The Shifting Price of Prey [4]

by Suzanne McLeod

  It was a sensible plan. Running the swampies’ foot-stomping gauntlet wasn’t that hard. I knew how to run, even if the recent chaos had meant I’d missed my usual morning exercise the last few days. But I wasn’t going to leave Finn to deal with the big cat and the gnome on his own, however sensible-sounding his plan. It didn’t feel right, not when there were two of us, and two of them. But as I was about to object, another grey and black striped big cat slunk through the entrance behind the gnome as if it were embarrassed to be here. Then as if to seal the deal, a third big cat bounded through, skidding to a clumsy halt next to the others. Fuck. No way could we outrun all three of them.

  The gnome gave a satisfied sniff and tucked his hanky away. ‘Glad you decided to take my suggestion and look into the path here, Ms Taylor.’ Crap, I’d forgotten he’d asked me to do that. ‘It really does make things easier for me.’

  ‘Easier?’

  The gnome waved at the three big cats. ‘The boys here have a little problem they need your help with, Ms Taylor.’

  ‘Gen,’ Finn’s voice was barely audible. ‘Run.’

  The gnome’s beady eyes flicked warily at Finn. Stupid satyr with a hero complex. It was going to get him killed one day. I clenched my fist and released Ascalon. The blessed and be-spelled sword sprang into my grip and I shifted into a ready stance. ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘let’s chat.’

  A strangled surprised noise came from beside me. ‘You’ve got a sword?’

  Oh yeah. Finn didn’t know about Ascalon. Amazing what you miss when you disappear for three months. ‘Yep.’

  ‘You know how to use it?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said, baring my teeth at the gnome and his boys.

  ‘Good.’ Finn’s voice was a satisfied growl.

  The gnome reacted, but not by backing off as I expected. He shook his head as if me producing Ascalon was somehow disappointing. Then the horrid little male, who was obviously far stronger than he looked, grabbed the embarrassed-looking cat by the scruff and threw him at me. The big cat yelped, all four paws stuck out as he flew at me with a horrified expression on his feline face. Reluctant to kill him with Ascalon when he wasn’t so much attacking as being sacrificed, I leaped to the side, only just missing skewering him. He landed on his paws less than a foot from me and for a second we froze, staring into each other’s eyes. Then shock ripped through me as a burning sensation engulfed my hand, the cat’s eyes lit with reflected green fire, and Ascalon vanished back into its ring.

  ‘He’s an innocent, Ms Taylor!’ the gnome called. ‘Your sword won’t work when there’s an innocent around.’

  Fuck. I scrambled back from the big cat who was still frozen.

  ‘Gen!’

  Finn’s warning shout jerked my head up in time to see the nasty gnome rubbing his hands together, then tossing them in our direction. A dozen cotton wool balls flew towards us, buzzing like angry bees. Security Stingers ~ the Ultimate Intruder Deterrent. Crap. If the spells got us we’d be asleep and helpless in seconds. Luckily once the stingers launched, they didn’t deviate too far from the original target area—

  ‘Split!’ Finn pushed me away, obviously having the same idea.

  I turned and sprinted along the cinder path that led to help. A couple of stingers buzzed my head, their sticky threads trailing my face like grasping cobwebs. I stumbled, nearly went down, then cracked the threads, feeling the magic slice my forehead as the spells disintegrated. Blood dripped in my eyes as I ran faster—

  Something thudded into my back, smacking me to the ground. Pain shot through my head as it bounced off the cinders. More pain burned down my back as claws punctured my skin and the hot heavy weight of a big cat pinned me. I yanked my magic up, flung it at the animal. If I could catch him in my Glamour, he would have to obey me.

  A fat mud-covered hand clamped a silver bangle studded with jade and citrines round my left wrist: a police-issue manacle. My magic cut out as if it had been ripped from me. I screamed as someone shouted, ‘Get off her!’ And the Stun spells in the jade chips ignited.

  My body convulsed as if I’d been zapped with high-voltage electricity.

  ‘Hurry up and change, boys, and get them in the cart,’ the gnome’s voice ordered. ‘We need to get moving before the beasts take an interest.’

  ‘Both of them?’ The man’s question was a low growl. ‘Going to slow us down.’

  ‘The Forum Mirabilis is in town. The satyr will bring a nice price at the auction. Those horns alone are worth a good few thousand each, and he’s a sex fae; I can get a king’s ransom for his—’

  Unconsciousness took me.

  Insistent fingers prised my lips open where I lay on my back, groggy from being yanked from unconsciousness. A small piece of meat, raw and still warm, landed on my tongue. Gamey-tasting blood infused with a strange, wild magic trickled down my throat. A hand clamped my mouth shut, pinched my nose, forcing me to swallow. I resisted, struggling, determined not to give in this time, concentrating on the firelight seeping beneath the tape closing my eyelids. My lungs began to burn. Despair and fury flooded me as, same as the last however many times, the instinctive need for air and the lure of the blood made me swallow before desperately gasping for oxygen like a landed fish. The meat slid into my stomach to join the rest where it congealed into a heavy solid lump, the magic in it seeming to snuff out.

  Where was Finn?

  Was he okay?

  I sent out my senses, searching for him. Nothing other than the two humans; the gnome’s boys, cats, or whatever the fuck they were. Only there’d been three of them. Where was the third? And the gnome? Where had they taken Finn?

  Gods, I prayed he was still alive. The memory of the gnome’s comment about the money he could make for a satyr at auction was like a fist squeezing my heart. Tears of rage and anguish pricked my eyes as I damned myself for not running when Finn had first told me. Then maybe they wouldn’t have caught both of us and I could’ve brought help.

  Something sharp pricked my arm . . .

  Only unlike the other times, I didn’t float back into sleep but hovered on the cusp, pulse pounding erratically as I realised I was frozen inside my own body. Terrified they’d up the dose of whatever, I fought the panic using my childhood trick: one elephant, two elephants . . . I needed to know what was going on if I was going to get out of this . . . five elephants . . . Find Finn . . . seven . . . nine . . . my pulse slowed as calm spread through me.

  ‘She’s under,’ a male said, sounding tired.

  ‘You sure, son?’ It was the same growling male who’d said taking both Finn and me was going to slow the cart down.

  The tape was peeled carefully from my eyes. I could feel it happening, but the sensation was odd, no pain even when I felt the tape snag a couple of lashes. Anaesthetic? Only the human sort didn’t work with my sidhe metabolism . . . unless they were using the stuff meant for animals. Enough of that even worked on vamps. Crap. Someone lifted my eyelids. I got a snapshot of a vaguely familiar pale face and dark hair before a penlight blinded me . . .

  ‘Pupils not reacting so she’s under.’

  . . . He was one of the two males I’d seen hanging round the gnome’s . . .

  A couple of buttons on my shirt were popped, sparking unease even as I realised I was still dressed. Something cold touched my chest. ‘Heartbeat’s stable too.’

  . . . Shit. Of course he was familiar. He was Katie’s treacherous boyfriend. Marc. Damn. Not only was he two-timing her with some redhead, now he was prodding my breast . . .

  ‘The bite’s healing up,’ Marc said. ‘Same as the cuts on her face and her back where you clawed her.’ Accusation threaded the words. ‘Don’t think it’s going to fester.’

  ‘How she get bit by some human anyway?’ Growling Male said.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Marc answered quietly, and relief filled me as my shirt buttons were closed. ‘But I don’t think it’s interfering.’

  Interfering? With what? Footsteps sounded as the two males moved.
>
  ‘Bloody hell,’ Growling Male said, his voice coming from further away now. ‘Yous thought this time it was gonna work for sure. Why ain’t she shifting yet?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Marc snapped. ‘Maybe the stuff the gnome gave you for the circle is wrong. Maybe there’s something missing from the ritual. Maybe whoever he got to hack the witch archives copied the wrong ritual. Maybe she can’t shift because she’s already too magical. I told you we shouldn’t trust him.’

  Shifting? Ritual? Witch archives . . .

  ‘Told you, son, more magical the better, so long as they ain’t one of them fae who already shift to somethin’ else, like a tree. That’s what the notes reckoned was wrong with those girls that chink weretiger tried the ritual on.’

  . . . chink weretiger . . .

  A loud noise. Stone hitting stone. ‘Don’t fucking call me son, Carlson,’ Marc shouted. ‘I’m not your kid, and after this I never want to see you again. This is all kinds of fucked up wrong. We can’t just kidnap a woman and force her into the shift.’

  . . . Fuck. They were trying to make me into a big-cat-shifter. Like them.

  ‘Heh, s— lad, I knows it ain’t right, but I promised yer Da when he passed, I’d find yer a mate. He was ma brother. Ain’t gonna break ma promise to him.’

  ‘Da would never have wanted this.’

  ‘Ain’t wanting it either, Marc, lad. But we tried gitting a female through that Forum an’ you seen the money those folk are putting up for that Bengali cat and her kit. Ain’t no chance for us to match it.’

  ‘I told you putting that listing on the Forum was a fucking stupid idea, Carlson. Information on the internet goes viral in seconds.’

  ‘Forum said it were private, lad.’

  ‘Nothing’s private on the internet. All that stupid listing did was tell everyone we weren’t extinct. I’ve already seen a load of blogs speculating about us.’

  ‘Ain’t nothing to be done now, lad. Yer twenty-four in a few days. Already long past yer prime. You need a mate.’

  ‘I don’t want a fucking mate.’ More stone crashed against stone.

  I didn’t want him for a fucking mate either.

  ‘Yer want to live, don’t yer, boy?’

  ‘Not like this. What’s the point of living if I have to spend my life mated to a woman who hates me? If I hate myself?’

  ‘Heh, s— lad, she ain’t gonna hate you. Not soon as the mate bond takes. The magic’ll see to that.’

  Mate bond. What the hell was that?

  ‘This is wrong,’ Marc snapped, and silently I shouted agreement. ‘I told you, that girl I’ve been seeing, Claire. I was going to talk to her, I’m sure she’d have agreed to the ritual willingly. She’s desperate to be more than human; she wouldn’t care what it meant. We didn’t have to do this.’

  ‘An’ I told you, lad. It weren’t gonna work, that redhead might have a smidge of something magic in her, but it ain’t enough. An’ anyways, she ain’t no virgin—’

  ‘She says she was!’ Marc exclaimed. ‘She told me thrice.’

  Was this guy for real? The thrice rule only worked for fullblood fae, not someone with a drop of magical blood.

  ‘Lad, the gnome ain’t guaranteeing that thrice rule works for a faeling. And even if yous was to try, even if it looked like it was working right, that redhead ain’t telling truth about being a virgin, so yous both be dead soon as yous mated.’

  They died if the mate wasn’t a virgin? Well, if they thought I was good to mate with Marc . . . no way in hell was that going to happen, even without the dying bit.

  ‘Better that,’ Marc said, ‘than kidnapping this poor woman.’

  ‘She’s a fairy, lad. Ain’t no comeback by the law when it comes to them.’

  For the freaking last time; Not. A. Fairy!

  ‘She’s a person,’ Marc snapped.

  ‘She’s a fairy. Heck, we’ve been catching her sort for the gnome. Ain’t hear you sticking up for them, lad.’

  ‘They’re garden fairies, Carlson. She’s as different from them as we are from the tigers in that stupid zoo. And the fairies were already dead from natural causes. We didn’t kill them.’

  ‘Ain’t killing her, lad. Just making her shift.’

  ‘What if she doesn’t shift? Then she’ll die,’ Marc said angrily. ‘That’s the same as killing her. Then what you going to do, Carlson, give her dead body to the gnome so he can cut it up and sell it like the garden fairies?’

  ‘Ain’t gonna come to that, lad. She’ll shift.’

  Even I could hear the doubt in his voice. Damn.

  ‘What if she’s not a virgin?’ Marc asked quietly.

  ‘Told you, lad, I got the feeling right here.’ A hollow thump sounded, like a fist on a chest. ‘Got it first outside the gnome’s in the park other night. I don’t get that less they’re intact.’

  Oh boy, was his feeling wrong. Stupid fucking idiot. He really needed to get his facts right. Not that I’d wish whatever ritual they were doing on anyone else.

  ‘I can’t feel anything,’ Marc said.

  ‘Course not, ’cos yous still an innocent yerself. Yous needs to go through the ritual afore you cans.’

  He was lying. I could hear it in his voice. Question was, why?

  ‘Anyways, it was her or that young blonde yous been sniffing around.’

  Katie! If they’d touched her, they were dead. Hell, they were dead anyway. They’d just be more dead.

  A menacing growl reverberated through the air, raising the hairs at my nape. ‘Told you, Carlson. Stay away from Katie.’

  I opened my eyes, blinked in relief and then frustration as I realised it was only my eyes I could move. I stared up. Firelight chased shadows over the rough-hewn rock. We were in a cave.

  ‘Aw, lad—’

  ‘The ritual is wrong,’ Marc’s yell cut him off. A stone flew over my head, crashing into the cave wall at the back. ‘The gnome must’ve stitched you up. That’s why she’s not shifting. You’re working on the wrong information, Carlson.’

  ‘Look, so— lad, maybe the ritual needs a bit more time,’ Carlson said placatingly. ‘Ain’t doing yous any good brooding ’bout it now it’s done anyways. She’s gonna be hungry once she shifts. Ain’t a bad idea if yous go hunting, get us all some victuals. Yous needs to keep yous strength up for the mating too.’

  I was lying on – the muscles of my neck freed and I turned my head – a pile of dark furs atop a bed of hay mixed with herbs. I made out the clean scent of sage and something minty which smelled oddly enticing. But even with the herbs, hay and smoke from the fire filtering the air, I could still smell the sulphur and shit reek from the swampies. Good. They hadn’t brought me too far into Between, then.

  The two males sat either side of the fire, just inside the low gaping slash of the cave’s entrance. Beyond them, it was night outside. How long had I been here? Was this the same day, or longer?

  Carlson turned his head slightly, his gaze meeting mine without any visible reaction. His eyes were glowing eerily, reflecting like a cat’s.

  I tried to shout, but my voice was still gone.

  ‘I’m not mating with her.’ Marc’s voice was firm as he stood, his head nearly brushing the cave’s roof as he raked his hands through his dark hair. ‘Better she dies than be forced into something she hasn’t agreed to.’

  ‘If that’s how yous feeling, lad,’ Carlson said, his eyes not leaving mine. ‘Then fair enough. But if yous so concerned ’bout her feelings, ain’t it better if yous give her the choice? Might be she’d choose to live as yous mate, ’stead of dying.’

  Marc stilled with his hands on his head. After a long moment, a frustrated growl came from his throat. ‘Yeah, you’re right. It’s not my decision to make. I can’t change what we’ve done to her, can’t take it back. But we can explain what’s what, then let her decide for herself.’

  Fuck, this guy Carlson was good. Though if he thought I was going to jump on the get-mated-instead-of-dying bandwagon, li
ke his pal Marc, he could think again.

  ‘Might as well fetch a brace of those rabbits we saw.’ Marc’s tone said he was resigned. ‘I’ll just check she’s okay first.’

  ‘Nah, yous git out there and hunt boy,’ Carlson said, ‘And check on Steve while yous out there. Make sure he ain’t gitting any trouble from that goat-man. Ain’t wanting them swampies to git him.’

  Finn. He was somewhere nearby. They had him. Captive, but alive. Relief made me limp.

  ‘Okay,’ Marc said, pulling off his T-shirt, then he dropped his jeans, showing the cave he went commando. He took a deep breath, expanding his chest, and seemed to fall to the floor. As he did so his human shape morphed into that of a grey and black striped big cat. The shift was fast and seamless and, even more worrying, I couldn’t feel any magic. If I couldn’t feel it, then there was less chance I’d be able to use it to fight them. I pinged him. Only animal came back. Seconds before he’d pinged human. Well, that answered that question. Ailuranthropes, and possibly all therianthropes, hit my inner radar as human or animal depending on what shape they were in.

  Big Cat Marc padded out the cave and disappeared into the night.

  Carlson stood, picked up a backpack from just inside the entrance, then grabbed what looked like a brush torch. He shoved it into the fire, making it flare up, then came towards me. He was wearing jeans, his chest bare other than a wide bandage wrapped round his lower ribs. Grim satisfaction trickled through me. He was injured. Maybe Finn had got a horn in before he’d been captured.

  Carlson dropped the backpack down, jammed the fiery torch into a hole and crouched next to me. I glared at him as he lifted my head, pulled something from behind me and fastened it around my throat. Not constricting, but tight enough that I could feel it was stiff, like new leather. A loud click at my nape, the chink of something metallic, and he lowered my head back into the furs. It took me a stunned moment to realise he’d put a collar and chain on me.