Suzanne McLeod - The Bitter Seed of Magic

‘Darius?’

I looked up as I heard his name and the magic dimmed. Francine ducked through the ripped doorway and came slowly into the room, placing one high-heeled boot in front of the other, watching me with a wary expression.

I felt my mouth smile at her, a wide beam, so happy to see her. She lifted her chin, such a tiny movement, and, oddly, I recognised that she was worried, and scared. I/Darius wanted to tell her it was all right, that now she and Genny were here, everything was going to be all right, but the words got confused with the thoughts in my head.

He loved Francine, she was so small and sexy, and she ’ d looked after him even before he got the Gift, like Genny looked after him now. If Genny was sunlight in a jar, Francine was dark, dark chocolate. He ’ d missed her, missed the Moths … he’d done something bad, but he hadn’t meant to, he was a good boy, but he’d just been so hungry … but she was here now, and Genny was here, they ’ d sort things out, make things right.

Sunshine and chocolate.

‘Darius?’ Weirdly Francine sank to her knees in front of me and reached out to cup my face, brushing away my tears.

‘I’m holding her hand, just like I promised, Francine.’ I felt my lips shape the words, but it wasn’t my voice, wasn’t my thoughts behind them. The voice and thoughts belonged to Darius … and so did the mouth, and the eyes I was using. I looked down at my hand where I held his. I squeezed, and Darius’ hand squeezed, not mine. I lifted, and Darius’ hand lifted mine. My hand was the limp one, the one it felt like I was holding.

Shit! I was in Darius’ body.

I sand-bagged a rising tide of panic. This wasn ’ t so strange, was it? After all, I ’ d been in someone else ’ s body before. All I had to do was stay calm, work out how this had happened, and find a way back to my own body …

Which hadn’t been in too good a condition last I saw. I squinted past the blinding golden glow of magic and saw myself: the jagged end of the pole was sticking out of my upper stomach, and the wet, gory mess of my throat looked like a wild animal—or a rabid vamp—had chowed down on it …

‘Oh crap. That doesn’t look good, does it?’ I muttered.

Francine turned my/Darius’ face away. ‘The sidhe, she is not lost yet. Her heart, you are still beating it, as I told you.’ Her words conjured the steady da-dum, da-dum of a heartbeat pulsing against my/Darius’ palm; it echoed up my/his arm and thrummed in my/his ears. A fainter echo sounded from within my unconscious, injured body. I/He nodded and gripped my limp hand harder, determined to not let go.

‘This is good, Darius.’ Francine leaned forward and kissed us …

She watched as Maxim led the blonde child away, trying to shut her ears to the child’s loud, hysterical sobs, and her imploring face, knowing her own face didn’t show her sorrow, fear, and rage. She’d never had a child of her body, and with the Gift she never would, but she’d made up for it with all her pretty Moths, and it shattered her heart every time she lost one of them. But this child was special, she’d hidden her, kept her safe, loved her, but now Maxim had claimed her. She would repay the bastard . One day.

… Francine broke the kiss, and I was on my own again in Darius’ head, trying to come to terms with the loss and pain of another memory shown me by the Morrígan.

Then Darius’ own thoughts started chiming in, like a bizarre background track, and I suddenly realised I wasn’t alone but co-habiting. Darius was here with me—or I was with him—and he was very happy about it, delighted, euphoric even, in a strange, fuzzy sort of way. He was happy both of us were here, me and Francine. We looked at Francine, who was now bending over my still body, and panic bubbled up inside me until a knowing, satisfied thought from Darius squashed my fear. She was healing the wound at my throat by licking it.

Francine would love my blood; it tasted so good, so sweet and thick. Hunger tightened our stomach, and something twitched between our legs … we looked down and grinned—

‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ I said out loud as I grabbed for a nearby piece of mattress and stuffed it between our/Darius’ legs, then wished I hadn’t as his pain nearly doubled us over. Darius choked back the lump in our throat, and his thoughts disappeared into a jumble of unintelligible expletives.

Crap! The sooner I got out of him, the better … but I didn’t even know how the hell I’d ended up inside him in the first place, let alone how I was supposed to get back into my own body. My mind kept chasing the thoughts, looking for answers that weren’t there. And there was something else, something important. Worriedly, I looked around the room littered with bits of bed and mattress and tried to think …

Finally it came to me: what had happened to Lucy, the Moth whose ghost I’d seen?

Darius gingerly resurfaced. ‘ Francine took her away. ’ The words formed in my mind, along with his self-guilt and worry. ‘ She said the other Moths would look after her. ’

‘ She ’ s not dead then? ’ I asked hopefully.

‘ No, ’ he said, almost overwhelming me with self-blame, ‘ Francine said she’d be okay. ’

Darius had only attacked the Moths because he’d been lost in bloodlust, and he’d only been lost in bloodlust because Mad Max had stolen my blood. ‘ It wasn ’ t your fault— ’

‘ He didn ’ t steal the blood, Genny. ’ Shame and regret curdled inside us. ‘ I said he could have one bag out of three.’

‘Why?’

His mind fuzzed for a second, then he said, ‘ So he ’ d give me the job; it was to pay the blood-tithe .’ It wasn’t a lie, but there was something else there, something he didn’t want me to know. ‘ I ’ m sorry, I didn ’ t think I ’ d need it, not with all the groupies, and I didn ’ t want to give him my Oath, or anyone else, but I kept getting booked for private parties, and then my head started going funny— ’

Images of his childhood mixed up with more recent ones of the private parties, or more precisely, the ‘anything goes’ orgies, flickered like a movie in my mind, telling me that Mad Max was effectively running a vamp brothel, letting humans into the rooms before the vamps woke up so they could prod and poke and—

Rage and disgust made me want to go and stick another knife in the bastard’s chest.

Darius shook our head emphatically . ‘ It ’ s not like that, Genny. All the vamps love it; you get plenty of blood waking up like that. I did too, sort of, at the beginning. ’

I felt the desperate need in him to be honest with me and got another quick image that I could’ve done without: Darius really enjoying himself at what looked like a ‘Bride of Dracula’ hen party, if the outfits were anything to go by.

‘ But then I started getting confused about where I was, ’ he carried on, ‘ and what was going on—I ’ m sorry, Genny, I ’ m really sorry. ’

More tears dripped down our face as recriminations filled us: his, for not asking for help, and mine for not checking up on him sooner. But now what mattered was getting back into my own body and sorting this whole mess out. I tried to piece together my thoughts … Only now we weren’t speaking, the background track of his thoughts grew louder and more intrusive, and my own thoughts kept getting lost in a fuzzy haze. He was relieved and happy that both Francine and I were here; he really loved both of us, and he really wanted us to like each other. We looked down at where she was bent over my body, and at the way the red leather moulded to her—