The Sweet Scent of Blood

‘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.’