The Bitter Seed of Magic (A Spellcrackers Novel) (25 page)

‘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—

 

I
came awake in an instant, fully aware of where I was: in my own bed, in my PJs, covered by a cool cotton sheet, and aware of who was with me: Malik. The moonlight filtering in through the window left the corners of the room in shadow, turned the wardrobe and chest to dark, silent sentinels and muted the white-painted walls to grey, the same greyness that clung like mist to my mind. As I pushed into the mist, so pieces of events came back to me: the vibration of a vehicle, the hot splash of a shower, and Malik’s constant caring presence.

I ran my hand over my stomach, tentatively investigating it – magic sparked as I brushed over Tavish’s handprint spell – and found my injury healed—

‘The metal is removed, Genevieve.’ Malik’s voice was soft; a brief push of
mesma
giving the words a soothing note.

‘Thank you,’ I said quietly, deeply grateful.

The soothing touch of his
mesma
and his presence in my head withdrew. I turned to look at him.

He lay on his side, his head propped on his hand, watching me out of his dark, exotic eyes. The moonlight glinted off the black stone in his left earlobe, played over the pale, gleaming skin of his shoulder and along the muscled contours of his arm, but left his bare chest in shadow. My gaze followed his arm down to where his hand rested on his leather-clad thigh—and stopped. Part of me – the part that was all instinct and lust and heat – was disappointed, even frustrated that he was still half-dressed. The rest of me was intrigued, albeit slightly wary.

I shifted onto my side, mirroring his position, and pasted an enquiring look on my face. ‘Should I expect to be seduced any moment now, or am I getting the wrong message?’

His eyes lit with amusement. ‘You still have a distinct lack of furniture, Genevieve. I see no reason to sit on the floor when you have a perfectly comfortable bed.’

Damn. I
was
getting the wrong message. ‘Ri-
ight
, so we’re just being practical here,’ I said drily.

‘Also,’ he smiled, giving me a glimpse of fang, ‘you appear to have a dryad tree growing in your living room.’

Sylvia! Oops, I’d completely forgotten about her. ‘Back in a min,’ I said, and jumped out of bed to check on her.

She was still asleep, still smiling blissfully, and her roots were still digging into my wooden floorboards, but the blood was gone. The buds on her fingers and scalp had grown into long, delicate branches covered with pink and white cherry blossom, and their subtle fragrance filled the room with the scent of springtime. As I stood there, she made a small sound, a sort of hiccoughing snore, and the flowers shivered. A mini snowfall of petals drifted down to decorate her rooted feet.

Sylvia was fine – out of it, but fine.

I smiled, my anxiety gone. I didn’t care about the holes in my floor; she was far too pretty and she looked way too happy for them to matter.

Now to sort out the beautiful vampire.

But first—

I needed a drink. I suddenly realised my mouth felt like I’d swallowed a bucket of sand. I headed for the kitchen, downed two glasses of water, then grabbed the bottle of vodka from the fridge and knocked back a generous shot. The alcohol burned an ice-cold path down my throat into my stomach, where it set up a nice warm glow. Carrying the bottle and two glasses, I walked back into the bedroom and bumped the door closed with my hip.

Malik had moved. He was lying on his back, propped against the pillows with his eyes closed and his hands tucked behind his head. I frowned. Something about the relaxed pose didn’t quite ring true . . .