Chapter 23 Declan
DECLAN
“Hail, Lord Sucellus. Allow me to be thy vessel. Great lord of the Celts, lord of forests and fields, god of wealth, and caretaker of flocks. Give unto your true servant what once belonged to another.”
I opened my eyes at the sound of the voice, my head aching like hell.
Slowly lifting my head, I looked around the room.
It took a second to get my bearings, but I quickly realized I was locked in a cell.
Opening out before me was a huge room that looked to have been renovated into a temple.
High on the walls, small windows showed the dark sky beyond.
Night? Fuck, how long had I been out?
“Let her go, you bastard!”
Veronica was in a cell right beside me. Yet another magic collar had been placed around her neck, but nothing on her wrists.
I quickly saw why they hadn’t bothered. She shifted to her wolf form as I watched and rammed against the bars to no effect, so enraged, she even clamped her jaws on the cage and shook her head, trying to break them before shifting back once more, and continuing to scream at Virgil.
Climbing to my knees, I looked toward the chanting voices.
Virgil stood before an altar, dressed in green-and-black robes.
The remainder of his goons stood around him, dressed the same.
Wendy was tied to the altar, bound and gagged with her own neutralizing collar back in place.
The girl sobbed and cried, thrashing about and trying to scream for help, but her voice was muffled by the rope tied around her mouth.
“Veronica?”
She stopped trying to shake the cell apart and turned at the sound of my voice.
“Declan? Oh, gods,” she said. She reached through the bars and took my outstretched hand. “I didn’t know whether you were okay. They knocked you out. You’ve been asleep for hours.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine. What time is it?”
“Eleven-fifty. Virgil just started the prayer a minute ago.”
“Son of a bitch.” I patted my pockets, checking to see if I had anything that might help us.
I’d been stripped of my jacket and all the weapons I had.
Though, when I touched the pocket of my jeans, I felt the hard circular outline under the fabric.
I’d threatened Sloan to within an inch of his life to give me that.
It looked like Virgil’s men weren’t completely thorough.
The problem was, it wouldn’t save us. Not now. Not when…
Frowning, I glanced up at the walls of the temple, where painted murals showed the history of Sucellus.
From his time as a protection god of the Celts down through the ages.
The later paintings showed him in the form of a human clad in finery and gold.
I scanned back toward the beginning and skimmed the image of him rising high above the Colosseum of Rome.
Rome? The Celts? Something about that tickled at the back of my mind. What was it? Then, as if from a distant memory, I recalled Veronica talking about some book. A book that talked about…
I sucked in a breath, my eyes going wide, a shiver of both fear and hopeful excitement coursing through me.
“Veronica?” I hissed, pressing myself against the bars.
“Wendy!” Veronica screamed.
Virgil’s men had lifted the girl up while another laid a tarp beneath her. Virgil stood off to the side, still reciting his prayer, an ornate knife clutched in his hand.
“By this sacrifice,” Virgil intoned, “you will be bound to me, and I to you. The spilling of this blood will sever the connection of the Freedman family. Their blessing will be mine, and all of my devotion and honor will go to you. This I decree, by the shadows of the west, and the star of the east, by the Mother, the Maiden, and the Crone. I bind us.”
Veronica was still shaking the bars. Panic rose in me. We had to hurry. If I was right, we didn’t have much time.
“Veronica,” I hissed, and she finally turned to look at me.
“What?” She said, kneeling beside me again.
“Take this,” I said, and pulled two silver coins from my pocket, placing one in her hand.
“What is this?” she said, frowning.
The coin was engraved with the symbol of a hammer on one side and a wine goblet on the other. The symbols of Sucellus.
“You need to repeat after me,” I said, thinking back on what Sloan had shown me in one of the ancient tomes in the Sucellus temple.
Veronica shook her head. “I don’t under—”
“No time,” I said, wrapping her fingers around her coin. “Repeat after me.”
She sent a worried glance toward Wendy, but nodded. “Okay.”
I went on to recite a litany of Gaelic words I’d managed to memorize. A simple blessing that asked for Sucellus’s protection and offered our temporary allegiance to him. I prayed that, since Wendy’s family was still currently a follower of him, she would be safe without this spell.
Finishing the Gaelic portion, I said, “Lord Sucellus, protect us and defeat the enemies who wish to put you under their sway. Protect us and all your true followers.”
I’d initially asked for these protection totems to ensure that, if Virgil was successful, I might be able to save Veronica and myself from the god’s wrath. Now? Maybe we’d all make it out of here alive.
The palm holding the coin grew hot, and I clenched my fist even harder.
“Get ready,” I said.
“For what?” Veronica whispered.
“I have no idea, but I don’t think it’s going to be good,” I said.
At the far end of the temple, Virgil raised his knife high. “With this first blood, on the night of the New Year, I summon you.”
Virgil touched the tip of the blade to Wendy’s forearm right as the clock chimed midnight. I clasped Veronica’s hand, holding her tight.
Wendy cried out as a single drop of blood oozed from her skin and hit the ground.
At that exact moment, a shimmering bright light appeared at the center of the room.
Virgil’s men turned to gaze upon it, squinting at the light.
Virgil grinned in a self-satisfied way, his eyes blazing with religious fervor.
A burly man with thick, hairy forearms and long wavy hair down to his shoulders stepped out of the light. He wore a colorful checkered tunic and baggy trousers, which made him look like a reject from a renaissance fair. His bearded face was twisted into a confused scowl.
“Who has summoned me?” His voice was deep, booming, and intimidating in a way only a god’s could be.
“I, Virgil Tacitus,” Virgil cried. “I summoned the great Lord Sucellus, here on the hour of the new year, and do bind you to me. With this death, I end the Freedman family and take their place as your truest worshipper, and all the gifts that bestows.”
“Excuse me?” Sucellus boomed, and as we watched, he grew almost three whole feet taller and equally as broad, looking like a giant.
Virgil’s smile faltered, but only slightly before it returned.
He lifted the knife high over his head. “I said, I am Virgil Tacitus. This night, on the turning of the calendar, I kill the last of the Freedman family. By the laws of your kind, this grants me the same gifts as them. Power, knowledge, wealth, and success. When I kill this child, then—”
A massive war hammer appeared in Sucellus’s hands, the handle as long as my entire body, and the huge steel head had to weigh as much as Veronica and me combined.
The god grew even larger, red, shimmering light emanating from his body.
He opened his mouth to speak, and the volume of his voice shook the earth.
We had to clap our hands to our ears to keep from going momentarily deaf.
“You dare,” Sucellus cried, taking a step forward, growing taller still. “Whelp. No one commands me. No one kills those who have my blessing.”
Fear melted Virgil’s face. Like wax pouring off a hot candle, his smile vanished, and his gaze darted from the wall to his men cowering by the wall.
“No!” Virgil cried, and once more thrust his hand up, aiming the knife down toward Wendy. “I am in charge here,” he screamed, sounding more like a terrified child than an adult. “This ceremony is binding on the stroke of midnight on the new year. You will grant me the Freedman blessings.”
Sucellus slammed his hammer onto the ground, shaking the very building. Concrete cracked, dust poured from the ceiling, and the windows shattered. The shockwave sent Virgil and his men flying backward.
Sucellus rose higher, his body transforming to something like pure energy. I stared in open-mouthed wonder. I’d never seen a god this pissed, and it was fucking terrifying.
“Know this, mortal,” Sucellus said, his voice deep and thunderous as he transformed. “None who are not mine shall leave this chamber alive.” The last word hissed out like the crackle of lightning and Veronica reached through the bars, trying her best to hold me.
“Look away,” I said. “Don’t watch.”
I had no idea what was about to happen, and I was only about ninety percent sure she, Wendy, and I were safe from whatever was to come.
Virgil’s men, rushed for the doors, but the energy that Sucellus had become washed toward them like a wave of liquid fire.
A scream burst from my throat as the fiery form rushed toward Veronica and me like a raging tidal wave of flame, but it passed over the metal cages and us without ill effect.
In fact, all I sensed as he went through was a gentle warmth, like a summer breeze.
The same could not be said for the running men.
Sucellus, still bellowing his earsplitting rage, washed across them.
Before my eyes, I watched them be taken.
Their arms flailed, and legs bucked, falling to the ground.
The heat of his anger was hotter than any earthly flame, and instead of burning them, they melted.
Skin and fat oozed off their bones until even those turned to ashes.
It was awful to behold. Even knowing those men had been about to kill us all, it didn’t make it any easier to watch.
“STOP!” Virgil bellowed.