Текст книги "The Bitter Seed of Magic"
Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 26 страниц)
‘Sure thing, Genny.’ Rissa swiped the keycard and the door opened into a long, carpeted corridor indistinguishable from any cookie-cutter hotel. They all ran off, whooping, towards door number eleven.
Now to find Mad Max.
I walked over to the cloakroom. Usually I waited for the security guard to take my bagged blood and give me a receipt, but this time I hopped up on the counter and swung my legs over. I landed with a soft thud behind it and the coat-check girl jumped up in surprise. ‘Hey, you can’t—’
I reached out and touched her face, entering her mind as easily as driving through an open gate. ‘Hi’—I checked her name badge—‘Cheryl. Can I have your keycard, please?’
She reached down, unclipped it from her belt and held it out to me.
‘Thanks,’ I smiled, taking it. ‘That’s great. You just forget about me now, and carry on with whatever you were doing.’ I reversed out of her mind just as easily and let her go.
She sat back down again.
I swiped the card down the lock and pushed open the ‘Office’ door. The room inside was a standard security centre doubling as a staffroom. One wall held a row of grey metal lockers; the other wall was banked to the ceiling with TV monitors showing shots of the club above a long bench full of blinking lights and switches. I quickly scanned them: entrance, coffin room, gift shop, the toilets—yep, the loos really were coffin-shaped!—and what had to be the vamps’ private rooms. Sitting bolt-upright in front of the TV screens was the human security guard with his eyes fixed intently on the monitors. A cup of tea was steaming on the bench in front of him.
He ignored me.
But of course. Mad Max was expecting me.
I walked past him to the door on the opposite wall, opened it and strolled inside.
‘Cousin, how nice to see you again.’ Mad Max stood and came round the desk to pull out one of the guest chairs for me. My backpack sat on the other. He gave me a wide beam of a smile and said, ‘Please, come and have a seat.’
As offices go it was pretty basic: desk, grey chairs, grey carpet, grey filing cabinet, a flat-screen LCD—currently showing the cloakroom girl—instead of a window. There was nothing to say vampire, or even well-heeled executive about it, other than Mad Max himself. His bright red Hussar jacket, worn over white shirt and blue trousers and with highly polished black boots made him look like he was playing dress-up, which of course he was.
‘Thanks,’ I said and sat. Of course, there was one thing that said vampire: the three bags of my blood sitting on the desk, one of which was squashed into a clear pint tankard with coffins decorating the outside. A black curly straw was sticking out the top. Nice—all it needed was a paper umbrella!Next to the bags of blood was my phone.
‘Glamouring a human carries the death penalty, Cousin,’ Max said cheerfully, waving at the cloakroom girl on the screen as he sat opposite me. ‘Or were you not aware of that particular law?’
Ignoring him, his threat, and my blood, for now, I reached for the phone and called Malik, or rather, Sanguine Lifestyles, his 24/7 answering service. A woman’s voice answered with a tentative, ‘Ms Taylor?’
‘Yes, it’s me, and I’m fine,’ I reassured her before she could ask, keeping my gaze fixed on Mad Max who was still beaming his hundred-watt smile my way. ‘Could you repeat the last message you were given, please?’
‘Certainly, Ms Taylor,’ she replied efficiently. ‘Mr Maxim Andrei Zakharin called, and his message was: “ Genevieve Zakharinova has honoured us by becoming a VIP member of our club. Sadly, the excitement was too much for Dear Old Dad, and I think it might take him three days to recover. Genevieve kindly consented to having a family portrait taken to celebrate our reunion.”’ The woman paused. ‘We received the photo of the gentleman and yourself, Ms Taylor, plus the one—’
A beep sounded, and I stopped listening to the woman as Max’s beaming smile cut out and was replaced by an almost panicked expression. He produced a remote, pointed it at the flat-screen and the picture of the cloakroom girl switched to one of strange, amorphous red and blue shapes shifting around a dark interior. Two red figures were huddled together in one area, and another red figure was merged with the only blue figure. I frowned, puzzled, until it clicked: I was looking at the new state-of-the-art CCTV monitoring system the vamps were touting on all their websites, supposedly designed to keep the humans safe. It showed a computer overlay of enhanced heat signatures, so basically, the red figures were humans, and the vampires, having a lower core body temperature, showed up as blue.
Max jumped up and rushed out of the office, leaving the door swinging.
‘… give Mr al-Khan your message along with the others when he checks in,’ the woman’s voice was saying in my ear.
Worry tied a knot in my gut. ‘Thought you said he checked in at sunset?’
‘Normally, yes. Not tonight. Is there anything else I can do for you, Ms Taylor?’
‘Thanks, not just now.’ I cut her off, and stared at the screen.
Now I knew what I was looking at, the figures looked more like people and less like blobs. The red figures were two upright humans huddled together. The other human was on the ground, with the vamp on top, and the blue vamp was slowly turning red– It didn’t take a genius to work out something was badly wrong. Then I saw the flashing number in the screen’s corner.
Room Eleven: Darius’ room.
I looked in horror at my blood on the desk.
Surely Mad Max couldn’t be stupid enough to take it all? Hadn’t he heard what had happened at Christmas, when Darius had gone rabid and fallen into bloodlust?
Fuck!I grabbed the two unopened bags of blood, knocking the tankard over in my haste, but it didn’t spill. Oddly, the bag was still unbroken. I grabbed that one too, and stuffed them all back into the padded compartment of my backpack. Then I ran after Mad Max.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The security guard was rattling away into his radio, and either Mad Max’s original mind-lock was still in force or he was too busy to worry about me. I grabbed the keycard off the cloakroom girl in passing, vaulted over the counter again and strode towards the vamp who was standing guard in front of doors 1–15. She was dressed in a wide grey crinoline and starched nurse’s cap, vaguely circa the Crimean War.
Her eyes widened as she saw me coming.
‘Move, or I’ll make you,’ I warned, knowing I had the unfair advantage. No way was she going to fight back—or even touch me—not with Malik’s decapitation threat standing behind me like a looming shadow.
‘Sorry, can’t do that,’ she said. ‘Orders.’
I swung the backpack, letting its own momentum carry it and it hit her square on the shoulder. I’m nowhere near as strong as a vamp, but compared to a human of the same weight, I’m a superwoman. Add in the bricks—
The vamp stumbled far enough away from the door for me to swipe the keycard down the lock and lunge through it before she had recovered.
My heart pounding, I raced along the carpeted corridor, past grey steel doors with curious faces peering out from their diamond-shaped windows, towards the group of three figures I could see at the end.
Mad Max held his hands up to stop me as I got closer. ‘Cousin, Genevieve,’ he called, ‘we’ve sealed the door. There’s nothing to be done until morning now. I suggest you go back—’
Bastard! He wasn’t supposed to seal the room if there were still humans inside.
This time I didn’t give any warning. I hoisted the backpack in front of me and, praying to any gods that might be listening, I launched myself at him, aiming for his chest with the brick-heavy backpack. I caught a glimpse of his eyes rounding with disbelief just before I barrelled into him, knocking him on his back. I landed on top of him and, yelling, I heaved the backpack up and smashed it down on his head, again and again, like a pile-driver. He shifted beneath me, his hands gripping my thighs, the muscles of his stomach bunching, getting ready to buck me off. Desperate now, I slammed the bag down again, wishing I had something sharper, like a stake, knowing I had to damage him enough that he wasn’t going to be getting up anytime soon—
Someone grabbed the back of my jacket and threw me back along the corridor.
I tried to tuck and roll, but the backpack dragged awkwardly on my arm and instead I landed in an inelegant heap. I scrambled back up to my feet, clutching the backpack, raging with determination and anger. I wasn’t going to let—
I stopped, stunned. Mad Max was still lying on the floor, but now a small figure straddled him—a female, if the long curls of black hair were any indication. The other two vamps were rapidly backing up the corridor away from her and Max, their faces contorted with fear. They reached the end and one banged on the steel door, while the other, his brain obviously slightly less panicked, produced a keycard, swiped it and they both fell into the room beyond the moment the door slid open.
As the door closed, the female figure shook herself then, in one fast, sinuous movement, she leapt to her feet and twisted to land perfectly on her red leather six-inch-heeled boots without so much as a wobble. A knife protruded from Mad Max’s chest, its bronze handle sticking up like a shiny exclamation point. She put her hands on her curvy hips, took a deep breath she didn’t need, and her waist very obviously cinched in even tighter and her breasts mounded even higher above her red leather corset. Then she cocked her head to one side and stared at me, her eyes reflecting yellow like a cat’s in the blackness of her face.
I grimaced. Vamps can never resist a flashy entrance.
I recognised her, of course: Yana’s new sponsor, Francine, the vampire from Darius’ old blood-house. Up close she looked younger than I remembered, more late teens than early twenties, although vamp-wise she had to be at least a couple of hundred years old if she was capable of taking Mad Max. And with her knife sticking out of him, she was either an opportunist, or an ally. I was hoping for the latter.
My hand tightened on the backpack just in case. ‘So why did they run?’ I jerked my head towards the door the terrified vamps had gone through.
The air wavered round her and for a second a pretty good likeness of Malik stood in her place. Then she was back to being herself again.
‘Impressive illusion,’ I said, and it was. ‘So, are you the new Head of Golden Blade blood?’
‘Not yet,’ she said, her sultry voice matching her sex-on-legs kick-ass red leather outfit.
Ah, so the position was still up for grabs, which probably meant she needed Malik’s backing. Maybe she’d decided assisting me was the best way to get it? I waved towards her and Mad Max. ‘You know, the show’s wasted if you’re not going to help?’ I raised my voice in question.
Moving almost too fast for me to see, she was standing in front of me, the sharp end of a bronze knife hovering steadily under my chin. I held my ground, ignoring my hitching pulse, and flicked a finger against the blade. ‘Nice toy,’ I said.
She smiled, her full lips pulling back to showcase longer-than-normal fangs—another illusion—and the knife flew back and thudded into Mad Max’s chest, perfectly aligned next to its twin. He grunted. I looked around her at his face. The bricks had done their job: it was a battered, blood-covered mess, and when he stared back at me from between already swelling lids, surprisingly, he was very much aware, and oddly speculative.
‘The bronze knife in the heart,’ Francine purred, drawing my attention back to her, ‘she paralyse him. Stop his power.’
‘Good to know,’ I said, stepping past her and over Mad Max to look through the diamond-shaped window in door eleven. It was as bad as I’d hoped it wouldn’t be.
The room was square, maybe twenty feet by twenty, and it looked like a hurricane had passed through recently. Broken bits of metal bed and shredded lumps of mattress littered the carpet, a wooden chest was overturned on its side, and the flat-screen on the wall was smashed.
Darius was in the centre, at the eye of the storm.
The eye-candy romance model with the drool-worthy six-pack was gone; instead, his body had shrunk back to bone. His stomach was concave above his jutting pelvis, and only a few wisps of hair straggled from his scalp. A raised map of blue-black veins corded his leathery-looking skin. He looked like he’d been left to starve. As I watched he twisted and turned from side to side in evident confusion, his lips curled back over all four of his fangs, his arms open wide, fingers clutching at empty space. Rissa and Viola were weaving around him in some sort of shifting pattern, their floating grey outfits and long white-grey hair fluttering as if blown by the wind. As I watched, one would flit past him, trailing a bloody wrist and snagging his attention, then as he lunged for her, the other would do the same, distracting him the other way, only they were moving so fast it looked as if there were more than just the two of them …
‘You’re doing something, aren’t you?’ I turned to Francine.
‘I make the illusion of many Moth. Darius do not think with his brain now, but with this.’ She tapped her corseted stomach. ‘The Moth, they bait him with the blood. He does not know which to eat next. It is a trick we use sometimes.’
I turned back to the room and came face to face with Lucy, staring at me through the glass. Startled, I jumped back in fear as my old phobia hit; stupid to still be afraid of ghosts, even now.I forced myself back to the small window, swiping at my face as I realised I was doing the crying thing again. My chest constricted with sorrow as Lucy turned and walked straight through the others to the far wall, then stood and pointed down at her still body.
Damn, damn, damn.Seeing her ghost didn’t necessarily mean Lucy was dead, or at least, not yet. I’d seen Sharon, Darius’ now-deceased girlfriend do the same thing. The Moth-girls’ ghosts—their souls or whatever you want to call it—can vacate their bodies on demand. It’s a sort of defence mechanism against pain, as having a vamp sink fangs into your carotid understandably hurts with a capital H.
Why the Moth-girls sign up for it, rather than the standard venom hit, which is all about pleasure, is a total mystery.
‘We need to get in there,’ I said, still looking at Lucy’s body.
‘The door, she is sealed until sunrise,’ Francine said at my side. ‘She is on the time lock, precaution to stop the bloodlust spreading.’
‘Sunrise! Fuck, they’ll all be dead by then!’
‘Yes. The heart of Lucy is weak. I beat it for her, but I cannot for long. My power, she is lowering.’ She spoke calmly, as if the situation wasn’t a death sentence for the girls and for Darius—especially Darius, because even if he came back to his senses after draining the Moths, the vampires would rescind his Gift, not in public retribution for killing the girls—it was doubtful any of them had any family, or anyone to worry about them other than the other Moths; their bodies could and probably would just disappear. As would Darius’. No, they’d rescind his Gift because the Moths’ deaths would be unsanctioned killing. The vamps can’t afford not to control their own.
Even if I did manage to save him now, unless one of them took him on, he was a dead vamp walking. I clenched my fists, desperation and guilt burning in my chest. I shouldn’t have encouraged him to stand on his own feet. More than that, I should’ve kept a closer eye on him.
But crying over spilled milk—or rather, spilled blood—wasn’t helping anyone. I had to save the Moths first, and after that I could worry about Darius … except—
I was all out of ideas.
I looked at Francine. ‘So, what’s the plan?’ I asked.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘The door, I can open her.’ Francine stared at me, her odd reflective eyes transparent like glass. ‘I make the illusion stay for the escape of the Moth. But Darius, he has the blood-lust, he cannot escape the room. I cannot control him, and I do not like to bring the final death to him.’
Okay, good to know she didn’t want to kill him, for all her flat statements. But then, if he wasn’t rabid with bloodlust, she wouldn’t have to. So she was asking me to feed him—my blood would sate his bloodlust—but getting it into him without ending up as dinner was the problem. Unless …
He was young enough that I could catch him in my Glamour—I’d done it before, after all. Once,muttered my cautionary voice, and the vamp was already restrained. I ignored it and asked, ‘Will you take his Oath, if the Moths survive?’
‘Darius …’ This time some emotion flickered in her gaze, then was gone. ‘I will accepthis Oath, but only if he chooses. The force, she is not right.’
I blinked: a democratic vampire?
‘Okay, leave Darius to me,’ I said with more confidence than I was feeling.
‘Good. Also, I ask the permission for the blood. For the power.’
Of course she needed blood. Well, I was going to be opening a vein anyway, and it was all in a good cause—
I grabbed my backpack and opened it. Miraculously, one of the three bags of blood I’d stuffed in it was still intact and I held it out to her as blood from the other bags dripped onto the carpet.
Her nostrils flared, her eyes closing briefly, then she shook her head reluctantly. ‘Darius, he will need your blood.’ She pointed down at Mad Max. ‘His blood, I can take. With the permission of my liege.’
Her liege was Malik, but he wasn’t here. The worry came back, and I didn’t know when—or if—he would arrive. ‘He’s not here?’ I made it a question.
‘We are to give you the help if you are in need.’ She smiled down at Mad Max, her long canines curving past her bottom lip, her strange, transparent eyes lighting with expectant predatory pleasure.
‘Ri– ight. I’m in need then.’ I waved at Mad Max. ‘You’ve got your liege’s permission.’
In a blur almost too fast to see, she whirled into a crouch and fell upon his throat. He roared, his legs jerking uncontrollably, then the sound cut out and harsh slurping noises took its place. Old, dark blood sprayed over the lower walls of the corridor. Judging by her enthusiastic reaction, there was more to her snacking on Mad Max than just getting power.
I shrugged out of my jacket, dropping it next to my backpack, and looked through the window at the Moths dancing round Darius, wondering how long it would take Francine to get her power up to speed—and also wondering how I was going to get close enough to Darius to touch him, let alone Glamour him, without getting my own throat ripped out first.
Long minutes later, and I was still staring anxiously through the diamond-shaped window in the door. I tensed as Darius snagged Rissa’s wrist, jerking her out of the weaving dance, but then Viola swiped her own bloody wrist close to his mouth and Rissa slipped from his grasp.
‘C’mon, Francine,’ I muttered. She’d been slurping on Mad Max for a good five minutes now. Surely that was enough to get a power hit. ‘Hurry it up; he nearly caught her that time.’
A soft hand brushed the hair back from my face, and I turned to find her standing next to me. Her pupils had vanished, leaving her eyes clear as glass and reflecting the overhead lights.
‘I am here,’ she murmured. Her tongue swiped out like a cat’s, catching a drop of blood at the corner of her mouth. She stepped closer, and wobbled on her heels. I grabbed for her, catching her arm and holding her steady. She laughed low and touched her forefinger to the pulse in my throat, sending a shiver of need into my body as the sensation of wings fluttered soft along my skin.
Mesma.Damn vamp was using vamp mind-tricks on me! I knocked her hand away, angry. ‘You’re drunk,’ I said accusingly.
‘But yes, of course.’ She laughed again, pressed her finger to my chest this time and pushed. I staggered back. She turned to face the door, took a wide-legged stance, then punched her hand straight through the diamond-shaped window. Gripping the edges of the opening with both hands, she braced one boot against the door and pulled downwards. At first nothing happened, then the door groaned, the metal buckled and it fractured from the bottom V of the window opening. She yelled, a deep, guttural sound, and the muscles in her arms and back stood out in relief as she ripped the steel door down and pulled it apart like it was made of cardboard.
‘Fuck!’ I muttered, impressed.
‘The door, she is open.’ She doubled over, giggling, then as she tried to straighten, she tottered back and fell on her butt against the corridor wall. I rushed to help her, but she waved me away with both her hands. ‘The Moths,’ she whispered, then in a louder, crooning voice, she called, ‘Come, my pretties, fly to me. Fly, fly, flyyyy!’
They came in a blur of grey silk and satin, ducking and spilling through the ripped steel door, breaking right and rushing past me along the corridor towards the door at the far end, trailing the scent of blood and liquorice and greasepaint behind them.
I quickly crouched and peered into the room. Lucy’s ghost was huddled by her limp body while Darius still stumbled around, his hands grasping at the illusions of Moths floating past him. Apprehension prickled down my spine as I gripped the bag of blood in my hand. All I had to do was rush him, shove the bag in his face as a distraction, hopefully piercing it on his fangs, then thrust my magic into him.
My turn to dance.
I bent to duck through the torn door and a sharp pain sliced across my wrist. Flinching, I looked down to see blood welling and dripping from a three-inch cut along my inner arm, right along the vein. Francine swayed on all fours near me, a thin bronze dagger in her hand.
‘What the fuck was that for?’ I demanded.
‘The arm, hold her up in front.’ She showed me, clumsily tucking her own arm under her chin, almost toppling over as she did. ‘She will keep Darius from the throat.’
I stifled my anger; she was trying to be helpful, even if it was the sort of help I could reallydo without. I swapped the bag of blood to my bleeding hand. Holding the bag and my blood-dripping wrist as a shield across my throat, I ducked into the room before she could think of anything else to helpme with.
Darius stopped, nostrils flaring, and fixed his gaze eerily on me, no longer interested in the illusionary Moths. Blood flushed the whites of his eyes; his irises and pupils were clouded, like cataracts. He was blinded by bloodlust, all his senses narrowed down to scent alone as he searched for the fresh blood he craved. I felt a tug on my consciousness as he automatically tried to mind-lock me and swatted it aside.
One touch was all I needed to Glamour him. Skin to skin.Lucky he was naked; it gave me a lot of skin to choose from.
I flipped the metaphysical switch inside me and let my magic flood out. A golden glow lit the room as if the sun was shining and small tendrils of power sprang like eager vines from my body, questing for someone to latch onto. Still holding the bag up in front of me, I aimed for his ankles—as far away from his fangs as I could get—and lunged towards him—
He snarled and leapt at the same time, smashing me down onto the ground and knocking the air out of my lungs. My head banged off the floor as he pinned me, and pain sliced upwards through my left kidney. I seemed to have all the time in the world to look down and see the broken end of something black and metallic poking out of my diaphragm: a piece of the metal bed. And all the time to look up at Darius as he straddled my hips, to feel the panicked thud of my heart, to smell the honey-scent of my own blood, to see his skeletal face blurring as he yanked my head back and exposed my throat—
But no time to raise my arm and the distracting bag of blood before he struck, his fangs piercing through skin, muscle and the arterial wall of my carotid—
And the world exploded into a pain-filled haze of red and gold.
