The Shifting Price of Prey

Chapter Twenty-Six

I walked through the mosque’s entrance gates and followed the short path through the near-hundred-foot-high archway and up the few steps into the wide expanse of paved courtyard. A string of open arches to my right showed a covered corridor leading to the main door; the other sides of the courtyard were watched over by rows of tall, arched windows, their glass plain. The whole building was a mix of blocky sixties concrete architecture married to the traditional patterns of Islam. It didn’t make anything pretty, but it was solid and imposing. The courtyard lights were bright enough to banish most of the shadows without bathing the space in the glare of spotlights. The place was almost empty of people but was filled with the same quiet, weighty peace that infuses most places of worship. A certainty of faith in a higher power. Allah might not be my god, but, nonetheless, his presence was felt here.

As was the ambassador.

He was near the mosque’s main door, huddled in a patch of shadow, hemmed in by a male and female. Briefly I wondered where his henchies were, and why they’d left him alone, then checked out the couple. The male was mid-twenties, tall enough to loom over the shorter ambassador, with the black curly hair and dark complexion of the Mediterranean. The female was in her late teens and petite, a pretty dark-eyed brunette with hair that waved over her shoulders, but unlike her Mediterranean pal, her skin was almost vamp pale. The male was dressed in a vest, shorts and flip-flops, clothes not entirely out of place in midsummer in London. The girl was also in flip-flops, legs bare, but then things got odd. Her top half was draped in a hip-length fur jacket more suited to the depths of a Russian winter.

Even without the jacket’s out-of-season strangeness, its colour would’ve snagged my attention. It was grey-brown; the same shade as the Emperor’s werewolves on his website picture. And the werewolves on the tarot cards. So was this female a werewolf? Wearing a wolf, or even a werewolf-skin coat? If she was, it seemed to be verging on cannibalistic to me, but hey, what did I know?

Nothing for sure, other than that the Tower tarot card had led me here and showed the ambassador being chased by a werewolf. So whatever was going on had to do with the fae’s fertility, the Emperor, and the ambassador’s kidnapped wife and child. But however I joined the dots, I couldn’t figure out what picture they made.

I kept my head down and glided behind a pillar so I could see without being seen, frustrated that I couldn’t cast a Listening spell, or at least chance getting near enough to hear without spooking them. Though, really, one look at the ambassador’s face told me he wasn’t getting good news, while the confident calm of the couple said they were entirely happy with whatever was being discussed . . . The female seemed to be doing all the talking . . . a ransom maybe? Except ransom demands weren’t usually delivered in person, were they? Something to ask Hugh’s negotiator. Later. For now, I watched and sent out a careful ping with my Spidey senses.

All three hit me as human.

Damn. My gut still said the girl, and probably the male with her, were werewolves, but then I’d never met any, so maybe I couldn’t tell. Not a particularly comforting thought when I was used to knowing who was what, no matter what shape they wore.

After a minute or two’s more quiet chat, the girl held her hand out, offering something to the ambassador.

He stared for a long moment, hope and fear warring in his expression, then held his own palm out.

She dropped whatever she was holding with a satisfied smile, and I caught a glint of gold.

He clenched his fist, nodded, then backed away. He quickly retreated through the entrance into the mosque’s interior.

The girl turned her satisfied smile towards the tall dark male, lifted a pale hand to caress his cheek, then the pair headed for a high archway that led out of the courtyard to the far side of the mosque. If I remembered right, there was a gate there that opened out on to the road.

Indecision nipped at me.

Did I go and talk to the ambassador as I’d originally intended, find out what he was hiding, and what the werewolf girl had given him?

Or did I chase the werewolfy pair?

Interrogating the ambassador was the sensible, safe option.

Only he wasn’t going anywhere.

The werewolves were.

But chasing after a couple of werewolves on my own was, well, chasing after the big bad wolves and asking for trouble, especially since I didn’t have my damn phone on me so couldn’t call for help. But if they were the Emperor’s werewolves, then the fur-coated female and her curly-haired pal could lead me straight to the vamp himself. Maybe even to the kidnap victims. And just because I was following the werewolfy pair didn’t mean I had to follow them all the way to their hideout. Or that I was going to be in danger. If things started looking iffy I could turn tail; after all, I knew how to run. Plus, if it came to a fight, well, so long as the pair didn’t take their half-and-half beast form they were as vulnerable to injury and death as any other human or animal.

And I had my ace up my sleeve, or rather my sword in my ring— Ascalon.

But first I needed to leave a few breadcrumbs for my kelpie backup.

I bit at my finger, the one with the nearly healed scab from where I’d given blood to the last tarot card, and touched a drop of honey-scented blood to the pillar.

Then I hightailed it after the werewolves.

The archway they’d passed through led me to another, smaller, paved area, some summer-browned grass, and, as I’d thought, to a short flight of steps and a gate to the Hanover Gate road. Hoping the furry couple hadn’t jumped into waiting transport, I stuffed the pashmina into my backpack, jogged quietly down the steps, took a moment to leave my blood on the gate as I closed it and then checked both directions.

Relief swam through me as I saw the werewolfy pair were nearly at the end of the road, on foot, and heading towards Regent’s Park.

I went after them, not worried about being seen or heard; there were enough folk around and, even at this late hour, the traffic was as busy as ever, not to mention the noisy whistles, clanks and excited shouts drifting over from the Carnival Fantastique in the heart of the park. I kept far enough back that I guessed I was out of scenting distance, in case they could do that in their human forms, while cursing my lack of knowledge about werewolves in general.

The pair turned right on to Outer Circle, the road which runs all the way round the park, and moved at a fast walk until they reached the temporary car park set up for Carnival visitors. For a moment I thought they planned to pick up a car, or head for the Carnival crowds, but instead they took the path past the kiddies’ boating pond and over the two-step bridge to the far side of the boating lake. I hung back as they reached the vehicle-turning space before one of the park’s large and exclusive private houses, watching to see which way they went next.

They took the south path.

It ran along the curving shore of the boating lake, and for a good long stretch had dense bushes to either side, and was pretty much deserted at this time of night. A perfect place for an ambush. Was this their intended route? Or had they twigged they were being followed?

‘Okay,’ I murmured, ‘do I call it a bust and head back to the mosque and the ambassador, or keep tailing you?’

The ‘ambush likely’ path met a crossroads at a point further on where they could choose to head up to the Carnival, go straight on across the park and ultimately out of it into Primrose Hill village. Or they could turn and cross the bridge towards the Inner Circle, the area containing the Queen Mary’s Gardens, a whole heap of the park’s utility and college buildings, and two more large, exclusive private houses. Houses which were just the type a vamp with delusions of imperialism would pick for his temporary residence.

If the houses were hosting the Emperor and his gang, then they would take the bridge at the crossroads. Only I wasn’t stupid enough to head down the creepy, ambush likely path after them.

But I didn’t need to. I could go the long way round through the more open parkland, which would make it easier to see anyone coming and, if I sprinted, still get to the crossroads before them and lie in wait. Yeah, it risked losing them but tailing them was looking more and more like a long shot anyway.

‘But first,’ I muttered, ‘a little added insurance.’

I fished inside my T-shirt, hooked out the chain I was wearing and pulled it over my head. The tiny blue-glass bottle that had contained the Morpheus Memory Aid potion dangled from the chain like a pendant. I’d salt-washed the bottle and filled it with Tavish’s disgusting werewolf repellent. Not that I was planning on anointing myself with the stuff – it stank enough that everyone, including werewolves with sensitive noses, would know I was about – but the bottle was fragile enough that it was easily broken. If anyone came at me with nefarious notions, werewolf or not, I’d crush the bottle and even if the obnoxious smell didn’t drive them away, it would give me a couple of seconds’ distraction.

And a second was all I needed to release Ascalon.

I placed another ‘I went this way’ drop of blood on the ground. Then, gripping the tiny bottle in my left hand, its neck chain wrapped round my wrist, and holding my right hand with Ascalon’s ring at the ready, I started running, sprinting over the summer-dry ground as silently as possible.

The bushes on my right grew denser as I raced past, leeching away the light and shifting with amorphous grey shadows that seemed to be keeping pace with me. Shadows that reminded me of the animal I’d seen on Primrose Hill the other night, the one my Morpheus-Memory-enhanced dream had shown me. My mind told me it was down to my imagination, to being hyper-aware of my surroundings, and that the grey shadows I kept glimpsing out the corner of my eye, and the hair-raising rustles and snaps I could almost hear coming from the thick vegetation, really weren’t a pair of huge werewolves licking their lips as they loped alongside me.

I neared the crossroads and slowed, pulse pounding like thunder in my ears, as I looked for a good spying place.

Shock splintered through me as a familiar presence pinged my Spidey senses.

I jogged forwards warily until I reached the crossroads and could see all four paths.

All seemed deserted.

But I knew there was a vamp nearby.

One I could feel, but couldn’t see.

The taste of Turkish Delight teased my tongue and my heart thudded with anticipation.

‘Show yourself,’ I murmured.

Shadows coalesced from nowhere at the start of the bridge twenty or so feet in front of me, twisting like smoke as they took on line and form and detail, until a figure stood, legs apart, arms loose at his sides, his black leather coat snapping around his leather-clad legs in a non-existent wind; the same wind blew his shoulder-length black silk hair away from his pale, perfect face and I caught my breath at his beauty.

Malik al-Khan.