‘Stop moving, my pretty sidhe, else I will rip out your throat.’ He leaned closer and opened his blood-soaked eyes wide. ‘Losing the muscle, sinew, tendons, blood vessels, cartilage, windpipe and voicebox hurts.Even one as difficult to kill as you will find it hard to heal that.’
He was right. I knewhe was right. I knewI might not heal it at all. I hadto do as he said. It was the only way . . .
I frowned at the thoughts in my head. They sounded wrong . . .
He touched his tongue to his fangs. ‘Or don’t. I would enjoy fucking you while you suffocate and drown in your own blood.’
Panic froze me as memories of my wedding night and him killing my friend, Sally, slammed into me. I hadto do as he said. I stopped struggling. His pressure on my throat increased, almost cutting off my air. I forced myself to stay still, to stare back stoically as my lungs heaved for breath, to concentrate on calming my pulse, even as my vision greyed around the edges. He watched me intently for what felt like hours, then his hand at my throat relaxed slightly. I gasped for oxygen before I could stop myself.
‘I see you understand, my pretty sidhe.’ He sighed. ‘Although I find it disappointing.’ He hooked his fingers into my briefs and tore them off. Fear clenched my stomach and I forced myself to stay still. He contemplated me like I was a bug pinned under a microscope, and started poking at Malik’s rose-petal bruises again. I tensed, skin crawling at his touch, the small pains insignificant to the fiery ones in my wrists. As his prodding moved lower, I desperately searched my mind for what little I knew about the Dreamscape. The only time I’d been here before was via Malik’s ring: I’d put the ring on to enter and he’d taken it off to make me leave. Or rather, to wake me up. While I was here, I was asleep in real life. That meant all I had to do to escape was wake up. But without Malik’s ring to remove, I didn’t know how. It hit me I was trapped in the Dreamscape with Bastien. Despair filtered into my mind. My recurring nightmare made real.
He gave my throat a quick squeeze. ‘Now, I am going to ask you a question. I know a sidhe cannot lie, but know I want you to answer only yes or no. No prevarication, do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ I gasped, my lungs struggling for breath.
‘You reek of Malik and sex,’ he said, voice soft. ‘Has my commander filled you with his seed, my bride?’
Shock sparked like lightning. ‘ What?!’
‘Answer me.’
‘No,’ I croaked. Where the hell was this going?
He frowned then slid his hand down my belly and between my legs. I shuddered in fear and disgust as his finger penetrated for an instant. He brought it up to his nose, sniffed and then licked it.
‘You are correct,’ he said.
Indignant anger rose. He hadn’t believed me. ‘Sidhe,’ I spat, ‘can’t fucking lie.’
His mouth thinned. ‘He has wanted you for a long time. He has even marked you.’ He poked a bruise on my left breast and I forced myself not to squirm. ‘But he has still not made you his, even though the spell should have done away with his resistance by now. It is a puzzle.’
It wasn’t the only one. For some weird reason, it sounded like he wanted Malik and me to have sex. Had encouraged it, even. The utter improbability of the Autarch ‘matchmaking’, allied to my earlier indignation, shattered something in my head. ‘What spell?’
He touched his forehead. ‘The one lodged within the delta brand.’
The sadistic Jellyfish spell I’d removed. Bastien’s gaze narrowed as he saw recognition on my face. ‘Well, well, my princess, it seems I underestimated you . . .’ He licked his lips, his gaze skating hungrily down my body.
Think! There had to be a way out of this.
‘You are not afraid of me,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Why not?’
I stared at him. He really was insane as well as psychotic if he didn’t think I was scared.
He tapped my forehead. ‘You are afraid here, but not here.’ He tapped over my heart. ‘You were before, but now you are not. Why not?’
I blinked. He was right. In the last few seconds I’d lost my mind-numbing terror of him. Not that I didn’t think he’d hurt me, but he wasn’t the big, bad, bogey-vamp of my fourteen-year-old nightmares any more. He was just another sucker, after all— And suckers could get into your mind. Make you think and feel and see anything they wanted with a combination of mesma,vamp mind-mojo and illusion. And I was the stupid idiot who’d forgotten it.
Bastien squeezed my throat. ‘There are not many who do not fear me, my sidhe princess. I find it interesting.’
May you live in interesting times.
The ambiguous Chinese saying flashed in my head, and I decided it was time this got interesting for him.
‘You’re not real,’ I whispered. ‘You have no substance. You are nothing but your thoughts in the Dreamscape.’ That was why the sword, Ascalon, hadn’t cut him. I’d have realised it earlier if not for my stupid childish panic. His other injuries had just been him playing with me. Using them to convince me that if I could hurt him, then he could hurt me. I stepped back.
His fingers didn’t unclench, but they didn’t rip my throat out either.
‘You’re not here,’ I said with more emphasis, lifting my arms as the pain and illusion they were broken vanished. ‘You. Are. Not. Real.’
‘I am real, sidhe.’ He waved his hand and the beautiful woman, the girl, the baby and the young Bastien, with Malik standing next to them, reappeared behind him. The five were in the sun-bright courtyard with its gleaming mosaic walls the same as when I’d first seen them in Malik’s memory, but the picture overlaid my bedroom like a holograph or a vamp-conjured illusion. ‘Just as they were real once. My loyal commander couldn’t save them— Save us,’ he amended, with an oddly conflicted expression, ‘when the Emperor came before.’
‘You. Are. Not. Here,’ I said, and taking a deep breath, I walked straight through him and out of my bedroom door.
‘Now the Emperor comes again, my sidhe princess.’
I woke up in the back of the police car.
‘And only you can save . . .’ His voice faded like morning mist banished by the sun.
The car was parked in a layby in front of a row of local community shops; a launderette, a newsagent, an off-licence, a boarded-up video rental place, a Subway and a butcher’s. And I was alone. A scrawled note on my lap, addressed to Sleeping Beauty, said Mary and Dessa were checking out a possible hit on their scrying and would be back soon. Something I was grateful for, as my reaction to tangling with Bastien suddenly made itself felt.
I just had time to stick my head out of the open car window (having discovered I was locked in) before my stomach revolted. Vomiting into the gutter, I tried not to think about exactly how and where Bastien had touched me. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t shown up physically, that our meeting had been in the Dreamscape; it still felt like he’d violated me. I heaved again, catching sight of the feet of passers-by in my peripheral vision. No one stopped; the one advantage to puking your guts out from the inside of a marked police car. Even if the police were nowhere in sight.
My heaves finally subsided and I grabbed a bottle of water from my bag, rinsed away the sour taste of regurgitated orange juice (thankful I’d had nothing more than that and vodka for hours), then used the rest to sluice my mess down the nearby drain, wishing I could flush psycho Bastien away as easily. I shoved the empty bottle back in my bag. Next time I ran into the sadistic bastard in real life, I was going to kill him.
Though I might ask him a few questions first. Like why he was so hot for me and Malik to get together? Whatever the reason, there was no way it was for my, or Malik’s, benefit. Bastien was the spoilt, spiteful, dog-in-the-manger type; the type that would break their unwanted toys rather than sharing . . . as he’d done to child-Fur Jacket Girl’s doll in Malik’s dream/memory.