Bitter Seed of Magic (9781101553695)

by Mcleod, Suzanne

  ‘I will huff, and I will puff . . .’

  I felt around until my fingers met with long, wiry hair. An orange glow began to penetrate the fog and the huge furry figure of the Old Donn took shape beside me. He was the one singing.

  I squinted up at him. ‘What—?’ I coughed up a mouthful of dust, gritted my teeth against the stabbing pain in my shoulder – should’ve asked Jack for another of the Witch-bitch’s Pain-Numbing spells to go – then managed to croak out, ‘What’s with the singing?’

  He knocked his hairy knuckles on one long horn. ‘There is a vampire at the door, tasty sidhe, and he says he’s afther entering.’ He leaned closer and whispered, ‘He says he can smell you.’

  Was it Malik?

  ‘Can you let him in?’ I asked, my voice a little less croaky.

  ‘I cannot ask.’ He winked. ‘For he cannot see—’

  A loud rumbling noise cut him off. It sounded like thunder directly overhead . . . or falling masonry. My pulse sped. Maybe I’d been a bit hasty in assuming I hadn’t destroyed the place. ‘What was that?’ I said, struggling up onto my good elbow.

  ‘You have huffed and puffed and now my house is blowing down,’ the Old Donn said sadly.

  Fuck. The Stepfords!

  ‘But you can keep the place stable, can’t you?’ I asked urgently, almost sure he could, otherwise why sing in my ear? ‘And let the vamp in?’

  His orange eyes glinted slyly. ‘I might be doing that, if you’d be agreeing to get me a new body and my freedom back?’

  Damn aggravating tricky fae, always wanting to bargain when the chips, or rather bricks, are down.

  ‘Let the vamp in and keep the place stable until everyone’s out,’ I said decisively, ‘and I’ll do a deal on the freedom.’ I paused, then added, ‘My terms, not yours.’

  ‘Not good enough,’ he bellowed.

  ‘All you’re going to get,’ I said flatly, mentally crossing my fingers. ‘But remember, if the place truly collapses and I fade, then you’ve lost your chance. You might not get another one for . . . oh, centuries, at least. So take it or leave it.’

  ‘Obstinate pretty sidhe.’ He stood and stamped his foot, and the floor shook. ‘Very well, then. I invite you in, vampire,’ he finished on a loud roar.

  For a second nothing happened, then the bed on my legs went flying and a tawny-haired blur loomed out of the grey fog above me. ‘Genny, are you okay?’ the vamp said, wiping at my face. ‘Your head’s all gashed and I can smell your blood, like, everywhere.’ He sniffed his fingers and wrinkled his nose. ‘Though this isn’t all yours, is it?’

  Darius. My fang-pet.

  ‘How did you get here?’ I asked, bemused.

  ‘This big hole just exploded in the Coffin Club’s wall,’ he said, his excited grin showcasing all four of his fangs. ‘We all crowded round, and as soon as I got near it I caught your scent.’

  Somewhere safe. The magic had an odd sense of humour at times – although, with Malik’s protection . . . well, a faeling possibly couldn’t get safer than a vamp club in Sucker Town just now. Not to mention there’d be no one faster, stronger, or more able to sniff out the Stepfords in the dust than a load of vamps with super-senses.

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured, sending my gratitude to the magic.

  I told Darius what I needed. ‘So get them all in here, get them hunting, but tell them no fangs, otherwise they’ll be begging for Malik to rip their heads off before I’ve finished with them.’

  ‘Sure thing, Genny,’ he said cheerfully.

  The hospital beds were made of iron, which thankfully meant the numbness in my legs was temporary, but also meant moving was out of the question, not to mention that my shoulder felt like a dwarf was using it as an anvil, and bouncing hammers off it, so Darius left me propped against the wall amidst the rubble of the entrance I’d made between the Tower and the Coffin Club. The big hole in the wall opened into the inner hallway of the club, and going by the heaps of coffin-shaped and decorated tat lying around the place, my magical explosion had extensively rearranged the gift shop; in particular the shop’s window display of DVDs, which was now a three-foot-high volcano of melted plastic and shattered glass.

  I shrugged – the DVDs had been on sale, so they obviously weren’t hot ticket items – and watched with beady-eyed anxiety as the club’s vamps disappeared into the dust, and sighed with heartfelt relief as the first reappeared carefully pushing a Stepford mum-to-be in her wheeled bed, then lifting it over the rubble like the bed weighed nothing more than a tea tray. I relaxed into a weary, pain-filled stupor as more complaining Stepfords, crying babies and sullen nurses were rescued, and waited for Hugh to arrive with his boys in blue. The Old Donn sat with me, humming happily while he polished his horns with his loincloth.

  After about ten minutes Darius walked out of the grey dust of Between with a white-coated body tucked under one arm and something dangling from his other hand.

  ‘Think he got caught up in the explosion,’ he said with a frown, as he held up Dr Craig’s head by one jug-handled ear. The neck was still dripping. ‘What do you want me to do with him?’

  The Old Donn’s polishing stilled.

  ‘Probably better put him on ice until the police get here,’ I said blandly.

  Darius grinned, saluted me with the head and strode off.

  ‘You seem to be havin’ a wee bit of a problem controlling your magic, pretty sidhe,’ the Old Donn said mildly.

  He was right. I’d only meant to crack the gold chain fastening the Old Donn’s cape across Dr Craig’s shoulders, so as to break the Glamour hold he had over the Stepfords, but the power-boost I’d been given had to go somewhere. Not that I was going to lose any sleep over Dr Craig’s demise, or that the Old Donn needed to know any of that.

  I gave him a wide beam of a smile. ‘Nah, the magic did just what I needed.’ Which wasn’t a lie. I had needed Dr Craig out of action, albeit not quite so bloodily.

  The Old Donn’s broad nostrils flared, then he nodded and went back to his polishing. A couple of rescued Stepfords later, he said in a conversational tone, ‘The vamps were afther comin’ afore, into my home. Two o’ them, along with the kelpie and the watery man.’ His orange eyes glowed with malice. ‘Relatives of hers, if you’re for believin’ that. They were the ones took her and her little girlie away.’

  ‘Took who away?’ I asked, keeping my voice casual. Not that I needed to ask: he meant Angel, or Rhiannon, as he’d known her, and Brigitta her daughter: Ana’s mother.

  ‘She was always one for singing.’ He hummed a few notes in a soft, sad baritone that sounded like ‘Rock-a-Bye-Baby’.

  ‘She still is,’ I said in the same casual tone as my hand clenched in his orange hairy hide.

  ‘She was happy here.’ His massive head dipped in apology. ‘We were never afther forcing her, pretty sidhe, not even with the curse as our reason. She agreed to all we asked.’

  ‘She didn’t know what it was all about,’ I said, only just keeping my fury in check. ‘How could she when she’s not in her right mind?’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said gently. ‘But then, you’re a fine daughter to her.’

  My hand spasmed open and I shoved his furry cape away. He winked out of sight.

  Angel was my mother.

  I dropped my head back against the wall as the thought ripped my heart into tiny bloody, painful pieces. In some shadowed corner of my mind I’d known she was . . . Not right away, even though seeing her that first time had been like looking into a mirror, but ever since then, the knowing had been dripping into me, as inexorable and unstoppable as Chinese water torture. I’d ignored it. I hadn’t wanted to admit it was real. I’d wanted to cling to my belief that my mother was a sidhe called Nataliya, that she’d died when I was born, and that she hadn’t abandoned me. And I hadn’t wanted to know that my part in the curse wasn’t happenstance, hadn’t wanted to know that I was just another sacrificial child in a family full of them: a child abandoned to
the vampires so she could break a mislaid curse.

  No wonder Clíona – my grandmother – had been so determined to kill me when I’d run away from the suckers at fourteen and turned up in London. I was her proverbial bloody, tainted laundry.

  My throat constricted and tears stung my eyes. But at least now I had the pendant with its Fertility spell and the means to put everything to rights, hopefully without ending up with a sacrificial child of my own.

  Jack, in his raven guise, soared out of the grey dust carrying a limp Nicky in his talons, her white frilly nightdress flapping in his slipstream; he didn’t stop, but flew straight through the club’s wall as if it wasn’t there and disappeared. I hoped he was taking her to Finn. Moments later he was followed by a tall, stretched-thin vamp with an equally limp Helen slung over his shoulder. He lowered her to the carpet in the club, and for a second I thought she was dead, she lay so still.

  The vamp wrung his hands and gave me a grovelling look. ‘Sorry, Ms Taylor, I had to put her out. She kept struggling, and it was making me hungry.’ He bent and touched his finger to her forehead and stepped quickly back.

  She sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, fists clenched, eyes wild and angry, a purple bruise blooming down the side of her face where I’d hit her. Evidently Nicky hadn’t put her hoof in as hard as I’d thought. Seeing me sitting there, she strode over.

  ‘I want it back,’ she shouted, and before I realised what she meant to do, she flicked her finger at my injured shoulder.

  Pain exploded though my body. Fucking Witch-bitch—

  And I fell into the blackness.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  I woke up in a coffin with the dark spice-and-copper taste of Malik’s blood in my mouth. He’d healed me. Part of me was disappointed that I hadn’t been around to enjoy it. The coffin was glass, cushioned with plush white velvet, and was in the middle of the Room of Remembrance. A hard knot of worry twisted in my gut. I hoped the coffin was nothing more than someone’s black sense of humour, and not some symbolic fairy-tale portent telling me I’d missed my sunset appointment with the Morrígan.

  I jerked up to find the room empty apart from Mad Max, who was watching me with a quizzical expression on his face. He was leaning, arms crossed, against the blood-smeared coffin displayed on the raised dais at the end of the room. He was dressed in his red Hussar uniform, with his long platinum-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail . . . and his shiny black knee-boots were firmly planted on the Old Donn’s furry orange hide.

  ‘I need to know how long it is ’til sunset,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

  Mad Max gave me a lazy smile. ‘Sun’s not going down for a couple of hours yet, love.’

  I blew out a relieved sigh. There was still time. ‘What happened while I was out?’

  ‘The police troll chappy turned up with all bells ringing and a parade of ambulances,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘Everyone got carted off to HOPE, or to the nick at Old Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Oh good.’ Sounded like Hugh had it all under control.

  I hopped out of the coffin, pulled a face at the dirty, bloodstained velvet I left behind, and scowled at the dirty, bloodstained jeans and ripped T-shirt I was still wearing. For some reason my clothes had suffered worse than I’d thought in the magical explosion. I had a brief, wistful thought about a hot shower, ice-cold vodka and clean clothes. Unfortunately, there wasn’t going to be enough time for all that.

  I still had a couple more problems to sort out as well as the Morrígan.

  And Problem Number One, Mad Max, was standing in front of me.

  ‘So,’ Mad Max said casually, ‘how’re you diddling, Cousin? All your aches and pains gone?’

  I gave my first problem a neutral look. ‘“Cousin”? Or should it be “niece”?’

  He raised his brows. ‘Cat’s out of the bag, is it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  He flung his arms wide, and bowed. ‘Cousin whatever-it-is-removed on your dad’s side’ – he smacked the coffin he was leaning against: inside it was Fyodor, still lying staked in his diamond – and blood-strewn white clothes – ‘and this here is not just my Dear Old Dad, but your mum’s too, which makes your mum my nutty little sister, and me your uncle. But family are downright hard to keep track of unless you keep them in their place’ – he smacked the coffin again with evident glee – ‘so don’t take my word for it; have a butcher’s at that instead.’ He pointed to a book propped up against one of the glass coffins opposite me.

  I strode across the aisle and snatched it up.

  ‘Watch it, love,’ Mad Max snapped out sharply, ‘you damage that and I’ll take it out of your hide.’

  I shot him a frown, then studied the book. It was tooled black leather with each corner protected by silver, and an ornate silver lock and clasp keeping it closed. Mad Max’s diary, maybe? The silver burned my fingers as I undid the clasp, and as the book fell open where it had been bookmarked by a black silk ribbon, the faint perfume of roses rose like an ethereal ghost.

  On the left-hand page was another family tree; a small hiccough of hysteria lodged in my throat that this was the second family tree I’d seen in two days. But it was the page opposite the tree that truly captured my attention. It was dated: 18th June, twenty-six years ago, and written at the top in large, almost childish script was: Brigitta’s fifteenth birthday.

  Below the heading was a faded, pressed pink rose, and next to the pressed flower was a strip of four small photographs, from one of those ‘instant photo’ booths. The first three photos were headshots of two giggling girls with a silver-haired Irish wolfhound sitting proudly between them – Mad Max in his doggy persona, presumably. The dog was holding a pink rose in his teeth. The last one showed the same two girls, with Mad Max in his human shape, still with the rose in his fangs, looking like some platinum-blond vampire Valentino.

  One of the girls was obviously Helen, a much younger version. The other one I’d never seen, but if her hair had been less strawberry blonde and more my own blood-amber colour, and if the pale gold colour of her sidhe eyes had been darker, she could’ve been my twin sister. She had to be Brigitta.

  All three of them looked young and happy, and like they were having a great time.

  I looked at the family tree on the page opposite.

  I stared at the photos and the handwritten family tree, trying to take it in.

  I wasn’t my mother’s only child.

  She’d had another daughter, Brigitta . . . who was twenty-six years older than me and looked like my twin—

  But Brigitta was dead, killed by the vamps, and I’d never even met her. Rage, and an odd grief for the sister I’d never known, rose like a surging tide in my chest and I wanted to smash something—

  ‘Of course,’ Mad Max’s loud drawl broke me out of my thoughts and I swallowed my anger back as I turned to glare at his cheerful, smiling face, ‘your batty mother – Angel, as she likes to be called now – kept changing her name’ – he pointed at the book in my hands – ‘which rather makes a mess of the whole thing, love.’

  My fingers clenched on his book. With all the family skeletons coming out of the bloody cupboard, maybe he’d tell me about one more. ‘So how did my sidhe mother end up in possession of a long-lost Fertility spell right at the time when she met my vamp father?’

  ‘Ah. I’m afraid the blame for that is mine.’

  I dug my nails into my palms to stop from screaming at him. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well.’ He crossed his arms again. ‘When my barmy sister was returning the Fertility spell to this nasty moth-eaten old thing here’ – he dug his heel viciously into the Old Donn’s hide – ‘she stopped off for a little romantic holiday with the equally crazy fossegrim. But the rub of it was, once she’d finished playing about in his fountains, the spell was missing. Fast-forward a few years, and Brigitta – that’s her kid with the old fossy – happened upon the spell on one of her visits to the old man.’

  ‘At which point you decided to
test it out – on Helen!’ I looked down at the diary in my hands. ‘And on Brigitta—’ I stopped, appalled. ‘Brigitta was your niece! My half-sister!’

  ‘What can I say’ – he grinned widely, flashing fang, but his eyes were a cold, hard blue – ‘other than the girls were great friends, they both had pressing problems they wanted solved with the miracle of a bouncing little baby, and despite being a cad and a really quite terrible uncle, I obliged them. Anyway, the next thing happens, my wacky sister turns up and demands the spell. Of course I handed it straight over. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of her, ’specially not when she’s got her “goddess” thing going on.’ He gave a dramatic shudder. ‘But old Andrei – that’s “Daddy” to you – was visiting, and my fruitcake of a little sister took a fancy to him, slapped the old boy with enough Glamour he didn’t know which way was up, and then, hey presto, nine months later out you pop.’

  ‘So my father didn’t rape her?’ I said, feeling oddly numb that I’d spent the last eleven years believing something about my parents’ relationship – and my birth – that wasn’t true. And after all this time, if there was a baddie in all that, it wasn’t my father, but Clíona and The Mother.

  ‘Good God no!’ He shot me a horrified look. ‘More like the other way round, if you think of it – not that he objected, no, he was quite the strutting peacock with it all.’

  So why did she leave me with him? But I didn’t ask. I was pretty sure the curse and The Mother had something to do with the answer. Instead, I carefully closed the diary and put it back next to the glass coffin. I’d had as much of my family history as I could cope with for now. I dropped the grief and pain and anger away into a dark hole in my mind to deal with later. I needed my wits about me for my sunset appointment with the Morrígan.