling off my jeans, which were starting to feel like they were trying to suck the skin off my legs.

“Ummm… John?” Sig kept her voice level as I kicked my way out of the clinging fabric.

“Relax,” I said, draping my jeans over the furnace door, where they would dry faster. “I’m keeping my boxers on this time.”

“This time?” Molly wondered.

Sig blushed slightly.

“She used magic to get me naked the first time we met,” I informed Molly.

“I was just trying to get change for a twenty,” Sig responded gamely. “I didn’t realize he worked at that kind of a bar.”

Molly looked me over. “Maybe you should have.”

This time I was the one who got a little uncomfortable. Sig bit her lower lip and looked at Parth.

We waited a little longer.

“You know, it’s weird,” I said to Sig conversationally. “I saw a naga get knocked out once before. He was in human form, and he stayed in human form just like Parth here is staying in combat form.”

“You saw another naga get knocked out?” Sig asked skeptically. “Or you knocked him out?”

“Uhm,” I said.

Here’s another little safety tip. It doesn’t matter if a creature regenerates or not; if a brain gets sloshed violently enough and smacks against the skull hard enough, the sloshee is getting knocked out. Of course, it’s harder to achieve that effect against beings who have stronger neck muscles and less sensitive nervous systems.

“Maybe that’s why Parth attacked him!” Kimi said triumphantly. “He must…”

Whatever else Kimi was going to say was cut off by the short, efficient punch that snapped her head back and sent her toppling backward. Molly managed to catch Kimi’s falling body, although she dropped the Mauser in the process.

Sig didn’t shake her hand or wince, which meant that her bones were probably harder than a normal human’s. Her fist had connected with Kimi’s jaw. “Why is that weird?”

“Well, there are all kinds of Hindu and Buddhist stories about nagas,” I said, “and none of them really agree on what a naga’s true form is. In some stories they’re humanoids who can change into snakes, and in others they’re giant water serpents who can turn into humans, and sometimes they’re half-and-half critters like Parth is right now who can go either way. No naga will give you a straight answer on the subject, but you’d think they’d change into their true form when they got knocked out. Most shape-shifters do.”

“I know what Parth would say if he were awake.” Molly didn’t look up from her efforts to make Kimi’s unconscious body look comfortable on the floor.

“Probably something like ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ ” I offered.

“He would say that your assumption is based on an illusion,” Molly informed me with an odd primness. “Parth would say that there is no one true form.”

Ah yes, the lesson of the lava lamp. I managed not to make any sarcastic comments out loud.

“Parth and Molly have talked a lot about religion,” Sig explained.

“Parth is awake,” I said.

He went ahead and opened his eyes then. It took him a moment to take in his surroundings and situation.

“You have some explaining to do,” Sig announced.

“What issss in my ear?” Parth said irritably, and it was bizarre hearing everyday words from that inhumanly sibilant voice. Apparently Parth realized this because his scales began to recede back into his skin and the black of his eyes started shrinking back down into normal-size pupils. His jaws commenced retracting back into his skull as if he were some kind of biological PEZ dispenser. Then he convulsed and gave out a strangled cry, and poisonous blood began to pour out of his punctured ear around the bright-red pocketknife handle that was still sticking out of the side of his head like a slot machine lever.

Sig stroked his now-human-looking forehead absentmindedly, her voice mild. “Better keep the party tricks to a minimum, Parth.”

“What happened?” Parth gasped as soon as he could talk again. “Did he… was I… he did!” He looked at me and his face lit up with a radiant joy. It was a bizarre sight under the circumstances.

Parth made to raise his neck to get a better look at me and Sig palmed the forehead she’d been stroking and pinned him back down onto the sliding tray. “Nuh-uh.”

“Sig, please,” Parth said, as if telling her to give him a break rather than asking permission.

Sig reached out and grabbed the chains that had slackened around Parth’s neck. I wanted to tell her to watch out for his blood, but I didn’t. “You had a chance to be reasonable,” she said. “If you try to get loose before we come to terms, this truce is over. I’m going to take that spear over there and stab you through the top of your skull and stir your brains around a little. Then I’m going to shut you in the furnace.”

“This isn’t…” Parth choked.

“John here doesn’t trust easily,” Sig interrupted. “But he trusted me when he came here tonight. Do you understand, Parth?”

“I…” he began, and Sig cut him off by pulling the chain tight again.

“I promised to hold his trust and keep it safe,” she said. “I vouched for you, and you attacked him. I asked you to stop, as my friend, and you kept attacking him. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”

For the first time Parth began to look embarrassed. “You don’t understand…”

“Explain it to me.” Her tone was implacable. “And make it good. You offered me your hospitality.”

He finally took her seriously. I’ve mentioned that there are rules that are literally older than mankind, treated with utter life-and-death seriousness by some races that were old when dinosaurs were walking on this planet. People like me don’t have to obey those rules, but taking them lightly is a fool’s game. If word gets around among some species that you don’t honor their value systems, you lose all kinds of respect and rights of mutual conduct. And the codes governing hospitality are particularly inflexible. In expecting Sig to ignore his breach of etiquette, Parth had both disrespected her and tried to take advantage of their friendship. He had, in effect, assumed that she was either too powerless or too passive or too ignorant to take serious offense. By formally invoking the rules, Sig was letting Parth know that court was now in session. Oddly enough, it didn’t frighten him. It pissed him off.

“I had to test him!” Parth said impatiently. “If he is what you say he is, he’s unique! The knights’ geas will not allow any outside supernatural force to dominate their consciousness, and lycanthropy completely takes over the mind at least once a month!”

Sig’s spine stiffened slightly. She practically had the words
OH! MAYBE THAT’S WHY HE DOESN’T CHANGE INTO A WOLF!
appear over her head in neon.

“Do you honestly think that no knight has ever been bitten by a werewolf or a vampire over the centuries?” Parth continued. “They don’t transform, they die! They commit suicide, or their minds shut down, or the geas causes such physical strain fighting the transformation that their hearts rupture!”

We were all silent.

“Do you understand now?” Parth yanked his chin in my direction. “He could be the vector point of a new evolutionary bypass! The first member of an entirely new species combining the mental defenses of a knight with the physical advantages of a lycanthrope! Who knows what’s in his sperm!”

“Hey,” I protested mildly.

His eyes went distant and dreamy. “Did you see how fast he was? How he tracked me? The way he threw off my attempt to enthrall him?”

I’d never heard anyone describe getting their ass handed to them quite so rapturously.

Parth’s eyes focused again and he stared at me fervently. “You are beautiful, sir. Truly beautiful!”

“Uhm?” I said.

Sig was amused. I’m not sure how I knew that; neither her expression nor her body language changed. But she was amused.

And then she wasn’t. “It stops here, Parth,” she said, her voice becoming a cold and desolate thing. “That’s my price for letting you live. You don’t tell anyone else about John, and you don’t ask him any questions about how he came to be, or try to take DNA samples from him, or anything else.”

“What harm would that do?” he protested indignantly.

I laughed, except it wasn’t really a laugh. “You planning on starting your own little eugenics program, Parth?”

Sig grunted agreement. What would trying to make more people like me even entail? Kidnapping women who had knight blood in their veins? Impregnating them against their will? Holding them captive? Forcing their hands into a cage with a werewolf in it when they were near term? Performing a caesarean on them before the next full moon? It would be a death sentence for the mothers even if their geas didn’t fight the transformation. Only the strongest survive the first werewolf change, and a woman who had just had surgery to remove her child unnaturally from her womb wouldn’t stand a chance. And who knew what percentage of the infants would survive even if the circumstances of my birth were re-created exactly? I was either a miracle, a long shot, an aberration, or a fluke, depending on how someone looked at it.

“You don’t understand,” Parth protested. “I don’t want knowledge because I want to… do anything with it.” He said that last part as if the very idea were vulgar.

Uh-huh. There’s a story in the Mahabharata about how nagas became immortal. Basically they were out to steal the secret of the elixir of life from the gods, and through a series of circumstances that would demand way too much background context if I went into detail, they blackmailed a minor deity into bringing it to them. This birdlike being, Garuda, brought them the elixir just as he’d promised, but he hadn’t promised to give it to them once he did. Some of the elixir spilled in the resulting struggle, and one naga was so obsessed that he got on the ground and began feverishly licking the grass, managing to get a few drops of elixir but cutting his tongue in the process. According to the story, that’s how birds and snakes became
enemies, and that’s why nagas have forked tongues no matter what shape they appear in.