The Shifting Price of Prey [4]

by Suzanne McLeod

  ‘What is it?’ Taegrin rumbled.

  ‘Max’s doggy choke-chain collar,’ I said. ‘Complete with his diamond-encrusted dog-tags.’

  Dessa frowned at Mary. ‘Think it’s a plant, or did he manage to drop it for us to find, Sarge?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Mary tapped her radio on. It crackled to life. ‘How close is that backup, Constable?’

  ‘Search group three is here now, ma’am,’ the constable’s tinny voice replied. ‘The others shouldn’t be long. And DI Munro’s on his way from Trafalgar Square. ETA: thirty minutes.’

  As she finished speaking, three more WPCs and Constable Lamber, his mottled beige headridge dusty, appeared in the circle of tents. They all cast quick hairy eyeball at the exhibitions, nodded to Mary, and joined Dessa and Constable Taegrin, waiting for instructions. The centaurs and Mini eyed them with professional disinterest but, as they obviously weren’t customers, dismissed them. O’Keefe, the leprechaun, just hunched deeper over his book.

  Mary strode over, looked at the dog-tag I held, then at the tent with its closed sign behind me. ‘It’s probably a trap.’

  Whether it was or not didn’t matter; it wasn’t like we were walking into it on our own, not with half the Met’s Magic and Murder Squad about to put in an appearance. I shrugged. ‘We’ll find out for sure when we check it out.’

  She looked at me, indecision warring in her brown eyes. ‘What’s supposed to be in the tent?’

  I took a couple of steps back to the tent doorway and flipped the closed signed over. It showed a picture of a golden bow and arrow, and a crystal ball. Written along the outer edge of the bow in fancy gold script was: Divine Love with Cupid.

  I waggled my brows. ‘So wanna go see a god about a dog?’

  Mary rolled her eyes at me, then said, ‘Let’s do it.’

  Despite Mary’s easy agreement, and my saying that whatever trap might be inside Cupid’s tent had probably been scrapped long ago thanks to the very obvious police presence, it still took a long, toe-tapping fifteen minutes for Mary to organise our backup to her satisfaction. She also took time to organise a search of all the other tents, inside and out, and to interrogate the leprechaun and the others for any extra intel on ‘Cupid’. But, much to Mary’s annoyance, all of them to a minotaur claimed they’d never set eyes on the ‘Divine Love god’.

  Though they did reveal Mad Max had trotted past them, tail wagging happily, into Cupid’s tent about an hour or so before we’d turned up. No one had been with him. Or, at least, they hadn’t noticed anyone. Not that any of them had been paying attention. So for all they knew Max the doggy could’ve had a whole army with him hidden beneath a See-Me-Not veil. And no, none of them had looked up either; so no one had seen any eagle, or any other birds, other than the swan maidens. Stellar witnesses they were not.

  Once Mary was sure they had no more beans to spill, she deemed us – us being Mary, me, Dessa and Taegrin – ready to beard the love god in his tent.

  ‘Right, no messing about this time, Genny,’ Mary told me as Dessa unzipped the tent’s entrance, Taegrin on standby to enter first. ‘Tell me what we can expect of Cupid.’

  ‘Far as I remember, he’s a cambion.’

  Cambions are born of a witch and an incubus, or a wizard (a witch’s son with a human) and succubus. The actual pairing could vary. And since cambions have long been considered ‘another type of witch’ (something the witches themselves have always been careful not to dispute, lest it reflect badly on their own ‘human’ classification) cambions benefited greatly from the witches big ‘human rights’ thing in the eighties. Of course, the real difference between a cambion and a witch or wizard, apart from their parentage, is their appetite for sex magic and their gift for prophecy. Which sort of explained why this cambion called himself Cupid and was telling fortunes.

  Mary gave me a resigned look. ‘So this guy’s not only a comedian, but a bona fide magician like Merlin?’

  ‘Yep,’ I agreed.

  ‘Cambions are demons,’ Dessa suddenly piped up.

  We both stared at her, shocked.

  ‘Half-demons anyway,’ she amended as she crossed herself.

  ‘Incubi and succubi are minor demons,’ Mary replied in a neutral tone, ‘but cambions, like us witches and wizards, have been classified as human since the Malleus Maleficarum was discredited back in the eighteenth century. Do you want to sit this one out, Dessa?’

  ‘No!’ She shook her head vehemently and adjusted her stab vest. ‘This is my job.’

  ‘Right,’ Mary said, after a few moments’ silence that told me, without any need of a cambion’s prophetic abilities, that Dessa could look forward to an uncomfortable chat in her near future. ‘The tent’s surrounded,’ Mary carried on, ‘so whoever’s in there isn’t going anywhere.’ She paused, extended her stun baton with a sharp snap (she’d still refused to give me one, much to my disgust), and motioned to Taegrin. ‘Lead the way, constable.’

  Taegrin lifted the tent flap and led the way. Mary, Dessa and I followed.

  Straight into an illusion.

  Years ago, before the lesser fae sealed the gates to the Fair Lands, and barred the sidhe from London, the Carnival Fantastique was famous for its illusions. The sidhe would take any idea and, using nothing but magic would build illusions so powerful that folk told stories of climbing towers in fairytale castles, feasting in mediaeval banqueting halls, swimming through tropical seas, dallying in enchanted woods, hiking up snowy mountains and many more. Now, with the sidhe locked out, most illusions were cast by half-rate magicians, and were as rough and shaky as the wooden scaffolding their fairytale towers were built on.

  But going by the illusion the four of us were now standing in, half rate, rough and shaky didn’t apply. As hard as I focused, I still couldn’t see the tent beneath the magical sheen of the illusionary room.

  The room itself was straight out of an Elizabethan-era castle: flagged stone floor and dark wood-panelled walls, candles flickering in sconces, fire burning merrily in the huge walk-in fireplace, the smell of herbs and woodsmoke scenting the air, and a massive four-poster bed with velvet drapes and enough tassels, fringes, and cushions to fill a hearth-witch’s haberdashery shop. And on the table next to the bed waited a golden flagon and five golden goblets.

  We were expected.

  Not really a surprise considering we were visiting a prophetic Cupid.

  Cupid himself was half-reclining on the four-poster, the silk sheets artfully arranged to preserve his modesty. But he wasn’t the stereotypical winged, curly haired cherub of legend. This god of love was definitely the grown-up adult version. The firelight licked golden shadows over his long, leanly muscled and obviously (apart from those pesky sheets) naked body, his hair was dark, sleek and cut short to his head, a mediaeval-looking gold chain hung around his neck and draped down to his navel, and he regarded us arrogantly with cool blue green eyes.

  I squinted in the dim light as I realised both the grown-up Cupid and the room looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘Ooh, my,’ Mary murmured in astonishment. ‘That’s—’

  ‘Jonathan Rhys Meyers,’ Dessa said, her gaze fixed unwaveringly on the figure in the bed. ‘Got everything he’s done on DVD. I loved him as Steerpike in Gormenghast. But his new Tudors series is the one I’ve been watching lately.’

  Recognition clicked. Cupid had cast himself as the young Henry VIII!

  And Dessa had the hots for the actor playing him . . . which meant the illusion wasn’t by chance.

  Which also meant Cupid/Jonathan/Henry – Hell, I was sticking with Henry; it suited him – had plucked his illusion from Dessa’s thoughts. Except cambions couldn’t do that. But there was something that could. A Wishing Web. I’d never been in one, but I’d read up on them for the Carnival – the spell woven in the web picked up on a person’s subconscious fantasies. The Carnival had approved three applications, all for kids under eight, and they’d been set only to trigger for specific wishes. No one in their right mind
would license one for adults; their deepest, darkest fantasies are far too dangerous.

  I upped my focus. Now I was looking for it I could see the dark emerald lines of the spell stretching through the dim room in all directions, hidden beneath the sheen of the illusion. It wasn’t so much a web, but more as if thin laser-like beams randomly crossed the room at all angles. Each emerald laser beam bristled with tiny sticky fibres. Fibres that were floating around us like fine cactus spines, and in Dessa’s case had already dug themselves into her skin.

  Hence, the Jonathan Rhys Meyers scenario.

  Crap. I needed to find the Web’s power source, and shut it down—

  ‘Ladies!’ Henry shifted one long lean leg so the sheet slipped a couple of enticing inches lower, patted the bed next to him and held his hand out. ‘Will you not join me? Please?’

  —hopefully before the fucking orgy started (no pun intended).

  ‘Oh, boy!’ Dessa took a step towards him.

  I grasped Dessa’s upper arm. ‘Oh no you don’t.’

  ‘Hey, single mum here,’ she growled, jerking her arm back and catching me by surprise in the stomach. I doubled over, wheezing. She packed a punch, even though the stab vest I was wearing took the brunt. ‘I gotta take whatever opportunities I can get,’ Dessa muttered, starting forward again.

  I straightened, grabbing for her wrist and pulling her round to face me. Her eyes were glazed, pupils fully dilated, almost eclipsing her dark brown irises, her mouth slack. ‘Believe me,’ I gasped, clamping my hand round her other wrist as she tried to shove me away again, ‘this isn’t an opportunity you want, Dessa. He’s not real. And you’re working, remember?’

  ‘Who cares,’ she snapped, still struggling.

  ‘A little help here, please,’ I called, then my stomach sank as I caught sight of Mary and Taegrin. They both stood still as stones, beatific expressions on their faces as they stared up at . . . whatever. Damn it. Mary I could understand, but what the hell was in the illusion that it could affect a troll?

  Deal with them in a minute, Genny, I told myself as I narrowly missed getting kicked in the shin by Dessa.

  I shook her, hard enough to rattle her teeth. When that didn’t work I called the tiny spell fibres sticking in her. As they pulled out they stretched, spinning out into long thin threads. Frantically, I started absorbing them, winding them around an imaginary spool inside me, determined to contain them before they dug themselves into any of my own fantasies.

  Within seconds the last of the threads slid of Dessa’s skin. She stopped struggling, blinked a couple of times, pupils contracting, then frowned. ‘Sorry, Genny. Don’t know what came over me.’

  ‘It’s a Wishing Web,’ I said, relieved she seemed herself again. ‘Once you’re caught in it, it’s hard to get out.’ I shifted uncomfortably, the spool inside tickling as it tried to unravel. ‘It jacks into your subconscious, and doesn’t stop till it’s worked through your fantasies or the power in the spell runs out.’

  ‘Clever girl,’ Henry boomed from the bed. ‘But if I can’t have that one, then this one’s just as plump and juicy with unfulfilled wishes.’

  The room around us shivered like a dog shaking itself. The Elizabethan look wavered, and rearranged itself into the interior of a rough wooden houseboat. The bed was still there, but it had lost is posts and cushions. The fire still burned brightly, but inside an cast-iron stove complete with piped chimney. And leaning against the wall was a guitar. I recognised this scene; it was from Chocolat; the film was one of Mary’s favourites. I scowled at Henry, still artfully naked in the bed. Unsurprisingly, given the new setting, Henry had morphed into Johnny Depp, his hair slicked back in a ponytail like the gypsy character in the film.

  Mary laughed, a loud delighted sound. I sighed. Of course, Mary’s fantasies would include this Johnny, or whatever his character was called; she’d only been talking about Ricou wearing a Glamour of the character the other morning at the zoo. Except as I watched, Johnny continued to morph. His skin took on a faint blue-grey tinge, his ponytail rose up into a headcrest, and fluted fins framed his face until he was part Johnny and part Ricou, as if the two of them had been Photoshopped together. The whole effect was weirdly disorientating.

  Or maybe I was dizzy because the houseboat was still shaking.

  Nausea roiled up in my gut. I dropped Dessa’s wrists and clapped my hands over my mouth, praying the BLT I’d eaten after taking the Revive spell wasn’t about to revisit.

  The shaking stopped.

  My stomach settled. Relief filled me until another delighted laugh snapped my attention to Mary. She was gazing, star-struck, at the bed.

  Johnny/Ricou was no longer alone.

  Johnny/Ricou had moved so he lay on his side, elbow bent, head propped on his hand. His other hand, more Ricou’s than Johnny’s going by the blue webbing between his long-clawed fingers, was spread low over the softly rounded stomach of the female figure lying on her back in front of him.

  Sylvia.

  A naked and hugely pregnant Sylvia. Her magnificent ‘Hello Boys’ boobs were tipped with pointed, cherry-red nipples, her bushy head of twigs, heavily laden with pink and white cherry blossom, was spread out over the pillows, and more pink and white flowers bloomed at the juncture of her thighs.

  Wow. I’d known Mary had a thing about Ricou and his Johnny Depp Glamours, but I hadn’t realised she had a thing about the pair of them together. As fantasies go, that was fine by me, if not for the fact that I was about to get an up-close-and-personal ringside seat of her fantasy ménage à trois, and no way did I need to see the three of them doing whatever Mary’s subconscious was about to conjure.

  Not to mention: where had the other cambion, or whatever she was, come from? Somehow I couldn’t believe Cupid was powerful enough to cast himself into two illusions. Of course, the bed was massive, its base about three feet off the floor, and the drapes round the base . . . well, draped, hiding the space beneath it. A space large enough for half-a-dozen more cambions. A cheerful thought. Not.

  Sylvia gave a sly ‘come hither’ smile, the expression uncannily like one the real Sylvia had given me two nights ago when she’d hit on me. Mary made a tiny eager noise, and Johnny/Ricou trailed his webbed blue hand up to cup one of Sylvia’s jiggling breasts. Sylvia squirmed in delight, her own hands zeroing in on the flowers between her legs, fingers plucking at the blossoms. Johnny lowered his head and swiped at one cherry-red nipple with a long purple tongue. She giggled, legs parting and blossoms flying as her fingers picked up speed. Johnny/Ricou grinned, his ’shopped face contorting bizarrely, and held out his hand. ‘Mary, come and join us, luv!’

  There was a soft thud, then another, and Mary – minus her stab vest and Stun baton – shoved me and Dessa aside, unbuttoning her blouse with quick jerky movements as she rushed towards the pair on the bed.

  Oh. Crap. This was so not going to happen. This might be Mary’s fantasy but that didn’t mean she actually wanted to experience it, and even if she did, she’d want it to be with the real Sylvia and Ricou, not with whoever the cambion and his pal were under their illusions. I focused on the Stun spell winking on the end of Mary’s baton, called it, caught the firefly of green magic, and, after a brief internal debate about which figure was the cambion, lobbed it in resignation at Mary’s back. It hit dead centre, exploding in a flash of mint-scented green, and unsurprisingly, Mary collapsed in a Stunned heap.

  ‘Wow!’ Dessa’s loud exclamation made me turn to her. She wasn’t looking at the unconscious Mary, but down at herself. ‘You know, I haven’t been this big since I stopped breastfeeding.’

  ‘What?’

  She lifted her head. Gold flecked the brown of her irises. Unease crawled up my spine. Had the gold flecks been there before, or were they new? Gold meant something was . . . wrong . . . Then all thought left me as Dessa ripped off her stab vest, shirt and bra, revealing a pair of breasts way bigger than Sylvia’s, with large areolas the colour of bitter chocolate. ‘Look!’ She
grinned, bouncing them. ‘Gorgeous, aren’t they?’ She pulled a sympathetic face. ‘Shame about yours, Genny.’

  I blinked. Looked down. I was as flat as a pancake. Again. I tore my own vest off to double check, patting myself down. Nothing but tiny bumps. I started to undo my shirt buttons, panic shooting round my gut as if I’d swallowed a set of hyperactive pinballs. The familiar feeling stopped me cold—

  I’d had it before. The Magic Mirror spell. The one from Harrods. Shit. Not again. Even as the knowledge clicked, my fingers were still frantically pulling apart my buttons as if on autopilot, and the realisation was lost.

  ‘Here, you can share mine.’ Dessa grabbed my hands, and cupped them to her own breasts, giggling.

  Lust and surprise flashed in me at the soft, generous weight of her. I’d never touched the breasts of anyone as well endowed as Dessa; the only women I’d ever been this hands-on with – literally – had been vamp venom junkies, and I’d always been more interested in blood than sex at the time. Only now I wanted— No, I needed sex. Never mind that I was basically straight, and Dessa was female, that didn’t seem to matter. Not when she seemed to like my hands on her body as much as I did. I brushed my thumb along the freckles trailing across the mound of her left breast like a shooting comet, then squeezed gently, mesmerised as her nipples instantly contracted, thrusting eagerly into my palms. She gave a happy moan, her own hands slipping inside my shirt, and I discovered, even flat as a pancake, the slightest touch from her was enough to drag a desperate groan from my own throat.

  As she moved my blouse aside, I moulded her with my hands, fascinated by both her body’s reactions and my own. She pressed her palms over my smaller nipples were pushing against the smooth satin of my bra, rubbing the tender, aching points. Another, deeper groan escaped me. Bending her head, she dragged down my bra, and quickly fastened her mouth over me. I gasped, my fingers digging into the lush fullness of her, as the slick wetness of her tongue played over my sensitised skin, flicking and teasing . . .