Текст книги "The Bitter Seed of Magic"

Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Chapter Five

‘Oh, look,’ I said flatly, ‘it’s Grianne, my faerie dogmother, come to join in the heavenly fun. Why am I not surprised?’

The phouka bared long black fangs a true dog would never have. ‘I have asked you before not to refer to me by that ridiculous mortal name. And this is not the time for levity.’

‘Damn.’ I bared my own teeth in a grin. ‘And there was me thinking I was supposed to laugh in the face of death. Got that one wrong, then.’

‘I am not here to kill you,’ the dog said with evident disappointment. ‘You are not with child, and my queen has given you a year and a day to find the answer you seek. Until then, you are safe from me.’

Yeah, like I was going to believe that. Next she’d be telling me that goblins had given up wearing bling.

When I was fourteen and a runaway, Clíona had sent the phouka to terminate me. According to Clíona, my father’s vamp DNA taints my gene pool, and makes me an abomination—even though my mother’s magical genetics means I’m pure sidhe through and through. No way was Clíona about to let me pass that taint on, curse or no curse. Only back then, things hadn’t quite gone the phouka’s way. Instead of killing me, she’d run into an opportunist vamp and I’d ended up saving her, which meant she’d ended up obligated to me for her life. So she’d reluctantly given me a reprieve. But if she could find a way for me to end up dead without getting her paws dirty, she would.

I jerked my head, indicating Angel, who was poking at the hissing snakes. ‘So whose soul is it?’

‘It is the sorcerer’s soul. Eating it was not a wise choice, child.’

‘I’m not sure “wise” or “choice” came into it at the time,’ I said, hiding the relief that washed through me at her words.

Consuming the sorcerer’s soul at Hallowe’en had been one of those act-now-and-live-with-the-evil-indigestion-later kind of things. The lack of immediate nasty consequences, together with the desperate need to find a way to crackthe curse, had pushed it to the bottom of my to-do list, but now it looked like I could cross it off. It also looked like I owed Angel one.

‘Chomping the sorcerer’s soul was more an instinctive kind of revenge thing,’ I said blandly, ‘payback for the evil bitch sacrificing me.’ See? I have teeth too, oh dogmother.

‘I have already told you, child. I am not here to kill you.’ The phouka’s ears twitched in disapproval, the air wavered around her and Grianne took her human form. She sat next to me, dressed in one of her usual silvery-grey Grecian numbers. Her long, sharp features aligned in a haughty frown. ‘My responsibility here is only to my charge.’

I gestured at Angel who had ripped off the head of one of the snakes and was busy sniffing it. ‘So who is little Miss Bloodthirsty?’

Angel went to pop the snake’s head in her mouth—

– and Grianne barked sharply. ‘Please do not eat that, Angel.’

Angel?

Angel stopped, a mutinous look in her eyes.

‘Why not allow your new creations to dispose of it?’ Grianne said, her voice taking on a placatory tone I’d never heard before. ‘I believe it would be good quarry for their hunters’ instincts.’

Angel’s face scrunched as she chewed over the idea, rather than the snake’s head, then she grinned, squealed and flung the head upwards. Between one blink and the next, the tiny cherubs had grown sharp red horns in place of their halos, their wings had turned black and pitchforks had materialised in their fists. One little red devil shot forward, expertly speared the head on its fork and brandished it high, taunting the others, before zooming out of the dome. The rest whirred in an eager, hopeful mob around Angel. As I watched, she tore off another snake’s head and threw it up with happy glee.

Devilled sorcerer’s soul.Hopefully they were taking it somewhere hot. ‘Is Angel her real name?’ I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.

‘She was first named for Our Mother’—Grianne’s grey eyes stayed fixed on her charge—‘but it was not a prudent choice, as the goddess quickly took her for Her own, and to call her by that name is to risk Her answering.’

I suppressed a shudder as I recalled the somethingI’d seen looking out at me from Angel’s eyes. Had that been Her—Danu, The Mother? And if Angel was once named for Danu, then why were we in Disney Heaven, with its clichéd image of the Christian God? Somehow that didn’t seem overly tactful, or prudent. If I were Angel, I’d be wary of pissing off a goddess who was likely to appear and answer my prayers in person. But then again, if I had Danu hitchhiking in my mind whenever She felt like it, then maybe I wouldn’t see Her as a higher—and much scarier—being. It explained a lot, though: the combination of Danu and Grianne was enough to make anyone barking mad.

‘Clíona renamed her Rhiannon, but she has not answered to that name for a long while,’ Grianne continued, with a long-suffering sigh. ‘Now she goes only by those names she chooses herself, and she has been Angel since you returned her to us. It would not be a problem, but she also insists on manifesting wings. At least she has not yet mastered them enough for flight, and we hope this phase will pass before she does. It is difficult enough to keep track of her as it is.’

‘So,’ I said, pushing away an overly affectionate cloud hovering near my face, ‘who is she?’

‘Clíona’s youngest daughter.’

No wonder Clíona had been so hot for me to find her and send her home! Having her youngest daughter safe was obviously more important than her erstwhile goal to eradicate me and my vamp-tainted blood. I filed the information away; maybe I could use it somehow to make Clíona take back her death promise if I became pregnant (unlikely), or refused her offer of sanctuary (very likely) …

Grianne rested her chin on her hands. ‘She has been watching you since you helped her.’

I snorted. ‘You can tell Clíona from me that stalking is illegal.’ Not to mention skin-crawlingly creepy.

‘It is Angel who watches you. She has conjured your image in every mirror, pool of water or silver surface at court. Sometimes she spends all night observing you sleep.’

‘What? So the whole court’s spying on me—all the time?’

‘They can do so, if they have a mind to.’

Great. I was the star in my very own magical Big Brother/ Truman Show. My life was now complete.

‘But there are not many who find you entertaining.’ Grianne’s mouth turned down. ‘You work, you eat, you sleep, you read. It appears you lead an uneventful life.’

‘“Star” to “has-been” in five seconds flat,’ I said drily. ‘My ego bleeds.’

‘That is, until this morning.’ Her lip curled, either in either amusement or disgust; I was never sure with Grianne.

I grimaced. ‘Guess a murder always ups the ratings.’ Another drop of blood stained my jeans. ‘And talking of that, it’s been interestingcatching up, Grianne, but sitting here chatting isn’t helping the poor corvid faeling who’s just died, so maybe you could get to the point as to why I’m here, or, you know, just send me back?’

‘You used to enjoy our talks, child,’ she said, sounding unusually wistful, but her gaze was still fixed on Angel. I doubted she was much for listening.

‘If by “talks”, you mean “lectures”’– on and on, about all things fae—‘and by “enjoy”, you mean “suffer”, then yes, I did. Get to the point, Grianne.’

‘Of course,’ she said briskly, ‘you should know that Clíona came to regret what she had wrought with the droch guidhe, so she petitioned Our Mother for a way to undo it. Our Mother decreed there should be a child for a child, and Angel is that child. She was created to break the curse.’

Whoa.I stared at her, questions jamming my mind to a standstill until the important one finally popped out. ‘So why isn’t the curse broken?’

‘Our Mother’s decree did not come with any specific commands other than to give birth to the child.’

Of course it didn’t. Gods and goddesses don’t do instruction leaflets—that would be way too easy. Although a child for a childsounded like it meant some sort of …

‘Birth is not the only path that Clíona has trodden seeking an end to this,’ she said. ‘Death has been another.’

… sacrifice.

‘It did not break the curse either,’ she finished in the same brisk tone.

‘Do London’s fae know about all this?’ I demanded.

She briefly turned her eerie eyes on me. ‘Have you asked them what they know, child?’

Have I—? Surprise hit me like a stampeding troll. Crap. I hadn’t. In fact, the only fae I’d talked to about the curse were Finn and Tavish the kelpie, and if I was honest, they hadn’t exactly been long conversations. As for the rest of London’s fae, I definitely hadn’t tried to talk to them about anything; all I’d done was hole up in my flat with the ton of books they’d collected over the last eighty-odd years in their efforts to find a solution.

Fuck. Why the hell would I do that?

‘As I have already told you, you lead an uneventful life. This is not what Clíona intended when she gifted you this time to break the droch guidhe.’

I really needed to find out what was going on. I jumped up. ‘Okay, message received. You can send me back now.’

‘I would, but it was not I who brought you here.’ She pointed at Angel, who was still humming as she smiled up at the blue-painted sky. All the devil/cherubs and hissing snakes were gone now, but the crows were still attacking the toys. They appeared to be concentrating on some more than others, but with all the bloodstained stuffing flying about, it was difficult to be sure. ‘Angel was watching your trials with the faeling and the human police,’ Grianne said, ‘and as soon as the circle opened, she calledyou to her. I only followed in her wake.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘ Shebeing Angel, or The Mother?’

‘I do not know, child.’

Great. I was either here at the whim of Miss Looney Tunes, which could mean I was stuck here, or The Mother, which might be much worse. There was only one way to find out. I took a deep breath, arranged my face in what I hoped was a suitably deferential smile (just in case I was addressing The Mother), and strode over to Angel. ‘I really would like to go back now, please,’ I said, ‘if you could arrange it? Or if there’s something you think I should know, then please could you tell me?’

Angel grinned, showing small, white, even teeth, grabbed my hands and twirled us round. Her golden wings beat the air, and a backwash of honey and vanilla-scented wind blew my hair back and the dome blurred as she whirled us round and round, faster and faster … and as our feet left the ground, she let me go—

–and I flew through the air, crash-landed into the side of the dome and slid down into a crumpled heap. The proverbial stars blinded my vision in a rainbow of coloured lights, and as they cleared, I found her leaning over me.

‘They are all dying,’ she whispered, then danced away from me, the long tips of her golden wings dragging in the fluffy clouds.

‘Who’s dying?’ I croaked.

The wheeling crows cawed loudly, then dropped, their small black bodies plummeting down, morphing back into blood-splattered feathers as they fell. Right, the faelings.

‘He is killing them,’ she shouted.

‘He?’

She raised her arms up to the blue-painted heaven. The old man’s benign smiling face had changed. And now a sharp-featured caricature of a horned Satan laughed down at us instead.

Someone really needed to buy her a digital camera.

She crouched next to me and I froze as she fixed me with her pale gold gaze. ‘She prays for my help.’ Shadows shifted in her eyes and she touched her finger to my breastbone. ‘Her prayers disturb my thoughts. Put ashes in my mouth. Pierce my flesh. ’ Her voice took on a deeper timbre. ‘You will stop this. You will answer her pleas. You will break this curse. You will give them a new life.’

I really hoped that didn’t mean what I thought. ‘What new life?’

Angel blinked, and a wide happy smile bloomed on her face. ‘She says to send you back now.’

She flicked her finger against my chest—

And I tumbled into freefall …

Chapter Six

‘The sidhe’s not fadingagain, is she, satyr?’ A male voice: rough, remembered, hated—

Thin ropes snapped tighter around my ankles. Panic raced through my body; instinctively I jerked my legs against the bindings.

‘By all the gods, dryad!’ Another male voice: angry, worried, and reassuringly familiar. Finn. ‘I told you, keep your branches to yourself before I take an iron axe to your tree.’

The ropes slithered away, taking my panic with them. I was back in the humans’ world. Finnwas here. Wherever herewas. Finn meant safety—

Then my body chimed in with a barrage of complaints, too mixed up for me to work out what part of me was suffering the most—my stomach, my head, or my back, where I was laying on something cold, hard and unyielding; concrete, maybe.

A gentle hand brushed my face. ‘C’mon, Gen, you need to wake up now,’ Finn said softly.

‘Don’t want to,’ I groaned in a whisper. Opening my eyes was too much effort. ‘Everything hurts.’

‘Yeah, well, absorbinga circle will do that,’ he said, exasperation threading through the worry.

Yeah, and getting thrown around by a goddess doesn’t help much either. Still, I was alive, if not yet kicking. And thinking of being alive– ‘The corvid faeling?’ I opened my eyes and stared up at Finn where he crouched beside me; his face was sombre, his usual moss-green eyes dark with sadness.

I sighed. ‘She didn’t survive, did she?’

He shook his head.

Damn. I didn’t think she had, not after seeing all the crows die, but I had to ask.

‘Hugh told me the doc isn’t sure if her head injury was deliberate, or a result of her being in the river.’ Finn’s light touch as he brushed away a tear from my cheek told me I was crying again. Damn stupid tears.‘You couldn’t have done anything, Gen; the doc said even if she’d been on the operating table while you removed the spells, he wouldn’t have been able to save her.’

‘ They are dying.’ Angel’s voice rang in my mind. ‘ He is killing them.’

I knew the poor corvid faeling wasn’t the first to die, and by the sounds of it she wasn’t going to be the last. Whatever was happening was ongoing, and it was down to the curse. Angel—or rather, The Mother—had been clear on that. They– She—had also been clear that Ihad to stop it.

And I was with Her one thousand per cent; the sooner faelings stopped dying the better. I just wished She’d given me more than a caricature of a photofit to go on.

I gritted my teeth and sat up. Vaguely, I registered I was outside, sitting on the concrete dock of Dead Man’s Hole, not far from the disused mortuary where the dead faeling had been found. There were still police and others milling about, so I couldn’t have been out for long …

My vision blurred, a wave of dizziness hit me and I dropped my head to my knees.

Finn draped my jacket round me. ‘Take it slowly, okay?’ he said, his voice low with concern as he rubbed my shoulders.

Part of me wanted to melt into that concern. It would be so easy. He was my friend, and more—or at least both of us wanted him to be more. Trouble was, ‘more’ to me meant going out on a few dates, getting to know each other a lotbetter, and having fun finding out if the attraction between us was as hot and magical as it seemed. But thanks to the curse, Finn’s ‘more’ meant he wanted to court me, to jump the broom with me– To make a baby with me. And that wasn’t the only problem with whatever our relationship could be. Magic and fae genetics might make me a full-blood sidhe, but my father was still a vamp. Most fae—the majority—are wary of vamps, and rightly so, but Finn hated vamps with a passion. If it wasn’t for the curse, would he still want ‘more’? Still want me? I wanted to believe he would, but …

But yearning after him like a Glamour-trapped human wasn’t going to get me any answers. Or stop the killer. Or crackthe curse.

‘ You will stop this. You will give them a new life.’

IfI took Danu’s command to mean what I thought it meant, and ifI ignored all the problems that came with me having a child, then me getting pregnant should crackthe curse and stop any more faelings dying because of it. They were pretty big ‘ifs’, especially considering the life-altering consequences involved. But even if they turned out to be not so iffyin the end, the faeling from three weeks ago and the corvid faeling today would still be dead, and whoever killed them would still be free. The murderer might be motivated by the curse—which wasn’t in any way a justification—but that didn’t mean once the curse was gone, that he’d stop killing. Odds were he’d find another reason to justify his actions. And faelings could still end up as victims, even without a curse making them easy targets. So before I changed my mind and got all positive about the whole baby-making/curse-breaking business, I needed to find the murderer.

And that meant I needed to talk to the police and tell them about my tête-à-tête with The Mother.

And that meant talking to DI Helen Crane.

Yeah. Like that was going to work. The Witch-bitch wouldn’t give me the time of day, even with Hugh backing me up, so I was going to need help: someone she wouldn’t ignore. And that someone was sitting right next to me.

I rested my cheek on my knees so I could look at Finn. ‘The faeling’s death is to do with the curse,’ I said quietly.

His hand on my shoulders stilled. ‘How do you know?’

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out—not because I didn’t want to tell him, not because he wouldn’t believe me, but because The Mother’s commands obviously came with a gag clause, one that currently had invisible hands around my throat doing their best to strangle me. Why the hell would she do that? Unless … she didn’t want me inadvertently tipping off the murderer.

‘Sorry,’ I finally gasped, ‘can’t tell you!’

‘“Can’t”, or “won’t”?’ Finn was good. He caught on quick.

I reached out, squeezed his knee and shook my head.

A thoughtful frown lined his forehead and I studied him as the invisible hands relaxed their hold on my throat. He was worth studying. With his strong, clean-cut human features, his short bracken-coloured horns standing about an inch above his dark blond wavy hair, his broad shoulders and honed muscular body, he looked like every human’s wet dream of a sex god—if their idea of a sex god was dressed in a dark chocolate-coloured business suit, with a cream shirt open enough at the neck to offer a tantalising glimpse of luscious tanned skin sprinkled with sleek sable hair, that is. But the handsome-human look was just that: a look, or rather a Glamour—not a spelled glamour, like the one on the dead faeling, but a true Glamour, made from his own will and self-perception.

Finn’s fae self is wilder, more feral, more gorgeous …

At the thought, magic bloomed inside me and lust and longing spread a rising heat through my body, catching me by surprise. A faint sheen of gold rippled over my fingers where they still rested on Finn’s knee as the magic reached out to him and I snatched my hand back in horror before he noticed. This so couldn’t be happening—not now, not after the magic had been quiet for so long. Crap. The last thing I needed was for itto join in and play matchmaker. I screwed my eyes shut, determined to push the feelings away.

It felt like trying to push back an incoming tide.

Trouble was, the magic likedFinn; it always had done. Of course, it didn’t help that he didn’t just looklike a sex god; he was one, or at least descended from one, since his long-ago satyr ancestors were worshipped as fertility deities—until the archetypal horned god image was relegated to the dark side and characterised as all that was evil.

Oh, and renamed Satan.

Damn it! If The Mother thought I was going to suspect Finn, the ultimate white knight and all-round good guy, of having anything to do with the faelings’ deaths, then She was nuttier than Angel.

But there was more than one satyr in London, and Finn’s herd, like the rest of London’s fae, were desperate to hear the pitter-patter of tiny hooves—so desperate that nine months ago they’d shelled out big-time for the Spellcrackers.com London franchise, and made Finn the boss– my boss—as a pre-emptive nuptial gift, to give us time to get to know each other(and making Finn their number one prospective curse– crackingdaddy in the process). I didn’t know how much money was involved, but I knew they were up to their eyes in hock to the Witches’ Council. That amounted to a lot of desperation.

I opened my eyes. ‘Finn, what’s the head count of the herd?’

‘Ninety-three.’ His gaze sharpened. ‘Why?’

Too many suspects. I needed some way to whittle them down. ‘Just wondering.’

‘Wondering what?’

The invisible hands grabbed my throat. I shook my head again.

He gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. ‘Okay, then.’ He slid his phone open with a quiet click. ‘Then if you can’t tell me, maybe you can tell Helen.’

Stupid irrational jealousy spiked as he said her name. I wanted him to call her: it was the right thing to do, to tell the DI in charge about a clue that could help solve the faelings’ deaths, and maybe prevent more. That was a solution I wanted more than she did, going by her recent stonewalling. The fact that Helenwas still Finn’s number one speed-dial, despite being his ex for however many years, and that she never seemed far from his mind despite him saying it was over between them? Well, actions speak louder …

He snapped his phone shut. ‘Helen wants us to meet her at Old Scotland Yard’—the Met’s Murder and Magic squad HQ—‘and she needs you to give a statement about today.’ He gave me a sympathetic look. ‘Do you think you’re able to get up yet, Gen?’

‘Sodding hell, satyr, stop mollycoddling the bloody sidhe.’ The loud, sneering words snapped my head up. ‘She’s got to be taken care of, and if you’re not up to it, then I am.’

Damn. I’d forgotten about the dryad.