Free Blood Sacrifice by Maria Lima

unless you think there’s anything else I need to do?”
    “No, that’s fine,” Adam said. “Pack for the both of us if you don’t mind? Niko and I will need to go to the inn as soon as possible since our hours are limited. We’ll take one of the ranch vans. You and Tucker can come along first thing in the morning. I’d like you to make sure John and his family get off all right.”
    Tucker nodded. “We’ll do that. Where are they going to?”
    “I’d like him to make sure the Wild Moon is closed up behind us. Then he and his family can drive to Austin and catch a commercial flight to London tomorrow,” Adam replied.
    “That’ll work.”
    Part of me was ecstatic that we were doing
something
, anything that seemed like action, like forward motion. The other part was trying to freak out that this was happening so fast. I stuffed down the gibbering part of my brain with a ruthless mental “later” command. I’d break down later. This wasn’t anything big, just a temporary relocation. I refused to think ofanything else right now but getting my stuff packed. No problem. I traveled light. San Antonio is a big city. If I needed anything, I could just go to a store. Right?
    Adam pecked me on the cheek. “See you later, love.”
    “I’ll come with you, sis,” Tucker said.
“Cariad
.” He kissed Niko. “I’ll pack for us as well. You two get out of here quickly, okay? It’s three hours to San Antonio from here. You need to go within the hour to beat full sun. Everyone else will be fine. I’ll help make sure they get on the plane and get out of here.”
    Niko laid a hand on Tucker’s face. “I’ll get him out of here. Why don’t we take your van? You and Keira can come in her car after.”
    The four of us stood in silence for a moment, regarding each other. This was huge. Huger than huge. We were about to abandon the one place that I’d felt safe, loved, cherished since my family had left more than two years ago. The place where I’d found love. I knew that my ties here were strictly emotional, but damn it, I didn’t want Gideon to take this—and there was no way I was letting him rule in my stead. I’d been dealt this heirship hand and I was going to play it out, as long as I had Adam next to me and my blood-bonded family supporting us.
    The mood broke as John, the day manager, bustled in with a clipboard and a long printout of something or another and gave us each a quick greeting. From his cheery demeanor, I couldn’t tell that he’d probably been wakened from a sound sleep and hurriedly brought up to speed on the situation.
    As Tucker and I left, I could hear Adam, Niko, and John organizing and coordinating things I’d neverhave thought of—such as suspending deliveries, clearing out perishables in the restaurant refrigerator, hiring someone to drop by and check the water tanks for the livestock. I felt as if we were preparing for a long haul, some sort of mental and physical entrenchment for Armageddon. I hoped I was wrong.

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    “Time is a great healer, but a poor beautician.”
    —Lucille S. Harper
     
    “O h,
hells
to the no. You expect me to stay
here
?” I looked at the place one more time, hoping that I was hallucinating. Nope. Still the same—a clapboard house, two stories and a porch that looked like the second cousin of the Bates Motel—the cousin that only got hand-me-downs third hand. Normally, I’d be okay with just about anything, despite my brothers’ teasing that I was only used to four-and five-star hotels, but this place? The house leaned dangerously to the right, the porch leaned the other way, every single step broken and worn in multiple places. What was left of the once-white paint on the wooden clapboards was now a dingy dirty gray, decorated with clods of dried mud, smears of I don’t know what, even smashed bits of insects. A lone shutter hung precariously by one hinge on one of the upstairs windows. None of the other windows even had shutters.