Blood Sacrifice

by Maria Lima

  “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.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “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)

  “We 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 tho
se 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.

  “We accept your gift,” Adam intoned. Me? I was still beyond the capability of coherent speech.

  Branwen stood, tucking her hands together in front of her. “I must offer my humblest apologies to my daughter, and to her husband.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “I believed that your cousin wanted to right things,” she explained. “To unite Faery and to claim our rightful place in the world. We’ve been fading, Keira. Fading quickly.” She looked directly at me. “I’m sure my queen neglected to tell you that when you visited.”

  “You were there?”

  “I was. Did you not wonder why so many closed doors in a place that once rang with the laughter of tens of thousands?”

  Truth? Not really. I’d blocked so much out of my head from those times, I only remembered my misery and my dank hidey-holes. The glitter and glare of the Faery throng was no more a part of my life than was shopping at the Galleria with the Real Housewives of wherever. I shook my head in answer to her question.

  “There are too few of us left. We close doors to hide just how few.” She walked over to the table and laid her hand on the parchment. “When Gideon gave me this to give to you, I took him at his word. I was wrong.” She looked at me. “I came back up after I’d spoken with my queen, with Minerva, and with the high king of the Unseelie Court. They continue to discuss long-term strategy. They do not see what is in front of their eyes. Your land, it is no longer barriered, nor boundaried by spell. Gideon removed the boundaries as part of the Challenge, yet did not perform the required ritual to bind the land to whomever wins the claim.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That the magick no longer is constrained to Challenge outcome,” Adam said. “We weren’t going down the wrong path after all. What we’ve done should have bound the land to us.” He slammed a hand against the hard wood of a chair. “That’s why nothing was working.”

  Branwen nodded. “Gideon has put a Geas on the land.”

  “How could he do that?” I protested. “Geas is placed on a person, not a place.”

  “It is a curse, nonetheless,” Branwen continued. “The land is encumbered.”

  I was sure she didn’t mean that in the modern day real estate sense, yet, oddly, the current legal definition probably evolved from this more traditional magickal one. Instead of having property title tied down by legal issues, this land had spells achieving the same effect. Too bloody good, Gideon. Too bloody good. I had to applaud his efforts, even though I hated what he’d done.

  “You are too easily led by others, Branwen,” Adam remarked. “First, you allow your initial championship of your own daughter, in whom you sense magick, to be overruled by those with silkier tongues. Now, when given a chance to reconnect with her, you support someone who dips into the Darkness to achieve his questionable goals.”

  “I only ever wished for peace and comfort,” she protested. “Since childhood, I was but a pawn in my queen’s long game. I was given to Huw Kelly to produce a child. I did so. I could not fight for her. It was a losing battle. Instead, I let her father raise her.”

  “You’re her mother.”

  “I am a horrible mother. I never wanted a child. I was forced.”

  I gasped, and turned to look at my father, who started at her words. He began to speak, but my mother continued.

  “He did not force me to lie with him, Keira,” Branwen interjected before Dad could say anything. “My queen coerced me to become pregnant, to remain with Huw until you were born. I wished none of these machinations.”

  Machinations. Machiavellian ones. Gigi. “It all falls back to Gigi and her cronies, doesn’t it?” I said. “Playing games with my generation, hoping for what? Power? As if they didn’t have enough already.” The words were bitter in my mouth.

  “Minerva needs to be here to help,” Adam said. “If Gideon is calling up the Darkness, wanting the barriers to fall between Faery and Above, he’s totally out of control. He’ll do nothing more than unleash Chaos.”

  “Chaos and all her sisters,” Tucker muttered. “Has the Darkness spread Below?”

  Branwen nodded. “It has begun,” she said. “Slowly, inexorably, it has infested us. We fade now even more rapidly.”

  “I’m reluctant to go back to the cave door,” I said. “That cemetery is riddled with Dark. It was dormant when we were there earlier, but there’s no guarantee that it stayed that way. Especially with everything Carlton’s told me. It sounds like something’s been let loose, or is at least seeping out. We need to drag Gigi out of there whether she wants to come or not. She can help, then go back to have her summit with Angharad when we’ve put this matter to rest. For that matter, the other two might as well be a part of this—Angharad and Drystan, I mean.”

  “You’d Summon the three highest?” Adam asked with an amused drawl.

  “In a New York minute,” I stated. “Their crap got us into this, they can bloody well come help out and put the Dark back where it belongs.”

  “We could walk Between,” Branwen suggested. “It’s not as easy as using an established portal, but can be done.”

  I turned to Adam. “We’re going to need more than just Branwen’s magick to pull us all through,” I said. “You used it before, when the Millers took Niko. Think you can do it again?”

  Adam looked surprised. “I don’t know,” he said. “Niko was in danger. I believe the only way I was able to do it before was because of our blood tie. My anger overrode my sense and I just—” He shrugged. “I didn’t stop to think about it. I simply did it.”

  “You maneuvered Between?” Branwen asked. “That’s a pure Faery ability. It should be lost to you, Aeddan.”

  “Needs must, I suppose.”

  “It should be physically impossible,” she insisted. “So should I,” I said, my words bitter. “There is never supposed to be more than one heir. That has been the case for the entire history of our clan. Why can’t Adam be able to use some ability in crisis mode? It’s been known to happen in humans, a rush of adrenaline—”

  “But this is fey ability,” Branwen protested. “He died, faded, then woke as vampire.”

  I turned this suggestion around in my brain. If she was right, if Adam’s Sidhe abilities should not exist, then there is no way he could have done what he did. No way he could’ve taken me and Tucker with him through the Between to Niko’s side. How had it happened?

  “Many things have happened that shouldn’t have,” Niko said. “Perhaps Adam’s blood exchange with Keira awakened some of the dormant Sidhe within him. Ne
cessity pulled the power to him.”

  “So not dead, only sleeping?” I asked, letting the sarcasm through. “He’s not a Monty Python parrot.”

  “No, but he is a Sidhe prince,” Branwen argued. “He is Drystan’s heir to the throne of the Unseelie Court. I believe yon vampire is correct. Aeddan, have you tried a Summoning?” She waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Not to the lesser fey, but to true Sidhe.”

  “I have not,” Adam said, a thoughtful look on his face. “I’d meant to…”

  Branwen nodded. “Do it. It is one of the most basic of our skills—”

  “Yet requires a great deal of power,” I finished her thought. “Adam, we have nothing to lose at this point. Try it.”

  Adam took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I will try it. But not here. Keira, with me?”

  I jumped off the table and followed him.

  Within minutes, we were in the privacy of our bedroom. “Are we doing what I think we’re doing?”

  “Exactly.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

  —Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet XVII”

  He tore off his clothing. I did the same.

  I groaned as he slid atop me, my skin already slick with sweat from our short time outside in the heat. His own skin seemed to burn as it touched mine. I licked at his collarbone, then bit down, teeth scraping skin, breaking it, bringing blood. He gasped, and rolled us over, his hands grasping my arms. I straddled his groin, my knees gripping his sides as we bit, licked, kissed. This was no leisurely lovemaking, but a joining to raise power, to Call and Summon. Could we do it? I forced aside my doubts and let myself sink into the sensations, pushing worry and thought and plans away, focusing only on this. This before me now.

  Power surged between us as once again, I plundered his mouth, taking, wanting, needing, connecting. Adam’s palms slid down my back, cupped my ass as he lifted me, then speared me on his cock. I threw my head back, letting the feelings wash over me. I reached a hand back between us to caress his sac, my other hand reaching forward to slide across his chest. His own hands came up, his thumbs brushing my nipples ever so lightly. I growled and he returned it, sounds of our union, of the power within us meshing, combining. The hunger rose inside me, meeting his. It crashed, burned, merged. Pulsed with light and darkness, joining us. Blood called to blood. Dark, powerful, needful. Adam raised his torso, one arm around me to press me to him as I rocked atop him. I turned my head to the side, baring my neck. With another growl of want, he sank his fangs deep, brought the blood pounding to the surface. Take. Want. Have. I rode the waves of pleasure and power, the energy surging between us, binding us, sealing together.