Suzanne McLeod - The Sweet Scent of Blood

I had to banish the fog. I had to find the stems.

Gold light flared, formed trembling tendrils that curled into the greyness. One green shoot crept its way up through the fog.

‘I told you, she’s too strong. Even half out of it, she’s trying to use her Glamour. It has to be the heart. Lift up her top.’

‘No, I won’t.’ But it was more a plea than a determined denial.

‘Finn, there’s no way you can gainsay me, not with the spells I’ve tagged you with, so stop fighting and just get on with it.’

Pink and purple streamers slithered through the grey, twisting over and along the fragile green stem. The stem shivered and struggled and writhed in pain, trying to be free. But the streamers wrapped around and around, until there was nothing but a thrashing nest of brightly coloured snakes.

Feverish fingers traced over my skin.

‘That’s it, do it there. I’ll hold her down.’ Weight pressed against my ribs. ‘Sorry, Honeybee, but this is going to hurt like the Nine Circles of Hell.’

The sting was a tiny, distant pain. She’d been wrong. Somewhere I laughed.

The fog bloomed with golden flowers.

Then cold iron filled my chest.

And the flowers withered.

My inner vamp sense told me sunset had long gone and night was here. My eyeballs felt like they’d been rubbed with sandpaper and my lids stuck together with Super Glue. Fear made my pulse jump in my throat. It jagged with pain. I lay frozen and listened.

I could hear a faint noise: shallow, fast breaths.

My heart pounded as my eyes snapped open. I stared, fearful, at the fuzzy greyness. Mouth dry, I blinked and the greyness resolved itself into a carved rock ceiling. Wincing, I slowly turned my head towards the light. There was a door about five feet away, steel, like the ones at the Bloody Shamrock. I sniffed, and caught a whiff of earthy dampness. I was in a cave, somewhere underground.

Why couldn’t I remember what had happened?

I tried to sieve the confusion from my mind.

Venom fizzed through my veins, but its usual lust-hyped high was muted; my body felt like one big bruise. And I could smell blood. Had I been caught feeding? Was that why I felt like I’d been in a slugfest with a horde of Beater goblins? My stomach clenched in hunger and I ran my tongue over my fangs in anticipation—only I didn’t have fangs, just teeth. Confusion slipped back into fear. Had I become so melded with the Alter Vamp spell that I no longer knew which body I wore? The blood snagged at my senses again. It smelled of sour blackberries.

And memory rushed back like a charging troll, smashing my fears into insignificant pieces.

Finn was somewhere nearby.

Toni the bitch witch had tagged Finn with the spell, and tied it with some sort of compulsion magic—no way would he poison me with cold iron. I visualised Toni’s face, compared it with the photo Psycho Louis had shown me. Now I knew what I was looking for I could see the similarities. Toni might have lost a lot of weight, but her eyebrows and nose were still the same.

‘Gen?’ Finn’s voice was quiet, hardly more than a whisper.

I slowly turned towards his voice. The cave room went back almost thirty feet, the ceiling sloping down to meet the floor at the end. In the gloom I could make out a body. Finn.

‘Gen?’ The anxious whisper came again.

I tried to say his name, but all I managed was a croak. I touched my sore throat. There was a swollen lump the size of a golf ball. Shit. Whichever sucker Toni had palled up with, they’d sunk their fangs into me.

I checked out my arms. I had three other bite marks: one on my right wrist and the others at the pulse points inside my elbows. I wrinkled my nose at the map of blue veins wriggling under my skin. The suckers had almost bled me dry.

No wonder I felt so depleted.

At least I still had my clothes on. I’d only been venomfucked, nothing else.

‘Are you okay?’ Finn’s voice was louder.

‘Yeah,’ I whispered. ‘Give me a sec.’

I rolled onto my front, got my hands flat underneath me.

‘Gen, I want you to come here to me.’

The words hit me like a hard promise, raised shivers over my skin. I got up onto my elbows and rested my head on my forearms for a moment, then dragged my legs up until I was on my knees. Panting, I peered down towards Finn. I caught the emerald gleam of his eyes.

‘C’mon, Gen. I’m waiting.’

Lust twisted sharp thorns in my belly, venom fizzed in my veins and both drew a painful gasp from my mouth. I started crawling, my hands and denim-clad knees scraping the stone, muscles protesting with aching soreness.

‘My Lady, I need you.’

‘I hear you,’ I whispered. The soreness in my body dissipated, pushed aside by a more urgent craving. I crawled faster.

‘Genny,’ he crooned.

I stopped, shaking, my skin flushing with heat. The throb between my legs and at my throat was hard, insistent, almost too painful to bear. My head buzzed and the cave swam and swayed into greyness.

‘Gen—’

‘Dammit, Finn,’ I croaked past another wave of lust, ‘keep your Glamour to yourself. My body can’t deal with it. I’ve lost too much blood.’

Silence. Then, ‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was soothing. ‘I thought it would help.’

The desperate need inside me blunted and the aching my body had ignored returned with a gleeful vengeance. Crap. I gritted my teeth and started crawling again: slow but steady, that was the way.

Hand ... knee ... swallow ... pant.

‘I don’t know when she gave me the spell.’ Finn’s voice washed with anger. ‘You know, the spell you came to tell me about? It sucks the magic out of you.’

Hand ... knee ...

‘Psychic vampirism, the bitch called it. She’s worked it so a sucker can bind a fae’s power and use it as their own.’ Fear flowed beneath the anger. ‘You don’t even have to know about it. No need for negotiations and bargains, just a cocktail of blood and spell and that’s you.’

Swallow ... pant ...

Damn. It all fitted with what Mick had told me—and I’d a good idea that Toni had tagged me with the spell too, but for some reason it hadn’t worked so well on me.

I reached Finn, my lungs gasping for air

‘You need to get out, Gen,’ he said quietly, staring at the ceiling.

Of course, the ‘getting out’ involved steel doors and solid rock, and I doubted I could blast through them with magic, even if I knew how.

‘There’s some sort of fight going on,’ he added. ‘The sucker’s siphoning off my power to win.’

I tried to catch my breath as I peered through the half-darkness at him. They’d stripped him naked and staked him out, stretching his limbs to the four points. The Glamour he’d been wearing to appear more human had gone, dispersed by the gem-studded silver shackles on his wrists and ankles, or maybe he just hadn’t the energy left to hold it. His body was broader, muscles heavier, his skin more darkly tanned than before. Sleek sable hair covered his stomach and his flanks, then smoothed like silk down his legs until it feathered over his hard cloven hooves.

Lifting my head, I crawled closer. His horns were small stubs almost hidden in his matted hair and he was covered in blood—his blood. I briefly closed my eyes as the scent of blackberries made my stomach twist with need. Hanging my head, I willed the hunger away. Deep wounds scored down Finn’s chest and stomach, and bite marks punctured his skin. The familiar-looking injuries told me which sucker Toni had palled up with, which sucker was using him: Rio.

He turned to look at me. His face was pinched, almost feral, the bones sharp under his skin. But it was his eyes I stared at. They were dull, grey, desolate with the spell.