Blood Sacrifice

by Maria Lima

  “Where did she come from?”

  “Gigi erected her,” I said.

  “Yeah, back a few decades ago,” Tucker said. “As a sort of a tribute to the people who once lived there.”

  “Ranchers,” I explained to the now perplexed priest. “The cemetery was in no-man’s-land, where three different ranches once intersected. Now, it’s just part of the Wild Moon. We take care of it. I used to have to go there as a child and clean the graves, pull weeds, generally tend to the land. It was our chieftain’s way of helping me to understand mortality.”

  The priest nodded his head, then closed his eyes again, soon lost in the silent whispers of his prayers. He was fingering the beads of a rosary. I watched him for a few moments, mesmerized by the repetitive movements. Then I settled back into my own seat, closed my own eyes. I needed to focus.

  “Keira, we’re here.” Adam’s gentle voice woke me. I’d fallen asleep.

  “Hey,” I said quietly. “Where is everyone?”

  “Waiting outside the car,” he said with amusement as he leaned into the open passenger door. “Didn’t even faze you when we parked and got out.”

  I smiled and kissed him. “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For letting me sleep. For being here with us.”

  “Always.” He kissed me back, then brushed a hand along my cheek. “We will prevail.”

  “With you here, yes, we will.” It took all the will-power I owned not to cross my fingers. Would we? I still had my doubts, but even so, I felt we had no choice. We’d picked our battle.

  I watched Adam and Niko disappear behind the hill that led to the overhang. Tucker had shouldered a rope and pickaxe, a Coleman lantern swinging from one hand. Antonio clutched his small bag, a cross in the same hand, a flashlight in the other.

  I took nothing. Instead, I let my hair loose, then rebraided it tightly. If we got into a skirmish, I didn’t want it flying into my face. I wore cargo shorts, a black tank top and on my feet, a heavy pair of Docs, steel toes and all. Just what all the girls were wearing these days—if they expected trouble.

  Tucker was geared-out in similar attire, shorts and a T-shirt and sported his own pair of steel-toed boots. Antonio wore what I considered a “priest suit”: dark pants and short-sleeved clerical shirt—the black stark and forbidding, the tiny white square of the collar as much a mark of his allegiance as the Mark my own gang wore on their bodies.

  “Loaded for bear, boys?” I said, hiding my own unease in humor.

  “Locked and loaded,” Tucker said and came up next to me. “Let’s go.”

  Antonio paused as we reached the small symbolic gate. Only two feet in height, the gate and its attendant short fence simply marked the property line. “I’ll begin here,” he said. “You two go on. I work best alone.”

  “Be careful,” I said.

  He put his bag down on the ground and pulled out a stole, kissed it and draped it over his neck as he whispered. “Restore to me, O Lord, the state of immortality which I lost through the sin of my first parents and, although unworthy to approach Thy Sacred Mysteries, may I nevertheless deserve eternal joy.” He was soon lost in his own world of prayer.

  I watched for a moment, then motioned to Tucker to continue forward. It was unlikely any lingering spirits would harm a priest. I hoped. To be safe, I muttered a quick warding spell, my fingers weaving the air.

  “You think he needs it?” Tucker asked.

  “Maybe, maybe not, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  “Point.”

  Tucker and I trudged forward, weaving among the first few rows of markers.

  “Do you see?” Tucker pointed with the lantern. “Someone’s cleaned up in here.”

  “No runespells, either,” I said as I examined one of the gravestones. The broken ones we’d seen in the photos Carlton had sent were somehow mended, cracks still evident, but with signs of mortar as if a stonemason had repaired the breaks. All the stones were clean, scrubbed, no signs of the sigils. I pulled out my phone and dialed Adam.

  “Keira, we’re just about to the overhang,” Adam said. “Is there a problem?”

  “Not exactly. Hang on.” I used the phone to snap a few photos and sent them to him. “Someone’s been here.”

  “Was it this way last night?”

  “No idea,” I said. “We didn’t come any closer than the crossing. That’s too far away to see the actual graveyard.”

  “What do you feel?”

  “Nothing.” I stopped walking and did an exploratory sending. “It’s quiet. Too quiet.”

  “What do you mean, ‘too quiet’?”

  I squatted and placed a palm on the ground. “It’s a cemetery, Adam. I should be able to feel something. Death leaves a trace. But it’s like this place has been wiped clean.”

  “Could it be the desecration?” Tucker asked.

  “No, that would have muddied the aura here, not removed it.”

  I stood, brushed dirt off my hands and approached a large tombstone. Placing a hand gingerly on the top, I carefully extended my senses, down, into the ground. There, below me, two sets of remains lay side-by-side, just as the engraving advertised: Joshua and Rebecca Johnson. Taken by their Lord into the Bosom of the Angels. One date, 1873.

  “They’re still there,” I said. “The remains. Only…” I nudged past the obvious, searching for more. “I don’t feel their spirits.”

  “They’re gone? I thought that wasn’t possible.” Adam’s voice sounded tinny and far away, the signal fading.

  “It’s not,” I said. “Something’s happened here. Something really, really bad.”

  Tucker set the lantern atop another stone. “I think whatever that darkness was, it gathered the spirits last night.”

  “And did what with them?” I put my hands on my hips. “It’s the law of conservation of energy, Tucker. Things can’t just poof and vanish. They had to have gone somewhere.”

  “Keira’s right, Tucker,” Adam said. “Spirits don’t just disappear. Energy that strong, to remove all traces of lingering death—”

  “We would have felt it—even if we’d still been in San Antonio.” I squatted in front of another tombstone. This was one of the ones I’d seen in Carlton’s photos with a rune painted on it. Taking a deep breath, I reached out my right hand, fingers outstretched, still wary. A brush of flesh on stone. Nothing. A firmer touch. Still nothing.

  “Keira?” Adam’s voice sounded concerned.

  “I’m trying something, hang on.”

  I shut my eyes and focused. “Give up your secrets, stone,” I whispered and placed my palm flat on the place where the runes had once resided.

  Flash!

  I fell backward nearly three yards, to land at Tucker’s feet. The skin of my palm burned. “Fuck!” I scrubbed my hand in the dirt, a reflex, nothing more.

  “Keira, what is it? What’s wrong?” Niko’s voice overrode Adam’s. “We’re coming down there.”

  “No, wait.” I stumbled to my feet with Tucker’s help. He’d dropped the rope. “I’m okay, don’t come down.” My palm still felt as if I’d placed it atop a hot stove element. Stupid, stupid, Keira, I thought. “Adam, there are still wards, spells of a sort,” I said, cradling my hand. “But they’re hidden now. I touched one of the stones and got tossed ass over teakettle.”

  “Are you all right?” Adam demanded.

  “Fine. My hand’s a bit sore, but I’m fine.” I muttered a quick healing spell, passing my left palm over my right. The pain subsided enough for me to think. “There seems to be another layer here,” I said. “Spells hiding the runes.”

  “Can you tell who set the spells?”

  “Didn’t get a sense right away, but I’m going to try.”

  “That doesn’t seem prudent, love.”

  “Prudent or not, we need to know who—or what—we’re up against,” I argued. “Now that I know they’re here, I’ll take precautions.”

  “Keira, anyone who can spell so
thoroughly and hide them so well…” Adam didn’t need to finish that sentence.

  “I know, Adam. I promise I won’t do anything foolish.” That time, I did cross my fingers. “I’ll call you if I find anything else.”

  “We’re at the overhang now,” he said. “We’ll wait here. I can see the light from the lantern, so I’m not totally out of touch.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  I put the phone in my back pocket. “I’m going to get closer to that stone, Tucker. Cover me.”

  “Cover me?”

  “Just be there, okay? I need to figure out if I can recognize this magick.”

  “If you say so.” My brother moved the lantern from its perch to another stone, this one closer. The light shone across the weathered letters. Bits of mica and other particulates glinted against the smooth carvings.

  I reinforced my shields, then extended a small bit of energy around my hands. As I reached out, I whispered a warding spell followed by a show-me. A pulse of white energy pulsed about five inches out from the surface of the tombstone. “This wasn’t here earlier,” I muttered.

  “What?” Tucker bent over me, peering at the stone. “Huh. I don’t see anything, but there is…”

  “Yeah. It’s not Gideon’s,” I said. “Not Kelly.” I concentrated, trying to define what I was feeling. Soft, yet strong, it swirled above the stone’s surface as if to guard? Was it keeping something out or something in? I let it flow around my hands. This time, it didn’t attack, but seemed to sniff me out, like a dog testing whether or not I was a threat. I began to taste the flavor of it—spice, yet smooth, clean—on the back of my throat. No blood went into creating this. Its tantalizing near familiarity teased me. I’d felt this before, knew this—

  “Son of a bitch!” Tucker howled, his feet stomping in a crazy dance.

  I fell back onto the dirt, my concentration broken. “What, what?”

  “Damn it!” His hands brushed at his bare calves and thighs. As I rose, I saw them. Hundreds of them crawling up his legs. Little red segmented bodies, wave upon wave of them attacking his skin.

  “Fire ants.” I breathed out a spell that would move a bit of air, aiming it at his legs. Nothing happened. They marched on, swirling and swarming.

  Tucker continued to yell and howl and stomp. The more he brushed at them, the more seemed to be there. He took off running toward the cemetery entrance. I followed him, yelling to Adam. “Fire ants, Tucker’s infested.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time”

  —Mark Twain, “The War Prayer”

  We passed the priest, who barely even noticed us, deep in his own world of prayer. Tucker made it to the car first, tore open the back door and grabbed a water cooler from the floor, upending it over himself. Drowning ants sluiced off his body. I snatched a towel from the car and helped wipe them off him.

  His skin reddened and puffed, tiny angry bites studded every inch of exposed flesh. I took hold of his arms, checking them both. Only a few bites there, the majority of them were on his legs. Tucker huffed, his breaths short and shallow.

  “Fuck, are you allergic?” I fumbled for the first aid kit without waiting for an answer. Before I could find what I was looking for, my Viking Berserker brother’s eyes fluttered closed and he fell, like a redheaded tree, thumping onto the solid packed ground. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I muttered as I scrambled in the kit. “There, I’ve got it.” I whipped out the EpiPen and jabbed it in Tucker’s thigh. When he didn’t immediately come around, I snagged a second one and gave him another dose.

  Adam and Niko appeared, as if out of the wind. “What happened?”

  “Help me get him up,” I said. “He got stung by fire ants. A lot of them.”

  “He’s not breathing very well,” Niko said.

  “I know. I gave him two doses. He’s actually breathing better now.”

  Without warning, Tucker began to convulse in our arms. He slid back to the ground as Niko wrapped his arms around him and held his head still, forcing his jaw open. Adam took Tucker’s legs, holding them down.

  “Healing spell, healing spell,” I muttered, mentally rifling through my repertoire. “Hold him still, please,” I asked as I knelt down at Tucker’s head. Calling energy, I placed my hands just above his skin, not quite touching him. “Heal, damn you,” I whispered as I forced the spell out from my hands onto him. I made three passes, up and down, up and down, over all his limbs, his torso, his face. The welts reduced a bit and he lay still. “Turn him over, please.”

  Niko and Adam complied. Thank the powers that be I had two vampires with me. Tucker weighed a freaking ton. It would’ve been difficult for me to move him on my own. I repeated my actions on his back, once again down his legs. After a few moments, he began to stir.

  “Tucker, cariad?” Niko bent close to Tucker’s face, his hand cupping my brother’s jaw.

  “Hello, love,” Tucker grunted. “What happened?”

  “Fire ants,” I said. “A huge swarm of them. I didn’t know you were allergic.”

  Tucker’s brow furrowed as he stared at me in the dim light. “I’m not.”

  I packed up the debris from the first aid kit into a small trash bag and stuffed it underneath one of the rear seat benches. “You’re not? You sure reacted as if you were. Swollen tongue, not breathing, the whole nine. I had to jab you with two EpiPens plus a healing spell to get you to breathe.”

  “Let me up,” he said to Niko, who, with an arm around him, helped Tucker to his feet. He wavered a moment, then steadied. “Damn it. It’s like I was hit by a really big truck.”

  “That was the biggest swarm I’ve ever seen,” I said. “Bigger than the one Bea got into one summer when we were camping at the lake.”

  “Wait, that’s not…” Tucker turned his head to look back at the cemetery. “Fire ants build mounds in moist soil,” he said. “Like lakeside. Not—”

  “Not in dry, cracked dirt,” I finished. “I’m going back there.”

  “You are not.” Adam put a hand on my arm. “Keira, if you’re saying that there was an infestation of insects where there should be none, then something is causing that. You’ve already been attacked one other time tonight, I say we table this now and regroup back at Bea’s house.”

  Regroup? Do this all over again tomorrow? I sighed. “Okay, maybe you’re right. But tomorrow, I think Tucker and I need to come out here in the daylight. As much as I want the two of you with us, daylight helps us. Harder to hide.”

  Adam began to protest, but I held up my hand. “I promise we’ll only look and not touch. I’ll take pictures of all the stones if it makes you feel better. We need to get to the bottom of this. I’m willing to take a risk.”

  “It does a little,” Adam said, “but I’m still wary of the place. There’s a subtle energy here that I feel now. It didn’t seem to be there until you—“

  “Rang the doorbell?” Facetious or no, I was pretty sure that’s exactly what I did by touching that gravestone. “I know I probably announced our presence, but…”

  “What’s wrong?” Antonio walked toward us, his stole still draped over his shoulders. “I saw you all over here.”

  “Tucker got into a fire ant mound,” I said. “We’ll need to come back tomorrow. I need to get him home.”

  “Oh dear, that’s terrible.” Antonio peered at Tucker, his human eyes not able to see well in the dim light. “Tomorrow is fine. I’ve begun the process, but I can finish it later,” he said. “Could we do it in the daylight? It’s rather difficult…” He let his voice trail off, a sheepish look on his face as he realized he was addressing two vampires.

  “We’re actually coming back during the day,” I said. “Tucker and I.”

  “Very well then.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.”

  —Sir Francis Bacon

>   “She’s not at the café,” I growled. “Or at least she’s not answering.”

  We’d arrived at Bea’s in record time, Tucker shivering in the back, even with a blanket on him. I drove with Adam as shotgun while Niko tried to comfort my ailing brother. I’d managed to heal down most of the ant bites, but his body was still in shock. When we’d pulled into the drive, there was no sign of Bea’s car.

  “Adam, I need to go find her. The café closes at nine. She should’ve been back by now. It’s nearly midnight.”

  Niko looked up from where he was coddling Tucker. “Keira, it’s not a good idea. We’re already down one person tonight. We don’t need to make it two… especially you.”

  “You’re the heir,” Tucker muttered from underneath his blanket. He was ensconced on the couch, wrapped in two Hudson Bay blankets and Niko. “Under no circumstances will you go gallivanting around—”

  “It’s Bea,” I protested.

  “Call Carlton,” Tucker insisted. “He can go look for her.”

  I slapped my own forehead and dialed a number I knew all too well.

  “Larsen.”

  “Carlton, Keira here.”

  “She’s at the emergency clinic,” he said with no preamble.

  “Bea? What’s wrong, what happened?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  Adam sprung up at the words and began to gather my backpack and keys.

  “No.” Niko whispered fiercely. Adam flashed fang at his second. “No.” Niko removed himself from Tucker’s side to take Adam into the back hallway as I talked to Carlton.

  “There was a fire,” Carlton was saying. “At the café.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “A little smoke inhalation, but she’s fine,” he said. “The café’s pretty bad off, though.” He let out a deep sigh. “Keira, I’m afraid that there’s more to it.”