The Sweet Scent of Blood

Chapter Forty-Eight

I clutched the Earl’s heart until I felt the life leave his body. I walked far enough from him that the blood spreading out from his corpse—my blood—wouldn’t be able to reach it, then carefully placed the heart on the blue-rubber floor. I shuddered as my Alter Vamp body healed itself. I glanced up at the screens. They were black and still, and the silence told me the magic dome still shimmered above, even though I could no longer feel it. I turned full circle and searched the empty arena.

Toni had gone.

The Earl might be dead, but the spell wasn’t, and Toni held its formula in her head. It wasn’t over yet.

Then I sensed it: an awareness, a hint of spice in the air, and fear, anticipation, and something more, fluttered in my belly.

Malik al-Khan.

He was watching, hidden in the shadows—only there were no shadows inside the dome; the stadium lights made it as bright as day.

My silent heart thudded once. ‘You can’t have the witch.’ My shout reverberated in the air.

A breeze teased around me, playing with the long black hair that curled over my shoulders.

‘I know you’re here,’ I shouted again. ‘You can have whatever you want, but not the witch.’

The sensation of silk slid soft over my naked skin.

‘Malik al-Khan.’ I held my arms out wide in offering. ‘This needs to be settled.’

‘Rosa ...’ His voice whispered behind me.

I crouched and swivelled to face him.

He wasn’t there.

‘Or is it Genevieve?’ Again the sound came from behind me.

I straightened and turned slowly, running my tongue over my fangs.

He stood perfectly still, his long black leather coat almost sweeping the ground. A pale length of flesh gleamed from his throat down to the leather trousers sitting low across his hips. The dark silk of his hair shone under the arc lights. He watched me, the obsidian-black of his eyes enigmatic.

Toni stood a few feet behind him, her face still blank with mind-lock.

‘What is it you think I want?’ His voice was soft.

‘Me.’ My voice was calm. It didn’t betray the child crying in my mind. ‘My agreement to come back with you.’

His long, elegant fingers brushed a wing of hair from his forehead while he studied me. ‘You would sell yourself in order to destroy the spell?’

‘When you put it like that,’ I said, ‘yes, in a heartbeat.’

Part of me didn’t care. It was over anyway. I’d been running and hiding since I was fourteen, trying to stay alive, trying to stay free, but I had always known that one day my prince would find me and someone would come to take me back. Getting rid of the spell was the honey that sweetened the pill.

‘If that is what you wish.’ Malik turned, and beckoned Toni to him.

She walked up to stand at his side and a sunny smile broke over her face.

‘You may see for yourself.’ He took her hand and held it out to me like a gift. ‘The spell is gone.’

I frowned, suspicion making me wary. I grasped her hand and cupped her face. Her smile didn’t change. I pushed into her mind and found ... nothing. There was no tangled net of thoughts, no mind-lock, just nothing. Her mind was gone. She wouldn’t be telling anyone anything ever again. Shock made my heart beat again. Malik hadn’t just wiped her mind clean, he’d obliterated it. Nausea roiled in my gut that he could do that, that it was even possible. He touched her shoulder and she walked away into the dome.

Toni had been condemning me and every other fae the vamps might capture to an eternity of slavery.

The spell was gone.

Then the nausea dissipated and all I felt was glorious relief.

The spell was gone.

Malik would have to force me to go back, and no way was I going to make it easy.

I smiled at him, flashed my fangs. ‘Looks like you’re out of bargaining chips.’

‘What about Rosa?’

Damn. There was always something, wasn’t there? He wanted to destroy Rosa’s body to save her soul from a demon—only it wasn’t a demon, it was me. Would he still want to do that, now he knew it was me sharing her body?

I shrugged. ‘What about Rosa?’

He waved towards the Earl’s corpse. ‘That was ... unexpected. ’ He moved to stand in front of me and held out his hand. The pearl handle of my knife gleamed like an accusation. ‘As was this, Genevieve.’

I didn’t move. ‘Puts you in a bit of a predicament doesn’t it?’ I gave him a mock sympathetic look. ‘I mean, you can’t kill this body, not without killing me too. It’s one of those golden-egg-and-goose-type things.’

He released the blade and pressed the sharp point to my breast. The silver burned against my skin. ‘Why is it,’ he asked, his eyes half-lidded and his lips lifting in wry amusement, ‘that I cannot take both your lives?’

‘C’mon, Malik, cut the crap.’ I raised my chin. ‘I was a child. Children are young, not stupid. I may never have seen your face, but I recognised your touch.’ Almost from the first, I added silently, only I hadn’t wanted to admit it, not to myself, not even when my dream-mind showed me the truth. ‘I’m just surprised it took him so long to send you after me.’

‘You are right, of course.’ Malik slid the blade down to rest just under my ribs.

‘Nice to know the homicidal maniac hasn’t forgotten me,’ I said, my pulse speeding faster in my throat.

‘He tasked me with bringing you back to him ten years ago.’ He sighed, and the sound slipped like sorrow into my heart. ‘Only I did not do as he wished.’ The knife dented my flesh.

My mouth dropped open. ‘What?’

‘The Autarch is no longer my Master, Genevieve. He has not been so for nearly twenty years.’ Cool fingers circled my left wrist. He lifted the knife and traced an ice-hot slash down my inner arm. Blood trickled in an eager rivulet to splash onto the blue floor.

I flashed back to him doing the same thing to my four-year-old self. The knife had been set with a dragon’s tear, an oval of amber the same colour as my sidhe eyes. He’d taken my blood with my father’s good wishes, tasted me in proxy for my prince.

As then, I stood frozen, unable to move.

Malik bent his head to my arm, licking a long firm line along the slash. He gazed at me, his pupils flaring red. ‘How could I call him Master when I coveted what he owned’—he kissed his lips to mine and I tasted my own honeyed blood as his voice whispered through my mind—‘for myself.’

Need and desire and a fledgling hope took flight inside me.

He broke the kiss.

And I asked the question. ‘Why did you kill Melissa?’

His expression didn’t change. ‘She had uncovered the witch. Once her vampire lover had realised, they would have fled again, taking the spell with them.’

So that was the information Melissa had been selling: Toni’s identity. Only Malik had always known where Toni was. The trees had been gossiping about him watching Spellcrackers—watching Toni—not me. ‘Why didn’t you just kill the witch?’

‘Genevieve.’ His voice held slight impatience, ‘The witch was under the protection of the Witches’ Council. To do so would have violated our rules and started something I did not wish.’

‘What about the spell?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t you want it for yourself ?’

‘I have no need of it.’

Of course he didn’t. He already had me—ever since I was four years old. ‘So what happens now?’ I breathed.

He reversed the knife, placed its handle in my palm and clasped his hands round mine to hold it straight and true. ‘What happens now is your choice.’ He spread his arms wide. The scar I’d given him bloomed rose-red against his pale skin.

I looked down at the blade, then up at his beautiful face.

And did nothing.

Malik smiled and my heart thudded in my chest. ‘Genevieve.’

He whirled round, an edge of darkness swinging from his coat, and strode away, vanishing into nothingness.