The Bitter Seed of Magic

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 leather 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.

Francine was kneeling between us and Malik, who had dropped the fanged monster look; maybe he’d just used it to frighten the natives, although Francine could’ve told him he didn’t need all the flashy dramatics.

‘—blame is not his, my liege.’ Francine’s words suddenly registered. ‘I beg you to not kill him. Wait, and listen to the sidhe when she wakes.’

Yeah, listen to her: killing him is so not a good idea—for either of us.

‘The sidhe lies behind you and is near death, Francine,’ Malik said in his calm, not-quite-English accent. ‘What makes you think she will live to plead for Darius to keep his Gift?’

As Francine started to talk in a soft, anxious monotone, I shot a quick assessing look at my throat: the wound in my neck was now a puckered mess of scabbed-over skin.

Thank you, Francine! It wasn’t pretty, but maybe my body wasn’t as close to death as Malik’s words suggested, particularly as he didn’t appear to be overly worried. I narrowed my eyes at him. Now I wasn’t seeing him through Darius’ less-than-rosy blood- and fear-coloured glasses, he looked more like his usual beautiful self—other than his hair, which no longer curled like black silk over his coat collar but had instead been buzz-cut close to his scalp. It made him look harder, more dangerous, and at the same time oddly vulnerable. I frowned, concerned, remembering Mad Max’s comments about Malik being the Autarch’s newest torture toy … was it only his hair that was different … or was there a slight stiffness in the way he held himself?

Uneasy, I studied him further. He was dressed as his übergoth persona: black leather trousers and a muscle-hugging T-shirt topped off with a long leather coat that flared and snapped in a nonexistent wind—a standard vamp trick, which, for some bizarre reason, was impressing the hell out of me right now, and filling me with envy …

Until I realised it wasn’t me being envious but Darius, who was metaphysically huddled behind me. He couldn’t do tricks like that, not yet. Darius’ gaze slid admiringly over the muscles under Malik’s T-shirt. He also looked good enough to eat …

… and our memories collided as we both remembered sinking our fangs into Malik, recalling the powerful, buzzing taste of his blood … our mouth watered, lust and hunger burned inside us, and something sprang to attention between our legs again, jolting me out of Darius’ reverie.

‘Okay, now that is so, so weird, and so, so wrong,’ I muttered in my head.

‘Not wrong.’ Our mouth stretched as Darius grinned lopsidedly, happily hyped-up again by the memory. ‘He’s fed us both, so it’s, like, normal that stuff happens.’

‘Normal for vamps maybe,’ I spluttered, ‘not for me.’

‘Yeah, but you’re in me now, and the blood and sex bits get all mixed up.’ A certain part of our anatomy did its weird, excited flex again. ‘Even more right now, ’cos you really, really want to get into his pants.’

‘That. Is. None. Of. Your. Business!’

‘Hey, it’s not like I can miss what you’re feeling.’ He gave a sly laugh. ‘And it’s not like he wouldn’t know you were hot for him anyway; he’d smell it if he wanted to. We vamps got supersenses, y’know.’

‘Okay, eew! And really, so not helping.’

‘Want me to hitch you up with him?’ Our face muscles contorted as I tried to wipe our grin away and he wouldn’t let me. ‘I could, like, ask him if he’s got the hots for you too.’

‘No! Just, no! And, please, go away. I need to think—’

‘Darius?’ Malik crouched in front of us and I vaguely registered that Francine had gone. ‘Do you know what you have done here? What the penalty is for causing harm to the sidhe?’

His attention accomplished what I couldn’t, and Darius’ teasing grin disappeared in the blink of one of Malik’s fire-filled eyes, and then Darius himself disappeared into some dark corner of his mind, leaving me on my own in his body.

‘Yep, he knows who you are all right,’ I grimaced, keeping my hand on the lumpy bit of mattress in my lap, even though things in that department had deflated rapidly. ‘But what I want to know is, do you think this counts as death number five, or number six?’

He stilled, then reached out and tipped my chin up with his finger. ‘Your eyes glow gold with sidhe Glamour. I knew you could trap some of us in this manner, Genevieve, but I did not know you could possess another’s body this way?’