Page 58 of Serpent and Shadow

My annoyance that he’d attacked me when I’d said I was done, and was on my way out the door turned into a harder flush of anger. Before I’d thought about it, I jerked my fingers into a swift “S” shape and hissed out a command in Sanskrit.

“Cobara makshikaaa!”

I said it too loud.

He would counter it easily, I thought, since he’d clearly expect it.

But that didn’t end up being the problem.

The gold bracelet I wore shot off my arm at the end of my mudra.

A massive, coiled-to-strike, solid gold cobra reared up to fill the cavernous room.

Its hood flared out, its head and ruby eyes rose higher.

I’d forgotten I’d put on the Bones’s Yule present when I got dressed that morning. Alaric and I had plans to use it later that day, and I hadn’t wanted to leave it behind.

In the space where I blinked, the snake swelled to fifty or sixty times the size it had been while coiled innocuously around my forearm and wrist. It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to think of a command to pull it back, or even to shrink it smaller.

The massive gold cobra let out a deafening hiss.

The sound echoed against the stone, forcing me to clamp my hands over my ears.

It hung there, its head nearly brushing the ceiling as it swayed in front of my Offensive and Defensive Magic professor, looking like it was about to eat him.

13

Magical Surpises

“Call it off!” Quicksilver barked.

He sounded angry, but I couldn’t mistake the fear in his voice.

He waved a muscular arm at me, making his wishes unambiguous.

“CALL IT OFF, SHADOW! NOW!” he snarled.

The snaked hissed, swaying closer to where he stood.

I froze for a few seconds longer than I should have, maybe in shock. I stared up at the snake, which was thicker around the middle than I was, or Quicksilver was, and had plated scales of what looked like real gold. Its tongue flicked out, also seemingly made of gold. Its eyes glowed red in the lantern light as it hissed, exposing long, gold fangs.

“SHADOW!”

I blinked, and reacted without thought.

“Back!” I shouted in English. “Come back to me!”

Fear rippled through me as the massive head turned. Those red eyes stared at me. Briefly, I almost saw another presence there. In my mind’s eye, the snake turned black, its eyes gold. Something about that version of it mesmerized me and scared the hell out of me.

My hand was shaking when I pointed at my now-bare arm and wrist.

“Back!” I demanded. “Come back! Now!”

The serpent rapidly began to shrink in front of my eyes.

It felt like I blinked, and it was half the size it had been, then a third, then a quarter, then only a few feet long. It began slithering towards me over the thick mats, moving in a mesmerizing sidewinding gait as it covered the distance between where it started and where I stood. I continued to hold out my wrist and arm as it slid up to me, then coiled coldly around my leg, climbing up until it reached my waist, then slid over to my bicep, then down to my wrist and forearm.

It shrank more as it coiled tightly around my bare skin.