Suzanne McLeod - The Cold Kiss of Death

‘ Genny ,’ came the whisper again, closer this time, and a small, cold hand crept into mine and tugged. I looked down into the big dark eyes of Cosette, the ghost, and felt a shiver of fright crawl up my spine. ‘ You need to come with me, Genny, ’ she whispered.

Did I? She’d helped me twice before, and sitting here wasn’t getting me anywhere, was it? I slid off the stone slab and followed her—stepping over a line of red sand that marked the edge of a circle—towards a dark corner.

‘Do you know how many strings I’ve had to pull to sort that murder charge out?’ Hannah carried on. ‘And how many promises I’ve had to make? If you hadn’t made such an almighty mess of things, we’d have had this spell done days ago, instead of having to rush things at the last minute.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ came Janet’s sulky reply. ‘It all just got a bit out of hand.’

We reached the corner and stopped. It was just a corner. I was a little taken aback that it wasn’t some sort of help, or an escape route. I frowned down at Cosette. ‘What happens now?’

‘Now we watch,’ she said, amusement lighting her eyes. ‘Oh, and Genny, think some clothes on, please.’

Huh? I looked down and as I did, my missing jeans and T-shirt materialised around me.

Cosette patted my hand. ‘That’s a good girl.’ She didn’t sound like an eight-year-old, even one born a hundred years ago.

‘Start using your brain instead of worrying about who to let into your knickers,’ Hannah snapped at Janet. ‘If it wasn’t for the fact that you’re my little sister, I’d have offered your soul up to the demon long ago. And stop eating those bloody sweets; you don’t need them now. Granny’s magic is powerful enough without you adding sugar to it. You need to lose some of that fat you’re carrying round with you. Do that and you could have your pick of boyfriends instead of having to moon about after those ugly trolls all the time.’

‘Trolls are not ugly,’ Janet huffed.

Ugly! Pieces of the jigsaw started slotting together in my head.

‘You’re the Ancient One, aren’t you?’ I said to Cosette, looking down at her. ‘So what happened to the old crone look?’

‘You have a phobia about ghosts, Genny.’ Cosette gave me a knowing smile; it sat oddly on her little girl’s face. ‘I thought this would be a more acceptable manifestation with which to approach you.’

I shuddered. She was right; the chest wounds had been bad enough—if I’d met her ghost with its yellowed skull and maggot-filled eyes ...

‘I will explain,’ she continued, ‘but first we must watch the proceedings.’

‘Well, each to their own,’ Hannah was saying, drawing my attention back to the squabbling women, ‘but I’ll tell you what, after we’ve finished you can have a look at Darius, my pet vamp. I’m not going to need him any more after tonight, so you might as well have him.’

‘I don’t want your cast-offs,’ Janet pouted.

‘Sure you do,’ Hannah said firmly. ‘Darius is almost as big as a troll anyway, so he’ll be right up your street.’ She arched a perfectly drawn brow at Joseph. ‘Now, Doctor, are we done yet?’

‘She’s dead,’ Joseph said quietly, turning away to fiddle with a medical trolley next to his machines.

‘Right, now stay out the way, but don’t leave the circle, and remember what I told you. Make sure you do it, otherwise come midnight yours will be one of the souls going to the demon.’

Joseph crossed himself, his face pale.

It looked like he might be a goodie, which begged the question how in hell had Hannah got her claws in him?

Hannah loosened her robe and let it fall to the ground, leaving her wearing nothing but a gold locket on a chain around her neck. She stepped up to the altar and used a small step-stool to climb up and onto me, swinging a leg over until she was straddling my thighs. She stared down for a minute then cupped her own full breasts and sighed. ‘I’m going to miss my curves’—she gave my own smaller breasts a prod—‘but thank goodness for silicone.’

Shock slammed into me as I realised she wasn’t just going to be borrowing my body. She was taking it over.

Permanently.

Hannah lifted her arms and removed the gold locket, opened it and placed it on my stomach, where it sat like a frozen butterfly. She waved at Janet, who hurried over, holding out a black embroidered cushion like a tray. ‘Your athame, Mistress.’

‘It’s not an athame, Janet,’ Hannah rebuked her. ‘It’s a very special knife, forged by the northern dwarves from cold iron and silver.’ She picked it up and ran a finger carefully along the thin blade. ‘It was tempered in dragon’s breath. The handle is carved from a unicorn’s horn, and this’—she smiled as she stroked the oval of clear amber set in its handle—‘this is a dragon’s tear.’

‘A Bonder of Souls,’ whispered Cosette in awe. ‘Wherever did she discover that?’

I narrowed my eyes. The last time I’d seen the knife, other than my dreams, I’d been four years old. ‘She stole it,’ I said flatly. ‘From Malik al-Khan.’

‘Ah, of course—that is how he tied your soul to his when you were a child. I was curious about how he’d done so.’

I eyed her with suspicion. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘Any knowledge is available if you’re prepared to pay the price,’ she murmured, her gaze fixed on Hannah.

Ri-ght, the demon information service. Figured!

Hannah held up the knife and started chanting in the same guttural language I’d heard her use before. Then she leaned forward and carved three interconnecting crescent moons in the centre of my chest.

I recognised them at once: Cosette had the same marks on her own small chest—only now I was beginning to suspect she might have put them there herself, and not, as I’d always thought, had them inflicted on her.

I watched, tense and powerless, as blood, glinting like wet rubies in the flickering candlelight, seeped into the marks carved on my chest. Hannah offered the knife to my blood and it rushed up the silver blade, turning it crimson. Then she held the knife over the locket and I watched as the blood drained down and pooled inside its open wings.

‘Your soul to gold, Genevieve,’ she chanted, kissing the knife and leaving a smear of blood on her lips, ‘my soul to your flesh,’ as she bent and touched her bloody lips to my mouth, ‘your flesh and my soul to join.’ Then she gripped the knife in both hands, held it out in front of her and reversed the blade. She took a deep breath and plunged it into her body, under her ribs and up into her heart.

Screaming, she threw her head back as if in ecstasy, hands still clutching the knife as blood dripped down between her fingers, then, after a moment, she wrenched the knife from her chest and let it drop as she half-fell, half-lowered herself onto me to press her mouth to mine, her body twitching in its death throes.

Joseph turned away, his face pale.

Janet stared avidly, her mouth parted, her bag of sweets clutched in her fist, forgotten.

Beside me, Cosette watched just as avidly. ‘She always was a good student, that one,’ she said, her dark eyes lit with something almost like pride.

Anger flooded into me, washing away the shock and panic. I bent down to look her in the eyes. ‘Right, now that your erstwhile pupil is happily stealing my body, want to tell me what I’m supposed to do to stop her?’

‘You can’t stop her, Genny,’ Cosette said, holding up a hand to silence me, ‘but you might be able to reclaim your body.’

‘How?’ I demanded.

‘You’ll need to expel her soul and rebond your own into your body.’