The Shifting Price of Prey

Chapter Thirty-Four

Covent Garden to London Zoo is fifteen minutes by road. On a traffic-free day. But I’ve never known London to have a traffic-free day, so we were in for a long, slow drive which I wasn’t looking forward to. Especially after it clicked with my hangover-fuddled brain exactly how we were getting there. Parked beneath the leafy canopy of the large elm guarding my building’s main door was a Magic and Murder Squad police van. Built to accommodate trolls (obviously, since Taegrin was driving), they lack a certain human-sized comfort.

Once we were safely buckled up (with me riding shotgun so I didn’t look like a suspect, but thanks to the adult booster seat and my dangling legs, looking like a seven-year-old instead), it took Taegrin all of a minute to tell me what the score was. The Bangladeshi ambassador had agreed (presumably after his midnight meeting with the Prime Minster) to hand over his bodyguard’s bloodstained kurta, so it could be used to scry for leads in the hope it would pinpoint the kidnap victims’ location. Hugh wanted me at the scrying, though as scrying was on the list of things I couldn’t do, when I asked why, Taegrin didn’t know.

After that he was quick enough to realise I wasn’t up to sparkling conversation; the two-part Hot.D (short for Hair of the Dog) potion I’d rushed out and bought from the Witches’ Market was probably a big clue.

I knocked back the first part, my mouth going dry at the chalky taste, and slumped on my booster seat waiting for the spell to take effect. Hot.D spells are meant to postpone any hangover for twelve hours, but as the witch I’d bought it from said, ‘You ain’t human, dearie, so I ain’t guaranteeing nuthin’.’

Taegrin chatted quietly as the van trundled along about his weekend with Mr Travers. The pair had spent Sunday walking the Troll Trail on the Thames – a sort of troll spiritual pilgrimage that involved crossing all the bridges, and included the occasional stop at participating ‘watering holes’ to sluice their blowholes. They’d set out at dawn from the Queen Elizabeth II Suspension Bridge at Dartford (the last bridge before the sea), headed upriver and, even with the required ‘watering hole’ stops, had reached Battersea Bridge by sunset.

‘That’s seventeen out of the hundred and one bridges, Genny,’ Taegrin said proudly. ‘Not bad going for a day’s trekking. Now we’re planning on how we’re going to tackle the rest. We thought . . .’

The initial stupor phase of the Hot.D hit, and I listened with half an ear, watching the sun glint off the gold specks in Taegrin’s polished black skin, happy for them both and, since I’d sort of introduced them last Hallowe’en, basking in a vague mother-hen-like delight that they’d found each other through me.

My pulse sped as the Hot.D kicked in with a caffeine shot.

I checked my phone.

Three missed calls from Hugh when he’d tried to contact me.

And a message from Malik.

My thumb hovered . . .

At some point before the vodka had induced its dreamless sleep, I’d sent him a text:

We need to talk. You know I need to see the Emperor about the fae’s fertility. Ignore Tavish and don’t cut me out of the loop. Whatever’s going on, I can help.

And here was his answer. I swallowed, heart thudding erratically against my ribs. Only the caffeine. Pressed the button:

Genevieve. I fear it is unwise for there to be any more direct communication between us. Should you require any assistance, in any matter, know that Maxim is tasked to put your needs above all others, including himself. Your servant, Malik.

I frowned. Why the hell was he telling me to talk to Mad Max?

I reread the message, disbelief closing my throat.

The words didn’t change.

He’d dumped me. By text. After what happened at the lake. Fury ripped through me. Okay, so I got that he’d ‘lost control’. That he was worried about his curse. And that he’d discovered he could use my magic. I got that it all scared him. And I got he probably thought he was protecting me. But even if Malik did think that fucking ‘direct communication was unwise’, he could at least call me and tell me in person. Not send a fucking text.

And if the bastard vamp thought that was the end of it, well, he really didn’t have a clue. I’d had enough of males doing what they thought was right. Or just doing whatever they wanted. Or not giving me answers. It pissed me off. Not to mention this wasn’t only about him, or me, but about the fae’s trapped fertility. I resent my text, adding:

Stop fucking around, Malik. V important we talk. Meet me at midnight at Tir na n’Og, tonight, or I tell DI Munro to open the letter.

I pressed send. Now he had to have ‘direct communication’ with me, or I’d shop him to the cops and witches.

The van braked to a stop and Taegrin’s bass rumble in my ear took on meaning. ‘. . . so we think we should reach the Thames head by the August New Moon.’ He turned to grin proudly at me.

‘That’s great,’ I said, forcing my mouth into a smile as I mentally shoved Malik and his fury-inducing texts somewhere where the sun shone hot, and knocked back part two of the Hot.D potion, almost gagging on the bitter aftertaste. Calm, clarity and a sense of purpose spread through me, smoothing out my emotions. Good thing too, as I had a job to do.

Taegrin pointed at the glovebox. ‘There’s consultant ID badges in there, Genny. Best if you wear one.’

I snagged a badge, followed him through the zoo, and to the tiger exhibit.

We entered the same shaded corridor as before with its U-shaped windows looking out on to the tiger enclosure. I skirted past a yellow ‘Warning: Wet Floor’ sign, leaving footprints on the recently mopped floor and nearly gagging on the reek of chemical pine-scented cleaner. About halfway along the corridor, Hugh, Mary and a coven’s worth of WPCs were gathered around a salt and sand circle with something green lying in its centre. As I neared I realised it was a folded piece of clothing; the blood-splattered kurta belonging to the kidnapped woman’s bodyguard.

Hugh turned, his pink granite teeth gleaming as he smiled a concerned welcome, then I jerked to a halt as the pine smell was gone, replaced by another, more familiar scent.

Blood. Its metallic odour was flooded with adrenalin, its very freshness telling me it was recently spilled. Without conscious thought, I inhaled deeply. Underneath the coppery aroma slid another. Meaty and rich with the smell of wet fur. I’d smelled it before, here, yesterday. Only now that recognition was deeper, more visceral than a day-old scent warranted, as if it was one I’d known long ago—

Static flashed in my mind.

The zoo corridor disappeared.

I stood at the centre of a wide, moon-bright plateau. It stretched out to both sides of me, one edge hugging the steep mountain face, the other falling into the clouds boiling below. The ground was covered by an ankle-deep blanket of snow, unmarked as far as I could see. For a moment all was still, silent, a breath out of time . . .

I was back in Malik’s dream/memory. The one I gatecrashed the first time I used the Morpheus Memory Aid.

A distant wolf howl split the air, icy snowflakes stung my cheeks and a chill wind whipped my hair over my eyes. I pushed it back, and the snow-covered plateau was no longer white and pristine. Instead, pools of fresh blood stained the white expanse around me like a scattering of crimson rose petals.

The blood-scent intensified, laced now with arousal and the sweetness of ripe figs.

Rage curdled in my stomach.

Genny?

The voice was a distant rumble, like thunder in a far-off storm. Hugh.

Static flashed again.

I looked down.

A man sprawled naked in the snow at my feet. Black curls matted his scalp. Green eyes, vivid against the dark olive of his skin, gazed up empty above a long aquiline nose and thin, sculptured lips. Splinters of bone gleamed sharp and white in the red ruin of his throat. Thick black hair furred the hard muscles of his chest. Below his ribs, a long wound gaped wide, the flesh ripped open by something sharp and clawed, the ragged end of his aorta dangling into the internal cavity; evidence that his heart had been ripped out. A tangle of intestines wriggled over the lower edge of the wound, glistening slick and wet as they spilled from his abdomen on to the snow.

A distant analytical part of my mind catalogued the dead male’s injuries, and concluded they were recent. So recent, so immediate, in fact, that his body hadn’t caught up with the reality of his demise. Since, from the thatch of black hair between his wide-spread legs, his sex still jutted, still erect, and still smeared with the girl’s blood.

A growl jerked my gaze to my right.

To a ten-foot circle cleared of snow. Ash marked out the circle. Glyphs glowed with magic around its circumference. Inside the circle was the girl. She was on her hands and knees, head thrown back, long dark curls streaming over her shoulders, her prepubescent body naked except for a wide leather collar around her neck. A thick chain stretched from the collar to a spike driven into the rocky ground at the circle’s heart.

Genevieve!

Malik’s voice calling my name was drowned out as the growl came again.

From the girl.

She lowered her head and glared at me with eerie yellow-green eyes.

Shock sliced through me as I recognised her, despite her being a few years younger than when I’d seen her last night.

She was the girl at the mosque. The one in the fur jacket.

The werewolf.

The girl snarled, lips drawing back over longer-than-human canines.

Genevieve!

My name was a sharply ordered imperative.

Static again.

Figures appeared in the distance, grey shadows loping over the snow, racing towards me. Hot flesh seared my palm. I squeezed my hand and warm wetness trickled from between my fingers to complete the pattern in the snow as the muscle I held pulsed one last time.

‘Dead.’ The girl’s whisper was a taunt on the wind. ‘My mate dead. You’ve killed him. Taken his heart.’

You must leave, Genevieve. Now!

‘They are coming,’ she screamed.

Static.

‘Coming for you.’

My eyes snapped open and I found myself lying on the ground, staring up into a huge furry face. It looked down at me with unnerving yellow eyes, swiped a pink tongue out to lick its muzzle and yawned wide enough to showcase a stomach-churning set of canines. My, what big teeth you have, oh Furry One! Panic knotted my throat— until I breathed in the scent of pine cleaner, and my mind caught up with the fact I was back at the tiger exhibit at the zoo; and there was a reassuringly thick pane of glass separating me from the pointy-toothed tiger eyeballing me like I was his next meal.

My pulse slowed and I realised I wasn’t lying on the ground but on a thin foam mattress covered by a silver-foil survival blanket. The only person about was Mary, chattering quietly away on her radio. I shut her and the tiger with its pointy teeth out and tried to sort through what just happened.

The damn Morpheus Memory Aid spell, combined with Malik’s blood I’d drunk, had to be backfiring again, this time not even waiting for me to sleep; instead the spell was just throwing me straight into a memory/flashback.

Malik’s memory/flashback.

And a disturbing one at that.

Not that I’d expected any of Malik’s memories of the Emperor and his werewolves to be good, not after Malik had gone hunting him and ended up sicced with the revenant curse by the evil imperial vamp.

Who had to be a truly foul piece of imperial shit indeed if he chained up prepubescent girls and forced them to become werewolves. Because I was betting that was the ritual Malik’s memory had shown me. Ugh. Definitely a disturbing memory to have. Not that the Fur Jacket Girl had seemed upset or traumatised by what was happening to her. No, she’d been raging about her mate being killed. That I’d killed him. Shouting that they were coming. For me.

My pulse sped up. It was the same as the Moon tarot card warning.

Only it wasn’t me who’d killed her werewolf mate in the memory, Malik was.

So was the memory a true one? Or had my subconscious added its own little twist at the end there as a reminder? Not that it mattered when I was pretty sure the Emperor’s werewolves were coming for me, anyway. And at least the memory had confirmed one thing; the werewolves were definitely the kidnappers. The smell of werewolf blood on the bodyguard’s kurta had dropped me into Malik’s memory/flashback.

So, did that mean all werewolf blood smelled the same? Nah, too unlikely. The blood probably belonged to a werewolf Malik knew. Since the male was dead it had to be Fur Jacket Girl. So who was she to Malik? Someone he cared for? The rage he’d felt suggested that. Though his memory wasn’t something you’d want to see happen to anyone, whether you cared for them or not. More importantly, his memory meant Fur Jacket Girl had been one of the werewolves here at the zoo.

Which was disturbing in an entirely different way.

Malik had said he hadn’t seen any of the Emperor’s werewolves for more than five hundred years. So, as Fur Jacket Girl was still around, then she had to be a good half a millennia old. Except werewolves only lived a human lifespan. So either Malik was lying – something I knew his honour wouldn’t allow him to do – or I was working on faulty info from the witch archives. Or more likely, incomplete info, since I’d never got into the password protected files. No doubt if I had, they’d have told me some werewolves did live longer than human lives.

And no doubt Malik could’ve told me that too. If I’d bothered to ask him.

Crap. I needed to speak to him. If he hadn’t known what was going on last night, I was betting he did now. Only the text-dumping vamp had cut me out of the loop. And yes, I was pretty sure it was all down to his screwed-up protective instincts and his deal with Tavish, but damn, didn’t the idiot vamp know, that all cutting me off would do, was make me furious? And didn’t he know that no way was I going to hole up in some metaphorical ivory tower, however much he wanted me to, not when people were missing and the fae’s fertility was still trapped? So what was his point, really?

I clenched my teeth, swallowing a frustrated scream.

The silver blanket covering me rustled and Mary looked up from her phone. ‘Oh good, you’re awake.’ She crouched down next to me, hitching her black trousers at the knees as she did, a relieved expression on her face.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I was thinking.’

‘Thinking?’ She grinned. ‘I thought it was called fainting. You did a good job of it too. Like a tree toppling.’ She demonstrated with her forearm. ‘Awesome faceplant. Or it would’ve been if the DI hadn’t caught you. We tried to wake you, but you were way out of it.’

‘I don’t faint,’ I grumbled, as my eyes caught the remains of the sand and salt circle. ‘Any luck with scrying for the kidnappers?’