Blood Sacrifice (31 page)

“Certainly.” She slid away, her mind on who knew what. At the Rose Inn, I’d thought Verena to be the spacey one and Grace to be at least somewhat grounded in the modern world. Here, though, it was as if they’d switched roles. Verena, though still a bit looney tunes, held her own in the discussion, while Grace did little more than wander about aimlessly.

My brother stabbed a finger at the Challenge parchment, which we’d rolled out onto the table and fixed down with clear tape. “That there. The passage that talks about Truce and consequences, I don’t think you’ve seen the last of the problems.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked. “Angharad herself spoke Truce to be dissolved. I felt the magick.”

“She may have,” Ciprian said in his precise, dusty way, “but this magick has already been set in motion. She didn’t mention that, did she?”

“No.” My blood was beginning to boil again. “She said nothing of the sort. In fact, she said very little of use to us at all. We were whisked out of there faster than I could ask anything else.”

“I’m sure that was her intention,” Tucker said. “She’s still got far too many schemes up her silky sleeve.”

“I’ll take Faery Follies for $500 with a side of ‘duh,’ Alex,” I said to the room at large. “Dad, you’re the only one in this room that knows her at all. You spent time in
Faery courting.” I didn’t even want to say my mother’s name. She was dead to me.

“She’s
The
Seelie, Keira, as Minerva is The Kelly—all the tricks and powers combine in her to make her the quintessential Seelie Sidhe.” He stood and walked around a bit. I’d gotten my habit of pacing from him. “She’s like the ultimate Trickster. She does what she does how she does it. Just when you think she’s going to do one thing, she starts to do another, then goes right back to thing one. I’m sorry, but knowing her only makes it more complicated.”

“If I may,” Antonio spoke in a quiet tone.

I nodded. “Go ahead.” Though what a Catholic priest could tell me of the Faery, I had no idea. We’d exhausted all our combined knowledge, even calling in each of the various vampires who lived on the ranch, some of them centuries old, to see what they could contribute. We’d gotten very little. Carlton had gone home, promising to be back in the morning. He’d walked out starry-eyed and rather lost.

“Short of actual battle, there seems to be little you can do to force the land to honor your claim,” he began.

“We know that already,” I said, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice.

“Yes, we do. However, have you considered real battle?”

Adam stood. “As a last resort only, Antonio. I’ve no taste for that sort of bloodshed. I’ve seen far too many wars to wish to begin another one.”

“Then I’m afraid that you must find a way for the land to accept something else in return.” Antonio brushed his hand over a particular passage that had eluded most of us. Vague words talking about blood
and sharing and giving. We’d done that. I gave of my own blood, as had Adam, Tucker, and Niko, speaking ritual words of binding to ourselves and to the land. With each drop, we’d felt something, a shimmery shudder of acceptance, but nothing concrete. All of us agreed that it hadn’t been enough.

A buzz in my pocket startled me. I reached for the phone as I stepped away from the discussion. Carlton’s number lit up the small screen.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Hey.” His voice sounded tired and defeated. “Keira.”

“Yes?” Crap. How bad was it? And was it? He’d left not that long ago. Barely a couple of hours. “What is it, Carlton?”

“Flu. Ten cases. Both my… kids.” His voice broke. “High fevers, chills. Their mother is with them in the ER in Boerne now. The Coupes were both admitted, as were Lenny and Angie from the video store. At least five more cases reported from Austin and a half dozen in Fredericksburg. Could this be…” He didn’t finish his question. He didn’t have to.

“I don’t know,” I said, utterly truthfully. “There’s no way to tell.”

“Doctors haven’t seen this strain before, they’re saying.”

“God, Carlton, I’m so sorry. I’ll send someone, okay? Boerne, you said?” I could have Isabel go there, pose as a specialist from the UK. She’d done it once or twice before that I knew of. She could tell if they were magicked or if this truly was simply an unfortunate strain of summer flu.

“Yeah, sure. I’d appreciate it. There’s one other
thing.” Carlton paused. “Hang on a sec, would you?” He must have put his hand over the phone speaker, though I could hear him talking to a doctor.

“Adam,” I frantically waved. “Have Isabel go over to the hospital in Boerne. There’s some sort of fast-acting flu. Both of Carlton’s kids are in the ER.”

He nodded and excused himself from the room. Ciprian looked over at me and I held up a hand, signaling him to hold on.

“Sorry about that, Keira,” Carlton said. “That was the doctor. Both kids are spiking high fevers. I told him you were sending over a specialist. Told him it was someone who happened to be visiting you. He is coming, isn’t he?”

“She,” I said. “My aunt Isabel. You remember her, right? She’s one of our best healers.”

A soft sigh escaped him. It almost sounded like a sob. “Thank you.”

“Wait, Carlton, you said there was something else?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. On the way to the hospital, I saw a number of dead cattle, deer, other animals at the side of the road. I don’t think my wife noticed, she was in the back with the kids.”

“Just dead?”

“Mostly. A few looked like something had been taking big bites, but that could be carrion eaters. I thought you needed to know.”

“Thanks. You take care, okay. If you need anything at all, tell Isabel. She’ll deal.” Adam walked into the room and gave me the high sign. “She’s on her way now, Carlton. Hang in there, yeah?”

“I will, thanks.”

“He’s in bad shape,” Adam said as he joined me. I thumbed off the phone.

“Yeah, barely holding it together. Kids are both spiking high fevers. Adam, he saw a bunch of dead livestock on the roadside on his way into Boerne from here. What do you think’s happening?”

“I looked, and there before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.” Antonio intoned the words as if he were preaching a sermon.

“What the—” I faced the elderly priest. “Revelations? You’ve
got
to be kidding me.”

“You mentioned it before. Pestilence, death, earthquake. These are all signs of the end.”

“
Your
end,” I muttered. “Antonio, legends from your Church teachings mean little to me or mine. I can’t argue with you that we’ve seen these things, but I know the cause. It would so be like Gideon to use these types of events to make people afraid.”

“They are not precisely of my Church,” he said. “There are many who believe this and I have come to do so also. I have had many years to read, to listen to others speak. Though I am of the One True Church, my mind has been opened.”

I wasn’t sure what he was referring to—my practical knowledge of various types of Christianity was fairly shallow. Niko saw us and rushed over, his face full of concern. I was sure I was projecting confusion, uncertainty. And not a small amount of anxiety.

“We Catholics don’t believe in an apocalypse,” Niko explained. “End-times theology is a Protestant fundamentalist belief. Gideon’s traps and tricks don’t really gibe with that, either, but…” Niko gave me a hesitant shrug.

Oh well, wonderful. The cursed Catholic priest had been spending his time watching the fire-and-brimstone screamers on TV and believed their insane rhetoric? I rubbed at my forehead. “Antonio, what Gideon’s done is simply use old tricks to frighten people.”

The priest glared. “The result will be the same. Apocalypse. The Four Horsemen have arrived. The seals have broken—did you not say the door to Hell would not close? The only thing left is rivers of blood and a willing sacrifice given in love to appease the angry Lord. The Lamb is coming.”

“Door to Hell?” What on earth was he on about?

“The door to the world below.”

“The door to Faery is open,” I said. “Though I admit my life was pretty much hellish when I was there, Faery is no more Hell than is driving in Houston during rush hour.” I looked for a way out of this mess. Had Antonio flipped what was left of his lid? I knew living that long of a life in ever-increasing pain had to take some sort of toll. Was his brain affected, too? I studied his face, stared into his eyes. No. Not the eyes of a madman, but someone absolutely convinced in his faith—no matter how oddly frankensteined out of his own Church’s teachings and those of others.

“Come with me, Father.” Niko took Antonio by the shoulders. “Let’s go rest, all right?” With no protest, the old man let Niko lead him away.

“What was that about?” Tucker asked. I looked over to the table. Most of the people there were still talking, arguing the same bloody points over and over again.

“He’s expecting the second coming,” I said, weary of the whole thing.

“Really?”

“Without a doubt,” I said. “Trumpets and everything. He said the door to Hell was open and that we’d begun to see the signs that the Horsemen were riding.”

“Who’s to say he’s not right?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Tucker began to laugh, but stopped, sobering in an instant. “Crap, Keira, take away all the religious symbolism and mumbo-jumbo…”

“What?”

“He’s not altogether wrong. We’ve been worried about the door to Faery being open in case someone accidentally went into Faery, right? What if we’ve been going about this backwards? What if Gideon opened the door to let someone… or a lot of someones out?”

“Fuck me. The door to Hell isn’t far off the mark.” Nor would it be untrue to call it Pandora’s box or anyone of those mythological stories where someone opens something they shouldn’t and unleashes… Faery. All of it to the world Above. Pandemonium and yes, apocalypse. I sank into a nearby chair. The priest wasn’t insane after all.

“Funny thing about black and white: You mix it together and you get gray. And it doesn’t matter how much white you try and put back in, you’re never gonna get anything but gray.”

—Lilah, “Habeas Corpses”
(Angel: the Series, 4–8)

“W
e call him out,” I insisted. “Gideon and his minions. A showdown, if you will. We’ve got our own army now.” Adam, Niko, Tucker, and I were arguing our point to the rest of the gang. By now, most of the vampires had retired for the day. Isabel had returned, reporting that Carlton’s children and the rest of the flu victims were resting comfortably. She’d been able to help, surreptitiously healing in the guise of examining the sick. Moments ago, she’d gone to her guest house to join Jane and sleep.

Me, sleep? What the heck for? Tucker and I had scrambled to dig out the books we’d brought back with us from the Rose Inn. We’d left them at Bea’s, but some kind soul had thought we might need them so sometime earlier that evening, the books had all arrived and boxes piled against the wall of the dining room. The only people
left to discuss this with us were my father, Ciprian, and the representative for the Snake clan, a group of lesser fey that watched over the local fauna—at least the ones that slithered instead of walked on four legs.

I shoved the open book underneath Ciprian’s face. “There, see. The Four Horsemen and all that rot. I don’t think Gideon’s any more a scholar of this than I am—hell, his understanding of it is probably less than mine. But you’ve got to admit, on the surface and for someone who is no expert, this wave upon wave of drought, fire, illness, and general misfortune could be the rallying point for some fundie freak. Gideon’s no fool—I can’t dismiss the idea that he’s playing as many games as he can. He
expects
this to end up in full-out war. I say we bring the war to him. We’ve got tooth and claw on our side. Gideon has only magick. I’ve got plenty of that, as do the rest of you.”

“If we do this, Keira, there’s no turning back.” Ciprian read over the passage I’d highlighted. I knew what it said. Stuff about the number of the beast, slaughter, famine, pestilence, conquest… all the same things Antonio had quoted. “I’ll give him one thing, the boy is clever. He’s done just enough to raise questions and make people wonder. After all, some of these preachers had little else to point to when screeching their sermons about Hurricane Katrina and the AIDS epidemic being God’s punishments. All of this stuff coming within weeks—now days—is plenty of grist for that mill.”

“Too clever by far,” Adam said. “Using enough symbology to frighten those who fear the end of the world and recall half-remembered Biblical passages. Truly heinous. This is no longer a simple fight of oneupmanship, if it ever was. I believe Keira and Tucker
are correct. Gideon is planning to distract us with these plagues, whilst Calling forth the Dark Fae and all other sorts of mischief.”

“Dark Fae?” Niko’s voice quavered just a little.

“Fey who live in the darkness,” Adam explained. “They are more wild magick than anything else. They thrive on chaos and confusion.”

“We cannot unleash Faery on the mortal world.” The ringing tones of my mother preceded her entrance by a millisecond.

“Branwen.” I watched her glide into the room, decked out in true Sidhe finery, a misty light green tunic flowing over a solid white dress. Her hair was caught up in an intricate set of braids wound with pearls.

“Going to a party or is that what the well-dressed Sidhe wears to a war room?” I didn’t bother keeping the sarcasm out of my voice. How dare she waltz in here?

“War? It has come to that, then?” She stopped several feet short of me.

“Perhaps. Why are you here?”

“May I approach?” She opened her arms, palm upward, and bowed her head. Okay, wow. What was this?

“Come.” Adam spoke before I could get my own voice back.

With a smooth glide, my mother took a step forward, then sank to one knee, bowing even further. “I came to offer myself,” she said.