Sacrifice Me: The Complete Season One (30 page)

“Until right now, you didn’t know he
was romantically involved with me, either,” I said, raising one
eyebrow.

“True,” she said. “But I had my
suspicions. I’ve never even almost suspected he was dating
someone before this.”

“We're not dating.” I bit the inside
of my lip and gave her a sideways look, my heart beating a little
faster. “Not even Azure?”

I said it so quietly, it was almost a
non-question. I was terrified the moment the words left my lips. I
definitely had my suspicions about Azure’s feelings for Rend.
What I didn’t know was how Rend felt about her.

“What? Are you serious? Never,” she
said. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why? Did she tell you there
was something between them?”

I shrugged, wondering if I’d already said
too much. “Not exactly,” I said. “She’s just
been really hard on me from the moment I walked into Venom, and the
closer I get to Rend, the more she treats me like shit. Then
tonight...”

My voice trailed off. I had almost let myself
forget the horrible things she’d said to me tonight, behind the
bar. She’d called me currency. I hoped he thought of me as more
than that, but what if this was all some game he was playing with me?

“What?” Lyla put her hand on my leg
and leaned closer. “What did she do?”

“She said something awful to me tonight when
we were working together behind the bar,” I said. “It
made me wonder if there had ever been something more between them.
Something romantic.”

“Not that I’ve ever known about,”
she said. “Azure has been with him from the beginning, so she's
known him a lot longer than I have. Still, I think everyone would
know if there had ever been something between them.”

“He trusts her,” I said. “He’s
apparently filled her in on all the things he found out about me,
when he obviously didn’t tell everyone else.”

“Like what?”

“Like who my real family is,” I said.
“When she was talking to me tonight, she mentioned it, so he
had to have told her. How else would she have known?”

Lyla went back to chewing on her fingernail. “What
if he didn’t tell her? What if she had some other way of
finding out information about you?”

I shook my head. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” she said,
shaking her head. “Forget it. I’m just thinking out loud.
What was it she said to you tonight that was so awful?”

I shrugged. I hated even to utter the words,
because they had been so hurtful. Mainly because I was worried they
were true. I wasn’t sure I wanted to lay my heart on the line
in front of Lyla.

“You can tell me,” she said. “I’m
not going to go blabbing back to the rest of the girls, if that’s
what you’re afraid of.”

“I don’t know,” I said. I felt
terrible talking about the people in the club when we didn't even
know how they were doing or where they were right now. Were they
really okay? “Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re
awesome and you’ve made me feel welcome from the second I
started working at Venom.”

“But?”

“I haven’t had a lot of people in my
life that I’ve gotten close to,” I said. “When I
was growing up my mother kept me very sheltered. We moved around a
lot and I didn’t have many friends. She never really let me
have girlfriends over or get too close to anyone. It’s hard for
me to really open up sometimes.”

Lyla leaned over and put her arms around me. “I’m
sorry,” she said. “You’ve been going through a lot
the past week and here I am, forcing you to spill all your personal
shit. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”

I hugged her back, grateful she was at least
willing to listen and empathize.

But the truth was, now that she’d basically
given me a pass, I realized I wanted to tell her. I desperately
wanted someone I could talk to about all this.

Talking to Katy was one thing. She was my dearest
friend and I knew I could talk to her about anything. At the same
time, she had no clue about how this new world worked. She didn’t
know any of the players involved so she couldn’t completely
understand what I was going through.

It would be nice to have someone, apart from Rend,
to confide in and ask for advice.

I took a deep breath. “Do you know who Rend
is?” I asked. “I mean, do you know what he is?”

Lyla leaned back against the arm of the couch. She
opened her mouth in a moment of realization. “Ah, you mean the
vampire thing? I wasn’t sure if you knew. He doesn’t keep
it a secret, but he also doesn’t exactly advertise the fact.”

So she knew. That was a relief, because even if I
decided to spill my own secrets, I wouldn’t feel right spilling
his.

“I just found out last night,” I said,
leaving out the details of how I’d found out. She didn’t
need to know everything. “I almost didn’t come back to
the club tonight, which is why you found me outside before we opened.
I was trying to make up my mind about whether to even go inside.”

“He’s not like the rest of them,”
she said. “Not all of them are like the Devil, you know. I
mean, some of them are, but a lot of the vampires are really great.”

“They drink the blood of witches,” I
said. “That’s hard to redeem.”

She shrugged. “Did Rend explain why they do
it?”

I shook my head.

“Do you know where demons come from? Has
anyone explained that to you, at least?”

I shook my head again, feeling for the millionth
time like a clueless child.

“Okay, so I’ll give you the short
version. Demons are not native to this world. Neither are witches.
Demons come from another world called The Shadow World. They came
here hundreds of years ago through a portal. The first demon was
named Mythic and he fell in love with a human woman. They had a child
together. The very first human with magical powers. The first witch.
See, a witch is just a human woman with the blood of a demon running
through her veins.”

“What about men? Are there male witches?”

“No, only women,” she said. “I
don’t really know why, but only daughters get magical powers
through demons. The strength of a witch’s line begins to
diminish the farther the line gets from the original demon union, but
any girl who has magical abilities is a descendent of a demon
somewhere along the way.”

I ran a hand through my hair, allowing her story
to sink in.

“When a witch casts spells here in the human
world, she connects to the power within herself to cast. But when a
demon from the Shadow World casts magic, they pull energy from the
life around them,” she said.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that if a demon was standing here
and he or she wanted to cast, they would need to pull energy from you
or me or the grass outside or a bug sitting on the windowsill.
Something living. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah.”

The candle on the coffee table flickered, throwing
eerie shadows across the wall.

“The problem early demons had with this, is
that every time they cast, they left a mark on this world. Grass or
animals around them died when they used their magic. It made them
easy to track. They had reasons they needed to keep their presence
secret from the rest of the human world, so one of the demons in
charge came up with a very creative solution.”

I nodded, my skin tingling. “They drank the
blood of witches.”

“Exactly,” she said. “You catch
on fast.”

“It makes sense,” I said. “If
they can drink the blood of a witch, they can pull from the power
inside without anyone ever knowing.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course,
they still left dead bodies of the witches they drained completely,
but they could drain a witch of her blood in Chicago and then go to
New York and cast in secret without anyone being able to detect their
presence,” she said. “That’s where the lore of
vampires began and, of course, humans took that to the cinema and
glorified it.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “And very
creative, when you think about it.”

“The tough part is that when a demon took
the oath to become a part of the Brotherhood of Darkness, which is
the order of the vampires, they had to undergo a very painful
transformation that allowed them to use the blood in the most
efficient way possible. Over time, the demons who transformed into
vampires became unable to cast without the blood.”

“So they lost their ability to cast in the
normal way demons cast?”

“Yes,” she said. “Some of them,
like Rend, got tired of all the senseless killing of the Brotherhood.
They rebelled, refusing to drink the blood of witches. That’s
when Rend came up with the idea of opening Venom. For him, it became
a refuge from the evils of this world.”

I leaned against the cushions on the couch and
thought about how hard it must have been for Rend to make that
decision. To turn away from what he had become and start a new life.

But I had seen him cast an orb. How did he do that
without blood?

Or was he still drinking blood in secret?

I reached up and touched the spot on my neck where
he had bitten me. With horror, I realized that after the excitement
of the explosion, I had forgotten all about re-casting the glamour
that hid the wounds.

Lyla grabbed my hand and pulled it away from my
neck. “Holy fuck,” she said. “Who did that to you?”

I pulled away from her, wishing I’d never
touched the spot. In the dim light of the candle she might not have
noticed it without me drawing attention to it.

“Did Rend do that?” she asked. Her
hands were shaking.

I swallowed and stood up, avoiding her eyes.

“Franki, I’m serious. Did he hurt
you?”

“I think it surprised him as much as it
surprised me, to be honest. He barely broke the skin before he
stopped himself.”

Lyla brought a trembling hand to her mouth. “I
have never seen him lose control like that,” she said. “What
happened between the two of you?”

I blushed as butterflies stirred in my stomach.
Thankfully, there was no way she could see the flush of my cheeks in
the darkness, but every time I thought about how close we had come to
making love, my body grew warm.

“Oh,” she said. “OH.”

“Please, don’t tell anyone else,”
I said, turning to her. The candlelight flickered across her shocked
face.

“I don’t even know what to say,”
she said. “I've just never seen him lose control, especially
not over a woman. You must really get to him.”

“He gets to me, too,” I said. “I—”

My words caught in my throat as the back door
clicked open and footsteps rushed across the tile in the kitchen.

Lyla sucked in a scared breath and grabbed me,
pulling me back toward the stairs as a tall black man with thick
dreadlocks stepped into the dim light of the candle still burning on
the table.

“It’s me,” a voice whispered in
the darkness. Someone walked around the black man and reached for us.
“Lyla?”

“Marco?” Lyla’s grip on me
softened and she reached for his hand. “Oh, thank God. Who’s
with you?”

“This is Mordecai,” he said, turning
to the other man. “You don’t know him, but he’s an
old friend of Rend’s.”

“Is Rend okay?” I asked, my heart
pumping.

“Franki?” Marco moved into the small
ring of light coming from the candle. He had a big smile on his face.
“You have no idea how happy Rend is going to be when he finds
out you're okay.”

“We got to get moving, man,” Mordecai
said, glancing toward the back door. “They’re close.”

Chills ran down my spine. “Who’s
close?”

“Fallon and some of his friends,”
Marco said. “I don’t know how they found you, but they’ve
been tracking the two of you since you left the club. Did you guys
use magic? We barely made it here ahead of them.”

I touched the cut on my forehead, wondering if the
vampires had been able to track my blood. Before we could answer him,
though, the front window shattered. I jumped back as two shadowy
forms flew through the gaping hole in the living room.

Instantly, the room filled with a dark energy that
shot fear through my veins.

Mordecai reacted first. He lifted his two large
hands in the air and every piece of furniture in the room rose and
flew toward the two intruders.

“Run,” Lyla yelled, grabbing me for
the second time that night. She pushed past Marco and Mordecai and
made a break for the back door, but before we could find our way out,
two more dark smoky forms broke through the door.

“Shit,” she said, turning back toward
the others. “We’re trapped.”

Marco moved around behind us, heading off the two
new demons. A bright white light shot out from his fingertips,
forming a rope that he whipped around the neck of the first demon. He
yanked on the magical rope and pulled. The demon screamed. It was a
high-pitched, painful sound that nearly brought me to my knees. With
another whip of his rope, Marco brought the demon to the ground, but
before he could get close to him, the demon turned to smoke and flew
backward.

I stood in the middle of the attack, helpless to
defend myself. My mind could barely register what was happening, much
less how to join the attack.

The candle blew out, leaving us in darkness.
Somehow, they must have broken the street light outside. Now, the
only light came from the flash of the spells cast back and forth
around me.

Lyla stood completely still, her eyes closed and
her hand outstretched. One of the first attackers stood equally still
just inches from her hand, his eyes wide open in terror. I had no
idea what she was doing to him, but whatever it was, it looked like
he couldn’t move or control his own body.

Mordecai fought one of the others, a silver dagger
flashing in his hand.

Marco battled with the two at the back door, but
without me helping, we were outnumbered. I had to do something.