The Bloodshade Encounters & The Songspinner (Shadeborn Book 2) (14 page)

Miss Pritchard Awakened

Salem’s songspinning only lasted in the subject’s waking hours. Once the target of his magic had fallen into unconsciousness, the melody left their heads and they awoke with fresh realisation of what they had done in the thrall of Salem’s notes. It was for this reason that Salem always rose early to wake his lovers with a morning song. No soft-whispered tune was going to help Jane now, not as she beat her fists against Fen’s broad back and started to scream at the top of her lungs.

“Put me down, you brute! Put. Me. DOWN!”

“Oho, a fiery one,” Scholl chuckled, “I like it. Do as she says son, let me see this raging beauty you picked out for me.”

When Fen gave Salem the name of Miss Jane Pritchard as the new target, he had called her the most beautiful woman in London. Now Jane stood between the two massive wolf-men, eyeing them like a particularly vicious mouse caught between two overconfident cats. Salem admired the anger that burned in her heart as she railed at her captors, until she caught sight of the shade and flung out an accusing finger.

“You!” she demanded. “You were leading me here, weren’t you? I was a fool to trust you, Salem. I don’t know what ever possessed me to think that I loved you!”

He wanted to tell her that he’d almost stopped her from landing in Fen’s clutches, but somehow Salem didn’t feel that ‘almost’ was going to be good enough. He hated the way that ‘love’ had moved so sharply into the past tense on Jane’s lips, because it reminded him too much of Evangeline’s cold-hearted farewell. The venom in her gaze was enough to rile Salem, and a prideful anger was slowly replacing his guilty conscience.

“She’ll make a good wolf for your brood,” he said to Scholl. “How about we say ‘no charge’ for this one?”

The wolf leader raised a bushy brow.

“That’s very kind of you, Master Cross,” he said with a slight bow.

Salem nodded, turning as if to leave, but the meaty assailants who had dragged him in caught hold of him once more. They rotated him on the spot to face the wolf king and his prince again. Fen was holding Jane by her slender young throat. He gave Salem a sharp-toothed grin.

“Oh don’t go just yet, old boy,” Fen crooned. “There’s one more thing we’d like you to see.”

Jane shrank limply with fear, tears brimming at her eyes, but not quite ready to be released. The hand that Salem could see was balled into a fist and the other was secreted in her bodice, presumably clutched over her heart with shock. He found it hard to look at her, knowing that her bright eyes would soon darken with the onyx hue of werewolf kind.

“I’d be lying if I said it was a painless process,” Fen drawled, clearly taking enormous delight in the way Jane stared up at him, pale as a ghost.

“And of course,” Scholl added wickedly, “it’s far worse with
two
sets of teeth.”

He stood behind Jane, gripping her shoulders with the same ferocity that Fen had in holding her throat. The father and son dipped their heads, dancing a little as they decided who would take her left side and who would get her right. Salem stared on helplessly, knowing that any move he made would be rewarded with violence from the Wohlgamuths’ goons. The wolf and his son were ready to perform the bite. Jane spared Salem one final look and, though her body trembled, the expression in her beautiful eyes was curiously calm.

Scholl suddenly doubled over, a deep growl of pain leaping forth from his lips as he stumbled backwards, clutching at his groin. Salem had barely had time to register the fact that Jane must have kicked him before the loud crack of a gunshot ripped through the air. It was Fen’s turn then to tumble backwards, collapsing onto the floorboards as his hands flew to his taught, bare chest. Below his right pectoral was a small, dark wound, which was rapidly secreting blood. In its centre lay a circular bullet, not lodged too deeply, but made of something that shone like silver.

Jane Pritchard had not been clutching her chest with fear. She had been fumbling for her gun.

“Grab her!” Scholl demanded, his voice almost too strained to be comprehensible.

Jane tried to dash past Salem, but the henchmen who had been holding him were already moving in on her. With his captors now after Jane instead, Salem had a fleeting thought that he might be able to make his own escape, but another sharp bark from the werewolf king put paid to that idea.

“Cross too!” he ordered with a snarl. “He brought her here! He’s on her side!”

The pack had descended. As he was restrained by half a dozen pairs of clawed hands, Salem saw a crowd gathering to lift Fen off the ground. The young man thrashed violently in unspeakable agony as deep crimson blood continued to trickle from his chest. Salem heard Jane screaming, but she was behind him somewhere as the wolves dragged him forward through the chaos. He passed through a sea of snarling jaws and soulless eyes as he was shifted towards a stone stairwell, leading down into a black abyss.

Salem was halfway down those stairs before his eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. His lupine captors didn’t seem to have the same problem. Jane was still behind him, presumably being led to the same subterranean space which, Salem decided, was either going to be some sort of holding cell or a makeshift slaughterhouse. Knowing the Wohlgamuths as he did, Salem could have bet even money both ways.

“Pick up your feet,” growled one of the wolves at Salem’s side. “We need to get back to Scholl, see what he wants us to do with this filth.”

He dug his long nails into Salem’s shoulder as he spoke, and the sound of fabric tearing made the shade stumble forwards. The goons gave him a shove and he fell through a dark doorway, crashing to the floor of what looked like a small storage space. A gaslight hung above him, hardly lit. Seconds later a body slammed into his, its impact waylaid somewhat by its collection of petticoats. The solid door slammed shut behind Salem and Jane as they disentangled from one another on the floor.

“Blast,” Jane griped, her voice nowhere near to the floaty, sweet tone it had once possessed. “That bullet should have cut the blaggard through. I thought for certain it would, with the beast so brazenly bare-chested.”

Salem watched her silhouette in the faint gaslight as Jane gathered up her knees like a pouting child.

“There are two kinds of werewolves,” he offered by way of explanation. “The ones made from humans via the bite are the weak sort. Fen and Scholl were
born
wolves, from a mating pair. Their abilities are far more advanced than the rest of their gathering. That’s why they wanted to turn you. It’s a breeding pack.”

“I wish I’d been able to ask you that prior to this little outing,” Jane replied, pulling the ribbons and pins from her hair.

“You couldn’t help it,” Salem replied, his face flushed with shame. “You were in a kind of trance.”

He was about to explain the effects of his songspinning to her when Jane let rip with a loud, mocking laugh. Salem paused, trying to make out her amused look in the darkness.

“Of course I wasn’t, you imbecile,” she said with another guffaw.

It took the shade a long moment to fathom what she was telling him.

“What are you then?” he asked, “Immune to magic, or something?”

“You might call it that,” Jane replied, “though it’s not by a natural proclivity. That first night that you ever came to my window, I truly was under your little spell.”

He loathed the way she said ‘little’. Salem rose and started to pace around the dark chamber, the sense of being locked underground was starting to alarm his nerves.

“And after that night?” he prompted.

“My father may seem like a gentleman of leisure in London society, but our bloodline has a far more interesting heritage than simply being gentry.” Jane rose too, and Salem heard the ripping of fabric as she began to tear her petticoats away. “The Pritchard family are the foremost potioneers in the whole of England. Masters of the true apothecary, you might say. When I told Papa what had happened to me, he concocted a tincture that made me quite impervious to your melodies.”

Jane pulled the sleeves away from the bodice of her gown and reached beneath the topmost part of her skirt. A pair of rolled-up trousers fell from the spot and she stooped to put them on. In the course of an evening, she had transformed from a dizzy debutante into a woman of action, and Salem was loath to admit that he liked what he saw.

“If you knew what I was, then why go on meeting with me?” Salem asked.

For one foolish moment, he thought that Jane looked rather sentimental. The moment passed.

“Papa heard rumours of a Pied Piper type who was luring girls into the wolf den,” she explained simply. “We wanted to acquire the wolves for potion-making supplies. You were a means to an end, Master Cross, and nothing more.”

“Pretty smart fellow, your father,” Salem snarked bitterly, “letting his precious daughter be captured by werewolves.”

“Of course I had to be captured,” Jane replied with a smile. “How else do you suppose Papa would know where to set up the ambush?”

Surrounded

The stone walls of the cavity beneath the schoolhouse reverberated with the sounds of chaos. Jane took one of her hairpins to the lock on the door and soon she and Salem were back in the dark corridor, pacing slowly towards the stairs with the echo of violence filling their ears. When they reached the foot of the steep flight, Jane spun suddenly, a silver knife in her hand that Salem hadn’t even seen her draw. She narrowed her pretty eyes at him, levelling the knife with his face.

“Now tell me, Cross,” she whispered, “are you with us, or are you with them?”

Salem didn’t have to think for long about his answer.

“I’m on my own side,” he breathed back. “Your fight with the Wohlgamuths has got nothing to do with me. I just want to get out of this place alive.”

Jane lowered her knife, a familiar look filling her gaze. Disappointment. Salem knew its dull glow all too well.

“Yes,” she surmised coldly, “You’re the basest coward I’ve ever known, Salem Cross. At least be decent enough to distract a few wolves for me whilst you flee for your measly little life.”

She was uncouth enough to spit at the ground in front of him before she tore up the stairs and into the fray. Salem heard the desperate cries of people in need from both sides of the fight, but heeded none. He stood, frozen in the darkness, trying to summon enough shademagic in his blood to fly himself up and away from it all. His powers would not rise, overtaken as they were by the fear in his heart. Instead, Salem took in a breath and wet his lips with his cold, silver tongue.

He sang no words, only a scale of varying notes that echoed up the stone stairs, growing in quantity and volume as the architecture of the building helped his song to take flight. Once the sounds of the nearest scuffles began to cease, Salem ascended the stairs and continued his melody, until it filled the huge school hall with its glorious, magical sound. There must have been close to a hundred people in the space, humans and werewolves alike were standing still as statues. Some were blood-soaked and battered, but all of them now looked to the songspinner for guidance.

“Go back to where you came from,” Salem commanded. “Leave this place, all of you.”

The throng of once-violent creatures moved as one towards the door.

“No!” A voice shouted from within the mass. “Papa! Stop!”

It was Jane. Still immune to the song by the effects of her potion, she was lucid and pulling at the arm of her father. The tall, strong figure shambled away with a trance-like smile. Jane shot Salem a look of pure rancour, marching towards him through the placid flock.

“Do you realise what you’ve done?” she demanded. “This war was our chance to rid London of these freaks for once and for all!”

Salem knew the consequences of his deeds all too well.

“Humans,” he spat, “You think you’re so righteous once you have a little power in your corner. What would come after the wolves were wiped out, Jane? Would you come after my people next?”

She slapped him hard across his smooth cheek, leaving it stinging. Salem wished for every memory of her false sweetness to abate from his mind as Jane stared at him with poison in every facet of her face.

“Any and all that would presume to take this great city from us,” she replied.

Salem walked away, following his gaggle of entranced hostages as they sauntered casually away from their forgotten fray. Fen Wohlgamuth was among them, his chest wrapped securely in a bandage. In his hand, he carried the silver bullet from Jane’s pistol.

“That’s right Salem!” Jane shrieked with bitterness. “Dissolve the battle rather than prove your worth in the fight. See what woman ever finds you fit when you refuse to be a hero for her!”

Reminiscence

Night was slow to come in August. Salem stretched out his back, leaning forward in his armchair a little as he continued to will the sun to set outside the window. He set his elbows on his knees, resting his head on his chin and letting the ghosts of the past wreak havoc in his mind. Without them, there was nothing left in his life, nothing but the cycle of elements outside that window. Day, night, day, night. How many revolutions would it take before he felt even the barest twinge of magic in his blood again?

However far his thoughts took him from the present moment, sooner or later they returned to Evangeline. Mother Novel, as she called herself proudly after Lemarick’s mighty ascension into shade society, had never regarded Salem as a man of power. Even the talents that Gifter had given him had never worked on her, no matter how hard Salem tried. It was little wonder that she had laughed at his attempts to vanquish her, right up until the moment when he’d made the ultimate decision.

He remembered it often: the sight of Lily’s mouth streaming with the water that Mother Novel had flooded into her lungs. The convulsing of her young chest as she lay dying, his son’s first true love. Something in her pleading eyes, verging on the blackness of death, had reminded Salem of Jane’s last look before the Wohlgamuths moved in for their attack. He had leapt to Lily’s side and held back the flood for as long as he could, but saving her and stopping Evangeline at the same time were well out of his capacity. He was fortunate that Lemarick stepped in when he did.

Evangeline was out of the picture now. Salem wondered often to where exactly his sacrifice of powers had banished her, though he remembered very little of the moment when the shademagic had left his blood. One moment he was on his knees, failing beneath her onslaught of sheer elemental force, and the next she was encapsulated by light, fading from view and screaming in terror at the prospect of where that light would lead her. Salem, for his part, only knew that the crippling weakness he felt after the sacrifice had never left him, and now he woke every day to the same disappointing realisation that most of his life-force was gone.

The door creaked open, bringing Salem round from his musings with a disgruntled groan.

“What is this, a zoo?” he griped, refusing to turn and see who had entered. “I’m sick of being gawked at.”

“I can’t help it if I still think you’re handsome,” crooned a voice in reply.

Salem turned to see the owner of those sultry words and, for one horrible moment, he thought Evangeline had stepped right out of his head and into the room. The rouged lips and deep, dark eyes of the woman now appraising him threw him off balance, before reality set in and he realised who he was addressing.

“Dharma,” he surmised. “I thought you were Lemarick come to chide me again.”

“As if,” she said with a chuckle.

She sidled her curvaceous form towards Salem and perched herself on the armrest of his chair, leaning in to curl her fingertips around the back of his neck.

“I’m bored,” she sighed, toying with the hairs at his nape.

Salem leaned out of her touch. Being in his sorry state was foul enough in front of Lemarick and Lily, but at least they were more like family. Dharma was a sultry girl he’d flirted with and showed off to when he arrived at Piketon in his prime. Now, it felt as though she was here out of pity, a fact which both riled Salem and depressed him.

“I don’t feel like amusing you, sweetheart,” he said. “You picked a bad day.”

Dharma scoffed with great exaggeration.

“Every day’s a bad day for you now,” she moaned, “I mean, you lost your powers. Big deal. Life goes on, right?”

Salem rose from the chair so sharply that Dharma toppled backwards onto the floor. The siren must have realised the carelessness of what she had said, for she scrambled to her knees, trying to get out of Salem’s way as he stood over her, a sudden fury burning at his heart.

“Life goes on,” he repeated, his usually smooth voice laced with venom, “and that’s exactly the problem. How about I take away your youth and your allure and see how well you go on living without them? Let’s see how
bored
you are then, huh?”

He wanted a flurry of flames to come forth from his hands and dance across her perfect little face to frighten her, but when he raised his arms, none came. Dharma winced as though she too expected some kind of impact, but after a moment, a wry smile began to creep onto her luscious lips. She arose from the floor, dusting off her skimpy gown, her eyes glittering over Salem with smugness all the while.

“Oh, you’d
love
that wouldn’t you?” she said, hands rising to her hips. “You’d just love to see everyone else lose what’s most precious to them. I bet it’d make you feel so much better to smite them all and take their powers away.”

Dharma skipped forward, one finger raised, and poked Salem sharply over his heart. Her smile was crueller close up.

“But you
can’t
,” she added with evident glee. “You know, I used to be the weakest creature in this house. I thought we could have made the most of that feeling together. But now I’ve realised something.”

The siren looked down at her sharp, red nails, keeping the shade waiting. Salem wanted to run before she could deliver her final, vicious blow, but pride kept him rooted to the spot. He knew the fulsome curve in her lip, the malicious enjoyment that a woman could take in that last inhale before she delivered the words that would destroy any man’s soul. He had seen this all before, too many times in fact.

“You’re not good enough for me, Salem,” Dharma said. “I’ll bet you’ve never been good enough for any woman in your life.”