Sacrifice Me: The Complete Season One (17 page)

His eyes widened and he looked both ways down the
hall. “There’s way too much to try to explain it here.”

“Give me the short version,” I said,
my jaw tensed. My breath came fast. He had to know he couldn’t
just drop a bomb like that and expect me to let it go until another
time.

He let out a frustrated sigh. “Many witches
have spirit animals or spirit objects, often tied to their family
line. Some witches are so strongly tied to their spirit animals that
they can actually shape-shift into them,” he explained. “You
come from a very long line of witches who are able to shift into
crows.”

I swallowed, my throat thick with anticipation.
How long had I wanted to know about my family?

“You are the descendant of a particularly
powerful witch called the Mother Crow,” he said. “She is
well over one hundred years old and she is one of the most truly evil
creatures I have ever had the misfortune to come across, which is
really saying something after what I’ve been through.”

“Evil?” I shook my head. Not exactly
what every girl wants to hear about her grandmother. Or
great-grandmother. At over a hundred years old, what was she to me,
exactly?

“Truly wicked, like the man Fallon works
for,” he said.

My hands began to tremble. I gathered them into
fists and pressed them against my legs, willing them to stop. “And
who is that?”

“We call him the Devil,” Rend said.
“And he lives up to that name. Getting his hands on one of
Mother Crow’s girls would mean...”

His voice trailed off and he looked away, his
eyebrows pinched together with worry.

“What could he possibly want with me?”
I asked.

“Your blood is valuable, Franki,” he
said. “Demons who come to this world cannot cast magic without
being detected. When a demon casts, their magic pulls energy from
every living thing around them. Trees, grass, even humans. It makes
demons vulnerable and very easy to track. That’s why vampires
exist. I know it’s difficult to understand, but when a demon
consumes the blood of a powerful witch, that power lives inside them.
The demon can draw from that power like a battery, allowing them to
cast without damaging the world around them.”

I shook my head. This was too much. My brain
couldn’t make sense of it all. The hallway spun and I closed my
eyes and pressed my back against the door.

“I promise I’ll tell you everything
after you’re safe, but for now, you have to trust me,” he
said. “There is a war going on around us all the time and the
most valuable weapon is the power that lives inside of you.”

“My blood,” I said with a whisper.

“Your blood. Your heritage. Your abilities.
All of it,” he said. “Different factions desire it for
different reasons, but all you need to understand right now is that
you’re in danger. Until I figure this out, I need to make sure
you’re safe.”

I wanted to protest and run away. I wanted to go
home and try to forget any of this existed. But I knew I was in too
deep now to walk away.

I opened my eyes and found Rend staring at me,
concern written in every line on his gorgeous face. “Let me
help you,” he said.

“I thought you said you couldn’t
protect me,” I said.

“I can’t promise you anything right
now,” he said, lifting his hand to my face and tracing a path
down my cheek. “But I swear to you I’ll do everything I
can. At least let me try.”

I took a step forward, but my knees buckled.

Rend caught me and lifted me off the ground,
cradling me in his arms as he walked with hurried steps back toward
the door to at the other end of the hall. The door that would take us
back into the club.

Instead, though, he stopped in front of the one
with the carving of the serpent.

He turned the handle and pushed the door open
wide, then carried me inside.

Lights flickered on as he nudged the door shut
with his foot.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

“This is my house,” he said. “It’s
the only place I can think of that will be totally safe right now.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Is your house in the basement of the club?”

“Not exactly,” he said. He carried me
through a dark room and down a narrow set of stairs.

I don’t know what I expected to see down
there. A basement apartment of some kind maybe. Some kind of man cave
with a big screen TV and a twin bed where he slept on nights when he
worked too late to go all the way home.

I definitely didn’t expect to see a real,
full-size house down there. A mansion, really, with pristine dark
wooden floors and paintings hanging in golden frames.

He carried me down another hallway and into a
large bedroom with a gorgeous canopied bed carved from mahogany.

Very gently, he laid me down on top of a billowy
white comforter. I sank into it as if he’d set me on top of a
cloud.

I couldn’t make sense of it. There was no
logical way the club was so big it could hold a hundred rooms like
this behind all those doors. And how had he built a huge mansion like
this underneath the streets of Chicago?

My mind was spinning with questions, but Rend
didn’t give me a chance to ask them.

He sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes dark with
worry.

“I can’t stay here with you right
now,” he said. “I have some very important people in the
club who will start asking questions if I’m gone too long.
Besides, I need to make sure Fallon is gone and none of the Devil’s
other minions are hanging around the club.”

“I can’t stay here by myself,” I
said, sitting up.

He placed his hand on my leg. “Frankie, this
isn’t a request,” he said sternly. “You’ll be
safe here for now, I swear my life on it. Stay here. Rest if you can.
I’ll be back as soon as I can get away.”

“You can’t leave me with all these
unanswered questions,” I said, the panic growing inside my
chest. “I’ll go mad.”

He ran his hand across my cheek. “I can’t
even imagine how difficult this is right now for you, to be thrust
into this world you never even knew existed,” he said. “But
I cannot stay right now, and I can’t bring you back to the club
with me. Until we know what their intentions are for you, it’s
just too dangerous.”

“If you can’t protect me from the
Devil,” I said, “then why are you still trying?”

He avoided my eyes. “I have to get back to
the club before someone comes looking for me.”

He took my hand in his and brushed his lips
against it like a whisper.

“I should have made you leave the second I
saw you walk into my club,” he said. “I should have
picked you up and taken you out myself.”

My shoulders slumped against the mountain of
pillows behind me. If it wasn’t for the way I felt when he was
near me, I would have wished the same thing.

But everything had changed with that kiss. I
couldn’t wish him out of my life now if I tried.

“Get some rest,” he said.

Before I could protest any further, he was gone.

I woke to the sound of rain falling against the
window.

But then, how could that be?

I sat up in bed, making sure I was still in Rend’s
house and that he hadn’t brought me back to my own campus
apartment sometime in the night.

The elegant white bedding was a dead giveaway. My
comforter at home was five years old and well used. There was no
accidentally mistaking the two.

So how were there windows in the basement?

I stood and made my way to the window, a bright
light coming from outside. How long had I slept? It only felt like a
few hours, but the light pouring through the glass was as bright as
day.

I must have taken my boots off at some point in
the night and the wood floor was cool against my bare feet. I
trembled as I watched snowflakes, not rain, pelt the window.

I closed my eyes, thinking I must be stuck inside
a dream.

I opened them again, wider this time, unable to
believe my own eyes. A winter wonderland stretched out before me for
miles. A cliff dropped off just a few feet from the edge of the house
and mountain peaks rose from the fog that stretched out across the
distance. Snow swirled everywhere.

I brought my hand to my mouth. I could hardly
breathe.

Toto, we are so not in Chicago anymore.

I stepped back from the window. Where the hell was
I? How was it possible that we had stepped through a doorway in the
club in Chicago, come down a flight of stairs, and ended up on the
edge of a mountain in the middle of nowhere?

It was summer in Chicago. This just wasn’t
possible.

For a brief moment, I wondered if maybe I was
looking into some kind of TV screen. An illusion to make me believe
we weren’t underground.

But it looked too real. What kind of trick was my
mind playing on me?

I looked around the room for a coat. I needed to
see for myself. If it really was snowing outside, I couldn’t go
out in nothing but some dance leotard. I’d freeze to death.

My eyes landed on a white dress shirt thrown
casually over the back of a large chair near the bed. I picked it up
and breathed in the scent of him, my insides warming just from the
thought of his kiss the night before.

Okay, so the guy was strange and obviously not
like any man I’d ever met before in my life. But there was no
denying that the smallest thought of him turned me upside down.

I slipped my arms inside the shirt. It was huge on
me, but I loved the way it felt against my skin. I pulled it around
me and headed for the bedroom door.

I made my way down the hallway with just a
fleeting look back toward the small hidden staircase he’d
originally brought me down. I knew he had said to stay put, but I
needed to see what was really going on outside.

The main hallway opened up into a large landing
with a wide wooden staircase. The banisters on either side were
hand-carved, with ornate patterns. Everything looked antique and
expensive and more beautiful than any house I’d ever stepped
foot inside.

I raced down the stairs to the heavy front door,
taking in the marble-tiled entryway and the large chandelier that
hung above it.

I pulled the door open and stepped into another
world.

Freezing cold wind whipped around my face and bare
legs.

My feet sank into the newly fallen snow. I don’t
know if it was shock or the leftovers of last night’s shot
running through my veins, but I hardly felt affected by the cold at
first.

I stood with my arms stretched out, lifting my
face to the sky. Soft snowflakes landed on my cheeks and melted in an
instant, icy water sliding across my warm skin.

I barely registered the sound of footsteps behind
me before strong arms circled around my waist.

I jumped and struggled for an instant, afraid
Fallon had found me again. But it was Rend’s voice that rose
above the growing wind.

“I told you not to leave the bedroom,”
he said.

I couldn’t tell if he was angry or amused.
Or both.

I flipped around to face him, glad when he didn’t
take his hands from my waist. “Did you really expect me to see
a winter wonderland outside your window and not investigate?”

“That’s not the point,” he said,
his voice stern, but his dark eyes somehow lighter here in the snow.

“How is this possible?” I asked,
looking up at the white sky. “Where are we?”

He pulled me closer and suddenly the snow felt
freezing on my skin compared to the inviting warmth of his body
against mine.

“Italy,” he said with a slight twitch
of his eyebrow.

I shook my head, not able to make sense of this.
Even with my feet buried in the snow, it didn’t feel like
reality.

“That’s impossible,” I said.
“How is Italy in the basement of your club?”

“It’s complicated.” He ran a
warm finger across my cheek, brushing away the melted snowflakes.

I shivered at the thought of all the things I had
never known. All the things I still didn’t know.

“You’re freezing,” he said.
“Let’s get you inside before you turn into an icicle.”

He didn’t ask my permission. He simply
lifted me into his strong arms, carried me up the granite steps, and
into the massive mansion on the cliff.

Rend brought me into a living room off to the
right of the grand staircase. He laid me gently across a large
leather couch facing a magnificent stone fireplace that looked big
enough to hold a family of four.

He pulled a blanket from the back of the couch and
wrapped it around my body, his eyes lingering on the unbuttoned
shirt.

“I see you made yourself right at home,”
he said with a small hint of a smile.

The blanket was soft like fur and I snuggled into
it, my body shivering.

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “I’ll
have it dry cleaned.”

He shook his head and turned toward the fireplace.
“Keep it,” he said. “Seeing you in my shirt isn’t
exactly an unpleasant sight.”

The hint of admission of his attraction to me sent
a wave of warmth between my legs and I squeezed them together under
the blanket. I bit my lip as I watched him open a large wooden box
beside the fireplace.

He was still dressed in the same black suit he’d
been wearing last night, but he’d taken off his tie and
loosened the collar. I let my eyes travel over his body, devouring
every inch of him, my mind imagining what he’d look like
outside of those clothes.

A contented moan escaped from my lips and he
glanced back at me, his eyes narrowed. “What are you thinking
about?”

I hid my face behind the blanket. “Nothing,”
I said. “This blanket is gorgeous. It’s so soft.”

My attempt at distraction didn’t seem to
work because he smiled and shook his head.

I sank deeper into the couch, wishing I could
disappear for a moment. I needed to get a handle on my own desires. I
barely knew this guy. He was obviously part of a world I couldn’t
even begin to understand.