The Cold Kiss of Death

by Suzanne McLeod

  ‘Well, after the droch guidhe first came into being there was a spate of faelings killed by the suckers, and everyone thought that was it.’ His voice was flat, almost detached. ‘But as time’s gone on we’ve all realised there’s more to the droch guidhe. Since it was cast, no full-blood child has been born to any of London’s lesser fae, only faelings, so not only do we have to watch our children die because they live only a mortal lifespan, but if our magic doesn’t procreate, it will start to fade. Once the magic fades it won’t be long before we all follow it.’

  Fuck. Grianne hadn’t told me about that nasty bit of the curse, but—‘So what exactly has this got to do with me?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘There’ve been a lot of things tried to break the droch guidhe,’ he went on, his voice not sounding quite as detached, ‘but so far none have worked. The one thing no one has tried yet, because the queen has refused to allow it ... is for one of London’s fae to have a full-blood child with a sidhe,’ he finished quietly.

  I blinked as my mind caught up with what he meant.

  Grianne had told me the facts of sidhe life when I was fifteen, in more detail than I’d ever wanted to know. Outside of a fertility rite, I’d only ever get pregnant if I wanted to - no morning-after-the-night-before worries for me as Grace had enviously said when I’d told her once - and if I did nothing to influence the pregnancy, then any child I had would inherit only their father’s genes.

  It’s a magical anomaly that always seems ‘difficult’ for humans to understand. But they’d proved it themselves - back in the eighties, when the witches’ right to be called human was challenged. Every DNA test known to man was done, and no matter that their fathers were sidhe, the tests showed nothing other than human genes in a witch’s make-up. All a witch’s sidhe father contributes - other than life, of course - is an ability with magic. It’s why a witch’s daughter - born of a witch mother and a non-magical human father - doesn’t inherit their mother’s power. It’s not there to be passed on.

  And it was why the sidhe queen’s son had been human.

  And by the sounds of it, it was why I’d landed on the dryads’ and the naiads’ Most Wanted list.

  ‘Whoa, wait a minute!’ I whispered in shocked disbelief. ‘Are you telling me they think they can get me to start popping out babies for them or something? Because it’s so not going to happen. Even if they kidnap me, they need my freely given consent for that, otherwise the magic doesn’t work.’

  ‘Unless the magic has already taken the decision for you, Gen,’ he said, an odd edginess to his voice, ‘which they think it has. Then your consent isn’t needed. It’s not even classed as rape under fae tradition.’

  ‘Listen, anyone who tries to have sex with me without my say-so, regardless of magic, or anything else, is in for a whole load of pain,’ I muttered furiously, casting furtive glances at the commuters around me. ‘And where the fuck do they get such a stupid idea from anyway?’

  ‘The fertility rite ritual.’ He sighed. ‘Hell’s thorns, Gen, I know it sounds stupid, but it’s not, not when you think about it from their side. As far as they know, you’re not in a relationship, you don’t date, not even humans, and you haven’t made any arrangements with any other fae. Usually the only reason a fae, particularly a sidhe, abstains from sex is when they’re preparing to bear a child, so when they hear about what’s going on, their first thought is that you’ve abstained for too long and the magic is making you react to any sexual advance you get, even without a proper fertility rite. They believe their way offers a solution to their reproduction problem, and your own.’

  ‘What,’ I snorted, ‘so kidnapping me to take part in a fertility rite and get me pregnant is just their way of being practical?’

  ‘Something like that,’ he muttered.

  ‘Damn! And I thought it was only humans that got all wound up about the sidhe sex myth thing!’

  ‘Yeah, well, the humans only think about the sex part, and not the reasons behind it. But for them, having children is kind of like falling off a log. For us it’s much more difficult, even without a droch guidhe to contend with.’ The words sounded bitter. ‘Anyway, Tavish has gone to talk to them and sort things out, but it might take a while for him to convince them, so you need to be careful. I’m not going to be able to get away from here until after midnight. If you can think of somewhere safe, then I’ll meet you there.’

  ‘I don’t know ...’ I glanced round and caught sight of a large poster for the HOPE clinic. ‘I’ll go to HOPE; they’re used to dealing with magic and stuff, so if anything happens it’s not going to faze them.’

  ‘Okay. Look, I’ve got to go, Gen. Helen’s agreed to let me go with them to speak to the florist’s boy. We’re going there now. See you later, and be careful.’

  ‘Sure,’ I agreed, but I was speaking to a dead phone.

  I stood staring blindly at the passing crowds, my mind reeling. Crap! Not only were the vamps inviting me to be their nightly pep-me-up and the police playing hide and seek with me, now the fae wanted to chain me to the bedposts and pass me round as their pet broodmare. And why hadn’t Grianne filled me in on all the nasty details? She had to know about them ...

  Then a thought hit me like a sucker-punch. If the dryads and the naiads wanted me for a baby-machine, did that mean the satyrs did too? And if they did, what exactly was Finn’s role here? Prospective daddy? Was that why he’d gone out on a limb with the witches so I could keep my job? And why he’d kept my secret? Maybe his white knight fixation was motivated by something other than overeager protective instincts and the attraction that jumped between us. In fact—Was there any attraction at all on his side, or was his magic just to ease the way for his herd to hear the patter of tiny cloven hooves?

  The questions stabbed into me like sharp knives and I hugged myself against the pain. Was that all I meant to him? I looked at the phone; part of me wanted to call him back and ask, but what if the answer was yes? Bad enough that he kept pushing me away ... Then I took a deep breath and told myself not to be stupid. Finn had been pushing me away; in fact, he’d done nothing but reject me since I’d told him about my parentage, so if he was interested in the role of ‘prospective daddy’, he was going the wrong way about it. Oddly, the thought soothed the hurt inside me, although why it should I wasn’t sure - was being rejected for something I couldn’t change better than being wanted, albeit for the wrong reasons? - I shook the confusion off for more practical concerns. At least Finn had told me the details of the curse, which was more than Grianne had ... or Tavish. But Tavish was one of the wylde fae, not the lesser fae, so where did he fit in with all this? I groaned, part disgust, and part mental overload. Now I had no idea who I could trust.

  And did the curse thing have anything to do with Tomas’ murder?

  But if someone could convince a sidhe to commit murder, wouldn’t they be able to convince them to have sex? Although in Tomas’ case, they had sort of convinced a sidhe to do both at the same time; any sidhe would know that having full-on faerie sex with a human would result in the human’s death.

  Damn. Never mind anything else - kidnapping dryads and scheming phoukas and tricky kelpies - finding the sidhe murderer was more important. Only other than my morning meet-up with the phouka, there wasn’t anything else I could think to do just now. I stared at the HOPE poster again. Grace was at HOPE. She really was a friend, and that was what I needed right now. I trusted her.

  I slid open the phone and turned it round, taking a picture of the Glamoured blonde bimbo me, then texted Grace to say I was on my way. I dashed back down the escalators and slid onto a train just as the doors were closing.

  I checked the carriage carefully, then settled back, scanning new passengers at each station. At Tottenham Court Road a grey baseball cap moving slowly towards me caught my eye, but the red cross embroidered on the cap meant the poodle-perm brunette wasn’t anyone to worry about kidnapping-wise. Poodle-perm was a Souler - the Underground is one of their favourite hu
nting grounds for new recruits; there’s nothing like having a captive audience.

  A chorus of ‘No thanks’ preceded the Souler, but her smile stayed in place despite the rebuffs and her shoulders were military-straight under her long grey tabard, which was embroidered with its own large red cross. I looked down, hoping not to catch her eye, and saw my Glamour reflected in a pair of black wraparounds. My pulse sped up. Damn.

  A Gatherer goblin.

  The goblin’s long ski-slope nose twitched like a curious mouse. I looked around for an escape, but it was too late, the goblin had caught the scent of my magic; the Glamour couldn’t hide it. He nodded his head, grey pigtails brushing the shoulders of his navy boilersuit, and slid a knobbly finger down his nose in greeting. My stomach tightened into an anxious knot. What if the London Underground goblin workers had been told to look out for me? Would he give me away as soon as I’d acknowledged him?

  But I couldn’t not return the greeting; it was a mark of respect offered to me as sidhe fae, and not something to be taken lightly. Holding my breath, I slid my own finger down my nose, trying to make it look more like I was scratching an itch.

  He stamped his foot, making his trainer flash red. I waited for him to give a howl of discovery, but it didn’t come. Instead he snatched up a crumpled paper cup and tucked it carefully away in the pink sequinned beach bag hitched over his shoulder.

  I let out my breath, relieved.

  He was still following his normal work contract.

  ‘Are you a member of our congregation, miss?’ the Souler asked, waving a leaflet in my line of vision.

  ‘What?’ I looked up to find her smiling curiously at me.

  ‘It’s just Samuel seems to recognise you; he greeted you as one of us.’ She waggled her fingers at Samuel, the goblin. He tapped his hand against his own Souler Red Cross badge, pinned next to his London Underground one.

  ‘Although they can’t see well,’ she carried on, ‘they’ve got very good memories for people, so I wondered if you were an acolyte?’ Her smile turned questioning.

  ‘Um, no, I’m not.’ I gave her a wary look. ‘I was just watching him, thinking about the great job they do clearing up the rubbish.’

  ‘Ah yes, goblins have proven themselves amongst God’s creatures: they see no shame in servile tasks, much as our Lord Jesus took it upon himself to wash his disciples’ feet.’ Her eyes lit up with enthusiasm. ‘He is an example to us all, with his help and guidance we can shed our sins, and our souls can be cleansed of the darkness and evil that abounds in our earthly life and we can join Him in all his Glory.’

  Inwardly I sighed, resigned. I just had to speak to her, didn’t I? Still, ignoring her probably wouldn’t have made much difference: all the Soulers were fervent zealots. She’d sensed an opening and was closing in for the kill - sorry, conversion.

  ‘Goblins aren’t really creatures, you know,’ I said, matter-of-fact, trying to put her off. ‘They’re more a different species.’

  ‘We are all God’s creatures,’ she jumped in cheerfully. ‘All of us, human, goblin, troll, fae and Other. God does not deny any among us his help or discriminate in his care.’ I stared at her, bemused. Since when had the Soulers changed their sermon tune? They didn’t usually include everyone in their salvation message, just humans, trolls and goblins. The rest of us could rot in hell for all they usually cared.

  She gave a closed-lip smile to Samuel - at least she knew not to show a goblin her teeth - as he scraped industriously at a glob of chewing gum stuck to the floor, then carried on, ‘Samuel, like most of the goblin race, may not enjoy the same legal rights as humans’ - she tilted her head to one side, jiggling her poodle-perm - ‘but that does not stop God or his acolytes from offering aid where it is needed.’

  Okay, now she was really starting to creep me out.

  ‘That’s great!’ I looked up at the map above the windows. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but my stop’s coming up ...’ I edged to the side to stress my point.

  ‘No problem.’ She took my hand and pressed the leaflet firmly into it. ‘Please, do call us.’ She smiled again, a knowing look that raised the hairs at the back of my neck. Turning to retrace her steps, she added, ‘Remember, when you need us, we can help.’

  Was she trying to give me some sort of personal message, or was this just her normal spiel? If so, she was weirder than most of the Soulers I’d come across. Frowning, I skimmed the leaflet; it looked like the usual come-and-be-saved stuff. I dismissed it and handed it to the waiting Samuel.

  ‘Ta, miss.’ He took it gently between knobbly forefinger and thumb, then, trainers flashing, he clomped along the carriage to give it back to the poodle-perm Souler.

  Recycling at its best.

  I watched her from the corner of my eye until the train pulled into the next station. The doors hissed open and as I got out a flash made me turn: she had her phone aimed at me and I blinked as it flashed again. She smiled and I watched her with a sense of mounting frustration as the train accelerated away.

  Fuck. She had twigged who I was, or maybe Samuel had given her the nod when she’d asked. Question was, who was she going to send the photo to - the police? Her boss? Someone else? And what was all that we want to help stuff about? Still, there was nothing I could do about it right now, other than maybe ditching the Glamour spell soon - it wasn’t much of a disguise if everyone knew what I looked like.

  I raced through the streets to HOPE, with the growing feeling I was being followed. I checked behind me a couple of times, expecting to see Cosette again now I’d escaped the dryads. But she didn’t put in an appearance, and neither did anyone else, despite my jitters. Nervous adrenalin fuelled me and it wasn’t long before I reached the welcome lights of the clinic.

  The doors swished open and I rushed in. Hari, the night receptionist, stared out from behind his glass screen and gave me the full force of his trademark you better not give me any trouble expression. It almost made my nervousness disappear: a yellow- and brown-streaked eight-foot-tall troll with fists the size of boulders doesn’t have to do much more than frown to cow most patients, but underneath, Hari was a big softie.

  ‘Yes, miss?’ he asked in his deep rumble.

  Hari wasn’t in on the little plan Grace and I had come up with, so I leaned against the chest-high reception counter, still catching my breath, and aiming for desperate, panted, ‘I’ve got to see Dr Hartwell; I’ve run out of gear.’ At least the gasping would give my venom-junkie play-acting an edge of realism. Trouble was, with all the chasing and running and adrenalin speeding my sidhe metabolism, it wasn’t going to be play-acting for much longer - like I really needed something else to worry about.

  ‘What’s the name?’ he rumbled.

  ‘Debby, with a y,’ I said, giving the name Grace had told me to use.

  ‘Well, Debby-with-a-y, you just go and sit yourself down in the waiting area. Dr Hartwell is a very busy lady’ - he treated me to another deep-fissure frown - ‘but I’ll let her know you’re here.’

  I walked past the bank of lifts and the fire-exit stairwell door, trying not to give in to the urge to push through it and run straight up to the fourth floor where the clinic was. Instead I played my part, letting my eyes glaze over while staring at the stippled peach wallpaper, the gold-framed botanical prints and the beige vinyl wipe-clean floor tiles. I wrinkled my nose at the strong smell of pine disinfectant, which didn’t quite cover the underlying scent of liquorice and even fainter trace of blood. Two rows of pumpkin-orange chairs lined either side of the waiting area, along with a slightly battered vending machine and the token magazine table with its collection of out-of-date glossies. As I approached, my steps faltered and my heart thudded in my chest. One of the chairs was occupied. Damn. I’d forgotten about him. I thought about turning back, but I couldn’t think where else to go - and I wanted to see Grace.

  How much trouble could one vamp be anyway?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Vamps were always trouble, so okay, that
was a stupid question. But Bobby, the vamp sitting in HOPE’s waiting area next to the soft drinks machine, was just a youngster; he’d only taken the Gift three years ago. And he was supposed to be on his best behaviour.

  I stood opposite him, leaning against the wall, hands stuck in my pockets.

  He lifted his head and looked me over, his lips quirked in a sulky, sexy way, his grey eyes shadowed and moody. The expression was one he’d perfected for the camera as Mr October, one of London’s hot celebrity calendar vamps. The hair in its French plait, the ankle-length leather coat, jeans and silk T-shirt, all of them black, completed the look - a look that had teenage girls and not-so-teenage woman swooning with desire and queuing out the door of the Blue Heart Vampire Club in a desperate effort to Get Fanged by the month’s star attraction. Of course, his recent arrest for the murder of his human girlfriend and the subsequent, very public clearing of all charges had done nothing to hurt his popularity. If I didn’t know better - having been instrumental in the ‘clearing’ bit - the words Publicity Stunt might have entered my mind.

  The silver circlet encrusted with yellow citrines that banded his head and the silver handcuffs that shackled his hands together added a touch of the mediaeval to his übermodern Goth look, and enhanced his bad-boy persona. Luckily neither the media nor the vamp PR machine had yet caught onto that fact, otherwise they’d probably have had him posing for the camera with all that magical hardware.