Текст книги "The Bitter Seed of Magic"

Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод

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Chapter Fifty-One

‘So, has she told you, my lady?’ Jack’s question startled me and I almost swallowed the key I had between my teeth, the one with which I was trying to unlock the shackle on my uninjured arm. I looked up to find him regarding me gravely out of his indigo-coloured sidhe eyes. Damn.

I spat the key out into my palm. ‘I knew I should’ve clocked you one on the head while you were still asleep.’ Trouble was, I’d been worried I’d wake him up, rather than knock him out.

‘Glad you didn’t, my lady,’ he said, casting a concerned look down at Helen, whose head I’d pillowed on her large leather bag (which contained nothing more useful than water, veggie sticks and cereal bars; I’d drunk the water). ‘Don’t worry, I’m here to help,’ he added.

I narrowed my eyes, wondering exactly how helpful he was going to be, and who he was really working for. Only one way to find out. I held out my shackled arm in invitation.

He reached out cautiously and took the key from my palm. I stifled a relieved sigh as he unlocked the shackle. It fell on the stone floor with a clang.

‘Proof enough?’ he asked. ‘Now, has my mother told you?’

‘If we’re talking about the Fertility spell, then yes.’

He took a deep breath, then asked earnestly, ‘Do you have it?’

I went to open my mouth … and then gave him a horrified look.

‘By the goddess.’ He raked his hands through his blond hair in frustration. ‘She promised she would tell you if you agreed.’

I grabbed his jumper. ‘Tell me what?’

‘There’s a Protection spell on it,’ he said, clenching his fists, ‘one that ensures anyone who knows about the Fertility spell can never find it, even if they’re staring right at it. And they can’t use force to get her to give the spell up, otherwise it will destroy the fertility in the spell.’

‘Fine, I get the picture,’ I interrupted. So that was how the Witch-bitch had managed to keep hold of it all this time: she’d booby-trapped it. And why no one, like the goddesses, or Tavish and Malik, would talk to me (I mentally forgave them both), and why the only clues anyone would give me were as cryptic as Hell’s worst crossword.

It also explained the pendant’s highly confusing flickering in and out of sight during the dozen tries it’d taken for me to remove it from Helen’s own neck—and why I couldn’t see—or see—the pendant even though it was nestling between my breasts, unless I concentrated on the sad memory of Helen losing the baby Jack. But Jack was Helen’s son and the Morrígan’s bird, so I kept all that to myself.

‘Crap,’ I muttered. ‘How the hell did she manage to castsuch a complicated spell? It must have taken her years. But there has to be a way to get it.’ I glowered at Helen, lying on the stone floor. ‘She has to have at least a hundred spells on her.’ Blinging herself up like a goblin queen had no doubt been extra camouflage. ‘It’ll take days to go through them all. But if you can fly her out’—I looked hopefully at Jack—‘and take her to the police, then—’

‘I’m sorry, my lady, I can’t. I have to procure my sister’s safety first, then I have to answer the Morrígan’s call to bring your friend here, as soon as the Time-sync spell runs its course.’ He reached out and touched Helen’s hand, suddenly looking very young again. ‘Why didn’t she tell you, when she promised she would?’

‘Ah,’ I said, grimacing, ‘maybe because I didn’t agree to do what she wanted.’

‘You didn’t agree?’ His mouth gaped in shock.

‘I couldn’t give my word,’ I said, and told him about the Chastity/Contraceptive spell.

He hunched over and hugged himself as he thought it through. I contemplated callinga Stun spell from one of the shackles, but decided he might be more useful awake. So instead I kept a cautious eye on him, in case he decided to regain the upper wing—sorry, hand—and knock me out so he could still swap me for Nicky. Although, to be honest, I had him pegged as more the follow-the-plan sort than a decide-what-to-do-next-when-things-go-wrong type of guy.

‘But what about my sister?’ he said finally with a plaintive look. ‘I gave my word to mother to help her. How am I supposed to get her to safety now if you can’t be traded in her place?’

Mentally I heaved a relieved sigh: I’d guessed right about him. ‘Okay,’ I said to Jack, trying to be reassuring for both of us, ‘it’s not all bad’– yet—‘and I’ve got a plan worked out’– hopefully—‘so here’s what we’ll do.’

After I’d finished telling him, I made a carry-pack out of Helen’s cardigan for the shackles with their Stun spells and tied it round my waist, Jack taggedmy injured shoulder and arm with another of his mother’s Pain-Numbing spells, then I left him with her in the circle. There was nothing he could do until Nicky put in an appearance.

I headed for the far end of the room, hugging close to the stone wall, and skirting round the various suits of armour that had appeared from nowhere (or maybe the magic had picked them out of my head?), until I reached the Look-Away veil. Behind it was a pair of metal double doors that looked like they’d be more at home on a modern lock-up instead of in the Tower of London. They had a thick wooden beam across them holding them shut, and a large shiny-steel padlock. I looked, and sawthe black bars of a Knock-Back Ward buzzing across their metal surface. Lined up by the side of them were half a dozen empty hospital beds like those the smiling Stepford mums-to-be were happily and quietly lying on.

Relief and hope filled me. I’d found the way out.

Now to sort out the time problem.

I made my way quietly to the grandfather clock. Behind the door next to it came the sound of soft snoring. I cracked the door open to find a rosy-cheeked nurse asleep with her feet up in an easy chair: the duty nurse Jack had told me about. Tiptoeing in, I calledone of the shackles’ Stun spells and tapped it on her head. It flashed green mint-scented lightning, and she jerked, then subsided into unconsciousness, putting her out of it for a good couple of hours.

I turned back to contemplate the grandfather clock. Crackingthe spells on the doors and the clock was a non-starter with twenty-odd pregnant females and half a dozen babies in the room. It would be like exploding a bomb in the place, and they were too close to ground zero. Absorbingthe spells was a no-go too; rescuing anyone while you’re unconscious is one of those impossible-to-do things. And teasingthe magic apart was too time-consuming (no pun intended).

But if I could get the clock to finish its chime, get everything back in sync and convince the magic to open the doors somewhere useful in the humans’ world, then I could absorbthe Wards and take the hit. Trouble was, someone, like Dr Craig or one of his minions was going to notice what I was doing sooner or later. So I needed … an emergency bolt hole.

Wincing, I bit into my wrist and casta circle of blood drops on the flagstone floor in front of the clock and smeared them together: my own mini blood-Ward, just large enough for me to kneel in. I opened the clock’s long door and pursed my lips at the two hanging weights, neither of which had a handy label. Reaching up I opened the clock face door, then, sending a prayer to both the goddesses who I hoped were listening, I started physically moving the large hand.

As the clock’s hands came together at eleven o’clock, I waited for the end of the chime, but it still didn’t come. Gritting my teeth, I started rotating the large hand, willing the small hand to move faster around the clock’s face. Anxious adrenalin fizzed in me as the magic in the spells started shifting … and the floor seemed to tip sideways like a ship sliding down a huge wave … I hit one o’ clock: the Stepford mums-to-be started moving restlessly. Keep turning … Five o’ clock: the Stepfords were moaning, the babies making small whimpering sounds, and a nauseous feeling roiled in my stomach. C’mon, c’mon … Eight o’ clock: my legs were trembling and I was almost out of time. Turn faster, damn it …Ten o’ clock: a Stepford screamed, the babies were crying, and spots swam in my vision.

A door slammed open behind me. Someone yelled.

Nearly there.

Green lightning hit the wall next to the clock. A Stun spell. Eleven o’ clock.

I jumped in the circle and collapsed to my knees—

The first chime split the air.

–and I shoved my magic into the blood-Ward—

The dome closed over me, and another Stun spell smashed in a shower of green sparks.

Dizzy, I dropped my head to the floor and gulped a couple of deep breaths.

The second chime sounded.

Safe, and in Time-sync … I’d done it—

—even if I was trapped.

Chapter Fifty-Two

The third chime cut out halfway through, strangled before it could finish.

Crap. Someone had frozen the spell. Time had stopped again.

I swallowed back my frustration and as the dizziness receded, looked up warily to find three people next to my suddenly very tiny, very fragile-feeling circle.

Dr Craig didn’t look much different from the way I normally saw him at HOPE: tweed trousers, white doctor’s coat, stethoscope round his neck, yellow notepad under his arm, and his grey curls ringing his fish-belly-pale bald scalp and parting around his jug-handled ears. Of course, that was if I ignored the long furry orange-coloured cape-thing that he was wearing over the doctor’s coat. And the thick gold chain that clasped it round his neck. He looked like he was auditioning for Caveman Doctor of the Year, and it wasn’t a look that suited him. Not to mention that if he was here, then he wasn’t in a silver-lined cell at Old Scotland Yard, and Hugh didn’t know he was a baddie. Fuck.

Standing beside him was a thickset witch dressed in an over-tight nurse’s uniform. Her cottage-loaf bun of grey hair looked like it had been stapled to her head, and her face didn’t look like it had ever cracked a smile.

Good to know he’ s got his own Nurse Ratched.

Behind them both was a faeling who could only be Nicky. Neat hooves peeped out below the hem of the white frilly nightdress she was wearing. Her features were a softer version of Helen’s beautiful patrician ones. Her horns curved to sharp triangular points about six inches above her head, and her hair was truly her proverbial crowning glory: sleek sable tresses fell almost to her waist—the same colour as Finn’s in his true guise. Seeing her made my heart ache for Finn. She shouldn’t be here; she should be safe with him.

Instead, she was smiling: that same wide, eerie Stepford beam that the rest of the girls in the circle had on their faces. I looked, trying to see the spell again, but as with the other girls, I couldn’t pinpoint any magic on her.

‘Hello, Genny,’ Dr Craig said genially, as if I wasn’t huddled like a stranded turtle on the floor by his feet. ‘I was hoping we’d meet again soon. I was expecting you to visit earlier.’

‘Yeah, something came up,’ I said drily.

‘Craig,’ Helen shouted imperiously from the other side of the large, gloomy room, ‘I want a word with you. Please.’ Dr Craig turned, regarded her for a few seconds, then said, ‘Helen, I’m glad to see you’ve considered your daughter’s health and returned.’ As he moved, I caught sight of her glaring from inside her circle. A worried-looking Jack hovered behind her. He caught my eye, and shrugged. I frowned at him: he was supposed to have kept her out of this. Movement in the circle of hospital beds caught my eye: two other nurses were moving from one Stepford mum-to-be to the next, obviously checking up on them. The mums-to-be ignored them; instead they were all craning their necks my way. And they were all still smiling that same blank eerie smile as Nicky.

‘I want a trade, Craig,’ Helen shouted again. ‘The sidhe for my daughter. I’ve told her what you want to do, and she agrees to it.’

Liar!But I kept that to myself.

But Dr Craig obviously thought Helen was lying too, since he ignored her and turned back to me with a smile just as creepy, if not as bland, as the Stepfords’. ‘Genny, why don’t you get up and we can have a nice chat about things.’ He said it like he expected me to agree.

Odd. Maybe he thought whatever spell he was using on the Stepfords would work on me … except I still couldn’t seeanything.

He kept on smiling and speaking, and I realised I heard him use that same tone of voice on patients at HOPE. I shut him out, and gauged the distance between me and his legs. His rubber-soled shoes were only about a foot away from my nose. It was too far to reach out … but if I launched myself at him, I could touch him skin to skin and maybe catch his mind in my Glamour—

–and get zapped by the Stun spell Nurse Ratched was ready to sling my way.

Shit. If only he was nearer, instead of a foot away.

His furry cape suddenly brushed the dome of my small circle. I blinked in surprise.

Neither of us had moved, but his shoe was right there, its rubber sole now an inch away from my blood smeared on the flagstones.

I swallowed, feeling almost sick with exhilaration and cast a thankful glance at the suits of armour: the magic was listening to me. I’d wanted him nearer, and nearer he was. I felt like whooping in delight, but instead I shot my uninjured arm out through the blood-Ward and pushed it under the cuff of his tweed trouser leg. I wrapped my fingers round his ankle, touching bare flesh, and shoved my magic into him. A bolt of gold fire shot up from my hand like a skyrocket and hit the gold chain round his neck; it exploded into a chrysanthemum-head of sun-bright magic—

–and pain sliced through my mind like someone had chopped the top of my skull off with an axe.

And before I could retreat into my tiny circle, he reached down, grasped my wrist and yanked me out. ‘Naughty, naughty,’ he said chidingly, as I knelt there, gasping like a landed fish, desperately wondering what the chain was Warded with, and what the hell I was going to do for an encore.

‘You’ve got the sidhe, Craig,’ Helen yelled, sounding just as desperate as I felt, ‘now let me have my daughter.’

‘Very well, Helen.’ He turned to the smiling Nicky. ‘Nicola, please go to your mother now.’

She started trotting towards Helen, hooves striking off the stone floor, her smile unchanging.

I gaped. Was he really just going to let her go?

Helen evidently thought so, as she brokeher circle and started hurrying towards Nicky, a big concerned smile on her face.

Unease shifted in me. I craned my head …

Nicky grabbed the frilly nightdress, bunching it up round her thighs, showing well-muscled, tanned calves and long, lean thighs coated with sleek hair the same sable colour as her head. She started to run towards her smiling mother.

Something was wrong.

Helen’s smile dimmed.

‘Helen,’ I shouted, ‘get back in the circle—

Nicky leapt the last few steps, kicking out as she did, and one precisely placed hoof caught her mother in the stomach. Helen doubled over and dropped like a broken broomstick to the stone-flagged floor. Another hoof caught her in the kidneys. Nicky circled round to Helen’s front and aimed a dainty hoof at her mother’s head—

‘Stop her,’ I screamed, reaching out and grabbing Dr Craig’s orange furry cape—

And everything stopped as if I’d pressed the pause button on a DVD: Nicky with her hoof in mid-air– Nurse Ratched with the Stun spell ready to throw– The Stepfords, all smiling creepily in my direction– Dr Craig standing half turned away from me—

Musty air shivered over me, and the rank scent of charred meat choked in my throat, then a huge translucent figure winked into being, superimposing itself like a badly scratched hologram over Dr Craig.

Chapter Fifty-Three

The figure looked half giant, half long-haired orang-utan, if you discounted his broad, mostly human face with its glowing orange eyes, and the heavy scimitar-like horns that were as long as my arms sweeping to either side of his head above his twitching furry ears. He was naked, apart from the orange hair, the heavy gold chain round his neck and a small brown leather loincloth. Underneath the thick hair his skin was covered in an intricate swirling pattern of red, gold and black ink that shimmered with latent power.

He had to be the Morrígan’s son: MacCúailnge, the Old Donn.

He was also the spitting image of The Mother’s photofit.

Hmm.Maybe she didn’t need a camera after all.

He was also a ghost.

My phobia hit. I pressed my lips together hard, stifling the shriek in my throat. Fae don’t leave ghosts—not naturally, anyway—but the Old Donn was definitely a ghost, however impossible that was. Which meant he couldn’t harm the living, at least not outside of All Hallows’ Eve. Or at least that’s the way normal ghosts work. And if he wasn’t normal … well, I’d find out soon enough.

He flicked a long cowlick of paler orange hair out of his eyes and grinned, showing brown stumps of ground-down teeth. ‘I’m the MacCúailnge,’ he pronounced, ‘and I’m afther believin’ me darlin’ mother, the Morrígan, has delivered you here to do my bidding.’

‘Yeah? Well, you can forget that idea,’ I said, pleased my words came out dry as dust despite the little phobic-fuelled voices in my head telling me to scream and run and don’t stop until I was far, far away. ‘I’ve got one dictatorial male in my life already. No way do I need another. So how about we try doing this the democratic “help-each-other-out” way?’

‘“Help” … ?’ The glow in the MacCúailnge’s orange eyes turned crafty. ‘I might be afther considerin’ it, seeing as I’m wantin’ something in return.’

Figured. I pursed my lips at him, wondering just how helpful a non-corporeal ghost could actually be, and if I really needed to ask him what he wanted when no doubt the clip-clop of little bull hooves was going to be the answer. I sighed. ‘Go on then, tell me what you want.’

He raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘Why, a body and me freedom, me darlin’. Forty years of bein’ without them both is quite the trial.’

A body?I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘What sort of body?’

‘A new one, of course.’ He waved a huge hairy arm towards the Stepfords. ‘This wee wizard man here’s been promisin’ me one for a rare long while now, but none o’ these wee girlies are strong enough for the MacCúailnge.’ A sly expression crossed his face and he crouched down so he could look me in the eyes. ‘Unless you’ll be willin’, pretty sidhe?’

The Morrígan’s little fertility mix of spit and Finn’s donation that she wanted me to drink made even more horrible sense. She didn’t want a grandson; she wanted a new body for her son. Her kidnapper rapist murderer son.

‘No,’ I said, as rage filled my veins with icy determination, ‘no way. You don’t deserve a new body, not after what you did to Rhiannon, and not after what you’re doing now. You’re the reason your wizard pal’—I jerked my head at the ‘paused’ Dr Craig standing within the Old Donn’s ghostly presence—‘has been able to kill these faelings. You should have stopped him.’

His large orange eyes did a slow blink, then his expression turned to dismay. ‘The wee lassies have been dyin’?’ His shoulders lowered and he shot a bushy browed frown at the Stepfords. ‘The wee wizard man ne’r told me that. And you have the right of it, pretty sidhe, I should have been afther stoppin’ him from doin’ such a foul thing in my ain home.’

Ri-ight. I gave him a suspicious look, not sure whether he was for real or not. ‘So, are you going to stop him now?’

‘I’m thinkin’ there’s not much I can do like this, pretty sidhe.’ His ears flattened. ‘Not while the wizard man here has harnessed what little power I still possessed by wearin’ me ain skin.’

Nice!Except– ‘That’s it: he’s used your power to Glamour them,’ I muttered. ‘Damn; that’s why I couldn’t catch him with mine.’ I looked him over speculatively, then tugged on the orange furry cape. ‘Okay, everything stopped when I grabbed your skin here, so does that mean I’ve got control of your power now?’

‘Maybe if you were wearin’ my hide, you would.’ His wide nostrils flared pensively. ‘But mind, once ye leave go of your hold on me, time will all be afther startin’ again.’

He’s wylde fae, murmured my cautious voice, and they’re always tricky, not to mention he gave in way too easily on the whole new body thing. Or that it wasn’t a coincidence that he’d appeared right at the opportune time. And where was Jack? I squinted up past the Old Donn to see Jack in his raven form perched on one of the wooden chandeliers. He was the Morrígan’s bird, and the Old Donn was the Morrígan’s bull.

And I knew what the Morrígan wanted.

Wearing his hide was a definite no.

But it wasn’t the only source of juice here.

This was Between, after all, malleable if you had enough will and power, and if the magic liked you—I glanced at the suits of armour—which it sort of looked like it did … I closed my eyes, sent a quick prayer to The Mother, and focusedon what Iwanted: enough time, plenty of space, and a perfect aim—

Something brushed against me, a shy questing touch of an unfamiliar consciousness. It– No, she, offered aid … power freely given. I took half a second to quell my natural cynical response that whispered about unspoken obligations, then, eager and grateful, I opened the part of me that absorbsthe magic and accepted. Power flooded into me like a tsunami, filling and stretching and reshaping until the barrier between us dissolved and it settled like a warm weight inside my soul. I took a shaky breath, then another, and with the third a rush of searing heat drenched sweat over my body, my bones vibrated like a magical tuning fork as the stone floor trembled beneath me, and the tart apple taste of cloudberries slipped down my throat and poured steadiness into my limbs.

‘Well, pretty sidhe, what say you?’ The Old Donn’s question held a note of eagerness he couldn’t quite hide. He’d been waiting a long time.

I opened my eyes and gave him a wry smile. ‘Nice offer, but I’ve had a better one.’ I released my hold on him, and he winked out of sight.

The grandfather clock rattled and squeaked, then resumed chiming.

Thirteen chimes for the hour, then eleven gongs for the time.

Twenty-four seconds.

I held my hand up and caught the Stun spell Nurse Ratched threw at me and zipped it straight at Nicky just before she stuck her hoof in Helen’s skull, wincing as Nicky dropped like a Stunned dryad. Luckily Helen was there to cushion her fall.

Twenty-one seconds.

I caught Nurse Ratched’s next Stun spell and tossed it straight back, grinning as she too dropped like a Stunned dryad. Sadly, there was nothing soft for her to land on.

Nineteen.

I called a Stun spell from the shackles tied at my waist and, yelling at the nurses there to stay back, flung it gently towards the circle of hospital beds. The spell splashed harmlessly to the floor in a burst of green stars.

Fifteen.

I focusedon the gold chain around Dr Craig’s neck and crackedthe sun-bright magic, rolling awkwardly to the side as he collapsed almost on top of me.

Thirteen.

I scrambled to my feet, grabbed the Old Donn’s furry hide and ran for the empty hospital beds stored next to the double doors.

‘Just a short distance,’ I muttered, and the distance obligingly shortened, so much so that I hit the metal beds in a bone-jarring skid just as the first deeper chime sounded.

‘Okay, a bit too helpful maybe,’ I murmured as I shoved myself in among the cover of the beds.

Nine.

I hunkered down and quickly gauged the distance to the circle of Stepfords. They were almost fifty feet away in the far corner now, but still much too close. ‘They need to be so far away that they’re just tiny, tiny figures,’ I murmured.

Seven.

The room started stretching, new wooden beams springing up to support the high ceiling like a line of trees popping out of the ground.

Five.

The room kept growing, and more wooden chandeliers dropped down on ropes from the high roof, their candles springing into flaming light as they did so.

Four.

The figures shrank into the distance.

Three.

I focusedon the Knock-back Wards on the double doors.

Two.

‘Somewhere safe for everyone,’ I prayed.

One.

I crackedthe magic—

–and the world exploded.