The Sacrifice: A Paranormal MC Romance

by Jessica Gadziala

  I was the exception, not the rule.

  Not so engulfed in my grief now, while I walked around the basement, I was able to see things I missed the last time.

  The hanging flowers, even some herbs that must have been found wild in the woods. The love and care that was put into the alter. There were murals on the walls. The pentacle. A wheel of the year.

  Then, nearly hidden behind an old cloak was a list.

  Names.

  The names of many of the Sacrifices before me as well as little details about them. Favorite seasons. Favorite colors. Favorite tarot cards.

  Curious, I moved around the mostly-empty space, foraging for any other possible traces of the women before me, clues as to what happened to them, what their sacrifice ended up being.

  I'd gotten the nerve up to ask Ly once what the plan was for me.

  He'd gruffly informed me that I would "know when I needed to know, so don't ask again."

  I'd been at the house for almost two weeks at that point, and while I hadn't seen any true evil behavior from the demons—no women were raped, no men were tortured, no satanic rituals were performed—I had found them, as a whole, to be cocky, condescending, and rude. Not damnable offenses, but frustrating when you lived with them.

  I was actually feeling a bit of guilt for often being too outspoken, too impatient, too disruptive. To my mom, to my coven. I should have been a better daughter, a better community member. I should have been quieter, calmer, more patient.

  Had I been, I would still be at home.

  At this time of day, I would have been in the garden, raking up potatoes, pulling up carrots, carefully storing them in packed dirt in the root cellars for the winter.

  That said, if I had been a good member of my coven, someone else would be here in this place. And maybe she wouldn't have been strong enough to ask for a proper bath, or to ask to open a garden to provide food for herself. Maybe she wouldn't have been provided the freedoms to walk around up in the main house.

  Because, from what I could see gathered around in the basement, it seemed like most—if not all—of the Sacrifices before me had been tossed in this basement to rot for some untold amount of time.

  Until, one day, they were gone from here.

  And I couldn't help but wonder how and why.

  Where did they go?

  What had been done to them?

  Surely, the demons wouldn't take a Sacrifice each generation only to throw them in a basement to die of old age.

  That didn't seem in-line with what demons were known for.

  Evil.

  Then again, what was more evil than taking a witch away from her coven, from her community, and her family, and sticking her down in a basement to feel her life slipping away day after day, week after week, year after year?

  Maybe they fed off the misery.

  Why, then, did Ly bring me out of the basement when my misery was blanketing the world in rain? Shouldn't they have been reveling in that grief?

  None of it made any sense.

  As much as I could tell, none of the witches had left behind accounts of their lives. There were no instruments to write with down here, and if they weren't given the freedom to roam, there would have been no way to find something to write with.

  The murals on the walls had been made with berries of some sort, precious bits of food they could have eaten to sustain their bodies in the cold, damp space. But they used them to create some beauty in their dark world, to honor the world they came from.

  My heart ached for them as I kneeled down in front of the altar, running my hand over the items carefully gathered there.

  "Fucking what now?" Ly's voice growled as he charged down the stairs, his heavy boots clomping down the steps.

  "What?" I asked, startled. My hand went to my hammering heart as I took a steadying breath.

  "Ace is going to lose his shit if the rain keeps going."

  "Oh," I said glancing over toward the window, seeing the fat raindrops already falling.

  "We have company tonight. We can't have it fucking pouring again. It would ruin the mood."

  "I... I can't just turn it off," I told him. I never could. When my cat passed away when I was a girl, I wept for a week straight, causing floods that washed out part of our winter food storage. Nothing anyone did could stop it. "I have never had great control over my powers," I admitted.

  "Or your emotions. Fucking witches," Ly growled, raking a hand through his hair. "Do you need a bath?" he asked.

  "Baths aren't the magical cure to bad moods, you know," I informed him. "Back in my coven, they were simply a part of daily life."

  "It worked last time."

  "That was different. I felt different. I was sad for different reasons."

  To that, I got a sigh before he reached out, grabbing my arm, pulling me up the stairs.

  "Lycus!" Ace roared from his usual position in his library.

  "I'm working on it," Ly called back.

  "Work faster. We were supposed to open the pool and hot tub for the party."

  "What kind of party?" I asked as Ly pulled me into the kitchen.

  "A party party."

  "For what occasion?"

  "No occasion."

  "You are not celebrating anything?"

  "No. We are having people over to eat and drink and dance and flirt and fight and fuck. You know... party."

  "Can I come?"

  "To the party?" he asked, eyes squinting.

  "Yes, to the party. Having something to look forward to may help my bad mood."

  I was being manipulative. I remember Marianne throwing that word at me a lot as a teenager when I managed to convince the girls my age to do chores I didn't like for me or join in on my little acts of rebellion.

  I had always been good at convincing people to do things I wanted, even when I knew it was not the kind thing to do.

  It was yet another reason I was here with the demons.

  But it was also a way for me to make a bad situation a bit more tolerable.

  Making demands had gotten me out of the basement for some part of the day. It got me the garden. It allowed me to prepare my own foods.

  I had no idea what may lie ahead for me, but at least until then, I could enjoy a halfway tolerable existence.

  "Ace won't like it."

  "Does Ace have to know?" I asked.

  "It's not like you blend in with normal human beings."

  "I won't speak to anyone."

  "That would be a welcome change," he grumbled. "This," he went on, waving toward my body, clad in my white gown.

  "If I had something else to wear, I would."

  "I will think about it. Is that good enough?" he asked, looking out the window. "Fuck. Guess not," he hissed, shaking his head. "Fine. Fucking fine. You can come. I will have to go and find you something to wear. You will need to keep your head down, stay away from everyone. Just watch."

  "Okay," I agreed, excitement starting to bubble up in my system, making the rain slow up, the sun already peeking through the clouds.

  "Do I want to know what you had to promise her to make it stop?" Ace asked, coming into the kitchen, moving right to the coffee pot, constantly needing the warmth the beverage provided.

  "No."

  "Then I won't ask," Ace said, shaking his head. "She doesn't leave the grounds."

  "I know," Ly agreed, leading me out of the kitchen, pulling me with him up the stairs and into his bedroom. "Bathe," he demanded, waving toward the bathroom. "I will figure out the other shit."

  I had no idea what the "other shit" was, but I was happy to run a bath while he left, slipping into the water, feeling the ache from the bed on the floor in the basement easing away with each passing moment.

  I drained the water and refilled it once before washing my hair and climbing out, slipping under the soft covers while the house seemed to come alive around and below me.

  Typically, I found the demons rather slothful, always hanging around, drinking, rea
ding, or watching television. I heard the soft strum of a string instrument—knowing these demons, likely a guitar—from somewhere behind a closed door on occasion, but they never did any cleaning, cooking, or yard work.

  I was starting to believe they weren't capable.

  But from my position on the bed, I could see Ace and Drex moving around the back of the grounds, scooping leaves out of the pool, and placing tables and chairs around.

  From below, I could hear the shuffling of furniture, music thrumming then stopping, then starting again, but louder, the beat pulsing up the walls, making even the bed vibrate with it.

  It was a long while later when I heard a strange rustling noise along with footsteps on the floors outside Ly's bedroom for a second before it opened and Ly moved inside.

  The bags in his hands were what was making the rustling noise, half a dozen of them.

  "What is all this?" I asked as he made his way to the foot of the bed, dropping all the bags there.

  "Things to wear."

  "I can't imagine I will need all of that for one night."

  "No," he agreed. "But you will need other things soon. Boots, for the gardening. A jacket for the same reason. You would be useless to us if you caught a chill and died."

  The gestures had started out kind, at least. And I was too pleased at the idea of something new to wear to care about his comments.

  "There are also things for the bath. Some food. Makeup shit."

  "Makeup," I repeated.

  "The shit chicks put on their faces. Makes their eyes bigger and their lips redder."

  "Oh, right," I agreed, feeling foolish.

  We didn't have makeup, not in the strictest definition of the word, but we did use natural dyes on our faces for special occasions, even though we had no one to impress but ourselves.

  "You'll figure it out," he said, reading the confusion on my face. "Or make yourself look like a clown. Either way, it will keep you out of our hair while we set things up."

  "How will I know when to come down?"

  "When I come to get you."

  "How long?"

  "However long it takes, witch," he snapped, walking to the door, leaving, slamming it on his way back.

  He always blew hot and cold with me.

  On the one hand, he had gone out, spent his money, and bought me more things than I needed, including an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables as well as some bottled fruit drinks. Smoothies, they said.

  I knew very well that he didn't need to buy me these things. The other witches did not seem to have the same treatment I had been enjoying.

  So he didn't have to be kind.

  But he was.

  And, I was starting to suspect, anytime he caught himself being kind, he covered it by being especially gruff.

  It couldn't have come naturally to him—a creature of pure evil—to be considerate, to think of others ahead of himself.

  Even if his reasons were, at their core, selfish, since they didn't want rain, so that their party could be enjoyable. Which, I imagined, served their own pride in some way.

  Still, it was nice.

  And I was going to let myself feel appreciative. If for no other reason than it felt good to feel appreciation for a kind gesture.

  I grabbed the bag of sugar snap peas and made my way into the bathroom with all the packages, looking over the makeup items, trying to discern what might be used for what, then snacking while I worked on my face, seeing a new me emerge as I went.

  My eyes looked bigger with the liner, my lashes thicker and darker with the mascara, my lips a red that reminded me of flowers, a dramatic change that had my lips seeming a more prominent feature.

  I liked the woman looking back at me. She looked more worldly and confident.

  The only remnants of the witch in the woods seemed to be the blue of my half-moon tattoo and my long, dark hair.

  Finished, I moved onto the clothing selections, finding myself perhaps more baffled than I had been about the makeup which, at least, explained itself on the packaging.

  Clothing had always been simple in my coven. We wore gowns—lightweight linen in the summer and heavy wool in the winter—and cloaks. If we were especially cold in the winter, we had stockings to slip under our gowns.

  We didn't wear undergarments save for when our sacred moontime arrived, making us use thick pads of fabric between our legs.

  So this strange collection of clothing had me using basic reasoning skills to figure out.

  The piece that baffled me most was two circular bits of lacy fabric with a black lining, two straps, and a band around the bottom.

  Eventually, though, I figured it—and its troubling clasps—out, finding it supportive, if a bit restrictive.

  A breast covering.

  For modesty, I imagined.

  That was something that had never been an issue in the coven. With no men around, there was nothing to feel modest about. We all had the same parts, more or less. And we faced nothing to fear from showing those parts of ourselves.

  But in this world, where men and women mingled, I imagined modesty was necessary to avoid the unwanted attention of the base of menfolk, the type we were warned about with grave voices, our elders telling us the ways in which a man's body could hurt a woman, how some human men were hardly better than wild beasts.

  Regardless of the restriction—and the unpleasant cultural associations with regard to it— I liked the garment. It showed off my stomach, the flare of my hip.

  It felt daring, sexy.

  Going back to the clothing, I found what, by process of elimination, I figured was a skirt. Even if I had never seen one so short or made of such material before. It was black, thin, stiff, and strangely shiny. When I slipped it up my legs, it only managed to fall about halfway down my thigh.

  Digging through the remaining bags, I found sprays that smelled chemical and flowery at the same time. Choosing the one the smelled the most like an actual flower—lavender—I sprayed some on my mostly-bare chest before going back into the bags to find some strange foaming product in a can and a razor. A razor, at least, I was familiar with. We used them to shave the heads of the sisters who aimed to become more devoted to the gods, the women who lived fully in the woods, without shelter, without having their daughters, their entire lives dedicated to the land, to their studies of it, and to their spirituality.

  And I knew from one of Ace's books about 'feminism' that women in this modern world had started to shave off nearly all of their body hair.

  Looking at myself in the large mirror, I could see the hair on my legs that had been allowed to grow as it did naturally my whole life. The same was true under my arms. Between my legs.

  Not wanting to be seen as backward, not wanting to stand out, I slipped back out of my skirt, went into the shower to get wet as the directions demanded, and put the foaming product up and down my legs, under my arms, and between my thighs. Then I working the razor blade across my skin.

  When I was done, there was blood everywhere. On my skin. In the shower. On the floor as I walked back out, slipping back into the skirt as I tried to think of a way to stop the bleeding when I didn't have any of my usual remedies around.

  "What the fuck are you wearing?" Ly asked, voice a strange, low hiss, sounding oddly airless.

  "The clothes you brought me," I supplied, waving an arm toward the bags. "Will I not fit in?" I asked, brows furrowing.

  "Fuck," he said, sighing, raking a hand through his hair. "You will," he told me.

  "Then what's wrong?"

  "Here. Just... you need this," he told me, brushing past me to go toward the bags when, suddenly, his nose scrunched up as he sniffed the air, his gaze shooting down to the floor. "Are you bleeding?" he asked. "Did you hurt yourself?" he demanded, grabbing my arm, and yanking me around.

  "Oh, I, uhm... I tried the razor," I admitted, feeling the heat rise up my neck, blooming across my cheeks. "It was my first time," I added as his gaze slid to my legs, seeing the bloo
d.

  "Christ. You cut yourself more than you didn't," he grumbled, dropping down to a crouch, calloused palm grabbing the back of my calf so he could inspect my cuts.

  "What?" I asked, stiffening when he angled his head up, taking another deep breath, his nostrils flaring, his eyes blazing redder.

  "Panties," he rumbled.

  "I don't understand."

  I would swear he said, "Of course not," but his voice was too quiet as the hand on my calf lifted, and pulled outward, spreading my thigh wide as his body arched upward.

  And his face... his face went between my legs.

  Not a second later, I could feel the most delicious, scandalous friction, something smooth and intimate, sliding up the cleft of my sex, teasing at the apex for the barest of seconds, the suddenly forked ends circling that bud of desire.

  My thighs started to shake.

  But it was over before I could truly wrap my head around what was happening.

  His tongue was on the most intimate part of me.

  But then it wasn't, and he was looking up at me.

  "Panties would prevent me from doing that," he told me as he put my leg back down.

  As he got to his feet and turned his back on me, I couldn't stop one thought from crossing my mind.

  Why would I want to prevent him from doing that?

  Except, of course, that he was evil.

  And he might very well torture or kill me in the future.

  "Put this on over the bra," Ly demanded, tossing a deep mauve velvet jacket at me.

  Trying to shake the lingering desire clawing at me, I slipped on the jacket, finding there was no way to clasp the front, creating a peek-a-boo effect.

  "Better?" I asked, turning to find him standing in the doorway. Almost, maybe, as though he didn't trust himself to be close to me.

  In response, I got a grunting noise.

  "Will I fit in?" I asked.

  "Enough. But you have to follow the rules. No talking to anyone. And stay away from Ace."

  "I can do that. Am I allowed outside? To see the pool? And the outdoor tub?"

  "Hot tub," he corrected. "Only if I am there to watch you. Otherwise, you stay inside. Hug the walls."

  "How does one hug a wall?"

  "It means stay near the walls. Don't get involved in anything."