Текст книги "The Shifting Price of Prey"
Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод
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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 33 страниц)
To find Gold Cat waiting for us.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Gold Cat looked like it had been pulled through a hedge backwards too. Or a war. Its funky metallic coat was dull and stuck up in dried-tinsel clumps. One ear was ripped, one eye swollen closed. Its ribs showed. And a long bloody gash scored its left flank.
‘What the hell do you want?’ I muttered.
Need help.The words were a low growl in my head.
I gave it a narrowed look. ‘It speaks?’
She,corrected Viviane.
‘She?’
Your ùmaidh, your gender,Viv said cheerfully. How else would she mate with the satyr?
Fury boiled through me and Ascalon appeared in my hand with a burst of green dragonfire. ‘Once she’s dead, that’ll put an end to her mating with Finn.’
Gold Cat opened her mouth and dropped a gold coin. It was one of the Emperor’s. Need me. Save mate.
She means you can’t kill her because she’s got the gold coin the Emperor’s werewolves gave her for the satyr,Viviane said. It’s her invitation into the Forum Mirabilis to barter for him.
I scooped the coin up. ‘I don’t need the cat. Only the coin.’
Viviane twirled her parasol. The coin only works as an invitation into the Forum for the one it was given to, or their nominated proxy. I doubt she will give you her proxy, if you intend to kill her.
Frustration had me briefly closing my eyes. I took a calming breath and let Ascalon slide back into my ring. ‘If the coin only works for her, or her proxy, what’s she doing here? Why isn’t she off to the Forum?’
Gold Cat’s ears flattened. Need you speak.
She wanted me as her mouthpiece. Figured. Except she still didn’t need me. Or she hadn’t when she’d decided to make Finn her mate. ‘Why isn’t she just jumping in and doing her possession bit like she did before?’
Her whiskers quivered in disgust. Not strong.
I took a closer lookat Gold Cat. Beneath her ‘been in the wars’ look, her body was faded, almost transparent. She was my ùmaidh. A temporary changeling. They usually had a couple of weeks, sometimes even a month. But Gold Cat didn’t look so lucky. My guess was she had a couple of days at most.
She means she’s too weak because she is dying—
‘I managed to work it out for myself, thanks, Viv,’ I said flatly, despite the anxious pounding of my heart. Carlson had been dying too because his mate had died, so he said. So if Gold Cat was dying and she was mated to Finn– I squatted next to Gold Cat, grabbed her by the scruff, demanded, ‘If you die what happens to Finn?’
Mated you too.
I blinked. ‘Thought you said he wasn’t mine, Viv?’
Was not,Gold Cat said sourly. Is now.
She means the mate bond jumped to you too,Viviane supplied with a touch of smugness, when you reclaimed the satyr just now.
Relief streamed through me. So Finn wasn’t going to die when Gold Cat did. That was the good news. And of course the magic would take its pound of flesh for that little bargain. Still, it could’ve been worse. But that didn’t mean I was just going to accept being mated to Finn; not when it wasn’t what I’d chosen. And for all Finn saying he wanted us to be together he hadn’t chosen to be mated either. If it wasn’t what he truly desired, then sooner or later he’d feel trapped, never mind whatever magic the mate bond was supposed to do to make us like each other. I gave Gold Cat a shake. ‘Can you undo the mating without killing either of us?’
Not possible.Her copper-coloured eyes slowly blinked and my heart sank. For me.
Tentative hope flared in me. Specific questions, Gen.‘Is there someone that can undo the mating without killing either Finn or me?’
Her pink tongue swiped her muzzle thoughtfully. Yes.
‘Who?’
Shrewdness flickered over her furry face. Save mate first.
I sighed, not even surprised. Standard negotiation tactics. Next she’d be asking me to find a way to keep her alive before she’d tell me who could break the mate bond. After all, she wanted to survive. But saving Finn was more important right now. In that we were of one mind, so we might as well be of one body. I tightened my hold on Gold Cat’s neck and lifted her. For something that looked the size of a chunky tiger, she was as limp and light as a kitten, but then the physical part of her was virtually non-existent.
‘Say hello to your fellow passenger, Viv,’ I said, as I absorbed Gold Cat in a brush of tickling fur. She landed on the grassy bank next to Viviane in a tumble of tail and paws. Viviane sniffed and brushed a couple of loose cat hairs off her dress. Gold Cat staggered to her feet, shook herself then curled up on the grass, tucked her nose under her paws and went to sleep as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Nice for some. I rolled my shoulders, feeling the muscle ache of swordplay setting in. At least with Gold Cat and her coin on board I could waltz right into the Forum; a way better plan than the original one of letting Mad Max walk me into his ‘trap’. But I still needed backup. And I needed to know what else had happened while I’d been stuck in Between.
I dug my phone out – surprisingly, it was working!– and called Hugh.
‘Genny, thank the peaks. Are you all right?’ His frantic rumble calmed as I told him I wasokay and where I was: Primrose Hill.
‘I’ll send a van to pick you up. What happened.’
I gave him the highlights: we’d been kidnapped by the gnome and the cat-shifters. They’d disappeared, and Finn had been taken by the Emperor’s werewolves.
‘Finn’s safe, Genny,’ Hugh said. ‘Half the herd were searching for you two in Between. They ran across him with the werewolves.’
My legs gave way with relief and I sat abruptly on the rough ground. ‘Is he okay?’
‘He’s been injured. There was quite a battle between the satyrs and the werewolves from what I understand, but he’s in a healing trance and should be fine.’
A bubble of joy expanded inside me and I felt a grin spread across my face. ‘That’s wonderful, Hugh.’ I jumped up, punching my arm into the air. Finn was safe. Everything else, like the mate problem and my lost memory, could be sorted out. I told Hugh I had another coin. ‘So now we’ve got three invitations to the Forum auction, which should up the odds of saving the kidnap victims.’
‘Sorry, Genny, but Finn’s coin isn’t going to help,’ Hugh said, then filled me in.
The police had already tried to gain entrance to the Forum auction using the coins. Mary (as the police’s main undercover girl due to her ability to mind-speak with her mother over any distance and so relay info back) had gone along with the Bangladeshi ambassador (who’d refused to let anyone else use his coin). But as soon as the pair had crossed into the Carnival Fantastique (the ambassador had been told the Forum Mirabilis was at its ‘heart’, wherever that was), the ambassador had vanished, as had Mad Max’s coin, leaving Mary and the police backup team with nothing.
‘So we think the coins contain some sort of dormant Translocation spell,’ Hugh finished, ‘but it only activates if the corresponding lot they’d been given in payment for is actually in the Forum. So now you’re back I’d like to put your cousin Maxim’s plan into action. If you think you’re okay to?’
‘Just try and stop me!’
Ten minutes later I reached the park entrance. The gnome’s house opposite was sporting crime-scene tape. I jumped into the police van waiting for me and Constable Taegrin told me that the cambion had confessed to buying (unlicensed) dried garden fairy and various other illegal aphrodisiacs from the horrid little gnome. The cambion was under arrest but, annoyingly, the gnome had slipped the police net, obviously by disappearing into Between.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if there’s any justice a swampie or one of the other nasties in there will eat him.’
‘A fitting end, Genny,’ Taegrin agreed with a grin, giving me a glimpse of shiny gold teeth, ‘but the boss would rather we had him in custody. He was going nuts with you missing. We were all worried, so glad you’re okay.’
‘So am I,’ I said. ‘So we’re back to the zoo again?’
‘Yes. Back to see the tigers.’
I gave a quiet huff. Gold Cat was gonna love them.
I was right. Gold Cat’s hackles went up the minute I’d entered the covered corridor of the tiger exhibit, and she’d circled restlessly around Viviane until Viv poked Gold Cat with her parasol. Gold Cat then slunk off behind the curtain of willows on the canal bank and I hadn’t seen her since. Not that her disappearing had made the zoo’s tigers happy. Through the corridor’s U-shaped viewing windows I could still see them crouched low to the ground, ears flat, their own hackles raised, eyeing me like I was an interloper in their territory and they weren’t sure whether to attack or run away.
Much like the two males before me.
I narrowed my gaze at Mad Max. His long platinum ponytail was tied at his nape with black ribbon, and his diamond dog-tags glinted in the V of his unbuttoned-to-the-waist black silk shirt, which was tucked into black satin dress trousers. He looked like a naff Legolas crossed with an eighties Medallion Man. ‘Look, Maxim,’ I said, tapping my boot on the blue plastic of my portable circle which I’d laid out in the centre of the corridor. ‘Stop being a wimp and get in the circle.’
Mad Max shot me a fang-filled grin and drawled, ‘Sorry, love, no can do. Not till the old kelpie here says you’re not going to chew my face off.’
‘I’ve told you I won’t,’ I snapped. ‘I gave you my word.’
‘Aye, doll, but you’re nae the one in control,’ Tavish said, the beads on his dreads flashing from black to warning amber and back again, as they had since he’d first clapped eyes on me and seen not only my own golden soul but the red glow of Viviane’s too. Damn kelpie. If he’d keep his eyes on everyone’s shells instead of their souls, this would be so much easier. So far, for whatever reason, he’d missed Gold Cat. And no way was I planning on mentioning her after his kneejerk reaction to Viviane.
I threw my hands in the air and looked appealingly at Hugh. ‘Can’t you do something?’
Hugh shook his head silently. He’d bowed to Tavish’s greater experience about my so-called possession, though he didn’t look too happy about it; his ruddy face was creased with concerned crevices, and anxious red dust sprinkled his straight-up black hair and the broad shoulders of his pressed white shirt. Neither did Mary, standing to attention next to Hugh, her face watchful, her police-issue stun baton extended ready at her side. Backing them up were Dessa, Constable Taegrin, Lamber and the rest of the WPCs and trolls from the Met’s Magic and Murder Squad. If sheer numbers counted in rescuing the kidnap victims, they’d be safe already. As they weren’t, we were putting Mad Max’s ‘trap’ plan into action.
Once Mad Max had popped out of his doggy shape he’d told Hugh the details of the ‘trap’ to get me into the Forum. He was to send me through a replica of the Portal spell the Emperor’s werewolves had used to kidnap the victims from here at the zoo. Hugh was hoping that once the replica portal was open all his girls and boys in blue would follow me through but, in case that part of the plan didn’t pan out, Mary and the witches were aiming to recast the replica Portal spell once they’d seen it. The preparations had been going swimmingly right up till Tavish appeared and declared me possessed by Viviane.
I gritted my teeth, turned back to Tavish. ‘I’m the one in control, not Viviane.’
His lacy gills snapped shut against his throat. ‘Aye, well she’ll be letting you think that, but with Viviane in occupation, you cannae be.’
And whose fault it that?I wanted to yell at him. Yours! You should’ve said I was only supposed to give the tarot cards my bloodonce instead of taking off in a kelpie hissy fit. Instead, I stuck my hands on my hips. ‘Time’s running out. Max, you need to get in the circle and, Tavish, I want those cards. Now.’
In answer Tavish crouched, calleda flick-knife, sliced his finger and flung blood on to the circle marked on my blue plastic. The circle rose, sealing me in, its dome rippling turquoise like the Caribbean Sea in a stiff wind. Tavish straightened, threw his arms wide and started muttering. His eyes swirled the same turquoise colour, and power beaded like water on the green-black skin of his bare chest, trickling down to be soaked up by his black silk harem pants.
The frown on Hugh’s face deepened. ‘What are you doing, àrd-cheann?’
Trying to exorcise me,Viviane said cheerfully. You should tell him that only works when the spirit is in full possession. Something only a demon can truly achieve for more than a few hours.
‘I’m not interested in telling him anything he already knows,’ I muttered, slicing my index finger on my own knife, then jabbing my bloody finger at the watery dome. It popped, as I expected, like a kid’s balloon, thanks to the safety feature I’d built into it. And even as I glimpsed shock on Tavish’s face, I calledthe Stun spell from Mary’s baton and flicked it towards him. He jerked at the last minute and it glanced off his shoulder. It was still enough to take him to the floor in a flash of green lightning and a burst of burned mint.
‘Maxim Fyodor Zakharin,’ I shouted. ‘You are tasked to put my needs above all others, including yourself. I need you to get in this circle now.’
Mad Max’s jaw dropped as his legs moved of their own accord and marched him into the circle. As soon as he was in, I bent and touched my blood to the circle. This time the dome rose up with a shimmer of reddish-gold. I gave Tavish a suck-on-that smile.
Mad Max shook as if shedding water. ‘It seems it is truly you, Cousin.’ He sketched a bow. ‘As I am apparently at your command.’
Well, that pretty much confirmed my other suspicion. The text Malik had sent telling me I was dumped, and that I should talk to Mad Max if I needed anything, hadn’t come from Malik. But psycho Bastien. Malik hadn’t dumped me, though he had still cut me out of the loop when he’d ‘sent’ me home from the boating lake island, so we still had stuff to sort out. But hell, if the psycho prick was using Malik’s phone, it meant the beautiful vamp was in trouble.
I jabbed Mad Max in the chest. ‘What’s the sadistic bastard done with Malik? And don’t try to pretend you don’t know what I mean.’
He heaved a theatrical sigh. ‘Dogs are given commands, not information, cousin dearest.’
‘Dogs also have ears,’ I said.
‘Doesn’t mean they hear anything of interest.’
‘Bastien told me you would lead me to Malik,’ I snapped.
‘Me lead you to the Turk?’ Mad Max shrugged then tapped his head. ‘Sorry, don’t have that order in here, love.’
I glared at him, desperately wanting him to tell me where Malik was, to pound the information out of him. And knowing it would be a waste of my energy. ‘Well, that’s just crap,’ I muttered, frustrated.
He grinned jovially, then wrinkled his nose and sniffed. ‘Talking about the Turk, he’s not going to be a happy bunny that you stink of sex, satyr and fetid feline, Cousin. Whatever have you been up to?’
Damn vamp supersenses. ‘Nothing you need to know about,’ I said flatly, trying not to squirm and wishing I’d had time for a longer shower in the zoo’s staff facilities. At least Mary had a clean T-shirt and jeans ready for me. I poked Mad Max. ‘All you need to do is follow my orders.’
‘Then follow them I shall, love. I’ve always had a yen for woman with power.’ He raised a sardonic brow as he leaned forward and whispered, ‘Oh, what fun we could have, if not for the Turk and his Royal Brattiness.’
‘And the fact that I’d castrate you quicker than you could say “Poodle Power”,’ I snapped back.
‘Ouch.’ He shuddered dramatically and leaned away.
‘Okay, so now I need the tarot cards.’ I looked at Tavish, who was holding his no doubt numb arm and glowering at my circle. ‘You can see I’m myself, so you ready to give them to me yet?’
His beads turned murky grey with refusal. ‘Doll, I cannae give you the cards. You cannae trust yourself with Viviane. She’ll lead you astray afore you ken what she’s doing. She’s a leannán sidhe.’
‘Leannán sidhe!’ Mad Max’s eyes almost popped out of his head as he backed up until he hit my circle.
Viviane was one of the dark muses? Well, that explained her obsession with all things arty. And Mad Max’s panic and Tavish’s alarm. A leannán sidhe’s inspiration comes at a high cost: possible madness and early death, though usually nothing that could be pinned on the muse herself. Van Gogh, Marilyn Monroe and Alexander McQueen were all suspected victims of the leannán sidhe. Still, Viviane wasn’t likely to drive a non-human to a quick, iffy demise through an overload of inspiration so she could suck down their creative energies, but if she got her metaphorical claws in deep enough, she could probably send a vamp crazy. Not that it would make much difference in Mad Max’s case.
Which made me wonder what exactly she’d done to Tavish for him to trap her in a set of tarot cards for near enough quarter of a century. I asked.
His beads turned a cagey purple. ‘Ah, she was an apprentice of sorts.’
Pfft! Apprentice! I was his artist’s model! His inspiration. The Love of his Life!Viviane’s shouting reverberated round my head. Until he took up with Turner. Don’t ever go swimming with him, bean sidhe, she warned. He’ll whip your soul out of your body faster than you can scream.
Briefly I closed my eyes. A lover’s tiff. Could my night get any better? ‘Tavish, give me the cards.’
His dreads writhed in refusal.
But Hugh had obviously decided I was truly me too, as he reached down, hooked a large hand under Tavish’s arm and pulled him onto his feet. ‘Think it’s best if you give Genny the cards, àrd-cheann,’ he rumbled warningly. ‘Otherwise I will have to arrest you for obstruction.’
A frustrated ‘on your own head be it’ look settled on Tavish’s face. He flicked his fingers and the tarot cards appeared in his palm and he said sullenly, ‘I make a gift of the tarot cards containing the leannán sidhe spirit, Viviane, to you, Genevieve.’
The cards streamed from his hand to hover in a neat upright stack in front of my face. The top card showed Viviane sitting by her canalbank in her lavender dress and bonnet, twirling her parasol. She was smirking.
‘I am in your debt, bean sidhe.’ She dipped her head, then, without turning, flipped her middle finger in Tavish’s direction. ‘Two hundred and forty-one years he has kept me enslaved to those cards. And he did not even allow me to do regular readings. Te-di-ous!’
Tavish flinched. Mad Max gave an appreciative, albeit nervous barking laugh.
‘Save your crowing, Viv,’ I said, and stuffed the cards into my jeans pocket, ignoring her muffled protests. ‘Right, Maxim, time to do your stuff.’
Chapter Fifty-Five
‘Time for the blood-letting, Cousin,’ Mad Max said, after he’d explained the mechanics of the spell.
One of which involved him sinking his fangs into me, the prospect of which had him grinning at me like a dog who’d found a stash of meaty bones. I shoved my sleeve up, stiff-armed him back, but left my hand on his chest. That was as close as he was getting.
He grinned wider, took my hand and executed an exaggerated bow as if to bestow a kiss, his platinum ponytail falling over his left shoulder as he did. He raised suggestive blue eyes to mine. ‘You know, Cousin, necks are much more fun than wrists?’
‘Get on with it,’ I said, ‘otherwise I’ll be ringing that vet when this is over.’ I scissored my fingers together under his nose. ‘I hear he does a good deal on doggy snips.’
‘You’re all bitch, love,’ he drawled, then closed his eyes. The hair on my nape rose like hackles as he drew his magic up. A faint silvery-red glow surrounded him like a thin aura. My own magic answered, turning my skin gold, and a distant part of me noted, thankfully, that I wasn’t feeling even the tiniest bit lustful towards Mad Max. Whatever consequences my lost night with Finn in the cave might have, at least the unwanted and embarrassing effects of shacking up with the leaking Fertility pendant were gone.
Mad Max muttered a string of unintelligible-to-me words under his breath, in a language with the same cadence as Gaelic, and I had my usual moment’s envy that a vamp, even one that started out as a wizard, obviously knew and could do more magic than me. I shoved the feeling aside, then braced myself as his grip on my wrist tightened, his lips peeled back from his fangs, and he struck.
Pain, sharp and hot, sliced through me, then was gone. Silver light wound with sapphire blue reeled out from Mad Max like a spool of film unravelling, then vanished, plunging us into darkness. Faint noise, like the distant roll of drums, grew closer and louder and more insistent, and gradually the darkness lightened like dawn colouring the sky—
And then we were in the circle again, Mad Max bowing over my wrist, looking up at me with a lascivious leer, everyone gathered about us, waiting for him to start the spell. The words ‘Get on with it’ came out of my mouth . . .
The air rippled and rolled through the zoo corridor, turning the images around me into watercolours, stretching and streaking and running them together so they flowed counter-clockwise around me, only to disappear downwards as if there were a drain at my feet.
The images streamed faster and faster until I stood in a whirlpool of silvery blue.
The drumming reached a crescendo.
It cut out.
The last of the whirlpool drained away, leaving me bathed in morning light, as the kidnap scene took shape. It was slightly out of focus, as if I were looking through a greasy lens.
Two dark-skinned males – the bodyguards – in their green and gold embroidered kurtas and mirrored aviators stood in the centre of the corridor watching a small black-haired boy who had climbed into one of the U-shaped windows and had his nose pressed against the glass: Dakkhin Jangali, the kidnapped child. On the other side of the window, the zoo’s two tigers were rubbing the sides of their faces against the glass as if they could touch him. Behind the boy stood a tall, lithely muscled woman in an orange sari, an indulgent smile on her face: Mrs Bandevi Jangali, the boy’s mother and wife to the ambassador. Next to her was a stylish twenty-something male wearing a dark business suit: the zoo’s publicity director, Jonathan Weir. He had his phone out, snapping shots of the boy and the tigers.
Look around, love,Mad Max whispered. Find the beacon. And remember, keep schtum, you can’t interact with the spell until I give the word.I looked. But other than the usual patches of wild untamed magic there was nothing to see.
‘There’s nothing—’
A high krick kricknoise filled the corridor and the eagle – the changeling – swooped in. It opened its beak and vomited a ribbon of green magic, as it had in Trafalgar Square. The ribbon twisted, morphing into a verdant green serpent that hung suspended in the air.
The beacon!
The eagle dived to land a few feet in front of the group. As the bird’s feet touched the ground it shimmered into a pale-skinned woman, her dark hair piled atop her head, dressed in a floor-length Roman tunic. Her pupils were hard black ovals, her irises the same blood-red as molten sulphur, similar in all but colour to any other sidhe changeling’s eyes, or mine.
Shock winged through me – not at her eyes, I’d expected them – but that I recognised her, not even needing the black ink marking her bare arms or the tiny black crescent kissing the corner of her lush mouth to confirm her identity.
The changeling was the Empress from the tarot cards, and Bastien’s mother from Malik’s dream/memory of the harem– Malik’s wife?
Only she couldn’t be. Changelings only lived a mortal lifespan once they left the Fair Lands. The only way a mortal could live longer was through dealing with demons . . . or being blood-bonded to a vamp. Then they lived and died on the vamp’s ticket. The Empress was blood-bonded to the Emperor. Hard on that shock was what the hell would Malik think that his wife was blood-bound to another vamp, and the Emperor at that; the vamp who’d sicced the revenant curse on him. Except Malik knew the Emperor, so he had to know who and what the Empress was, didn’t he? Unless he’d thought her dead all this time? No way could I imagine Malik knowing his wife was alive and not going after her. Whether he loved her or not . . .
Not that it mattered who Malik loved.
What mattered was rescuing the victims she’d kidnapped.
The Empress smiled pleasantly at the group, all of whom stared back as if stunned, then she lifted her arms outwards as if she were entreating the heavens. The black ink marking her skin slithered into hard-edged glyphs that shot like Cupid’s arrows into the walls, throwing a Veil over the corridor. More glyphs shot out and struck the suspended snake. As they hit, the space behind her split open like the wide yawning maw of a swamp-dragon. The portal. Beyond the portal was a shadowed stone tunnel lit by flickering fire torches.
Seven dark shapes loped along the tunnel and leaped through the portal into the zoo corridor– wolves. As they hit the ground the first three wolves morphed into the three black-haired, olive-skinned centurions who’d taken Finn. In the seconds it took for them to shift, the other four wolves had circled the two bodyguards, each snagged the tail of the wolf in front and were now racing round them like they were playing the wolf equivalent of ring-a-ring o’ roses. It had to be how they’d stopped the bodyguards from protecting or even knowing what happened to their charges; but whatever magic it was, I couldn’t seeit.
Nets appeared in the hands of the three centurions as they quickly spread out and advanced on Mrs Jangali. She called something that sounded like an order to her son, who crouched down on the windowsill. Then she snarled and crumpled to the ground, her sari disappearing as she shifted into an orange and black tiger indistinguishable from the zoo’s tigers behind the glass. She lunged at the nearest centurion. He dodged out of her way, leaping and rolling in an acrobatic-type move, but not before her claws raked across his chest sending an arc of blood droplets through the air to stain the bodyguard’s green kurta. As the tiger landed and whirled, tail whipping out, the other two centurions flung out their nets and trapped her. Stun magic sparked green, and she dropped like she’d been shot. The two centurions efficiently scooped up the netted tiger as if she were nothing more than a skinned rug, and raced away with her into the portal.
As the third centurion rolled to his feet and sped after the others, the small boy growled and jumped off the windowsill, chasing after them. His action snapped Jonathan, the zoo employee, out of his frozen shock and he grabbed the boy round the waist, only to find he’d seized a wriggling tiger cub. The cub turned on Jonathan and the two fell in a tangled heap of snarls and surprised yells almost at the feet of the Empress.
She shouted a sharp command and the centurion in the portal ran back, threw his net over the struggling pair, then heaved them both up and carried them into the portal. The four wolves circling the bodyguards broke away and loped after him. The Empress gave another pleasant, satisfied smile then gracefully brought her arms down and together in a sweeping motion. The green snake shuddered, ejecting the glyphs as it plunged down to wrap around her throat. She turned and strolled into the portal, the rest of the glyphs springing from the walls and zooming after her as if she were a magical Pied Piper.
Now, Cousin!Mad Max shouted, jerking me into action.
I reached out and calledthe magic.
The snake and the glyphs flew to me, alighting like insubstantial sparrows on my hands and arms, the birds’ tiny talons piercing my flesh with the sharp, hot pain of a vamp’s fangs—
And I found myself staring down at Mad Max’s head, his platinum ponytail dangling over his shoulder, where he was sucking like a blood-starved vamp on my wrist.
My magically ink-stained wrist. The glyphs were writhing over my skin like a fading memory. For a moment I understood what every single glyph meant, as if the knowledge had rushed up into me like a hot spring from deep within the earth. I knew how they’d been drawn. What they would do. I blinked, amazed and full of wonder.
Reverse the magic,Viviane urged.
Almost in a trance I took Mad Max’s ponytail and pulled him from my wrist then swept my foot behind his legs and watched in glee as he sprawled on his arse. He collapsed on to his back, eyes glazed, giggling like he was sloshed, and absently I wondered just how much of my blood he’d drunk. I plucked the black ribbon from his hair. It morphed into a twisting obsidian snake. I flung it out, lifted my arms and castthe glyphs after it. They speared the suspended snake and, as it had for the Empress, the air beneath it split, the portal yawning open on to the torch-lit stone corridor.
Run, quick, before it closes,Viviane yelled.
I ran. And jumped through the portal.
