Lifting my head, I crawled closer. His horns were small stubs almost hidden in his matted hair and he was covered in blood - his blood. I briefly closed my eyes as the scent of blackberries made my stomach twist with need. Hanging my head, I willed the hunger away. Deep wounds scored down Finn’s chest and stomach, and bite marks punctured his skin. The familiar-looking injuries told me which sucker Toni had palled up with, which sucker was using him: Rio.
He turned to look at me. His face was pinched, almost feral, the bones sharp under his skin. But it was his eyes I stared at. They were dull, grey, desolate with the spell.
‘You need to get undressed, Gen,’ he said wearily.
‘What?’ My mouth fell open. That was the last thing I’d expected.
‘I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. There’s a chance you can escape using a blood door.’ His gaze held mine, then he looked away again, as if it hurt him for me to see him like this. ‘Only you have to go naked, in supplication. It won’t work otherwise.’
I knew of blood doors. I’d even been through one once, taken by another fae. Once you activated the spell, it took you straight to the person who’d shared the ritual with you.
I frowned, slumping back on my heels. ‘Don’t they have to be pre-arranged?’
‘You need to go to Helen.’ His voice caught as he said her name. ‘Ask her for aid.’
Oh right, Helen, as in Inspector Crane.
‘Helen and I have performed the blood exchange. We did it when we jumped the broom before—’ A spasm of pain cut him off.
They’d jumped the broom? When did that happen? And before what? Before they split up? They couldn’t be still together, could they? An odd feeling slipped from beneath my heart, as though I’d lost something I never had to begin with. I shrugged it off. No wonder the inspector didn’t like me. Still, priorities: escape first, pity-party later.
‘Great plan,’ I said, brightly. ‘I’ll crack the spells holding you.’ I pulled off my T-shirt. ‘Then once you’re out of the shackles, I’ll absorb the psychic-spell and you can take us through.’ I tugged off a boot.
‘Gen, cracking the spells isn’t going to work.’ He slowly turned his head back to me and gave me a shadow of his normal smile. ‘I really don’t want to lose any of my appendages.’
I levered off the other boot, paused as a wave of dizziness hit me. ‘Then I’ll absorb those spells too.’
‘You can’t absorb the shackles, and absorbing the spells could knock you out, or worse.’
I unsnapped my jeans. ‘Who cares, Finn?’ I wriggled the denim over my hips. ‘If you can’t carry me, you can always drag me.’
‘Be realistic, Gen,’ he sighed. ‘You have to go to Helen and get help. You have to go alone.’
‘I’m not leaving without you.’
‘The sucker will be back soon, and the closer she is, the more power she can take from me.’ His hands clenched. ‘You need to go as soon as possible.’
I almost screamed in frustration and fear - this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Taking a deep breath, I said, ‘Okay, tell me how to do it.’
‘We do the ritual, then you have to stand in a circle of your own blood and call to Helen. Once she feels the call, she’ll open the door.’
‘What’s the ritual, Finn?’
‘Nothing drastic, just blood freely offered and exchanged.’
I stared at him in horror. ‘You mean I drink your blood and then spill mine over the floor, then wait for your ex to answer.’
‘Yes, that’s pretty much it.’ His eyes drifted closed. ‘I think that should work.’
‘What do you mean, “should”? Don’t you know?’
‘I’m working from memory here,’ he murmured. ‘It’s not easy.’
Crap. I couldn’t drink his blood. Just the smell was tempting enough. And what if it didn’t work, or Helen didn’t answer? He’d end up in more danger from me than the vamps we were trying to escape from. Of course, there was still my other option: I could bring out my Alter Vamp and just break his shackles ... only she wasn’t strong enough to get us out of the cave, or to fight off more than a couple of other vamps. And she - I - would be right back to being hungry.
‘You have to do it, Gen,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t kill the sucker, I’ve already tried. I can feel her in me, controlling me, feeding off me, like she’s turned a tap on and I can’t turn it off.’ He turned his head away again.
Something about that didn’t tally; I hadn’t noticed the spell at all, not even after I’d taken it from Holly - nothing other than tiredness, and maybe the bad dreams—
‘She’s not going to let me fade—’ Finn’s words shattered my thoughts. He was talking about fading - letting himself die - shit, it had to be bad. ‘Gen, you have to go and get help—’ He was almost pleading with me.
Heart aching, I finished tugging off my jeans and briefs as another flash of dizziness hit me. ‘Okay, let’s do it,’ I said.
He turned back to face me, hope turning the grey in his eyes back to their usual green for an instant.
‘Looks like it’s my turn to ride to the rescue.’ I gave him a lop-sided smile.
‘What are you talking ’bout, Gen?’
Leaning over, I gave him a butterfly kiss on the mouth. ‘You running off to do the shining knight bit earlier when the witches kicked me out of Spellcrackers.’
He gave a weak laugh. ‘If I’d known it’d impress you, I’d have tried it sooner, instead of the cheesy sex god line.’
‘Don’t worry; the sex god thing is pretty impressive too.’ I opened my eyes wide to keep the tears from falling, grinned at him. ‘Just don’t tell anyone I said so.’
Chapter Forty-One
All I had to do was bleed a large enough puddle that I could stand in. I grimaced at the blue veins mapping my naked body. Getting blood out of one of them wasn’t going to be easy.
‘Why can’t I just draw a circle in blood?’ I asked.
‘It doesn’t work that way, Gen.’ Finn gave another weary sigh. ‘It’s a sacrifice, a last resort thing, so no one opens a blood door without thinking seriously about it.’
Yeah, right. Heart labouring in my chest, I clambered to my feet, checked out my left wrist. Maybe I’d be lucky and the vein wouldn’t have healed yet.
I raised my wrist to my mouth.
‘What are you doing?’ Finn was watching me.
‘I haven’t got a knife.’
‘Use one of my horns.’
‘They won’t be sharp enough.’
‘The spells in the restraints aren’t muting my magic, they’re just stopping me from getting free. And the sucker’s not getting all of it; I’m holding back as much power as I can.’ His chin jutted out. ‘Touch one.’
I crouched near his head and gently pressed my finger to one of his horns. It quivered, its ridges scraping against my fingertip as it elongated and stiffened until it was seven inches of smooth curved horn, its tip sharp, like a whittled bone.
‘You need to do it quick, Gen.’ His eyes were closed again, face tight with strain.
I wrapped my hand round his horn and he groaned, low and deep. Pleasure or pain? I wasn’t sure.
‘Hurry.’
Gritting my teeth, I pressed my inner arm against the sharp point, pushed until it pierced the skin. Blood seeped sluggishly out of the wound. I waited for the pain, but it didn’t come. Jerking my arm back, I scored a deep cut from my inner elbow to my wrist.
The blood welled slowly and I stared at it transfixed.
The tattoo on my hip throbbed like a second heart. My nostrils flared as I drew the sweet smell into my lungs. My mouth watered. The urge to rub my blood into the tattoo filled my mind like the cry of a rapacious spirit. I gazed at Finn, at the wounds on his body, and felt nothing but hunger.
And he couldn’t get away.
My mouth stretched in a smile.
‘Have you finished?’ Finn whispered.
Suddenly appalled at my own thoughts, I
scrambled back from him.
‘Gen?’ His horn was shrinking back down into his hair. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ I looked at the floor, not wanting him to see the hunger in my face. Holding out my arm, I squeezed the wound, watched the blood trickle into a puddle the size of a teacup.
‘Gen, we need to do the ritual first.’
‘I’m doing it,’ I muttered.
‘You can’t. You haven’t taken my blood.’
‘And I’m not going to, Finn. There’s someone else I can call for a blood door, someone who can help us better than Helen can.’
‘But you’ve got to go to Helen. She’s the police.
‘I know, but she upholds the humans’ laws, Finn. We’re fae. The human laws don’t apply to us, not with things like this.’
‘She’ll still come,’ he said with certainty. ‘She’s not going to leave me here.’
‘Finn, you don’t get it, do you. Helen is police. She has to go by the rule book whether she wants to or not.’ Look what she’s just done to me, I wanted to shout but didn’t. Instead I carried on, trying to be calm. ‘Technically, the vamps have done nothing wrong. She can’t force her way in here, and no way is she going to start a full-scale war with the vamps, especially not on my say-so. And even if she does work out a way, by the time she gets past them and gets to you, there’ll be nothing left to find. I’m sorry, Finn, but I’m not taking that chance.’
He turned his head away.
The pool of blood was the size of a plate.
‘You’re going to the sucker, aren’t you? The one from last night.’
What if the blood door didn’t work?
‘Gen you don’t have to do this, Take my blood, go to Helen, she’ll come, I know she will.’
I looked at Finn, lying shackled to the floor. No way was I going to take his blood - if I fell into bloodlust, how was I going to stop?
‘I thought you were dead,’ Finn whispered. ‘I thought I’d killed you. I didn’t know a sidhe could survive cold iron like that.’
My heart fluttered with palpitations. I answered him without thinking. ‘It’s the human blood in me.’
The quick movement of his head caught my attention. ‘No part of you is human, Gen, not with those eyes.’
‘My mother was sidhe, my father was human.’ Or he was once, I added silently.
‘Then you would be faeling.’
‘I’m not.’
After a moment he spoke again. ‘They brought you in and started feeding on you. She made me watch ...’
I looked at him, horror invading my mind. He wouldn’t have, would he? ‘What did you promise her?’ I breathed, not sure if I actually wanted to know.
‘I couldn’t let them do that to you,’ he murmured, and I heard other words echo as he spoke. I can’t kill the sucker, I’ve already tried. I can feel her in me, controlling me, feeding off me.
‘It’s not just the spell, is it?’ I whispered as shock settled cold and hard inside me. ‘You took the sucker’s Blood-Bond, didn’t you? That’s how she’s draining so much power from you - she’s combined them together.’
‘Gen, you have to get to Helen.’ He looked at me and the fear and despair on his face gave me my answer. ‘She can sort everything out. Fix this.’
Rio dead was the only way to fix this, and no way was Helen Crane going to kill her.
‘I know you think Helen can’t do anything,’ he continued, ‘but you’re wrong about her. Going to that sucker for help isn’t the right thing for you.’
Fucking shining knight complex! Even if I got him out of this mess he’d probably still come after me, still try and rescue me, thinking I was some distressed damsel he needed to save - and he’d get himself killed, or worse. No way could I let that happen. He had to know the truth.
I squeezed the slash on my arm again, forcing more blood out, concentrating on it instead of him. ‘When I said my father was human, Finn, I meant he was human, before he became a vampire.’ I kept my tone matter-of-fact. ‘So you see, there really is only one place I can go for help, Finn. And that’s to the vamps.’
‘That’s not possible; vamps can’t reproduce like that.’
‘My father found my mother at a fertility rite, got her pregnant, and then after I was born, he let her fade.’ Of course the story wasn’t as simple as that, but it covered the basics. ‘Vamps have their own magic, Finn. And the sidhe can breed with anything magic - and most things not - you know that.’
He didn’t answer, and I stared blindly at my blood as it dripped onto the stony ground.
A chill crept up my spine and my heart stuttered. I closed my eyes, ran my tongue over my teeth and sniffed at the air. A glorious miasma of pain and fear and the liquorice scent of venom had me shifting uncomfortably.
The shush, shush of his blood rushing through his veins, the fast da-dum, da-dum of his heart.
‘Gen?’
My eyes snapped open.
His pulse was jumping in his throat, his skin glowing with blood heat, and I was too close for safety.
‘Gen, I think it’s large enough now.’
‘What?’ I slurred.
‘The blood. You’ve got enough now.’
I looked down. The puddle was larger than a dinner plate. I brought my arm to my mouth and slowly licked the blood off. The sweetness muted my hunger and I sighed. Then I noticed Finn, an odd, indecipherable expression on his face.
Shit. I’d finally succeeded in frightening him.
As I staggered to my feet, the cave swung round me like a fairground ride.
‘Be careful, Gen.’ Finn’s voice was faint in my ears.
Frowning, I half-waved my hand. There was something else. What was it? Oh yeah. ‘I’ll come back, okay?’
His mouth moved, but my ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear him.
The blood looked wonderful. I wanted to fall back to my knees and lap it up. I dipped my toe. I felt it cool against my skin. I stepped in, then lifted my other foot and set it down.
Dark.
Cave.
Dark.
A figure.
Dark.
The woman stood, head thrown back to expose her slender throat, mouth open wide. The image flickered on and off, like a silent movie.
Thick carpet beneath my feet, smell of sex and blood in my nose, buzzing in my ears.
The vampire stood behind her, his face buried in the curve of her neck, his jaw working.
Hunger hot in my stomach, I snarled, the vamp in me clawing to get out. I pushed my wrist down towards my tattoo.
My arm stilled in midair.
A shudder rippled through the woman and she grasped the vampire’s dark hair and pulled him from her neck. She reached out and took my outstretched hand in hers.
She smiled, the smile of an angel, and that smile promised me whatever I wanted. Moving closer, she pressed her body up to mine. Her skin felt slick, hot with blood. Her heartbeat throbbed, pumping sweet life from the fang marks that pierced the swollen flesh at her neck. She tilted her head to the side and offered me her throat, the smile still playing on her face.
I shoved my fingers into her glossy dark hair and fed.
Chapter Forty-Two
The blood was hot and salty and thick - human blood - with an extra kick from a recent venom hit. And when that thought finally penetrated, so did another: the vampire sucking on her neck hadn’t been Malik. The blood door hadn’t worked, or at least not as I’d hoped.
I dragged my mouth from her throat and shoved her away. I threw my head back and stared at the ceiling, trying to calm the exhilarated thunder of my heart. I wanted more. I felt like I could feed on her forever. Clenching my fists, I looked down at my half-finished meal: Hannah Ashby, the ladylike accountant who’d delivered the silver invitations, aka Corset Girl, the vamp junkie from the Leech & Lettuce.
She reclined on the floor, a more normal smile on her face. ‘Well, that wasn’t quite as exciting as I’d imagined, but I s
uppose allowances should be made.’ She touched her hand to her still bleeding neck and pouted. ‘I really was hoping for more than a quick snatch and suck. You’re sidhe - I thought faeries were supposed to be hot.’
Ignoring her, I looked round at the stone ceiling, stone floor, steel door, thick navy rug and massive oak furniture. It all appeared horribly familiar. I was still in the same underground place, just in a different cave room. I strode to the door and waved at it. Nothing happened. A combination of anger, frustration and fear expanded like a whirlwind inside my head. I wanted to scream and cry, punch something, anything—
I concentrated on calming my thoughts. The blood had banished the hunger and the deep slice on my arm had almost healed, the skin knitting together in a raised red scar. Now I had to get out of here.
I wiped a hand over my mouth and walked back to where Hannah was sitting on the bed. ‘Let’s skip the after-dinner pleasantries, shall we? Instead, why don’t you tell me what I’m doing here?’
‘You need help, and I like to help people.’
‘Right. Hijacking me is being so helpful.’ I stuck my hands on my hips, ‘I have to tell you, it’s not working for me.’
‘Oh, I didn’t hijack you.’ She tapped her chest. ‘I felt the blood door open and offered.’
‘Come off it, Hannah,’ I snorted, ‘until now I haven’t had your blood.’
Her smile turned sly. ‘But you did, a tiny taste, maybe, but enough to still count.’ Reaching out, she stroked her fingers across the tattoo on my hip. ‘You may not be wearing the same body, but that’s a minor technicality. It appears that the two of you are becoming so entwined that there is almost no separation.’
The Sweet Scent of Blood Page 31
