[Sacrifice Me 08.0] Season Two: Part 2

by Sarra Cannon

  I crossed my arms at my waist, hiding my ring against my body as I sat down.

  The Mother Crow sat next to me, her body smelling of decay as she rolled her tongue around in her mouth.

  Finally, after a few moments of silence, she started to talk.

  “I’m sure you have questions about what’s happening to you,” she said. “Already, I can feel parts of my own soul finding their way to you. Leaking into you. Did you dream of me?”

  She turned her gaze on me expectantly, and I shook my head.

  “Oh, I hardly believe that,” she said, shaking her head slightly. But then she stopped and smiled. “You didn’t sleep.”

  She clucked her tongue against the back of her teeth.

  “Naughty girl,” she said. “You need your rest for what’s coming next. And I need you to be in perfect health.”

  “I wasn’t tired,” I said, my voice low. I meant to sound defiant, but it came out like a petulant child. “And I want to know what’s happening to my friend. The one you left sleeping in that curse.”

  She laughed, the sound a roaring cackle that reverberated in the enclosed space.

  “You are feisty,” she said. “I like your spirit. It pleases me to know you have some fight in you. You’re strong. If you had grown up here among my crows, I have no doubt you would have been one of the Favored.”

  I cleared my throat, holding back all the things I wanted to say. What use would it be to argue with her now? After all, she was the one who had sent me away in the first place. And from the sound of it, she’d done me a favor.

  “Your friend is still sleeping,” she said. “Maybe when your job here is done, I will send one of my crows to wake her. That, my little bird, depends entirely on your behavior.”

  I clenched my teeth, wanting nothing more than to kill her right here, but I knew that wasn’t an option for me. Not anymore.

  The Mother Crow lifted her hand and pulled back the sleeve of her robe, revealing withered, decaying flesh that had a grey tint to it and seemed to barely be holding onto her bones.

  “The decay began some years ago,” she said, the laughter gone from her voice now. “I did everything I could think of to stop it, but my spells and potions only slowed its progress. It didn’t make sense to me. Those old crones from the Order of Shadows walk around looking healthy, each one of them seeming to be hardly a day over forty at most, usually. At first, I thought it must be merely glamours, so I tried the same thing. If I could permanently glamour myself by making a small sacrifice here and there, it would be a small price to pay for eternal youth.”

  I tightened my jaw to keep from speaking. She spoke so casually about killing another human being, as if it were no more than doing the laundry or cooking a meal. Just another task on her to-do list.

  “It didn’t work for me, of course,” she said. “I tried it over and over, but despite the sacrifices, the glamours only held for a short time. A few years at most before the body beneath began to show through with sagging skin and rotting flesh.”

  I looked away from her, wishing she would just leave. I didn’t need to know her story. I just wanted her to go and leave me alone.

  “I couldn’t make sense of it at first, but one day, as I was going through a few of the Order’s own spell books, it suddenly dawned on me. I felt like a fool,” she said. “The witches who rule the Order of Shadows have one thing I can never have.”

  She looked at me, a single, scraggly eyebrow raised to a point. She wanted me to participate in this conversation. I could see it in her eyes, but worse, I could feel it. She had some mysterious control over me, and although it was just a faint feeling now, I shuddered at the thought of it growing over time.

  Absently, I touched the stone in my chest.

  “They have a demon,” I said simply, unable to resist her now.

  “Yes, yes, child,” she said, nodding approvingly. “They all have powerful demons trapped inside of them, fueling and intensifying their powers. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but they also have a master stone for a heart. Some piece of the ritual from when the gates were created, I suppose. The combination of the stone and the demon allows them to continue living forever, young and free, glamouring themselves over and over again as if it were nothing. But me…”

  Her voice trailed off in a long sigh.

  “I feared I was doomed to die when my body finally withered away,” she said. “The spells keep my mind, soul, and power strong, but it wasn’t until somewhat recently that I discovered a way to fix my body. Which is where you come in, my daughter.”

  My stomach knotted, and I once again tasted bile at the back of my throat. It took everything in me not to run straight for the bathroom.

  I didn’t want to hear this. I wanted to put my hands over my ears and curl up in the corner somewhere.

  Or better yet, I wanted to place both hands inside this evil witch’s mouth and rip her apart.

  I had the power to do it—and much worse—but the moment I even thought about hurting her, the stone in my chest heated instantly, burning me.

  I cried out and clutched at it, scratching at the flesh as I writhed in my seat.

  The Mother Crow’s laughter rang out again.

  “I can feel your anger,” she said. “Your desire to hurt me, but those are dangerous thoughts now, my daughter. Best to put them aside before you hurt yourself.”

  I closed my eyes against the pain and bit down hard on my lip, pushing back tears as the heat slowly subsided.

  “What are you doing to me?” I asked.

  “I am becoming you,” she said, eyes wide. “Or rather, you are becoming me.”

  “Soul transfer?” I asked. My lips trembled around the words. “But what happens to me when this is over?”

  “You’ll be gone,” she said with a shrug, as if it was nothing to worry about. “My soul and my power are being transferred into your body now, and when the transfer is complete, your power will still be there. Your body will still be there, just as it is now. But your soul? I imagine it will be consumed by mine.”

  I shook my head, bringing my legs up to my chest, as if to shield myself from her words.

  “Oh, there may be some piece of you still in there,” she said. “I have never done this before, so I can’t be certain. But you will not have any control over your body or your power. It will all be mine.”

  “This can’t be happening,” I whispered.

  “It’s already done,” she said. “There’s no use worrying over it now.”

  “But why not choose one of the girls you already have here in the village?” I said, my voice rising with panic. “Surely one of them would willingly have made this sacrifice. Honored it, even. Why take my life away from me?”

  “There were many who begged for the chance,” she said. “And if it had taken us any longer to find you, I would have had to choose one of them for sure. But you, Mary Francis. You’re special.”

  “I’m not,” I said, a tear leaking from one eye and sliding down my cheek. “I don’t want this. Please, I only just found out who I am. I only just…”

  Found him.

  I wanted to explain it to her. To make her see just what she had taken from me. But in her eyes, there was no sympathy. No concern. She was pure hatred and evil, concerned only with her own desires. She didn’t care that she’d stolen my life. All she cared about was the fact that she’d wanted me.

  Nothing else mattered.

  “There’s no reversing it now, even if I wanted to. So you can put any hope of that out of your head now. The sooner you accept what’s happening to you and learn to welcome it and see it for the honor it is, the easier this will be on all of us.”

  I stood and backed away from her. “I don’t want this to be easy on anyone,” I shouted. “And I’m not going to let this happen. I won’t.”

  I reached for the power at my core and braced for the heat of the stone, but the moment my own anger and intentions flared inside of me, the burning fla
mes of whatever spell was now taking over my body consumed me. The shadows that had gathered around my hands faded to nothingness, and I screamed, clawing at my chest.

  The stone burned me with a white-hot heat, and I fell to my knees.

  Somewhere at the edge of my consciousness, I heard the Mother Crow stand up and walk toward me, but I couldn’t see her. My eyes were pressed shut, and my body shook violently from the pain.

  “You cannot use your power against me,” she said, her voice close as the skirt of her robe snaked along my skin. “And if you try to use it against any of my daughters, I will punish you in ways you can’t even imagine.”

  “I will not let this happen,” I said, forcing my eyes open. “Rend won’t let this happen. He will find me, and when he does, he will put a dagger through your heart and end this spell. You’ll be begging for the chance to choose another girl by the time he gets here, I promise you that.”

  She threw her head back and laughed again as flashes of pain pulsed through me.

  The Mother Crow crouched in front of me and put the tip of one bony finger under my chin, her long fingernail scratching my skin.

  “Oh, girl. Don’t you understand?” she asked, smiling. “You are my chosen vessel, but you’re also my insurance policy against this game the Brotherhood has decided to play.”

  She leaned closer, her rancid breath making me gag.

  “Your beloved Rend will not kill me,” she said. “And he won’t allow his competitor to do it, either. Because if I die, Mary Francis…”

  She lowered her finger and tapped the visible edge of the stone.

  “...you die.”

  She chuckled and stood, her bones cracking as she straightened and shuffled along the wooden floors. She didn’t even glance back as she walked out. Seconds later, the doors slammed shut and the locks clicked into place, but my mind barely registered the sound.

  Tears flowed from my eyes as I twisted Rend’s engagement ring around my shaking finger.

  There was no way to stop this spell. The Mother Crow’s soul would consume mine, and she would live another hundred years or more wearing my face. My body. This body that had loved him just hours ago.

  But that was not the worst of it.

  All this time, Rend had refused to open his heart to love. He’d been afraid of it, and he should have been. Because now, his love for me was going to be the death of both of us.

  He couldn’t win the Council’s seat without killing the Mother Crow. And he couldn’t kill the Mother Crow without killing me in the process. He would let himself die before he would kill me with his own hands.

  And he wouldn’t let Dagon do it, either.

  They would both be condemned to the dungeons for the rest of their lives, wishing for death. And I would be lost forever, anyway.

  It was an impossible conflict. A death-sentence for us both.

  And there was no way out.

  I Couldn’t Go Back Now

  Rend

  “What are you doing here, Rend?” Silas asked, glancing nervously at the door again.

  “Trying to do what I can to save Franki,” I said. “And myself.”

  “You should have told me you were coming,” he said sternly.

  “Why is that?” I asked. “What could possibly be more important right now? What are you hiding?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this here,” he said, taking my arm and leading me toward his study. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Not exactly. But I was thinking. If what you told me about your father being betrayed by the other members of the Council is true, they’ll all have a firm interest in making sure neither Dagon or myself wins this competition. They’ll do whatever they think is necessary to keep us both from winning.”

  Silas raised an eyebrow and took a bottle of scotch off a cart near his desk. He poured a tall glass and took a long drink.

  “They can’t prevent us from finding her, if that’s what you mean,” Silas said.

  “Not unless they’re watching us. They could be keeping an eye on us the entire time. This dagger could be imbued with some kind of magic that tells them my location,” I said. “And if we get close, they could warn the Mother Crow. We’ll never get to her.”

  “So, what are you suggesting we do about it?” he asked.

  “I was hoping you might have some suggestions,” I said. “You’ve spent the most time with them recently. Did they know what you were going to ask of us if it came to a tie?”

  Silas shifted his weight and took another drink.

  “We never discussed the possibility of it, no,” he said. “But they kept eyeing the stone.”

  He wrapped his fingers around his father’s black soul stone, clutching it like a prized possession.

  “So, they could have suspected it,” I said. I closed my eyes, feeling the familiar angry pull to destroy something, but ruining Silas’s study wasn’t going to get me anywhere but on his bad side. And I still didn’t entirely trust him right now. “This could be the whole reason the Mother Crow took Franki in the first place. You first presented this issue of the Council being one vote short to them months ago, right?”

  “Yes, three months ago,” he said. “I didn’t meet with them then, but I let them know they couldn’t decide the vote on their own.”

  “So, they had time to discuss all the options. To go through the rules of the Enchiridion with a fine-toothed comb and figure out just what they would do in any case,” I said. “That’s plenty of time for them to make a plan with the Mother Crow to make certain that you didn’t allow Solomon out of that stone.”

  He walked a few steps and turned. “It’s possible,” he said. “But the chances of a tie were slim.”

  “Not so slim that you didn’t already have a plan in place and know exactly what you were going to do if it came to that,” I said. “They had to have at least suspected it.”

  “What good does this do to talk about now?” he asked. “The important thing is that Franki is with the Mother Crow, and we need to find them both.”

  “And just how are we supposed to do that?” I asked, rage causing my voice to shake. We didn’t have time for this shit.

  I was going out of my mind. I wanted to know exactly what that witch had done to Franki, and even though I had my suspicions, I didn’t want to believe it could be real. We had to find her now, or there would be no reason for me to win the seat on the Council.

  If Franki died, I didn’t want to live.

  I couldn’t live without her.

  Just knowing her had changed everything for me, and I couldn’t go back now. I needed her.

  Silas swallowed and glanced around. He fidgeted and then shook his head.

  “What?” I asked. “What are you not telling me? If this is about whatever you have hidden in your bedroom, you better tell me about it right now. You’re already on thin ice with me, Silas, and you know what happens when I get angry.”

  “Believe me, I know,” he muttered. “Look, there’s something very delicate I need to tell you, but when you hear this, I need you to promise that you won’t make any rash decisions. I need you to hear me out.”

  “Right now, I’m not promising you anything,” I said. “If you know something that could help me save Franki’s life, you need to come out with it before I beat it out of you.”

  He smiled nervously. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said. “But before I take you back down to my room, you need to hear me out. With the way things have been going lately, I don’t want to trust anything—or anyone—who just happens to fall in my lap, in a manner of speaking.”

  I drew in a ragged breath, my anger and anxiety near the absolute edge.

  “Who do you have locked away in there?” I asked.

  He glanced up, meeting my eyes for a brief moment before looking away again.

  “There’s a crow in my bedroom,” he said. He shifted quickly and reappeared in front of the door to the study just before I stor
med through it. “Dammit, Rend. I said I needed you to listen to me. I know you don’t trust me right now because of this stone I’m wearing around my neck, but I’m the same person you trusted for all these years. I promise you that.”

  “You better start talking,” I said.

  “She came here to my house. I don’t even know for sure how she found me,” he said. “Her name is Mary Tate, and she was a wreck when I found her sitting just outside my front doorstep. She’d been…”

  He shook his head, his voice trailing off.

  “Tell me.”

  “She’d been half-drained by a vampire,” he said. “Not me, but she didn’t know the demon’s name. Only that he attacked them, along with five other vampires. She’d barely gotten out alive.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you about her right away. I wanted to be certain I could trust what she was saying. But now that the Mother Crow has Franki, I think we both need to listen to her and decide whether or not we should act on it.”

  “Act on what?” I asked.

  “I’ll let her tell you,” he said. “But Rend, if what she has to say is true, it could lead us down an even more dangerous path than the one we’re already on.”

  I took a deep breath and met his eyes, so he could see the determination in them. The absolute lack of fear. I honestly didn’t care what kind of danger came my way.

  Besides, I now carried the Dagger of Truth. She wouldn’t be able to lie to me.

  All I cared about right now was getting Franki home and putting a stop to whatever the Mother Crow had done to her.

  “Take me to her,” I said.

  Silas nodded and stepped away. Together, we shifted and flew down to the other end of the hall and opened the door to the bedroom.

  The crow witch was tied up in black ropes and sitting on Silas’s bed, her body pressed against the wooden headboard. There were red bite marks all over her body, and her eyes widened when I entered the room.