Bitter Seed of Magic (9781101553695)

by Mcleod, Suzanne

  Her nostrils flared, her eyes closing briefly, then she shook her head reluctantly. ‘Darius, he will need your blood.’ She pointed down at Mad Max. ‘His blood, I can take. With the permission of my liege.’

  Her liege was Malik, but he wasn’t here. The worry came back, and I didn’t know when – or if – he would arrive. ‘He’s not here?’ I made it a question.

  ‘We are to give you the help if you are in need.’ She smiled down at Mad Max, her long canines curving past her bottom lip, her strange, transparent eyes lighting with expectant predatory pleasure.

  ‘Ri-ight. I’m in need then.’ I waved at Mad Max. ‘You’ve got your liege’s permission.’

  In a blur almost too fast to see, she whirled into a crouch and fell upon his throat. He roared, his legs jerking uncontrollably, then the sound cut out and harsh slurping noises took its place. Old, dark blood sprayed over the lower walls of the corridor. Judging by her enthusiastic reaction, there was more to her snacking on Mad Max than just getting power.

  I shrugged out of my jacket, dropping it next to my backpack, and looked through the window at the Moths dancing round Darius, wondering how long it would take Francine to get her power up to speed – and also wondering how I was going to get close enough to Darius to touch him, let alone Glamour him, without getting my own throat ripped out first.

  Long minutes later, and I was still staring anxiously through the diamond-shaped window in the door. I tensed as Darius snagged Rissa’s wrist, jerking her out of the weaving dance, but then Viola swiped her own bloody wrist close to his mouth and Rissa slipped from his grasp.

  ‘C’mon, Francine,’ I muttered. She’d been slurping on Mad Max for a good five minutes now. Surely that was enough to get a power hit. ‘Hurry it up; he nearly caught her that time.’

  A soft hand brushed the hair back from my face, and I turned to find her standing next to me. Her pupils had vanished, leaving her eyes clear as glass and reflecting the overhead lights.

  ‘I am here,’ she murmured. Her tongue swiped out like a cat’s, catching a drop of blood at the corner of her mouth. She stepped closer, and wobbled on her heels. I grabbed for her, catching her arm and holding her steady. She laughed low and touched her forefinger to the pulse in my throat, sending a shiver of need into my body as the sensation of wings fluttered soft along my skin.

  Mesma. Damn vamp was using vamp mind-tricks on me! I knocked her hand away, angry. ‘You’re drunk,’ I said accusingly.

  ‘But yes, of course.’ She laughed again, pressed her finger to my chest this time and pushed. I staggered back. She turned to face the door, took a wide-legged stance, then punched her hand straight through the diamond-shaped window. Gripping the edges of the opening with both hands, she braced one boot against the door and pulled downwards. At first nothing happened, then the door groaned, the metal buckled and it fractured from the bottom V of the window opening. She yelled, a deep, guttural sound, and the muscles in her arms and back stood out in relief as she ripped the steel door down and pulled it apart like it was made of cardboard.

  ‘Fuck!’ I muttered, impressed.

  ‘The door, she is open.’ She doubled over, giggling, then as she tried to straighten, she tottered back and fell on her butt against the corridor wall. I rushed to help her, but she waved me away with both her hands. ‘The Moths,’ she whispered, then in a louder, crooning voice, she called, ‘Come, my pretties, fly to me. Fly, fly, flyyyy!’

  They came in a blur of grey silk and satin, ducking and spilling through the ripped steel door, breaking right and rushing past me along the corridor towards the door at the far end, trailing the scent of blood and liquorice and greasepaint behind them.

  I quickly crouched and peered into the room. Lucy’s ghost was huddled by her limp body while Darius still stumbled around, his hands grasping at the illusions of Moths floating past him. Apprehension prickled down my spine as I gripped the bag of blood in my hand. All I had to do was rush him, shove the bag in his face as a distraction, hopefully piercing it on his fangs, then thrust my magic into him.

  My turn to dance.

  I bent to duck through the torn door and a sharp pain sliced across my wrist. Flinching, I looked down to see blood welling and dripping from a three-inch cut along my inner arm, right along the vein. Francine swayed on all fours near me, a thin bronze dagger in her hand.

  ‘What the fuck was that for?’ I demanded.

  ‘The arm, hold her up in front.’ She showed me, clumsily tucking her own arm under her chin, almost toppling over as she did. ‘She will keep Darius from the throat.’

  I stifled my anger; she was trying to be helpful, even if it was the sort of help I could really do without. I swapped the bag of blood to my bleeding hand. Holding the bag and my blood-dripping wrist as a shield across my throat, I ducked into the room before she could think of anything else to help me with.

  Darius stopped, nostrils flaring, and fixed his gaze eerily on me, no longer interested in the illusionary Moths. Blood flushed the whites of his eyes; his irises and pupils were clouded, like cataracts. He was blinded by bloodlust, all his senses narrowed down to scent alone as he searched for the fresh blood he craved. I felt a tug on my consciousness as he automatically tried to mind-lock me and swatted it aside.

  One touch was all I needed to Glamour him. Skin to skin. Lucky he was naked; it gave me a lot of skin to choose from.

  I flipped the metaphysical switch inside me and let my magic flood out. A golden glow lit the room as if the sun was shining and small tendrils of power sprang like eager vines from my body, questing for someone to latch onto. Still holding the bag up in front of me, I aimed for his ankles – as far away from his fangs as I could get – and lunged towards him—

  He snarled and leapt at the same time, smashing me down onto the ground and knocking the air out of my lungs. My head banged off the floor as he pinned me, and pain sliced upwards through my left kidney. I seemed to have all the time in the world to look down and see the broken end of something black and metallic poking out of my diaphragm: a piece of the metal bed. And all the time to look up at Darius as he straddled my hips, to feel the panicked thud of my heart, to smell the honey-scent of my own blood, to see his skeletal face blurring as he yanked my head back and exposed my throat—

  But no time to raise my arm and the distracting bag of blood before he struck, his fangs piercing through skin, muscle and the arterial wall of my carotid—

  And the world exploded into a pain-filled haze of red and gold.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  He held Genny’s hand, gazing down at her as she lay sleeping. She was pretty, like sunshine in a jar, as his mum used to say. Happiness and relief filled him. Now Genny was here, everything would be all right; she’d sort it. All he had to do was hold her hand, stop her from leaving, and she’d sort it. He’d done something bad, but he hadn’t meant to, he’d just been so hungry. But he was a good boy. He’d always been a good boy . . .

  His thoughts stumbled back into his childhood again before he could stop them. He hated lying there night after night, listening for the thump of the front door closing as his mum went off to her night shift. He desperately wanted to shout for her not to go, not to leave him. Then he’d listen as the fridge door slammed, waiting until the second stair from the top creaked, until the landing light under his bedroom door snuffed out. Then he’d hear the click as the handle turned and the hinges whined . . .

  ‘Be a good boy now, Daryl lad,’ his step-da would say. ‘We don’t want to upset yer mum, don’t want anythin’ to’appen to ’er, now, do we, lad? So just you be a good boy like yer promised.’

  . . . and he’d always been a good boy like he’d promised. He’d promised not to tell then, and he’d promised not to tell now. He always kept his promises.

  But now he’d done something bad to Genny. Sadness and loss squeezed his insides, making the hunger come back, then he gazed down at her, at her shining hand in his, and happiness filled him. She’d g
one away for a while, but she was back now, and so long as he held her hand she’d wouldn’t leave again, and then she’d sort it.

  Sunshine in a jar.

  The thoughts and memory – Darius’ thoughts and memory, I realised after a while – kept going round and round in my head like they were on a children’s roundabout, and somewhere I was crying, for the little boy then, and for Darius now. I could feel the tears dripping down my face, but I couldn’t see anything past the blinding glow of my magic. I could feel his hand holding mine, except it felt odd, more like I was holding his hand, only that wasn’t right either, not when his hand felt small and limp and my much bigger hand enveloped it.

  ‘Darius?’

  I looked up as I heard his name and the magic dimmed. Francine ducked through the ripped doorway and came slowly into the room, placing one high-heeled boot in front of the other, watching me with a wary expression.

  I felt my mouth smile at her, a wide beam, so happy to see her. She lifted her chin, such a tiny movement, and, oddly, I recognised that she was worried, and scared. I/Darius wanted to tell her it was all right, that now she and Genny were here, everything was going to be all right, but the words got confused with the thoughts in my head.

  He loved Francine, she was so small and sexy, and she’d looked after him even before he got the Gift, like Genny looked after him now. If Genny was sunlight in a jar, Francine was dark, dark chocolate. He’d missed her, missed the Moths . . . he’d done something bad, but he hadn’t meant to, he was a good boy, but he’d just been so hungry . . . but she was here now, and Genny was here, they’d sort things out, make things right.

  Sunshine and chocolate.

  ‘Darius?’ Weirdly Francine sank to her knees in front of me and reached out to cup my face, brushing away my tears.

  ‘I’m holding her hand, just like I promised, Francine.’ I felt my lips shape the words, but it wasn’t my voice, wasn’t my thoughts behind them. The voice and thoughts belonged to Darius . . . and so did the mouth, and the eyes I was using. I looked down at my hand where I held his. I squeezed, and Darius’ hand squeezed, not mine. I lifted, and Darius’ hand lifted mine. My hand was the limp one, the one it felt like I was holding.

  Shit! I was in Darius’ body.

  I sand-bagged a rising tide of panic. This wasn’t so strange, was it? After all, I’d been in someone else’s body before. All I had to do was stay calm, work out how this had happened, and find a way back to my own body . . .

  Which hadn’t been in too good a condition last I saw. I squinted past the blinding golden glow of magic and saw myself: the jagged end of the pole was sticking out of my upper stomach, and the wet, gory mess of my throat looked like a wild animal – or a rabid vamp – had chowed down on it . . .

  ‘Oh crap. That doesn’t look good, does it?’ I muttered.

  Francine turned my/Darius’ face away. ‘The sidhe, she is not lost yet. Her heart, you are still beating it, as I told you.’ Her words conjured the steady da-dum, da-dum of a heartbeat pulsing against my/Darius’ palm; it echoed up my/his arm and thrummed in my/his ears. A fainter echo sounded from within my unconscious, injured body. I/He nodded and gripped my limp hand harder, determined to not let go.

  ‘This is good, Darius.’ Francine leaned forward and kissed us . . .

  She watched as Maxim led the blonde child away, trying to shut her ears to the child’s loud, hysterical sobs, and her imploring face, knowing her own face didn’t show her sorrow, fear and rage. She’d never had a child of her body, and with the Gift she never would, but she’d made up for it with all her pretty Moths, and it shattered her heart every time she lost one of them. But this child was special, she’d hidden her, kept her safe, loved her, but now Maxim had claimed her. She would repay the bastard. One day.

  . . . Francine broke the kiss, and I was on my own again in Darius’ head, trying to come to terms with the loss and pain of another memory shown me by the Morrígan.

  Then Darius’ own thoughts started chiming in, like a bizarre background track, and I suddenly realised I wasn’t alone but co-habiting. Darius was here with me – or I was with him – and he was very happy about it, delighted, euphoric even, in a strange, fuzzy sort of way. He was happy both of us were here, me and Francine. We looked at Francine, who was now bending over my still body, and panic bubbled up inside me until a knowing, satisfied thought from Darius squashed my fear. She was healing the wound at my throat by licking it.

  Francine would love my blood; it tasted so good, so sweet and thick. Hunger tightened our stomach, and something twitched between our legs . . . we looked down and grinned—

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ I said out loud as I grabbed for a nearby piece of mattress and stuffed it between our/ Darius’ legs, then wished I hadn’t as his pain nearly doubled us over. Darius choked back the lump in our throat, and his thoughts disappeared into a jumble of unintelligible expletives.

  Crap! The sooner I got out of him, the better . . . but I didn’t even know how the hell I’d ended up inside him in the first place, let alone how I was supposed to get back into my own body. My mind kept chasing the thoughts, looking for answers that weren’t there. And there was something else, something important. Worriedly, I looked around the room littered with bits of bed and mattress and tried to think . . .

  Finally it came to me: what had happened to Lucy, the Moth whose ghost I’d seen?

  Darius gingerly resurfaced. ‘Francine took her away.’ The words formed in my mind, along with his self-guilt and worry. ‘She said the other Moths would look after her.’

  ‘She’s not dead then?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘No.’ he said, almost overwhelming me with self-blame, ‘Francine said she’d be okay.’

  Darius had only attacked the Moths because he’d been lost in bloodlust, and he’d only been lost in bloodlust because Mad Max had stolen my blood. ‘It wasn’t your fault—’

  ‘He didn’t steal the blood, Genny.’ Shame and regret curdled inside us. ‘I said he could have one bag out of three.’

  ‘Why?’

  His mind fuzzed for a second, then he said, ‘So he’d give me the job; it was to pay the blood-tithe.’ It wasn’t a lie, but there was something else there, something he didn’t want me to know. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think I’d need it, not with all the groupies, and I didn’t want to give him my Oath, or anyone else, but I kept getting booked for private parties, and then my head started going funny—’

  Images of his childhood mixed up with more recent ones of the private parties, or more precisely, the ‘anything goes’ orgies, flickered like a movie in my mind, telling me that Mad Max was effectively running a vamp brothel, letting humans into the rooms before the vamps woke up so they could prod and poke and—

  Rage and disgust made me want to go and stick another knife in the bastard’s chest.

  Darius shook our head emphatically. ‘It’s not like that, Genny. All the vamps love it; you get plenty of blood waking up like that. I did too, sort of, at the beginning.’

  I felt the desperate need in him to be honest with me and got another quick image that I could’ve done without: Darius really enjoying himself at what looked like a ‘Bride of Dracula’ hen party, if the outfits were anything to go by.

  ‘But then I started getting confused about where I was,’ he carried on, ‘and what was going on – I’m sorry, Genny, I’m really sorry.’

  More tears dripped down our face as recriminations filled us: his, for not asking for help, and mine for not checking up on him sooner. But now what mattered was getting back into my own body and sorting this whole mess out. I tried to piece together my thoughts . . . Only now we weren’t speaking, the background track of his thoughts grew louder and more intrusive, and my own thoughts kept getting lost in a fuzzy haze. He was relieved and happy that both Francine and I were here; he really loved both of us, and he really wanted us to like each other. We looked down at where she was bent over my body, and at the way the red leat
her moulded to her—

  Darius was getting entirely too happy about things again.

  I gingerly tapped the lumpy bit of mattress between his/ our legs to distract him and mentally pulled myself away from his thoughts until he was just a muted whisper. My own mind cleared and I realised the ‘fuzzy hyped’ feeling had come from Darius; he was still high, from drinking my blood and getting hit by my Glamour.

  I looked at Francine, still bent over my throat, and at the jagged metal sticking out of my stomach. I was sidhe fae, I was still here; I could survive that, couldn’t I? So long as someone took it out soon? Except I was injured and stuck in a vamp (who was keeping me alive by holding my hand), in the middle of a vamp club, with only Francine to help; it wasn’t a win-win situation. How the hell was I going to get out of this? Another bubble of panic threatened to burst—then I remembered I had my very own personal Angel watching over me. An Angel with a hotline to The Mother. It was unlikely She’d let me truly die, at least not until after I’d completed her commands. And then there was the Morrígan too. Maybe if I prayed—

  ‘Genevieve?’

  My name was both a question and a call, and my heart stuttered in thankfulness.

  ‘Malik al-Khan.’

  As I spoke, Darius rushed back in alarm and we looked up. A monstrous figure loomed over us, half-obscured by writhing, angry shadows. Flaming eyes blazing bright stared out of a thin, harsh face, its pale skin laced with an ominous map of hungry blue veins, its lips drawn back over sharp white fangs. Hot fingers of mesma-induced fear lashed down our spine and Darius screamed in terror. Then, before I could grab our thoughts, we were spinning away in a fiery maelstrom of panic.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I fought my way out of the maelstrom, leaving Darius tucked away in the hidden corner of himself, and looked out of his eyes again.