Sacrifice Me: The Complete Season One (33 page)

“I hope,” I said. “But I don’t
want to put anyone else in danger. It’s not right that everyone
is taking so many chances to keep me alive.”

“It’s like Lyla said. If you’re
important to Rend, you’re important to all of us,”
Mordecai said. “He doesn’t take his relationships
lightly, and he doesn’t ask us to back him up unless he has a
reason. I’ve known Rend for many years and I’ve never
seen him so concerned for a woman. You’re very special,
Franki.”

“So I’m told,” I mumbled. “I
just wish I understood why.”

“Did Rend ever explain to you about blood
sacrifice?”

“Not really,” I said. “Lyla
mentioned it earlier, but I didn't really know what it meant.”

“A blood sacrifice is one of the darkest
magics there is,” he said. “When you cast a spell like a
glamour, or a rope of smoke or whatever, it’s temporary. It
takes power and energy to maintain, which is why, when you fell
asleep, your glamour dropped.”

I nodded. It made sense so far.

“With blood sacrifice, a witch or demon can
cast a spell that is permanent and can never be broken. The more
powerful or difficult the spell, the more powerful the blood needed
to sustain it for eternity,” he said. “You following me?”

“So, if the Devil were to get his hands on a
powerful witch, he could kill her in a blood sacrifice in order to
maintain a permanent spell?”

“Exactly. Some spells are much too powerful
to sustain forever,” he said. “They might require several
sacrifices over the course of time. But, it’s very difficult to
fight against a blood sacrifice. Whatever the Devil has planned, it
can’t be good. Not for any of us.”

“Is my blood really that powerful?” I
asked. “Just because I’m a descendent of the Mother Crow?
If that’s true, why isn’t he after my cousin, Mary Anne?”

“It's also possible you were just an easier
target,” he said. “But I have a feeling there’s
more to your power than just your mother’s heritage, if you
know what I mean.”

I sucked in a breath and turned my face to the
window, letting the sun warm my skin. I suddenly felt very cold
inside.

“So the real question,” I said after a
few moments to let his words sink in, “is who is my father?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yes, I believe that
is a very good question.”

I shivered, wishing I had a blanket or something.
I felt exposed and vulnerable. A feeling I hated with everything I
had.

My mother had refused to discuss my father. I must
have asked her a thousand times, but as I grew older, I learned to
avoid the subject at all costs. I had always assumed he was some
loser who had beat her or something. Someone she obviously wanted to
forget.

But what if there was more to it than that?

I curled my feet under me on the seat and rested
my head against the window.

I didn’t say another word until we had
crossed over the Georgia state line and were well on our way to
Peachville.

Mordecai turned on a gravel road in the middle of
nowhere. It was almost four in the afternoon and we had been
traveling on back roads in Georgia for more than half an hour. The
main feature of the scenery was pine trees that lined both sides of
the road for miles. I had never seen so many trees in my life.

It started to give me some confidence that Rend
had chosen a good place for me to hide. We had definitely found the
middle of nowhere.

Mordecai took a winding driveway down a bumpy road
and, in a clearing at the end, stood a huge white house.

Flowers bloomed in a gorgeous garden to the left.
A fountain flowed with crystal-clear water, surrounded by bright blue
and pink hydrangeas. Crepe myrtles with pink and white flowers lined
the final drive up to the house. It was like a fairy-land back here,
and not at all what I was expecting.

The house itself had been newly painted a
brilliant white. Tall stately columns rose from the wide porch, and
there on the top step sat two teenagers. They straightened when they
saw the SUV approach.

The boy was tall and lanky with sandy brown hair.
He looked over at the girl and clasped her hand tightly as they
stood.

It was the girl who took my breath away. I knew
the instant I saw her that she was Mary Anne. There was no mistaking
the family resemblance. Her hair was shorter than mine, but had the
same dark blue-black shine.

Mordecai parked out front. I reached for the door
handle with trembling hands. Was this real? After every horrible
thing that had happened in the past few hours, was fate truly tossing
me this beautiful gift?

My heart sped up as I stepped from the Escalade.

I pulled the baseball cap from my hair and
smoothed it out with my fingers. This was not exactly how I would
have wanted to look when meeting the first member of my family
outside my mother, but it would have to do. Mordecai came around the
car and nodded to me.

I took a deep breath and walked toward the girl on
the steps. I made it about four steps before she released the boy’s
hand and ran toward me, throwing her arms around me.

I laughed, the breath nearly knocked from my body.
It felt so amazing to wrap my arms around her small frame, knowing
she was a part of me. A part of my real, true family. This was a
moment I had dreamed of my whole life, and never dared hope could
ever come true.

We held tight to each other for a long moment
until someone near the house laughed and Mary Anne pulled away, her
porcelain skin flushing with a light pink blush.

When she lifted her eyes to mine, they were
mirrors of my own—a clear blue as true as the sky above.

“I’m Franki,” I said awkwardly.
“Mary Francis, really, but everyone calls me Franki.”

Her face broke out into a smile. “I’m
Mary Anne,” she said.

“I can’t believe you’re real,”
I said. Emotion released from me in a sudden gulp of air, and I
lifted my hand to my mouth as tears welled up in my eyes. “I’m
sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” a girl said.
“We're so glad you guys made it here safely.”

I looked up to see a beautiful girl with wavy
blonde hair and deep, brown eyes, smiling at me.

“I’m Harper,” she said. She held
her hand out to me and I shook it. The instant our skin touched, a
tiny static shock went through me, and I pulled away. Harper laughed
and rolled her eyes. “That happens to me all the time, sorry.”

I smiled, feeling the warmth coming from her, as
if I were meeting with old friends instead of complete strangers.

“Come on in and meet everyone,” she
said. She put one arm around Mordecai and gave him a brief hug.

Mary Anne held her hand out to the boy who had
been sitting beside her. “This is Essex.”

When she said his name, her face blushed again.

“Hi Essex,” I said, unable to hide my
smile. “Nice to meet you.”

Essex bowed his head. “I am very honored to
be meeting you as well,” he said. His voice had a slight
foreign accent to it that I couldn't quite place, and I wondered
briefly where he'd come from.

He took Mary Anne’s hand and together we all
walked up the steps to the house.

Harper led us to a room just off the main entryway
where a group of teens were gathered, playing video games. They were
shouting and laughing as zombies came after their characters on the
screen.

“Shoot it,” one guy shouted. He lifted
his hands up as if moving the controller up would save his character.

A gorgeous girl with tanned skin and a long black
braid laughed and punched buttons on her controller faster. “I’m
trying,” she shouted. “Get out of my way.”

A couple of other guys sat around watching them,
cheering them on.

Another guy stood in the corner, alone, his
expression sad even in the midst of all this laughter.

Harper cleared her throat and everyone turned and
looked at us all at once.

“Hey guys, this is the girl I told you
about,” she said. “Her name is Franki and she’s
Mary Anne’s cousin. We’re going to help keep her safe for
a little while, so no one outside this group needs to know she’s
here.”

The two playing the game abandoned their
controllers and stood to introduce themselves.

“I’m Lea,” the brunette said.
She pointed to the other two guys on the couch. “The guy with
the glasses there is Joost and this is Cristo.”

I waved, feeling self-conscious, but amazed at how
welcoming everyone was.

“I’m Jackson." The guy who'd been
playing video games lifted his chin in a nod. “And over there,
that’s my twin brother Aerden.”

I glanced over at the quiet guy in the corner and
noticed that the two of them were nearly identical except for the
color of their eyes—one had green and the other blue.

“Nice to meet you guys.”

“You've been through a lot, so I’m
sure you're anxious to take a shower and get settled,” Harper
said. She came over and put a hand on my wrist. “You can meet
the rest of the group later. If you want, Mary Anne can show you to
her room and you can shower and change or whatever. You can take
anything you want out of my closet. We should be about the same size,
I think.”

I looked around the room at the group and wondered
what their story was. Why were they all so willing to just accept me
in and protect me when I could be putting them all in danger? And how
were a bunch of teens all living in this big house together with no
parents or guardians? It was a strange situation. They seemed to act
like a family, but I knew Mordecai had said some were human and some
were demons.

Mary Anne slipped her small hand into mine. “I’ll
show you upstairs.”

Essex winked at her as we passed and Mary Anne
smiled and ducked her head. They were so cute, I wanted to just grab
them up and hug them. I wondered how long they’d been together.

“So, do you guys all live here?” I
asked as we made our way up the stairs.

“Not everyone and not full-time, but yeah,
sometimes,” she said. “This is kind of our headquarters,
if you want to call it that.”

I had so many questions I wanted to ask her, but
no idea where to even begin. I didn’t want to step over any
boundaries, either, and I didn’t know if there were any topics
that were off-limits.

“Thank you for taking me in like this,”
I said. “I don’t want to put any of you guys in danger,
though.”

Mary Anne gave me a stoic look. “Trust me,
there’s nothing you can bring to the table that we haven’t
faced, and then some,” she said. “We’ve been
through a lot the past couple of years.”

I wanted to ask their story. I'd heard the name
Harper from one of the dancers before, and I wondered if this could
be the same girl. An orphan who grew up never knowing about her
powers, but then quickly becoming extremely powerful. It had to be
her, right?

Mary Anne showed me into a room decorated in rich
black fabrics with blue accents that was off the main hallway. Black
silk curtains hung from high windows, blocking out most of the
outside light. A black bedspread with dark blue piping was on the
bed. Even the rug covering part of the wood floors was a rich black
wool.

“Big fan of black,” I said.

“I’m comforted by the darkness,”
she said. “Which I guess is kind of ironic considering where we
come from.”

I bit the inside of my lip. “Did you grow up
with them? The other crows?” I asked. I wasn’t even sure
if that’s what I was supposed to call them.

Mary Anne sat down on the edge of her bed. “For
a little while,” she said. “It’s kind of a long
story, but when I was about ten, the Mother Crow sent me here. This
place used to be called Shadowford Home for Girls. It was set up to
look like a kind of orphanage, but it was really a way for the Order
of Shadows to look for someone who was very important to them.”

“Harper?” I asked, piecing together
small parts of the story from the bits and pieces I’d gotten
along the way.

“How did you know that? Has someone already
told you the story?” she asked.

“No, but I've heard people talking about
her.”

“Yeah, she’s kind of well-known all
over these days,” Mary Anne said. “The Mother Crow
originally sent me here knowing that if the Order ever found Harper,
I could report back to her about it.”

I nodded, wondering what it would have been like
to grow up with the rest of them, following orders and having no
control over my own life.

“That must have been really hard. To leave
your family like that.”

Mary Anne shrugged. “It was, in a way, but
life in the village wasn’t exactly paradise either.”

“The village?”

She nodded. “It’s a small city above
the trees that the Mother Crow built for all of us,” she said.
“It’s where she kept us hidden all these years. She cast
a spell on the village that made it impossible for anyone to see it
or enter into it without having the blood of a crow.”

“Wow,” I whispered, taking a spot next
to her on the bed. I never would have dreamed of a secret village
above the trees. “And no one was allowed to leave?”

“Not unless they had a specific job to do,”
she said. “And none of us who left were ever allowed to tell
anyone who we were.”

“So, how did you get away from all that?”
I asked.

“When the Mother Crow found out about
Harper, she tried to kill her. I was supposed to be a part of it, but
I’d already made friends with Harper,” she said. “I
couldn’t let them do that to her.”

I shivered, remembering what Mordecai had told me
earlier about blood sacrifice. Was that what they were doing to
Harper?

“You saved her?”

Mary Anne shrugged and gave a small smile. “I
helped,” she said. “But Harper’s amazingly good at
saving herself in situations like that.”

“Situations? As in plural?”

“Like I said, we’ve been through a
lot.”