The Shifting Price of Prey [4]

by Suzanne McLeod

  She was sidhe.

  Sidhe don’t leave ghosts. If we die, our bodies fade, dissipating back into the ether as our spirits dissipate back into the magic. Damn. Stupid phobia had zapped my brain cells. She wasn’t dead, she was some sort of spirit. I straightened, shooting the girl a narrow-eyed look.

  She smiled, showing fangs every bit as sharp, white and pointed as Gold Cat’s, but way more dainty.

  ‘Nice gnashers,’ I muttered, wondering why she’d chosen to Glamour herself with them, then added louder, ‘so are you anything to do with the cat?’

  She laughed. ‘Me, dearie? Oh no, that . . . cat is not known to me. I am Viviane.’

  She announced her name as if I should know it. I didn’t. I did know her voice, even if the last time I’d heard it, it had sounded older, deeper and more crotchety. ‘You’re the spirit of the tarot cards.’

  She snapped her fingers and a fan of translucent, blank white cards appeared in her hand. ‘I am, indeed, bean sidhe.’

  Good to have it confirmed, even if her showing up in person added a whole slew of questions to the suspicions already in my mind. Nor was I thrilled about having Viviane’s now much larger and no doubt sharper teeth near my flesh. But now I’d get the last and final tarot card. Looking on the bright side, it was bound to be way more enlightening that the previous four.

  I held out my hand. ‘I offer my blood solely in exchange for the answer to my questions. No harm to me or mine.’

  ‘Pfft!’ She shot me a disgusted look. ‘I’m not here for that.’

  Disappointment and surprise washed through me. ‘Then what are you here for?’

  ‘Oh, just a little chat,’ she said airily. ‘Nothing more.’

  Yeah, and I wasn’t a sitting duck in a circle of ashes with a magical collar fastened round my neck. Gold Cat seemed to agree with me, if its low growl was anything to go by. Maybe it was on my side after all. ‘Start chatting then,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Direct. Good.’ She nodded. ‘I like that.’

  She didn’t, or she’d have told me what she wanted. No, she’d probably much rather string me along until she got me in a position that she thought I’d agree to whatever it was, without her giving too much in exchange. Well, two could play that game.

  I went back to sprinkling salt on the ash circle. Viviane gave me an arch look for a moment then started laying her cards out in what, from the corner of my eye, looked ironically like Patience. Once she was done, she moved a couple, then said to no one in particular. ‘That cat is not a cat, nor is it a true shifter. It is an ùmaidh.’

  An ùmaidh. A temporary changeling.

  My hand shook and I only just managed not to dump the rest of the salt. It took flesh and a sliver of soul forged to living matter to animate an ùmaidh. The living matter had to be Carlson’s body; I wasn’t entirely clear where the flesh had come from, unless it was the flesh Carlson had fed me (ugh), and then somehow I’d managed to sunder part of my own soul. Did that mean Gold Cat was made from both of us? Was it gold because it was more me than him? And what had happened to Carlson’s soul? Or souls, since shifters had two souls. Maybe Gold Cat had two and a bit souls now? Or maybe there was nothing left of Carlson at all. I didn’t know. And I didn’t know how I’d created an ùmaidh either. Unless the magic had helped? It had done that before, made impossible-for-me-to-do things happen because it decided I needed them.

  Viviane moved another couple of cards. ‘Now you’re thinking that cat is your ùmaidh, and you’re right, bean sidhe. But you’re also wrong.’

  Hmm. I kept sprinkling salt; Viviane wasn’t done with the free information.

  ‘Shifters have two souls, one human and one animal,’ she said.

  C’mon, Viv, tell me something I don’t know.

  ‘The human soul is the usual reincarnated one, but the animal soul isn’t. It’s an animus.’

  Now she was getting interesting.

  She placed a finger on one card. ‘Animus are primal spirits who long ago decided to embody themselves in animals, predators mostly, instead of the magical flesh The Mother chose to clothe herself in.’

  I wasn’t entirely sure what a primal spirit was, but The Mother is our creator, and the first to shape herself out of the magic way back when. A shiver of fear pricked goosebumps over my skin. Bad enough when gods or goddesses take an interest in you, even more so when it’s The Mother. If primal spirits were anything like even a minor god or goddess, the last thing I wanted was to have one set its sights on me. I squinted at Gold Cat dozing in the sulphurous sunshine. It didn’t look like an überpowerful primal spirit, but hey, looks are deceiving.

  Viviane flicked a card into the air and gave a sharp nod as it vanished. ‘Unfortunately, the animus shortly discovered the downsides of chaining their spirits to their animal hosts. One was that animals die too quickly. And by embodying themselves in actual flesh, the animus only keep their immortality so long as their spirit lives on in their host, or its descendants. Should all their descendants die, the animus dies too.’ She vanished another card. ‘But there was an even greater threat to the animus’s immortality: their animal hosts were not the most efficient predator in the humans’ world. So the animus sought primacy by bonding their animals’ bodies and souls with those of humans. In doing so, they succeeded in using the humans’ shapes, along with their animal shapes, as they willed, thus creating the first shifters.’

  Which hadn’t panned out too well for them, since shifters had still ended up being hunted almost to extinction. But it did tell me how Carlson’s ritual was supposed to have worked. It should’ve bonded my soul with whatever part or parts of the animus’ soul that Carlson carried and turned me into a shifter. Only it hadn’t worked quite right, for whatever reason.

  ‘When the shifters die,’ Viviane carried on, ‘their human and animal souls move on, but the part of the animus’s spirit rejoins with itself by travelling into another shifter, a direct descendant of the human who is dead.’

  I stopped sprinkling salt and stared at the back of the cave, hearing Carlson’s voice saying, ‘Our pride is dying. Adults ain’t living once the kits all gone. Only thing keeps us all living is if we’s mated an’ having kits.’ Which sort of made sense if the shifters’ pride were all sharing one or two primal spirits. With no more children being born, and the human and animal parts of them dying, the primal spirit had fewer bodies to inhabit. Until it had no body left at all, and died.

  No doubt why Carlson had advertised on the Forum Mirabilis for a female weretiger, and when that hadn’t worked he’d got hold of a copy of the ritual and used me as his experimental guinea pig. He didn’t have any direct descendants. With Carlson dead, the animus was finally dead too.

  Except it wasn’t. I’d somehow made an ùmaidh, and the animus had bonded to the part of my soul in the ùmaidh, instead of me. Or maybe I (or more likely, the friendly magic) had severed the part of my soul the animus had bonded to, so I didn’t end up a big-cat-shifter.

  Whatever.

  The ritual hadn’t worked. I wasn’t a shifter. The animus was stuck in a temporary changeling’s body. One that was going to die in a couple of weeks.

  My relief came with a thread of pity for Gold Cat. No way did I agree with its methods (or Carlson’s methods? I wasn’t sure who’d actually been in charge), but it just wanted to survive, like the rest of us. Of course, Gold Cat wasn’t the only spirit in the cave; Viviane was another. And she’d been quiet long enough that her info-freebies had evidently come to an end. I turned and gave her and the Gold Cat an enquiring look.

  ‘So have the two of you been chatting’ – and no doubt plotting too – ‘about all things primal while I’ve been sleeping?’

  Viviane shook her head. ‘Oh no, that cat isn’t interested in talking to me.’

  Did that mean Gold Cat wanted to talk to me? So far it hadn’t been very communicative, other than the odd growl or disdainful look, much like any cat really. But if they hadn’t been chatting/plotting, where
was Viv getting her info from? Since if all that stuff about shifters was known, if not by me, then by the fae, I was pretty sure Tavish would have mentioned it at some point. And he hadn’t.

  I asked her.

  ‘Knowledge is easy to come by, bean sidhe, if you know where to research.’ Viviane grinned like a Cheshire cat, but unlike the cat she didn’t disappear only stretched her head and neck out like a cartoon character across the cave to where Carlson’s backpack and its contents were strewn on the floor. She stuck her head into the cloth-wrapped package. ‘Let us see.’ Her voice was slightly muffled. ‘Ah yes, pages thirty-two to thirty-eight talk about shifter creation’– she lifted her head and gave me a smug look – ‘with a note from a Witch Whitneyi to say that “animus” as pertaining to shifters bears no relation to Jungian theory, and not to confuse the two. The witch archives contain an amazing collection of knowledge, so vast that even they do not know what insights are to be found within. But I use it often enough that I have become quite proficient in discovering any answer I want.’

  Did she expect me to applaud, or something? ‘Anything in there about why the ritual didn’t work?’

  Viviane stuck her head back in, then after a moment she snapped back to her previous sitting position next to her cards. She gave me a sly smile.

  Right. No more free info. And no way could I get hold of Carlson’s papers on my own— ‘Hey, Gold Cat. Any chance of you getting those papers for me?’

  Gold Cat lifted its head, gave me another copper-eyed stare, then rose gracefully and padded out of the cave without a backward look.

  ‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ I muttered.

  Viviane let out a pleased sound and moved three cards.

  I went back to my salt sprinkling . . . and learned that even closing the circle with salt didn’t negate its magic. Frustrated, I chucked the empty salt container at the back of the cave, sighed, sat down, and arranged the chain so it didn’t touch me. I looked at Viviane. ‘What’s the deal, then?’

  ‘Let us see, bean sidhe.’ Viviane tapped another card. ‘You want to be released from that circle. You want to help your troll friend with his rescue of the victims. You want the satyr safe.’ She gave me another sharp-toothed smile. ‘And you want the last card in the tarot reading so you know how to release the fae’s fertility from the pendant. That card, however, is not part of this agreement, since it is already under contract.’

  Left unsaid was that she could fudge the timing of the card’s appearance, to make it less helpful than it might be. But as for the rest, she’d got it spot on.

  Viviane shifted a card from the top of one line to the bottom of another. ‘I also get a touch of precognition with the cards. For instance, when it comes to your negotiations with the Emperor, I might be able to help you.’

  Help me, or you? ‘What sort of help?’

  She frowned, moved another card. ‘I’m not able to say exactly. It seems I might have a conflict of interest.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  She shrugged. ‘Exactly what I said. Some things I can help you with. Others would negate another bargain I have already made.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that,’ she said chidingly.

  It was an easy out. Though that probably didn’t make it any less true. And my suspicious antennae said her bargain was with Bastien. The tarot cards had tied in too closely to Bastien’s plans for it to be anyone else. Only Viv’s mention of bargains had my stomach clenching, but if that was what I had to do . . . ‘So you want to make a sidhe bargain—’

  ‘No,’ she shouted, throwing her hands up in horror, her cards flying round the cave like a flight of panicked garden fairies. ‘Just a small agreement to help each other out the best we can, nothing more, bean sidhe. I do not want the magic involved in this. That is how I ended up enslaved to the cards in the first place.’

  I blinked, surprised at her words, and that she’d admitted it. But it also made me happier to go along with her small agreement; it meant no unpredictable consequences for either of us. Of course, it also left a greater chance of loopholes to wiggle out of.

  ‘So what do you want?’

  She clasped her hands in front of her. ‘I want you to get the kelpie to give you the tarot cards as a gift then, at a time and place of my choosing, I want you to burn the cards to ash and transfer ownership of the ashes to the person of my choice.’

  She wanted her freedom. With the chain and collar round my neck, I could relate. ‘If I agree, you’ll help release me, help save Finn, help me rescue the victims, and get my answer from the Emperor with no harm to me or mine?’

  ‘With no harm to you or yours from me, yes. I can’t guarantee what others will or will not do.’

  Hmm. Nice qualification for a small agreement. But then loopholes could work both ways. Transferring ownership of the tarot cards was one thing, but she hadn’t said it was to be an unrestricted transfer.

  ‘Then we have ourselves a small agreement,’ I said. We both held our breath in case the magic decided to chime in of its own accord. Sometimes it can be tricky like that. After a long, thankfully, chime-free minute, we both relaxed. ‘So what happens now?’

  Viviane gave me a pleasant smile. ‘We wait.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Your white knight to appear, of course.’

  ‘Who the hell is that?’

  ‘Someone who can release you.’

  Crap. She wasn’t going to tell me. I narrowed my eyes. ‘Thought you were going to help?’

  ‘Incorporeal.’ She waggled her hands. ‘I can look, but not touch. That collar needs someone with opposable thumbs and magic.’ She flashed me her sharp-toothed smile again. ‘But I’ve got it all organised, no need to worry.’

  She’d got it all organised? Figured. But then she’d already known I was likely to end up chained in the ash circle. After all, she’d shown me that big grey and black cat on the Moon tarot card, and warned that the beasts were coming for me. Just enough information that I couldn’t call her on it. I was the fool for thinking she’d meant the Emperor’s werewolves. Shame on me.

  Forty-odd minutes later, during which I impatiently (and ironically) watched Viviane play Patience, I was pacing the ash circle and rattling my chain like a trapped animal, or the recently condemned.

  I stopped as a bellowing noise came, followed by two more. Swamp-dragons on the hunt. And not too far away, judging by the pitch. Viviane lifted her head, focused warily on the cave entrance.

  More bellowing. Eager and excited. The swampies had sighted prey.

  A loud, angry roar rolled through the air, sounding like the cat roaring on the Moon tarot card. The roar came from right outside the cave.

  Gold Cat? Or some other shifter?

  I clenched my fists, pacing the circle and listening to the cacophony of noise: growls of warning, the swampies’ excited bellows . . . a sharp yelp of pain followed by a long, breath-holding silence . . . then Gold Cat was backing through the entrance of the cave dragging a body behind it—

  Finn.

  He was scarily still.

  Heart thudding with fear, I slapped my hands against the circle’s invisible wall, shouting at Gold Cat to bring him near. Gold Cat hauled him right to the edge of the ash circle and, sides heaving, let him drop. He fell on his front, face towards me. His shirt and trousers were ripped and mud-splattered, with a distinct whiff of swampie sulphur. His hooves were rough, his hair matted, his long curving horns bloody, and cuts and bruises marked his cheek, jaw and what I could see of his back. He’d been in a fight; the purple colour of the bruises suggesting it had happened hours ago. There was a deep scratch on his forehead, more recent judging by the fresh blood still trickling. I slapped the circle wall again, but still couldn’t breach the ashes.

  ‘Viviane,’ I shouted. ‘Do something. He’s hurt.’

  She held up her hands and shook her head. ‘Sorry. Incorporeal, remember.’

  Fu
ck. I kicked the circle, straining to grab its magic, then stopped as Gold Cat snarled and spat at me as if to say, ‘Get back!’ Hope springing in my heart, I watched as it swiped its tongue over Finn’s bloody face then pushed at him with its head. His body rolled over, landing on the ashes, his arm dropping inside the circle.

  I dropped to my knees, reaching out to grab him, but as my fingers closed over his wrist, Gold Cat leaped over him and the ashes and vanished in a cascade of golden stars.

  Magic exploded inside me, desperate heat spreading through my veins, throbbing between my legs. I tightened my hold on Finn and pulled him fully into the circle, not caring for anything other than needing him in here with me. He moaned, lids fluttering open, eyes a muddy-green with pain. They lit with relief when he saw me.

  ‘Gen?’ he murmured. ‘Thank the Gods. I thought . . . killed . . . worse.’

  I wanted to tell him how ecstatic and relieved I was to see him alive, wanted to find out how hurt he was, wanted to ask him what had happened, wanted to tell him I was fine, wanted to get him to take the damn collar off, wanted us to escape. Wanted to tell him about the magic driving me. Wanted to warn him. Wanted to stop it. Instead, I took his face in my hands and thrust my magic into him, exalting as the muddy-green in his eyes flickered emerald and he reached up to grip my arms.

  His eyes turned solid gold with my Glamour. I lowered my lips to his in a searing kiss.

  The steady beat of Finn’s heart woke me. My face was pressed into the curve of his throat, my body sprawled atop his where we lay on the furs, and despite Finn’s sleeping breath warming my hair and the languorous wellbeing leaving my muscles yielding and pliant, I could feel where a certain part of him was nowhere near so soft. Could feel it so intimately that there was no way I could deny we’d had sex, and we’d evidently fallen asleep still joined.

  Only I couldn’t remember any of it.