Sacrifice Me: The Complete Season One (43 page)

“I honestly thought you'd be happy to hear
the news,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“Where is she now?” I asked. “Is
she still alive?”

She walked down the length of the cell, her hand
trailing along each bar. “Yes. In fact, I think you've seen
her,” she said.

I stopped breathing for a moment. “What?”

“At Venom that first night,” she said,
narrowing her eyes. “The Devil had finally located Solomon's
stone and we were preparing to kidnap you and bring you here, but
your real mother intervened at the last minute. I don't know how she
even knew you were in danger, but I guess she'd been keeping an eye
on us both. Her little stunt put a temporary halt to our plans,
especially when Rend asked you to come work for him.”

I stared ahead in a daze. “She's the one who
sent me those flowers,” I whispered.

“Yes, sending you right into the arms of the
one vampire she thought could keep you safe,” she said. “Little
bird was actually her name for you. She called you that the moment
you were born.'

Tears welled up in my eyes. How long had she been
watching me? How many times had I been in the same room with her and
not even known it?

“God knows she would never be strong enough
to protect you on her own. Poor Mary Kathryn. Her pregnancy with you
was extremely difficult. It practically killed her, growing such an
evil seed in her belly. She used to be the Mother Crow's golden
child, destined for great things. She was showered with love and
attention, groomed for an important role in the family. But she chose
the wrong mate.”

I closed my eyes, a single tear escaping down my
cheek. “Solomon.”

“Yes. She had no idea who he was, of course.
It was her duty to get pregnant and Mary Kathryn was merely doing as
she was told,” she said. “Back then, the Mother Crow sent
all the girls out of the village when they turned eighteen. They were
instructed to find a strong man, get pregnant, and return home. The
Mother Crow didn't want men living in our village, so it was the
easiest way to continue the family line.”

I shook my head, disgusted. It sounded barbaric.
Girls who had never once been allowed to leave the safety and
confinement of their small village were sent out at eighteen to find
a man and get pregnant? Never allowed to love or have a normal family
life with a husband and children?

“Don't look so horrified. We all grew up
knowing it was our duty,” she said. “We also knew that if
you gave birth to a boy, he was immediately offered up to the Mother
Crow to be used as a blood sacrifice. If you gave birth to a baby
girl, she would take her place in the family.”

Her voice grew sad and she looked down at the
floor of the dungeon.

“My first and only child was a boy,”
she said. “I still remember the moment he was taken from my
arms. He was so chubby and pink and lovely.”

There was more tenderness in her voice for that
lost child than I had ever heard from her the entire time she'd
raised me as her own. I couldn't imagine the horror of having your
child taken like that, but my sympathy for what she'd been through
was tainted by the fact that she'd been planning the details of my
death for the past three years.

“I begged the Mother Crow for another chance
to have a child of my own. A daughter to raise.” She laughed
and wiped away a tear. “Instead, she gave me you. A baby whose
very existence was cursed from the moment of conception.”

I swallowed back words of hatred.

“I resented you from the moment you were
first placed in my arms,” she said. “The Mother Crow cast
a spell binding me to you until your eighteenth birthday when you
would come of age. The spell ruined my womb, making sure I would
never have another child that might distract me from my duty of
taking care of you.”

“Why did she send me away?” I asked.
“I don't understand.”

“Because your life put every crow in that
village at risk,” she said. “When she first found out
Mary Kathryn was pregnant with Solomon's baby, she had to make sure
he would never come after you. She hunted him down and bound his
spirit in a stone. But she knew others would eventually come looking
for you. She was willing to risk my life, but not her own.”

“You were the one who told the Devil about
me,” I said.

“I was supposed to hide you and make sure
you never used your magic and could never be tracked,” she
said. “I did such a good job, not even the Mother Crow could
find you. She trusted me to return you to the crows when you turned
eighteen, but I wasn't about to hand such a powerful asset over to
the monster who had murdered my son and destroyed my youth.”

“Instead, you found another monster.”
Bile rose in my throat.

My false mother turned to me, a triumphant smile
spreading across her treacherous mouth.

“Instead, I became a monster,” she
said. “And through your death, I will finally gain enough power
to take my revenge on the crows, once and for all.”

New footsteps sounded on the stone. I counted each
foot-fall until the edge of a boot came into view, followed by the
rest of the weaselly servant I knew as Fallon.

He put one hand on my mother's shoulder and
smiled. His white skin looked in the dim lighting.

“Someone’s awake,” he said. “The
Devil will be pleased. He’s very close to finishing his
preparations for the ritual and he needs for you to be wide awake
when he pierces your heart and bleeds you dry.”

I swallowed back any signs of fear and met his
stare. “Fallon. It’s so nice to see you again,” I
said. “You look so much more at home in a creepy dungeon. It
matches your pasty coloring.”

“I see the sleep spell hasn’t slowed
your tongue,” he said. He raised a thin eyebrow at me. “I
would have liked to be the one silencing it for you.”

“You aren’t worthy of my death,”
I said. “You know as well as I do that if I’d had time to
fully learn to use my powers, neither one of us would be standing
here right now.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But that’s
something we’ll never know, will we?”

I raised an eyebrow right back at him. “Time
will tell.”

He laughed. The empty sound echoed through the
dungeons, and for the first time, I heard the movement of others in
nearby cells.

“Who else is down here with us?” I
asked, wondering what the girl across from me, and the others locked
down here, had done to deserve such torture.

Fallon shrugged and glanced down the corridor.
“Other witches. Ones less powerful than yourself. Or rather,
witches who have a less significant heritage.”

“Are they a part of this ritual, too? Or is
it just me who has that honor today?”

“We have prisoners of all kinds,”
Fallon said. “Some are witches we wish to punish. We drain them
of their blood until they are almost dead. We make them cry for mercy
and beg to die. Then we let them live. We let their blood replenish
so that in a few months, we can drain them all over again,” he
said. A wicked smile lit his entire face as he spoke. “Others
are here only as meals. None have the rare privilege of being held
for ritual sacrifice such as yourself, but they may yet be of use to
the Devil today. When he awakens Solomon’s power from the
stone, he might find Solomon’s thirst after twenty years of
solitude is quite strong. If his new host is to survive, she will
need blood to sustain her.”

My stomach twisted. His new host?

I closed my eyes, understanding how this all fit
together. My mother—I had no other name for her despite the lie
of calling her that—had traded information for ultimate power.

“In fact, you may know some of the witches
we've reserved as snacks for after the ritual,” she said. “Now,
if you'll excuse me, I have to go upstairs and get ready as well.”

She turned and disappeared from view, her heels
clicking on the stone.

I jerked my head toward Fallon, panic seizing my
chest.

“Who was she talking about?” My voice
hitched on the words even though I’d sworn not to show any
signs of weakness or fear.

“Some of your friends from the club,”
he said, lifting a finger for each one he counted off. “Misty.
Shay. And what was the other one’s name? Something that reminds
me of a flower. Lilac? Oh, I can’t remember.”

My heart stopped beating for a moment.

“Lyla?” I whispered her name.

“Ah, yes, that’s the one,” he
said. “Tricky little bitch, really. She has this nasty ability
to control minds. It took a few of our senior vampires to catch her,
but she’ll make a wonderful meal when the time comes.”

He pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and held
them up, but I could barely see through the angry tears that welled
up in my eyes.

Not Lyla. Not after all she had done for me.

Rend had said she was safe. Marco had taken her to
safety somewhere on the west coast. How had the Devil’s lackeys
gotten their hands on her?

Fallon went through the dozens of keys on the
looped keyring, finally selecting a rusted bronze key from the mix.
He inserted it into a slot on the outside of the cell and the door
popped open.

If I hadn’t been chained to the wall, I
would have murdered him. I would have clawed at his eyes until he
screamed for mercy.

But I could only take a couple steps toward him
before my chains pulled me back.

He laughed. “I can feel your anger in the
air around us,” he said. “It’s lovely, really. To
me, the best part of killing is watching the faces of their loved
ones as the light slips from the eyes. The rage and helplessness. The
pure sorrow. It’s the most delicious thing in the world. I’m
glad to see we chose a few people you’ll be sad to miss. It
makes today a lot more fun for me.”

“You’re vile,” I said.

He cocked his head toward me. “A compliment?
I wasn’t expecting such kindness.”

“That wasn’t a compliment,” I
said, knowing he was just toying with me and that I was playing right
into his hands. “You disgust me.”

“I am who I am,” he said. “Being
true to your own nature is the only thing that matters in this world
or the next. If you had learned that sooner, you might not be here in
chains. You might have been standing at the Devil’s side.”

“Never,” I said. “Don’t
even pretend to think that just because you knew my father it means
you understand my true nature.”

He shrugged and walked toward me. “You still
have so much to learn about the darkness inside you,” he said.
“And so little time. Mere hours and your light will go out
forever.”

I drew in a breath. Hours. I still wanted years.
Decades.

I wanted a lifetime.

Fallon moved toward me, stopping just outside of
my reach.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Now I take you to the preparation room,”
he said. He didn’t explain further, but I didn’t like the
sound of it.

Getting out of these chains sounded nice, though.

I held them up for him and waited.

He shook his head. “Don’t get any
grand ideas about escaping,” he said. “Your magic is
completely useless in the dungeons. Only vampires can cast down
here.”

I pressed my lips together. Annabelle had already
told me as much, but hearing it confirmed by Fallon made it feel more
real.

It made sense. If they were using these dungeons
to hold witches against their will, they would need some kind of
assurance that those witches wouldn’t be able to use their
magic to go free or fight back.

Fallon looked at my outstretched hands. “When
I remove these chains, I expect you to come without a fight,”
he said. “As much as I would enjoy finding ways to punish you,
the Devil wouldn’t appreciate it if I harmed you before the
ritual. He needs you to be mostly intact.”

He waved his hand over the shackles and they fell
from my wrists, clanging to the ground.

I smiled. “You shouldn’t have told me
that.”

I lifted a knee to his crotch, putting all my
strength behind it.

Fallon doubled over, and I quickly reached into
his pocket for the keys to the cell. I scrambled through the open
door and slammed it shut. With trembling hands, I searched for the
rusted bronze key he’d used to open it. Before I could find it,
Fallon shifted to smoke and moved through the bars like a ghost. His
bony hands wrapped around my throat and squeezed.

Damn. I'd forgotten demons could do that little
trick.

“I warned you not to struggle,” he
said, the musical quality of his voice replaced with a grating
shrillness.

I couldn’t breathe. I gripped the keys as
tightly as I could and swung them back toward his face. The pointed
end of one of the keys sank into his flesh and he released me,
screaming.

The sound echoed through the dungeon and the
witches nearby began to clang against their bars.

I turned around to face him, keys lifted between
us. “Don’t come near me again,” I threatened.

Fallon held a hand over the gash in his face. No
blood poured from the wound, but I was sure I had injured him at
least a little. Maybe vampires didn’t bleed.

I wish I knew more about how to kill him. I wanted
to gouge his eyes out with my bare hands, but the way he’d
shifted to smoke so quickly, I doubted I’d have the chance.

He lowered his hand. The skin beneath it was torn
and black, but not bloodied. Within seconds, it healed itself
completely, becoming the familiar flawless white skin he’d had
before.

But his eyes had changed. Instead of black, they
glowed a faint red. His fangs came out, protruding past his lips in a
snarl.

“You won’t get away with that again,”
he said.

“You can’t hurt me, remember?” I
said. “Not without making the Devil angry. And I’m sure
you’d rather deal with me than with him.”

He narrowed his red eyes at me, anger boiling
inside them. “I am looking forward to watching you die.”