Suzanne McLeod - The Shifting Price of Prey

I snorted. ‘It’s not like I’ve got any choice.’

‘Good-oh!’ He wagged an admonishing finger at me. ‘Living like a nun while shacking up with a Fertility spell isn’t the best lifestyle choice for a sidhe fae.’

I wasn’t shacking up with a Fertility spell, exactly. I was living with Sylvia, my friend who was pregnant. And Sylvia was wearing the sapphire pendant with the fae’s trapped fertility that had made that pregnancy possible. She and her partner, Ricou, had moved in with me after the ToLA case, due to their families arguing about where they should live; my flat was apparently nominated neutral territory. I hadn’t been too thrilled having new flatmates to begin with, but it had turned out to be fun, though evidently the fertility magic in the pendant had been having its own fun without any of us knowing— if I was to believe Mad Max.

‘Are you saying the pendant is’ – I eyed him mistrustfully – ‘spreading its magic around, or something?’

‘Leaking is the word you’re looking for,’ Mad Max said cheerfully. ‘Which means denial isn’t just a river in Egypt; for you, love, it’s a cracked dam leading to a flood of impromptu orgies every time you feel a tad frisky. Sticking your finger in the hole, however enthusiastically, isn’t going to do a damn thing.’ He gave a barking laugh then poked me in the side. ‘Dam and damn. Get it, Cousin?’

I got it. Along with a jagged pain that said: cracked ribs. Sonofabitch had really gone for it with his payback.

I also got what he was going on about: the stupid sidhe sex myth, the one where the humans all think we’re gagging for it at the drop of a hat thanks to the ancient fertility rites once held to replenish the land and encourage its future fecundity, and the salacious tales about the rites being huge free-for-all orgies. Tales I’d been told were the product of humans prurient imaginations, since the rites, usually held during the main equinoxes – like the Summer Solstice we were fast approaching – had always been well orchestrated, rigidly controlled and only for those specifically chosen participants who’d carefully prepared . . . by purposely abstaining from intercourse in the months leading up to the rite . . .

Like I’d been abstaining!

Shit! How could I have been such an idiot? I’d been obliviously setting myself up for my own personal fertility rite. And the Glamour I’d hit Malik with, along with the frustration of oh, so near sex, had flipped some sort of switch inside me. Only by the time it had, Malik was gone. Hence my desperate self-pleasuring (which really hadn’t been any pleasure at all) until Mad Max had turned up and the fertility magic blazing hot within me had decided it wanted a piece of him. Even though the thought of jumping his bones, blood relationship aside, was enough to make me want to throw up, it seemed being male had been enough for the magic to go, ‘Screw the crazy sonofabitch!’

Maybe I should thank him for tying me up instead? Nah. Never gonna happen. I was pretty sure he’d gone for overkill, and even if he hadn’t, he was enjoying the pseudo BDSM way too much.

I glared at him. ‘What’s the spell in the towel for?’

‘Oh, just a little magic poultice I cooked up to help you.’

‘Since when do vamps do magic?’

‘You forget, Cousin,’ he admonished, ‘that my mother is a sidhe queen. Clíona might have chosen to make me human and mortal, but I’m still a wizard by birth. Becoming a vamp didn’t change that.’

I frowned, suspicious. Was he kidding me? Though now I thought about it, he would be a wizard, as the son of a sidhe and a human (as his dad had been, when Mad Max was – nauseatingly – conceived). And I’d never known any vamp who’d been anything other than a straight human before they’d Accepted the Gift – unsurprisingly, given the whole ancient Live and Let Live Tenets between the witches, wizards and vamps: the last thing they did was socialise. So a wizard keeping his magic after being given the Gift could be possible . . .

‘Though Mommie Dearest didn’t actually teach me anything. That was down to your sister, Brigitta.’ He gave me a cat-that’s-got-the-canary smile.

Half-sister, I mentally corrected him, though you couldn’t tell by looking at Brigitta’s picture. We could’ve been twins, if she hadn’t been born forty-odd years before me. Even though I’d thought of her earlier when Mad Max had first appeared, his mentioning her again, and the fact she’d taught him magic, raised a mix of grief and anger that I’d never known her, along with the usual frustrated envy that she obviously hadn’t lacked anything in the magical ability department. Unlike me. But then Brigitta’s father had been the fossegrim, a lesser fae, while my father had been a vamp. For a moment I almost asked Mad Max whether he knew if our having different fathers was the reason why I couldn’t do magic, then I nixed that idea. No way was I going to discuss the ins and outs of anything with him . Instead, I scowled and said again, ‘What’s the spell in the towel do?’

‘Stops you wanting to polish the peanut, Cousin. What else?’

Ah. ‘Okay,’ I said slowly, ‘it’s worked. So you can untie me.’

His smile widened, blue eyes lighting with unholy delight. ‘Oh, I don’t think so, love. No gain without pain, isn’t that what they say?’

He whipped the wet towel away. A cloud of dust motes floated up, the calm feeling vanished, and the painful arousal throbbed back to even more agonising life than before. The shock pulled a scream from deep inside me; but before it could escape, he stuffed the wad of sheet back in my mouth. I bucked and writhed, desperate to get free, to kill him, or myself, whatever would bring me release—

His fist slammed into my jaw.

‘Oh, and next time, Cousin,’ I heard him say as I slid into unconsciousness, ‘just fuck the Turk. It’ll sort you out, put the great Malik al-Khan out of his misery, and save the rest of us the hassle of his bleeding melodramas.’

I woke to the sun streaming round the curtain edges. The clock told me it was not long past dawn. The crazy sonofabitch was gone. No way would he stick around after the sun had risen, not when he’d have dropped into a vamp’s daytime sleep – a sort of hibernation mode that looked very much like being dead. And if I had my way, next time we met the vicious sonofabitch wouldn’t just look dead he’d be dead . I was going to make sure of it; the mad vamp had left me still tied to the damn bed .

He’d also left me draped with the towel, which was now a sludgy mess dripping cold water adding to the existing wet spot beneath me. Ugh. On the positive front, that part of me felt fine. And I was no longer gagged, verbally or magically; the silver headband was gone. The rest of me felt fragile, in a beaten-unconscious sort of way. Unsurprisingly, since Mad Max had roused me a couple more times, whipped off the towel, cheerfully watched as my frantic struggles demonstrated that the spell hadn’t done whatever it was supposed to yet, and enthusiastically knocked my lights out again.

I was going to enjoy killing him. Slowly.

Once I got free.

I debated shouting for help. Unfortunately any ‘rescue’ would come with embarrassment. There was no way this wouldn’t end up in the scandal rags. I’d have to live with headlines like SIDHE IN KINKY SEX ROMP until something more salacious came along. Not to mention the risk of YouTube.

I shuddered. Maybe I should just wait. After all, Mad Max couldn’t leave me here like this . . .

Just as I was thinking the sonofabitch might be crazy enough to do exactly that, a tentative knock sounded on the door.

I froze.