Sacrifice Me: The Complete Season One (35 page)

I took a seat at the big table in the kitchen and
soon everyone joined me. I almost forgot to eat, watching them
interact with each other. It nearly brought tears to my eyes. My
whole life, I'd never had what these people have. True friendship.
Family. They loved each other in this house. I wanted to be a part of
something like that someday.

Then Rend caught my eye from across the table. He
hadn't even made a plate of food. He just sat there, watching me with
that same hunger blazing in his dark eyes.

That's when I realized I was a part of something.
I was part of the Venom family, and now I had ties to this new group
in Peachville. I had a real cousin who could tell me stories about
the family I'd never known. And it was all because of Rend. If he
hadn't chosen to save my life that night in the alley, I never would
have had any of this.

Yes, this new life was terrifying, and dangerous,
and confusing, but it was also real and beautiful. It held the
promise of finally belonging to something—or someone—for
the first time.

Staring into Rend's eyes, my stomach fluttered and
my heart beat faster. My body warmed at the thought of those lips on
mine again.

I forced my gaze away and concentrated on
finishing my food so we could get out of here and get to the village
where we might finally be alone.

Footsteps pounded on the stairs, and I turned to
face the door to the kitchen. Aerden rushed in.

“Rend, Franki, you guys have to go now,”
he said. He was out of breath from running.

“What’s going on?” Rend asked,
standing.

“Azure just checked in and sent a message,”
Aerden said. “She said the group tracking her in Paris
destroyed her glamour. They know you tricked them and now they’re
tracking Mordecai’s vehicle. It won’t be long before they
figure out where he was.”

“Is Azure okay?”

“Why was she in Paris?” I asked.

“She was a second decoy,” Rend said.
“We sent Lyla to Vegas and Azure to Paris.”

“She’s fine,” Aerden said. “She
managed to dodge them and get back through the Venom door before they
could get to her.”

“Someone just reported four dead witches
from a coven near Nashville,” Lea said, coming around the
corner. “The vampires could be here in less than an hour.”

“And if they’ve just fed, they’ll
be nearly impossible to track from there,” Rend said. I was
still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Azure had agreed to
glamour herself as a fake me and put her own life in danger. I knew
she would do anything Rend asked of her, but I’m sure it killed
her to have to wear my face for a while.

As hard as she’d been on me so far, though,
I was still thankful she was safe. I didn't want her blood on my
hands, too.

“We should just stay here and fight them,”
Lea said. “We can take them. I've been wanting a good fight,
anyway. Things have been way too calm lately for my taste.”

“He'll just send more,” Rend said.
“I'd rather not get you guys involved.”

“We're already involved,” Lea said.

She had a definite attitude on her, but I liked
the fact that she didn't seem scared of anything.

“You haven't fought them directly,”
Rend said.

“Mordecai killed a few of them,” I
said, remembering the way his silver dagger had sliced through the
skin of the vampires back at the safe-house.

Everyone grew quiet and I realized after a few
beats that they were all looking to Harper for an answer.

Harper finally looked up and met Rend's eyes. “I
think you should go,” she said finally. “If it comes down
to a fight, we're behind you. But if we can avoid bringing a fight to
Brighton Manor, I'd at least like to try.”

Lea grumbled and turned away, shaking her head.
But Rend nodded. He took my hand in his and my entire body lit up at
his touch.

“I understand,” he said. “Mary
Anne, can you show us where to go?”

Mary Anne nodded. “Do you know how to
shift?” she asked me.

I bit my lip and shook my head.

She scrunched her nose in disappointment. “Okay,
what's the best way to get them both up there without leaving a
trail?” she asked. “They'll track Rend if he casts,
unless you've had something to drink lately.”

His hand tensed against mine and I swallowed
nervously, realizing the bites on my neck were still visible to
anyone paying enough attention.

“No,” he said.

My face warmed. I knew I should keep my mouth
shut, but we were in danger and running out of time. “You can
drink from me,” I said.

Mary Anne's eyes grew wide and she looked from me
to Rend, questioning our relationship.

Rend tensed and dropped my hand. “Absolutely
not,” he said. “Who here has the ability to fly us up
there without being tracked?”

I backed away, hurt that he had been so quick to
dismiss my offer. It wasn't like I was telling him to drain me and
leave me for dead. One little drink and we would be up in the safety
of the crow village in minutes. Instead, he had to be difficult. As
usual.

Zara stepped forward. “I can float you up
there,” she said. “Come on.”

She and Mary Anne led us out the back door. Mary
Anne nodded to Zara and shifted, her body shrinking and transforming
in the blink of an eye. A black crow with bright blue eyes cawed at
us, then flew into the air.

Zara nodded to us. “Ready?”

Rend took my hand. “Let's go.” He
turned back toward the door and nodded to Harper and the others.
“Thank you.”

“Let us know if you need us,” Harper
said, waving as Zara lifted her hands into the air.

Our feet rose off the ground. I clung tightly to
Rend's hand, feeling unbalanced as my body flew forward and up, above
the trees. He pulled me close to him and over the sound of the wind
in my ears, I was sure I heard him laugh.

“A crow afraid to fly,” he said.

If we had been on solid ground, I would have
smacked him. Instead, I held on tighter.

“I'm not afraid to fly,” I said. “I'm
just new at it.”

We flew over the tops of the trees. I couldn't
believe how many trees. Miles in every direction. Growing up in the
city all my life, I'd never seen anything like it.

In the distance, the sun had started to set. I
breathed in the beauty of it as Zara and Mary Anne led us toward the
village where my mother was born.

The place where we landed was nothing more than a
platform of air and nothingness. I couldn't see a village here, or a
landing zone for that matter, but Mary Anne shifted back to her human
form and landed in mid-air.

Zara joined her, setting Rend and me down next to
them.

I knew as a natural crow, I shouldn't be scared,
but I was seriously about to pee my pants. We were literally standing
on nothing, at least twenty feet above the tallest pine tree.

“I'll wait here,” Zara said.

“Thanks for your help,” I said,
wondering how exactly we were going to get back down without her. I
really didn't want to fall from way up here.

Mary Anne motioned for us to join her. I stepped
carefully, unsure what we were even standing on, much less where it
started and ended.

“Follow me,” she said. “Hold his
hand as you come in.”

She stepped forward and her body disappeared
completely. I gasped. I knew I had to trust this, but I was learning
more and more that I could no longer trust my eyes. It was a weird
feeling.

I squeezed Rend's hand and raised an eyebrow. He
smiled and nodded. With a deep breath, I followed Mary Anne, trying
my best to place my foot exactly where she had stepped.

My body buzzed with a peculiar energy, similar to
the static shock I'd felt when I touched Harper's hand, but more
intense and all throughout my body. I shook my head, shivering from
the strangeness of it as it pulsed through me.

Then I looked up and truly opened my eyes.

I dropped Rend's hand and brought both my hands to
my mouth. Holy crap. The forest of tree-tops was gone, replaced by a
small village filled with colorful houses. A real sidewalk—just
like in a normal neighborhood—wound around the whole village.
Houses lined the walkway on one side and in the middle of the entire
village was a large covered pavilion with a stone altar in the
middle. I shivered, thinking of what that altar must have been used
for. Had the Mother Crow performed dark rituals here? Blood
sacrifice?

How was she tied to the Devil?

I looked around, trying to picture what it must
have been like when the entire family of crow witches lived here.
Some of them were evil like the Mother Crow, but many of them had to
be more like Mary Anne and me. There might be darkness inside us, but
we were always fighting for more light. We couldn't be the only ones.

Mary Anne gave me a brief hug. “I'm sorry to
bring you up here and leave, but I have to go,” she said. “If
we're going to face the vampires and prove to them that you were
never here, we all need to be there. Especially me. If I'm gone, they
might suspect where we've hidden you.”

“Thanks for everything,” I said. “You
have no idea how much meeting you means to me.”

“I feel the same way,” she said. “I’ll
be back, if I can, when things blow over. We still have so much to
talk about.”

She gave us a small wave, then shifted back into
the form of a crow and flew down into the cover of the trees.

“Do you think they’ll be okay?”
I asked. “Or did we just put them all in danger?”

“They’re tough,” Rend said. “The
Devil wouldn’t dare attack them right now. It would start a war
he’d be too scared to lose.”

“They’re really that powerful?”
I asked. It was a solid group of people, but they were mostly
teenagers from the looks of it.

“More than you can imagine,” he said.
“They conquered a group of evil witches when all the odds were
stacked against them. That’s a war they’re still
fighting, though, which is why Harper was reluctant to get involved
beyond what she did.”

I walked with Rend through the streets of the
small village. Being here felt like an out-of-body experience. The
houses and the altar in the center. It was like walking through a
ghost town, but the energy of my people called to me here.

This is where my mother grew up.

Knowing this about her and picturing her as a
child here in this place changed her for me. Made her more real than
she'd ever been, even when she was alive.

“Think of the secrets this village holds,”
I said. “What was my mother’s childhood like, I wonder?”

“Sheltered, I imagine,” Rend said. He
walked beside me as we passed in front of the empty houses.
“Extremely strict.”

“But also filled with family,” I said.
“Traditions. Can you imagine the closeness you would feel if
you grew up in this small village your entire life and never once got
to leave?”

Rend shook his head. “Don’t
romanticize it,” he said. “These women and children were
prisoners, but they were also expendable if it suited the Mother
Crow’s purposes. She had no problem sacrificing one of her
daughters to give herself a longer life. Her pursuit of power knew no
limits.”

“Knew?” I asked. “I thought she
was still alive.”

“Technically, she is,” Rend said. “Or
we all assume she is, but after she tried to kill Harper, she was
severely wounded and only just managed to escape. The coven scattered
for a while, but no one knows if the Mother Crow created a new
village for her family and gathered them all back by her side or if
many of the ones who escaped are still in hiding, praying the Mother
Crow never finds them.”

I shook my head, overcome with emotion. “Why
do you think my mother took me away from here?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “There
are many possible explanations, but the one that makes the most sense
is that she wanted to keep you safe. She didn’t want you to
grow up a part of this.”

“I just keep thinking there has to be more
to it than that,” I said. I walked up the steps of a two-story
house painted the color of rust and looked out on the village. “My
mother was never affectionate with me. Growing up, I never felt like
I was valued, you know? I never once felt as if she loved me so much
she would do anything to protect me.”

“What was it like, then?”

“It was like she resented me,” I said.
“As if she’d been faced with an impossible choice and
took the lesser of two evils—a life raising a child she never
wanted.”

Rend grabbed my hand and the connection started a
fire in my heart. We were alone now, with so much left unsaid between
us. I had no idea how to say all those things. I was terrified of
being vulnerable around him again. What if he turned me away again?
What if he admitted that Azure was right?

What if I really was nothing more than currency to
him and he was here to protect his investment?

“That sounds like a difficult way to grow
up,” he said.

I shrugged. Talking about my mother wasn't
pleasant, but it was easier than telling him how I felt about him.

“It was all I ever knew, but I’d be
lying if I said I didn’t long for her to tell me she loved me,”
I said, my tongue stumbling over the word love. “Instead, she
spent a lot of time drunk or on drugs, as if she hated her life so
much she would do anything to escape it.”

I looked out at the peaceful, quiet village that
used to be filled with laughter, solidarity, and commitment, even if
it was in loyalty to an evil witch. Yes, the ghost of fear still
haunted these halls, but it had also been a place of happiness and
love.

“I have longed for love my entire life,”
I told him, my heart open so wide it was terrifying. “So much
so that my greatest fear became the idea of falling for
someone—trusting someone—who didn't love me back. At a
young age, I decided the best way to protect myself was to never
allow myself to let anyone close enough to have that power over me.”