Текст книги "The Bitter Seed of Magic"

Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Four

He held Genny’s hand, gazing down at her as she lay sleeping. She was pretty, like sunshine in a jar, as his mum used to say. Happiness and relief filled him. Now Genny was here, everything would be all right; she’ d sort it. All he had to do was hold her hand, stop her from leaving, and she’ d sort it. He’d done something bad, but he hadn’t meant to, he’d just been so hungry. But he was a good boy. He’d always been a good boy …

His thoughts stumbled back into his childhood again before he could stop them. He hated lying there night after night, listening for the thump of the front door closing as his mum went off to her night shift. He desperately wanted to shout for her not to go, not to leave him. Then he’ d listen as the fridge door slammed, waiting until the second stair from the top creaked, until the landing light under his bedroom door snuffed out. Then he’ d hear the click as the handle turned and the hinges whined …

‘Be a good boy now, Daryl lad,’ his step-da would say.‘We don’t want to upset yer mum, don’t want anythin’ to ’appen to ’er, now, do we, lad? So just you be a good boy like yer promised.’

… and he’ d always been a good boy like he’ d promised. He’ d promised not to tell then, and he’d promised not to tell now. He always kept his promises.

But now he’d done something bad to Genny. Sadness and loss squeezed his insides, making the hunger come back, then he gazed down at her, at her shining hand in his, and happiness filled him. She’ d gone away for a while, but she was back now, and so long as he held her hand she’ d wouldn’ t leave again, and then she’ d sort it.

Sunshine in a jar.

The thoughts and memory—Darius’ thoughts and memory, I realised after a while—kept going round and round in my head like they were on a children’s roundabout, and somewhere I was crying, for the little boy then, and for Darius now. I could feel the tears dripping down my face, but I couldn’t see anything past the blinding glow of my magic. I could feel his hand holding mine, except it felt odd, more like I was holding his hand, only that wasn’t right either, not when his hand felt small and limp and my much bigger hand enveloped it.

‘Darius?’

I looked up as I heard his name and the magic dimmed. Francine ducked through the ripped doorway and came slowly into the room, placing one high-heeled boot in front of the other, watching me with a wary expression.

I felt my mouth smile at her, a wide beam, so happy to see her. She lifted her chin, such a tiny movement, and, oddly, I recognised that she was worried, and scared. I/Darius wanted to tell her it was all right, that now she and Genny were here, everything was going to be all right, but the words got confused with the thoughts in my head.

He loved Francine, she was so small and sexy, and she’ d looked after him even before he got the Gift, like Genny looked after him now. If Genny was sunlight in a jar, Francine was dark, dark chocolate. He’ d missed her, missed the Moths … he’d done something bad, but he hadn’t meant to, he was a good boy, but he’d just been so hungry … but she was here now, and Genny was here, they’ d sort things out, make things right.

Sunshine and chocolate.

* * *

‘Darius?’ Weirdly Francine sank to her knees in front of me and reached out to cup my face, brushing away my tears.

‘I’m holding her hand, just like I promised, Francine.’ I felt my lips shape the words, but it wasn’t my voice, wasn’t my thoughts behind them. The voice and thoughts belonged to Darius … and so did the mouth, and the eyes I was using. I looked down at my hand where I held his. I squeezed, and Darius’ hand squeezed, not mine. I lifted, and Darius’ hand lifted mine. Myhand was the limp one, the one it felt like I was holding.

Shit! I was in Darius’ body.

I sand-bagged a rising tide of panic. This wasn’ t so strange, was it? After all, I’ d been in someone else’ s body before. All I had to do was stay calm, work out how this had happened, and find a way back to my own body …

Which hadn’t been in too good a condition last I saw. I squinted past the blinding golden glow of magic and saw myself: the jagged end of the pole was sticking out of my upper stomach, and the wet, gory mess of my throat looked like a wild animal—or a rabid vamp—had chowed down on it …

‘Oh crap. That doesn’t look good, does it?’ I muttered.

Francine turned my/Darius’ face away. ‘The sidhe, she is not lost yet. Her heart, you are still beating it, as I told you.’ Her words conjured the steady da-dum, da-dumof a heartbeat pulsing against my/Darius’ palm; it echoed up my/his arm and thrummed in my/his ears. A fainter echo sounded from within my unconscious, injured body. I/He nodded and gripped my limp hand harder, determined to not let go.

‘This is good, Darius.’ Francine leaned forward and kissed us …

She watched as Maxim led the blonde child away, trying to shut her ears to the child’s loud, hysterical sobs, and her imploring face, knowing her own face didn’t show her sorrow, fear, and rage. She’d never had a child of her body, and with the Gift she never would, but she’d made up for it with all her pretty Moths, and it shattered her heart every time she lost one of them. But this child was special, she’d hidden her, kept her safe, loved her, but now Maxim had claimed her. She would repay thebastard . One day.

… Francine broke the kiss, and I was on my own again in Darius’ head, trying to come to terms with the loss and pain of another memory shown me by the Morrígan.

Then Darius’ own thoughts started chiming in, like a bizarre background track, and I suddenly realised I wasn’t alonebut co-habiting. Darius was here with me—or I was with him—and he was very happy about it, delighted, euphoric even, in a strange, fuzzy sort of way. He was happy both of us were here, me and Francine. We looked at Francine, who was now bending over my still body, and panic bubbled up inside me until a knowing, satisfied thought from Darius squashed my fear. She was healing the wound at my throat by licking it.

Francine would love my blood; it tasted so good, so sweet and thick. Hunger tightened our stomach, and something twitched between our legs … we looked down and grinned—

‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ I said out loud as I grabbed for a nearby piece of mattress and stuffed it between our/Darius’ legs, then wished I hadn’t as his pain nearly doubled us over. Darius choked back the lump in our throat, and his thoughts disappeared into a jumble of unintelligible expletives.

Crap! The sooner I got out of him, the better … but I didn’t even know how the hell I’d ended up inside him in the first place, let alone how I was supposed to get back into my own body. My mind kept chasing the thoughts, looking for answers that weren’t there. And there was something else, something important. Worriedly, I looked around the room littered with bits of bed and mattress and tried to think…

Finally it came to me: what had happened to Lucy, the Moth whose ghost I’d seen?

Darius gingerly resurfaced. ‘ Francine took her away.’ The words formed in my mind, along with his self-guilt and worry. ‘ She said the other Moths would look after her.’

‘ She’ s not dead then?’ I asked hopefully.

‘ No,’ he said, almost overwhelming me with self-blame, ‘ Francine said she’d be okay.’

Darius had only attacked the Moths because he’d been lost in bloodlust, and he’d only been lost in bloodlust because Mad Max had stolen my blood. ‘ It wasn’ t your fault—’

‘ He didn’ t steal the blood, Genny.’ Shame and regret curdled inside us. ‘ I said he could have one bag out of three.’

‘Why?’

His mind fuzzed for a second, then he said, ‘ So he’ d give me the job; it was to pay the blood-tithe.’ It wasn’t a lie, but there was something else there, something he didn’t want me to know. ‘ I’ m sorry, I didn’ t think I’ d need it, not with all the groupies, and I didn’ t want to give him my Oath, or anyone else, but I kept getting booked for private parties, and then my head started going funny—’

Images of his childhood mixed up with more recent ones of the private parties, or more precisely, the ‘anything goes’ orgies, flickered like a movie in my mind, telling me that Mad Max was effectively running a vamp brothel, letting humans into the rooms before the vamps woke up so they could prod and poke and—

Rage and disgust made me want to go and stick another knife in the bastard’s chest.

Darius shook our head emphatically .‘ It’ s not like that, Genny. All the vamps love it; you get plenty of blood waking up like that. I did too, sort of, at the beginning.’

I felt the desperate need in him to be honest with me and got another quick image that I could’ve done without: Darius reallyenjoying himself at what looked like a ‘Bride of Dracula’ hen party, if the outfits were anything to go by.

‘ But then I started getting confused about where I was,’ he carried on, ‘ and what was going on—I’ m sorry, Genny, I’ m really sorry.’

More tears dripped down our face as recriminations filled us: his, for not asking for help, and mine for not checking up on him sooner. But now what mattered was getting back into my own body and sorting this whole mess out. I tried to piece together my thoughts … Only now we weren’t speaking, the background track of his thoughts grew louder and more intrusive, and my own thoughts kept getting lost in a fuzzy haze. He was relieved and happy that both Francine and I were here; he really loved both of us, and he really wanted us to like each other. We looked down at where she was bent over my body, and at the way the red leather moulded to her—

Darius was getting entirely too happy about things again.

I gingerly tapped the lumpy bit of mattress between his/our legs to distract him and mentally pulled myself away from his thoughts until he was just a muted whisper. My own mind cleared and I realised the ‘fuzzy hyped’ feeling had come from Darius; he was still high, from drinking my blood and getting hit by my Glamour.

I looked at Francine, still bent over my throat, and at the jagged metal sticking out of my stomach. I was sidhe fae, I was still here; I could survive that, couldn’t I? So long as someone took it out soon? Except I was injured and stuck in a vamp (who was keeping me alive by holding my hand), in the middle of a vamp club, with only Francine to help; it wasn’t a win-win situation. How the hell was I going to get out of this? Another bubble of panic threatened to burst– then I remembered I had my very own personal Angel watching over me. An Angel with a hotline to The Mother. It was unlikely She’d let me truly die, at least not until after I’d completed her commands. And then there was the Morrígan too. Maybe if I prayed—

‘Genevieve?’

My name was both a question and a call, and my heart stuttered in thankfulness.

‘Malik al-Khan.’

As I spoke, Darius rushed back in alarm and we looked up. A monstrous figure loomed over us, half-obscured by writhing, angry shadows. Flaming eyes blazing bright stared out of a thin, harsh face, its pale skin laced with an ominous map of hungry blue veins, its lips drawn back over sharp white fangs. Hot fingers of mesma-induced fear lashed down our spine and Darius screamed in terror. Then, before I could grab our thoughts, we were spinning away in a fiery maelstrom of panic.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I fought my way out of the maelstrom, leaving Darius tucked away in the hidden corner of himself, and looked out of his eyes again.

Francine was kneeling between us and Malik, who had dropped the fanged monster look; maybe he’d just used it to frighten the natives, although Francine could’ve told him he didn’t need all the flashy dramatics.

‘—blame is not his, my liege.’ Francine’s words suddenly registered. ‘I beg you to not kill him. Wait, and listen to the sidhe when she wakes.’

Yeah, listen to her: killing him is so not a good idea—for either of us.

‘The sidhe lies behind you and is near death, Francine,’ Malik said in his calm, not-quite-English accent. ‘What makes you think she will live to plead for Darius to keep his Gift?’

As Francine started to talk in a soft, anxious monotone, I shot a quick assessing look at my throat: the wound in my neck was now a puckered mess of scabbed-over skin.

Thank you, Francine!It wasn’t pretty, but maybe my body wasn’t as close to death as Malik’s words suggested, particularly as he didn’t appear to be overly worried. I narrowed my eyes at him. Now I wasn’t seeing him through Darius’ less-than-rosy blood– and fear-coloured glasses, he looked more like his usual beautiful self—other than his hair, which no longer curled like black silk over his coat collar but had instead been buzz-cut close to his scalp. It made him look harder, more dangerous, and at the same time oddly vulnerable. I frowned, concerned, remembering Mad Max’s comments about Malik being the Autarch’s newest torture toy … was it only his hair that was different … or was there a slight stiffness in the way he held himself?

Uneasy, I studied him further. He was dressed as his übergoth persona: black leather trousers and a muscle-hugging T-shirt topped off with a long leather coat that flared and snapped in a nonexistent wind—a standard vamp trick, which, for some bizarre reason, was impressing the hell out of me right now, and filling me with envy …

Until I realised it wasn’t me being envious but Darius, who was metaphysically huddled behind me. He couldn’t do tricks like that, not yet. Darius’ gaze slid admiringly over the muscles under Malik’s T-shirt. He also looked good enough to eat …

… and our memories collided as we both remembered sinking our fangs into Malik, recalling the powerful, buzzing taste of his blood … our mouth watered, lust and hunger burned inside us, and something sprang to attention between our legs again, jolting me out of Darius’ reverie.

‘ Okay, now that is so,so weird, and so,so wrong,’ I muttered in my head.

‘ Not wrong.’ Our mouth stretched as Darius grinned lopsidedly, happily hyped-up again by the memory. ‘ He’s fed us both, so it’s, like, normal that stuff happens.’

‘ Normal for vamps maybe,’ I spluttered, ‘not for me.’

‘ Yeah, but you’re in me now, and the blood and sex bits get all mixed up.’ A certain part of our anatomy did its weird, excited flex again. ‘ Even more right now, ’cos you really,really want to get into his pants.’

‘ That. Is. None. Of. Your. Business!’

‘ Hey, it’s not like I can miss what you’re feeling.’ He gave a sly laugh. ‘ And it’s not like he wouldn’t know you were hot for him anyway; he’d smell it if he wanted to. We vamps got supersenses, y’know.’

‘ Okay, eew! And really,so not helping.’

‘ Want me to hitch you up with him?’ Our face muscles contorted as I tried to wipe our grin away and he wouldn’t let me. ‘ I could, like, ask him if he’s got the hots for you too.’

‘ No! Just, no! And, please, go away. I need to think—’

‘Darius?’ Malik crouched in front of us and I vaguely registered that Francine had gone. ‘Do you know what you have done here? What the penalty is for causing harm to the sidhe?’

His attention accomplished what I couldn’t, and Darius’ teasing grin disappeared in the blink of one of Malik’s fire-filled eyes, and then Darius himself disappeared into some dark corner of his mind, leaving me on my own in his body.

‘Yep, he knows who you are all right,’ I grimaced, keeping my hand on the lumpy bit of mattress in my lap, even though things in that department had deflated rapidly. ‘But what I want to know is, do you think this counts as death number five, or number six?’

He stilled, then reached out and tipped my chin up with his finger. ‘Your eyes glow gold with sidhe Glamour. I knew you could trap some of us in this manner, Genevieve, but I did not know you could possess another’s body this way?’

‘Yep, it’s a new one on me too,’ I sighed, relieved that he’d caught on quick, and Darius wasn’t going to lose his head just yet. ‘Look, I’m a bit hazy on the specifics of how I ended up inside Darius’ body, and I’d really like to get back to my own. Don’t suppose you’ve heard of anything like this before?’

‘Not without a demon or black magic being involved?’ He raised his voice in question.

‘No, no demon, nor anything like that this time,’ I said quickly, with a shudder.

He tilted my/Darius’ head up further, peering closer into my/his eyes, and his dark spice scent twisted a curl of desire inside us. ‘And you are sure you did nothing to cause this, Genevieve?’

‘Nope,’ I said, pressing down on the bit of mattress, seriously hoping Darius didn’t choose this moment to do anything stupid. ‘One minute I’m hitting the painful high point of being necked on, then the next I’m hearing voices—or rather, hearing thoughts and memories in my head, only now it’s not myhead …’ I trailed off.

‘You have thought of something?’ His expression turned quizzical.

‘I had a visit from the Morrígan earlier today …’ I frowned, thinking it through as I spoke. ‘She sicced some kind of memory spell on me. Darius triggered the spell—it seems to be triggered by touch; his isn’t the first memory I’ve picked up on—but maybe with me pushing my Glamour into him, the spell had some sort of drastic side-effect?

‘What are these memories?’

‘Sad ones,’ I said, softly, ‘from their pasts. And the spell is still working, even though I’m in Darius’ body,’ I added, recalling the memory of Francine’s, the one of Mad Max dragging away the blonde girl (who was vaguely familiar from somewhere) when Francine had kissed me—or rather, Darius.

‘I see,’ he said, releasing my/Darius’ chin with something like apprehension. And I wondered what memory he didn’t want me to know. ‘We will discuss this later, Genevieve. For now, we should concentrate on healing your body and restoring you to it safely. I will examine your injuries to see what can be done.’

‘Works for me,’ I said, more than happy to let Malik use his handy healing powers on my body.

He moved closer to my body and carefully tore my T-shirt. Watching him gently probing my injury was surreal enough to make my/Darius’ stomach churn squeamishly, so instead I fixed my gaze on the ripped-up doorway, and thought about the Morrígan and the memories instead. Was I just picking up any memory to do with grief and childhood, or were the memories clues to the dying faelings and, therefore to the curse? And if so, what did they mean, and what was I meant to do with them? And where had I seen the girl in Francine’s—

Francine herself reappeared from wherever she’d been, and derailed my thoughts. She wasn’t alone. She was dragging a groaning Mad Max behind her, like a child trailing a gigantic rag doll.

‘My liege.’ She dipped her head at Malik. ‘Maxim, he is the only possibility. Fyodor, he is staked. There is none other here above fifty.’

Malik eyed the groaning Maxim for a moment, then stood and moved to one side. ‘Maxim will be sufficient.’

Francine kicked and shoved Mad Max—she reallydidn’t like him—until he was lying alongside my body. With her two bronze blades still jutting out of his chest, and the metal pole in my stomach, we looked like a couple of gruesome extras in a low-budget horror flick.

I leaned over and poked him suspiciously. ‘What’s Mad Max sufficient for?’ I asked as he fixed me with a malevolent glare from the one blue eye which wasn’t quite swollen shut.

‘Mad Max?’ Francine’s mouth fell open, her eyes widened and she backed up, crossing herself in panic until she was plastered against the wall. ‘You are notDarius! What voodoo is this?’

‘It’s not voodoo, Francine,’ I said, ‘just a side-effect of the magic.’

‘Voodoo is evil.’ She crossed herself again, sweat beading on her forehead.

‘Be calm, Francine.’ Malik’s pupils flared with tiny flames and her face smoothed over. ‘Darius is not harmed; he has allowed Genevieve to share his body for now.’

‘As you wish, my liege,’ she replied blandly.

‘Did you just mind-lock her?’ I asked, curious.

‘No,’ Malik and Francine said in unison.

I waited for Malik to say more. He didn’t, and I realised that was all the answer I was getting. ‘Trust me, Francine, I’d much rather be in my own body’—I looked down at it—‘well, maybe not quite this minute, but as soon as Malik’s healed me.’

‘I believe you should return to your body before it is healed further, Genevieve.’ Malik started to brush a hand over his forehead, his ‘I’m considering’ gesture I recognised from when his hair was longer, then hesitated before running a palm over his new buzz-cut. ‘It is possible that with the blood connection between you and Darius, and your attempt to control his mind, that your spirit slipped out to avoid the pain, much as the Moths do.’

That sort of made sense: except the Moths usually vacated their bodies as temporary ghosts, not as squatting tenants.

‘I do not understand how they return to their bodies,’ he carried on. ‘Francine can only tell me that they fly when their blood sings to them, but she tells me their spirits are less susceptible to losing themselves if they return before their bodies are fully healed. She also tells me that those Moths who are able to perform this trick have some fae magic in their blood.’

The Moths were fae, or at least had an ancestor who was fae? Interesting—and reassuring, given I was just about to try the same trick. ‘Okay,’ I said, looking from him to Francine, ‘so how do we make my blood sing to me?’

Francine drew her lips back and her tiny venom fangs sprang down. ‘The vampire, he make the blood sing,’ she murmured.

Lovely. I—or rather, my body—was going to get a shot of the real stuff. I’d really fall off the blood-fruit wagon after that—

‘ Umm, I think maybe I already venom-stuck you, Genny,’ Darius’ apologetic voice interrupted my own internal thoughts. ‘ Y’know, when I—’

‘ It wasn’t your fault,’ I muttered, scowling at Mad Max who was still giving me the evil eye from the floor, and feeling that same fuzz in Darius’ mind again. There was something there he didn’t want me to know … about my blood … and someone called Andy … he’d made a promise not to tell—

‘Genevieve?’ Malik touched my/Darius’ face and the thoughts scattered. I blinked and looked up at him. Compassion softened his expression. ‘You have no need to worry,’ he said softly. ‘I will find a way if this does not succeed. But first we shall try this?’

I didn’t tell him I wasn’t worried, or rather, I hadn’t been until I caught a glimpse of his own anxiety beneath the compassion. My heart gave a happy little lurch that he cared, and I flashed him a smile big enough to reassure both of us. ‘Hey, I’m hard to kill, remember? Not to mention I’ve got two goddesses on my case, so no doubt one of them is watching over me.’

He gave me a long, pensive look, then nodded. ‘Good, then Francine will finish her preparations.’

Francine stepped forward, jumped up and grabbed something hanging above. The somethingdropped down with a great clanking noise and turned out to be a thick, heavy chain with an odd leather-belt contraption on its end. The chain was attached to a pulley bolted into the ceiling.

I started to wonder what on earth it was for, but almost immediately images flashed in my mind of naked bodies dangling down, the leather belt-thing strapped tightly around their ankles, then the images were quickly replaced by a wide expanse of blank white wall, and the knowledge that Darius was embarrassed and trying not to think about anything else.

‘ Tell me you haven’t killed anyone with that,’ I demanded.

‘ No!’ His answer blasted through me with enough shock and horror, along with a flash of something very definitely to do with sex, that I had absolutely no trouble believing him.

Francine hunkered down at Mad Max’s feet and efficiently buckled the leather contraption—‘ Ankle cuffs,’ Darius murmured from behind his white wall—around Mad Max’s legs, and started hoisting him up.

‘What’s she preparing him for?’ I asked, sincerely doubting Mad Max was being strung up for the usual reasons.

‘Your body is too depleted of blood for your heart to beat on its own,’ Malik explained. ‘You need a transfusion before you can be fully healed. Maxim is a suitable donor, but with his heart stopped by the knives, we will need gravity to aid the transfer.’

I frowned, not thrilled about having Mad Max’s blood in my body. ‘Why can’t I have your blood at the same time as you heal me, like you did before?’

‘You need more blood than I can safely give you, Genevieve. Such quantity as you require would risk afflicting you with my curse.’

‘Okay,’ I said, puzzled, and not entirely understanding his worry. ‘But I’m not human, I’m sidhe. Your curse can’t affect me, because I can’t become a vampire. The magic doesn’t work that way.’

‘That would be true if you were full-blood sidhe,’ he said quietly, ‘but your father is a vampire.’

‘No, my father being a vampire is irrelevant,’ I said firmly. ‘Sidhe reproduction is different, so I ama full-blood sidhe—I’m like a clone of my mother; that’s how it works.’

‘I am not willing to take that gamble,’ Malik insisted, ‘not when his blood will suffice.’ He waved at Mad Max, now swaying gently above my actual body. His arms and long silver hair were just inches above my body’s face and I wrinkled my/ Darius’ face in disgust as I clicked exactly how I was going to get Mad Max’s blood: I just knew he was going to taste bad.

‘Fine,’ I agreed. Getting back in my body was the priority, not worrying about whose blood I was going to get. ‘So what’s next?’

‘Darius should feed now,’ Malik said, an edge of displeasure in his voice. ‘Sparingly,’ he added.

‘Okay, let’s do it,’ I said, then as Darius stopped hovering unobtrusively behind his white wall and leaned us eagerly towards my body’s neck, I added; ‘ From the wrist.’ Ignoring his vague disappointment, I/Darius lifted up my limp hand, the one we were still clutching, and we sniffed the sweet honey scent that pulsed just under the skin. Hunger cramped our stomach, and we struck—

–thick viscous, honey-tasting blood burst into our mouth—

Cold, socold … every beat of my heart hurt, as if a large hand were gripping it and squeezing, the fingers digging in painfully, then a brief second of respite before the hand gripped and squeezed all over again, like some torturous mechanical pump. I screamed, desperate to get away from the unbearable agony …

‘ Drink, Genevieve,’ Malik’s voice commanded in my mind, and as Mad Max’s metallic, sour-tasting blood touched my lips, I opened my mouth and let it flood in, swallowing convulsively as it hit the back of my throat—

He watched as the boy slid down the slide squealing with pure joy. The security lights flooded the playground in a bright white light that kept the night at bay, and turned the boy’s blond curls silver. He wanted to pick him up, lift him and swing him round, and tell him he could fly. Tell him he loved him. It was something the old man had done when he’d been the boy’s age: a small, happy thing in among the ever-constant fear. But he hugged the want to himself, tucked it away in his heart. She’d never allow it. It had taken five years from the boy’s birth until now for her to grudge him this one brief glimpse from a distance. And he didn’t want to give the bitch the satisfaction of seeing his need. Or his pain.