The Shifting Price of Prey

Chapter Forty-Eight

‘The entrance is through there?’ I frowned at the impenetrable tangle of greenery. It was about twelve feet high and wide, and crowded round a double-stemmed oak tree. Ground level was a dense mix of sharp-spiked gorse and stinging nettles. Above, dark-leaved rhododendrons were twisted with convolvulus, the weed’s white trumpet flowers dotting the greenery. Finger-thick blackberry stems sporting wicked-looking thorns and hard, unripe fruits arched out of the tangle, swaying in the summer breeze like the feelers of a monster triffid.

We were in one of the rougher, less-used areas of Primrose Hill park. The wide-spread branches of the oak cast a heavy shade, but other than the bushes beneath it, the area around the tree was free of anything but rough grass for a good thirty or so feet. It meant no one would be likely to use the oak as an illicit trysting place, and anyone using the entrance would have a clear view before either popping out of thin air or disappearing, as we were about to do. Something that would either freak humans out or make them too curious; a trait that doesn’t just kill cats.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks, Gen,’ Finn said encouragingly. ‘Though it’s a touch more overgrown than I remember.’

‘Thought you said this was a regular shortcut?’ The shortcut led through a section of unclaimed Between – the space joining the Fair Lands and the humans’ world – to London’s other parks and green spaces, including Wimbledon Common, home to the satyr herd (and wombles, though the satyrs get a bit ansty when anyone mentions that), and Finn’s glade, obviously. Supposedly the shortcut was a five-minute walk which was way quicker than fighting through London’s traffic for more than an hour, with the added advantage that we’d get to Finn’s glade before the fertility rite magic forced me to commune with the earth or rethink the option of a sex-a-thon with Finn. Not that part of me wasn’t doing that anyway.

‘It is a regular shortcut, or it was anyway. I haven’t used this entrance in a couple of years, though.’ He held out his hand. ‘Just imagine it parting like a pair of curtains, put a bit of juice behind the thought, and stick close to me.’

‘Yeah, me doing spontaneous magic,’ I muttered, linking my hand with his, which was warm and firm and filled me with totally inappropriate ideas about how it’d feel on my body. ‘Like that’s really gonna happen.’

‘Hey, have some faith, Gen,’ he said, plunging into the thicket and pulling me behind him.

I yelped, felt the gorse scratch at my ankles, the brambles snag at my clothes, then the magic slipped over me like grass tickling my skin and darkness swirled as we left the humans’ world. Cinders crunched under my feet as I stepped on to the path: the safe way to travel through unclaimed Between. Paths mean you get to where you’re going, and don’t end up lost or falling prey to the cannibalistic half-formed— semi-evolved spirits hungry for magic and flesh. Finn tugged on my hand and I took another step. My bones seemed to lighten as if gravity had lessened and for a second I felt energised. Then fierce sunshine made me squint, loud bellows followed by high-pitched screams assaulted my ears and I gagged on the stench of shit and sulphur.

‘Hell’s thorns!’ Finn yanked me down behind an ochre-coloured boulder the size of a small car. ‘No wonder it’s so overgrown, a herd of swamp-dragons have moved in.’

I peered round the boulder. About twenty huge beasts, the size of double-decker buses, looking like a mutant rhinos with scales, small vestigial wings and long whip-like barbed tails, were lumbering through the steaming yellow smoke of an apocalyptic-style landscape, snatching at the charred remains of trees. Around another fifteen or so swampies were wallowing in the massive bubbling sulphur craters, sending rivers of liquid sulphur cascading over the craters’ edges. The liquid sulphur shone red like streams of super-heated blood and I could just see its fey-like blue flame as it burned.

Swamp-dragon is a misnomer. The name comes from their first appearance back in the mangrove swamps in Java, Indonesia, in the 1690s. It was thought to be their natural habitat before it was discovered the swampies were just on walkabout after emerging from the Kawah Ijen volcano in the east. They’d made enough of an impression last time I’d run into them, I’d done research.

Good thing about swamp-dragons is they have less intelligence than a cow, aren’t the fastest creatures for their size, and, unsurprisingly given the nose-stinging environment, have absolutely no sense of smell.

Bad thing is they’re omnivores and will munch on anything they stumble across. Usually after stomping on it like they’re playing whack-a-mole: their standard method of disabling prey, despite being able to breathe fire. So long as we could run fast, dodge their tractor-wheel-sized feet, and stay on the cinder path, we’d be okay. Probably.

Another high-pitched scream came from above us, followed by a tiny body thudding onto the boulder then bouncing off to land at my feet. A garden fairy, his throat slashed, still twitching in the last throes of ecstasy as he died. I blinked at it, and then, as another screaming, entangled pair zipped past us, it clicked that this had to be where Lecherous Lampy the gnome was getting his out-of-season stock from. The heat from the swamp-dragons had accelerated the fairies’ life cycle, and being small and fast, the swampies weren’t likely to eat them.

They would us.

I looked at Finn. He’d dropped his human Glamour. His horns curved a good foot above his head, his body still athletic but shoulders and chest broader, muscles thicker, more honed. The angles of his face sharper, feral and even more gorgeous than his clean-cut handsome look— Lust coiled tight in my belly. Forget stinking, stomping swamp-dragons, I wanted to hole-up with him somewhere for at least a week. No, make that a month. I closed my eyes, forced the feelings back.

‘So,’ I said, adding an airy note to my voice, ‘want to go back, or run for it?’

‘Run for it?’ He shook his head. ‘Hell’s thorns, Gen, are you crazy? One slip and we’d be swampie pancakes.’

A low chuffing cough sounded behind us.

We turned as one.

A dark grey cat, striped with black and the size of the tigers in the zoo, crouched belly low to the ground about ten feet away. It stared at us out of gleaming green eyes, ears flat to its skull, tail swishing from side to side as if readying to pounce.

‘What the fuck is that?’ I muttered.

‘Haven’t a clue, Gen,’ Finn replied just as quietly, ‘but it doesn’t look friendly.’

The cat gave another low chuffing sound and its lips drew back, seemingly in a grin, exposing more of its long sabretooth fangs.

‘It doesn’t,’ I agreed. ‘And it’s blocking the exit.’ Coincidence or deliberate? I sent my inner radar out. ‘It pings as an animal. No magic, nothing like human or fae in there.’

‘My take too.’

‘I’m guessing it could be some sort of ailuranthrope?’ I said, though I’d never heard of a weretiger, or even a normal tiger, that strange grey and black colour, not to mention the big cat looked suspiciously like the one that had climbed out of the abyss on the Moon tarot card. The card had said, ‘The beasts are coming.’ Maybe it hadn’t been talking about the Emperor and his werewolves after all.

‘Whatever it is,’ Finn said grimly, ‘there’s only one of it, and nearly forty swampies.’

‘Think we can take it?’ I asked, dropping my backpack and kicking it out of the way.

The cat gave a guttural growl.

Finn made a similar low sound. ‘Is the sky blue?’

I looked up. Blue sky wasn’t always a given in Between. It was now, if you ignored the smoky yellow haze from the sulphur.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How about I try to scare it, and if it doesn’t run, you do your horny bit.’ Then we were high-tailing it to the nearest hotel in the humans’ world. ‘On three, two, one—’ I jumped up, yelling and waving my arms, and ran at the cat.

It sat back on it haunches, a ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ look on its face.

I skidded to a stop, Finn’s arms going round my waist as he dragged me back. ‘Guess that answers the question whether it’s an animal or not,’ I said, glaring at the cat.

‘Oh, he is an animal, Ms Taylor,’ a familiar smarmy voice said. ‘But not just an animal.’ A squat figure appeared out of the charred foliage at the base of the twin-stemmed oak tree: Mr Lampy, the wrinkles in his round face deepening as he gave us a wide smile, his ultra-white human dentures blinding. The mustard-coloured lichen mapping his bald pate ruffled in the hot wind. His bare feet crunched on the cinder path as he strained forward, pulling what looked like the bastard child of a wheelbarrow and a chariot behind him. He stopped once he was fully through the entrance, produced a dirty hanky from his tweed jacket and mopped his face.

‘What’s going on?’ I demanded.

‘I’m guessing an ambush of some sort,’ Finn breathed against my ear. ‘You run for it while I hold the cat off. Keep to the left of the cinder path and look for a copse of goat willow by a small stream; the entrance there will bring you out on Wimbledon Common near the windmill. Speak to Dimitris’ – Finn’s closest brother – ‘and he’ll bring help.’

It was a sensible plan. Running the swampies’ foot-stomping gauntlet wasn’t that hard. I knew how to run, even if the recent chaos had meant I’d missed my usual morning exercise the last few days. But I wasn’t going to leave Finn to deal with the big cat and the gnome on his own, however sensible-sounding his plan. It didn’t feel right, not when there were two of us, and two of them. But as I was about to object, another grey and black striped big cat slunk through the entrance behind the gnome as if it were embarrassed to be here. Then as if to seal the deal, a third big cat bounded through, skidding to a clumsy halt next to the others. Fuck. No way could we outrun all three of them.

The gnome gave a satisfied sniff and tucked his hanky away. ‘Glad you decided to take my suggestion and look into the path here, Ms Taylor.’ Crap, I’d forgotten he’d asked me to do that. ‘It really does make things easier for me.’

‘Easier?’

The gnome waved at the three big cats. ‘The boys here have a little problem they need your help with, Ms Taylor.’

‘Gen,’ Finn’s voice was barely audible. ‘Run.’

The gnome’s beady eyes flicked warily at Finn. Stupid satyr with a hero complex. It was going to get him killed one day. I clenched my fist and released Ascalon. The blessed and be-spelled sword sprang into my grip and I shifted into a ready stance. ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘let’s chat.’

A strangled surprised noise came from beside me. ‘You’ve got a sword?’

Oh yeah. Finn didn’t know about Ascalon. Amazing what you miss when you disappear for three months. ‘Yep.’

‘You know how to use it?’

‘Yep,’ I said, baring my teeth at the gnome and his boys.

‘Good.’ Finn’s voice was a satisfied growl.

The gnome reacted, but not by backing off as I expected. He shook his head as if me producing Ascalon was somehow disappointing. Then the horrid little male, who was obviously far stronger than he looked, grabbed the embarrassed-looking cat by the scruff and threw him at me. The big cat yelped, all four paws stuck out as he flew at me with a horrified expression on his feline face. Reluctant to kill him with Ascalon when he wasn’t so much attacking as being sacrificed, I leaped to the side, only just missing skewering him. He landed on his paws less than a foot from me and for a second we froze, staring into each other’s eyes. Then shock ripped through me as a burning sensation engulfed my hand, the cat’s eyes lit with reflected green fire, and Ascalon vanished back into its ring.

‘He’s an innocent, Ms Taylor!’ the gnome called. ‘Your sword won’t work when there’s an innocent around.’

Fuck. I scrambled back from the big cat who was still frozen.

‘Gen!’

Finn’s warning shout jerked my head up in time to see the nasty gnome rubbing his hands together, then tossing them in our direction. A dozen cotton wool balls flew towards us, buzzing like angry bees. Security Stingers ~ the Ultimate Intruder Deterrent. Crap. If the spells got us we’d be asleep and helpless in seconds. Luckily once the stingers launched, they didn’t deviate too far from the original target area—

‘Split!’ Finn pushed me away, obviously having the same idea.

I turned and sprinted along the cinder path that led to help. A couple of stingers buzzed my head, their sticky threads trailing my face like grasping cobwebs. I stumbled, nearly went down, then cracked the threads, feeling the magic slice my forehead as the spells disintegrated. Blood dripped in my eyes as I ran faster—

Something thudded into my back, smacking me to the ground. Pain shot through my head as it bounced off the cinders. More pain burned down my back as claws punctured my skin and the hot heavy weight of a big cat pinned me. I yanked my magic up, flung it at the animal. If I could catch him in my Glamour, he would have to obey me.

A fat mud-covered hand clamped a silver bangle studded with jade and citrines round my left wrist: a police-issue manacle. My magic cut out as if it had been ripped from me. I screamed as someone shouted, ‘Get off her!’ And the Stun spells in the jade chips ignited.

My body convulsed as if I’d been zapped with high-voltage electricity.

‘Hurry up and change, boys, and get them in the cart,’ the gnome’s voice ordered. ‘We need to get moving before the beasts take an interest.’

‘Both of them?’ The man’s question was a low growl. ‘Going to slow us down.’

‘The Forum Mirabilis is in town. The satyr will bring a nice price at the auction. Those horns alone are worth a good few thousand each, and he’s a sex fae; I can get a king’s ransom for his—’

Unconsciousness took me.