The Shifting Price of Prey (52 page)

Mate bond. What the hell was that?

‘This is wrong,’ Marc snapped, and silently I shouted agreement. ‘I told you, that girl I’ve been seeing, Claire. I was going to talk to her, I’m sure she’d
have agreed to the ritual willingly. She’s desperate to be more than human; she wouldn’t care what it meant. We didn’t have to do this.’

‘An’ I told you, lad. It weren’t gonna work, that redhead might have a smidge of something magic in her, but it ain’t enough. An’ anyways, she ain’t no
virgin—’

‘She says she was!’ Marc exclaimed. ‘She told me thrice.’

Was this guy for real? The thrice rule only worked for fullblood fae, not someone with a drop of magical blood.

‘Lad, the gnome ain’t guaranteeing that thrice rule works for a faeling. And even if yous was to try, even if it looked like it was working right, that redhead ain’t telling
truth about being a virgin, so yous both be dead soon as yous mated.’

They died if the mate wasn’t a virgin? Well, if they thought I was good to mate with Marc . . . no way in hell was that going to happen, even without the dying bit.

‘Better that,’ Marc said, ‘than kidnapping this poor woman.’

‘She’s a fairy, lad. Ain’t no comeback by the law when it comes to them.’

For the freaking last time; Not. A. Fairy!

‘She’s a person,’ Marc snapped.

‘She’s a fairy. Heck, we’ve been catching her sort for the gnome. Ain’t hear you sticking up for them, lad.’

‘They’re garden fairies, Carlson. She’s as different from them as we are from the tigers in that stupid zoo. And the fairies were already dead from natural causes. We
didn’t kill them.’

‘Ain’t killing her, lad. Just making her shift.’

‘What if she doesn’t shift? Then she’ll die,’ Marc said angrily. ‘That’s the same as killing her. Then what you going to do, Carlson, give her dead body to
the gnome so he can cut it up and sell it like the garden fairies?’

‘Ain’t gonna come to that, lad. She’ll shift.’

Even I could hear the doubt in his voice. Damn.

‘What if she’s not a virgin?’ Marc asked quietly.

‘Told you, lad, I got the feeling right here.’ A hollow thump sounded, like a fist on a chest. ‘Got it first outside the gnome’s in the park other night. I don’t
get that less they’re intact.’

Oh boy, was his feeling wrong. Stupid fucking idiot. He really needed to get his facts right. Not that I’d wish whatever ritual they were doing on anyone else.

‘I can’t feel anything,’ Marc said.

‘Course not, ’cos yous still an innocent yerself. Yous needs to go through the ritual afore you cans.’

He was lying. I could hear it in his voice. Question was, why?

‘Anyways, it was her or that young blonde yous been sniffing around.’

Katie! If they’d touched her, they were dead. Hell, they were dead anyway. They’d just be more dead.

A menacing growl reverberated through the air, raising the hairs at my nape. ‘Told you, Carlson. Stay away from Katie.’

I opened my eyes, blinked in relief and then frustration as I realised it was only my eyes I could move. I stared up. Firelight chased shadows over the rough-hewn rock. We were in a cave.

‘Aw, lad—’

‘The ritual is wrong,’ Marc’s yell cut him off. A stone flew over my head, crashing into the cave wall at the back. ‘The gnome must’ve stitched you up. That’s
why she’s not shifting. You’re working on the wrong information, Carlson.’

‘Look, so— lad, maybe the ritual needs a bit more time,’ Carlson said placatingly. ‘Ain’t doing yous any good brooding ’bout it now it’s done anyways.
She’s gonna be hungry once she shifts. Ain’t a bad idea if yous go hunting, get us all some victuals. Yous needs to keep yous strength up for the mating too.’

I was lying on
– the muscles of my neck freed and I turned my head – a pile of dark furs atop a bed of hay mixed with herbs. I made out the clean scent of sage and something
minty which smelled oddly enticing. But even with the herbs, hay and smoke from the fire filtering the air, I could still smell the sulphur and shit reek from the swampies. Good. They hadn’t
brought me too far into
Between
, then.

The two males sat either side of the fire, just inside the low gaping slash of the cave’s entrance. Beyond them, it was night outside. How long had I been here? Was this the same day, or
longer?

Carlson turned his head slightly, his gaze meeting mine without any visible reaction. His eyes were glowing eerily, reflecting like a cat’s.

I tried to shout, but my voice was still gone.

‘I’m not mating with her.’ Marc’s voice was firm as he stood, his head nearly brushing the cave’s roof as he raked his hands through his dark hair. ‘Better
she dies than be forced into something she hasn’t agreed to.’

‘If that’s how yous feeling, lad,’ Carlson said, his eyes not leaving mine. ‘Then fair enough. But if yous so concerned ’bout her feelings, ain’t it better if
yous give her the choice? Might be she’d choose to live as yous mate, ’stead of dying.’

Marc stilled with his hands on his head. After a long moment, a frustrated growl came from his throat. ‘Yeah, you’re right. It’s not my decision to make. I can’t change
what we’ve done to her, can’t take it back. But we can explain what’s what, then let her decide for herself.’

Fuck, this guy Carlson was good. Though if he thought I was going to jump on the get-mated-instead-of-dying bandwagon, like his pal Marc, he could think again.

‘Might as well fetch a brace of those rabbits we saw.’ Marc’s tone said he was resigned. ‘I’ll just check she’s okay first.’

‘Nah, yous git out there and hunt boy,’ Carlson said, ‘And check on Steve while yous out there. Make sure he ain’t gitting any trouble from that goat-man. Ain’t
wanting them swampies to git him.’

Finn. He was somewhere nearby. They had him. Captive, but alive.
Relief made me limp.

‘Okay,’ Marc said, pulling off his T-shirt, then he dropped his jeans, showing the cave he went commando. He took a deep breath, expanding his chest, and seemed to fall to the floor.
As he did so his human shape morphed into that of a grey and black striped big cat. The shift was fast and seamless and, even more worrying, I couldn’t feel any magic. If I couldn’t
feel it, then there was less chance I’d be able to use it to fight them. I pinged him. Only animal came back. Seconds before he’d pinged human. Well, that answered that question.
Ailuranthropes, and possibly all therianthropes, hit my inner radar as human or animal depending on what shape they were in.

Big Cat Marc padded out the cave and disappeared into the night.

Carlson stood, picked up a backpack from just inside the entrance, then grabbed what looked like a brush torch. He shoved it into the fire, making it flare up, then came towards me. He was
wearing jeans, his chest bare other than a wide bandage wrapped round his lower ribs. Grim satisfaction trickled through me. He was injured. Maybe Finn had got a horn in before he’d been
captured.

Carlson dropped the backpack down, jammed the fiery torch into a hole and crouched next to me. I glared at him as he lifted my head, pulled something from behind me and fastened it around my
throat. Not constricting, but tight enough that I could feel it was stiff, like new leather. A loud click at my nape, the chink of something metallic, and he lowered my head back into the furs. It
took me a stunned moment to realise he’d put a collar and chain on me.

A sudden image of Malik’s memory of the snow-covered plateau with Dilek a.k.a. Fur Jacket Girl werewolf, naked on her hands and knees inside an ash-marked circle, tethered by a leather
collar and chain, slammed into me. Whatever had been done to her, this male was planning on doing to me.

Terrified panic rose up in me. I shoved it back. Forced my hand to slowly clench around Ascalon’s ring. Marc the innocent was gone. Carlson the guilty was easily within sword distance and,
if the damn anaesthetic would wear off so I could move more than just my fingers and head, I was going to kill him.

Carlson the guilty moved to sit cross-legged out of my reach. He looked impassively at where I lay, the fire throwing half his face into shadow. ‘Yous ain’t no virgin,
girl.’

I
stared at him. It was a statement, not a question, surprising me, even though I knew he’d been lying earlier. Then I recalled his easy
manipulation of Marc. However stupid he’d initially sounded by supposedly not checking his facts, he wasn’t. ‘No, I’m not,’ I said calmly, then realised my mouth had
unfrozen and I could talk again.

‘S’pected as much.’ He patted his chest. ‘Yous don’t feel quite right.’

‘Then why didn’t you check?’ I asked, working on the age-old maxim that if the baddie wants to talk, let him; there’s always a chance he’ll tell you something you
can use against him. Of course, I didn’t really have any other option than to let Carlson talk. But I was curious. Somehow, for all his manipulations, I couldn’t see this guy letting
Marc try to mate with a non-virgin if it meant the younger male would die. Not that I’d have wanted Carlson to check. If I had my way he wasn’t leaving this cave, so there was no chance
of him kidnapping any other poor girls,
virgo intacta
or not, ever again. ‘All it would’ve taken was a simple medical examination,’ I added.

‘Ain’t only the physical that counts,’ he said. ‘Yous gotta be able to take the shift. Gnome says yous probably magical ’nuff it’ll work. That’s why I
were watching yous in the park.’

‘I heard,’ I said flatly.

He nodded, telling me he’d known I’d been listening. ‘Gnome said I should take the blonde, but ma nephew likes the girl. Knew he ain’t gonna agree to using
her.’

The blonde was Katie. Whether Marc agreed or not didn’t make me like him any better. He was out of Katie’s life, for good.

‘Lad wanted this redhead. Only, like I says, she definitely ain’t a virgin. I seen her with the gnome one time.’ His mouth turned down. ‘If yous know what I
mean.’

Ugh.

‘She got habits,’ he added.

Poor girl.

‘An’ once yous no longer intact, then even if yous shift, the mating kill yous.’

Nice. ‘So even though you thought I might not be a virgin,’ I said, voice dry as dust, ‘and even if I did shift, then this mating would kill me and your boy, Marc, you still
decided I was the one. I’ll be honest, leaving aside the whole kidnapping and performing magical rituals on me against my will thing, doesn’t sound like you’re on to a winner with
me. So why bother?’

‘We always birthed girl an’ boy kits till this last generation. Now we’s got four boy kits in need of mates. Ma nephew’s the first. If he ain’t getting a mate soon,
he ain’t gonna live. If all of thems ain’t getting mates in next five years, then our pride is dead. Adults ain’t living once kits all gone.’

I snorted. ‘C’mon, you can’t really expect me to believe that?’

‘We’s already lost seven male kits,’ he said softly. ‘We’s descended from old, old tigers. Tigers ain’t livin much past they be twenty or so. Ma
nephew’s twenty-four. Soon as his animal soul moves on, his human soul goes with it. Only thing keeps us all living is if we’s mated an’ having kits.’

Shifters had two souls? Was that the explanation for their long lives, the one Mary hadn’t got around to reading in the witch archives?

I narrowed my eyes. ‘But you’re older than him, and you’re not dead.’

‘I’s two hun’red an’ fifty-six. We’s ain’t ageing much once we’s mated, not till one of us passes. Ma mate, Shona, passed last month. It’s why
I’s doing the ritual. I’s dying soon anyways. But if the ritual working, then ma nephew gets a mate an’ he’ll live.’

And shifters didn’t die as long as they were mated. It would’ve been interesting if I wasn’t chained up. Still, I felt some satisfaction that Carlson was dying, slightly less
that Marc was too. Though if Carlson thought I was going to feel pity for them . . . ‘But I’m not a virgin. So the ritual was never going to work.’

He leaned forward. ‘The ritual ain’t finished yet. If yous shift, then we knows the ritual works. Not like when that chink weretiger tried it an’ killed them tree girls. It may
be too late for ma nephew, but ain’t for our other kits.’

It all fell into place. He’d gone ahead with the ritual because even if it didn’t work out fully, he’d hoped to learn enough for next time. I was a fucking experiment.

‘So yous can sit up now, girl.’

The anaesthetic vanished from my body, aches and pains rushed in and I groaned and sat up before I could stop myself.

‘Sorry,’ he said in a tone that didn’t sound it. ‘It takes yous like that.’

I groaned again. Less from the pain and more to give myself time to scope out the cave. Ice slid down my spine as I saw I
was
in an ash circle, glyphs glowing at intervals around the
circle’s edge, like the one Dilek had been in on the snow-covered plateau. Carlson was sitting outside the circle. I straightened, shoving aside the thick chain dangling from the collar
banding my neck. It disappeared beneath the furs, so presumably was attached there. But there was enough slack in it to strangle him, if I could get him close enough. But then if he was that close,
I could skewer him with Ascalon.