And then there was Ana, or Annan, Clíona’s great-granddaughter, who was pregnant, and whose mother Brigitta was dead because of the curse (and the vamps), and whose grandmother, Rhiannon/Angel, had suffered at the hands of London’s fae because of it. So when it came to the curse, Ana had ‘victim’ stamped all her, even without the Morrígan appearing as a bean nighe. But that didn’t mean she had anything to do with the missing faelings, other than she was a faeling herself. I sipped my juice. Maybe I’d find out more when I visited Ana tomorrow for our little who’s-the-vamp chat?
There was nothing more I could do about the missing faelings until tomorrow now, other than email Hugh some questions:
The missing faelings since Hallowe’en—how many have corvid
blood, or connections to the Morrígan?
And do any have dealings with any of the satyrs?
Check out Ana (Victoria Harrier’s daughter-in-law)—possible future victim.
I went to press send, then stopped and added:
Did any of them worship The Mother?
Someone was annoying Her with their prayers, enough to make Her do something, so it was a clue Hugh needed to know, whether it would lead to anything or not. He was the one really investigating the poor faeling’s death, after all. Then recalling another vague suspicion I’d had, I added:
Maybe have someone look at yesterday’s circle; I think there was something wrong with the way the yew was laid out …
I pressed send, and hoped that The Mother’s gag clause didn’t extend to cyber-space, not that I’d put much in the email. The message disappeared, but whether it would get there … I sent him a text too, just in case.
I closed the computer down, then padded over to the kitchen and touched the empty cut-glass fruit bowl on the counter. The bowl’s diamond-cut facets shimmered with a sudden rainbow of colours, highlighting the engraved glyphs. I dipped my hand in … and an apple, painted gold, appeared as my fingers passed its edge.
‘Symbol of fertility,’ whispered the bowl. ‘The forbidden fruit. The poisoned gift. The healthgiver; an apple a day keeps the vampires away.’
I sighed, exasperated, and withdrew my hand. ‘I’ve told you,’ I muttered, ‘I hate apples.’ And magical artefacts that had their own snide opinions. The bowl had been a boon from Clíona in return for finding Angel at Hallowe’en. The magical blood-fruit it produced was the equivalent of the humans’ G-Zav—faerie methadone for the 3V infection—and while it didn’t cure my venom addiction, at least with the blood-fruit, I was the one in control. So long as I didn’t let a vamp actually stick their fangs in me.
The bowl gave a small, irritated cough, and the apple was replaced by five gleaming, silver-painted blackberries. ‘Sacred fruit of the Goddess. Fruit of the fae. Healer of wounds. Seeds of hope and rebirth—’
‘Yeah, okay, I get it,’ I muttered and gathered them up. The blood-fruit burst on my tongue, sweet and tart with the faint liquorice flavour of vamp venom, the juice flowing down my throat like warm blood. My libido went straight to Red Alert—which was why I usually followed the blood-fruit with a cup of cold lamb’s blood: it knocked the annoying sexual cravings on the head. But despite Sylvia’s obvious enjoyment of the blood, I wasn’t prepared to lick it off the floorboards, and the feelings would wear off by the time I got to my evening’s appointment.
And as I was running short on daylight, I needed to get a move on.
I whipped my T-shirt off, turned it inside out and put it back on, then tucked my hair into my black baseball cap with its See-Me-Not spell; my standard operating procedure when I wanted to stay below the fae’s radar. It appeared to have been working, because even with Bandana following me, no one (including Finn!) had ever mentioned my outings.
I grabbed the padded backpack with the insulated compartment from under the sink, opened the fridge, and carefully transferred the three bags of blood—my blood—from the middle shelf. The blood-fruit controlled my venom addiction, but like anyone infected with 3V, my body still produced much more blood than it needed. Bags were way better than leeches (the slimy sort, not the fanged sort) at getting rid of it.
Time to go to Sucker Town, make my weekly donation, and see what insider info I could glean about Malik before the beautiful, over-protective, and maybe still angry vamp got my message at sunset.
Chapter Eighteen
‘Sure you want to get out ’ere, luv?’ The taxi driver took my money with a morose expression. ‘Them vamps, they ain’t like regular people. One of me mates, ’is kid got mixed up wiv ’em and ’e ended up in rehab at that ’OPE clinic. An’ I gotta tell you too, luv, that you don’t get no human cab drivers after dark ’ere in Sucker Town, just them Gold Goblin cabs. Regulations, innit.’
Sucker Town: home to the B-, C- and Scary-list London vamps, venom-junkies and blood-groupies, not to mention the occasional marauding fang-gang. Of course, between the licensing laws, the Beater goblin security force and the local vamps wanting to cash in on the same tourist money the mainstream city centre clubs were raking in, the place isn’t as dangerous as it used to be, even six or seven months ago. And thanks to Malik giving me his protection, I was now probably safer in Sucker Town—which the rest of the fae avoid like vamps shun sunlight—than in any other part of London.
I gave the taxi driver a wry smile, tucked my cap in my backpack, and hitched it on my shoulder. ‘I’m sure. But thanks for the concern.’
‘Suit yerself, luv, yer funeral,’ he called even more glumly as he drove off, leaving a fug of exhaust fumes in his wake.
‘Everyone’s a comedian,’ I murmured and turned round to face the entrance of Sucker Town’s newest, hottest vampire establishment: the Coffin Club.
I looked up at the sun, half disappeared behind the row of warehouses, and at the shadows creeping over from the other side of the quiet industrial park, and an anxious itch crawled down my spine. Instead of going in the club, I walked along the side of the building past the life-sized posters advertising the club’s vamps until I came to Darius, the vamp I’d come to see. Except he wasn’t called Darius any more, not officially, anyway, but William, as in William Wallace. In the poster he was dressed in full kilt and regalia (minus the blue face paint). He looked great, but then, the tall, tawny-haired vamp had always looked like he’d just stepped off the front of a romance novel, even when he’d been a human blood-pet.
Darius and his Moth-girl girlfriend, Sharon, had come to my rescue on All Hallows’ Eve during the demon attack. Darius survived, but sadly Sharon didn’t—but as she died, she had asked me to watch over him. I owed them both, big time, so it was an unspoken promise I was determined to keep.
Trouble was, watching over him had got complicated—and not in the way I’d thought it would. The first time I’d checked up on him, a couple of weeks after the attack, I’d come loaded up with so many defensive spells that I glowed brighter than the Christmas lights in Regent Street. Malik might have given me his protection, but even so, not taking precautions is just plain stupid. I expected the vamps to stalk me like cats scenting a mouse; instead, every one I came across tripped over their own feet and shoved each other out of the road in their panic to run away. I knew it wasn’t the spells scaring them off—vamps can’t see magic—which left me curious about exactly what Malik had done.
Darius had filled me in. Turned out, at sunset on Guy Fawkes’ Night, Elizabetta, head of the Golden Blade blood, had called together all four of London’s blood-families to witness her ascension to Oligarch and Head Fang of London’s High Table (I’d killed the last one a month earlier, so the position was vacant). Standing on the dais in the Challenge ring, surrounded by her bladesmen, Elizabetta had held her five-foot-long bronze sword aloft, then shouted for any who would oppose her to come forward. Right at the very end of the required minute’s expectant silence, just as she started to smile in triumph, her chest erupted in a spray of blood and bone, leaving a fist-sized empty hole where her heart had been; her head ripped itself from her neck, Exorcist-style, zoomed fifty feet straight up into the night sky and vanished; then her body combusted in white-hot flames. Within minutes her burning ashes were scattered by a nonexistent wind.