The Bitter Seed of Magic

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?’

‘Yep, it’s a new one on me too,’ I sighed, relieved that he’d caught on quick, and Darius wasn’t going to lose his head just yet. ‘Look, I’m a bit hazy on the specifics of how I ended up inside Darius’ body, and I’d really like to get back to my own. Don’t suppose you’ve heard of anything like this before?’

‘Not without a demon or black magic being involved?’ He raised his voice in question.

‘No, no demon, nor anything like that this time,’ I said quickly, with a shudder.

He tilted my/Darius’ head up further, peering closer into my/his eyes, and his dark spice scent twisted a curl of desire inside us. ‘And you are sure you did nothing to cause this, Genevieve?’

‘Nope,’ I said, pressing down on the bit of mattress, seriously hoping Darius didn’t choose this moment to do anything stupid. ‘One minute I’m hitting the painful high point of being necked on, then the next I’m hearing voices—or rather, hearing thoughts and memories in my head, only now it’s not my head …’ I trailed off.

‘You have thought of something?’ His expression turned quizzical.

‘I had a visit from the Morrígan earlier today …’ I frowned, thinking it through as I spoke. ‘She sicced some kind of memory spell on me. Darius triggered the spell—it seems to be triggered by touch; his isn’t the first memory I’ve picked up on—but maybe with me pushing my Glamour into him, the spell had some sort of drastic side-effect?

‘What are these memories?’

‘Sad ones,’ I said, softly, ‘from their pasts. And the spell is still working, even though I’m in Darius’ body,’ I added, recalling the memory of Francine’s, the one of Mad Max dragging away the blonde girl (who was vaguely familiar from somewhere) when Francine had kissed me—or rather, Darius.

‘I see,’ he said, releasing my/Darius’ chin with something like apprehension. And I wondered what memory he didn’t want me to know. ‘We will discuss this later, Genevieve. For now, we should concentrate on healing your body and restoring you to it safely. I will examine your injuries to see what can be done.’

‘Works for me,’ I said, more than happy to let Malik use his handy healing powers on my body.

He moved closer to my body and carefully tore my T-shirt. Watching him gently probing my injury was surreal enough to make my/Darius’ stomach churn squeamishly, so instead I fixed my gaze on the ripped-up doorway, and thought about the Morrígan and the memories instead. Was I just picking up any memory to do with grief and childhood, or were the memories clues to the dying faelings and, therefore to the curse? And if so, what did they mean, and what was I meant to do with them? And where had I seen the girl in Francine’s—

Francine herself reappeared from wherever she’d been, and derailed my thoughts. She wasn’t alone. She was dragging a groaning Mad Max behind her, like a child trailing a gigantic rag doll.

‘My liege.’ She dipped her head at Malik. ‘Maxim, he is the only possibility. Fyodor, he is staked. There is none other here above fifty.’

Malik eyed the groaning Maxim for a moment, then stood and moved to one side. ‘Maxim will be sufficient.’

Francine kicked and shoved Mad Max—she really didn’t like him—until he was lying alongside my body. With her two bronze blades still jutting out of his chest, and the metal pole in my stomach, we looked like a couple of gruesome extras in a low-budget horror flick.

I leaned over and poked him suspiciously. ‘What’s Mad Max sufficient for?’ I asked as he fixed me with a malevolent glare from the one blue eye which wasn’t quite swollen shut.

‘Mad Max?’ Francine’s mouth fell open, her eyes widened and she backed up, crossing herself in panic until she was plastered against the wall. ‘You are not Darius! What voodoo is this?’

‘It’s not voodoo, Francine,’ I said, ‘just a side-effect of the magic.’

‘Voodoo is evil.’ She crossed herself again, sweat beading on her forehead.

‘Be calm, Francine.’ Malik’s pupils flared with tiny flames and her face smoothed over. ‘Darius is not harmed; he has allowed Genevieve to share his body for now.’

‘As you wish, my liege,’ she replied blandly.

‘Did you just mind-lock her?’ I asked, curious.

‘No,’ Malik and Francine said in unison.

I waited for Malik to say more. He didn’t, and I realised that was all the answer I was getting. ‘Trust me, Francine, I’d much rather be in my own body’—I looked down at it—‘well, maybe not quite this minute, but as soon as Malik’s healed me.’

‘I believe you should return to your body before it is healed further, Genevieve.’ Malik started to brush a hand over his forehead, his ‘I’m considering’ gesture I recognised from when his hair was longer, then hesitated before running a palm over his new buzz-cut. ‘It is possible that with the blood connection between you and Darius, and your attempt to control his mind, that your spirit slipped out to avoid the pain, much as the Moths do.’

That sort of made sense: except the Moths usually vacated their bodies as temporary ghosts, not as squatting tenants.

‘I do not understand how they return to their bodies,’ he carried on. ‘Francine can only tell me that they fly when their blood sings to them, but she tells me their spirits are less susceptible to losing themselves if they return before their bodies are fully healed. She also tells me that those Moths who are able to perform this trick have some fae magic in their blood.’

The Moths were fae, or at least had an ancestor who was fae? Interesting—and reassuring, given I was just about to try the same trick. ‘Okay,’ I said, looking from him to Francine, ‘so how do we make my blood sing to me?’

Francine drew her lips back and her tiny venom fangs sprang down. ‘The vampire, he make the blood sing,’ she murmured.

Lovely. I—or rather, my body—was going to get a shot of the real stuff. I’d really fall off the blood-fruit wagon after that—

‘Umm, I think maybe I already venom-stuck you, Genny,’ Darius’ apologetic voice interrupted my own internal thoughts. ‘Y’know, when I—’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I muttered, scowling at Mad Max who was still giving me the evil eye from the floor, and feeling that same fuzz in Darius’ mind again. There was something there he didn’t want me to know … about my blood … and someone called Andy … he’d made a promise not to tell—

‘Genevieve?’ Malik touched my/Darius’ face and the thoughts scattered. I blinked and looked up at him. Compassion softened his expression. ‘You have no need to worry,’ he said softly. ‘I will find a way if this does not succeed. But first we shall try this?’

I didn’t tell him I wasn’t worried, or rather, I hadn’t been until I caught a glimpse of his own anxiety beneath the compassion. My heart gave a happy little lurch that he cared, and I flashed him a smile big enough to reassure both of us. ‘Hey, I’m hard to kill, remember? Not to mention I’ve got two goddesses on my case, so no doubt one of them is watching over me.’

He gave me a long, pensive look, then nodded. ‘Good, then Francine will finish her preparations.’

Francine stepped forward, jumped up and grabbed something hanging above. The something dropped down with a great clanking noise and turned out to be a thick, heavy chain with an odd leather-belt contraption on its end. The chain was attached to a pulley bolted into the ceiling.

I started to wonder what on earth it was for, but almost immediately images flashed in my mind of naked bodies dangling down, the leather belt-thing strapped tightly around their ankles, then the images were quickly replaced by a wide expanse of blank white wall, and the knowledge that Darius was embarrassed and trying not to think about anything else.

‘Tell me you haven’t killed anyone with that,’ I demanded.

‘No!’ His answer blasted through me with enough shock and horror, along with a flash of something very definitely to do with sex, that I had absolutely no trouble believing him.

Francine hunkered down at Mad Max’s feet and efficiently buckled the leather contraption—‘Ankle cuffs,’ Darius murmured from behind his white wall—around Mad Max’s legs, and started hoisting him up.

‘What’s she preparing him for?’ I asked, sincerely doubting Mad Max was being strung up for the usual reasons.

‘Your body is too depleted of blood for your heart to beat on its own,’ Malik explained. ‘You need a transfusion before you can be fully healed. Maxim is a suitable donor, but with his heart stopped by the knives, we will need gravity to aid the transfer.’

I frowned, not thrilled about having Mad Max’s blood in my body. ‘Why can’t I have your blood at the same time as you heal me, like you did before?’

‘You need more blood than I can safely give you, Genevieve. Such quantity as you require would risk afflicting you with my curse.’

‘Okay,’ I said, puzzled, and not entirely understanding his worry. ‘But I’m not human, I’m sidhe. Your curse can’t affect me, because I can’t become a vampire. The magic doesn’t work that way.’

‘That would be true if you were full-blood sidhe,’ he said quietly, ‘but your father is a vampire.’

‘No, my father being a vampire is irrelevant,’ I said firmly. ‘Sidhe reproduction is different, so I am a full-blood sidhe—I’m like a clone of my mother; that’s how it works.’

‘I am not willing to take that gamble,’ Malik insisted, ‘not when his blood will suffice.’ He waved at Mad Max, now swaying gently above my actual body. His arms and long silver hair were just inches above my body’s face and I wrinkled my/ Darius’ face in disgust as I clicked exactly how I was going to get Mad Max’s blood: I just knew he was going to taste bad.

‘Fine,’ I agreed. Getting back in my body was the priority, not worrying about whose blood I was going to get. ‘So what’s next?’

‘Darius should feed now,’ Malik said, an edge of displeasure in his voice. ‘Sparingly,’ he added.

‘Okay, let’s do it,’ I said, then as Darius stopped hovering unobtrusively behind his white wall and leaned us eagerly towards my body’s neck, I added; ‘From the wrist.’ Ignoring his vague disappointment, I/Darius lifted up my limp hand, the one we were still clutching, and we sniffed the sweet honey scent that pulsed just under the skin. Hunger cramped our stomach, and we struck—

—thick viscous, honey-tasting blood burst into our mouth—

Cold, so cold … every beat of my heart hurt, as if a large hand were gripping it and squeezing, the fingers digging in painfully, then a brief second of respite before the hand gripped and squeezed all over again, like some torturous mechanical pump. I screamed, desperate to get away from the unbearable agony …

‘Drink, Genevieve,’ Malik’s voice commanded in my mind, and as Mad Max’s metallic, sour-tasting blood touched my lips, I opened my mouth and let it flood in, swallowing convulsively as it hit the back of my throat—

He watched as the boy slid down the slide squealing with pure joy. The security lights flooded the playground in a bright white light that kept the night at bay, and turned the boy’s blond curls silver. He wanted to pick him up, lift him and swing him round, and tell him he could fly. Tell him he loved him. It was something the old man had done when he’d been the boy’s age: a small, happy thing in among the ever-constant fear. But he hugged the want to himself, tucked it away in his heart. She’d never allow it. It had taken five years from the boy’s birth until now for her to grudge him this one brief glimpse from a distance. And he didn’t want to give the bitch the satisfaction of seeing his need. Or his pain.