The Cold Kiss of Death

by Suzanne McLeod

  At that thought I raised my eyes; his were empty, emotionless pools. I could hear his heart now, its beat slow, weak, and I could taste his hunger like sweet copper on my tongue. His rich scent saturated the small confined space, mixing with the tang of honeyed blood, making my head swim with desire, my belly coil with anticipation. I inhaled his hunger, the jagged edge of it grinding like a whetstone against my own thirst. I wanted, needed blood. It had been so long since I’d taken it, forcing myself to settle for venom. Then my prey had been human venom-junkies or captured fae, and I’d only ever drunk enough for my needs, or to rid them of their infection. But Malik wasn’t human, and he wasn’t fae. I stared at him, listening to the whisper of his blood, knowing that I could take whatever I wanted from him and the certainty that he would let me as he’d always done seeped into my consciousness. He wouldn’t - couldn’t - deny me; his guilt over what he’d made me wouldn’t allow him to. The thoughts swimming like leeches in my mind were both alien and familiar to me and as I traced my fangs with the tip of my tongue, I tried to separate things out, to choose which was my thought.

  But the hunger wouldn’t let me.

  It wanted him, now.

  I smiled, a practised, seductive curve of my lips, and slowly moved closer to him. I raised my hands to the first button on his jacket and released it. His jaw tensed and he looked almost wary, but he did nothing to stop me. I worked my way down, two, three, four, five buttons, then pulled the jacket open and pushed it from his shoulders. As it fell with a soft thud to the lift floor, I grabbed his black silk T-shirt and ripped it, exposing the pale, perfect skin, the lean muscles, the silky triangle of black hair arrowing down to his taut abdomen. I leaned in, pressed my lips to the firm flesh over his heart and, opening my mouth, let my fangs indent his skin. He trembled and I raised my eyes to find him gazing down at me, pinpricks of desire blazing in his pupils. Satisfaction spiralled fast inside me.

  I kissed my way down his body, my lips seeking the scar that marked him below his heart, the one I’d given him, the one he hadn’t healed, even though he could. Blood bloomed beneath his skin, the scar flushing red like a rose. I struck, quick and hard, the sharp points of my canines piercing his firm flesh, into the heart of the rose, and glorious blood filled my mouth, tasting like spiced nectar and liquorice and sweet Turkish delight as it slipped down my throat, spreading a glittering chill that rushed me towards that edge, almost but not yet tripping me over into mindless, dazzling pleasure. Reluctantly I drew my mouth away and laved at the small wounds, feeling his stomach quivering under my tongue. His blood and hunger hummed inside me like a promise and I straightened, sliding my palms up to run them over his shoulders, my fingers digging into the corded muscles, then I moulded my body to his, crushing my softer breasts against his hard, cold chest. He groaned, and the sound reverberated inside me as his breath spilled along my cheek. I threaded my fingers into his hair and pulled his head back, then rose on the balls of my feet to place my mouth over the slow pulse beating below his jaw. His musky scent teased my nose and I licked his thin skin, long wet strokes, tasting salt and the copper tang of his sweat, as my jaw ached with need. I wanted to fill my mouth with more of the glittering taste of his blood, wanted it so desperately that the torture of holding back was an exquisite pain. He shuddered as his solid, thick length pressed into the softness of my belly. Lust slicked damp and liquid between my thighs, desire swelling my breasts and hardening my nipples into rigid, painful points.

  And I wanted more than his blood in my body.

  I hooked my leg around his waist, opening myself to him, lifting myself up to rub against the thick length of him, the coarse fabric of his trousers abrading my sensitive, swollen flesh. I sucked at his throat, pulling the soft skin into my mouth, anticipating the moment when my fangs would pierce his skin. A tremor of pleasure echoed through me, and I ground myself against him again, wanting to feel him thrusting inside me, wanting his blood spurting down my throat, wanting his fangs penetrating my body.

  I slid one hand down, following the silky arrow of hair until my fingers closed on his belt. I picked urgently at it, freeing the buckle, the throbbing heat between my legs growing ever more frantic—

  ‘No.’ Hard fingers manacled my wrist, stilled my hand. ‘I do not want this.’

  I struggled against his hold, my mouth working, my hips almost jerking with need. He couldn’t say no, I had to have him inside me, had to!

  He yanked my arm behind my back, wrenching it upwards, straining my shoulder, the pain like a lover’s pledge. His other hand caught me by my hair, ripping me away from his throat.

  He couldn’t deny me, I wouldn’t let him!

  I hit out, catching his chin with the heel of my hand, banging his head back against the lift side, and kicked my heel into the back of his knee, screaming my frustration. He stumbled, falling, his hold on my hair tearing, his hand yanking my arm higher up and popping the shoulder joint. We hit the floor, my body beneath his. Pain exploded like a fire-burst across my back and ricocheted down my spine. I screamed again, lips curling back from my fangs, wanting to tear into his throat, wanting to coat myself in his blood, wanting to fuck him ...

  I wrapped my legs round his thighs, locking my ankles together, bringing him hard against me. He stared down at me, rage lighting his black pupils, his own lips pulled back, all four of his fangs sharp and gleaming. I struggled beneath him, goading him; pain flared in my shoulder, building pleasure between my legs. He growled low and yanked my head to the side, stretching the tendons in my neck, exposing my throat.

  Deep inside me a sliver of fear chilled the lust raging through my body.

  He twisted my arm higher and pain bloomed hot and razor-sharp in my shoulder. Eagerness replaced the fear.

  ‘Break it and fuck me,’ I pleaded, my hips spasming against him with desperate lust even as a distant part of me recoiled in shock at my words.

  The fury in his eyes turned to hot flames, flames that licked over my body as if to scorch the flesh from my bones. ‘No,’ he snarled, ‘I will not.’

  ‘Break my arm and fuck me,’ I screamed into his face. ‘It’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘Be still,’ he ordered, staring down at me, his eyes fixed on my throat, and in the silence I waited, frozen on his command, desperate for him to grant me pain, needing it, knowing that for him to hurt me was the only way he could bring me pleasure.

  ‘Please, Malik, I beg—’

  ‘You will not say it.’ The sorrow in his voice twisted like barbed wire round my heart. ‘I will not allow it ... you are not her.’ He lowered his mouth to mine, touching my lips briefly with his. ‘You. Are. Not. Rosa.’

  Then he was gone.

  The wire pierced my heart, leaving it bleeding, and I curled in on myself, hugging my knees to my chest, his grief battering against me as if it were a horde of Beater goblins. Tears of shame pricked my eyes that I hadn’t pleased him. I struggled to hold them back but they seared down my face, drowning me in hopelessness. Then the feelings were gone, shut off like a tap, replaced by an ice-cold stillness like the depths of frozen water.

  I blinked and looked up.

  Malik stood there, looking calm and remote. He pointed to his jacket lying in a heap on the floor. ‘Get up and put it on,’ he said, his voice expressionless.

  Silently I grabbed the jacket and scrambled up; contorting so I could pull it on past the distant pain in my shoulder. The silk lining settled over my skin like a soothing caress. Using my good arm, I lifted my hair from where it was trapped by the jacket, feeling bewildered, almost numb as I clumsily buttoned it closed.

  What had just happened? Or rather, why had it happened? Why had I asked - no, almost begged him - to hurt me? The feelings had felt like mine, but I was pretty sure they’d been Rosa’s. Fuck. There really was something wrong with the spell; why else would I experience her memories and her desires twice in one night? This was so not fucking good.

  I wiped the tears from my face wit
h the jacket cuff and shoved the thoughts away. The pain in my shoulder was almost gone as the spell healed it. All I had to do was get through this fealty thing tonight, then I’d never use the spell - never use Rosa’s body - again. I’d find some way to cut myself off from it, from her.

  ‘What happens now?’ I asked, a part of me still bemused by my own calmness, even though I could feel Malik smoothing over my thoughts.

  He turned the key in the lift and it dipped slightly, taking my stomach with it, before the lights flickered on and it started to ascend. ‘We shall prepare for the oath, then once that is over we will go to the police station.’

  The lift halted, the door gliding open. Blue carpet patterned with small silver hearts stretched down a long, empty corridor lined on one side with steel doors. I gathered the remnants of our clothes as he bade me, then followed him past half a dozen of the doors, my bare feet sinking into the thick carpet, until Malik stopped at one of them. He stilled, then lifted his chin, sniffing the air.

  ‘It appears we have company waiting for us,’ he said softly. ‘This is not a good sign.’

  But before I could ask who, the door slid away into the wall and I had a brief moment of déjà vu. Hannah Ashby, dressed in her vamp-groupie outfit of pumpkin-coloured velvet bustier and black net skirt, stood in the opening.

  ‘Malik al-Khan, and the ever-delightful—Rosa.’ She arched one perfectly-drawn-in black brow in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘Don’t you think it might be better to enter instead of loitering about in the hallway?’ She gave a low chuckle, then stood back and ushered us past her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  My newly changed vampire senses picked up the base notes of patchouli and sandalwood in Hannah’s perfume, but for some reason the scent had the same effect as walking into the swamp-dragon’s cave. My eyes teared up. I dropped the clothes and clapped my hand over my mouth and nose as I choked on a coughing fit. I felt Malik’s hand at the small of my back as he pushed me into the room. I hurried to the far side, putting as much distance between me and the lung-burning scent as possible.

  I slapped my hands over my eyes and concentrated, dialling my vamp body’s reactions down to nothing, cutting out the toxic smell, the slightly raised da daum of Hannah’s heartbeat, and the bitter chemical taste of the perfume that made me feel like I’d been sucking on a vamp junkie stoked up on crack as well as venom. After a couple of seconds, I stopped breathing, my heart stopped beating and the perfume was nothing more than a ghost-memory in my mind.

  Dropping my hands, I pressed my fingers into my own sternum, where I could still feel the slight burn in my lungs. ‘What the hell is that perfume you’re wearing?’ I asked, glaring at Hannah.

  ‘It’s a bespoke perfume created by Roja Dove.’ She smiled, looking delighted. ‘He’s a renowned “nose”, trained at the House of Guerlain. He mixes liquid silver into the jus; I wear it as an added precaution when I want to avoid any confrontations with the club’s vampires.’

  Liquid silver? No wonder my lungs were burning up.

  Malik was standing just inside the door, his face almost hidden by shadows. His bare chest gleamed pale in the room’s dimmed light, the rose scar under his heart hardly visible, and he looked elegant and composed, despite wearing nothing but his suit trousers. Either Hannah’s perfume didn’t affect him as much, or he’d known what to expect and cut his senses off before taking a whiff of the noxious stuff.

  The room itself didn’t manage to live up to Malik’s style. It could have been a lounge in any bland hotel suite, decorated in shades of blue with silver-fronted furniture: except for the floor-to-ceiling glass wall behind me. The glass wall gave a god’s-eye view of the Blue Heart’s dancefloor three floors below, packed with a mass of bodies undulating to a beat that vibrated through the glass, though I couldn’t actually hear anything.

  Hannah had positioned herself behind one of two sofas, her hands resting on a familiar vamp’s broad shoulders - Darius, her personal fang-pet. He sat slumped, staring fixedly at me from half-lidded eyes. He was dressed as the last time I’d seen him, in my flat: naked apart from his diamanté Calvin Klein briefs and calf-high boots. Little beads of blood-tinged sweat shone on his forehead and trickled down his flushed romance-model’s chest. He looked like he’d been on a binge-drinking session and wasn’t far off collapsing into a blood-dream - the vamp equivalent of being utterly, totally drunk.

  ‘Of course, it doesn’t bother too many of the vamps in the club,’ Hannah carried on, ruffling Darius’ tawny waves. ‘Most of them keep themselves offline anyway, unless they’re actually feeding. And while there are plenty of willing donors walking around, once I’ve fed Darius here, I prefer not to worry about anyone else. So the perfume is my way of being safe rather than sorry.’

  ‘What is your reason for being here, Hannah?’ Malik’s voice was soft, a hint of threat riding along with his question.

  I could probably hazard a guess that the answer had something to do with a Fabergé egg, seeing as she knew about my Disguise spell, and no doubt also knew that every other vamp in town was expecting ‘Rosa’ to turn up tonight with Malik and with me missing for the last couple of days, Hannah being here wasn’t really a surprise.

  Unfazed, Hannah turned her delighted smile on him. ‘I thought I would do you a favour.’ She tipped Darius’ head back, offering his throat. ‘They plan to refuse you your blood-tithe, although I suspect you already know that. So I thought I’d offer you some provisions.’ She trailed a finger across Darius’ chest, smearing a line in his blood-sweat. ‘He has fed well, as you can see’- gorged was more like it - ‘and is willing to do whatever you want, aren’t you Darius?’ She patted his cheek.

  ‘Yess,’ he slurred, eyes still eerily fixed on mine, his head lolling to the side.

  Malik didn’t move, didn’t even blink, but I felt the tension tighten his body. A sudden edge of shared hunger clenched like a fist in my stomach, nearly doubling me over.

  ‘All I ask is you try not to kill him,’ Hannah added, leaning down to lick Darius’ exposed throat. ‘I find him satisfying in so many ways; I would be so disappointed to lose him.’

  ‘Leave us then,’ Malik ordered.

  She pushed at Darius’ shoulder, urging him up. He staggered to his feet and stumbled towards Malik, who opened his arms, catching the taller vampire to his chest, then in one smooth easy movement, hooked an arm under his knees and lifted him, cradling him like a bride about to be carried over a threshold. Darius might have weighed not much more than his Calvin Klein’s for all the effort Malik seemed to expend.

  ‘Actually, it’s you who’s going to leave us, Malik. I still have a favour to do for someone else.’ She smiled and lifted a black holdall from behind the sofa and dropped it on the seat. It gave a metallic clank as it landed. ‘Elizabetta wants Rosa to dress appropriately for the ceremony.’

  Somehow I knew appropriate wasn’t going to be my kind of thing.

  ‘Use the bedroom.’ Hannah waved at the other door. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll both be right here when you finish.’

  Malik hesitated, then looked at Darius in his arms, his expression turning predatory, and I swallowed against the constriction in my throat; whether it was fear or envy I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Be careful of this one, Genevieve,’ Malik’s voice whispered in my mind. ‘She is more than she appears.’ The connecting door opened, apparently of its own accord, and I wondered if he had some sort of kinetic ability too. I filed that question away for later.

  When the door had closed behind him and his meal, I turned back to a smugly smiling Hannah. And Malik’s warning reminded me that I was in Rosa’s body and I had use only of her vamp senses; all my own abilities with magic were gone. It wasn’t something that had ever bothered me much in the past, but then, I’d never knowingly sparred with a sorcerer before as ‘Rosa’. Now I couldn’t see the magic, and even my unwanted aptitude for seeing ghosts was gone; after Cosette’s recent help, it made me feel oddly vulnerable.


  ‘So, Hannah, what is your reason for being here?’ I said, echoing Malik’s question.

  She walked over to me and stood looking at the gyrating dance crowd below. ‘They’re like chickens in the fox house, aren’t they?’ she laughed, the sound scornful. ‘Totally unaware of the dangerous possibilities that surround them. But we’re not like that, are we, Genevieve?’ Her fingers toyed with the silver death’s head pendant that nestled at the base of her neck. ‘We know how unpredictable life can be - unless of course we have a helping hand.’ She blew on the glass, misting it with her breath, then waved her palm over the now-opaque window. ‘Allow us to see,’ she murmured.

  Within the glass a picture appeared: a room similar to the one we were in. Declan and Elizabetta were standing facing each other and a crystal wine glass - half-full of dark purple-red liquid - sat on a small table between them. Elizabetta held out a thin silver knife - more ornate than Malik’s, the blade already bloodied - and smiled up at Declan. Anticipation was written all over her currently young face. Declan’s blue eyes crinkled in an answering grin as he took the blade, then he held his arm over the glass and in a movement almost too fast to see, sliced along the vein that bulged blue under his pale Irish skin. His dark blood dripped down from the cut to merge with that already in the glass.