The Shifting Price of Prey

Chapter Fifty-Five

‘Time for the blood-letting, Cousin,’ Mad Max said, after he’d explained the mechanics of the spell.

One of which involved him sinking his fangs into me, the prospect of which had him grinning at me like a dog who’d found a stash of meaty bones. I shoved my sleeve up, stiff-armed him back, but left my hand on his chest. That was as close as he was getting.

He grinned wider, took my hand and executed an exaggerated bow as if to bestow a kiss, his platinum ponytail falling over his left shoulder as he did. He raised suggestive blue eyes to mine. ‘You know, Cousin, necks are much more fun than wrists?’

‘Get on with it,’ I said, ‘otherwise I’ll be ringing that vet when this is over.’ I scissored my fingers together under his nose. ‘I hear he does a good deal on doggy snips.’

‘You’re all bitch, love,’ he drawled, then closed his eyes. The hair on my nape rose like hackles as he drew his magic up. A faint silvery-red glow surrounded him like a thin aura. My own magic answered, turning my skin gold, and a distant part of me noted, thankfully, that I wasn’t feeling even the tiniest bit lustful towards Mad Max. Whatever consequences my lost night with Finn in the cave might have, at least the unwanted and embarrassing effects of shacking up with the leaking Fertility pendant were gone.

Mad Max muttered a string of unintelligible-to-me words under his breath, in a language with the same cadence as Gaelic, and I had my usual moment’s envy that a vamp, even one that started out as a wizard, obviously knew and could do more magic than me. I shoved the feeling aside, then braced myself as his grip on my wrist tightened, his lips peeled back from his fangs, and he struck.

Pain, sharp and hot, sliced through me, then was gone. Silver light wound with sapphire blue reeled out from Mad Max like a spool of film unravelling, then vanished, plunging us into darkness. Faint noise, like the distant roll of drums, grew closer and louder and more insistent, and gradually the darkness lightened like dawn colouring the sky—

And then we were in the circle again, Mad Max bowing over my wrist, looking up at me with a lascivious leer, everyone gathered about us, waiting for him to start the spell. The words ‘Get on with it’ came out of my mouth . . .

The air rippled and rolled through the zoo corridor, turning the images around me into watercolours, stretching and streaking and running them together so they flowed counter-clockwise around me, only to disappear downwards as if there were a drain at my feet.

The images streamed faster and faster until I stood in a whirlpool of silvery blue.

The drumming reached a crescendo.

It cut out.

The last of the whirlpool drained away, leaving me bathed in morning light, as the kidnap scene took shape. It was slightly out of focus, as if I were looking through a greasy lens.

Two dark-skinned males – the bodyguards – in their green and gold embroidered kurtas and mirrored aviators stood in the centre of the corridor watching a small black-haired boy who had climbed into one of the U-shaped windows and had his nose pressed against the glass: Dakkhin Jangali, the kidnapped child. On the other side of the window, the zoo’s two tigers were rubbing the sides of their faces against the glass as if they could touch him. Behind the boy stood a tall, lithely muscled woman in an orange sari, an indulgent smile on her face: Mrs Bandevi Jangali, the boy’s mother and wife to the ambassador. Next to her was a stylish twenty-something male wearing a dark business suit: the zoo’s publicity director, Jonathan Weir. He had his phone out, snapping shots of the boy and the tigers.

Look around, love, Mad Max whispered. Find the beacon. And remember, keep schtum, you can’t interact with the spell until I give the word. I looked. But other than the usual patches of wild untamed magic there was nothing to see.

‘There’s nothing—’

A high krick krick noise filled the corridor and the eagle – the changeling – swooped in. It opened its beak and vomited a ribbon of green magic, as it had in Trafalgar Square. The ribbon twisted, morphing into a verdant green serpent that hung suspended in the air.

The beacon!

The eagle dived to land a few feet in front of the group. As the bird’s feet touched the ground it shimmered into a pale-skinned woman, her dark hair piled atop her head, dressed in a floor-length Roman tunic. Her pupils were hard black ovals, her irises the same blood-red as molten sulphur, similar in all but colour to any other sidhe changeling’s eyes, or mine.

Shock winged through me – not at her eyes, I’d expected them – but that I recognised her, not even needing the black ink marking her bare arms or the tiny black crescent kissing the corner of her lush mouth to confirm her identity.

The changeling was the Empress from the tarot cards, and Bastien’s mother from Malik’s dream/memory of the harem— Malik’s wife?

Only she couldn’t be. Changelings only lived a mortal lifespan once they left the Fair Lands. The only way a mortal could live longer was through dealing with demons . . . or being blood-bonded to a vamp. Then they lived and died on the vamp’s ticket. The Empress was blood-bonded to the Emperor. Hard on that shock was what the hell would Malik think that his wife was blood-bound to another vamp, and the Emperor at that; the vamp who’d sicced the revenant curse on him. Except Malik knew the Emperor, so he had to know who and what the Empress was, didn’t he? Unless he’d thought her dead all this time? No way could I imagine Malik knowing his wife was alive and not going after her. Whether he loved her or not . . .

Not that it mattered who Malik loved.

What mattered was rescuing the victims she’d kidnapped.

The Empress smiled pleasantly at the group, all of whom stared back as if stunned, then she lifted her arms outwards as if she were entreating the heavens. The black ink marking her skin slithered into hard-edged glyphs that shot like Cupid’s arrows into the walls, throwing a Veil over the corridor. More glyphs shot out and struck the suspended snake. As they hit, the space behind her split open like the wide yawning maw of a swamp-dragon. The portal. Beyond the portal was a shadowed stone tunnel lit by flickering fire torches.

Seven dark shapes loped along the tunnel and leaped through the portal into the zoo corridor— wolves. As they hit the ground the first three wolves morphed into the three black-haired, olive-skinned centurions who’d taken Finn. In the seconds it took for them to shift, the other four wolves had circled the two bodyguards, each snagged the tail of the wolf in front and were now racing round them like they were playing the wolf equivalent of ring-a-ring o’ roses. It had to be how they’d stopped the bodyguards from protecting or even knowing what happened to their charges; but whatever magic it was, I couldn’t see it.

Nets appeared in the hands of the three centurions as they quickly spread out and advanced on Mrs Jangali. She called something that sounded like an order to her son, who crouched down on the windowsill. Then she snarled and crumpled to the ground, her sari disappearing as she shifted into an orange and black tiger indistinguishable from the zoo’s tigers behind the glass. She lunged at the nearest centurion. He dodged out of her way, leaping and rolling in an acrobatic-type move, but not before her claws raked across his chest sending an arc of blood droplets through the air to stain the bodyguard’s green kurta. As the tiger landed and whirled, tail whipping out, the other two centurions flung out their nets and trapped her. Stun magic sparked green, and she dropped like she’d been shot. The two centurions efficiently scooped up the netted tiger as if she were nothing more than a skinned rug, and raced away with her into the portal.

As the third centurion rolled to his feet and sped after the others, the small boy growled and jumped off the windowsill, chasing after them. His action snapped Jonathan, the zoo employee, out of his frozen shock and he grabbed the boy round the waist, only to find he’d seized a wriggling tiger cub. The cub turned on Jonathan and the two fell in a tangled heap of snarls and surprised yells almost at the feet of the Empress.

She shouted a sharp command and the centurion in the portal ran back, threw his net over the struggling pair, then heaved them both up and carried them into the portal. The four wolves circling the bodyguards broke away and loped after him. The Empress gave another pleasant, satisfied smile then gracefully brought her arms down and together in a sweeping motion. The green snake shuddered, ejecting the glyphs as it plunged down to wrap around her throat. She turned and strolled into the portal, the rest of the glyphs springing from the walls and zooming after her as if she were a magical Pied Piper.

Now, Cousin! Mad Max shouted, jerking me into action.

I reached out and called the magic.

The snake and the glyphs flew to me, alighting like insubstantial sparrows on my hands and arms, the birds’ tiny talons piercing my flesh with the sharp, hot pain of a vamp’s fangs—

And I found myself staring down at Mad Max’s head, his platinum ponytail dangling over his shoulder, where he was sucking like a blood-starved vamp on my wrist.

My magically ink-stained wrist. The glyphs were writhing over my skin like a fading memory. For a moment I understood what every single glyph meant, as if the knowledge had rushed up into me like a hot spring from deep within the earth. I knew how they’d been drawn. What they would do. I blinked, amazed and full of wonder.

Reverse the magic, Viviane urged.

Almost in a trance I took Mad Max’s ponytail and pulled him from my wrist then swept my foot behind his legs and watched in glee as he sprawled on his arse. He collapsed on to his back, eyes glazed, giggling like he was sloshed, and absently I wondered just how much of my blood he’d drunk. I plucked the black ribbon from his hair. It morphed into a twisting obsidian snake. I flung it out, lifted my arms and cast the glyphs after it. They speared the suspended snake and, as it had for the Empress, the air beneath it split, the portal yawning open on to the torch-lit stone corridor.

Run, quick, before it closes, Viviane yelled.

I ran. And jumped through the portal.