Suzanne McLeod - The Shifting Price of Prey

The memory stilled as if I’d pressed pause.

I, not Malik, recognised the girl. It was Fur Jacket Girl, the werewolf I’d seen at the mosque, and then again in the memory I’d had at the zoo, where she’d been chained in the ash circle in the snow, her mate lying dead nearby. This was her as a child.

Malik had known her. She’d meant something to him. That’s why he’d been full of rage and had killed her mate.

Even as shock stuttered within me, the memory started up again.

Behind the woman and children stood a tall boy of around nine or ten, head down, arms crossed over his thin chest, bad-temper radiating from his stance. He was dressed in a miniature version of Malik’s/my clothes: a tall headdress atop his turban, pantaloons, and a floor-length crimson coat that brushed the gem-sewn slippers on his feet. And secured through the embroidered belt around his waist was a curved sabre, similar to the one I carried, a man’s blade and not a child’s toy.

I stepped into the courtyard and the woman looked up, giving me a smile full of welcome and love.

‘Malik, canımın içi ’ – light of my soul – she called. ‘You are home. Safe. I trust the campaign goes well?’

The memory sharpened and I drank in the woman’s beauty; her huge, thickly lashed, dark eyes, porcelain-pale skin touched with the sun’s blush, the perfect lines of her cheek and jaw, the tiny black crescent inked at the corner of her lush mouth.

The moment broke as child-Fur Jacket Girl jumped up and flung herself at me. I caught her, lifting her high in the air to a delighted squeal, then kissed her cheek as I carried her back to her mother. I set her on the rug as her mother offered me the baby. As she did, her sleeves fell back to reveal intricate tattoos like black vines twisting up her arms. Dropping an affectionate kiss on the woman’s forehead I took the chubby baby into my arms and tickled her tummy as her mother had done. She smelled of sweet herbs and aloes. I laughed as she giggled with innocent happiness.

A sharp cough vied for my attention and I saw a shadow flit through the woman’s eyes. I handed the baby back and turned to the boy. He was still staring at his slippered feet, his bad temper more pronounced.

‘Emir,’ I said, sketching a bow.

‘ Çorbaci ’ – Commander – ‘Abd al-Malik. Welcome.’ He returned my bow. Then he raised his eyes to mine, his mouth splitting wide in a knowing grin.

The memory froze again.

I, not Malik, knew that grin, even with its slightly crooked, still human teeth.

Last time I’d seen the boy I’d been fourteen and it was our wedding night. He hadn’t been a child then but a six-foot-tall gangly fifteen-year-old. Or at least, that was the age he’d looked; as a vamp he was however many centuries old. But it didn’t matter how childish he appeared in this dream/memory, no way could I ever forget the spiteful way his lips curved. Or the lust for others’ pain that shone in his large, doe-like brown eyes.

He was the Autarch – Bastien – my psychotic murdering betrothed.

‘Hello, my sidhe princess,’ the boy-Bastien said, as if we’d last met days ago instead of eleven years.

Terror-induced adrenalin flooded my veins. I forced myself to take a calming breath, and then another. This was Malik’s memory, twisted into nightmare. A side-effect of the Morpheus Memory Aid interacting with his blood. Just like at the zoo. Nothing more. Bastien wasn’t real, which meant he couldn’t hurt me. But despite my mental bolstering, I still flinched as his hand clasped the scimitar and he rolled his shoulders back in the same way that had been a prelude to him wielding another sword on my faeling friend that betrothal night. Finally killing her after days of torture. And I couldn’t stop myself instinctively shuffling backwards to put more space between us until I bumped into the courtyard wall.

‘You’re not real,’ I whispered.

He laughed, darting to me and pinching my arm. It hurt, and I froze, shaking with panic. ‘Real is a mutable term, princess,’ he admonished. ‘Particularly when you are trespassing in someone else’s memories.’

I swallowed. ‘Yours?’

‘Come now, sidhe. Let’s not spoil our reunion with stupidity.’ He threw his arms wide to encompass the woman, the girl and the baby. ‘This vision of domestic sentimentality is certainly not something I would desire to relive.’ He leaned towards me and I pressed myself harder into the wall as he sniffed. ‘And then there is the nasty little irritation that you stink of Abd al-Malik’s blood.’

This is a nightmare. Nothing more.

Only even as I told myself to wake up, I knew I wouldn’t. Somehow I’d blundered – or been pulled? – into the Dreamscape; where dreams and reality mix.

And now I was trapped there with the one person who churned my guts liquid with horror.

The boy-Bastien’s nostrils flared again. ‘Not only his blood, but sex too. My, my, what have you and my ever-faithful commander been up to, my lovely bride, that you smell so deliciously tasty?’

No way was he biting me. Or fucking me. Or using his sword on me. I’d die first. Or, said the scared child-voice in my mind, more likely after . . .

‘But sadly, I am not allowed to play with you, my princess.’ He stepped back and I sagged against the wall in relief. ‘Not yet, anyway, not until my pact with my commander is done. But them I can play with’ – he indicated the woman and children on the rug, then lifted one elegant brow – ‘so which one shall I pick, my bride?’ He pointed a contemptuous finger at the woman. ‘Shall it be the beautiful Shpresa, my father’s favoured Ikbal, despite her opening her legs for any who choose to defile her? Or her youngest, Aisha, the little parcel of precious humanity that squeals like a stuck pig at her knees and takes all her attention?’ He moved to stand behind the child-Fur Jacket Girl cradling her doll, and reached out to stroke her hair, jealousy twisting his mouth. ‘Or perhaps her other daughter, the delectable Dilek.’ Child-Fur Jacket Girl frowned, feeling his touch if not hearing his voice, and hunched away from him. ‘Such young flesh Dilek has, so very pure and innocent.’

Nausea roiled in my stomach at the thought of what he might do. At what he might make me watch. Again.

The dream/memory started up again; this time it scrolled in front of me like a film I was watching.

Boy-Bastien bent to Dilek’s ear, saying something in a language I didn’t understand. A look of fear, quickly masked, crossed her face, and she turned to yell defiantly at him. He laughed nastily, pinching her cheek and, as she batted him away, grabbed her doll, holding it tauntingly aloft. She shouted, desperately jumping up to rescue the doll from him.

The woman, Shpresa, looked up from swaddling the baby, her expression the resigned one of mothers everywhere when children goad each other. She called out sharply, gesturing at Bastien to give the doll back. Bastien nodded, holding the doll by its head and feet as he offered it to the crying Dilek. As she went to take it, he shot a ‘watch this’ look in my direction and shoved the doll into Dilek’s small chest. She stumbled back and he jerked his arms gleefully apart, ripping the doll’s head from its body and tossing the decapitated parts into the corner fountain.

Dilek burst into anguished tears. Her mother gathered her up into a hug, and spoke to Bastien in a disappointed tone that indicated this wasn’t the first such incident. He shrugged his bony shoulders, a mock air of contriteness not quite hiding his satisfaction. Shpresa spoke again, pointing at the baby, and he sidled past her, surreptitiously yanking Dilek’s hair as he did so. As Dilek bawled louder, Bastien snatched the baby up, gripping her under her arms and dangling her at arm’s length. She wriggled, little arms and legs waving as he gave me a calculating glance and the dream/memory halted again.