Suzanne McLeod - The Cold Kiss of Death

‘Bullshit.’

‘I killed you. As I did tonight. Your heart was still, your blood had settled in your body, your lungs no longer drew breath and your skin was cold and lifeless to the touch. If you had not been sidhe, I doubt you would have revived.’

I stared at him, my mind reaching for something I couldn’t quite grasp—

‘I don’t understand.’

His frown deepened. ‘Would you have preferred me to have given you back to the Autarch alive?’

No! my fourteen-year-old voice screamed in my mind.

He touched a hand to my forehead. ‘Sleep now.

Iawakened for the third time to the quiet burble of water, the scent of clean air, and silk sheets caressing my skin. I huddled tense and wary, listening, but a feeling of calm enveloped me, finally convincing me that I was on my own, and safe—even if I wasn’t entirely sure where I was.

I squinted out from under my lashes. Everything in the room was round: the bed on which I was lying, and the dais beneath it; the skylight in the domed ceiling that framed the stars piercing the night sky; the porthole windows, behind which darted shoals of tiny fish in neon-bright blues and oranges and yellows. Even the pillows on the bed, the huge vault-style door, and the dive hole set in the thick green-glass floor leading down into the water were round. If I didn’t know better I’d have guessed I was on some sort of movie set instead of Tavish’s bedroom.

The calm feelings persisted, dampening down my surprise at being here, and a vague notion made me look. A barely discernible net of cool green magic covered the walls and ceiling, shifting softly as if pulled by a peaceful sea. I wondered if it was some sort of Containment spell, but when I reached down to where it gathered by the bed it rippled away, then reformed as I removed my hand. Some sort of Wellbeing or Tranquillity spell, or even a Healing spell, maybe?

Just what I needed after being skewered with a five-foot-long bronze sword.

Still, the sword-in-the-chest incident might have been an abrupt ending to our dramatic fealty performance, but one thing was clear: even in the haze of imp-engendered bloodlust I—or rather, Rosa—had given Malik my oath. And that effectively shut the door on any vamp in London—or anywhere else—contacting me. Relief overwhelmed me. No more invitations, no more worrying about paranoid witches demanding I be evicted, no more visits from poor stoked-up Moth-girls. Now they’d have to go through Malik—although hopefully not as literally as Elizabetta had tried to do—and all I needed to worry about now was the pretty vampire himself.

I shivered; did that mean my life was better or worse?

The thought brought on the unwanted image of my torn wedding dress; nausea roiled in my stomach and I jerked up, clamping my hands against my mouth to keep from vomiting. The past was gone. It had been a nightmare, nothing more; my mind had equated one trauma involving a sword with another and coupled it with Elizabetta’s talk about the Autarch. That’s all it was, nothing more. Malik wasn’t Bastien, the monster, and I wasn’t marrying him—I wasn’t doing anything with him. And Malik had had more than one opportunity to do me harm, and he hadn’t taken it ...

A huff of almost hysterical laughter escaped me: that was if I discounted the recent sword-in-the-chest episode, of course. I took a deep breath and let the green magic calm me as I rubbed the cold spot just below my heart where the sword had entered. Nervous, I pulled the sheet down to check my body. It looked normal—and uninjured. I ran my fingers under the base of my sternum, pressing and prodding: nope, definitely no sword holes, not even a pink patch of new skin or a leftover yellowing bruise. I looked as good as new. But then, Malik held the true Gift, and he’d healed me before.

He’d also killed me before.

Betrayal sliced through me with as much pain as the sword had. I hugged my knees tight and dropped my head onto them, tears pricking my eyes, aching in my throat. The voice had told me to run that night. I swallowed the tears back. I was not going to cry. But you don’t run from vampires. I’d trusted the voice in my head, trusted Malik’s voice, trusted it meant escape ...

But Malik had hunted me down like an animal.

Malik had sunk his fangs in me.

Malik had infected me with 3V.

Not the Autarch, as I’d always believed.

Rage filled me like a tidal wave, surging up and out of me in one long, furious scream. Why the fuck had he? Why hadn’t he just killed me, instead of condemning me to an eternity of needing him, or some other vamp? I punched the bed, ripped at it with my hands, grabbed the pillows and threw them, one after the other until they were all gone, wanting to smash something, wanting to break something, wanting all of it to never have happened. I screamed again; screamed until the tears spilled hot and scalding, and until I slept again, limp and exhausted and numb with grief.

I lay quiet amongst the shredded sheets and stared up at the fading stars in the pre-dawn sky.

You don’t run, you don’t struggle ; it gets a vamp too excited.

Maybe Malik hadn’t meant to infect me; maybe he’d just lost control ...

He had saved me from the Autarch.

Like some beautiful but deadly guardian angel.

Gratitude washed over me, muting my anger and soothing my grief, and bringing a curl of need to the confusion swirling inside me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to offer him my throat, my body or even my heart ...

Or if I never wanted to see the beautiful vampire again.

Then as if my thoughts had conjured it, Malik’s not-quite-English voice came faintly through the open doorway: ‘—only way to destroy the imps before one or more could hatch was to kill their host, kelpie.’

Slowly, I sat up and hugged my knees, and listened for an answer. But none came. The silence stretched, thinning out until the soft slap of the water and the background hum of the magic disappeared and there was nothing but the waiting thud of my pulse. And I finally admitted to myself that ‘not seeing him again’ wasn’t what I wanted. But as for the rest, right now the only thing I was offering him was ...

‘Thank you,’ I murmured, knowing he would hear me.

‘Although, next time you decide to kill me,’ I added, a touch more caustically, ‘perhaps you could try a less violent option.’

‘ I do not intend there to be a next time, Genevieve. ’ His words slipped with sorrow and regret into my mind.

I lay back and returned to contemplating the fading stars above me. The net of calming green magic crept up and when I didn’t rebuff it, gently tucked itself around me like a soft, warm blanket.

‘Aye, but killing the host body ’twas a chancy thing tae do, vampire.’ Tavish’s burr sounded disapproving. ‘Especially as Genevieve’s soul took its own sweet time coming back.’

I sighed; at least I’d survived. But had Rosa’s body? She was a vamp, so it was likely, but ... I sent a prayer to whatever god was listening that it/she had, and reminded myself that she was on my problems-to-deal-with list. Still, Malik’s drastic sword-option had solved the Rosa’s body being consumed by imps part of the whole ‘Rosa’ problem.

‘Even if the body Genevieve occupied had survived the imps’ physical onslaught,’ Malik said, tension in his voice, ‘it was always possible her mind would have been destroyed. Genevieve was already influenced by Rosa’s persona, and Rosa’s mind was unstable long before the sorcerer’s manipulations.’