Blood Sacrifice (15 page)

I flew back to the group and grabbed the phone. “At all? That’s impossible.”

“I know. Which is why I called you. You’re her heir. Maybe you can try?”

“Explain,” Adam demanded. “Why is this impossible? Don’t seers only see possible futures?”

“Mostly,” I said, “but these seers, family seers, can
always
see our chieftain. It’s a way to keep tabs, in case—”

“In case of something just like this,” Tucker added. “There’s a blood connection with them, literally. Seers share blood with our leader so that they can reach her in times of trouble.”

“As with our bond,” Adam said. “I understand. Did you do this as well?” he asked me.

“No, not as the heir,” I said. “That bond would have interfered with ours, so I asked that we postpone it until Gigi stepped down—centuries from now.”

“Wait, Keira, I’m getting a notification that someone’s trying to call.”

The screen went dark as my dad answered his other call. I bit my lip, clutching the phone as if it were a lifeline. I wanted the caller to be Gigi. Wanted her to say she’d just been shopping, had left the phone behind.

“Could she just have left the phones behind?” Niko asked, echoing my thoughts.

“Not in a million years,” Tucker said.

“Not even. She might be the chieftain, our leader,
but she never, ever leaves no way to contact her,” I said. A thought occurred to me. “Adam, the Batphone, is that to her normal phone?”

“I don’t know.” He strode over to the table and picked it up, pushing the programmed shortcut. “Worth a try.”

As the first ring sounded, I grabbed onto Tucker’s arm. She had to answer. That’s why she didn’t have her regular phone, right? Because she had the other phone?

“Keira, sorry,” Dad’s face came back onto my own phone. “That was your brother Duncan. He went to see one of the cousins, to see if they could help out at the hotel room by casting a location spell. Only that didn’t work, either.”

“Hang on, Dad,” I said. “Adam’s trying the Bat-phone.”

“The what?”

“Sorry, it’s a phone Gigi gave him a while back,” I explained. “Programmed with speed dial to her. Like the Batphone, she always answers if the call is from this phone.”

“Except for now,” Adam said. “It’s rung four times and went to voice mail.” He spoke into the phone he was holding. “Minerva, it’s Adam. No one can find you. If you get this message, please call us.” He disconnected the call.

“It’s not ringing her regular phone,” Dad said. “I’ve got that one here.” He waved it in front of the camera lens on his phone. “It’s on and charged. I was hoping that someone would call her that could shed some light on this.”

“Did you check her phone’s history?” I asked. “Calls made, etcetera?”

“We did. Nothing stood out. A call from you yesterday, a few calls out to family in the past few days. One to Gideon, also yesterday.”

“Dad! That call to Gideon didn’t stand out?” I practically screamed at my father.

“Calm down, honey. It didn’t stand out because I knew that she’d called him. She told me.”

“Why?”

“Because she wanted to tell me? I don’t know.” Dad’s voice got huffy. “I’m doing the best I can, Keira.”

Argh. He’d misunderstood me. “No, Dad, sorry for yelling,” I said in a much calmer tone. “I meant do you know why she called Gideon?”

“I expect to ream the boy out,” he said. “She was quite unhappy with him.”

“Huw, did she tell Gideon she was disinheriting him?” Adam asked.

Dad frowned. “She what? Disinherited him? When?”

“She told us she’d begun preparations to remove him from any succession,” Adam said. “Keira is to be sole heir now.”

Dad’s face grew grim. “That’s news to me. I don’t like this at all. She told me what happened down there. What Gideon did. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that she decided to cut him loose. Though…” His brow furrowed, he moved away from the phone’s camera lens.

“Dad? Though what?”

“Keira, I need to call you back,” he said as his face once more came into view. “Can you see if you can find Gideon? He’s there, isn’t he?”

“Here? Not with us,” I said. “We’ve had to move off the Wild Moon. We’re staying in an old place in San Antonio.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t Gigi tell you the details?” Did my family not bloody talk to each other? He’d just said she’d told him what happened.

“Look, honey, you know how closemouthed my great-grandmother can be,” he said. “She gave me the SparkNotes version. That Gideon showed up at your Reception and claimed Challenge. Then she gave the scholars the parchment, but that was the gist of it. Nothing about you removing yourselves from the ranch. I sort of figured you’d had to put Gideon up on the property, that’s how usually these things work.”

“Have you had a chance to help them out yet?” I asked. “The scholars, I mean.”

“A little. My experience with Faery Challenges is admittedly rather limited.”

“You know of Challenges?” Adam interrupted.

“I do. I am rather old, you know.” This last was said with a bit of humor. “I know our dear leader got some notion in her head to help you but she has no experience. I don’t know what she was thinking.”

“But you do? How? You’re at least three centuries younger than she is,” Tucker remarked. “Even Adam couldn’t decipher all the information.”

My father raised a brow. “Minerva may be older than I am, but I was her emissary to the Sidhe royals for centuries,” he said. “I lived Below for a long time, wooing Branwen. While there, I made acquaintance with many much older than I.”

“You did? How come you never told me?” I asked.

“It’s never been that important. How did you think I knew where to find you when I came to get you?”

“I never thought about it,” I said.

“Sweetheart, let me go back to work with the scholars, see what I can do. While I’m doing that, you might call—
do
you have Gideon’s number?”

I had his number all right, but it had nothing to do with a phone. “No, Dad, I don’t.” Hadn’t had it for years. When I’d left him, I made sure to delete all his contact information from the phone I’d had then.

“I’ll send it to you,” he said. “I think you should at least call him. See what he knows. I’ll work here and see what more we can tell you about this Challenge of yours.”

“Papa,” Tucker began, his voice worried. “Do you think she’s okay?”

“Minerva? She has to be.” With that, he disconnected.

I walked over to one of the couches and sank onto the seat, letting every muscle I had relax as much as I could. “He didn’t say he was sure,” I said. “What if she’s not? What if…” I took a deep breath, willing myself to calm down.

“If she’s not, we will deal with it.” Adam joined me on the couch and took my hands in his. “We will deal.”

“I think we should fly to Vancouver,” I said. “Look for her. I can go to the hotel room and see what I can find out.”

“I’d be the first to agree,” Tucker said, “except for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“If we leave here, willingly, after Truce was declared and after we’ve established our temporary location, it’s tantamount to abandonment. By terms of Truce, we’ll have to let our claim go and Gideon wins.”

“How long have you known this?” I accused. “Seriously,
Tucker, I thought you’d told me everything. Did you know this?” I addressed both Adam and Niko.

Niko only shook his head.

“It’s standard Truce—” Adam began.

“Standard Truce protocols, what
ever
,” I said, my voice heated. “You guys have
got
to be completely in full-on disclosure mode from now on. Pretend I’m totally stupid and give it to me in simple words. I don’t know Truces. I don’t know Challenges. I obviously don’t know what questions to ask, and now my bloody matriarch is missing somewhere and our seers can’t even locate her. If she’s… if she’s dead…” I closed my eyes against that thought. Anger, yes, I could do anger, thought it was mostly frustration. I knew Tucker hadn’t kept information from me deliberately, nor had Adam. It was simply one of those situations where they didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I didn’t realize that I’d been missing data. Despair, however, that was an emotion I couldn’t handle so well. If Gigi was truly gone, dead, passed over, that meant I was the new ruler. I couldn’t be, not yet. I wasn’t anywhere near ready.

Sure, I could pretend. I’d been okay with doing the ruling thing over Texas and the Southwest. That was cake. I would ease my way in with Adam’s help and we’d enjoy the next several decades just learning each other, learning how to be rulers. He’d ruled a vampire tribe, but nothing of this magnitude. Gigi had promised to be there for us, to help us learn. She told me she was going to be around for a long time to come. Damn it. I wasn’t ready. She had to be all right.

I voiced my concern out loud. “What if she’s dead?”

“She’s not dead,” Tucker said, with a certainty I couldn’t argue with. “You’d know it.”

“I’d know?”

“You’re the heir, Keira. If Gigi died, whether by choice or not, you’d feel it.”

I had to take his word for it. “Okay then, I’ll accept that.”

“What now?” Niko asked. “If we can’t go to Canada to search for her, what do we do?”

“We wait some more,” Adam said. “Here, you and Tucker sit and I think the four of us need some information sharing. Tucker, I’ll explain the terms of Truce if you can share what you know of the various runespells on the parchment.”

“The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”

—Charles du Bos

A
headache beat its pounding rhythm against my brain. My eyes watered with the strain of looking at tiny imperfections in the parchment skin, at minuscule curlicues of ink. Two hours after Dad’s phone call and the four of us were no better off. Sure, I understood Truce now—basically, we were stuck here for the duration. So much for my brilliant idea of moving to a hotel. We couldn’t leave here (other than forays to town for supplies, but two of us must always remain on property); we couldn’t go back to the ranch.

Dad had texted me, asking me to wait for his call a little later on. He thought he’d found something regarding Gigi and had some information regarding the Challenge, but he needed to consult with one more person before he got back to us.

I didn’t wait well. I’d buried myself in reviewing the parchment, touching it, stroking the letters, muttering various revealing spells. Nothing. I’d balked at calling
Gideon and made the others swear to let me call him, but later. Yeah, I knew it was stupid, but talking to him right away would have been more stupid. In the mood I was in, I’d just yell. If I could calm myself, get a grip on my emotions, I could approach the call rationally. Talk to him as one person to another, keep my cool. I was going to need time to regroup, to get myself in the right frame of mind.

“Keira.” Adam spoke to me with a gentleness I’d not heard from him for a while. “Come away from there, you are in pain. I can feel your headache.” His cool hands rubbed my temples. “Come over to the couch and lie down for a bit, love. This isn’t helping you.”

I let him lead me. He sat and I lay down, my head on his lap. He stroked my forehead. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the soothing touch. My headache began to fade. I slowly let myself fade with it, dropping into sleep.

I woke, swearing, as my phone rang in my ear.

“Damn it.” I grabbed for it, narrowing its location down to Adam’s pants pocket.

“Sorry, love,” he said. “I should’ve moved the phone.”

I shot him a glare as I mumbled into the phone. “Dad? You find something?”

“Enough.”

I sat up at the tone of his voice. I’d rarely heard my father sound so tired.

“Did you call Gideon?”

I fumbled, nearly dropping the phone. “Sorry, Dad, I didn’t.”

“Keira, why ever not? Damn it, girl, we’re not playing games here.”

I cringed, feeling about ten years old, caught doing something stupid. “I know, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll call when we’re done.”

Dad sighed. I left the call on just audio, not really wanting to see his disappointed expression. “It’s not good, hon. I had a tough time with the wording, but from what I can decipher, this is an old-style sacrificial Challenge.”

“What?”
Sacrificial?
Adam’s voice spoke over mine. “No, not good at all, Huw.”

I put the phone on speaker and set it down onto the table. Tucker and Niko came down the stairs, each carrying a tray of food. I motioned them over.

“Huw, what’s the bottom line?” Adam dropped into full business mode.

The other two set down the food trays, pulled around the armchairs, and sat, listening.

“There’s a lot of history of such,” Dad said. “Long established tradition for these kinds of Challenges. Your cousin means to oust you entirely, Keira. To rule in your stead, to bind all the land to him.”

“All of it?” I still felt a little fuzzy from my nap. “The ranch?”

“No, I mean everything under your rule.”

“How can he do that?” Adam asked. “Minerva said the Truce involved just the Wild Moon property.”

“And so it does. Buried in the writing is the fact that the property at the Wild Moon stands as center, it represents all your holdings. If you can bind this land to you, then your rule is safe.”

“Then how do we do this? What kind of sacrifice?”

A rustle of paper, then my dad began to quote. “Willing and unwilling meet and marry. Blood of the
willing. Heart of the unwilling. Replenish and fulfill.
Rhoi a gadael yn byw. Mêr esgyrn. Gwaed ac esgyrn
.”

“Give and let live. Blood, marrow, and bone.” I automatically translated the Welsh, though Adam and Tucker wouldn’t need me to.

“It’s very traditional,” Dad said. “Shared blood given freely reawakens the land, calls the rains. You said the land was dry, barren, a drought and heat wave?”

“Yes,” Adam answered. “I thought it was due to our natures, our infertility.”

“Could be. Could just be a curse.”

“A curse?” I asked. “But who? Adam bought the ranch slightly more than two years ago. Been living on it for nearly a year. The drought only just started a few months ago.”