… Francine broke the kiss, and I was on my own again in Darius’ head, trying to come to terms with the loss and pain of another memory shown me by the Morrígan.
Then Darius’ own thoughts started chiming in, like a bizarre background track, and I suddenly realised I wasn’t alonebut co-habiting. Darius was here with me—or I was with him—and he was very happy about it, delighted, euphoric even, in a strange, fuzzy sort of way. He was happy both of us were here, me and Francine. We looked at Francine, who was now bending over my still body, and panic bubbled up inside me until a knowing, satisfied thought from Darius squashed my fear. She was healing the wound at my throat by licking it.
Francine would love my blood; it tasted so good, so sweet and thick. Hunger tightened our stomach, and something twitched between our legs … we looked down and grinned—
‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ I said out loud as I grabbed for a nearby piece of mattress and stuffed it between our/Darius’ legs, then wished I hadn’t as his pain nearly doubled us over. Darius choked back the lump in our throat, and his thoughts disappeared into a jumble of unintelligible expletives.
Crap! The sooner I got out of him, the better … but I didn’t even know how the hell I’d ended up inside him in the first place, let alone how I was supposed to get back into my own body. My mind kept chasing the thoughts, looking for answers that weren’t there. And there was something else, something important. Worriedly, I looked around the room littered with bits of bed and mattress and tried to think…
Finally it came to me: what had happened to Lucy, the Moth whose ghost I’d seen?
Darius gingerly resurfaced. ‘ Francine took her away.’ The words formed in my mind, along with his self-guilt and worry. ‘ She said the other Moths would look after her.’
‘ She’ s not dead then?’ I asked hopefully.
‘ No,’ he said, almost overwhelming me with self-blame, ‘ Francine said she’d be okay.’
Darius had only attacked the Moths because he’d been lost in bloodlust, and he’d only been lost in bloodlust because Mad Max had stolen my blood. ‘ It wasn’ t your fault—’
‘ He didn’ t steal the blood, Genny.’ Shame and regret curdled inside us. ‘ I said he could have one bag out of three.’
‘Why?’
His mind fuzzed for a second, then he said, ‘ So he’ d give me the job; it was to pay the blood-tithe.’ It wasn’t a lie, but there was something else there, something he didn’t want me to know. ‘ I’ m sorry, I didn’ t think I’ d need it, not with all the groupies, and I didn’ t want to give him my Oath, or anyone else, but I kept getting booked for private parties, and then my head started going funny—’
Images of his childhood mixed up with more recent ones of the private parties, or more precisely, the ‘anything goes’ orgies, flickered like a movie in my mind, telling me that Mad Max was effectively running a vamp brothel, letting humans into the rooms before the vamps woke up so they could prod and poke and—
Rage and disgust made me want to go and stick another knife in the bastard’s chest.
Darius shook our head emphatically .‘ It’ s not like that, Genny. All the vamps love it; you get plenty of blood waking up like that. I did too, sort of, at the beginning.’
I felt the desperate need in him to be honest with me and got another quick image that I could’ve done without: Darius reallyenjoying himself at what looked like a ‘Bride of Dracula’ hen party, if the outfits were anything to go by.
‘ But then I started getting confused about where I was,’ he carried on, ‘ and what was going on—I’ m sorry, Genny, I’ m really sorry.’
More tears dripped down our face as recriminations filled us: his, for not asking for help, and mine for not checking up on him sooner. But now what mattered was getting back into my own body and sorting this whole mess out. I tried to piece together my thoughts … Only now we weren’t speaking, the background track of his thoughts grew louder and more intrusive, and my own thoughts kept getting lost in a fuzzy haze. He was relieved and happy that both Francine and I were here; he really loved both of us, and he really wanted us to like each other. We looked down at where she was bent over my body, and at the way the red leather moulded to her—
Darius was getting entirely too happy about things again.
I gingerly tapped the lumpy bit of mattress between his/our legs to distract him and mentally pulled myself away from his thoughts until he was just a muted whisper. My own mind cleared and I realised the ‘fuzzy hyped’ feeling had come from Darius; he was still high, from drinking my blood and getting hit by my Glamour.
I looked at Francine, still bent over my throat, and at the jagged metal sticking out of my stomach. I was sidhe fae, I was still here; I could survive that, couldn’t I? So long as someone took it out soon? Except I was injured and stuck in a vamp (who was keeping me alive by holding my hand), in the middle of a vamp club, with only Francine to help; it wasn’t a win-win situation. How the hell was I going to get out of this? Another bubble of panic threatened to burst— then I remembered I had my very own personal Angel watching over me. An Angel with a hotline to The Mother. It was unlikely She’d let me truly die, at least not until after I’d completed her commands. And then there was the Morrígan too. Maybe if I prayed—
‘Genevieve?’
My name was both a question and a call, and my heart stuttered in thankfulness.
‘Malik al-Khan.’
As I spoke, Darius rushed back in alarm and we looked up. A monstrous figure loomed over us, half-obscured by writhing, angry shadows. Flaming eyes blazing bright stared out of a thin, harsh face, its pale skin laced with an ominous map of hungry blue veins, its lips drawn back over sharp white fangs. Hot fingers of mesma-induced fear lashed down our spine and Darius screamed in terror. Then, before I could grab our thoughts, we were spinning away in a fiery maelstrom of panic.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I fought my way out of the maelstrom, leaving Darius tucked away in the hidden corner of himself, and looked out of his eyes again.
Francine was kneeling between us and Malik, who had dropped the fanged monster look; maybe he’d just used it to frighten the natives, although Francine could’ve told him he didn’t need all the flashy dramatics.
‘—blame is not his, my liege.’ Francine’s words suddenly registered. ‘I beg you to not kill him. Wait, and listen to the sidhe when she wakes.’
Yeah, listen to her: killing him is so not a good idea—for either of us.
‘The sidhe lies behind you and is near death, Francine,’ Malik said in his calm, not-quite-English accent. ‘What makes you think she will live to plead for Darius to keep his Gift?’
As Francine started to talk in a soft, anxious monotone, I shot a quick assessing look at my throat: the wound in my neck was now a puckered mess of scabbed-over skin.
Thank you, Francine!It wasn’t pretty, but maybe my body wasn’t as close to death as Malik’s words suggested, particularly as he didn’t appear to be overly worried. I narrowed my eyes at him. Now I wasn’t seeing him through Darius’ less-than-rosy blood- and fear-coloured glasses, he looked more like his usual beautiful self—other than his hair, which no longer curled like black silk over his coat collar but had instead been buzz-cut close to his scalp. It made him look harder, more dangerous, and at the same time oddly vulnerable. I frowned, concerned, remembering Mad Max’s comments about Malik being the Autarch’s newest torture toy … was it only his hair that was different … or was there a slight stiffness in the way he held himself?