The Viper's Nest Series

The Viper's Nest

The Viper's Nest

Prologue-

It was a sweltering temperature of eleven degrees past Hell. In this weather only frizzy hair could be in style. You could cook eggs on the sidewalk even though the sky was gray with the strain of holding back the rain and infuriated lightning. The building we sat in was made of carefully placed bricks, still rouge with their youth and concrete barely cracking under the weight of a few years.

Always the children. With their doe eyes and innocent smiles, they were irresistible. I couldn't deny the chance to watch over them like a substitute mother hawk. They were each different, special in their own way and we all connected on different levels none reaching an undesirable point. You could smell the rain in the air like fresh mown grass, souring the stagnant oxygen. In Louisiana the weather is like an overprotective parent, it sticks to you. The children paid no attention to this dreary weather though. Instead they ran and played, making both friends and enemies alike.

I grabbed the keys to my secondhand car, a used black 1999 Ford Mustang, and walked out to meet her. I called her, my car, The Batmobile because I figured that she could prowl the streets at night if not as well as, then better than Batman himself. I kissed her, proving that I still loved her as much as the first day I met her with her rust spreading everywhere and her low mumbling hum.

I sat in her leather; breathing her springtime scent that was purchased at some store I passed by. I just sat there, breathing, allowing her breath to relax me into a state of almost unconsciousness. Then I felt something on my leg, like moist rope pulling itself across my skin. Then something sank into my neck and I cried out, the venom seeping into my veins. The rope on my leg slithered up and wrapped itself around my thigh then sank its teeth deep into the muscle there. The serpent on my neck was clearly a Boa Constrictor plunging into the soft flesh there, letting its roots sink in. The weird thing was that it spread its hood like a King Cobra, squeezed my throat like a Boa Constrictor and spat poison in my blood like a Hydrophis Belcheri. The other snake looked like a Black Mamba, but curled around me like a Boa and sucked my blood like a vampire bat. The venom was intoxicating, it blurred my vision. When the snakes withdrew their fangs is when the searing pain came along with the black spots around the edges of my eyes.

There was a roar bursting from within me, a roar of pain, a roar of desperation. My mouth was open as wide as it could go, trying to allow the venom to dispel in the air. They came running, fluid in brown smooth bags. They faded in and out of my vision like bobbing rubber ducks. The next few hours came in flashes. Red and white light burning my eyes. White gloves pulled tight over white hands. Machines all around, worried faces. Flatline, a long note played out by the machine next to me. My eyes open and I see the white ceiling and the flatline is gone.

A boy is crying near my side, pools of mud spilling down his cheeks, but he is turned away from me staring out of the window, gripping the side of the bed. His hair is cut short, his clothes are crisp, his scent makes me want to dive in it and wrap it around me. But his eyes, they are lifeless, flat, as if they are drained of their spark that they once possessed.

I cleared my throat. He spun around and when he saw me he swayed, rocking back and forth on his heels. His mouth opened and closed again, unsure of what to say, but his arms wrapped around me, they reminded me of the snakes.

"Viktor," I rasped into his warm shoulder.

"Artemis..." he began, not knowing quite where to start.

"It's okay; I'm gonna be okay, 'kay?" I answered giving him a light kiss on the cheek.

When he pulled back, a look of pure awe and disbelief ruptured onto his face as he peered into my eyes. Without speaking, he handed me a mirror and I saw that my eyes were a deep crimson and my canines had grown until they scraped against their opposites. When I pulled away from the mirror, I noticed that I hissed and that my reflexes were inhumanly fast. My pupils were slits like cats', my breath was intoxicating, and my saliva was poisonous.

I finally realized what I had become. I was transformed into half human, half serpent. I was part viper and part homosapien.