I wrapped my legs round his thighs, locking my ankles together, bringing him hard against me. He stared down at me, rage lighting his black pupils, his own lips pulled back, all four of his fangs sharp and gleaming. I struggled beneath him, goading him; pain flared in my shoulder, building pleasure between my legs. He growled low and yanked my head to the side, stretching the tendons in my neck, exposing my throat.
Deep inside me a sliver of fear chilled the lust raging through my body.
He twisted my arm higher and pain bloomed hot and razor-sharp in my shoulder. Eagerness replaced the fear.
‘Break it and fuck me,’ I pleaded, my hips spasming against him with desperate lust even as a distant part of me recoiled in shock at my words.
The fury in his eyes turned to hot flames, flames that licked over my body as if to scorch the flesh from my bones. ‘No,’ he snarled, ‘I will not.’
‘Break my arm and fuck me,’ I screamed into his face. ‘It’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘Be still,’ he ordered, staring down at me, his eyes fixed on my throat, and in the silence I waited, frozen on his command, desperate for him to grant me pain, needing it, knowing that for him to hurt me was the only way he could bring me pleasure.
‘Please, Malik, I beg—’
‘You will not say it.’ The sorrow in his voice twisted like barbed wire round my heart. ‘I will not allow it ... you are not her.’ He lowered his mouth to mine, touching my lips briefly with his. ‘You. Are. Not. Rosa.’
Then he was gone.
The wire pierced my heart, leaving it bleeding, and I curled in on myself, hugging my knees to my chest, his grief battering against me as if it were a horde of Beater goblins. Tears of shame pricked my eyes that I hadn’t pleased him. I struggled to hold them back but they seared down my face, drowning me in hopelessness. Then the feelings were gone, shut off like a tap, replaced by an ice-cold stillness like the depths of frozen water.
I blinked and looked up.
Malik stood there, looking calm and remote. He pointed to his jacket lying in a heap on the floor. ‘Get up and put it on,’ he said, his voice expressionless.
Silently I grabbed the jacket and scrambled up; contorting so I could pull it on past the distant pain in my shoulder. The silk lining settled over my skin like a soothing caress. Using my good arm, I lifted my hair from where it was trapped by the jacket, feeling bewildered, almost numb as I clumsily buttoned it closed.
What had just happened? Or rather, whyhad it happened? Why had I asked—no, almost begged him—to hurt me? The feelings had felt like mine, but I was pretty sure they’d been Rosa’s. Fuck. There really was something wrong with the spell; why else would I experience her memories and her desirestwice in one night? This was sonot fucking good.
I wiped the tears from my face with the jacket cuff and shoved the thoughts away. The pain in my shoulder was almost gone as the spell healed it. All I had to do was get through this fealty thing tonight, then I’d never use the spell—never use Rosa’s body—again. I’d find some way to cut myself off from it, from her.
‘What happens now?’ I asked, a part of me still bemused by my own calmness, even though I could feel Malik smoothing over my thoughts.
He turned the key in the lift and it dipped slightly, taking my stomach with it, before the lights flickered on and it started to ascend. ‘We shall prepare for the oath, then once that is over we will go to the police station.’
The lift halted, the door gliding open. Blue carpet patterned with small silver hearts stretched down a long, empty corridor lined on one side with steel doors. I gathered the remnants of our clothes as he bade me, then followed him past half a dozen of the doors, my bare feet sinking into the thick carpet, until Malik stopped at one of them. He stilled, then lifted his chin, sniffing the air.
‘It appears we have company waiting for us,’ he said softly. ‘This is not a good sign.’
But before I could ask who, the door slid away into the wall and I had a brief moment of déjà vu. Hannah Ashby, dressed in her vamp-groupie outfit of pumpkin-coloured velvet bustier and black net skirt, stood in the opening.
‘Malik al-Khan, and the ever-delightful—Rosa.’ She arched one perfectly-drawn-in black brow in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘Don’t you think it might be better to enter instead of loitering about in the hallway?’ She gave a low chuckle, then stood back and ushered us past her.
Chapter Nineteen
My newly changed vampire senses picked up the base notes of patchouli and sandalwood in Hannah’s perfume, but for some reason the scent had the same effect as walking into the swamp-dragon’s cave. My eyes teared up. I dropped the clothes and clapped my hand over my mouth and nose as I choked on a coughing fit. I felt Malik’s hand at the small of my back as he pushed me into the room. I hurried to the far side, putting as much distance between me and the lung-burning scent as possible.
I slapped my hands over my eyes and concentrated, dialling my vamp body’s reactions down to nothing, cutting out the toxic smell, the slightly raised da daumof Hannah’s heartbeat, and the bitter chemical taste of the perfume that made me feel like I’d been sucking on a vamp junkie stoked up on crack as well as venom. After a couple of seconds, I stopped breathing, my heart stopped beating and the perfume was nothing more than a ghost-memory in my mind.
Dropping my hands, I pressed my fingers into my own sternum, where I could still feel the slight burn in my lungs. ‘What the hell is that perfume you’re wearing?’ I asked, glaring at Hannah.
‘It’s a bespoke perfume created by Roja Dove.’ She smiled, looking delighted. ‘He’s a renowned “nose”, trained at the House of Guerlain. He mixes liquid silver into the jus; I wear it as an added precaution when I want to avoid any confrontations with the club’s vampires.’
Liquid silver? No wonder my lungs were burning up.
Malik was standing just inside the door, his face almost hidden by shadows. His bare chest gleamed pale in the room’s dimmed light, the rose scar under his heart hardly visible, and he looked elegant and composed, despite wearing nothing but his suit trousers. Either Hannah’s perfume didn’t affect him as much, or he’d known what to expect and cut his senses off before taking a whiff of the noxious stuff.
The room itself didn’t manage to live up to Malik’s style. It could have been a lounge in any bland hotel suite, decorated in shades of blue with silver-fronted furniture: except for the floor-to-ceiling glass wall behind me. The glass wall gave a god’s-eye view of the Blue Heart’s dancefloor three floors below, packed with a mass of bodies undulating to a beat that vibrated through the glass, though I couldn’t actually hear anything.
Hannah had positioned herself behind one of two sofas, her hands resting on a familiar vamp’s broad shoulders—Darius, her personal fang-pet. He sat slumped, staring fixedly at me from half-lidded eyes. He was dressed as the last time I’d seen him, in my flat: naked apart from his diamanté Calvin Klein briefs and calf-high boots. Little beads of blood-tinged sweat shone on his forehead and trickled down his flushed romance-model’s chest. He looked like he’d been on a binge-drinking session and wasn’t far off collapsing into a blood-dream—the vamp equivalent of being utterly, totally drunk.
‘Of course, it doesn’t bother too many of the vamps in the club,’ Hannah carried on, ruffling Darius’ tawny waves. ‘Most of them keep themselves offline anyway, unless they’re actually feeding. And while there are plenty of willing donors walking around, once I’ve fed Darius here, I prefer not to worry about anyone else. So the perfume is my way of being safe rather than sorry.’
‘What is your reason for being here, Hannah?’ Malik’s voice was soft, a hint of threat riding along with his question.
I could probably hazard a guess that the answer had something to do with a Fabergé egg, seeing as she knew about my Disguise spell, and no doubt also knew that every other vamp in town was expecting ‘Rosa’ to turn up tonight with Malik and with me missing for the last couple of days, Hannah being here wasn’t really a surprise.