Suzanne McLeod - The Shifting Price of Prey

I jabbed Mad Max in the chest. ‘What’s the sadistic bastard done with Malik? And don’t try to pretend you don’t know what I mean.’

He heaved a theatrical sigh. ‘Dogs are given commands, not information, cousin dearest.’

‘Dogs also have ears,’ I said.

‘Doesn’t mean they hear anything of interest.’

‘Bastien told me you would lead me to Malik,’ I snapped.

‘Me lead you to the Turk?’ Mad Max shrugged then tapped his head. ‘Sorry, don’t have that order in here, love.’

I glared at him, desperately wanting him to tell me where Malik was, to pound the information out of him. And knowing it would be a waste of my energy. ‘Well, that’s just crap,’ I muttered, frustrated.

He grinned jovially, then wrinkled his nose and sniffed. ‘Talking about the Turk, he’s not going to be a happy bunny that you stink of sex, satyr and fetid feline, Cousin. Whatever have you been up to?’

Damn vamp supersenses. ‘Nothing you need to know about,’ I said flatly, trying not to squirm and wishing I’d had time for a longer shower in the zoo’s staff facilities. At least Mary had a clean T-shirt and jeans ready for me. I poked Mad Max. ‘All you need to do is follow my orders.’

‘Then follow them I shall, love. I’ve always had a yen for woman with power.’ He raised a sardonic brow as he leaned forward and whispered, ‘Oh, what fun we could have, if not for the Turk and his Royal Brattiness.’

‘And the fact that I’d castrate you quicker than you could say “Poodle Power”,’ I snapped back.

‘Ouch.’ He shuddered dramatically and leaned away.

‘Okay, so now I need the tarot cards.’ I looked at Tavish, who was holding his no doubt numb arm and glowering at my circle. ‘You can see I’m myself, so you ready to give them to me yet?’

His beads turned murky grey with refusal. ‘Doll, I cannae give you the cards. You cannae trust yourself with Viviane. She’ll lead you astray afore you ken what she’s doing. She’s a leannán sidhe.’

‘Leannán sidhe!’ Mad Max’s eyes almost popped out of his head as he backed up until he hit my circle.

Viviane was one of the dark muses? Well, that explained her obsession with all things arty. And Mad Max’s panic and Tavish’s alarm. A leannán sidhe’s inspiration comes at a high cost: possible madness and early death, though usually nothing that could be pinned on the muse herself. Van Gogh, Marilyn Monroe and Alexander McQueen were all suspected victims of the leannán sidhe. Still, Viviane wasn’t likely to drive a non-human to a quick, iffy demise through an overload of inspiration so she could suck down their creative energies, but if she got her metaphorical claws in deep enough, she could probably send a vamp crazy. Not that it would make much difference in Mad Max’s case.

Which made me wonder what exactly she’d done to Tavish for him to trap her in a set of tarot cards for near enough quarter of a century. I asked.

His beads turned a cagey purple. ‘Ah, she was an apprentice of sorts.’

Pfft! Apprentice! I was his artist’s model! His inspiration. The Love of his Life! Viviane’s shouting reverberated round my head. Until he took up with Turner. Don’t ever go swimming with him, bean sidhe , she warned. He’ll whip your soul out of your body faster than you can scream.

Briefly I closed my eyes. A lover’s tiff. Could my night get any better? ‘Tavish, give me the cards.’

His dreads writhed in refusal.

But Hugh had obviously decided I was truly me too, as he reached down, hooked a large hand under Tavish’s arm and pulled him onto his feet. ‘Think it’s best if you give Genny the cards, àrd-cheann ,’ he rumbled warningly. ‘Otherwise I will have to arrest you for obstruction.’

A frustrated ‘on your own head be it’ look settled on Tavish’s face. He flicked his fingers and the tarot cards appeared in his palm and he said sullenly, ‘I make a gift of the tarot cards containing the leannán sidhe spirit, Viviane, to you, Genevieve.’

The cards streamed from his hand to hover in a neat upright stack in front of my face. The top card showed Viviane sitting by her canalbank in her lavender dress and bonnet, twirling her parasol. She was smirking.

‘I am in your debt, bean sidhe.’ She dipped her head, then, without turning, flipped her middle finger in Tavish’s direction. ‘Two hundred and forty-one years he has kept me enslaved to those cards. And he did not even allow me to do regular readings. Te-di-ous!’

Tavish flinched. Mad Max gave an appreciative, albeit nervous barking laugh.

‘Save your crowing, Viv,’ I said, and stuffed the cards into my jeans pocket, ignoring her muffled protests. ‘Right, Maxim, time to do your stuff.’

‘Time for the blood-letting, Cousin,’ Mad Max said, after he’d explained the mechanics of the spell.

One of which involved him sinking his fangs into me, the prospect of which had him grinning at me like a dog who’d found a stash of meaty bones. I shoved my sleeve up, stiff-armed him back, but left my hand on his chest. That was as close as he was getting.

He grinned wider, took my hand and executed an exaggerated bow as if to bestow a kiss, his platinum ponytail falling over his left shoulder as he did. He raised suggestive blue eyes to mine. ‘You know, Cousin, necks are much more fun than wrists?’

‘Get on with it,’ I said, ‘otherwise I’ll be ringing that vet when this is over.’ I scissored my fingers together under his nose. ‘I hear he does a good deal on doggy snips.’

‘You’re all bitch, love,’ he drawled, then closed his eyes. The hair on my nape rose like hackles as he drew his magic up. A faint silvery-red glow surrounded him like a thin aura. My own magic answered, turning my skin gold, and a distant part of me noted, thankfully, that I wasn’t feeling even the tiniest bit lustful towards Mad Max. Whatever consequences my lost night with Finn in the cave might have, at least the unwanted and embarrassing effects of shacking up with the leaking Fertility pendant were gone.

Mad Max muttered a string of unintelligible-to-me words under his breath, in a language with the same cadence as Gaelic, and I had my usual moment’s envy that a vamp, even one that started out as a wizard, obviously knew and could do more magic than me. I shoved the feeling aside, then braced myself as his grip on my wrist tightened, his lips peeled back from his fangs, and he struck.

Pain, sharp and hot, sliced through me, then was gone. Silver light wound with sapphire blue reeled out from Mad Max like a spool of film unravelling, then vanished, plunging us into darkness. Faint noise, like the distant roll of drums, grew closer and louder and more insistent, and gradually the darkness lightened like dawn colouring the sky—

And then we were in the circle again, Mad Max bowing over my wrist, looking up at me with a lascivious leer, everyone gathered about us, waiting for him to start the spell. The words ‘Get on with it’ came out of my mouth . . .

The air rippled and rolled through the zoo corridor, turning the images around me into watercolours, stretching and streaking and running them together so they flowed counter-clockwise around me, only to disappear downwards as if there were a drain at my feet.

The images streamed faster and faster until I stood in a whirlpool of silvery blue.

The drumming reached a crescendo.

It cut out.

The last of the whirlpool drained away, leaving me bathed in morning light, as the kidnap scene took shape. It was slightly out of focus, as if I were looking through a greasy lens.

Two dark-skinned males – the bodyguards – in their green and gold embroidered kurtas and mirrored aviators stood in the centre of the corridor watching a small black-haired boy who had climbed into one of the U-shaped windows and had his nose pressed against the glass: Dakkhin Jangali, the kidnapped child. On the other side of the window, the zoo’s two tigers were rubbing the sides of their faces against the glass as if they could touch him. Behind the boy stood a tall, lithely muscled woman in an orange sari, an indulgent smile on her face: Mrs Bandevi Jangali, the boy’s mother and wife to the ambassador. Next to her was a stylish twenty-something male wearing a dark business suit: the zoo’s publicity director, Jonathan Weir. He had his phone out, snapping shots of the boy and the tigers.