Sacrifice Me: The Complete Season One (22 page)

No matter how much I wanted him, there was no
denying this. He had hurt me. Yes, it could have been much worse, but
wasn’t this bad enough? The one person I’d been trusting
to keep me safe was the most dangerous person on the planet. I’d
let my guard down around him, and that was just about worse than
anything else. I’d let him into my heart in ways I’d
never let a man in before.

I couldn’t let it happen again.

“Franki?” Katy knocked on the door to
the bathroom. “You can’t seriously be making me wait to
hear this. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I cleared my throat and turned off the water.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. I
rummaged in my makeup bag for a bandaid and placed it over the marks
on my neck. She was going to think I was crazy, but I knew I had to
tell her the truth. Lying to someone I cared about right now would
make me the worst kind of hypocrite.

“The coffee’s almost ready,”
Katy said.

“I’ll be out in a second,” I
said.

I waited until I heard her walk back toward the
kitchen before I slipped out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. I
undressed quickly, shedding my bloodied clothes and pulling on a pair
of sweat pants and a tank top.

I picked Rend’s white shirt off the floor,
thinking how I’d worn it last night to find comfort and feel
close to him. And how less than twelve hours later, I wasn’t
sure if I ever wanted to see him again.

I wadded the shirt up and tossed it into the
trashcan under my desk.

I took another deep breath, then made my way out
to have coffee with my best friend and tell her about how I’d
almost been killed by vampires.

Katy sat across from me, her mouth open.

She hadn’t said a word in the past half hour
and she hadn’t taken so much as a sip of her coffee. Mostly,
she just stared at me, listening in awe.

Or horror.

I wasn’t sure which.

“When he left, I must have sat on the floor
until I finally fell asleep,” I said, coming to the end of my
story. I’d told her almost everything from the vampires in the
alley to Fallon’s threat and Rend’s visit last night.

I bit my lip and waited for her to react. Tell me
I was crazy. Something.

Instead, she sat still, her hands gripping her
favorite Eiffel Tower coffee mug.

“Katy, say something. Please.”

She took a deep breath in and raised her eyebrows.
“Are you going to see him again?”

I pressed my hand against my forehead. “Wait,
you heard all that and this is the burning question on your mind?”

Maybe she was the crazy one here.

“Franki, do you seriously think I haven’t
always known there was something different about you?” she
asked in a soft voice. She placed her hand on mine and squeezed.
“We’ve been friends for as long as I can remember. I
notice things like unexplained gusts of wind when you get angry or
the way you flinch every time someone uses the word witch.”

I shook my head. “Why didn’t you ever
say anything?”

She shrugged and released my hand, finally taking
a sip of her coffee. She stuck her tongue out and made a face. “Yuck,
this is cold.”

She stood up, dumped her cup out in the sink, and
poured a fresh one.

“I’m serious,” I said. “You’re
telling me you’ve known all this time I was a witch and you
never once asked me or confronted me about it?”

“It was obvious you were sensitive about
it,” she said. “The same way I almost never ask you about
your mom. It’s just not important if it’s going to hurt
you to bring it up.”

I ran a hand through my knotted hair. “Great.
So I’m the last one to find out who I really am,” I
mumbled. “Next you’ll be telling me you knew vampires
were real.”

She shrugged again. “It’s not like
I’ve ever met one before, but I guess I’m not really that
surprised. There’s all kinds of weird shit going on in the
world that we never even hear about,” she said. “And I’m
definitely not surprised there’s crazy shit going on at Venom.
That place is definitely the kind of place where vampires would hang
out.”

I laughed and threw my arms around her neck.
“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For making me feel a little bit less
crazy,” I said. “I thought you were going to have me
committed.”

She smiled and went back to sit down on the
barstool. “Oh, I still think you’re crazy,” she
said. “I just don’t think that’s any different from
any other day.”

I rolled my eyes and opened the fridge. “I’m
going to make eggs and bacon,” I said. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” she said. “But you
still haven’t answered my question.”

My stomach flipped over. I grabbed the eggs and
butter and set them down on the counter next to the stove.

I hadn’t answered her partly because I had
no idea what to say. Was I ever going to see Rend again? Should I go
back to the club? Or just go back to my life before Venom?

As if I could.

“You really care about this guy, don’t
you?”

I groaned and put my hands over my face. “Is
it that obvious?”

“As long as I’ve known you, I’ve
never seen you this twisted up over someone,” she said. “It
just sucks he’s a vampire.”

I laughed, but kind of wanted to cry at the same
time. “Yes. Yes it does.” I cracked the eggs into a bowl
and poured a little bit of milk inside. “The thing is, I
honestly wasn’t as hurt by the fact that he’d tried to
kill me as I was by the fact that he lied to me.”

“Did he ever tell you he wasn’t a
vampire?”

“Well, no, but leaving it out is just as
bad, right?”

Katy leaned over the counter. “It’s
not exactly a lie,” she said. “It’s just not
telling the whole truth. You can’t expect a guy to confess his
deepest, darkest secrets to you the second you meet.”

“I can if it’s a secret that could put
me in danger.”

She nodded. “Maybe.”

My eyes widened and I put a hand on my hip. “Are
you taking his side, here?”

Katy held her hands up in defense. “Hey, you
know I’m always on your side,” she said. “I’m
just saying that it sounds to me as if he’s been risking a lot
to keep you safe. I don’t think he would intentionally turn
around and put you in danger.”

“What does that even mean? If he’s a
vampire, he should have known he was putting me in danger by even
coming up here.”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “Hear
me out. The girls at the club were quick to tell you Rend was
off-limits, right? They probably all already know what he is and what
he’s capable of when he loses control. Only, the thing is, he
doesn’t normally lose control. He’s usually the
poster-child for control, am I right?”

I shrugged and turned back to the scrambled eggs.

“He’s probably off-limits to most of
the women there because he refuses to allow himself to lose control,”
she said. “Only, he couldn’t resist you and he went too
far.”

Her words sparked the most annoying little feeling
of hope deep inside me.

Part of me desperately wanted to believe I was
nothing special to him. Everything would be so much easier—for
both of us—if he saw me as just another witch with delicious
blood running through her veins. It was better if I could make myself
believe he didn’t care for me. If I could just stay angry with
him, my heart was safe.

But hope had sparked and I knew there was nothing
I could do to kill it now.

“Couldn’t resist me?” I asked.
“Or just couldn’t resist my blood?”

She rolled her eyes and made a clicking sound with
her tongue. “How many witches does he work with on a daily
basis? How many witches come in and out of that bar every single
night? Hundreds? He’s surrounded by the scent of powerful blood
every day of his life and somehow, he manages to maintain control. If
there wasn’t something different about you, he wouldn’t
have had any trouble resisting you.”

I shook my head and sighed. “Maybe I’m
different some other way, you know? Maybe my blood is just more
potent or something? Why else would this other guy—the Devil—be
after me?”

Katy bit her lip. “I don’t know for
sure, but he scares me a lot more than Rend does,” she said.
“And you’ve never seen him?”

“No, just his lackey or whatever you would
call him,” I said. “Rend said the Devil isn’t
allowed in his club at all.”

I scooped the finished eggs into a large bowl and
doused them in salt. My mind was spinning. I definitely wasn’t
expecting Katy to believe me so easily, much less start applying her
typical logic to the situation.

“You have to go back there,” she said,
sneaking a piece of bacon from the plate I’d set on the
counter.

“What? Why?”

“Because regardless of what happened between
you and Rend last night, he’s still your best chance of
surviving whatever this other guy has planned for you,” she
said. “Plus, you have way too many questions to turn your back
on him so fast.”

I leaned against the counter and nodded. She was
right. Life as I knew it was over forever. There was no more denying
who—or what—I was. Turning my back on Venom was the same
as turning my back on myself. I knew Venom was my best chance at
really figuring out who I was and where I came from.

“What would I do without you?” I asked
her, taking a piece of bacon for myself.

Katy smiled and looked up toward the ceiling. “I
don’t know. Probably make all the wrong decisions and end up an
old maid who never got it on with a hot vampire.”

I threw the rest of my bacon at her, hitting her
squarely on the nose. “I did not get it on with a vampire,”
I protested.

She laughed and picked up the thrown bacon. She
tossed it into her mouth. “Not yet,” she said.

“Not ever,” I mumbled, turning back to
grab two plates from the cupboard.

Still, despite my protests, my stomach fluttered.

“I’ll go back,” I said. “But
only because I need answers.”

My fingertips traced the outline of the Bandaid on
my neck, and I shivered at the thought of someday finishing what Rend
and I had started last night.

Would I be so lucky next time? Would I even
survive a next time?

I closed my eyes and started the grueling work of
cleaning up the mess we’d made of the apartment. Deep inside, I
started the more taxing work of rebuilding the wall around my heart.
The one Rend had managed to destroy with a single kiss.

I stood in the drizzling rain outside Venom for a
few minutes before going inside.

I felt like the second everyone saw me, they would
know. My feelings for Rend would show in my face, and they would all
feel sorry for me.

Poor girl. We told her he was off-limits. She
really believed she was special.

How humiliating.

And worse than the humiliation of it all was
having to be close to Rend, knowing I could never be with him. It was
going to be torture.

I almost turned around and ran back to the ’L’,
but I was determined to be strong. Let them laugh. I deserved it for
believing there was something real between us when everyone had
warned me against it.

I didn’t care what Katy said. To Rend, I was
just another tasty witch. He’d gotten too close and had shown
his true nature. End of story. I had to believe that if I was going
to make it through my shift tonight.

A tap on my shoulder made me nearly jump out of my
skin. I looked over to see Lyla waving and smiling. My hand flew to
my heart.

“You scared me to death,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I
was walking by and saw you standing here like a zombie. Are you
coming in? How are you feeling?”

“Yeah. I was totally zoned out there for a
second,” I said, laughing it off. “I didn’t get
much sleep last night.”

“I wasn’t even expecting to see you
here tonight at all,” she said as we made our way down the
alley to the club’s entrance. “Rend told us you got sick
last night and might not be in for a while.”

“He did?” I shouldn’t have been
surprised. Of course he would have some kind of explanation ready for
when I disappeared and never came back.

But until now, I hadn’t really considered
his reaction when he saw me tonight. I’d been thinking so much
about what I wanted to do that I hadn’t even thought about what
Rend might want. What if he kicked me out and told me he never wanted
to see me again?

“Maybe I should go home,” I said,
turning back toward the train. “If Rend isn’t expecting
me in tonight—”

Lyla grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward the
club’s entrance. “Oh hush. He’ll be so glad you’re
here,” she said. “I know I am. We could really use the
extra help now that Amber’s been flaking out on us.”

“Who's Amber?”

“The dancer you replaced last night.”

“I thought she’d only been gone a
couple nights?”

Lyla shrugged. “Yeah, but even two nights is
too many,” she said. “I haven’t had a night off in
at least five years.”

“You’re here every night?” I
asked. “Like, always?”

“Of course,” she said. “Everyone’s
here every night. Once you start working here, it becomes home, in a
way.”

I had never heard anyone say they didn’t get
a night off from their job every once in a while. The club was fun,
but it wasn’t easy being on your feet every night, having to
always be on for the crowd.

Selena, the bouncer, said hey to us as we walked
in, but her eyes lingered on me. I thought I detected a hint of anger
there, but before I could stop to ask her about it, Lyla pulled me
inside.

“Did Rend tell you guys why he hired me?”
I asked Lyla as we headed back to the dressing rooms.

“Why do you ask that?” Lyla turned to
me and put her hand on my wrist.

“I was just curious if he explained why
someone who obviously knows almost nothing about your world was given
a job here.”