Blood Sacrifice

by Maria Lima

  “Yes, well, there’s the rub.” Adam pushed aside his paper and tossed the pen back onto the food tray. “This is useless. Other than the one warespell I recognized, without seeing them in person, I can do nothing.”

  “But if we go…” Repeating Niko’s statement wasn’t likely to get me a different answer, but I had to.

  “Yes, exactly.” Adam leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face. “It has been a very long time since I felt this caught between options,” he said.

  “What if we leave this alone?” Tucker pulled the paper off the tray and studied it. “I can recognize variations on a theme, but as you said, there’s no way to tell if you’re right. In my opinion, this is one of Gideon’s tricks—hire someone to vandalize the cemetery, scribble fake spell marks on various gravestones and lure us back.”

  “What in all the hells did he hope to accomplish with that?” I stood and paced across the floor. “I’m angry, yes, but frankly, this isn’t a ‘must do now’ situation. Carlton’s keeping an eye on things, so we can let it lie for now.”

  “Maybe.” Adam tossed me the phone. “Look at the second photo. The stone that is to the right and partially obscured by the broken one.”

  I caught it and checked the photos. A shot from the entrance gate, one gravestone broken in two, the bottom still stuck in the ground, the top fallen in front. Just behind and a little to the side, another stone, this one intact, but with blue paint marks. I could make out part of a loop, two slanted lines and what could be a second loop at the bottom. “What am I supposed to see?”

  “That mark could be one of several symbols,” Adam said. “The most innocent of them is nothing more than a mild digestive curse. These aren’t fake spells.”

  Brilliant, just bloody brilliant. “Okay, well, what would set it off?”

  “Anyone walking in the vicinity,” Adam replied. “At best, your police friends won’t be able to stay on the job long, due to bellyaches and loose bowels.”

  “At worst?”

  “Death.”

  I sank to the floor, staring at the photo. “You weren’t kidding.” I wasn’t asking.

  “No. Without seeing these in person, I cannot even begin to figure out how we can neutralize the spells.”

  “What if the symbols were just painted on by someone human?” Niko asked. “According to the Challenge rules, no one beholden to us or part of Gideon’s people are allowed on the property during the Truce period. If he hired some locals…”

  Adam nodded. “A possibility. If they were painted on by non-magick folk, then they are just symbols.”

  “But do we want to take that chance?” I said. “I can think of several scenarios where Gideon conned or persuaded someone who is not of his crew, nor ours but yet still Sidhe to set the magicks.” I sighed. “We’re back to square one, aren’t we?”

  No one had to answer me. We were. Damned if we did, and possibly damned if we didn’t. Could I take the risk of those spells being true spells, being anything from discomfort to death? Was that even an option?

  “Adam, is there any way to contact your father?” Tucker asked.

  “If he’s already gone Below, then we can try to Call him,” Adam said. “It’s not a Summoning, but more like a request. Keira would need to do so, since I no longer have Sidhe magicks.”

  “What’s your angle, Tucker?” I asked. “Not that I’m not willing to try, but what can Drystan do?”

  “Well, to be precise, he’s neither beholden to you, nor is he part of Gideon’s retinue.”

  “But he is our father,” Adam said. “He is bound by blood to us both.”

  “Damn it.” I pulled my knees up and hugged them. “So what do we do?”

  “I don’t think it’s a bad idea to contact my father,” Adam continued. “He may not be able to go to the land without violating the sanctions, but he might have some other suggestions. I have been vampire much longer than I was Sidhe.”

  I sprang up. There that was more like it. Action. That I could do. “What do I need to do?”

  “We’ll need blood and a candle.”

  “On it,” Tucker said. “I can get us the candle and matches from the kitchen.”

  “The blood?” I asked. “Mine?”

  “Mine,” Adam answered. “There are a couple of sigils you’ll need to draw on the floor or the wall whilst concentrating on my father. I’ll draw them out so you can follow. They’re not complex.”

  “I’m game,” I said. “What is this calling going to accomplish?”

  “We should be able to speak to him.”

  I laughed. “So our version of a floo call?”

  Niko frowned. “Floo?”

  “Harry Potter books,” I said. Niko still looked confused. “Never mind, Niko. After this is over, I’ll lend you my copies.”

  Adam shook his head as he drew on the reverse side of the paper. “Yes, like a floo call,” he said, “but without the special effects. This is pure old-school, voice only.”

  “As long as it works.” I watched over his shoulder. The marks seemed fairly easy. A circle, bisected by a squiggly line with some loops and curls. Pretty. “So if he wants to come through, physically that is, can he use that?”

  “No, this is simply a Calling. A Summoning would require more focus than we have here.”

  “When we were in Vancouver, I Summoned you from Below,” I said.

  Adam finished the drawing and handed it to me. “That you did. The difference is that there, we had the Portal to Faery handy. Here we do not.”

  Damn it. The only door to Faery I was aware of anywhere in our region was the one situated in the very cemetery that had been vandalized—the one potentially full of booby traps and on the land none of us could set foot on without breaking the restrictions of the Challenge. Damn it times a thousand.

  “I’m for trying Gigi again,” I said. “She can’t access the cemetery, but she can bloody well fly here and help. This mess is partially her doing.”

  Quizzical looks from all three men made me rephrase. “Yes, I blame her for part of this. I know it’s Gideon and his never-ending quest for whatever makes him hard—power, prestige, revenge—”

  “All of the above,” Niko inserted with a wry smile. “From what I’ve experienced of your cousin, he’s not in this for anything more than him being on top of the mountain.”

  “We can natter on about this as much as we like, but we’re still getting nowhere.” Tucker stood. “I’m taking the trays back to the kitchen. You call Gigi and see if she’s got any brilliant ideas.”

  “If she’s unwilling, I will then try to Call my father,” Adam said.

  “Or both,” I said as I pushed the speed dial button on my phone. “Wouldn’t hurt to have both of them here.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

  —Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

  “What do you mean she’s still not back?” I practically yelled into the phone. “Jane, we need her. Gideon’s on some sort of power trip. We’re banned from our own land and things are so far from peachy and keen that we can’t think straight.”

  “Keira, I’m sorry.” My aunt Jane’s soothing voice did nothing to calm me. “Minerva’s not been back, nor is she answering our calls to her.”

  “Where in all the hells did she go?” Adam placed a hand on my arm. I shook it off. “Get Dad for me, would you?”

  Jane huffed into the speaker then the on-hold music came up.

  “She’s not happy with me,” I said.

  Adam frowned. “I don’t think that’s all of it. She doesn’t sound happy with the entire situation. Has Minerva ever done this?”

  “Disappeared incommunicado? Not as far as I know, but Tucker might.” My brother and Niko had gone back to their room. I’d let them, knowing that having them there wasn’t doing anything to help. They might as well get some more rest, because I wasn’t about to. My nerves sang with tension, my energy-a
ura or whatever you wanted to call it shimmered so brightly that I could almost see it even without focusing. I knew Adam felt it, his soothing strokes along my arm, my back meant to relax me. But the fury of a Kelly trumped his attempt. I might not be redheaded, like my brother, nor have ever been a Viking Berserker, but I felt on the verge of a true rampage right now. How dare Gigi disappear like this? She’d said she was going to do some research, but I needed her. “Damn it.” I slapped a hand against the solid wall. “I hate being kept waiting on hold. I hate this whole fucked-up situation.”

  Adam, wise enough to know not to say anything, just nodded and kept stroking my back.

  Two long minutes later, my dad’s perplexed voice greeted me. “Hello, honey. Fire up the face chat thing, would you?”

  I did as he asked. Convenient this new face-to-face chat app. Made it a lot easier.

  “Dad, we’re in a jam,” I said, reverting to daughter mode. “Gigi’s gone and scarpered and we’re in a bit of a mess. You have any ideas?”

  His calm expression didn’t change, but he shook his head in a slow negative. “I’m sorry, Keira, but she left without saying much. Just that she needed to see someone about something important.”

  “She’s our bloody matriarch, our clan leader. How can she just walk off the premises without leaving some sort of way to contact her?” I rubbed my jaw, which was starting to hurt from the tension. “Dad, what’s going on? This seems really odd to me. Don’t you think?”

  “Well, yes, somewhat.” He paused a moment. “She’s never really done this to my knowledge, Keira.” Dead silence.

  I closed my eyes against the worry that began to cross his face. This wasn’t normal. For my entire life with him, he never lost his cool, never seemed to lose the innate calm that permeated his body. I’d not ever doubted that my dad could handle anything. He’d been born to a small branch of the clan in what later became northern Scotland and had seen his share of true battle—the kind fought with hand weapons, as well as magick. Very little fazed him. Only now, I could feel his anxiety almost as clearly as I felt my own.

  “Dad?” I said. Adam had stopped stroking me, his hand frozen in place on my back. He’d felt it, too.

  My father gave a huge sigh and rubbed his face. “Keira, Gigi told me about the Challenge. It’s not good.”

  “Did she show you the photos of the parchment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just ‘yes’? Nothing else?” I prodded.

  “She gave it to some of our more linguistically able scholars,” he said. “Gigi set this task on them before she left.”

  “It’s really that difficult?” I asked. “I mean, I understand that perhaps Tucker and I don’t have the requisite knowledge of the language. After all, it’s not exactly modern Welsh.”

  “I only caught a glimpse, but it’s not Pictish, nor anything I’m familiar with. And Adam?”

  “He’s right here, Dad. Behind me. Can you see him?”

  “No, I mean how did he fare in the translation?”

  “Huw, it’s extremely odd construction,” Adam said, as he leaned forward so the phone camera lens could capture him. “Seems a blending of many variations of the Old Tongue. The repercussions of mistranslation could mean our losing the Challenge.”

  Dad grimaced. “I was afraid of that.”

  “It’s the tiny discrepancies that can make all the difference,” Adam continued. “Like the arguments of Bible scholars translating Aramaic—was it ‘maiden’ or ‘young woman’—that’s what we’re facing here.”

  I gaped at Adam as all of a sudden, I truly understood the precariousness of our position. I’d assumed that eventually, we’d figure this out. After all, it was language and language could be translated. But now I got it. Nuances could mean everything. That Bible thing, I’d read about it some time ago, where some scholars said the original work meant Mary, mother of Jesus, was referred to as a young woman, not a virgin. Needless to say, that upset the traditionalist religions, considering how much of their faith and beliefs were tied up in the whole virgin birth thing. If that kind of subtlety is what we were dealing with, our chances could be even worse than I thought.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Son,” Dad said. “You’re about as right as you can be. We’re doing our best here, but it’s been pretty tough going. Three or four of the scholars will agree on a phrase and just as many will argue against it. We’re getting nowhere. I’ll go back to help as much as I can, but language translations just isn’t my strong suit.”

  “What I don’t get,” I began, as the implications sank in. “How did Gideon, my own contemporary, manage this? He’s no scholar of dead languages.”

  “He’s not?” Adam seemed taken aback. “I’d assumed…” His words trailed off. “That makes little sense.”

  “Exactly,” Dad agreed, nodding enthusiastically. “That’s part of the overall puzzle. Gideon’s always been a bit of a dilettante, studying whatever suited him or took his fancy. He’s never been good with completion.”

  I handed the phone over to Adam so I could pace. Did it help? Not really, but standing there hunched over a phone screen wasn’t doing much to relieve my tight muscles. Pacing could at least work out some of the energy. “He had help, obviously.”

  “I’d assumed as much,” Adam replied, “but whom? Aoife seemed less than interested in this entire situation, insofar as the Challenge itself. Your mother?”

  I shrugged as I fiddled with a piece of tile that I’d found on the ground. “Maybe? I know so little about her.”

  Dad snorted. “Branwen? She was as much of a pawn as I was,” he said. “We did our duty by our respective families, that was all. She was no scholar, either.”

  “But then why is she here?” I insisted. “Why is she helping Gideon?”

  “She’s what?” Dad’s mouth dropped open. His image wavered, blinked out and then came back. “Sorry,” he said. “A wee burst of unintentional magick.”

  “You didn’t know my mother is here?”

  “No. Though it doesn’t change my evaluation of her ability to write this Challenge,” he said. “This is the work of someone old, someone craftier than your mother.”

  “My father might have been able to do it with help,” Adam ventured. “But it’s not like him.”

  I pushed one of the chairs we’d sat on earlier under the small table. “He did sell you to the vampires,” I reminded him. “Though he has seemed to be helpful now.”

  “‘Sell’ is a bit harsh, Keira,” my father chided. “Back in the day, in those days, rather, kings made these sorts of arrangements all the time. Marriages for power and money, fostering children. You’re young. Grew up in the modern world and amongst humans. I’m not sure the latter was as good of an idea as it sounded at the time. I think you missed out on being raised within clan.”

  “It’s not as if you all weren’t with me,” I protested. “I had the same childhood lessons as the rest of the clan kids.”

  “Only then it was you and Marty, no one else.” Dad’s face grew sad. “Sometimes I wish I could just go back and undo some things.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “Whatever you think I missed out on or didn’t get to do, you were the one who came back for me. You rescued me from Below, from living a life as an outcast child.” I started to sniffle, tears welling up into my eyes. How had this turned from a discussion about where my great-great-granny had gone to my father blaming himself for not raising me properly? How could he even feel that way? There was nothing I’d not do for him or any one of my brothers, my clan. They’d raised me from perdition—from hell, really, if you can think of the Christian hell as a place of abuse and torture. I’d been ignored, abandoned and mocked. Yes, and abused physically sometimes, a harsh word turned into a slap. Lack of proper warm clothing. Lack of proper food. Seven years of this hell, knowing only that I was unwanted and a freakish child. I had no magicks, or so they’d thought. I was worthless.

  “Huw, we’ll phone back
later,” Adam said. “See what you can do to find Minerva.”

  “Will do,” my dad said. “Keira, honey, I love you. We’ll help you get out of this, I promise.”

  I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me from where I was standing. “Thanks, Dad.” I managed to get the words out.

  Before I could take another breath, Adam was there, holding me. “I can’t stand this,” I said. “Breaking down like this. There’s not time—”

  “There is always time,” Adam said. “You’ve had a lot to deal with over the past few days. You’ve not had a chance to relax, to just be.”

  “No, not so much,” I chuckled through a few tears. “Stupid life and stupid, stupid genetic heritage.” I wiped my face. “I thought I’d had this down, you know. After those three training months at the enclave. I really had accepted being heir, being part of the political machine. I could do this. But now…” I sighed and looked Adam in the face. “If it weren’t for you,” I said, I might have chosen to run.”

  “Away from Minerva?” Adam smiled gently. “I can understand that.”

  “From a lot of things, I think. I don’t like being this angry, this anxious. Anger on behalf of someone else, yeah, I can do that. That’s part of the gig. Having to be angry because someone’s decided to not let me exist peacefully in my own house, on my own land? Makes me insane with it. I just want to fight, to bring it to the table and let it all out. One big knock-down, drag-out fight to the finish. Don’t you ever feel that way?”

  “Constantly.”

  “Really?” Was he just humoring me? “You’re usually so…” I gestured to him. “Like now, you seem to be taking this in stride.”

  “I’m not going to play the age card,” Adam said. “When I was a young vampire, even though many years older than the rest of the others in true age, I knew that the only way to survive was to temper my instincts and emotions. It’s not that I don’t get angry. I’d just rather get even.” White teeth flashed, fangs and all. “Don’t underestimate my emotion.”

  “No, I can’t do that,” I said. “When you needed to, you got us to Niko in time… even though I don’t know how, exactly.”