The Shifting Price of Prey (45 page)

Deal with them in a minute, Genny, I told myself as I narrowly missed getting kicked in the shin by Dessa.

I shook her, hard enough to rattle her teeth. When that didn’t work I
called
the tiny spell fibres sticking in her. As they pulled out they stretched, spinning out into long thin
threads. Frantically, I started
absorbing
them, winding them around an imaginary spool inside me, determined to contain them before they dug themselves into any of my own fantasies.

Within seconds the last of the threads slid of Dessa’s skin. She stopped struggling, blinked a couple of times, pupils contracting, then frowned. ‘Sorry, Genny. Don’t know what
came over me.’

‘It’s a Wishing Web,’ I said, relieved she seemed herself again. ‘Once you’re caught in it, it’s hard to get out.’ I shifted uncomfortably, the spool
inside tickling as it tried to unravel. ‘It jacks into your subconscious, and doesn’t stop till it’s worked through your fantasies or the power in the spell runs out.’

‘Clever girl,’ Henry boomed from the bed. ‘But if I can’t have that one, then this one’s just as plump and juicy with unfulfilled wishes.’

The room around us shivered like a dog shaking itself. The Elizabethan look wavered, and rearranged itself into the interior of a rough wooden houseboat. The bed was still there, but it had lost
is posts and cushions. The fire still burned brightly, but inside an cast-iron stove complete with piped chimney. And leaning against the wall was a guitar. I recognised this scene; it was from
Chocolat
; the film was one of Mary’s favourites. I scowled at Henry, still artfully naked in the bed. Unsurprisingly, given the new setting, Henry had morphed into Johnny Depp, his
hair slicked back in a ponytail like the gypsy character in the film.

Mary laughed, a loud delighted sound. I sighed. Of course, Mary’s fantasies would include this Johnny, or whatever his character was called; she’d only been talking about Ricou
wearing a Glamour of the character the other morning at the zoo. Except as I watched, Johnny continued to morph. His skin took on a faint blue-grey tinge, his ponytail rose up into a headcrest, and
fluted fins framed his face until he was part Johnny and part Ricou, as if the two of them had been Photoshopped together. The whole effect was weirdly disorientating.

Or maybe I was dizzy because the houseboat was still shaking.

Nausea roiled up in my gut. I dropped Dessa’s wrists and clapped my hands over my mouth, praying the BLT I’d eaten after taking the Revive spell wasn’t about to revisit.

The shaking stopped.

My stomach settled. Relief filled me until another delighted laugh snapped my attention to Mary. She was gazing, star-struck, at the bed.

Johnny/Ricou was no longer alone.

J
ohnny/Ricou had moved so he lay on his side, elbow bent, head propped on his hand. His other hand, more Ricou’s than Johnny’s going by
the blue webbing between his long-clawed fingers, was spread low over the softly rounded stomach of the female figure lying on her back in front of him.

Sylvia.

A naked and hugely pregnant Sylvia. Her magnificent ‘Hello Boys’ boobs were tipped with pointed, cherry-red nipples, her bushy head of twigs, heavily laden with pink and white cherry
blossom, was spread out over the pillows, and more pink and white flowers bloomed at the juncture of her thighs.

Wow. I’d known Mary had a thing about Ricou and his Johnny Depp Glamours, but I hadn’t realised she had a thing about the pair of them together. As fantasies go, that was fine by me,
if not for the fact that I was about to get an up-close-and-personal ringside seat of her fantasy
ménage à trois
, and no way did I need to see the three of them doing
whatever Mary’s subconscious was about to conjure.

Not to mention: where had the other cambion, or whatever she was, come from? Somehow I couldn’t believe Cupid was powerful enough to cast himself into two illusions. Of course, the bed was
massive, its base about three feet off the floor, and the drapes round the base . . . well, draped, hiding the space beneath it. A space large enough for half-a-dozen more cambions. A cheerful
thought. Not.

Sylvia gave a sly ‘come hither’ smile, the expression uncannily like one the real Sylvia had given me two nights ago when she’d hit on me. Mary made a tiny eager noise, and
Johnny/Ricou trailed his webbed blue hand up to cup one of Sylvia’s jiggling breasts. Sylvia squirmed in delight, her own hands zeroing in on the flowers between her legs, fingers plucking at
the blossoms. Johnny lowered his head and swiped at one cherry-red nipple with a long purple tongue. She giggled, legs parting and blossoms flying as her fingers picked up speed. Johnny/Ricou
grinned, his ’shopped face contorting bizarrely, and held out his hand. ‘Mary, come and join us, luv!’

There was a soft thud, then another, and Mary – minus her stab vest and Stun baton – shoved me and Dessa aside, unbuttoning her blouse with quick jerky movements as she rushed
towards the pair on the bed.

Oh. Crap. This was so not going to happen. This might be Mary’s fantasy but that didn’t mean she actually wanted to experience it, and even if she did, she’d want it to be with
the real Sylvia and Ricou, not with whoever the cambion and his pal were under their illusions. I
focused
on the Stun spell winking on the end of Mary’s baton,
called
it,
caught the firefly of green magic, and, after a brief internal debate about which figure was the cambion, lobbed it in resignation at Mary’s back. It hit dead centre, exploding in a flash of
mint-scented green, and unsurprisingly, Mary collapsed in a Stunned heap.

‘Wow!’ Dessa’s loud exclamation made me turn to her. She wasn’t looking at the unconscious Mary, but down at herself. ‘You know, I haven’t been this big since
I stopped breastfeeding.’

‘What?’

She lifted her head. Gold flecked the brown of her irises. Unease crawled up my spine. Had the gold flecks been there before, or were they new? Gold meant something was . . . wrong . . . Then
all thought left me as Dessa ripped off her stab vest, shirt and bra, revealing a pair of breasts way bigger than Sylvia’s, with large areolas the colour of bitter chocolate.
‘Look!’ She grinned, bouncing them. ‘Gorgeous, aren’t they?’ She pulled a sympathetic face. ‘Shame about yours, Genny.’

I blinked. Looked down. I was as flat as a pancake. Again. I tore my own vest off to double check, patting myself down. Nothing but tiny bumps. I started to undo my shirt buttons, panic shooting
round my gut as if I’d swallowed a set of hyperactive pinballs. The familiar feeling stopped me cold—

I’d had it before. The Magic Mirror spell. The one from Harrods. Shit. Not again. Even as the knowledge clicked, my fingers were still frantically pulling apart my buttons as if on
autopilot, and the realisation was lost.

‘Here, you can share mine.’ Dessa grabbed my hands, and cupped them to her own breasts, giggling.

Lust and surprise flashed in me at the soft, generous weight of her. I’d never touched the breasts of anyone as well endowed as Dessa; the only women I’d ever been this hands-on with
– literally – had been vamp venom junkies, and I’d always been more interested in blood than sex at the time. Only now I wanted— No, I needed sex. Never mind that I was
basically straight, and Dessa was female, that didn’t seem to matter. Not when she seemed to like my hands on her body as much as I did. I brushed my thumb along the freckles trailing across
the mound of her left breast like a shooting comet, then squeezed gently, mesmerised as her nipples instantly contracted, thrusting eagerly into my palms. She gave a happy moan, her own hands
slipping inside my shirt, and I discovered, even flat as a pancake, the slightest touch from her was enough to drag a desperate groan from my own throat.

As she moved my blouse aside, I moulded her with my hands, fascinated by both her body’s reactions and my own. She pressed her palms over my smaller nipples were pushing against the smooth
satin of my bra, rubbing the tender, aching points. Another, deeper groan escaped me. Bending her head, she dragged down my bra, and quickly fastened her mouth over me. I gasped, my fingers digging
into the lush fullness of her, as the slick wetness of her tongue played over my sensitised skin, flicking and teasing . . .

The boat shifted, rocking us gently on our feet, then settled.

. . . I gazed down at his black silk hair, the obsidian gem gracing his earlobe, his lips teasing my breast. Desire flooded my veins, need, sexual and something more, something stronger,
fluttered inside me at his nearness; and as his teeth nipped, I threaded my fingers into that black silk, wanting him to pierce my skin, wanting him to have my blood. To have me. I arched into him,
physically and mentally, telling him with my thoughts I wanted all the pleasure he could give me, to share that pleasure with him, and telling him that I was his, however he wished. He complied
readily, sucking me deeper into the heat of his mouth and biting down, hard. But instead of the delicate sharpness of fangs, clumsy human teeth tore into my flesh. The unexpected pain threw my head
back in a scream. I shoved him away from me—

And watched uncomprehendingly as Dessa stumbled back and fell.

She lay there, panting, dark blood staining her lips, her irises solid golden orbs, gazing adoringly up at me.

For a moment I gazed back, confused. Then, as the honey-copper scent of my own blood reached me, my mind cleared and it dawned on me what had happened— what was still happening. The
Wishing Web I’d absorbed and spooled was unravelling inside me, its sticky fibres sliding deep as they hooked into my long-held fantasies . . .
of Malik . . . of giving him my blood . . .
not because I had to, not because the 3V forced me, not for any reason other than I wanted to
. . . I shoved the thoughts away, hitching my bra up, heedless of the bloody bite –
I’d heal – and buttoning my shirt as I did so. Now wasn’t the time for whatever fantasies the Wishing Web had pulled out of my psyche. Not when I had a more immediate and horrific
problem to deal with.

Dessa. I’d trapped her in my Glamour. Never mind that it was illegal and would win me a quick one-way trip to the guillotine. Never mind I could’ve killed her if we’d got as
far as orgasm, leaving her daughter without a mother. Bad as both of those things were, I had an uneasy feeling that releasing Dessa wasn’t going to be as simple as I needed it to be. She was
a witch. She had to have been Glamoured by a sidhe at least once before (during a fertility rite, otherwise she would never have become pregnant). And we were trapped in a Wishing Web. Despite
Dessa’s Jonathan Rhys Meyers fantasy, it looked like, deep down, she wished for something else, but whether it was sex with another female, or with a sidhe, I didn’t know.

Or really, for all I did know, she was gazing happily up at a creepy magically ’shopped merging of Jonathan Rhys Meyers and me. Which was kind of disturbing given the way she was lying
half-naked on the sun-drenched grass—

I blinked.

The houseboat was gone. In its place was a manicured lawn, littered with early autumn leaves, half of it covered in bright sunshine, the rest deep in the shadow cast by the grey-stone walls of a
half-ruined Norman manor house. To my right was a huge arched stone entrance, the door half ajar. To my left a copse of trees rustled in an almost chilly breeze. In the distance the deep waters of
a moat sparkled.

I knew where this was. Knew what had happened here on my fourteenth birthday, on my wedding night.
It’s an illusion
, the rational part of me cried,
ripped from your memories
by the Wishing Web.
Memories I’d revisited in shocking clarity only an hour or so ago in the Dreamscape with Bastien.

‘My sidhe bride.’ His voice was light, chiding, gentle. A lie. ‘Mildly entertaining as it is to see you toy with the witch, I wish your attention now.’

It’s not Bastien. It’s the cambion.

A sword appeared next to me, its point stuck in the grass, its bejewelled hilt quivering as if it had been thrown there.

‘Unless, of course,’ Bastien’s voice said, ‘you wish me to cause her, or the other witch, some damage, with that pretty sword.’

I glanced at Dessa, still lying oblivious in the sunshine. And across at Mary, still unconscious from the Stun spell. Horror choked my throat. I swallowed it back. He might be the cambion, but
it was my memories the Wishing Web was channelling into this fantasy. And both of them were easy pickings. Innocent victims he would gleefully torture while he fucked them. It was what he’d
done to Sally, my faeling friend, all those years ago, in the grand hall of this very house.

Sweat broke on my skin. My heart pounded in dread. No way did I want to relive that horror.

Illusion! Nothing more!

But it didn’t matter what I told myself. Between my memories, and the Wishing Web, the illusion was now as dangerous as the reality.

I scooped up Dessa’s shirt, slapped it on her chest, and grabbed her head. Ironically grateful that my Glamour forced her to be my puppet, I told her to put her shirt on, get Mary, and get
both of them, and the still stone-like Taegrin, out of the tent, and then to keep everyone else out.