The Serpent League Read online

  The Serpent League

  Brendan Walsh

  Copyright © 2019 by Brendan Walsh

  City Lights Press

  An Imprint of Wolfpack Publishing

  6032 Wheat Penny Avenue

  Las Vegas, NV 89122

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  EBook ISBN 978-1-64119-810-3

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-64119-811-0

  The Serpent League

  (Noble Animals Book II)

  Brendan Walsh

  Contents

  Stay Up To Date!

  1. Where They Are Now

  2. Insomnia

  3. Hibernation

  4. Hatchlings

  5. Respect Your Elder

  6. Zoo Girl

  7. Uncoiled

  8. The Ritual of the Snakes

  9. The Anointment

  10. Reunion

  11. The Invited

  12. Story Time Again

  13. Scientist and Novelist

  14. King Delta

  15. The Willing

  16. Delta Talks To Animals

  17. Christmas Eve

  18. New Blood

  19. New Friends

  20. Delta and Gary

  21. Dead Blood

  22. To the Streets

  23. I Was There

  24. Suicide Song

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  A Look at Immortale

  Stay Up To Date!

  About the Author

  Stay Up To Date!

  Join the City Lights Press mailing list for information on new releases, updates, discount offers, and a FREE eBook copy of My Summer Job.

  1

  Where They Are Now

  “I’m going to hang it up for the rest of the night, boss.” the rosy part time officer said over her shoulder.

  Neidman slapped the next page of his mystery novel. “Good work tonight, Jenny. See you next week.”

  The Catholic University student put on her wool coat and scuffled out into the snowy pavement. The back door creaked before gutting to a stop, making it warm again in the security office. Fred Neidman was the head security guard at the Dawson library. It was a dull job. Good pay, considering who signed his checks. He couldn’t complain. At least the room had proper heating.

  The chill could get fierce in the nation’s capital during mid-December.

  Tuesdays were usually the longest. Not because he had extended hours, but because of his only company: Jenny Brick. She was a college student, only working at Dawson to put another word on her resume. Her work wasn’t lacking, not at all. He and Jenny just didn’t have anything to talk about. He was a forty-year-old army vet and she was a nineteen-year-old sorority girl. He must have seemed ancient to her. So, normally, he just quietly read a James Patterson novel while she worked on some sociology report, saying nothing in between “hello” and “bye”.

  So Neidman resumed his focus to his words, maintaining a still peripheral glance at the doorways adjacent to his office. He wasn’t paranoid. He was just being realistic. Normally in his previous five years on the job his eyeballs never faced the direction of anything that wasn’t written by James Patterson or Michael Connelly, but recently a scare had flushed over the country.

  And now that scare had come to his hometown.

  First there was California, then somehow, they had hightailed their terror onto the porch of the most guarded home in the country. Whatever they were, they were dangerous. The massive attack, which took place only blocks from his library, had happened three days ago. Reporters, tinfoil hats, and pundits all had different theories as to the true nature of what happened. Some say it was proof of the existence of a domestic terrorist group displaying their chilling capabilities. Others thought that was a reflection of the decline of America’s values, where college age kids had anti-Americanism so ingrained that this was just the start of the end of an empire. But there was still one thing no one discussed.

  What was that flying creature that broke the president’s arm?

  Yes, there was evidence that it had saved him from the explosion, but Neidman didn’t believe there was any proof. Whatever the answer was, he didn’t want any of it to impact his comfortable life.

  And then the light in his office flicked off.

  He shoved the novel away from his hands and jerked his flashlight from his belt.

  Fred, he thought to himself, you need to stop reading so many mystery novels. This is just the power. It does this sometimes.

  Having his nerves contained, he took a light stroll out of the room. The fuse box was located just around the corner of his station. It was a walk that he had completed hundreds of times in his life. Only this time was different.

  This time he would not complete it.

  When he was halfway to the fuse box a thump startled him. He twirled, unsheathing the flashlight from his belt. It came from the other rear door blocked by several columns of records. He couldn’t see what it was without getting right it its face.

  “Hello?” Neidman squeaked, gripping his light like a weight.

  That same eerie creak from Jenny’s exit returned, making his bones constrict. Someone had just entered the building. It was locked, and there was no sound of forced entry. It was probably just Jenny returning to get her glasses or something.

  Neidman flashed the light towards the door. “Jenny, is that you? Say something if it’s you!”

  His only response was a rush of black flying passed the window. At first he thought he’d just blinked, but the instantaneous scratching from the roof told a different story. Neidman was speechless. He wasn’t even paying attention to the intruder at the door anymore, because whatever was on the roof was no longer scratching. It was coming in through the air shaft.

  “Whoever you are,” Neidman screamed upwards, to where the air came in. “I’m armed! Move another inch closer and I’ll pump you dead!” He didn’t actually have a gun, but he was too scared to care about lying.

  The slithering through the shaft ceased. He allowed himself one safe breath before a pair of demonic, yellow eyes blinked through the bars of the shaft.

  He let out a heavy scream before making a break for the exit. But the next thing he knew he was holding his head in pain. Someone behind him had just clocked him straight in the back of the noggin. The weight of his concussed cranium was too much, and he tumbled over on the floor. The last thing he saw was a young brunette’s apologetic expression.

  “Really sorry about this.” She said.

  “Did I do it right?” Jane asked, poking the man’s unconscious body with her club. “Is he going to be alright?”

  “Those are two different questions.” Patrick replied as he joined at her side.

  The two others who had snuck in through the back thanks to Edgar’s handy technological prowess. Slate and Lindsey, the romantic pair of The Raven Gang, rushed forward to the fallen security guard. If Patrick didn’t know any better, he’d say they had guilty looks on their faces, and not because they were sorry for the unconscious man.

  Patrick leaned in to the guard’s body. His name was Neidman according to his tag. He seemed like a pleasant enough guy who probably didn’t deserve what they did to him. But in looking at the bruise on the back of his head and the steady rising of his chest, there was nothing to be concerned about
.

  Patrick rose to his cousin, who seemed to be on the cusp of a panic attack. “Don’t worry. He’s going to be fine.” He took the wooden club out of her palm and went into a dry windup. “But remember, you have to follow through all the way. The power is all in your hips.”

  “Can you two do your Assaulting 101 lesson at another time?” Slate urged. “We’re on the clock here.”

  “Right,” Patrick returned the club to Jane and paced around the shelves. “What was the number the president gave us?”

  Lindsey unrumpled a torn piece of paper from her jean pocket. “It is right between numbers b-124a and b-124b. From what President Gear told us, this library doesn’t use normal serials, so it should be a piece of cake to find it.”

  The two cousins navigated the columns of dusty books, shuffling through old hardcovers and first editions. It wasn’t long until they found the number they were looking for. Between two unsuspicious tea stained volumes was a thick line dividing the border of two shelves. It was metal, so whatever was placed in between the two shelves was definitely not normal.

  Jane noted the irregularity. “This place probably isn’t even officially a library. Considering the documents being kept here, this is definitely some kind of high clearance front.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Slate grumbled. “Otherwise the president just sent us over here so we could be ambushed and arrested.”

  “He’d lose my vote for sure.” Jane replied.

  A small nob equidistant from both columns was enough for Patrick to go from. He hastily jimmied it up and down until a click made the small switch inert. Several tiny industrial devices ticked until a standard nine-digit pad was left resting where a book should have been.

  Patrick stood down. “This is as far as we can take it. Get Edgar so he can finish the job for us.”

  “Okay,” Lindsey said. “Edgar, here’s your cue. Now!”

  There was no response, or any noise for that matter, except for the continual pounding of winter breezes against the window. Everyone called out for their flying pal one more time but it only gave the same result.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Slate started hotly for the window, looking all around. The back door was closed, and the ventilation shaft was vacant with only a light brush of clean air steeping. “Maybe he got stuck coming out of the pipes. He was probably way too big for them.”

  As Slate’s windbreaker sleeve caught a corner pane a massive coat of darkness popped down. The figure’s ears shut in on him like a descending maw, and its yellow eyes stung his soul. But the animal’s two prominent fangs jutting out with its mouth almost in a smile were what sent him down to the floor.

  “Gah!” Slate exclaimed as he rose up, rubbing his lower back. “Curse you to high hell! We told you not to scare us when we’re on the job!”

  Patrick and everyone wanted to have Slate’s back and scold Edgar, but watching him scream to the floor was too golden for them to pass up. With a flick of his wing, the bat scuttled indoors and shook the snow off his fur. A high-pitched sequence of squeaks rang from Edgar’s throat. He sounded nothing like a human but it was obvious to everyone that he was laughing.

  Slate snorted. “All right all right, cut it out buddy. It wasn’t that funny.”

  “It was a riot from over here.” Jane sneered.

  Edgar helped Slate get steady back on his feet. He gave the bat an unceremonious nod before Edgar intensely nuzzled his snout against the human’s chest.

  “Guys? What’s happening?” he asked nervously, trying to shove the chiropteran off of him.

  “Calm down already, it’s how his species shows affection.” Patrick tilted his head over to the number pad on the shelf. “Can we get your help over here?”

  Edgar noted him with a quick twitch of his ears. He quickly stumbled over to the shelf, lowering an eye to the key pad. Something that the gang couldn’t understand was happening. One of the most useful features of the bat was the strange device the powered his existence also gave him the ability to manipulate various technologies. The weird thing was that the device was destroyed during the battle with the wolves and gryphons days earlier.

  Naturally, no one wanted to raise too much concern, but there were clearly more angles to the whole Samuel Elder ordeal than they were currently wise to. Surely the destruction of the device should have meant their friend’s death, but there he still was, in the flesh, fur and ears. If their combination of blind luck and unlikely outcomes were not going to cease, then maybe all the answers would be dealt.

  The number pad went ballistic with static. Edgar snuffed out the chaos with a quick bop of his winged thumb against the pad, and the shelves split into two.

  Before the group was a standard manila envelope. The thickness of its insides proved that their breaking and entering was worth it. The contents were surely what the president allowed them to retrieve.

  Lindsey didn’t want to waste any time. She grabbed it and opened the front flap and gave the contents a cursory read. “This is it. This is what we came for.”

  Everyone sighed in relief. But their break was stamped away from the oncoming chorus of police sirens headed their direction.

  “Crap,” Patrick breathed. “The alarm to the place must connect straight to the police department. We got to get out of here now!”

  “This wouldn’t be happening if some people weren’t too busy with their romantic side quest.” Jane judgingly eyed Slate and Lindsey, who suddenly had the same guilty expressions they had when they arrived.

  “Sue us.” Lindsey replied hotly. “We haven’t been together for almost three weeks. It’s not even my fault, Slate kissed me first.”

  Slate scoffed. “I…. well yeah...that’s true.”

  Patrick wasted no more time. He took out his walkie talkie from the inside of his jean jacket. If the other two raven gang members were intent on keeping their objective of the mission, escaping the library would be a piece of cake.

  He jabbed the talk button a couple times. “Johnny, it’s Patrick, do you read me?”

  Only static sounded from the device.

  “You there?” he tried again.

  No reply.

  “Johnny, I swear if you got marinara sauce on the mic again-”

  “I’m here I’m here!” Johnny beamed from the speaker. “Sorry, Gary and I were working on something. We may have had a breakthrough.”

  “The details of that can wait. We’re about to be stormed by the police. Tell Gary we’re going to have to do the thing one more time.”

  “The...” Johnny stuttered. “But we agreed not to do it again until we understood it.”

  The sirens grew louder, and the rush of opening car doors were right out in the front of the library. “No time for anything else. Put Gary on the line!”

  A few bumps of static itched before his newest friend came to the speaker. “I’m here Patrick. Are you sure about doing this?”

  “Not at all. But all our progress from the last two days will be erased if we get caught, so this needs to be done.”

  “Okay,” Gary said cautiously. “Tell me where to face, and I’ll get you guys back here.”

  Patrick rushed to the window. Besides the usual neighborhood businesses and sights right in front of him, something else stole the picture. Way off into the distance stood his favorite thing in Washington D.C. The Washington Monument.

  “Face the Washington Monument from where you are. That will be enough for our devices to recognize.”

  “Right away, now hurry!”

  Patrick gathered everyone against him until they were all sheltered by the shelves. It would be the last place the incoming authorities would check.

  “Everyone, hold hands. You know how intense this thing is.”

  Everyone touched each other, with Edgar standing with his wings folded over Slate and Jane’s shoulders. Patrick hastily removed the other item from his inner pocket. It was the item that started it all. The enigmatic, old, radiant device that set the tim
er running for everything the gang had become since the killing of Jefferson Black nearly a month before.

  It was the Buchanan pocket watch.

  He turned out to the window. The peak of the watch was facing the tall monument in the skyline.

  “And…now!”

  At the push of the chamber, the hands on the watch start to spin faster and faster until they were no longer visible. A bright light erupted from the decades-old device that swallowed the entire library whole. The DCPD scrambled to find shelter from the immense glow, but it didn’t even last long enough for anyone to do that.

  In a flash, the gang was gone.

  The childish ramblings from the crowd before him made the president happy his children were all grown up.

  “Is it true, sir?” asked a pretentious looking boy from some indie magazine.

  He grunted. “No, it is not true that the big black bird that saved me was a plot to raise my approval rate. And yes, my arm is actually broken which, if I may add, was treated aptly by the doctors under my innovative health care reform.”

  Some murmurs and giggles flowed through the audience. He was tired of having to answer the same questions for days. That’s what the press secretary was supposed to be for. If he knew constantly talking to the media and answering the same questions over and over again would be such a key component of the job he would have voted for the other guy.

  He sighed and winced as he tried to raise his arm to the peak of the platform. The sling was too uncomfortable and it was making him look nervous in front of potentially millions of viewers. At that rate he’d go out almost as disgracefully as Nixon.