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That sort of made sense: except the Moths usually vacated their bodies as temporary ghosts, not as squatting tenants.
‘I do not understand how they return to their bodies,’ he carried on. ‘Francine can only tell me that they fly when their blood sings to them, but she tells me their spirits are less susceptible to losing themselves if they return before their bodies are fully healed. She also tells me that those Moths who are able to perform this trick have some fae magic in their blood.’
The Moths were fae, or at least had an ancestor who was fae? Interesting—and reassuring, given I was just about to try the same trick. ‘Okay,’ I said, looking from him to Francine, ‘so how do we make my blood sing to me?’
Francine drew her lips back and her tiny venom fangs sprang down. ‘The vampire, he make the blood sing,’ she murmured.
Lovely. I—or rather, my body—was going to get a shot of the real stuff. I’d really fall off the blood-fruit wagon after that—
‘ Umm, I think maybe I already venom-stuck you, Ge
‘ It wasn’t your fault,’ I muttered, scowling at Mad Max who was still giving me the evil eye from the floor, and feeling that same fuzz in Darius’ mind again. There was something there he didn’t want me to know … about my blood … and someone called Andy … he’d made a promise not to tell—
‘Genevieve?’ Malik touched my/Darius’ face and the thoughts scattered. I blinked and looked up at him. Compassion softened his expression. ‘You have no need to worry,’ he said softly. ‘I will find a way if this does not succeed. But first we shall try this?’
I didn’t tell him I wasn’t worried, or rather, I hadn’t been until I caught a glimpse of his own anxiety beneath the compassion. My heart gave a happy little lurch that he cared, and I flashed him a smile big enough to reassure both of us. ‘Hey, I’m hard to kill, remember? Not to mention I’ve got two goddesses on my case, so no doubt one of them is watching over me.’
He gave me a long, pensive look, then nodded. ‘Good, then Francine will finish her preparations.’
Francine stepped forward, jumped up and grabbed something hanging above. The somethingdropped down with a great clanking noise and turned out to be a thick, heavy chain with an odd leather-belt contraption on its end. The chain was attached to a pulley bolted into the ceiling.
I started to wonder what on earth it was for, but almost immediately images flashed in my mind of naked bodies dangling down, the leather belt-thing strapped tightly around their ankles, then the images were quickly replaced by a wide expanse of blank white wall, and the knowledge that Darius was embarrassed and trying not to think about anything else.
‘ Tell me you haven’t killed anyone with that,’ I demanded.
‘ No!’ His answer blasted through me with enough shock and horror, along with a flash of something very definitely to do with sex, that I had absolutely no trouble believing him.
Francine hunkered down at Mad Max’s feet and efficiently buckled the leather contraption—‘ Ankle cuffs,’ Darius murmured from behind his white wall—around Mad Max’s legs, and started hoisting him up.
‘What’s she preparing him for?’ I asked, sincerely doubting Mad Max was being strung up for the usual reasons.
‘Your body is too depleted of blood for your heart to beat on its own,’ Malik explained. ‘You need a transfusion before you can be fully healed. Maxim is a suitable donor, but with his heart stopped by the knives, we will need gravity to aid the transfer.’
I frowned, not thrilled about having Mad Max’s blood in my body. ‘Why can’t I have your blood at the same time as you heal me, like you did before?’
‘You need more blood than I can safely give you, Genevieve. Such quantity as you require would risk afflicting you with my curse.’
‘Okay,’ I said, puzzled, and not entirely understanding his worry. ‘But I’m not human, I’m sidhe. Your curse can’t affect me, because I can’t become a vampire. The magic doesn’t work that way.’
‘That would be true if you were full-blood sidhe,’ he said quietly, ‘but your father is a vampire.’
‘No, my father being a vampire is irrelevant,’ I said firmly. ‘Sidhe reproduction is different, so I ama full-blood sidhe—I’m like a clone of my mother; that’s how it works.’
‘I am not willing to take that gamble,’ Malik insisted, ‘not when his blood will suffice.’ He waved at Mad Max, now swaying gently above my actual body. His arms and long silver hair were just inches above my body’s face and I wrinkled my/ Darius’ face in disgust as I clicked exactly how I was going to get Mad Max’s blood: I just knew he was going to taste bad.
‘Fine,’ I agreed. Getting back in my body was the priority, not worrying about whose blood I was going to get. ‘So what’s next?’
‘Darius should feed now,’ Malik said, an edge of displeasure in his voice. ‘Sparingly,’ he added.
‘Okay, let’s do it,’ I said, then as Darius stopped hovering unobtrusively behind his white wall and leaned us eagerly towards my body’s neck, I added; ‘ From the wrist.’ Ignoring his vague disappointment, I/Darius lifted up my limp hand, the one we were still clutching, and we sniffed the sweet honey scent that pulsed just under the skin. Hunger cramped our stomach, and we struck—
—thick viscous, honey-tasting blood burst into our mouth—
Cold, socold … every beat of my heart hurt, as if a large hand were gripping it and squeezing, the fingers digging in painfully, then a brief second of respite before the hand gripped and squeezed all over again, like some torturous mechanical pump. I screamed, desperate to get away from the unbearable agony …
‘ Drink, Genevieve,’ Malik’s voice commanded in my mind, and as Mad Max’s metallic, sour-tasting blood touched my lips, I opened my mouth and let it flood in, swallowing convulsively as it hit the back of my throat—
He watched as the boy slid down the slide squealing with pure joy. The security lights flooded the playground in a bright white light that kept the night at bay, and turned the boy’s blond curls silver. He wanted to pick him up, lift him and swing him round, and tell him he could fly. Tell him he loved him. It was something the old man had done when he’d been the boy’s age: a small, happy thing in among the ever-constant fear. But he hugged the want to himself, tucked it away in his heart. She’d never allow it. It had taken five years from the boy’s birth until now for her to grudge him this one brief glimpse from a distance. And he didn’t want to give the bitch the satisfaction of seeing his need. Or his pain.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I came awake in an instant, fully aware of where I was: in my own bed, in my PJs, covered by a cool cotton sheet, and aware of who was with me: Malik. The moonlight filtering in through the window left the corners of the room in shadow, turned the wardrobe and chest to dark, silent sentinels and muted the white-painted walls to grey, the same greyness that clung like mist to my mind. As I pushed into the mist, so pieces of events came back to me: the vibration of a vehicle, the hot splash of a shower, and Malik’s constant caring presence.
I ran my hand over my stomach, tentatively investigating it—magic sparked as I brushed over Tavish’s handprint spell—and found my injury healed—
‘The metal is removed, Genevieve.’ Malik’s voice was soft; a brief push of mesmagiving the words a soothing note.
‘Thank you,’ I said quietly, deeply grateful.
The soothing touch of his mesmaand his presence in my head withdrew. I turned to look at him.
He lay on his side, his head propped on his hand, watching me out of his dark, exotic eyes. The moonlight glinted off the black stone in his left earlobe, played over the pale, gleaming skin of his shoulder and along the muscled contours of his arm, but left his bare chest in shadow. My gaze followed his arm down to where his hand rested on his leather-clad thigh— and stopped. Part of me—the part that was all instinct and lust and heat—was disappointed, even frustrated that he was still half-dressed. The rest of me was intrigued, albeit slightly wary.