Suzanne McLeod - The Shifting Price of Prey

Dessa. I’d trapped her in my Glamour. Never mind that it was illegal and would win me a quick one-way trip to the guillotine. Never mind I could’ve killed her if we’d got as far as orgasm, leaving her daughter without a mother. Bad as both of those things were, I had an uneasy feeling that releasing Dessa wasn’t going to be as simple as I needed it to be. She was a witch. She had to have been Glamoured by a sidhe at least once before (during a fertility rite, otherwise she would never have become pregnant). And we were trapped in a Wishing Web. Despite Dessa’s Jonathan Rhys Meyers fantasy, it looked like, deep down, she wished for something else, but whether it was sex with another female, or with a sidhe, I didn’t know.

Or really, for all I did know, she was gazing happily up at a creepy magically ’shopped merging of Jonathan Rhys Meyers and me. Which was kind of disturbing given the way she was lying half-naked on the sun-drenched grass—

I blinked.

The houseboat was gone. In its place was a manicured lawn, littered with early autumn leaves, half of it covered in bright sunshine, the rest deep in the shadow cast by the grey-stone walls of a half-ruined Norman manor house. To my right was a huge arched stone entrance, the door half ajar. To my left a copse of trees rustled in an almost chilly breeze. In the distance the deep waters of a moat sparkled.

I knew where this was. Knew what had happened here on my fourteenth birthday, on my wedding night. It’s an illusion , the rational part of me cried, ripped from your memories by the Wishing Web. Memories I’d revisited in shocking clarity only an hour or so ago in the Dreamscape with Bastien.

‘My sidhe bride.’ His voice was light, chiding, gentle. A lie. ‘Mildly entertaining as it is to see you toy with the witch, I wish your attention now.’

It’s not Bastien. It’s the cambion.

A sword appeared next to me, its point stuck in the grass, its bejewelled hilt quivering as if it had been thrown there.

‘Unless, of course,’ Bastien’s voice said, ‘you wish me to cause her, or the other witch, some damage, with that pretty sword.’

I glanced at Dessa, still lying oblivious in the sunshine. And across at Mary, still unconscious from the Stun spell. Horror choked my throat. I swallowed it back. He might be the cambion, but it was my memories the Wishing Web was channelling into this fantasy. And both of them were easy pickings. Innocent victims he would gleefully torture while he fucked them. It was what he’d done to Sally, my faeling friend, all those years ago, in the grand hall of this very house.

Sweat broke on my skin. My heart pounded in dread. No way did I want to relive that horror.

Illusion! Nothing more!

But it didn’t matter what I told myself. Between my memories, and the Wishing Web, the illusion was now as dangerous as the reality.

I scooped up Dessa’s shirt, slapped it on her chest, and grabbed her head. Ironically grateful that my Glamour forced her to be my puppet, I told her to put her shirt on, get Mary, and get both of them, and the still stone-like Taegrin, out of the tent, and then to keep everyone else out.

She scrambled to her feet, yanking on her shirt as she rushed to do my bidding.

A sigh behind me. ‘You disappoint me. I was hoping for some entertainment while we continued our conversation, which you so rudely ended earlier.’

I gripped the hilt of the sword, it wasn’t Ascalon but it would do, and turned. Keeping him occupied would give them chance to escape—

My eyes met those of the sucker I’d always wanted dead.

I smiled. As fantasies go, this one was turning out to be a killer.

Bastien, my psychotic, memory-hijacking betrothed, and Malik’s – son? – smiled at me. A trickle of fear dripped down my spine. I reminded myself that he was just another sucker, not to mention that this Bastien was nothing more than the product of my imagination and the Wishing Web. Surprisingly, my conjured illusion of him looked different from when he’d ‘appeared’ in my Dreamscape daymare.

Now he was wearing jeans and a Blondie T-shirt, of all things. It made him look more like the tall, gangly fifteen-year-old he’d been when he’d Accepted the Gift. His features and skin tone were a mix-up of Mediterranean and Middle East, and I searched them for any resemblance to Malik, disturbed when I realised they had the same shaped mouth, the same sharp jawline, though Bastien’s brown eyes were round, and heavily lashed, in a way that gave him a limpid, almost girlish look.

In fact, now I wasn’t looking at him through panic-warped eyes I realised that, with his unruly dark hair and good looks, he’d probably be a candidate for a lot of people’s wet dreams. If they didn’t know how sick he was inside.

His looks also reminded me of the crush I’d had on him at fourteen.

Bastien grinned. ‘You always did like watching me, my sidhe princess,’ he said, the illusion evidently picking up on my memories. ‘Peering at me from behind curtains, inside wardrobes, all wide-eyed and innocent, like a timid mouse fascinated by a cat.’ He licked his lips. ‘It made dallying with your faeling friend even more exciting, hearing your heart flutter like a trapped bird’s, hearing your breath hitch at the things we did, all the while knowing that soon I would do the same to you, that I’d be the first to pierce you in every way.’

Of course, once he opened his mouth . . . My hand clenched around the sword’s hilt, grateful Dessa and Mary were gone. ‘Her name was Sally,’ I said flatly, tightening my grip on the sword. ‘You killed her.’

He shrugged. ‘I am rash and impulsive. I often regret the consequences. As I did after I dealt with the faeling: she met her death much too soon. I am sure she could have provided a few more days’ amusement for our wedding celebrations, if I had but curbed my impatience.’

I suppressed a shudder. ‘I’m sure Sally would’ve been thrilled to know that.’

‘She thought she could take your place, my sidhe. It was an insult.’

‘You killed her because you got off on it,’ I spat. ‘You got off on torturing her. And you were going to do the same to me before Malik stopped you.’

‘Be ready to run, Genevieve. At my command.’ Malik’s voice came out of his mouth. They were the words I’d heard in my head that long ago night when I’d been standing in front of Bastien, in my wedding dress soaked with Sally’s blood, frozen with terror.

I took a step back, surprise and dismay washing over me.

‘Be ready to run, Genevieve. At my command.’ This time Bastien said it in his own voice, his tone bored. ‘You presume, my princess, that I did not know what Malik, my ever-faithful commander, my always-loyal shadow, was doing. He told you to run, ordered you to so you had no choice. Then he chased you down like a frightened rabbit, feasted on your blood and your life, and threw your dead body down in front of me like a sacrificial offering.’ He tapped his head. ‘I was with him in here. Listening, watching, experiencing. So how could I not know what he was doing all along?’

‘No.’ I shook my head in disbelief. The bastard was trying to trick me. Again. ‘If you knew he was saving me, not killing me, you would’ve stopped him.’

‘Saving you?’ He laughed, derisive. ‘Malik wasn’t saving you , princess. He was saving me, from myself. It is what he has always done. What he still does.’

Saving him? Did that mean Bastien really was Malik’s son? I wanted to ask, but couldn’t force the words out. ‘What the hell does “saving you” mean?’ I demanded.

‘We had waited so long for you.’ He shrugged. ‘As such we would have regretted using your death for a mere few days’ entertainment. So Malik prevented me from doing so.’