The Shifting Price of Prey [4]

by Suzanne McLeod

  Stunned, I prodded the blankness in my mind. I could recall the swampies bellowing, Gold Cat dragging Finn into the cave, Viviane lifting her hands and shrugging . . . then a fuzzy memory of pulling Finn into the circle, the magic and need driving me as I kissed him. But nothing more. Shocked disbelief washed over me, fracturing my sleepy aftermath.

  I couldn’t remember what we’d done.

  Was this some sort of cosmic joke? Had someone stolen my memory? Or hexed us, or maybe just me— Crap. The Morpheus Memory Aid. One of its side-effects was memory loss. Why the hell did it have to hit now? Then something more horrifying hit me. I’d Glamoured Finn.

  Fuck. I’d forced him. Disgust whirled through me. It didn’t matter that he might have said yes if the circumstances were normal; he hadn’t had the chance. I was as bad as his ex, the Witch-bitch Helen.

  I started to move then found myself flipped over and a very awake-looking Finn gazing down at me, horns curving at full length, eyes shining gold. Part of me was selfishly grateful he was still caught in my Glamour, so I had a few more minutes before I got to see his revulsion at how I’d trapped him. And if I was truthful, even sickened with myself as I was, I wanted a few more minutes to enjoy the position I’d woken up in . . . and was still in. Finn flipping me over hadn’t dislodged anything, and what hadn’t been exactly soft before was becoming less that way even as we lay here, much to my body’s obvious delight. It reacted happily, tightening around him with desire.

  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered, ashamed heat burning my face. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Hey.’ He grinned, did something that made me gasp beneath him. ‘Nothing to be sorry for, Gen. I am a sex god, after all’ – he winked – ‘and us sex gods love it when we’re appreciated. It does wonders for our poor battered egos.’

  ‘Yeah, about that—’

  He silenced me with a long lingering kiss, one that made my toes curl and made me want nothing more than to take this where he thought it was headed. As he started moving, my heart cracked a little and I broke the kiss, turning my face away.

  He stilled above me. ‘Gen?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, staring at the back of the cave, noticing the leather collar and its broken padlock. Finn must’ve removed it at some point. ‘We can’t— I can’t do this.’ Tears stung my eyes.

  He gently turned my face to his, brushing his thumb across my wet cheek. ‘Gods, Gen, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Finn,’ I said softly. ‘I’m not sure if you’ll understand me, but I’ve trapped you in my Glamour. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Whatever we did last night, it’s my fault. But we can’t do this now. And I can’t release you unless we’re not touching.’

  ‘You’ve Glamoured me?’ He gave me a perplexed look as he shifted back slightly.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling strangely reluctant to lose my connection to him. ‘I’m sorry. You need to move so I can free you.’

  ‘Gen,’ he said earnestly, ‘we talked about all this last night at length. I’ve told you before, and I explained then, you can’t trap me. See?’ He closed his eyes, took a breath and when he opened them again, they were his normal moss-green. ‘It’s just more fun sharing magic.’ He gave me a brief half-smile. ‘I know you were knocked sideways with the effects of that stupid cambion’s magic coming on top of the fertility spell and all the ambush stuff, but we didn’t do anything either of us didn’t want to last night, or at least—’ His expression turned troubled. ‘Are you saying something different, Gen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember. I’ve used two of those Morpheus Memory Aids in the last few days. I think their magic’s—’

  ‘Morpheus Memory Aids usually cause spotty memory loss, like forgetting if you’ve locked the door, or where you left your keys. It doesn’t strip away a whole night.’

  ‘Well, it has.’

  Distress crossed his face. ‘Gen, we didn’t just have sex, we talked about stuff. A lot of stuff. Nicky, Helen . . . us. Don’t you remember any of it?’

  ‘Seriously, Finn. Nothing after I kissed you, no.’

  His expression turned horrified, and he was gone so fast I felt a breeze. A fur landed on top of me and I hugged it as I sat up. He had his back to me. Sleek sable hair coated his hips and thighs, and a black tuft nestled at the base of his spine: his tail. The fact that he was too upset to hide it sent my pulse spiking with anxiety. It sped faster as I saw he was tearing Carlson’s backpack apart, ripping off all the smaller pockets. He tossed it aside then scanned the cave as if searching for something. Suddenly his eyes lit on Marc’s clothes by the cold fire. He snatched them up, shoved his hand in the jeans pockets, but came up empty. He threw them down in disgust.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ I asked, hating that my voice shook.

  ‘Something that would explain why you’ve lost your memory.’ His gaze fixed on the fire. He grabbed a stick and poked the ashes. ‘Nothing.’ He rushed back, his jeans appearing as he did, and crouched down next to me. ‘What’s the exact last thing you remember, Gen?’

  I looked into his worried face, tamped down my own panic. ‘The swampies were outside the cave, I could hear them, and something like a fight, then Gold Cat dragged you in, pushed you into the circle.’ I frowned. ‘I remember wanting to talk to you, but instead I kissed you. Then nothing until I woke up.’

  Finn took my hands, an odd look on his face. ‘You said a gold cat dragged me in. What cat, Gen?’

  ‘Gold Cat. It’s a primal spirit, an animus,’ I said slowly, unease clutching my gut. ‘The ritual went wrong and I somehow made an ùmaidh and the animus bonded to it.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about primal spirits, Gen,’ he said worriedly. ‘But you have to sever part of your soul to make an ùmaidh. It’s not something you can do without the right knowledge. What’s this cat look like?’

  ‘Same size as the shifters’ cats. but not as chunky, and it’s gold with black stripes, not dark grey. It brought you here.’

  Finn shook his head. ‘I don’t remember any gold-coloured cat, Gen. Just the gnome and the big cats that ambushed us.’

  ‘You were unconscious when it brought you in,’ I said, trying to stay calm, but hearing my anxiety in my voice.

  ‘Yeah.’ His eyes flickered down at my arms, at the fading needle-marks there. ‘Gen, we talked about this last night, how you couldn’t remember much about what happened after the ritual went wrong. But you were sure you were okay. Maybe I was a bit hasty believing you. I think—’

  ‘You think what? That Gold Cat isn’t real? That I was hallucinating it or something? Finn, think about it. Hugh was waiting for us to turn up at Old Scotland Yard. We’d been kidnapped. Why would we stay the night here and talk and everything?’

  He frowned. ‘I said that to you, but you reminded me this is Between. Said we could spend a week here and make it just an hour in the humans’ world if we wanted. That we shouldn’t waste the opportunity. You wanted us to get rid of the fertility magic, and to sort things out between us, before we went back. You never mentioned any gold cat, Gen. And we talked about . . .’

  I stopped listening as Gold Cat padded silently through the cave entrance. I grabbed Finn’s arm. ‘There! Look!’ As he turned, the cat huffed in exasperation, crouched and leaped. As it flew towards us I shoved Finn out of the way and braced for impact. It didn’t come. Instead, the big cat seemed to merge into me in a brush of soft fur, sharp claws and alien magic. As it did, my skin felt stretched tight enough to split, the colours in the cave muted to grey and the taste of fresh meat filled my mouth. I looked at Finn’s shocked expression and a cascade of memories poured over me; our voices mingling in laughter and tears, our limbs tangling in passionate pleasure, and the deep satisfaction of knowing he was mine.

  My mate.

  And I/it was his.

  Mated.

  No! I tried to shout, to push it out, but it raked claws through me, slicing me into smaller and smaller bloody pieces and casting them do
wn into the darkness.

  As I fell it reached out to Finn and as my lips met his, I felt it find the memories of it returning as the Gold Cat to the cave, of his and my waking minutes, of my telling him about it, and steal them from him.

  The memories rained down on me, burning like acid tears.

  I woke with a raging thirst, a hammering in my head that rivalled a dwarves’ workshop, and a nauseous roiling in my belly. I groaned, rolled groggily away from the sunlight sending knives into my eyes, and got a face full of fur. I groaned again, belatedly realising my Hot.D/Reviver double-postponed hangover had sucker-punched me. As had Gold Cat.

  Fucking animus had mated me and Finn. Or it and him. Or all of us. Or— Fuck if I knew. But whatever Gold Cat had done, it was going to undo it as soon as I got my hands around its funky furry neck.

  I scrambled up, dizzy with the hangover, to find Finn and Gold Cat were gone.

  But Viviane was back, sitting with her game of Patience.

  Shit. I should’ve known better than to trust her small agreement. I should’ve negotiated a cast-iron bargain with her and damned the consequences.

  ‘You and Gold Cat planned that, didn’t you?’ I accused, grabbing my clothes and yanking them on.

  She calmly moved a card. ‘Not so much planned as, once I knew what the animus wanted, I agreed not to interfere.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why isn’t important right now, bean sidhe. Not if you want me to help you save the satyr, as we agreed.’

  I snorted then wished I hadn’t as the dwarves in my head hammered another couple of nails in. ‘No thanks, Viv. After your last bit of help, in which you, oh so helpfully fucked Finn and me up, you can stick it. And the agreement’s off; you’ve broken our no-harm-to-me-or-mine deal.’

  Her cards jerked up on end, quivering with umbrage. ‘I agreed to help release you from that circle. In order to do that without your dying, the ritual had to be completed. As stated on page thirty-nine of the notes taken from the witch archives.’

  My hands stilled on my shirt buttons as the ramifications hit me. If I hadn’t had sex with Finn, I’d be dead . . . except I’m sidhe, and hard to kill. And I trusted Viviane about as far as I could throw her, which seeing as she was incorporeal was not at all. But I didn’t need to trust her, I could check for myself. I lurched over to Carlson’s ripped backpack, only to find the cloth-wrapped bundle containing the details of the ritual was missing.

  I rounded on Viviane. ‘Where is it?’

  She shrugged. ‘I do not know. But I can tell you that what happened between you and Finn was for the best. If it had not happened, then when the Emperor’s lupus centurions appeared, they would have killed the satyr and one of them would have completed the ritual instead. I do not think you would enjoy being mated to one of the Emperor’s werewolves.’

  I stared at her, horrified at the worse-than-having-sex-with-Finn-and-whatever-Gold-Cat-had-done fate Finn and I had averted. ‘The Emperor’s werewolves were here?’

  She tossed her black hair back in irritation and her cards flew up into a line in front of my face. Like a slide show they showed seven huge wolves at the cave entrance. Then three black-haired, olive-skinned males, dressed only in short centurion-style leather kilts with thick hair furring their muscled chests, alike enough to be brothers, if not triplets, and all of them resembling the Latin Lover werewolf guy from Trafalgar Square. Next card showed Finn, his head bleeding, eyes closed, half-bundled into a net. The last card showed the swish of Gold Cat’s tail as it chased after them.

  A vice squeezed my heart. The Emperor’s werewolves had taken Finn. I had to get him back. Rage and fear ignited in my veins. I would get him back, no matter what it took. The Emperor wanted something from me—

  ‘I was here,’ I said, my voice flat. ‘Why didn’t they take me?’

  ‘No doubt they had a reason.’ Viviane flicked her fingers and the cards returned to a tidy stack in front of her. ‘But if you want my help to save the satyr along with all the other victims of the Forum Mirabilis we should get moving.’

  ‘Told you,’ I snapped. ‘Your help is no longer required.’

  She gave me an arch smile. ‘Then I wish you luck finding your way back to the humans’ world.’

  Crap. Like I’d ever find it. Between didn’t go in for handy signposts and I’d been unconscious on the way here. Even if I struck lucky and found an entrance, right one or not, opening it would take another miracle. Being magically challenged sucks. Big time.

  ‘Fine,’ I snapped. ‘Let’s move.’

  The way back felt like I was climbing-through Dante’s nine circles of hell. My Hot.D postponed hangover, which even the painkillers in my backpack couldn’t nix, didn’t help. Neither did the cave being so far off any regular paths, so not only did I have fucking garden fairies screaming in my ears and sulphurous-smelling swampies to dodge but all the other magical beasties and half-formed spirits that plague Between decided to come out and party too. Most of them decided retreat was the best option as soon as they got a look at Ascalon, but enough wanted a piece of me that by the time we reached the double oak tree with its bramble- and weed-tangled and impossible-for-me-to-pass exit back to London’s Primrose Hill, I already looked like I’d been pulled through a hundred hedges backwards.

  I glowered at the bespelled tangle, cursing my lack of magical ability, the Emperor and anyone else who’d had a meddling hand in my life. Slicing and dicing my way through the half-formed hadn’t done much to take the edge off my rage and fear for Finn; instead the fighting had solidified it into a gutful of determination. But at least the long trek in between the fights had given me time to put more of the ‘Viviane jigsaw’ together.

  I turned to where she hovered silently. Once we’d left the cave she’d changed her outfit to a lavender-coloured Victorian dress, complete with beribboned bustle, feathered bonnet and lacy parasol, and had entertained herself by making small-talk about all the famous artists she’d got it together with, or by critiquing my sword-handling skills, demonstrating with her parasol, after each of my tussles. Of course, none of the half-formed had attacked her; she’d been safe behind a personal Ward. She’d shut up, though, after my frustrated rage had exploded and I’d threatened to slice and dice her wretched parasol.

  I reached out and grabbed her wrist.

  Her mouth dropped open in shock. ‘You can’t do that. I’m a spirit! Incorporeal!’

  Except I could. As I’d discovered during my skirmishes with the half-formed. It hadn’t just been Ascalon that had chased them off; my fists and feet had too. The first time had been by accident; two seven-foot cyclops-types with orange exoskeletons and snapping lobster claws got me in a pincer movement (bad pun aside). Ascalon declawed one (a minor injury, if not for the fact it was caused by the blessed, bespelled sword), blasting the cyclops-lobster back into the magic, and my automatic elbow to the gut got the one behind me. Its surprised look as its carapace cracked had mirrored my own, then, as it gathered its leaking magic back to re-form and attack again, I instinctively called it and absorbed it. Horrified about what nasty side-effects might arise from ingesting a half-formed, I spat it straight back out. Or rather I spat out an orange amorphous mass. It floated off, drifting gradually apart until it faded away into the ether.

  It took me a few more fights, and absorptions, to put my new ability together with the sorcerer’s soul I’d consumed during the demon attack last Hallowe’en, and realised that I could do more with souls and spirits than just chomp on them and regurgitate the magical remains. Like spells, I could grab them and, once they realised my touch controlled them, let them go (at which point most of them beat a hasty retreat) or I could absorb them and spit them back out whole. Well, I could after my ninth attempt. Of course, those spirits had found the whole experience a tad traumatic, but then they hadn’t exactly wanted to be absorbed.

  Unlike Viviane, who’d obviously been popping in and out of me as if I’d installed a revolving door.

&n
bsp; I bared my teeth in a smile at her. ‘Your tarot cards neglect to tell you I was a soul-eater?’

  She snapped her mouth shut and a sullen look darkened her red eyes to almost black.

  ‘Thought not,’ I said, letting her go as she tugged on her arm. ‘So when exactly did you jump ship from the tarot cards to me?’

  She made a show of shaking the sulphur dust off the hem of her dress. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  Yeah, you keep prevaricating like that, Viv. ‘C’mon, you’re supposed to be bound to the tarot cards. I’m pretty sure Tavish has still got the cards with him, in the humans’ world, yet you’re swanning around in Between. The only way you could’ve got here was by hitchhiking a ride. With me.’ I tipped her chin up. ‘Truth time. I wasn’t the one who made the ùmaidh, you were. And the Emperor’s werewolves didn’t leave me when they took Finn, you prevented them from taking me.’ Both acts seemed to suggest she was protecting me, though, which begged the question why she hadn’t stopped the big-cat-shifters abducting me in the first place. I asked her.

  ‘We have an agreement, bean sidhe. No harm to you or yours. Until the cat-shifters threatened you with irreparable harm there was no need for me to intervene. And you should recall,’ she finished, like she expected a medal, ‘I did warn you about them.’

  Right. ‘Your warning wasn’t exactly clear.’

  She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. ‘That is how the cards work sometimes.’

  How she made them work. Still, it made sense of her ‘intervention’; her warning had been iffy, so if some ‘irreparable harm’ had happened to me as a result, she’d have been responsible. The magic wouldn’t look lightly on it. In fact, she could still be in for a world of trouble. ‘Our agreement was no harm to me or mine.’ I stressed the mine. ‘So you should’ve stopped the werewolves from taking Finn, too. Not to mention stopping Gold Cat from getting its claws in him. He’s mine.’

  She tilted her head with a sly look. ‘Is he? Or did you relinquish your claim to the satyr?’