The Sweet Scent of Blood

Chapter Forty-One

All I had to do was bleed a large enough puddle that I could stand in. I grimaced at the blue veins mapping my naked body. Getting blood out of one of them wasn’t going to be easy.

‘Why can’t I just draw a circle in blood?’ I asked.

‘It doesn’t work that way, Gen.’ Finn gave another weary sigh. ‘It’s a sacrifice, a last resort thing, so no one opens a blood door without thinking seriously about it.’

Yeah, right. Heart labouring in my chest, I clambered to my feet, checked out my left wrist. Maybe I’d be lucky and the vein wouldn’t have healed yet.

I raised my wrist to my mouth.

‘What are you doing?’ Finn was watching me.

‘I haven’t got a knife.’

‘Use one of my horns.’

‘They won’t be sharp enough.’

‘The spells in the restraints aren’t muting my magic, they’re just stopping me from getting free. And the sucker’s not getting all of it; I’m holding back as much power as I can.’ His chin jutted out. ‘Touch one.’

I crouched near his head and gently pressed my finger to one of his horns. It quivered, its ridges scraping against my fingertip as it elongated and stiffened until it was seven inches of smooth curved horn, its tip sharp, like a whittled bone.

‘You need to do it quick, Gen.’ His eyes were closed again, face tight with strain.

I wrapped my hand round his horn and he groaned, low and deep. Pleasure or pain? I wasn’t sure.

‘Hurry.’

Gritting my teeth, I pressed my inner arm against the sharp point, pushed until it pierced the skin. Blood seeped sluggishly out of the wound. I waited for the pain, but it didn’t come. Jerking my arm back, I scored a deep cut from my inner elbow to my wrist.

The blood welled slowly and I stared at it transfixed.

The tattoo on my hip throbbed like a second heart. My nostrils flared as I drew the sweet smell into my lungs. My mouth watered. The urge to rub my blood into the tattoo filled my mind like the cry of a rapacious spirit. I gazed at Finn, at the wounds on his body, and felt nothing but hunger.

And he couldn’t get away.

My mouth stretched in a smile.

‘Have you finished?’ Finn whispered.

Suddenly appalled at my own thoughts, I scrambled back from him.

‘Gen?’ His horn was shrinking back down into his hair. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ I looked at the floor, not wanting him to see the hunger in my face. Holding out my arm, I squeezed the wound, watched the blood trickle into a puddle the size of a teacup.

‘Gen, we need to do the ritual first.’

‘I’m doing it,’ I muttered.

‘You can’t. You haven’t taken my blood.’

‘And I’m not going to, Finn. There’s someone else I can call for a blood door, someone who can help us better than Helen can.’

‘But you’ve got to go to Helen. She’s the police.

‘I know, but she upholds the humans’ laws, Finn. We’re fae. The human laws don’t apply to us, not with things like this.’

‘She’ll still come,’ he said with certainty. ‘She’s not going to leave me here.’

‘Finn, you don’t get it, do you. Helen is police. She has to go by the rule book whether she wants to or not.’ Look what she’s just done to me, I wanted to shout but didn’t. Instead I carried on, trying to be calm. ‘Technically, the vamps have done nothing wrong. She can’t force her way in here, and no way is she going to start a full-scale war with the vamps, especially not on my say-so. And even if she does work out a way, by the time she gets past them and gets to you, there’ll be nothing left to find. I’m sorry, Finn, but I’m not taking that chance.’

He turned his head away.

The pool of blood was the size of a plate.

‘You’re going to the sucker, aren’t you? The one from last night.’

What if the blood door didn’t work?

‘Gen you don’t have to do this, Take my blood, go to Helen, she’ll come, I know she will.’

I looked at Finn, lying shackled to the floor. No way was I going to take his blood—if I fell into bloodlust, how was I going to stop?

‘I thought you were dead,’ Finn whispered. ‘I thought I’d killed you. I didn’t know a sidhe could survive cold iron like that.’

My heart fluttered with palpitations. I answered him without thinking. ‘It’s the human blood in me.’

The quick movement of his head caught my attention. ‘No part of you is human, Gen, not with those eyes.’

‘My mother was sidhe, my father was human.’ Or he was once, I added silently.

‘Then you would be faeling.’

‘I’m not.’

After a moment he spoke again. ‘They brought you in and started feeding on you. She made me watch ...’

I looked at him, horror invading my mind. He wouldn’t have, would he? ‘What did you promise her?’ I breathed, not sure if I actually wanted to know.

‘I couldn’t let them do that to you,’ he murmured, and I heard other words echo as he spoke. I can’t kill the sucker, I’ve already tried. I can feel her in me, controlling me, feeding off me.

‘It’s not just the spell, is it?’ I whispered as shock settled cold and hard inside me. ‘You took the sucker’s Blood-Bond, didn’t you? That’s how she’s draining so much power from you—she’s combined them together.’

‘Gen, you have to get to Helen.’ He looked at me and the fear and despair on his face gave me my answer. ‘She can sort everything out. Fix this.’

Rio dead was the only way to fix this, and no way was Helen Crane going to kill her.

‘I know you think Helen can’t do anything,’ he continued, ‘but you’re wrong about her. Going to that sucker for help isn’t the right thing for you.’

Fucking shining knight complex! Even if I got him out of this mess he’d probably still come after me, still try and rescue me, thinking I was some distressed damsel he needed to save—and he’d get himself killed, or worse. No way could I let that happen. He had to know the truth.

I squeezed the slash on my arm again, forcing more blood out, concentrating on it instead of him. ‘When I said my father was human, Finn, I meant he was human, before he became a vampire.’ I kept my tone matter-of-fact. ‘So you see, there really is only one place I can go for help, Finn. And that’s to the vamps.’

‘That’s not possible; vamps can’t reproduce like that.’

‘My father found my mother at a fertility rite, got her pregnant, and then after I was born, he let her fade.’ Of course the story wasn’t as simple as that, but it covered the basics. ‘Vamps have their own magic, Finn. And the sidhe can breed with anything magic—and most things not—you know that.’

He didn’t answer, and I stared blindly at my blood as it dripped onto the stony ground.

A chill crept up my spine and my heart stuttered. I closed my eyes, ran my tongue over my teeth and sniffed at the air. A glorious miasma of pain and fear and the liquorice scent of venom had me shifting uncomfortably.

The shush, shush of his blood rushing through his veins, the fast da-dum, da-dum of his heart.

‘Gen?’

My eyes snapped open.

His pulse was jumping in his throat, his skin glowing with blood heat, and I was too close for safety.

‘Gen, I think it’s large enough now.’

‘What?’ I slurred.

‘The blood. You’ve got enough now.’

I looked down. The puddle was larger than a dinner plate. I brought my arm to my mouth and slowly licked the blood off. The sweetness muted my hunger and I sighed. Then I noticed Finn, an odd, indecipherable expression on his face.

Shit. I’d finally succeeded in frightening him.

As I staggered to my feet, the cave swung round me like a fairground ride.

‘Be careful, Gen.’ Finn’s voice was faint in my ears.

Frowning, I half-waved my hand. There was something else. What was it? Oh yeah. ‘I’ll come back, okay?’

His mouth moved, but my ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear him.

The blood looked wonderful. I wanted to fall back to my knees and lap it up. I dipped my toe. I felt it cool against my skin. I stepped in, then lifted my other foot and set it down.

Dark.

Cave.

Dark.

A figure.

Dark.

The woman stood, head thrown back to expose her slender throat, mouth open wide. The image flickered on and off, like a silent movie.

Thick carpet beneath my feet, smell of sex and blood in my nose, buzzing in my ears.

The vampire stood behind her, his face buried in the curve of her neck, his jaw working.

Hunger hot in my stomach, I snarled, the vamp in me clawing to get out. I pushed my wrist down towards my tattoo.

My arm stilled in midair.

A shudder rippled through the woman and she grasped the vampire’s dark hair and pulled him from her neck. She reached out and took my outstretched hand in hers.

She smiled, the smile of an angel, and that smile promised me whatever I wanted. Moving closer, she pressed her body up to mine. Her skin felt slick, hot with blood. Her heartbeat throbbed, pumping sweet life from the fang marks that pierced the swollen flesh at her neck. She tilted her head to the side and offered me her throat, the smile still playing on her face.

I shoved my fingers into her glossy dark hair and fed.