Icy fingers clutched at my back and up my neck, I tried to thrash and bite, but nothing worked. Even my lungs were frozen, and I couldn’t make a sound. The last thing I saw before it all went dark were two men dragging an unconscious Declan toward the stairs of the mausoleum.
23
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 herhead, 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 hadanythingthat 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 andgold. 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?—”
