Chapter 13 Veronica #3
“This says she enjoys the skins of young animals,” he said, pointing to a paragraph. “I don’t recall the ledger specifying the age of the skins.”
I sighed. “I know. No way to know for sure.”
Straightening, he sat on the edge of the table, head tilted up in thought.
“Something about this is scratching an itch. This makes no sense,” he said, lifting Balthazar’s ledger and shaking it. “All these random sacrifices? Most gods like one thing and one thing only. Goats, calves, rabbits, skins, human blood, virgins—”
“Virgins?” I gaped at him.
“Yeah. Quetzalcoatl always wanted virgins. The guy’s a real dick.
Lost a hundred bucks to him in a poker game in The Shadow Streets about ten years back.
Anyway, like I was saying, most deities sort of specialize in the types of sacrifices they like.
Some of the more pacifist guys like vegetables and plants.
There can’t be that many gods who want stuff so random.
I feel like I…” he trailed off, blinking slowly, and I sat forward, excitement rushing through me.
“What? Did you think of something?” I almost reached out to touch his leg, but restrained myself.
“Maybe.” He gave a rueful chuckle. “Is that fucker even still around?”
“Who?” I wanted to reach out and shake him.
Declan rose from where he sat and paced the room, running a hand through his hair.
“Holy shit,” he muttered. “You said Wendy never gave you any reason to think Balthazar was anything other than a self-made sorcerer?”
Hungry for information, I had to suppress a scream of frustration. “Correct,” I said through gritted teeth.
“And you never saw anything to give you that impression?”
“Nope.”
Declan stopped pacing. “What if he’s not bound to a god for power. What if it’s a patronage that stems from an older pact. One he didn’t make but one a member of his family made?”
I blinked a few times, racking my brain for any scrap of information I might have heard or read that could make sense of what Declan was saying.
When that didn’t work, I said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Shit, sorry.” He sat down on the edge of the table again. “Sometimes, ancestors do things that can trickle down through the centuries.”
“Why do I get the feeling this has something to do with you?” I said, eyeing him warily.
“That goddamned fish,” Declan hissed, which didn’t help my opinion that he was losing his mind.
“A fish. What? Are you, like, allergic or something?”
“Hang on,” he said. “This is a long story. Let me give you the basics.”
“Oh, good, I was worried this was going to be too easy to understand,” I said wryly.
Ignoring me, he said, “So, you know I told you I can tell when anyone is lying to me right?”
I did recall that from our very first meeting. He’d made it sound like some skill he’d developed over all the years of investigations, but now, I worried there was something deeper to that than what he’d let on.
“Uh, yeah. I remember,” I mumbled.
“That gift has been passed down for over eight generations,” he explained. “A magical gift that allows me to know when anyone is lying about anything.”
“Everyone in your family could magically tell when people were lying?” I sat forward, suddenly intrigued. “Like…you couldn’t even lie to your parents? Ever?”
He made a face like he’d just bitten into a lemon.
“It’s not like that. Well, not really. Not exactly.
Not everyone has the same gift. My six-times-great-grandmother lived in Ireland.
One day, she was out and about foraging for food.
This was right around the potato famine, and food was scarce.
Unwittingly, she journeyed near a magical nexus.
A place where the human world and your world”—he gestured toward me—“converge sometimes.
A lot of weird shit happens there. A lot of human legends come from those nexus points.
Bigfoot, will-o'-the-whisps, leprechauns, lake monsters, stuff like that.
“Anyway, by the river, she came across the most beautiful hazelnut tree she’s ever seen.
As the story goes, the branches were shimmering in the sunlight, and it looked like something from a fairy tale.
Beside the tree was an ancient well that looked like it may have been old when the Celts walked the island.
The branches of the tree hung out over the river.
What my dear old great-great-however-many-greats-grandma didn’t know, was that the hazelnut tree’s roots had wound their way into this old well.
It was the Well of Knowledge. An ancient and powerful magical source of knowledge, understanding, and vision.
“Instead of investigating the well, she went about trying to see if there were any nuts she could harvest. The remaining nuts were all hanging over the riverbank. Several of those nuts fell into the water. From deep down, a massive river salmon swam up and gobbled them down—”
I pressed my palms to the sides of my head like it was about to explode. “What the absolute hell does this have to do with anything?”
“I’m getting there,” he said with a sad sigh.
“So, this river was also mystical, and the salmon itself was not of this world.
The creature had swum in from God knows where.
Elysium? Asgard? The Field of Reeds? Anywhere.
What my ancestor stumbled across was a once-in-a-lifetime intersection.
The Well of Knowledge, having fed this tree and infused the nuts with knowledge, and a mystical salmon from some other magic realm, and a nexus location that allowed her to be there at the exact moment it all happened.
“While the fish was busy munching on nuts, Granny, in her starved and desperate haste, broke off a branch and speared the salmon. She hauled the massive fifty-pound fish out of the water and dragged it home. She dressed it and smoked most of it to preserve it, but she cooked up a nice dinner for her family. The stories say her children tucked in with wild abandon, eating the fish with the fervor only starving kids have.” Declan snapped his fingers.
“Just like that, the knowledge of the world was infused into my family.
The moment they ate the fish, they were given insight and understanding and knew what had happened, seeing it all in a sort of vision.
Those four children grew to be great and brilliant people.
One ended up a powerful politician, another a scientist, the third practiced law, the fourth unfortunately died in an accident a few years after this feast, though before death he was apparently a talented musician, but as the decades went by, everyone was blessed with this gift.
“I’ve got a great-great-uncle who won the Nobel Prize for Physics.
There’s a second cousin who’s a world class cardiac surgeon.
Even those of us with lesser versions of the blessing tend to end up as the best in whatever field they chose.
Teacher, artist, construction worker, whatever.
They’ve all been really successful.” His mouth twisted into a bitter smile.
“Then there’s me. All I got was the ability to hear lies and see magic.
I’d much rather have been great at fucking stock trading or something.
I’d be on a beach somewhere sipping a margarita. ”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“An old woman killed and ate a magic fish, that had also eaten magical nuts, which had taken water from a magic well, and…that gave your whole family magical intelligence?”
He sighed. “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds dumb.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to stop chuckling. “Was there another way it should sound?”
Grumbling, he waved my comment away. “Back to the subject. That was what I was talking about. Things in the past, especially when it comes to magic creatures, can travel through time. My family only dealt with a blessing from a magic fish. What would happen if someone in the past made a deal with a god? Something more powerful than that dumbass salmon? I think that’s what’s happened with Balthazar.
He was a sorcerer. His magical power came from his own research and skill.
But if his entire family is under patronage to a god, then the offerings would need to continue.
The gods are fucking assholes when it comes to that stuff.
If he stopped, then his patron might kill him or strip him of his powers, or even kill people he cares about.
Shit, they could send a tornado to tear apart the school he’d built.
There are a hundred ways they could exact revenge for the slight. ”
My brain felt like it had partially melted and run out of my ears. I knew the old gods all walked the human as well as the magical world, but so far I’d never had any dealings with any of them. It sounded like that was about to change.
“So…uh… Sorry, I’m trying to process this whole Charlie Tuna thing.”
“It was a salmon,” Declan muttered.
“Right, right. Salmon, because tuna would be way too crazy.”
“Are you done?” he said, shooting me a look.
“All done, yeah. Anyway, you act like you know which god it might be. Want to elaborate?”
Declan rose and shuffled through the books, obviously searching for something in particular.
“I saw this asshat the other day when I was flipping through these. I didn’t put two and two together until a few minutes ago,” he explained, pulling a thick hardcover book free of the pile.
He flipped through the pages. “This guy. I’m almost positive this is Balthazar’s patron god.”
Slapping the book down, he pointed at a picture of a bronze statue. It depicted a bearded man holding a giant hammer in one hand and what looked like a wine goblet in the other.
“Who is this?” I asked, intrigued.
“The old Celtic god named Sucellus,” Declan said. “It’s got to be him. He’s the only god I can think of that requires such random offerings.”
“Let’s go see him, then,” I said, looking up at Declan.
He gazed back at me for a long time. There was a strange combination of things going on in his eyes—hesitation along with desire.
For a split-second, I wondered if he was going to shoot his shot with me.
In fact, I hoped he would. The sexual tension between us had grown so strong I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle it much longer.
Leaning forward, he lifted an eyebrow and grinned. “You want to come?”
All the saliva in my mouth vanished. The double entendre was obvious, but I couldn’t tell if he was being a smart-ass or serious. Did I want to come? Yes. But did he mean come with him to find this god, or did he mean come with his tongue, fingers, and cock buried inside me?
“I would like to come.” I almost added sir to that sentence, but even I didn’t have that kind of audacity.
“Let’s go,” he said, heading for his bedroom.
“We probably won’t actually meet him in person.
Gods don’t hang around on this plane unless they have a reason to.
We might be able to speak to one of his acolytes or priests.
Grab a coat. It’s snowing again. I need to grab a couple other things too. Be right back.”
I sighed, watching him go into his room. I rose from my chair, a savage ache between my legs. Maybe I’d have to be the one to make the first move. If we survived this new little adventure, that was.