Blood Sacrifice (35 page)

I stifled my instinct to laugh in Gideon’s face—the player played. He’d been so intent on strutting his stuff as Big Man on Campus, he’d missed what should’ve become obvious to anyone of magick after more than a few days in Aoife’s company—that the pregnancy was simply a spell to trick the mind. I’d only seen her for less than an hour, but I bet I’d have figured it out given enough face time with her.

“You lied!” Gideon’s face looked like he was about to explode in an apoplectic fit. Me? I was sitting on a tombstone enjoying the show. Hells, all I needed was a tub of buttered popcorn, some greasy nachos, and a Big Gulp. Above on the overhang—balcony seats!—Adam and Niko watched, both of them as amused as I was.

“You failed
my
Challenge, my test, Gideon, Raven’s
child.” With this pronouncement, Angharad waved a hand and muttered a few words. In a flash, she slid out of sight into the Between.

Before I could begin my own gloating, Gideon threw up a hand and cast a flashbang. Caught off guard, I dove for the ground, but wasn’t fast enough. My ears rang and eyes watered. I rolled, scrambled and rolled again, trying to keep moving in case he came for me. I couldn’t hear, damn it. I let my eyes shut, tears streaming down my face. Trying to focus on my other senses, I
Reached
, trying to establish a perimeter of safety as I shielded. I couldn’t throw any spells, in case I hit Adam or Niko. Minutes passed. Nothing happened, other than I sat there, waiting for the aftereffects to die down enough so I could maneuver.

When the ringing finally started to fade, I heard Adam’s voice calling. “Keira, you all right? Gideon’s gone.”

I raised a hand above my head and waved it. “Fine. I’m fine,” I said, my voice sounding in echoes in my own head. “I’m here.”

“Stay still,” Adam said. “There’s no sign of any more of Gideon’s fighters. You should be safe there.”

That was good news. Though the fact Gideon had gone disturbed me.

Long minutes later I was finally able to blink the last of the tears out of my eyes. My hearing had returned to nearly normal. I stood, trying to get my bearings. La Angel was to my upper right. I made my way there.

Adam and Niko were arguing in quiet whispers.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I think we need to try to get the door open,” Adam said. “We believe Gideon’s gone Below to loose the Dark Fae into Seelie territory bypassing Above altogether
and letting them Between. He’s after Angharad. If he defeats her—”

For a swift moment, I hesitated, my instinct to let them fight their battle in Faery and stay there, but I knew that couldn’t happen. If Gideon won, by whatever chance, he’d be able to open the doors now shut. Her death would mean the spells chaining them would vanish and he could allow the Darkness free reign over the world.

“He’s also got Minerva and Drystan,” Niko supplied. “Adam didn’t want to worry you.”

“What the hell happened?” I asked. “I was out of commission for about what, ten minutes?”

“More,” Adam said. “A lot more. All this opening and closing of the door and magickal activity seems to have created pockets of unstable time. It seems to be passing at different rates in different parts of the cemetery. We’re mostly out of it up on the overhang, but we noticed the anomalies as soon as we got up here. We’d hoped to get a better sense of the action, to figure what to do next when we saw you three.”

I dropped my head and kicked at a rock, swearing under my breath. Great. Fan-bloody-tastic. “So Gideon snatched Gigi and your father?”

“More like swept them along as he slid Between,” Adam said. “They’d just shown up when he slid out. At the last possible second, he grasped their hands and pulled them along with him. It happened too fast to get to them.”

“Do we know for sure he’s Below?”

“The fact that he was yelling something about ‘getting that bloody queen’ leads me to believe so.” Adam shook his head. “I’m afraid if we don’t open the door, we may not be able to find him in Faery.”

“Why not?”

“Going there through a door makes things more stable,” Adam replied. “Trying to use pathways in the Between is fine if your goal is just to get to Faery and you have deep knowledge of navigating its Ways. I’ve long since lost that knowledge. We could be lost in there for years, trying to find a familiar place.”

“In that case, I guess I have to open a door.”

“Then the king and all Israel with him offered sacrifices before the Lord.”

—1 Kings 8:62

T
he mouth of the cave yawned wide and empty. Beyond it, if I concentrated, I could feel the energies of the door chained tightly to itself as if literal links of steel bound it. Part of me wanted to just throw all my energy at it, to see if I could burst the chains. Sure, I’d probably end up letting the rest of the Darkness and Chaos through. No doubt they, and it, were panting at the other side of that door waiting for their master to defeat Angharad. I sighed and focused, trying to see the spells the queen had used to create the bindings.

And if I figured out how to remove them? Could I do what Adam asked? Open Pandora’s box and let it all out? Gideon might just win then, despite our having soundly routed his forces. Then again, if I didn’t, we could lose Gigi and Drystan. Gideon’s power was strong, fueled by the dark energies he’d allowed inside. He might simply incarcerate the two of them while he went looking for Angharad to take his anger out on her,
but he might also decide he didn’t need them any longer and kill them. It wasn’t easy to kill a Sidhe king or the Kelly clan chief, but there were ways, and Gideon, no doubt, could put his hands on a number of those ways.

Hell of a choice I had, wasn’t it?

I slammed my hand against the rough stone. “Damn him forever,” I yelled into the impenetrable darkness within the cave. “Damn him, damn him, damn—FUCK!” I’d sliced open the side of my hand. I shook it and brought it to my mouth to ease the pain. The moonlight was enough to let me see the damage. Moonlight? No longer the dark of the moon, but now nearly half full! More of that pesky time imbalance. Great. Had I been in here nearly two weeks now? Were Adam and Niko frantic with worry?

I sucked at the wound. It wasn’t horribly deep, but deep enough to draw blood. I was going to need to do a healing spell. I was pretty shite at it when it came to doing it on myself especially after tonight’s battle, but this was a small enough cut. I shook my hand, trying to remove some of the blood so I could see the edges of the torn skin. Drops flung every which way, on the rock, on the ground. As the drops hit the parched dirt, the ground beneath me seemed to tremble, just a little, like a wee shrug.

“What was that?” I spoke out loud, my words swallowed by the night. I waited a moment, and nothing else happened. Surely my blood on the ground wouldn’t—I squeezed the wound which had already begun to close and forced a few more drops of blood on the ground. Plop. Plop. They lay there in the dirt, shining. Nothing. Okay, then I must have imagined—

Another shudder, this time stronger, underneath my
feet. I dropped to one knee and placed my uninjured hand on the ground, palm flat to the dirt. The movement wasn’t originating here. That much I could tell. I shut my eyes and concentrated, letting shields lower and my energy pour outward. I had to be careful, had to make sure that whatever was causing this didn’t actually touch me, just in case it was some manifestation of the Darkness. I slid awareness just under the surface of the soil. “Find it,” I whispered. My energy sang, pulsing in place as if sniffing out its prey. A moment later, it sped away, toward the center of the cemetery. I kept hold of it as I stood, worried that someone had inadvertently run into something he couldn’t handle. The night remained silent as I exited the cave. No signs of any more fighting. With Gideon vanished, his minions had scattered. A few bodies still lay on the ground. Some his. A few ours. I peered up at the sky. I was back in normal time… or what seemed normal to me. The final, nearly transparent sliver of the moon hung among the stars, winking in and out of what could only be rain clouds gathering. Rain. Blessed be. Something had gone right tonight if we were getting rain.

Should I shift? I could scent things better as wolf. Yet, if I did, what if I came across something I had to fight with magick? I couldn’t cast spells in animal form. At least, I didn’t think so. Deciding against shifting, I followed the energy path. It shone for me, a silvery ribbon pulsing in the moonlight, as if made of the moon’s own light, faint, but steady. I followed its path, extending my shields around me, strengthening my protection.

“Keira?” A soft voice called. Adam.

“I’m OK,” I called back. I knew that Niko was probably chomping at the bit, his Protector instincts
on overdrive, but I ruthlessly tamped down emotion. I didn’t want either of them to join me just yet. Not until I knew what I faced.

The night was quiet as I carefully walked the path. No night insects calling, no breeze rustling the dead leaves. The path wandered a bit, as if following someone’s stride, not exactly straight, but more or less in the same direction. Where was it leading? This wasn’t exactly a large place. The gate came into view, the light path veering to the right just before it. Was that Antonio? Had he made it away safely or had he hid during the battle? I didn’t want to call out. If the priest had stayed and somehow survived, any lingering physical manifestation of the Darkness might hear me and find him first. I couldn’t put him at risk.

The shining ribbon curved once more, between two gravestones, back again toward the rear of the cemetery, back in the direction I’d just come from, toward the Angel. I could see her some dozen yards or so in front of me, the edges of her wings faintly lit by the moon. A shadow passed in front of her. My heart thudded in my chest. I stopped, tried to focus my vision. A light wavered in front of the statue. Antonio again? Had he come to pray in the aftermath?

I saw that the path of my energy led directly to the clearing in front of the statue. I ran then, leaping over gravestones, over piles of dead leaves and grass. I let my unconscious take over as I wove through the tangled brush and undergrowth. Before I reached the clearing, I smelled it.

Blood. Fresh, liquid, and lots of it.

One last leap over a mutilated body and up a small rise and I froze.

Antonio knelt in front of La Angel, facing her, both arms held out a little to the side, a rosary dangling from his right hand. Blood dripped from his fingers, pooling on the ground. He’d set the lantern at the feet of the statue. She looked as if she were alive, illuminated by the dancing light. A breeze had sprung up, making even the shadows dance.

Soft words carried in the no longer still air.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena; Dominus tecum: benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Ave Maria, gratia plena; Dominus tecum: benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.”

Over and over again he repeated the Latin prayer, the Hail Mary prayer, his voice weaker with every repetition.

“Antonio?” My feet wouldn’t move, couldn’t move. It was as if he’d cast a ward against me. How? I tried to move again, putting my whole energy into it. Nothing. My feet stuck to the ground, locked in place as if encased in concrete.

The priest’s voice faltered.
“In hora mortis…”
He shuddered, a weak movement, and attempted to speak again. “
In hora mortis…”
At the hour of our death. Why?

“Why?” I screamed at him. “Why this?” My words fell flat, as if the wards he’d somehow raised blocked sound, as well as people. “Why are you doing this?” I struggled against the invisible glue that held me in place. C’mon, Keira Kelly. You are the heir. You have more power than this. Sweat beaded on my brow and trickled
into my eyes as my muscles strained. The ground shivered and shook again, as if another earthquake was beginning. The blood scent grew stronger, permeated the air around me. I growled in frustration and sank to my knees, palms flat on the earth. “Let me through,” I commanded in a whisper. “Let me—”

A bark and growl from behind me. I turned and fell to a sitting position.

Tucker leaped to my side and shifted back to human. He knelt next to me and took me into his arms. “Keira.” He kept whispering my name over and over again, face buried in my hair. “I thought—” He stopped, his body tense as strung wire. “What?”

“Antonio,” I said, slumping against my brother’s chest. “He’s…” I didn’t finish, not needing to.

“He chose to be the sacrifice.” Tucker’s voice sounded awed. “Why?”

I pushed him away, needed to see this through. Needing to watch. The priest’s body swayed as if pushed by the wind, which had increased. The wards fell.

“He’s fading,” I said, trying to scramble to my feet. “I want to—”

“No, you can’t.” Tucker put his arm around my waist. “He has to finish this. Don’t make this worth nothing.”

A soft cry from the priest, then the words again. The same prayer.

“I know.” I sank back against Tucker, letting him take some of the weight from me. “I know.”

“The cemetery is re-consecrated,” Tucker said quietly. “Adam and Niko couldn’t enter. They saw him from the overhang and tried to jump down, but he’d already managed to re-consecrate the ground.”

I nodded and wiped my face of the tears that now flowed without interruption. “I didn’t ask him to do this.”

“I know.” Tucker’s arm tightened around my waist. A noise from above made me look up. Adam and Niko stood atop the overhang once more. “We can’t come down,” Adam said softly. “He’s completing the ritual. We wished to honor his choice.”

I nodded, focusing only on the priest. I vaguely saw Adam and Niko bowing their heads, as if standing vigil. Niko’s hands were folded, his lips moving in prayer. Of the four of us, he was the only one originally human, raised as a Christian. He was still a believer.