The Shifting Price of Prey [4] Read online

  Last time we’d met in the Dreamscape, he’d used Tower Bridge as a backdrop, but really it could be any place we were both familiar with, like oh, say, my bedroom? After all, I couldn’t get much safer than my own bed . . . My pulse raced as my Malik fantasies roared back to life, fuelled by our recent near miss. We’d been a breath away from sex. Lust and longing twisted low inside me. And, boy, was I missing sex after nearly a year of no touch but my own. Sighing, I traced the bruises on my breasts, following them down my body to the last mark, which disappeared beneath the lacy briefs, remembering the glorious feel of his hands on me—

  Sudden excruciating arousal made my legs buckle. I fell to my knees and, desperate for release, shoved a hand into my briefs. As soon as I touched myself, an orgasm rocked through me, more pain than pleasure. Panting, I collapsed against the mirror. My reflection stared back at me with molten-copper eyes wide with shock. Magic wreathed me in a swirling golden haze, and Malik’s marks suddenly gleamed like blood-tinted silver pennies.

  The mark on my wrist had never done that – I looked – was still not doing that. Arousal flamed through me again, making me feel I’d perish in agony if I didn’t come. This time it took much more than a touch to get me off as I crumpled over on the floor, forehead on the cold marble, arse in the air, my fingers working feverishly, unable to stop – what the fuck was wrong with me? – until finally the orgasm ripped through me as if the pain/pleasure were trying to tear me apart. I screamed my release, the sound reverberating like a banshee’s screech in the small room.

  The door slammed open.

  A vamp stood framed in the doorway, his platinum hair hanging loose around his shoulders, his hooded blue eyes cold as they scanned the room. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of a tongue-lolling Irish wolfhound’s head on it: an outfit that would’ve seemed odd if you didn’t know him.

  I did. He was Maxim Fyodor Zakharin a.k.a. Mad Max. My uncle on my sidhe mother’s side; or distant cousin on my vamp father’s side. Neither of the relationships were ones I wanted to acknowledge, even without the icky overtones of incest. Not that the family relationship, or the incest, stopped there; Mad Max had taken both further by having a fling with his niece, my half-sister Brigitta, who I’d never even known existed until I’d learned she’d been killed by the vamps. I say fling, but it was more than that, seeing as they’d had a kid together, Ana.

  But even without the close family connections, there was no way I trusted Mad Max. He was the Autarch’s pet vamp. He was a crazy sonofabitch who hardly cared for himself, much less anyone else; I’d seen him cheerfully stake his own father on a whim. And he was the vamp who’d kidnapped Katie last year. As relatives and vamps go, Mad Max was the last one anyone would want to see, even if they weren’t huddled half-naked on the floor, fighting a compulsion to pleasure themselves again.

  A compulsion my gut told me was magical.

  Somebody – the provider of the underwear? – must’ve sicced me with some sort of sex spell.

  But despite that, and the soreness between my legs telling me I’d been more than rough in my desperation, I still throbbed with arousal. I wanted. Needed. But my gut also told me another attempt at release was likely to drive me as crazy as Mad Max, and quite possibly render parts of me raw and bloody. What I wanted, needed, was something more.

  Mad Max stopped scanning and his gaze settled on me. For a moment he stared as if I were some strange specimen he’d never seen before, then he sniffed. A grin broke his face, flashing all four of his fangs. ‘Paddling the pink canoe, are you, Cousin? Good for you. But a bit of rumpy pumpy’s much more fun than flying solo. Want some company?’

  Not in a million years, and Touch me and I’ll stake you vied as answers in my head, but the Compulsion riding me had other ideas. It wasn’t too impressed with the faint reddish glow emanating from him, but it decided it was better than nothing, so even as part of me recoiled in horrified disbelief, I flung my magic at him. It snaked out, twisting round his limbs like thick golden vines, and my mouth growled, ‘Yes, I want company.’

  He barked a laugh, his eyes flashing from white to gold like manic warning lights. ‘It’ll be my pleasure, Cousin!’ And he stepped towards me, his stance familiar in a way I realised way too late to counter, as he shifted his weight, swung his leg in a fast roundhouse kick and his boot connected with my temple.

  The world exploded into the proverbial Milky Way of spinning stars—

  And I plunged into darkness.

  The world swam back into head-pounding, dimly lit focus. I still throbbed with arousal. Not as desperately as before, but more like banked embers that would burst into flame at the slightest breath of air. But the Compulsion nagged at me. On autopilot I tried to touch myself, only—

  I was tied down. On a bed. Spreadeagled like I was a star in some tacky bondage video.

  Panic roared up. I struggled, my screams muffled by the fabric gagging my mouth.

  ‘Good-oh, Cousin, nice to see you’re awake.’ Mad Max loomed over me, eyes burning white fire, and slapped something wet and warm over my thighs and between my legs.

  Enforced calm relaxed my body, muscles going limp as cooked noodles. My panic retreated deep inside, where it clawed and spat like a caged tiger; the pounding in my head diminished and everything around me took on a recognisable shape and form.

  I was in a hotel room, going by what I could see out of my oddly swollen eyes and the trickle of light coming from behind the wall of drawn curtains. The light’s sodium hue told me it was still night. As did the red electronic clock on the plasma TV opposite, which also told me I’d been here for a good hour.

  On the plasma a large St Bernard was lolloping after a blonde standard poodle. The St Bernard was wearing a bow tie, and streaming from the poodle’s collar was something white and lacy . . . a bridal veil? The sight was so surreal I stared until Mad Max grunted and pointed the remote. The TV flicked off.

  In its place, spent magic drifted like dust motes, and the place smelled of herbs, treacle and something vinegary. The same fabric – ripped sheets? – that gagged me was tied around my wrists and ankles, with knots that tightened as I gave an experimental tug. Silver banded my head— silver that stopped me using magic. Not that I had any, other than my Glamour. Which had obviously been so successful – not! – at trapping Mad Max earlier.

  I gave myself a quick mental once-over: as well as the silver burning my head, my skin itched from dried sweat, my body felt like a horde of Beater goblins had introduced me to their baseball bats, and the rawness in my throat suggested I’d been practising sword swallowing. The only part of me that didn’t hurt, or throb, was between my legs . . . numbed by whatever the warm wet thing was.

  Which would’ve been a whole new worry, if not for the enforced calm.

  Mad Max leaned over, poked my cheek. I glared up at him, wanting to knock his hands away.

  ‘Bleeding hell, love, you’re a hard nut to crack,’ he drawled. ‘I’ve met mountain trolls who break easier than you.’

  I was going to kill the sonofabitch.

  The white fire in his eyes faded. He settled into the chair next to the bed, crossed his arms over his bare chest, and stretched out long pale legs with an exaggerated sigh. All he was wearing was a pair of red boxers decorated with black coffins.

  It hit home that all I was wearing was the cream bra. I couldn’t feel the briefs, but I couldn’t tell if that was because I was numb, or they weren’t there.

  I lifted my head, straining to look. The wet warm thing moulded to me like a thick second skin was made of nubby towelling. It was pink-tinged, dotted with bits of green leaf and the magic in it glinted like the tiny chunks of glass of a smashed car windscreen. Did our mutual state of undress mean he’d had sex with me? After all, I’d been offering it to him on a plate – or the Sex-compulsion spell had. The panic and rage inside me threw itself against its cage, but the calm kept it contained.

  I jerked my chin at him and tried to spi
t the gag out.

  He got the message. ‘Start screaming,’ he warned, ‘and it goes straight back in.’

  I nodded, and he pulled it out.

  ‘Why—’ I coughed, licked my lips, which were split and tasted of my own dried blood, and started again. ‘Why the hell am I tied up?’

  ‘Just keeping you out of my pants, love. Much as I enjoy a bit of the rough stuff when it comes to foreplay, you’re a tad too forceful for my liking.’ He spread his arms wide. Long bloody furrows ran down his chest and stomach, disappearing into his red boxers, as if some rabid animal had attacked him; only a hazy memory told me the rabid animal had been me. I almost apologised, but he added, ‘Of course, as a bit of slap and tickle was all that was on the cards, I have to confess I did rather let my frustration get the better of me when it came to subduing you. But y’know, Cousin, what goes around, comes around.’

  The swollen eyes, split lip and various other pains made sense now.

  I’d attacked him once – he’d been hurting my friends – and had beaten his face almost to a pulp almost with a backpack full of bricks. He’d obviously decided to return the favour.

  ‘Bastard,’ I spat out.

  ‘Payback’s a bitch! Oh, no, wait! This time payback’s a dog!’ He chuckled then growled menacingly exactly like a dog, which was eerily apt since his other form was an Irish wolfhound. Like the picture on the T-shirt he was no longer wearing.

  ‘Why aren’t you dressed?’

  ‘Just being practical, Cousin.’ He pointed at my bottom half. ‘That’s a wet towel and I’ve got a bath full of Poultice potion.’

  Practical? Him?

  ‘But I ’spect you’re asking ’cause you’re wondering if I took you up on your offer to do the old in and out together,’ Mad Max continued cheerfully

  I gritted my teeth. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Enticing as making the beast with two backs with you might be, a few too many interested parties would get a tad upset about it. My loopy fruitcake of a sister with her part-time goddess gig, for one – or two, depending which way you look at it.’

  I wasn’t sure that his sister, a.k.a. my mother, Angel, would even notice, though she had spied on me magically in the past, but why was anyone’s guess. She wasn’t just loopy, but seemed to have the mental age of a five-year-old, so I doubted she even knew I was her daughter. Hell, I hadn’t even known she was my mother until I’d met her for only the second time three months ago. Until then I’d believed my mother died at my birth— all of which was something my head, never mind my heart, was still coming to terms with.

  And as for Angel’s goddess hitch-hiker, The Mother, well no way could I predict how she’d feel; it wasn’t like she’d been overly concerned about me in the past other than to dump me with a problem she couldn’t be bothered to solve herself. Though Mad Max knew them better, so if he thought they’d be ‘a tad upset’, I was happy to go along with him. On that, anyway.

  ‘Then there’s the Turk’ – he gave a dramatic shudder – ‘I’d have to be insane and suicidal to get on the wrong side of the great and powerful Malik al-Khan. Oh, and let’s not forget His Royal Brattiness—’

  ‘The Autarch’s not coming here!’ I interrupted as a spurt of panic overcame the spell’s calm.

  Mad Max waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, Cousin. It isn’t worth sticking my head above the parapet to tell him about your little problems. He enjoys eviscerating the messengers too much.’ He cocked a finger and mimed shooting himself in the head. ‘So, unluckily for you, Cousin, you’re doomed never to know the magnificence that is my love wand.’

  Relief flooded through me. Not that his self-serving restraint was going to stop me removing his love wand and shoving it, along with the rest of him, where the sun did shine, given half a chance.

  ‘Now, of course, you’re probably also wondering why we’re having ourselves a little bondage party here.’ He flashed a fang-filled grin. ‘I must admit I was too, for a while, since it’s unheard of for me to be so altruistic. But then I convinced myself that having everyone find out I’ve got more than one crazy relative was going to reflect particularly badly on me.’

  And they say chivalry is dead.

  ‘So I magnanimously opted to save you from beating around your own bush until some poor unsuspecting human stumbled into your Glamour.’

  The suspicious part of me wondered exactly how and why he’d been oh, so conveniently on hand to save me, but that thought was eclipsed by the horror of what could have happened. Humans can’t survive full-on sex with a sidhe outside of the Fair Lands. If a human had found me, I’d probably have fucked them to death.

  ‘I’m sure you can think of a suitable way to thank me later, Cousin,’ Mad Max said, a smug smirk on his face. ‘But I can’t always be waiting around to clear up your nasty little messes, so this lesson is by way of a heads up.’ He leaned forward in the chair. ‘So, listen carefully.’

  I snorted. ‘It’s not like I’ve got any choice.’

  ‘Good-oh!’ He wagged an admonishing finger at me. ‘Living like a nun while shacking up with a Fertility spell isn’t the best lifestyle choice for a sidhe fae.’

  I wasn’t shacking up with a Fertility spell, exactly. I was living with Sylvia, my friend who was pregnant. And Sylvia was wearing the sapphire pendant with the fae’s trapped fertility that had made that pregnancy possible. She and her partner, Ricou, had moved in with me after the ToLA case, due to their families arguing about where they should live; my flat was apparently nominated neutral territory. I hadn’t been too thrilled having new flatmates to begin with, but it had turned out to be fun, though evidently the fertility magic in the pendant had been having its own fun without any of us knowing— if I was to believe Mad Max.

  ‘Are you saying the pendant is’ – I eyed him mistrustfully – ‘spreading its magic around, or something?’

  ‘Leaking is the word you’re looking for,’ Mad Max said cheerfully. ‘Which means denial isn’t just a river in Egypt; for you, love, it’s a cracked dam leading to a flood of impromptu orgies every time you feel a tad frisky. Sticking your finger in the hole, however enthusiastically, isn’t going to do a damn thing.’ He gave a barking laugh then poked me in the side. ‘Dam and damn. Get it, Cousin?’

  I got it. Along with a jagged pain that said: cracked ribs. Sonofabitch had really gone for it with his payback.

  I also got what he was going on about: the stupid sidhe sex myth, the one where the humans all think we’re gagging for it at the drop of a hat thanks to the ancient fertility rites once held to replenish the land and encourage its future fecundity, and the salacious tales about the rites being huge free-for-all orgies. Tales I’d been told were the product of humans prurient imaginations, since the rites, usually held during the main equinoxes – like the Summer Solstice we were fast approaching – had always been well orchestrated, rigidly controlled and only for those specifically chosen participants who’d carefully prepared . . . by purposely abstaining from intercourse in the months leading up to the rite . . .

  Like I’d been abstaining!

  Shit! How could I have been such an idiot? I’d been obliviously setting myself up for my own personal fertility rite. And the Glamour I’d hit Malik with, along with the frustration of oh, so near sex, had flipped some sort of switch inside me. Only by the time it had, Malik was gone. Hence my desperate self-pleasuring (which really hadn’t been any pleasure at all) until Mad Max had turned up and the fertility magic blazing hot within me had decided it wanted a piece of him. Even though the thought of jumping his bones, blood relationship aside, was enough to make me want to throw up, it seemed being male had been enough for the magic to go, ‘Screw the crazy sonofabitch!’

  Maybe I should thank him for tying me up instead? Nah. Never gonna happen. I was pretty sure he’d gone for overkill, and even if he hadn’t, he was enjoying the pseudo BDSM way too much.

  I glared at him. ‘What’s the spell in the towel for?’r />
  ‘Oh, just a little magic poultice I cooked up to help you.’

  ‘Since when do vamps do magic?’

  ‘You forget, Cousin,’ he admonished, ‘that my mother is a sidhe queen. Clíona might have chosen to make me human and mortal, but I’m still a wizard by birth. Becoming a vamp didn’t change that.’

  I frowned, suspicious. Was he kidding me? Though now I thought about it, he would be a wizard, as the son of a sidhe and a human (as his dad had been, when Mad Max was – nauseatingly – conceived). And I’d never known any vamp who’d been anything other than a straight human before they’d Accepted the Gift – unsurprisingly, given the whole ancient Live and Let Live Tenets between the witches, wizards and vamps: the last thing they did was socialise. So a wizard keeping his magic after being given the Gift could be possible . . .

  ‘Though Mommie Dearest didn’t actually teach me anything. That was down to your sister, Brigitta.’ He gave me a cat-that’s-got-the-canary smile.

  Half-sister, I mentally corrected him, though you couldn’t tell by looking at Brigitta’s picture. We could’ve been twins, if she hadn’t been born forty-odd years before me. Even though I’d thought of her earlier when Mad Max had first appeared, his mentioning her again, and the fact she’d taught him magic, raised a mix of grief and anger that I’d never known her, along with the usual frustrated envy that she obviously hadn’t lacked anything in the magical ability department. Unlike me. But then Brigitta’s father had been the fossegrim, a lesser fae, while my father had been a vamp. For a moment I almost asked Mad Max whether he knew if our having different fathers was the reason why I couldn’t do magic, then I nixed that idea. No way was I going to discuss the ins and outs of anything with him. Instead, I scowled and said again, ‘What’s the spell in the towel do?’