Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [102]
“Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “Sensitive as hell to the shifting energies.”
“If this is true … and I’ll admit, you may not be the first. There were reports right around the Inquisition of witches who—”
“Sunny,” I said. “Less history. More helping me figure out a way not to explode whenever I brush up against magick.”
“I’ll help you as much as I can,” said Sunny. “But I’m not a Path, or a were. Just the standard-issue caster witch … I don’t know anything about this branch of magick.”
“Thanks anyway.” I sighed. She worried her hands together.
“Do you still want to spend the night?”
“No,” I said, standing and putting the Skull back into the tote bag. “Right now I think I just want to go home.” I shouldn’t, of course, but after what had happened to me I wanted to be at home, in my own bed, alone. Screw whatever Seamus would try to do to me. I was beyond caring.
The cottage was dark and desolate, just the way I’d left it. No shadowy security men waiting in the bushes in full tac gear. No trip wires in front of my door.
I put the Skull on the high shelf of the downstairs closet, with boxes of old shoes that I kept meaning to sell online, and went to my bedroom to find my backup gun. Morgan would probably chew me a new ass for losing the Glock, but right now all I cared about was firepower, so I loaded my father’s .38 revolver with hollow-point slugs and set it on my nightstand. I flopped onto the bed, intending to rest for just a minute before taking a shower, and when I woke up again it was morning, and my alarm clock was pinging at me.
Not my alarm clock, I realized after a second. Something from downstairs, an insistent ding ding ding that no one with normal ears would even notice from this far away.
I followed the noise into my office and saw that my e-mail in-box was blinking with a new message.
No sender, the address line informed me. Sent from an anonymous box. The message was one word. Look.
A video attachment blinked at the top of the message.
Shit. I already knew I wasn’t going to like this.
The image jumped into focus, a grainy handheld digital camera. Three plain black chairs against a blank white wall. In the chairs sat three bodies, tied down and slumped over, their heads covered in hoods. One of the anonymous suited security thugs came into the frame and snatched the hoods off. My stomach lurched, even though I’d half known what I’d see.
Victor Blackburn was tied in one chair, his face bleeding from a recent beating. He was gallows-pale, his eyes unfocused. The other figures were Shelby and Valerie. Shelby looked scared, but she wasn’t panicking, and her expression was enraged. If I were the security thug, I wouldn’t get too close.
Seamus stepped in front of the camera, bending down to look directly into it. “You have two hours to bring the Skull to me. Since I know you won’t just give it back, I propose this: participate in the Certamen Letum, werewolf. If you best me, I’ll release my hostages. If you don’t… well, you can figure out the rest.” He smiled thinly, and I dug my nails into my palm. The son of a bitch was enjoying this. “The O’Halloran Tower. I think you know where that is. Two hours.” The screen went dark.
To my credit, I only sat frozen with disbelief for about thirty seconds before I grabbed up the phone and dialed Sunny. She answered groggily. “Luna, it’s six-thirty in the morning.”
“What’s the Certamen Letum?”
Silence. “Where did you hear that?”
“Seamus O’Halloran,” I said grimly, “of course. He has Shelby. I have two hours to bring him the Skull and participate in whatever-it-is.”
“It’s a contest,” said Sunny, and I heard shifting as she sat up in bed. “A witch’s contest. Literally, ‘contest to the death.’”
I had figured it was something melodramatic like that. “So what, we get in a big ring and poke each other with sticks while alien lizard-men look on?”
“It’s not funny,” said Sunny. “Two caster witches face each other inside a working circle and they raise their energy until one of them burns themselves out. Or dies.