I smiled pleasantly. ‘Would it upset you if I arranged for them to be dispersed?’
A gleam lit his scarlet eyes. ‘You want to see bloodshed.’
‘I want to seetheirbloodshed,’ I corrected.
Athair crooked his little finger and snarls rippled through a section of the watching vamps. One of the ragged figures detached themselves and limped forward. A child: of course it was. Ice filled my veins but I maintained my smile.
The bloodsucker was small, perhaps only four feet high. There was no indication as to how she had died, but she clearlyhadn’t been dead for long. Although she had the pallid, bloodless skin of the undead, her clothes were immaculate and there were few signs of decomposition. She didn’t deserve this afterlife. None of those vamps did.
‘Here you go,’ Athair said with a friendly grin. ‘You can take this wee one’s blood if her existence bothers you so much.’ He raised his hand and patted her head gently.
As if on cue, a tear leaked out of her dull, glazed eyes. I knew it wasn’t as a result of any emotion she was feeling but just a physical irregularity; even so, it tore at my heart.
I set my jaw, slid Gladys out of her sheath and gazed at the undead child. ‘I will give you peace,’ I said, then I swung my blade and sliced off her head. It was a gruesome act to witness and it was even worse to be the instigator, but it was the fastest and least cruel method of sending her to oblivion where she belonged.
Athair pursed his lips and made a show of assessing my work. ‘You didn’t hesitate,’ he said. ‘I’m impressed.’ He paused. ‘But I remain concerned that you are too soft-hearted. That side of you will diminish when you become a fiend.’
‘And if I don’t become a fiend?’ I asked in a deliberately casual tone.
He smirked. ‘Your soft-hearted nature will make you suffer even more when I slowly torture and kill everyone you care about.’ He glanced over my shoulder at Hugo. ‘The blue-eyed boy you pretend to be in love with will be first.’
I put my hand in my pocket then turned my back on Athair. I withdrew my hand and released Hausman’s golden ring into Hugo’s palm. ‘Time for you to go,’ I said. ‘Take the brownies with you.’
He grinned, leaned forward and planted a brief kiss on my mouth. ‘See you soon, Daisy,’ he murmured, before turning away and jogging off towards the Royal Elvish Institute. Thedoors opened as he approached and within seconds he’d been swallowed into its depths with Hester and Otis trailing behind him.
‘He’s pleasingly obedient,’ Athair commented. ‘But that won’t save him.’
I turned back to face him.
‘What did you give him?’ he asked. ‘What did you take out of your pocket and hand to the boy?’
‘A souvenir,’ I replied. ‘From our recent trip.’
‘A romantic interlude before you abandon his side for mine?’
‘It was more business than pleasure,’ I said. ’We went to Lincolnshire.’
There was no obvious reaction from Athair but I fancied I saw a fleeting shadow cross his face.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it was actually LincolnshireandNorfolk. We spent some time in King’s Lynn and a small village over the county border. Sutton Bridge. Do you know it?’
Athair gazed at me with his unblinking red eyes. He didn’t answer – he didn’t need to because a moment later, a voice boomed out from amongst the vampires on the right-hand side of the square. ‘She’s telling the truth, boss,’ Arbuthnot called. ‘They were in Sutton Bridge first and then in King’s Lynn.’ He lumbered forward, shoving several mindless vamps out of the way.
‘You didn’t mention this before,’ Athair growled.
Arbuthnot hefted his vast shoulders into a shrug. ‘You said only to tell you if it looked like they were running away. It didn’t. As far as I reckoned, they were only searching for something.’
I kept my gaze fixed on Athair’s face but his expression remained impassive. ‘And did they find what they were looking for?’
I jumped in before Arbuthnot could answer. ‘You could ask me, your daughter, instead of your drug-dealing henchman.’
Neither Athair nor Arbuthnot paid me any attention. ‘I don’t know, boss,’ Arbuthnot said. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think so?’ Athair sneered.
I interrupted them again. ‘We didn’t find anything in Sutton Bridge,’ I said loudly. ‘There wasn’t enough time.’ This time I caught the flicker of a smile on my fiendish birth-father’s face. ‘But,’ I added quickly, ‘we also realised that the true object of our search had already been found. It wasn’t in Sutton Bridge at all.’
The smile vanished. This time it was replaced by a snarl. ‘Enough!’ Athair spat. ‘Enough talk and enough delay! I don’t care about your stupid little treasure hunts. Tell me your final decision, daughter. Are you with me? Or are you against me?’
