The Shifting Price of Prey

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I was four.

My father, tall and blond and aristocratic, was dressed in his special black suit with the satin lining, the one that matched my stepmother Matilde’s sapphire-blue eyes. We were in the great hall of some ruined castle that was our latest home; an empty, echoing acre of grey flagstoned floor, lit by a distant fire. I stood between Matilde and my father, his hand a restraining weight on my shoulder, fearful as I sensed their unease about the strange vampire who visited us.

The stranger faced us. Shadows writhed around him like angry spirits, shredding and reforming in a non-existent wind, shrouding his face in darkness. Only now I could see past them. The stranger was Malik, but he was still a stranger. There was none of the warmth or humour or humanity I was used to seeing; instead a vicious cruelness sharpened his beautiful features.

‘Is this the child, Andrei?’ Malik’s low disdainful voice, with its not-quite-English accent, ran a shiver down my spine, then and now.

‘Greet our guest, Genevieve.’ My father’s hand pressed on my shoulder.

I stuck out my black patent toe, clutched the slippery green satin of my dress and bent my knee in a trembling curtsey.

Malik’s insistent fingers gripped my chin, jerking my face up. ‘The eyes are truly sidhe fae,’ he murmured, his expression as cold and hard and brutal as his fingers. ‘I am sure my master will be pleased. All that is left is to confirm the contract. I am to take a sample.’

‘Niet.’ Matilde spat out the word.

My father hissed. ‘It is but a taste, Matilde; no harm will come to the child.’ My father offered the stranger a low bow. ‘My apologies. You have my permission.’

Malik knelt on one knee before me, avarice and an alien anticipation filling his eyes, and held up a silver dagger. ‘Janan, Beloved of Malak al-Maut. Forged by the northern dwarves from cold iron and silver. Tempered in dragon’s breath.’ The blade gleamed red in the firelight. ‘The handle is carved from a unicorn’s horn.’ Pale light bled from between his fingers. ‘And set with a dragon’s tear.’ An oval of clear amber winked against his palm.

The part of me still in the present recognised the silver dagger. It was the one from the tarot cards. The Bonder of Souls.

In the memory Malik’s hand clamped around my left wrist, his power freezing me so I was unable to move, but I heard my bones crack, felt the pain lance through my small body. His nostrils flared with pleasure.

The blade traced a slow, icy-path down my inner arm.

I cried, though no sound came out, my tears mixing with the thin rivulets of my blood to pool on the flagstone floor . . . as Malik used Janan to bond my soul to his.

‘Genevieve!’

The memory fled, leaving my tongue coated with the sickly sweet taste of strawberries. The taste of the Morpheus Memory Aid potion. Just my bad luck I’d have another adverse reaction to the damn spell. Not that the memory of Malik taking my blood for his master, the Autarch, when I was four was new. I’d just never experienced it with quite such clarity before. Or remembered Malik being quite so detached and pitiless before.

I realised we were kneeling together in the small boat, my hands balled in his T-shirt and his arms tight about me as if he thought I was about to jump. He wasn’t far wrong. My heart thudded in my chest as I looked into his obsidian eyes, now inches away from my own, seeing the flickering remnants of the past in their black depths. ‘You hurt me deliberately,’ I whispered, hearing both my four-year-old’s fear and my current shock in my voice. I swallowed back the ache in my throat. ‘You enjoyed it.’

‘Yes.’ His agreement was desolate in my mind.

‘Why?’

‘That was who I was, then, Genevieve.’

I stared at him, still stunned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Nor would I wish you to.’ Sorrow and remorse soothed over my arm where he’d cut me then, the barest touch of mesma, offering apology for the pain he’d caused. ‘But I will attempt to explain, should you wish me to, though I would prefer not to do so here in the open. Nor will my honour allow me to tell you the whole of it.’

His honour wouldn’t allow him? Crap, that meant he’d given his word not to talk, which meant I’d get nothing important out of him. I clenched my fists, wanting to beat him, to scream at him, to make him tell me now. I needed to know all of it; I’d had enough of things hidden, of secrets. But . . . I took a shallow breath, then another deeper one, calming myself. He couldn’t tell me. And this wasn’t the time. I forced back the hurt, both physical and emotional, of the memory . . . and concentrated on Janan: the Bonder of Souls knife.

The Emperor had been holding Janan the knife in the first tarot card.

The Irish wolfhound (a.k.a. Mad Max) had dropped Janan into the snow in the Moon tarot card.

The ambassador on the Tower tarot card said the Emperor wanted Janan.

Only Janan was gone. Lost in the demon attack last Hallowe’en when a sorcerer had tried to use it to steal my body for herself. Long story short, she hadn’t succeeded, and the knife had disappeared with her demon master.

The only way the Emperor could get Janan was if he took a trip to hell.

That wasn’t going to be an option. At least not if he wanted to come back in full ownership of his body.

But if the Emperor wanted a soul-bonding knife, it followed he wanted to bond souls.

What the hell did bonding souls have to do with releasing the fae’s trapped fertility?

Unless that was the price the Emperor wanted me to pay? My soul bonded to his? Some sort of power thing? Fear tightened my gut. What would that mean for me? Except . . . Malik had my soul bonded to his for near enough twenty years before I’d died one too many times and the bond broke. As far as I could tell, it hadn’t done anything at all to me. Or to him.

But Malik knew of both Janan and the Emperor. He could probably join the dots much faster than me. I gave him a narrowed look and said, ‘The Emperor wants Janan.’

Something indefinable flickered over his face at my subject change, before his expression turned to his more usual enigmatic one. ‘Am I to take it your tarot card told you this, Genevieve?’

‘Yes. Do you know where Janan is?’

His black brows drew into a frown. ‘Did you not send it to hell with the demon last Hallowe’en?’

A question. Damn it. I hated questions. ‘Yep. But maybe something or someone got to the knife before it disappeared?’

He shook his head. ‘I know only what you told the kelpie, Genevieve. That does not lead me to think that it would be possible for someone to have retrieved the knife before the veil closed.’ Frustration threaded his words. ‘Had I been conscious at that time, I would perhaps be more certain.’

Which, with the whole ‘tranqued-by-the-bad-guy’, was about as specific as an answer as he could give. I sighed. ‘Okay, so we’re pretty sure Janan is in hell. But the Emperor obviously doesn’t know that otherwise why look for the knife? So the more important question is: why does he want to bond souls, and whose souls do you think he wants to bond? The kidnap victims’, maybe?’ I shuddered at that horrible thought.

‘The Emperor may not want to bond any souls,’ Malik said. ‘Janan can also release a soul from its earthly body.’

I snorted. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just kill someone if he wanted to release their soul?’

‘No. Death frees the soul. But with Janan the soul can be captured.’

I shuddered. ‘Ugh, nasty thing.’

‘Not originally. Janan’s primary purpose was to keep the souls of the dead safe on their journey to the afterlife. That is why Janan is called, Beloved of Malak al-Maut. Malak al-Maut is the Angel of Death.’

Shock slammed into me. ‘Malak al-Maut’s the Angel of Death? Why the hell would you use the Angel of Death’s knife to bond our souls together?’ Horrified and angry, I shoved at him, catching him off guard. He went flailing backwards over the wooden seat behind him and thudded into the base of the boat, eyes wide with surprise. The small boat rocked dangerously and, as if we were in the middle of a rom-com, I lost my balance and tumbled forwards to faceplant, oh so gracefully, between his legs, my nose mashing against a certain hard but obviously sensitive part of him. As mortification spliced through my fury, and his pained grunt reached my ears, there was a clunk of something hitting wood, followed by the quiet tinkling of shattering glass.

Cold liquid drenched my T-shirt, arms and hands.

My anger stalled as my mind tried to understand what broken glass and wetness meant. Then, as the boat steadied and Malik’s hands grasped my shoulders, lifting me away from him, it dawned on me that my fall had smashed the fragile bottle of werewolf repellent.

The reek of it slapped me like a long-dead, heavily decaying fish.

I clapped my hand over my nose and mouth. My wet hand. My lips burned as if I’d pressed silver to them. Then as the metallic tang of the liquid seared my tongue, and my hands started to blister, it hit me that the repellent did actually have silver in it. Silver which, thanks to my vamp blood, I’m allergic to. Shit. I snatched my hand away as my throat closed on a choking cough and, catching a glimpse of bloody tears streaming down Malik’s pale face, realised I wasn’t the only one hit by the silver in the repellent.

Where’s the Hallmark moment now, Gen?

Then, almost faster than I could process, we were out the boat and in the lake. Water closed over my head. Instinctively I snapped my mouth shut, struggling and thrashing to the surface, but a steel grip held me under. I gasped for breath and water rushed down my nose, my throat, filling my stomach and lungs. Hands ripped at my clothes, the cool lake water soothing my burning flesh. Greyness edged my vision and a distant part of me thought I was probably drowning until I was hauled out of the water, coughing and spluttering, and dumped unceremoniously on to a patch of sandy grass.

I collapsed there, retching. Damn Tavish. Why hadn’t he told me the repellent had silver in it? The stuff wouldn’t have killed me, like it might a young vamp, but if Malik hadn’t dunked me I’d have been out of it for who knew how long while my sidhe body healed itself. Not to mention what harm had it done to him. And hadn’t that article in the witch archive said silver didn’t work on werewolves? The kelpie had some explaining to do, next I saw him.

Finally, my heaves subsided.

I pushed wet hair out of my eyes and discovered I was on the small island just past the bridge.

Other than my briefs, I was naked.

With no sign of Malik.