The Cold Kiss of Death Read online

  Then she was walking towards me, an inviting smile on her black-painted lips, the venom-bite already swelling at her throat. I blinked, confused, but as she reached me the scent of liquorice and sweet copper invaded my senses and I could think of nothing other than what I wanted. My mouth watered and I swallowed painfully, hunger cramping my stomach, lust tightening my nipples and slicking damp wet heat between my legs. I licked my dry lips before I could stop myself.

  ‘Such a long time, Genevieve, since you’ve had a taste.’ She touched her fingers to the bite at her throat, gasping a little as she pressed the tender skin and clear fluid seeped from the pinprick fang marks. I swayed towards her, drawn by the sight. ‘Why should you deny yourself when all you want is here for the taking?’ she murmured.

  My heart thudded in my chest, deep echoing beats that thundered in my ears. A distant part of me knew what she was doing, offering me what I craved, tempting me, but I didn’t care. She was right. It had been too long.

  She held her hand out to me, encouraging, enticing, her fingers so close to my mouth that all I needed to do was touch my tongue to the venom glistening on her fingertips—

  I closed my eyes for a brief moment.

  I was not going to do this.

  I grabbed her wrist.

  I was not going to give in to her, to it.

  I held her hand where it was—

  Was I?

  I shoved her hand away. ‘Not biting, Hannah,’ I said and jerked my head at the scantily clad vamp grinning over her shoulder. ‘So take your fang-pet and get the fuck out.’

  She pursed her lips, then nodded as if coming to a decision. ‘That’s what I like about you, Genevieve, you don‘t allow what’s in your blood to distract you from what’s important.’ She reached back and stroked her fingers down Darius’ smooth, muscled chest. ‘It’s something else we share.’

  I clenched my hands to stop from reaching for her, not sure if I wanted to smash my fist into her face, sink my teeth into her neck, or offer my own throat to her fang-pet. ‘What. Do. You. Want?’ I said, struggling to keep my voice even.

  ‘To do you a favour of course.’ She smiled. ‘As a friend.’

  ‘I told you, we are not friends. So why would you think I want another of your favours?’

  ‘The last one worked out well enough, didn’t it.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘If not for me, you wouldn’t be here, Genevieve. You would no longer be master of your own destiny. Instead, you would be blood-bonded to a vampire, your blood and your body and your magic his to use as he willed.’

  Okaaay, now that was stretching things. A lot.

  The Mr October mess might have ended up with the vamp whose blood-bond I’d taken dead, and nothing left but scattered ashes, but other than the ‘drinking her blood’ favour - and how much help that had actually been was still debatable - Hannah hadn’t had much to do with it. Still, it wasn’t worth the argument; she was just warming up her sales pitch, after all. We both knew that.

  ‘Just get on with it,’ I said, resigned. ‘Then go.’

  She leaned closer. ‘You’ve got 3V, Genevieve. Everyone’s talking about it - the vamps, the witches, the blood-pets - and those that didn’t see you get bitten last month heard about it. And without a regular shot of venom—’ She pulled a sympathetic face. ‘There’s the constant headache, the hot flushes followed by agonising stomach pains, the incessant need to scratch, the heavy labouring of your heart, the extreme fatigue ...’

  She sounded like one of the hard-hitting infomercials for HOPE.

  ‘... and that’s not even the worst, is it?’ She pointed at my new pets swimming lazily in their goldfish bowl, her face screwing up in disgust. ‘I mean, ew! Leeches! Then what’s going to happen when the cravings get too much for you? When you suffer a stroke or a heart attack? You’re sidhe, your body won’t die, it’ll recover eventually, but the cravings will shatter your mind and send you insane. Is that truly what you want?’

  Did she really expect me to answer that?

  ‘And these aren’t the solution either.’ She placed a packet of little black pills on the counter between us; no doubt pinched from my bathroom.

  She was right, taking the G-Zav - the vamp-junkies’ methadone - might work on humans, but my sidhe metabolism is too fast; the reason why I was popping the pills like they were going out of fashion.

  ‘Of course,’ she carried on, ‘unlike everyone else, you and I know you’ve had 3V for, oh, ten years, isn’t it now?’ She tapped the tablets. ‘And while you might be fooling them into thinking these are how you’re coping, I recognised the spell-tattoo on your hip; we both know how you’ve been satisfying your needs.’

  Ri-ight! She’d seen the tattoo when she’d done me the ‘blood-drinking favour’. I’d bought an all-singing, all-dancing, all-blood-sucking Disguise spell from the Ancient One, a sorcerer who’d been around a lot longer than Hannah. Venom is so addictive that even vampires still need a regular fix, usually from other vamps - or secondhand from a convenient blood-pet - so using magic to give myself all the attributes of a vamp in order to hunt Sucker Town in safety had seemed like a good idea at the time. Trouble was, the spell might’ve been solving my venom-cravings for the last three years, but lately I’d discovered it had turned out to be not so much a disguise as a whole new body - one that already belonged to someone, a vampire called Rosa.

  It was another problem on my to-sort-out list, after the vamps, my neighbours, Cosette - and now Hannah.

  It was getting to be a long list.

  ‘But here’s the dilemma,’ Hannah continued, lowering her voice. ‘Now that Malik al-Khan has discovered you’ve been borrowing the body of his beloved Rosa, he’s not going to let you continue with that little charade, no matter how closely yours and Rosa’s bodies are entwined.’

  She wasn’t wrong. Malik had threatened to kill me over Rosa’s body. But since he’d thrown away the opportunity when he’d had the chance, and had now done a vanishing act, Hannah’s assessment of my problem was out of date, as was her knowledge. It also meant he hadn’t sent her here in his place.

  ‘Okay, Hannah,’ I said, drily. ‘We’ve done the doom and gloom bit, so why don’t you show me the light at the end of the tunnel.’

  ‘Here’s your light, Genevieve.’ She reached up and cupped Darius’ face. ‘Young and handsome and so recently Gifted that he’s both biddable and controllable. And he has no master, no one to tell tales to, so no one need ever know what you do with him.’

  No master? I frowned at him. That wasn’t possible, was it? Unless—? Well, maybe shacking up with an evil sorcerer had its compensations.

  ‘Doesn’t Darius have anything to say about it?’

  She smiled up at him. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he grinned, enthusiastically flashing his fangs.

  Now I remembered: Darius was a man of few words and that was his favourite. If it wasn’t for the predatory intelligence lurking in his eyes, I’d have thought him simple.

  ‘Think about it,’ she said softly. ‘No need for tablets, no need to be at the mercy of any vamp that takes a fancy to you, no need to do any deals with them. Freedom, independence and control of your own life. And look at him, he’s the icing on the cake.’

  She could be reading my mind with her offer - in fact, I wasn’t sure she wasn’t - but even as I considered her little scenario, I knew it wouldn’t work, not in the long run. Darius might not belong to a master vamp now, but as soon as one of them found out I was using him as a venom-pet that would change. Never mind that even contemplating the role reversal bit was giving me a queasy feeling in my stomach; I was anti being a blood-slave myself, so no way did I want to own one, however willing he appeared. Then there was the other, Hannah-sized, fly in the ointment: Darius might not have a master vamp calling his shots, but he did have her - a sorcerer. Whoever she was working for, herself or someone else, she wasn’t here for my benefit.

  ‘So how do you think this would work then?�
� I said slowly. ‘Do we split the week between us and give him the seventh night off?’

  ‘If that is what you want.’ She smiled.

  ‘I’m kind of more interested in what you want, Hannah. Like, what you were looking for and didn’t find when you searched my flat?’

  She patted Darius’ chest. ‘Looks like we’ve been rumbled, my pet.’ She glanced round before giving me a rueful smile. ‘There wasn’t much to search, though - oh, don’t get me wrong, I like what you’ve done with the place, but wouldn’t you like something more—Well, some place where Darius could pop by and no one would notice, somewhere that belonged to you that wasn’t dependant on the charity of the Witches’ Council?’

  Now we were getting to the cherry on top. ‘Okay, now I’m biting.’

  Satisfaction flickered in her eyes. She leaned forward, eager to close the sale. ‘You were given a present from the Earl’ - London’s big-cheese vamp, the vamp I’d given my blood-bond to, the vamp now thankfully waterlogged ashes - ‘he gave you a Fabergé egg containing a sapphire pendant. It was one of the earliest, made in 1886 in Saint Petersburg as a gift from Tsar Alexander III to Tsarina Maria Fyodorovna, and is, according to records, now lost.’ She held her hands out. ‘All you need to do is sell it.’

  My mouth almost dropped open. The Fabergé egg was some cherry!

  I’d all but forgotten all about it - probably because I’d never wanted it in the first place, or ever considered it mine. The Earl had given it me during the Mr October thing, not so much as a present, but more a sort of gem-studded blackmail note, an added inducement to get me to take his blood-bond. And while I’d realised it was valuable - it was Fabergé, after all - I’d sort of imagined it was a recent one, or an expensive copy, not a lost original.

  And how the hell did Hannah even know about it?

  ‘Oh and before you say you don’t have it, Genny’ - her smile hardened - ‘just remember I used to look after the Earl’s business activities. I know he gave you the Fabergé since I arranged its delivery to you myself. On his behalf, of course.’

  I narrowed my eyes at her thoughtfully. There was something wrong with what she was saying, only I couldn’t quite work it—

  ‘I have contacts, Genevieve,’ Hannah carried on, her voice brisk and businesslike. ‘I can arrange for a quick sale at a good price; sixty per cent to you, forty to me, and the services of Darius here whenever you need them.’ Her look turned sly and she touched a finger to the base of my throat. ‘On his own, or, if you prefer, a ménage à trois?’

  I didn’t bother answering that one.

  ‘Here are my details,’ she added, holding out her hand palm up.

  Darius produced a card from somewhere, reminding me of a well-trained magician’s assistant. She placed it on the counter next to the G-Zav pills.

  ‘Call me tomorrow and we’ll set up a meeting to arrange the sale.’ She smiled. ‘I think this could be a very profitable and enjoyable relationship for both of us.’

  I stood sipping my vodka and watched them leave, then turned on my computer.

  ‘The egg’s worth how much?’ Grace spluttered coffee, her brown eyes widening with shock.

  I snagged a clean dishcloth from under the sink, rinsed it under the tap and held it out to her. ‘Ten to twelve million quid, if you believe Google,’ I repeated, grinning at her wide-eyed amazement. ‘It’s a Fabergé, after all.’

  ‘Goddess!’ She blinked, then took the cloth and dabbed thoughtfully at her baggy jumper.

  I studied her, worried about how tired she looked. The bruised circles under her eyes and the slight grey tinge to her latte-coloured skin made her look a good five years older than her actual twenty-nine, and her plump shoulders were on their ‘been working too long’ downward slump. I wished she’d take a break and not push herself so hard all the time, only that argument was older than all our more recent ones about me and the vamps. But since my place is nearer to HOPE than her house in Wimbledon, at least she’d agreed to crash with me if she was on back-to-back shifts, rather than camp out in her office at the clinic. Although tonight that plan wasn’t working out too well. When she’d finally got away after her emergency, it was only to end up helping me in my cleaning frenzy as I tried to rid my flat of the nasty lingering presence of my uninvited visitors.

  ‘It’s a good job the egg wasn’t still here then,’ she said, throwing the cloth into the sink. ‘People have killed for much less than that.’

  I snorted. ‘Tell me about it.’

  Luckily, the egg was locked away in a bank vault rather than cluttering up my flat, otherwise I’d probably not have seen it again in this life - or much else, once Hannah and her lap-dancing fang-pet had disposed of me.

  Fae might be hard to kill, we might live for centuries, but we’re not immortal, and certainly not where that amount of money is involved.

  Grace dried her hands and then shoved them into her short, curly hair and shook her head. ‘Grrr, I hate it when things like this happen to you.’ She dropped her hands and narrowed her eyes at me. ‘So, what are you going to do about it, Genny?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet,’ I said, keeping my tone casual. ‘I suppose try and find out who the egg really belongs to now the Earl’s dead and take it from there.’

  ‘Which means talking to that vampire, Malik, doesn’t it?’ She pressed her lips together and gave me her concerned look, the one that had disapproval skirting round its edges.

  ‘Grace, I can’t survive on these.’ I poked at the G-Zav tablets sitting on the counter between us. ‘You know what I was like before I bought the Disguise spell - some days I couldn’t do much more than sit and shake, the cravings got so bad. And I can’t use the spell any more, not now I know the truth about it.’

  She gazed at me for a moment, indecision wavering on her face, then sighed. ‘I know you can’t, Genny. It’s not morally right to use someone else’s body like that, not even a vamp’s.’

  ‘And Hannah Ashby’s little visit on top of all the invites from the vamps sort of means I can’t stall any longer, however much you want me to,’ I said quietly. ‘I need to sort it all out and Malik appears to be the best way.’

  ‘I’m not disagreeing, not now. It’s just—Oh heck, Genny, you know what the vampires are like, better than I do,’ she said, frustrated, then she threw her hands in the air in reluctant acceptance. ‘What am I saying? Of course you know better than me, you were brought up with them, although Goddess knows what that must have been like.’

  ‘I’ve told you!’ I gave her a teasing smile, trying to lighten her mood. ‘Not much different from any other child’s whose father is still living according to eighteenth-century Russian aristocratic traditions, with nannies, private tutors, servants, learning how to dance, dressing for dinner ...’

  ‘Exactly.’ She laughed, sounding slightly dismayed, and crossed her arms. ‘There’s just no way I could ever imagine dinner.’

  ‘Okay, I admit it,’ I said drily, ‘I was the only one whose meals turned up on a plate instead of on two feet, but hey, I was a kid, I didn’t know any different, so to me that was normal.’

  And okay, occasionally someone would get too enthusiastic over their ‘food’, but accidents happen - as Matilde, my stepmother would say - and then the ‘accidental meal’ would continue to walk around - looking confused and a bit misty - even after the ‘leftovers’ had been ‘disposed of ’ ... but nearly everyone has phobias, don’t they? Spiders are Grace’s, mine just happens to be ghosts.

  ‘And dinner was always very civilised,’ I grinned, just to distract Grace a bit more. ‘Wrists only, of course.’ Which was true; anything else was behind closed doors. My father had strict rules about that. So I’d never seen anything like Hannah and Darius’ vamped-up sex show until my first visit to Sucker Town. My father would have been horrified, same as Grace was when I’d told her about it, albeit for different reasons.

  ‘Yes, it was so civilised that you ran away when you were fourteen,’ Grace said, he
r voice still concerned, but with a thread of reproach for my teasing.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ I sighed, instantly apologetic, ‘as I told you, it wasn’t so much to do with my father as with a mistake he made.’ Like arranging for me to marry another vampire, a future I was utterly happy with, until the vamp turned out to be a psychotic sadist.

  ‘Are you sure that you’re not making the same mistake with this Malik?’ Her forehead creased with worry.

  ‘I’m not planning on getting that close to him’ - despite the traitorous thoughts my libido occasionally had - no, I was aiming to keep any future association between us at arm’s length. Literally. Malik coveted my blood, had done since I was four; I needed his protection and his venom, so the wrist was as good a meeting place as any. It was what I’d planned to tell him when he next put in an appearance - only now it looked like I’d have to go and find him. Which would give him the upper hand - not such a great negotiating position.