Текст книги "The Cold Kiss of Death"
Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 23 страниц)
She barked, loud and insistent, a sound that reverberated through the quiet street around me. Humans would only hear the bark; I heard: ‘Hurry up, child, the trees are gaining on you.’
Like I really needed her to tell me that! I gritted my teeth and pushed my legs harder.
The phouka snarled again, baring long black fangs that a true dog would never have, then turned, loping towards the steps this side of the bridge, and disappeared. I caught up; the steep flight rose up to the road above. I grabbed the handrail and flung myself after her, half climbing, half leaping. My lungs were starting to burn. Above me the phouka bounded, sharp claws scratching loudly on the stone and the silver glow from her coat casting welcome light back into the dim stairwell.
Second landing. Behind me I heard shouts, then more of the whistling, rustling noise grated against my ears: the ground-eating legs of the tall pale-faced turban guys were taking the steps two at a time. Shit. I swallowed back an edge of panic and, my heart hitting against my ribs, my thigh muscles bunching with effort, I concentrated on getting to the top.
As I reached the last few steps, vicious snarls and growls erupted, quickly followed by horrified yells and human screams, which almost drowned out the growling. I ran onto the pavement to find the phouka crouching over one of the beanie-hatted dryads on the ground, savaging its throat. The other Beanie Hat was screeching in rage. It kicked out, catching the phouka in the stomach. The phouka yelped and went flying, landing in a scrambling, whining heap at the feet of stunned bystanders.
‘Hey, you!’ I yelled, pleased in some detached part of me that I still had enough breath. ‘Leave that poor dog alone!’
The yellow Beanie Hat whipped round, lips curled, face twisted in a snarl that would have done the phouka proud, and sprang at me. I half-crouched, judged my moment, then shifted low and let Beanie Hat’s own momentum help me heave her over my back. She crash-landed against the bridge’s stone parapet with a noise that sounded like branches snapping in the wind and lay still. The other Beanie lay moaning on the ground, yellow-tinged sap trickling from the wounds on his throat. The onlookers stared, huddled under their umbrellas and muttering, their eyes darting from Beanie to Beanie to me, indecisive.
‘Quickly, child,’ the phouka said as she trotted to my side, ‘tell me where the faeling you’ve rescued is hidden before these vermin regain their senses.’
‘It’s not a faeling this time, Grianne.’ I looked down at the phouka. ‘There’s another sidhe in London, and a human has been murdered. I need to know who’s opened a gate—’
‘Enough, I will attend to this.’ The phouka growled, ears flat against her skull. ‘Meet me here tomorrow as the sun is cresting.’ A wet nose pushed into my hand. ‘Now run, child, the other trees are coming. I will detain them.’
For a second, I laid my palm over her rain-wet silky head, wondering what her help was going to cost me, but—‘I owe you one, Grianne.’ Her eyes blazed yellow and feral as she dipped her muzzle in acknowledgment, then I turned and raced towards the Underground.
Chapter Twelve
Ihit London Bridge Station still running, slapped my Oyster card over the reader and raced down the escalators into the rush of warm air that signalled a train arriving: Jubilee Line westbound to Waterloo and Stanmore. I tucked myself in by one of the doors, my feet braced, my body swaying with the juddering carriage. My heart slowed and I started to feel uncomfortable, my sweat-and-rain-damp clothes feeling sticky in the hothouse air of the packed Tube train. I wrinkled my nose, hoping I didn’t reek too much of exertion and panic, a smell that would be all-too-attractive to any vamps out on the prowl.
I doubted the dryads would follow me underground, but they hadn’t looked like they were going to give up their kidnap the sidheidea anytime soon, so just to be sure, I scanned the packed commuters searching for anyone in a hat. My gaze skimmed a big man in a homburg, bushy grey hair poking out round his ears, and automatically dismissed him as human. I passed over a couple with matching camo berets, and a group of Jews in their kippah skull-caps. Why were the dryads chasing me? And why had Cosette warned me about them back at the Clink? Not that I wasn’t grateful; if it hadn’t been for her, the dryads might have cornered me, but ...
I swallowed back my frustration at the delay. Still, if nothing else Grianne should have some info for me in the morning.
We reached Waterloo and I jumped off and started running again, speeding through the curved roof tunnels, heading for the Northern Line. I wasn’t the only one; half a dozen other commuters raced with me, desperate to catch their own trains. I was just desperate to get somewhere safe, and fast, and I didn’t stop until I had flung myself, panting, into the next train. The next stop was Embankment. The doors parted with a clunking sucking sound and I got off, peered up and down the platform and made my way up to the exit. Then I hesitated; I’d been heading back to Tavish almost on autopilot, thinking I’d stay there until it was time to meet Grianne the following morning, but once I was there, doing nothing but hanging around would be a complete waste of time. Not to mention there were a lot of trees to pass between the Underground and the RAF monument.
I leaned against the wall and phoned Tavish ... No answer. I tried Finn next, and as he picked up I heard voices humming in the background.
‘It’s me, Finn,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a whole copse of trees chasing after me, wanting to take me to their leader! What the hell’s going on?’
‘Ah yes, I see, that is a problem. Can I ask you to hold for a moment please?’ His next words were muted. ‘Sorry, I’m going to have to deal with this. I’ll try not to take too long.’ A door opened, then slammed shut and the background thrum of voices silenced. Finn came back on the phone. ‘Just so you know, I’m at Old Scotland Yard,’ he said quietly. ‘What happened to the party you were supposed to meet?’
‘I just told you, the dryads.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Embankment Underground. I tried Tavish but there’s no answer.’
‘Unfortunately my colleague isn’t available tonight.’ Voices rose in the background again. ‘Another matter has come up that needed to be dealt with urgently. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to help you either, not until after midnight. I’m going to be tied up until then.’
Not literally, I hoped.
‘Can you get away?’ I asked. ‘Just to let me into Tavish’s? The entrance doesn’t work on its own for me.’
‘That’s not such a good idea,’ he said. Someone else laughed: a deep rumble that sounded like a troll. ‘That particular course of action could be dangerous.’
‘Dangerous! Okay, Finn, stop messing about and get somewhere where you can talk.’
The phone cut off and I stared at it, anxiety churning inside me. Why dangerous—?The phone rang.
‘Okay, I’m outside now.’ He sounded slightly breathless. ‘There’s too much water at Tavish’s; the naiads might try the same thing as the dryads.’
‘What the—? Why the hell do theywant to kidnap me?’
‘It’s because of the human’s murder. They all think you killed him, and they want to take advantage of it.’
‘Okay, now you’ve totally lost me. How can they take advantage of me—?’ I stopped, suddenly conscious of the people in the station milling round me. ‘—of that,’ I finished.
‘Gen, it’s complicated...’ He hesitated, then said, ‘You know about the droch guidhe—the curse—don’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ I frowned. ‘The local sidhe queen cursed London’s fae to know the grief in her heartwhen she lost her son to the vamps. But what’s that got to do with anything right now?’
‘Well, after the droch guidhefirst came into being there was a spate of faelings killed by the suckers, and everyone thought that was it.’ His voice was flat, almost detached. ‘But as time’s gone on we’ve all realised there’s more to the droch guidhe.Since it was cast, no full-blood child has been born to any of London’s lesser fae, only faelings, so not only do we have to watch our children die because they live only a mortal lifespan, but if our magic doesn’t procreate, it will start to fade. Once the magic fades it won’t be long before we all follow it.’
Fuck. Grianne hadn’t told me about that nasty bit of the curse, but—‘So what exactly has this got to do with me?’ I asked quietly.
‘There’ve been a lot of things tried to break the droch guidhe,’ he went on, his voice not sounding quite as detached, ‘but so far none have worked. The one thing no one has tried yet, because the queen has refused to allow it ... is for one of London’s fae to have a full-blood child with a sidhe,’ he finished quietly.
I blinked as my mind caught up with what he meant.
Grianne had told me the facts of sidhe life when I was fifteen, in more detail than I’d ever wanted to know. Outside of a fertility rite, I’d only ever get pregnant if I wanted to—no morning-after-the-night-before worries for me as Grace had enviously said when I’d told her once—and if I did nothing to influence the pregnancy, then any child I had would inherit only their father’s genes.
It’s a magical anomaly that always seems ‘difficult’ for humans to understand. But they’d proved it themselves—back in the eighties, when the witches’ right to be called human was challenged. Every DNA test known to man was done, and no matter that their fathers were sidhe, the tests showed nothing other than human genes in a witch’s make-up. All a witch’s sidhe father contributes—other than life, of course—is an ability with magic. It’s why a witch’s daughter—born of a witch mother and a non-magical human father—doesn’t inherit their mother’s power. It’s not there to be passed on.
And it was why the sidhe queen’s son had been human.
And by the sounds of it, it was why I’d landed on the dryads’ and the naiads’ Most Wanted list.
‘Whoa, wait a minute!’ I whispered in shocked disbelief. ‘Are you telling me they think they can get me to start popping out babies for them or something? Because it’s sonot going to happen. Even if they kidnap me, they need my freely given consent for that, otherwise the magic doesn’t work.’
‘Unless the magic has already taken the decision for you, Gen,’ he said, an odd edginess to his voice, ‘which they think it has. Then your consent isn’t needed. It’s not even classed as rape under fae tradition.’
‘Listen, anyone who tries to have sex with me without my say-so, regardless of magic, or anything else, is in for a whole load of pain,’ I muttered furiously, casting furtive glances at the commuters around me. ‘And where the fuck do they get such a stupid idea from anyway?’
‘The fertility rite ritual.’ He sighed. ‘Hell’s thorns, Gen, I know it sounds stupid, but it’s not, not when you think about it from their side. As far as they know, you’re not in a relationship, you don’t date, not even humans, and you haven’t made any arrangementswith any other fae. Usually the only reason a fae, particularly a sidhe, abstains from sex is when they’re preparing to bear a child, so when they hear about what’s going on, their first thought is that you’ve abstained for too long and the magic is making you react to any sexual advance you get, even without a proper fertility rite. They believe their way offers a solution to their reproduction problem, and your own.’
‘What,’ I snorted, ‘so kidnapping me to take part in a fertility rite and get me pregnant is just their way of being practical?’
‘Something like that,’ he muttered.
‘Damn! And I thought it was only humans that got all wound up about the sidhe sex myth thing!’
‘Yeah, well, the humans only think about the sex part, and not the reasons behind it. But for them, having children is kind of like falling off a log. For us it’s much more difficult, even without a droch guidheto contend with.’ The words sounded bitter. ‘Anyway, Tavish has gone to talk to them and sort things out, but it might take a while for him to convince them, so you need to be careful. I’m not going to be able to get away from here until after midnight. If you can think of somewhere safe, then I’ll meet you there.’
‘I don’t know ...’ I glanced round and caught sight of a large poster for the HOPE clinic. ‘I’ll go to HOPE; they’re used to dealing with magic and stuff, so if anything happens it’s not going to faze them.’
‘Okay. Look, I’ve got to go, Gen. Helen’s agreed to let me go with them to speak to the florist’s boy. We’re going there now. See you later, and be careful.’
‘Sure,’ I agreed, but I was speaking to a dead phone.
I stood staring blindly at the passing crowds, my mind reeling. Crap! Not only were the vamps inviting me to be their nightly pep-me-up and the police playing hide and seek with me, now the fae wanted to chain me to the bedposts and pass me round as their pet broodmare. And why hadn’t Grianne filled me in on all the nasty details? She had to know about them ...
Then a thought hit me like a sucker-punch. If the dryads and the naiads wanted me for a baby-machine, did that mean the satyrs did too? And if they did, what exactly was Finn’s role here? Prospective daddy? Was that why he’d gone out on a limb with the witches so I could keep my job? And why he’d kept my secret? Maybe his white knight fixation was motivated by something other than overeager protective instincts and the attraction that jumped between us. In fact—Was there any attraction at all on his side, or was his magic just to ease the way for his herd to hear the patter of tiny cloven hooves?
The questions stabbed into me like sharp knives and I hugged myself against the pain. Was that all I meant to him? I looked at the phone; part of me wanted to call him back and ask, but what if the answer was yes? Bad enough that he kept pushing me away ... Then I took a deep breath and told myself not to be stupid. Finn hadbeen pushing me away; in fact, he’d done nothing but reject me since I’d told him about my parentage, so if he was interested in the role of ‘prospective daddy’, he was going the wrong way about it. Oddly, the thought soothed the hurt inside me, although why it should I wasn’t sure—was being rejected for something I couldn’t change better than being wanted, albeit for the wrong reasons?—I shook the confusion off for more practical concerns. At least Finn had told me the details of the curse, which was more than Grianne had ... or Tavish. But Tavish was one of the wylde fae, not the lesser fae, so where did he fit in with all this? I groaned, part disgust, and part mental overload. Now I had no idea who I could trust.
And did the curse thing have anything to do with Tomas’ murder?
But if someone could convince a sidhe to commit murder, wouldn’t they be able to convince them to have sex? Although in Tomas’ case, they hadsort of convinced a sidhe to do both at the same time; any sidhe would know that having full-on faerie sex with a human would result in the human’s death.
Damn.Never mind anything else—kidnapping dryads and scheming phoukas and tricky kelpies—finding the sidhe murderer was more important. Only other than my morning meet-up with the phouka, there wasn’t anything else I could think to do just now. I stared at the HOPE poster again. Grace was at HOPE. She really was a friend, and that was what I needed right now. I trusted her.
I slid open the phone and turned it round, taking a picture of the Glamoured blonde bimbo me, then texted Grace to say I was on my way. I dashed back down the escalators and slid onto a train just as the doors were closing.
I checked the carriage carefully, then settled back, scanning new passengers at each station. At Tottenham Court Road a grey baseball cap moving slowly towards me caught my eye, but the red cross embroidered on the cap meant the poodle-perm brunette wasn’t anyone to worry about kidnapping-wise. Poodle-perm was a Souler—the Underground is one of their favourite hunting grounds for new recruits; there’s nothing like having a captive audience.
A chorus of ‘No thanks’ preceded the Souler, but her smile stayed in place despite the rebuffs and her shoulders were military-straight under her long grey tabard, which was embroidered with its own large red cross. I looked down, hoping not to catch her eye, and saw my Glamour reflected in a pair of black wraparounds. My pulse sped up. Damn.
A Gatherer goblin.
The goblin’s long ski-slope nose twitched like a curious mouse. I looked around for an escape, but it was too late, the goblin had caught the scent of my magic; the Glamour couldn’t hide it. He nodded his head, grey pigtails brushing the shoulders of his navy boilersuit, and slid a knobbly finger down his nose in greeting. My stomach tightened into an anxious knot. What if the London Underground goblin workers had been told to look out for me? Would he give me away as soon as I’d acknowledged him?
But I couldn’t not return the greeting; it was a mark of respect offered to me as sidhe fae, and not something to be taken lightly. Holding my breath, I slid my own finger down my nose, trying to make it look more like I was scratching an itch.
He stamped his foot, making his trainer flash red. I waited for him to give a howl of discovery, but it didn’t come. Instead he snatched up a crumpled paper cup and tucked it carefully away in the pink sequinned beach bag hitched over his shoulder.
I let out my breath, relieved.
He was still following his normal work contract.
‘Are you a member of our congregation, miss?’ the Souler asked, waving a leaflet in my line of vision.
‘What?’ I looked up to find her smiling curiously at me.
‘It’s just Samuel seems to recognise you; he greeted you as one of us.’ She waggled her fingers at Samuel, the goblin. He tapped his hand against his own Souler Red Cross badge, pinned next to his London Underground one.
‘Although they can’t see well,’ she carried on, ‘they’ve got very good memories for people, so I wondered if you were an acolyte?’ Her smile turned questioning.
‘Um, no, I’m not.’ I gave her a wary look. ‘I was just watching him, thinking about the great job they do clearing up the rubbish.’
‘Ah yes, goblins have proven themselves amongst God’s creatures: they see no shame in servile tasks, much as our Lord Jesus took it upon himself to wash his disciples’ feet.’ Her eyes lit up with enthusiasm. ‘He is an example to us all, with his help and guidance we can shed our sins, and our souls can be cleansed of the darkness and evil that abounds in our earthly life and we can join Him in all his Glory.’
Inwardly I sighed, resigned. I just had to speak to her, didn’t I? Still, ignoring her probably wouldn’t have made much difference: all the Soulers were fervent zealots. She’d sensed an opening and was closing in for the kill—sorry, conversion.
‘Goblins aren’t really creatures, you know,’ I said, matter-of-fact, trying to put her off. ‘They’re more a different species.’
‘We are all God’s creatures,’ she jumped in cheerfully. ‘All of us, human, goblin, troll, fae and Other. God does not deny any among us his help or discriminate in his care.’ I stared at her, bemused. Since when had the Soulers changed their sermon tune? They didn’t usually include everyonein their salvation message, just humans, trolls and goblins. The rest of us could rot in hell for all they usually cared.
She gave a closed-lip smile to Samuel—at least she knew not to show a goblin her teeth—as he scraped industriously at a glob of chewing gum stuck to the floor, then carried on, ‘Samuel, like most of the goblin race, may not enjoy the same legal rights as humans’—she tilted her head to one side, jiggling her poodle-perm—‘but that does not stop God or his acolytes from offering aid where it is needed.’
Okay, now she was really starting to creep me out.
‘That’s great!’ I looked up at the map above the windows. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but my stop’s coming up ...’ I edged to the side to stress my point.
‘No problem.’ She took my hand and pressed the leaflet firmly into it. ‘Please, do call us.’ She smiled again, a knowing look that raised the hairs at the back of my neck. Turning to retrace her steps, she added, ‘Remember, when you need us, we can help.’
Was she trying to give me some sort of personal message, or was this just her normal spiel? If so, she was weirder than most of the Soulers I’d come across. Frowning, I skimmed the leaflet; it looked like the usual come-and-be-savedstuff. I dismissed it and handed it to the waiting Samuel.
‘Ta, miss.’ He took it gently between knobbly forefinger and thumb, then, trainers flashing, he clomped along the carriage to give it back to the poodle-perm Souler.
Recycling at its best.
I watched her from the corner of my eye until the train pulled into the next station. The doors hissed open and as I got out a flash made me turn: she had her phone aimed at me and I blinked as it flashed again. She smiled and I watched her with a sense of mounting frustration as the train accelerated away.
Fuck. She hadtwigged who I was, or maybe Samuel had given her the nod when she’d asked. Question was, who was she going to send the photo to—the police? Her boss? Someone else? And what was all that we want to helpstuff about? Still, there was nothing I could do about it right now, other than maybe ditching the Glamour spell soon—it wasn’t much of a disguise if everyone knew what I looked like.
I raced through the streets to HOPE, with the growing feeling I was being followed. I checked behind me a couple of times, expecting to see Cosette again now I’d escaped the dryads. But she didn’t put in an appearance, and neither did anyone else, despite my jitters. Nervous adrenalin fuelled me and it wasn’t long before I reached the welcome lights of the clinic.
The doors swished open and I rushed in. Hari, the night receptionist, stared out from behind his glass screen and gave me the full force of his trademark you better not give me any troubleexpression. It almost made my nervousness disappear: a yellow—and brown-streaked eight-foot-tall troll with fists the size of boulders doesn’t have to do much more than frown to cow most patients, but underneath, Hari was a big softie.
‘Yes, miss?’ he asked in his deep rumble.
Hari wasn’t in on the little plan Grace and I had come up with, so I leaned against the chest-high reception counter, still catching my breath, and aiming for desperate, panted, ‘I’ve got to see Dr Hartwell; I’ve run out of gear.’ At least the gasping would give my venom-junkie play-acting an edge of realism. Trouble was, with all the chasing and running and adrenalin speeding my sidhe metabolism, it wasn’t going to be play-acting for much longer—like I really needed something else to worry about.
‘What’s the name?’ he rumbled.
‘Debby, with a y,’ I said, giving the name Grace had told me to use.
‘Well, Debby-with-a-y, you just go and sit yourself down in the waiting area. Dr Hartwell is a very busy lady’—he treated me to another deep-fissure frown—‘but I’ll let her know you’re here.’
I walked past the bank of lifts and the fire-exit stairwell door, trying not to give in to the urge to push through it and run straight up to the fourth floor where the clinic was. Instead I played my part, letting my eyes glaze over while staring at the stippled peach wallpaper, the gold-framed botanical prints and the beige vinyl wipe-clean floor tiles. I wrinkled my nose at the strong smell of pine disinfectant, which didn’t quite cover the underlying scent of liquorice and even fainter trace of blood. Two rows of pumpkin-orange chairs lined either side of the waiting area, along with a slightly battered vending machine and the token magazine table with its collection of out-of-date glossies. As I approached, my steps faltered and my heart thudded in my chest. One of the chairs was occupied. Damn. I’d forgotten about him. I thought about turning back, but I couldn’t think where else to go—and I wanted to see Grace.
How much trouble could one vamp be anyway?
