The Shifting Price of Prey (58 page)

‘Maxim Fyodor Zakharin,’ I shouted. ‘You are tasked to put my needs above all others, including yourself. I need you to get in this circle now.’

Mad Max’s jaw dropped as his legs moved of their own accord and marched him into the circle. As soon as he was in, I bent and touched my blood to the circle. This time the dome rose up
with a shimmer of reddish-gold. I gave Tavish a suck-on-that smile.

Mad Max shook as if shedding water. ‘It seems it is truly you, Cousin.’ He sketched a bow. ‘As I am apparently at your command.’

Well, that pretty much confirmed my other suspicion. The text Malik had sent telling me I was dumped, and that I should talk to Mad Max if I needed anything, hadn’t come from Malik. But
psycho Bastien. Malik hadn’t dumped me, though he had still cut me out of the loop when he’d ‘sent’ me home from the boating lake island, so we still had stuff to sort out.
But hell, if the psycho prick was using Malik’s phone, it meant the beautiful vamp was in trouble.

I jabbed Mad Max in the chest. ‘What’s the sadistic bastard done with Malik? And don’t try to pretend you don’t know what I mean.’

He heaved a theatrical sigh. ‘Dogs are given commands, not information, cousin dearest.’

‘Dogs also have ears,’ I said.

‘Doesn’t mean they hear anything of interest.’

‘Bastien told me you would lead me to Malik,’ I snapped.

‘Me lead you to the Turk?’ Mad Max shrugged then tapped his head. ‘Sorry, don’t have that order in here, love.’

I glared at him, desperately wanting him to tell me where Malik was, to pound the information out of him. And knowing it would be a waste of my energy. ‘Well, that’s just
crap,’ I muttered, frustrated.

He grinned jovially, then wrinkled his nose and sniffed. ‘Talking about the Turk, he’s not going to be a happy bunny that you stink of sex, satyr and fetid feline, Cousin. Whatever
have you been up to?’

Damn vamp supersenses. ‘Nothing you need to know about,’ I said flatly, trying not to squirm and wishing I’d had time for a longer shower in the zoo’s staff facilities.
At least Mary had a clean T-shirt and jeans ready for me. I poked Mad Max. ‘All you need to do is follow my orders.’

‘Then follow them I shall, love. I’ve always had a yen for woman with power.’ He raised a sardonic brow as he leaned forward and whispered, ‘Oh, what fun we could have,
if not for the Turk and his Royal Brattiness.’

‘And the fact that I’d castrate you quicker than you could say “Poodle Power”,’ I snapped back.

‘Ouch.’ He shuddered dramatically and leaned away.

‘Okay, so now I need the tarot cards.’ I looked at Tavish, who was holding his no doubt numb arm and glowering at my circle. ‘You can see I’m myself, so you ready to give
them to me yet?’

His beads turned murky grey with refusal. ‘Doll, I cannae give you the cards. You cannae trust yourself with Viviane. She’ll lead you astray afore you ken what she’s doing.
She’s a leannán sidhe.’

‘Leannán sidhe!’ Mad Max’s eyes almost popped out of his head as he backed up until he hit my circle.

Viviane was one of the dark muses? Well, that explained her obsession with all things arty. And Mad Max’s panic and Tavish’s alarm. A leannán sidhe’s inspiration comes
at a high cost: possible madness and early death, though usually nothing that could be pinned on the muse herself. Van Gogh, Marilyn Monroe and Alexander McQueen were all suspected victims of the
leannán sidhe. Still, Viviane wasn’t likely to drive a non-human to a quick, iffy demise through an overload of inspiration so she could suck down their creative energies, but if she
got her metaphorical claws in deep enough, she could probably send a vamp crazy. Not that it would make much difference in Mad Max’s case.

Which made me wonder what exactly she’d done to Tavish for him to trap her in a set of tarot cards for near enough quarter of a century. I asked.

His beads turned a cagey purple. ‘Ah, she was an apprentice of sorts.’

Pfft! Apprentice! I was his artist’s model! His inspiration. The Love of his Life!
Viviane’s shouting reverberated round my head.
Until he took up with Turner.
Don’t ever go swimming with him, bean sidhe
, she warned.
He’ll whip your soul out of your body faster than you can scream.

Briefly I closed my eyes. A lover’s tiff. Could my night get any better? ‘Tavish, give me the cards.’

His dreads writhed in refusal.

But Hugh had obviously decided I was truly me too, as he reached down, hooked a large hand under Tavish’s arm and pulled him onto his feet. ‘Think it’s best if you give Genny
the cards,
àrd-cheann
,’ he rumbled warningly. ‘Otherwise I will have to arrest you for obstruction.’

A frustrated ‘on your own head be it’ look settled on Tavish’s face. He flicked his fingers and the tarot cards appeared in his palm and he said sullenly, ‘I make a gift
of the tarot cards containing the leannán sidhe spirit, Viviane, to you, Genevieve.’

The cards streamed from his hand to hover in a neat upright stack in front of my face. The top card showed Viviane sitting by her canalbank in her lavender dress and bonnet, twirling her
parasol. She was smirking.

‘I am in your debt, bean sidhe.’ She dipped her head, then, without turning, flipped her middle finger in Tavish’s direction. ‘Two hundred and forty-one years he has kept
me enslaved to those cards. And he did not even allow me to do regular readings. Te-di-ous!’

Tavish flinched. Mad Max gave an appreciative, albeit nervous barking laugh.

‘Save your crowing, Viv,’ I said, and stuffed the cards into my jeans pocket, ignoring her muffled protests. ‘Right, Maxim, time to do your stuff.’

‘T
ime for the blood-letting, Cousin,’ Mad Max said, after he’d explained the mechanics of the spell.

One of which involved him sinking his fangs into me, the prospect of which had him grinning at me like a dog who’d found a stash of meaty bones. I shoved my sleeve up, stiff-armed him
back, but left my hand on his chest. That was as close as he was getting.

He grinned wider, took my hand and executed an exaggerated bow as if to bestow a kiss, his platinum ponytail falling over his left shoulder as he did. He raised suggestive blue eyes to mine.
‘You know, Cousin, necks are much more fun than wrists?’

‘Get on with it,’ I said, ‘otherwise I’ll be ringing that vet when this is over.’ I scissored my fingers together under his nose. ‘I hear he does a good deal
on doggy snips.’

‘You’re all bitch, love,’ he drawled, then closed his eyes. The hair on my nape rose like hackles as he drew his magic up. A faint silvery-red glow surrounded him like a thin
aura. My own magic answered, turning my skin gold, and a distant part of me noted, thankfully, that I wasn’t feeling even the tiniest bit lustful towards Mad Max. Whatever consequences my
lost night with Finn in the cave might have, at least the unwanted and embarrassing effects of shacking up with the leaking Fertility pendant were gone.

Mad Max muttered a string of unintelligible-to-me words under his breath, in a language with the same cadence as Gaelic, and I had my usual moment’s envy that a vamp, even one that started
out as a wizard, obviously knew and could do more magic than me. I shoved the feeling aside, then braced myself as his grip on my wrist tightened, his lips peeled back from his fangs, and he
struck.

Pain, sharp and hot, sliced through me, then was gone. Silver light wound with sapphire blue reeled out from Mad Max like a spool of film unravelling, then vanished, plunging us into darkness.
Faint noise, like the distant roll of drums, grew closer and louder and more insistent, and gradually the darkness lightened like dawn colouring the sky—

And then we were in the circle again, Mad Max bowing over my wrist, looking up at me with a lascivious leer, everyone gathered about us, waiting for him to start the spell. The words ‘Get
on with it’ came out of my mouth . . .

The air rippled and rolled through the zoo corridor, turning the images around me into watercolours, stretching and streaking and running them together so they flowed counter-clockwise around
me, only to disappear downwards as if there were a drain at my feet.

The images streamed faster and faster until I stood in a whirlpool of silvery blue.

The drumming reached a crescendo.

It cut out.

The last of the whirlpool drained away, leaving me bathed in morning light, as the kidnap scene took shape. It was slightly out of focus, as if I were looking through a greasy lens.

Two dark-skinned males – the bodyguards – in their green and gold embroidered kurtas and mirrored aviators stood in the centre of the corridor watching a small black-haired boy who
had climbed into one of the U-shaped windows and had his nose pressed against the glass: Dakkhin Jangali, the kidnapped child. On the other side of the window, the zoo’s two tigers were
rubbing the sides of their faces against the glass as if they could touch him. Behind the boy stood a tall, lithely muscled woman in an orange sari, an indulgent smile on her face: Mrs Bandevi
Jangali, the boy’s mother and wife to the ambassador. Next to her was a stylish twenty-something male wearing a dark business suit: the zoo’s publicity director, Jonathan Weir. He had
his phone out, snapping shots of the boy and the tigers.

Look around, love,
Mad Max whispered.
Find the beacon. And remember, keep schtum, you can’t interact with the spell until I give the word.
I
looked
. But other
than the usual patches of wild untamed magic there was nothing to see.

‘There’s nothing—’

A high
krick krick
noise filled the corridor and the eagle – the changeling – swooped in. It opened its beak and vomited a ribbon of green magic, as it had in Trafalgar
Square. The ribbon twisted, morphing into a verdant green serpent that hung suspended in the air.

The beacon!

The eagle dived to land a few feet in front of the group. As the bird’s feet touched the ground it shimmered into a pale-skinned woman, her dark hair piled atop her head, dressed in a
floor-length Roman tunic. Her pupils were hard black ovals, her irises the same blood-red as molten sulphur, similar in all but colour to any other sidhe changeling’s eyes, or mine.

Shock winged through me – not at her eyes, I’d expected them – but that I recognised her, not even needing the black ink marking her bare arms or the tiny black crescent
kissing the corner of her lush mouth to confirm her identity.

The changeling was the Empress from the tarot cards, and Bastien’s mother from Malik’s dream/memory of the harem—
Malik’s wife?

Only she couldn’t be. Changelings only lived a mortal lifespan once they left the Fair Lands. The only way a mortal could live longer was through dealing with demons . . .
or being
blood-bonded to a vamp
. Then they lived and died on the vamp’s ticket. The Empress was blood-bonded to the Emperor. Hard on that shock was what the hell would Malik think that his wife
was blood-bound to another vamp, and the Emperor at that; the vamp who’d sicced the revenant curse on him. Except Malik knew the Emperor, so he had to know who and what the Empress was,
didn’t he? Unless he’d thought her dead all this time? No way could I imagine Malik knowing his wife was alive and not going after her. Whether he loved her or not . . .

Not that it mattered who Malik loved.

What mattered was rescuing the victims she’d kidnapped.

The Empress smiled pleasantly at the group, all of whom stared back as if stunned, then she lifted her arms outwards as if she were entreating the heavens. The black ink marking her skin
slithered into hard-edged glyphs that shot like Cupid’s arrows into the walls, throwing a Veil over the corridor. More glyphs shot out and struck the suspended snake. As they hit, the space
behind her split open like the wide yawning maw of a swamp-dragon. The portal. Beyond the portal was a shadowed stone tunnel lit by flickering fire torches.

Seven dark shapes loped along the tunnel and leaped through the portal into the zoo corridor— wolves. As they hit the ground the first three wolves morphed into the three black-haired,
olive-skinned centurions who’d taken Finn. In the seconds it took for them to shift, the other four wolves had circled the two bodyguards, each snagged the tail of the wolf in front and were
now racing round them like they were playing the wolf equivalent of ring-a-ring o’ roses. It had to be how they’d stopped the bodyguards from protecting or even knowing what happened to
their charges; but whatever magic it was, I couldn’t
see
it.

Nets appeared in the hands of the three centurions as they quickly spread out and advanced on Mrs Jangali. She called something that sounded like an order to her son, who crouched down on the
windowsill. Then she snarled and crumpled to the ground, her sari disappearing as she shifted into an orange and black tiger indistinguishable from the zoo’s tigers behind the glass. She
lunged at the nearest centurion. He dodged out of her way, leaping and rolling in an acrobatic-type move, but not before her claws raked across his chest sending an arc of blood droplets through
the air to stain the bodyguard’s green kurta. As the tiger landed and whirled, tail whipping out, the other two centurions flung out their nets and trapped her. Stun magic sparked green, and
she dropped like she’d been shot. The two centurions efficiently scooped up the netted tiger as if she were nothing more than a skinned rug, and raced away with her into the portal.