“If nothing can get in, nothing can get out. Not until the ritual is complete or the circle is broken.”
Shane didn’t bother saying and this time.
Siobhan sighed. “They are standing on top of a gateway to a dimension full of monsters. And they. Can’t. Get. Out.”
His eyes widened as he caught up to her thought train. “You’re going to open the gate.”
“Yes.”
“What about the girl?”
Siobhan looked at her replacement who was passed out cold and stripped bare on the altar. “The high council are cowards at the core. They’ll open the circle to save themselves, and if we do this right, we’ll be able to get in and grab her before whatever comes out has a chance to get her first. It’s the only way we’re getting over that line.”
Shane whistled again, a low, impressed sound. “You’ve got bigger balls than I do.”
Pulling her knife out, she tried to lighten the mood. “I think we both know that’s not true.” She held out her empty hand, and he gave her his arm with only the slightest hesitation.
“Try not to kill me,” he warned.
“Try not to die,” she countered before she slit open his arm.
Chapter Twelve
Siobhan was a banisher by nature. Her job was to take whatever got past the gates and send it back from whence it came. But the gateway worked in two directions. Calling them to her was just turning the ritual on its head. The problem was she didn’t have the blood she needed, which was why she had to borrow some.
Shane looked woozy as the blood seeped from his arm and wet the ground beneath their feet. She released his arm, and with her ceremonial knife in hand, she tracked the blood as it flowed towards the white circle her father and his cohorts had laid down in salt.
The moment Shane’s blood touched the circle she drove her knife into the newly reddened salt.
Light and energy exploded outwards with a force she’d been unprepared for, sending her stumbling backwards into Shane. They landed in a heap, bathed in the cool, bright illumination she’d created.
Blinking, she shielded her eyes and looked into the circle, a dome of pulsing energy now showing exactly where the ceremony site extended to. Within the confines of the dome, the high council turned towards her, and though she couldn’t see their faces, she knew they were pissed.
Let them be pissed.
She pushed herself off Shane, and they both climbed to their feet. He removed his jacket and investigated the mark on his arm with naked wonderment. The knife had acted like a soldering agent, sealing the wound once the bloodletting had ended. He rubbed the thin, long scar and turned his arm over as if expecting to see the real wound had moved of its own volition.
Seeing the blade’s healing power in action had lost its impact for Siobhan, so she returned her attention to the ceremony circle where the crackling energy of the dome had formed a bright blue pillar in the center of the clearing. The pillar sparked and billowed outwards with lightning-like arms until it was a good five feet across. The white light shrank until a wide, dark circle had appeared ten feet behind the altar, forming the black yawning mouth of the gate.
This whole venture now depended on luck. She prayed to the goddess her father hadn’t had an opportunity to summon forth whatever gatekeeper would be coming to claim the virgin sacrifice. If he had, surely the gate would have been opened already. Siobhan didn’t know what she expected to emerge from the hole, but she hoped it was something big, mean and hungry for druids and not unconscious virgins.
Shane ambled up next to her, and they stared into the circle while the druids watched the gate nervously. They moved into action, pulling out their own knives—identical to hers—and set about a speedy course to seal the gate. They wouldn’t make it on time. Opening the gate, even for a second, was long enough for something to get through.
Siobhan withdrew the compact bow from her back sling and slipped the wire off her hip, stretching it long as the bow expanded into its full size. She bent the bow, stringing the wire tight, all the while watching her clansmen try to shut the gate before—
The gate was empty one moment, and the next a big, hulking mountain of monster appeared in the opening. It was easily ten feet tall, had the skull structure of a horse and four elephantine legs as well as two humanlike arms. The only thing making the arms unusual was the sharp claws in place of fingers. The beast was entirely red, except one break in color—two solid black eyes. The monster—one she’d never seen before in her life—grabbed the nearest druid by sinking its talons in the man’s head and flinging him into the blackness of the gate.
Siobhan heard a pop, and the gate closed. Blood was blood as far as bindings went, and the gate had been appeased.
The remaining five men scattered in front of the monster like ants whose hill had been disturbed. One panicked and ran headlong into his own protective circle, and the swirling wall of energy sent him flying back, directly into the monster’s waiting arms.
The monster ripped the druid in half.
Siobhan recognized the gruff voice of her father shouting directions to his still-living comrades while he knelt before the salt line and began to chant in Gaelic. The breaking ritual. She fixated on the slab where the girl lay supine, and prayed the monster would seek out more active prey before turning its attention to the unconscious innocent. Watching her father’s mouth move, she could hear the words he was speaking echoing in her head, words she’d chanted herself a thousand times over.
She knew the exact moment the barrier would collapse.
Leveling her bow and keeping both eyes on her father, Siobhan could feel her fingers trembling. It wasn’t that she harbored any kind of warm-and-fuzzy feeling towards the man who’d sired her, but the idea she might need to put an arrow in him didn’t sit well.