Free Blood Sacrifice by Maria Lima Page A

The entire place looked abandoned, broken, unclean. A decrepit wooden sign hung from the edge of the porch roof, the only thing about the place that wasn’t falling apart.
    A line drawing of a flower—meant to be a rose, I thought—graced the sign, just to the left of the worn words “Rose Inn.” Shabby, like the building, the sign swayed gently in the quiet breeze. A sense of decay, genteel, but decay nonetheless hovered around the building. Cracks in the paint shimmered in the heat. The requisite wooden swing hung from beams to the left of the double front doors, both open. A pair of shredded screen doors were the only thing holding back the outside from inside. A scraggly gray tomcat wandered into view from the right of the house. He stopped, fur rising, hackles drawing up. With a hiss and spit, he arched his back, tail stuck straight up at least three times bushier than at first sight. Tucker bared his teeth and let out a low growl. The cat hissed once more for good measure before disappearing back the way he’d come. Great. Feral cats plus a run-down piece of shit building. What had Adam gotten us into?
    “Seriously, we’re staying here?” I repeated. He couldn’t mean it. This place was beyond a dump.
    “Yes.” My brother didn’t sound as if he were joking.
    “Tucker, really? Why not the Menger or Emily Morgan? Nice, clean hotels. Or if you insist on low budget—not that I have any idea why—we can always find a Days Inn or something. I mean, for goodness sake, this place looks like the bastard child of the
Psycho
house crossed with the Liberty Bar.”
    “And how do you plan on housing our two vampires in a Days Inn?” Tucker asked. “It’s not as if we have many choices in sunny San Antonio. This place has all the amenities we need. Adam and Niko will be safe here.”
    “This is a choice?” I muttered.
    “They know us, remember?” Tucker replied. “The proprietors are used to the unusual. Besides, Adam and Niko are already here. It’s this, or move out even farther. It’s vampire friendly,” Tucker explained. “Plus there’s a hell of a lot more to it than at first glance.”
    “Damn well better be,” I muttered. “Bad enough I had to leave my home because my bloody cousin can’t keep his dick in his trousers.”
    “It wasn’t his penis that dictated his ridiculous actions,” Tucker said. “I blame your mother.”
    I shook my head as I scooped my backpack from the floor of the Rover. “Not me, as much as I’d like to. This has the stamp of Gideon all over it. Branwen may be deep into this, hell, she probably encouraged it, but I’ve no doubt Gideon instigated every bit of this charade. I still don’t know what he promised her, nor how he figured doing this, but it was him.”
    “You’ve got a point, but I doubt Gideon knows any more about Sidhe Challenges than we did. If the High King of the Unseelie hadn’t seen one in his long lifetime, then I don’t know how Gideon got this stupid idea.”
    “Is Angharad older than Drystan?” I asked. “She could well be the instigator, or at least the enabler.”
    Tucker shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but Adam might. Though I do think she may be about the same age as Adam’s father. We can hope that Drystan gets through to her.”
    “Yeah, because we both know that him trying to persuade Gideon to give this up is about as likely as an above-freezing day in Antarctica.”
    I hadn’t shared my fears with anyone yet—that we were about to become a party to a modern-day war worse than any technology could provide. Magick andpower thousands of times more deadly than the worst nuclear bomb could be released. Or, we could just be fighting a battle of wits and words. We had no idea and very little guidance. Gigi had emailed back her interpretation of the text, but with a very strong
caveat lector
attached. She’d been able to give us the gist, but none of the nitpicky details that still fretted me. We still had no bloody clues