Suzanne McLeod - The Shifting Price of Prey

Bastien was huddled on the ground in front of the Emperor’s slab, hands cupping his Mr Very Unhappy and moaning for England. Vulnerable, if not totally defenceless. The Empress must’ve released him from his stone. Nice for the Big Girl’s Blouse to have his mother watching over him. At least the Emperor was still lying on his stone circle, trapped by his own magic. Totally defenceless. Two vamps with one sword came to mind.

Time for Ascalon.

The ball of green dragonfire engulfed my hand, and grunting through the searing pain from Janan’s burns on my palm, I gripped the blessed sword.

I started towards them both.

Mr Moany Bastien stopped his over-the-top whimpering and rose to his feet as if a puppet master had pulled his strings. Creepy.

‘Well, well, princess,’ he said, backing around the stone slab. ‘I see you have your sword again. I take it you intend to dispatch Romulus Augustus with it before he calls any of his minions to the scene. He is a much more dangerous threat than I, is he not?’

I shot Supercilious Smiling Bastien a narrowed look. Killing the Emperor first was playing right into the pyscho’s hands. But, much as it irritated me, it was the way to go. ‘You’re right,’ I said coolly. ‘The Emperor needs dispatching. First.’

Smiley Bastien inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘I am glad we agree, princess. On that, at least.’

Mentally I flipped him the bird and moved to the Emperor, positioning myself at the top of the stone circle. I looked into his flat alien eyes, then raised Ascalon two-handed over my head and brought the sword down. The blessed blade sliced through the Emperor’s neck with absolutely no resistance until it hit the sandstone. But unlike Janan, the sword cleaved cleanly through flesh, muscle, ligaments, tendons, blood vessels and bone, separating the Emperor’s laurel-wreathed head from his nude body. His eyes blinked, then his head slowly rolled to the side, stopping to glower at my feet as his crown lodged on the stone. Viscous claret-coloured blood seeped out of his severed neck and pooled beneath his head. I poked the head with the sword, moving it out of reach of the blood – better safe than sorry – then quickly changed my grip on the sword so the blade pointed downwards.

‘The heart, my bride,’ Eager Bastien urged. ‘Do not forget the heart.’

‘I know,’ I snapped back, thinking you’re next, buddy . I moved sideways, lining myself up with the Emperor’s chest, then stabbed down into his heart; again the blessed steel cut cleanly, resisting only as it bit into the stone beneath. The Emperor’s body stiffened, limbs going rigid, then it sunk in on itself like a pricked balloon until all that was left was withered, wrinkled skin over jutting bone.

I poked at the Emperor’s remains with the sword. I’d sort of expected something more to happen when ending a millennium-and-a-half-year-old vamp. Not that I’d wanted him to put up a fight, or even thought he could, trapped as he was. Nor was I particularly bothered about killing him while he was defenceless. He was a baddie. And I was pragmatic, not stupid. I’d never have won in a fair fight. If any fight I had with a vamp could ever be called fair.

Of course, his remains would still have to burn, and his ashes scattered to be sure he really wasn’t going to pop back up at some point in the future. But still, deflating like that was a pretty anti-climactic end.

Bastien clapped, flashing fang. ‘Felicitations, princess. I applaud your swordsmanship.’

I bared my own teeth at him in a smile. ‘If you liked that wait till you see what I’ve got for an Encore.’

‘Encores are all well and good, my lovely sidhe, but I do believe we have only seen the Prelude.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘Behold! Act One!’ He threw something at the Emperor— Gold flashed through the air: one of the Emperor’s coins.

The Emperor’s body twitched and lit itself on fire, the flames burning the cool blue of an ice-dragon’s breath. I stumbled back in shock as the blaze licked the tent roof, then spread out and rained down the tent sides, trapping me – and trapping Malik in the roaring inferno. A panicked scream twisted inside me. Even if he was immortal, no way did I want to see him crispy-crittered and endure the pain of healing. If I could get to his stone I could protect us both. All it needed was my blood in the circle’s outer groove, and hey presto, one Blood Ward. Only, a curtain of flames burned furiously between us. I’d have to jump and roll to smother—

Bastien lunged forwards and snatched something from the Emperor’s stone. The fire snuffed out as if it had never been. All that remained on the slab was a body-shaped pile of ashes. I sagged in relief then scowled at Bastien.

Somehow he’d managed to dress himself in the Emperor’s purple toga. He stood with his arms held out like he was offering benediction. In one hand he held the Emperor’s gold laurel-wreath crown, and dangling from the other by its dark hair was a small shrunken head the size of a crab apple.

‘Here we have Act Two, my sweet sidhe.’ He brought the shrunken head to his lips, kissed it, then popped it into his mouth and munched down.

‘Nice illusion,’ I said drily, trying not to heave.

‘Ah, but is it?’ He held his finger up much like the Emperor had done. I shuddered, the sight weirding me out. ‘Act Three comes, my princess.’

The hair on my nape rose as a low keening wind rushed through the tent’s entrance and the Emperor’s ashes spiralled up in a small tornado. An unseen hand briefly cupped my cheek with a gentle feeling of gratitude, startling me. Then the wind-gathered ashes exploded outwards and dissipated into the ether, leaving the candles still burning.

Bastien held the golden laurel wreath out before him. ‘Now for the Grande Finale.’ He placed the gold crown on his head and intoned. ‘The Emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor.’

I narrowed my eyes at him as the final piece clicked into place.

Bastien wanted the Emperor dead so he could steal his power. But the real kicker in all of this wasn’t that the psycho had set me up to do his dirty work, but that now his (or Malik’s?) plotting had made Bastien the Emperor, there was no way I could kill the sadistic sack of shit.

At least, not until he’d told me how to save the fae’s trapped fertility.

I gripped Ascalon, battened my frustration down and said flatly, ‘Tell me how to find that which is lost, and how to join that which is sundered, to release the fae’s fertility from the pendant and restore it back to them as it was before it was taken. And the price you want me to pay.’

‘Ah! And now we come to the Encore.’ He raised a mocking brow. ‘To have something you want, my sweet sidhe, fills me with such glorious anticipation.’

I glowered at him. Sadistic prick was obviously going to spin this out, whereas I wanted it done so I could kill him. ‘What’s the deal, Bastien?’

‘Patience, my princess.’ Slyness glinted in Bastien’s brown eyes as he moved to squat by Malik. He brushed a hand over Malik’s shorn scalp, smudging the glyphs painted there. ‘Does my loyal commander, my shadow, my kingmaker not deserve some care first?’ He bit into his own arm and held his wrist over Malik’s mouth so drops of dark crimson blood splashed on to Malik’s parted lips. ‘Were it not for his perfect plan none of this would have been possible.’ He smiled gleefully.

Fuck. Malik had planned it all. He’d used me, put those I’d cared about in danger and all to help Bastien gain power. It felt like his soul turned to ice around my heart and shattered into sharp icicles. Leaving me bleeding. How the hell could I have been so stupid to think that Malik cared for me? That we could have something together? We couldn’t. Not if he was prepared to put innocents like Katie and Freya in danger to get what he wanted. Furious and heart-sore, I wanted to shout at Malik, tell him there’d been no need to involve them. Hadn’t the Machiavellian vamp understood that if he’d told me his plan, I’d have gone along with it willingly? After all, he’d known I needed to see the Emperor, and I’d told him I’d help. And even if I’d ended up hurt or dead as I had in the past with a couple of his plots, it wasn’t as if I’d held it against him—