Suzanne McLeod - The Bitter Seed of Magic

Moving almost too fast for me to see, she was standing in front of me, the sharp end of a bronze knife hovering steadily under my chin. I held my ground, ignoring my hitching pulse, and flicked a finger against the blade. ‘Nice toy,’ I said.

She smiled, her full lips pulling back to showcase longer-than-normal fangs—another illusion—and the knife flew back and thudded into Mad Max’s chest, perfectly aligned next to its twin. He grunted. I looked around her at his face. The bricks had done their job: it was a battered, blood-covered mess, and when he stared back at me from between already swelling lids, surprisingly, he was very much aware, and oddly speculative.

‘The bronze knife in the heart,’ Francine purred, drawing my attention back to her, ‘she paralyse him. Stop his power.’

‘Good to know,’ I said, stepping past her and over Mad Max to look through the diamond-shaped window in door eleven. It was as bad as I’d hoped it wouldn’t be.

The room was square, maybe twenty feet by twenty, and it looked like a hurricane had passed through recently. Broken bits of metal bed and shredded lumps of mattress littered the carpet, a wooden chest was overturned on its side, and the flat-screen on the wall was smashed.

Darius was in the centre, at the eye of the storm.

The eye-candy romance model with the drool-worthy six-pack was gone; instead, his body had shrunk back to bone. His stomach was concave above his jutting pelvis, and only a few wisps of hair straggled from his scalp. A raised map of blue-black veins corded his leathery-looking skin. He looked like he’d been left to starve. As I watched he twisted and turned from side to side in evident confusion, his lips curled back over all four of his fangs, his arms open wide, fingers clutching at empty space. Rissa and Viola were weaving around him in some sort of shifting pattern, their floating grey outfits and long white-grey hair fluttering as if blown by the wind. As I watched, one would flit past him, trailing a bloody wrist and snagging his attention, then as he lunged for her, the other would do the same, distracting him the other way, only they were moving so fast it looked as if there were more than just the two of them …

‘You’re doing something, aren’t you?’ I turned to Francine.

‘I make the illusion of many Moth. Darius do not think with his brain now, but with this.’ She tapped her corseted stomach. ‘The Moth, they bait him with the blood. He does not know which to eat next. It is a trick we use sometimes.’

I turned back to the room and came face to face with Lucy, staring at me through the glass. Startled, I jumped back in fear as my old phobia hit; stupid to still be afraid of ghosts, even now. I forced myself back to the small window, swiping at my face as I realised I was doing the crying thing again. My chest constricted with sorrow as Lucy turned and walked straight through the others to the far wall, then stood and pointed down at her still body.

Damn, damn, damn. Seeing her ghost didn’t necessarily mean Lucy was dead, or at least, not yet. I’d seen Sharon, Darius’ now-deceased girlfriend do the same thing. The Moth-girls’ ghosts—their souls or whatever you want to call it—can vacate their bodies on demand. It’s a sort of defence mechanism against pain, as having a vamp sink fangs into your carotid understandably hurts with a capital H.

Why the Moth-girls sign up for it, rather than the standard venom hit, which is all about pleasure, is a total mystery.

‘We need to get in there,’ I said, still looking at Lucy’s body.

‘The door, she is sealed until sunrise,’ Francine said at my side. ‘She is on the time lock, precaution to stop the bloodlust spreading.’

‘Sunrise! Fuck, they’ll all be dead by then!’

‘Yes. The heart of Lucy is weak. I beat it for her, but I cannot for long. My power, she is lowering.’ She spoke calmly, as if the situation wasn’t a death sentence for the girls and for Darius—especially Darius, because even if he came back to his senses after draining the Moths, the vampires would rescind his Gift, not in public retribution for killing the girls—it was doubtful any of them had any family, or anyone to worry about them other than the other Moths; their bodies could and probably would just disappear. As would Darius’. No, they’d rescind his Gift because the Moths’ deaths would be unsanctioned killing. The vamps can’t afford not to control their own.

Even if I did manage to save him now, unless one of them took him on, he was a dead vamp walking. I clenched my fists, desperation and guilt burning in my chest. I shouldn’t have encouraged him to stand on his own feet. More than that, I should’ve kept a closer eye on him.

But crying over spilled milk—or rather, spilled blood—wasn’t helping anyone. I had to save the Moths first, and after that I could worry about Darius … except—

I was all out of ideas.

I looked at Francine. ‘So, what’s the plan?’ I asked.

‘The door, I can open her.’ Francine stared at me, her odd reflective eyes transparent like glass. ‘I make the illusion stay for the escape of the Moth. But Darius, he has the blood-lust, he cannot escape the room. I cannot control him, and I do not like to bring the final death to him.’

Okay, good to know she didn’t want to kill him, for all her flat statements. But then, if he wasn’t rabid with bloodlust, she wouldn’t have to. So she was asking me to feed him—my blood would sate his bloodlust—but getting it into him without ending up as dinner was the problem. Unless …

He was young enough that I could catch him in my Glamour—I’d done it before, after all. Once, muttered my cautionary voice, and the vamp was already restrained . I ignored it and asked, ‘Will you take his Oath, if the Moths survive?’

‘Darius …’ This time some emotion flickered in her gaze, then was gone. ‘I will accept his Oath, but only if he chooses. The force, she is not right.’

I blinked: a democratic vampire?

‘Okay, leave Darius to me,’ I said with more confidence than I was feeling.

‘Good. Also, I ask the permission for the blood. For the power.’

Of course she needed blood. Well, I was going to be opening a vein anyway, and it was all in a good cause—

I grabbed my backpack and opened it. Miraculously, one of the three bags of blood I’d stuffed in it was still intact and I held it out to her as blood from the other bags dripped onto the carpet.

Her nostrils flared, her eyes closing briefly, then she shook her head reluctantly. ‘Darius, he will need your blood.’ She pointed down at Mad Max. ‘His blood, I can take. With the permission of my liege.’

Her liege was Malik, but he wasn’t here. The worry came back, and I didn’t know when—or if—he would arrive. ‘He’s not here?’ I made it a question.

‘We are to give you the help if you are in need.’ She smiled down at Mad Max, her long canines curving past her bottom lip, her strange, transparent eyes lighting with expectant predatory pleasure.

‘Ri- ight . I’m in need then.’ I waved at Mad Max. ‘You’ve got your liege’s permission.’

In a blur almost too fast to see, she whirled into a crouch and fell upon his throat. He roared, his legs jerking uncontrollably, then the sound cut out and harsh slurping noises took its place. Old, dark blood sprayed over the lower walls of the corridor. Judging by her enthusiastic reaction, there was more to her snacking on Mad Max than just getting power.

I shrugged out of my jacket, dropping it next to my backpack, and looked through the window at the Moths dancing round Darius, wondering how long it would take Francine to get her power up to speed—and also wondering how I was going to get close enough to Darius to touch him, let alone Glamour him, without getting my own throat ripped out first.