Blood Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF

parchment to the floor.
    The four of us watched it roll itself up, bounce and rattle against the polished hardwood as it rolled and stopped at my feet. I could almost see the magick within it quivering. I looked away.
    “So the land is dying because you are vampires and not strictly living.”
    “And we are infertile,” Adam reminded me. Right. Dead men can’t make babies—a phrase I’d snapped at my aunt Jane when she’d tried to convince me to return to Canada, to leave Adam. Of course, that conversation had happened before everything changed… including me.
    “Which means…” I didn’t even bother to finish my own sentence. I knew what it meant. In the traditional “king must die” sense, the old king, when no longer fertile, sacrificed himself so the new, young king could take his place, impregnate his queen and continue the line, satisfying the land. Persephone, eat your bloody heart out. I was living with Hades—and his sidekicks. “I do hope no one’s considering what I think they’re considering,” I warned. No way was I about to allow anyone of my family to commit suicide so we could keep
real estate
.
    Three heads shook in the negative.
    “Then what do we do?” I asked. “Do we let Gideon take it?”
    “First, before we do anything, we need to leave,” Adam said.
    “Leave?”
    “That would be part two of the Challenge.” Tucker bent down and picked up the scroll, tapping it on his palm. “This says that if we choose Truce, during the challenge period and through the final day, no one may live on the land in question.”
    I rubbed my forehead. “This whole thing is giving me a headache.”
    “It should do,” Adam said. “I believe that part of the interwoven spells is to cause consternation and confusion.”
    “Lovely. Because you know, my life so far has been so full of bunnies and fluffy kittens that I needed something like this to take my mind off the sheer boredom.” I stood. “I need to get out of this gear and into something more me,” I said. “Let’s table this for now, regroup after some sleep?”
    “I’m afraid we can’t.” Adam stepped closer and took my hand. “It is fairly specific. We can either leave now and continue the Challenge, allowing ourselves until Lughnasa to provide our proof, to have the land accept us, or we pay a price.”
    Fan-bloody-tastic. So we evacuate the only true home I’d known in a long time, uprooting an entire group of vampires who were innocent of anything more than being Adam’s people. They didn’t deserve this.
We
didn’t deserve this. “Does that thing explain what the ‘price’ is?” I asked. “Or does it just leave it up to us to figure out?”
    “It’s rather vague,” Adam said. “Just that there will be consequences.”
    “Multiple and varied,” Tucker supplied, almost in humor.
    I couldn’t really blame him. In one respect, this entire thing was beyond ridiculous. I mean, who the devil presented Challenge anymore? This wasn’t the old days, the old ways. We were in twenty-first century America, with cell phones and digital entertainment and space flight. Yes, Faery still existed, but they kept Underhill, out of sight. I knew that my Sidhe cousin Daffyd had been hungry to get out, to come Above, but he’d been trapped in the pocket of Faery, not free to return to his home. This entire situation could only come from some sort of misguided jealousy. Right?
    “You’re not helping,” I said to Tucker.
    “What Tucker means, love, is that the Challenge, though specific in what we must do, isn’t quite as forthcoming in what exactly happens if we ignore it. Only that the payments will be numerous and of great consequence.”
    Every muscle tensed as fury flashed through me. Great consequence? Knowing the bloody Sidhe, this could be anything from petty annoyances up to and including death. When they spoke of payment, they didn’t mean money. Sidhe had no need for currency—they only traded in lives and life