Sacrifice Me, Season two

by Sarra Cannon

  She made it to the portal just as it began to close, her small black body just barely fitting through the rings of light. Franki cried out, shifting in midair as she reached toward the crow, but it was too late.

  She was gone, and the portal closed before I could reach it.

  Franki, now in human form, fell toward the ground, and I turned abruptly, racing toward her and just barely catching her in my arms as I shifted. She fell onto me, and we both tumbled to the ground.

  I sat up, anger and frustration rising inside my chest. I wanted to knock that damn column down to the ground.

  This couldn’t be happening. Mary Agatha had been our one shot. Our only hope.

  And now she was gone.

  “How did we miss her?” I shouted as I stood. I directed my question toward Connery, who was shaking his head in confusion.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “She either wasn’t here before or she was hiding her scent from me.”

  “How is that possible?” I asked, holding my hand out to Franki to help her up.

  Azure was already standing on the roof of the blue house, investigating the spot where Mary Agatha had appeared.

  “There’s a hiding spot here,” she said, her palm slapping against some invisible barrier. “It must have shielded her from being detected by any of our senses, including sight and smell.”

  “Dammit,” I shouted.

  “Rend,” Franki said, but I ignored her.

  I walked over to the girls still sitting at the picnic table.

  “Did you know she was here the whole time?” I asked.

  Mary Lola looked up at me, a wicked smile on her face. “I was the only one who knew she was here. I summoned her while you were still trying to search for the village,” she said, pulling a second blue stone from her pocket. “Besides, you didn’t ask us if she was here now. You just asked if she had come recently. We’re not stupid, you know. We knew you’d follow me here.”

  I couldn’t believe we’d been outwitted by a group of teenagers. I wanted to scream.

  I’d trusted that Connery would be able to sense the witch if she were standing nearby, but I hadn’t bet on her having a way to shield her scent from him.

  No wonder Azure had felt power coming from that portal. It had just recently been opened.

  “We’re done, then,” I said, shaking my head. “That witch will tell the Mother Crow what happened her today, and they’ll move again. They’ll know we’re looking for her, and I’m running out of time.”

  “Rend,” Franki said again, more forcefully this time.

  “What?” I asked, turning on her.

  She stood at the base of the wooden column, a smile on her face as she twirled a single, black feather between her fingers.

  “It’s not over yet,” she said. “I just may know a way to track this witch down.”

  Sacrifice

  Franki

  Two hours later, after we’d gathered everything we needed for the spell to track the crow witch, Silas, Rend, Azure, Mary Anne, Essex, and I sat outside on the cliff of the expansive mountains, a single black feather sitting between us in the snow-laced grass.

  It was already dark here in the Swiss Alps, but if this worked, we’d be able to attack well before dawn in the US.

  We had left the four girls, including Mary Janice, at Harper’s castle. I didn’t have the heart to send them down to the dungeons, so Harper had agreed to put them in one of the castle’s suites where they were all guarded, but safe and well-cared for.

  Marco had stayed at the castle in the Shadow World, too, so that Angela could see to his burns. She’d said they weren’t too serious, and that he would make a full recovery soon. Connery had gone to talk to some of his brother wolves, to ask them to join us in battle against the crows.

  I glanced down at the small black book in my hands, thankful for the good luck to have found it when I did.

  This book would save the man I loved and my best friend. All we had to do was put a track on Mary Agatha, and we would be able to find the Mother Crow.

  We’d discussed our plan at length and decided that once the spell was cast and her location was shown to us, we would gather an army of our friends and raid the village in the early morning hours. Hopefully by noon tomorrow, the Mother Crow would be dead, Rend would be a ruler of the Brotherhood, and Katy would be awake and complaining about all the study time she’d lost.

  Maybe I would finally agree to see if Marco would want to go on a double-date, just to make it up to her.

  I smiled, feeling the importance of this moment. We would finally have the upper hand in this battle.

  I felt strong and ready. I’d shifted to my demon form for the first time today in the crow village, and it had filled me with hope. The hope of all that was possible.

  We could win this fight. I knew it.

  “Are we ready?” I asked.

  Azure placed a map of the United States on the ground between us.

  According to the book, a small crow’s feather would appear on the map used to set our trace, and wherever that witch went from then on, we would be able to see her location on that map.

  As we got closer to the witch’s location, the feather would act as a compass, pointing us toward her. There was no doubt in my mind Mary Agatha had returned to the Mother Crow’s village to tell her about our meeting in the trees.

  As long as she stayed there, she would tell us exactly where the Mother Crow and her many daughters lived.

  I took a deep breath and opened the black book to the location of the spell.

  It was to be cast outside, so that the magic could be carried by the wind, seeking out the owner of the feather.

  The only other requirements besides the feather itself and a crow witch to cast it were a vial of any crow witch’s blood, a compass, the map, and the bark of a pine tree.

  “Let’s get it over with,” Silas said. “The sooner we have her location, the sooner we can move against the Mother Crow. She’s probably already gathering her forces for battle.”

  “Hopefully she has no idea we have this spell,” I said.

  I breathed deeply, my nerves getting the best of me. I had never cast a spell like this before, but it had to be cast by a fellow crow witch. Mary Anne volunteered to do it, saying she’d cast several ritual spells when she was younger, but it felt like it had to be me. This was my responsibility.

  I read through the instructions one more time, making sure I was familiar with the order of things. I couldn’t really tell what the spell words themselves said, since they were in Latin, but as long as the spell worked, I didn’t really care what it said.

  I nodded to the others and placed my hand on the feather.

  “Invoco virtute mutatio,” I said.

  The feather warmed beneath my hand, and I pulled back as it began to spin in a circle, moving faster and faster.

  “Movere potentiam non facinum,” I said, reading from the book.

  Dark shadows rose from the feather, swirling around us like a tornado. It blew my hair back and lifted the pages of the book in my hand.

  I glanced at Rend, and he nodded in encouragement. One small part left to say, and the trace should begin.

  “Dabit mater mea me in sacrificium.”

  “What?” Silas asked, his eyes snapping to mine. “Franki, stop.”

  His eyes widened as he reached across the circle, as if to grab the book.

  But as he moved into the swirling smoke, his body froze. The smoke scattered, and I choked as it entered my lungs. My body halted mid-movement. I couldn’t breathe.

  No one around the circle moved at all, our forms solid and still like stone.

  The whirlwind around us grew larger, billowing high into the air with such force it broke the windows all along the front of the great mansion carved into the side of the mountain.

  Panic filled me as I struggled against the spell. What was happening?

  I tried to draw a breath, but no air would come.

&
nbsp; Then, from the center of the raging black winds, came a horrible, cackling laughter.

  An image appeared inside the shadows. A woman with a decaying face and red eyes ringed with blackest night.

  She stepped toward me, her dark robes billowing in the wind.

  The Mother Crow.

  I wanted to cry out. To fight. To turn back time and undo whatever I had said.

  “Oh, my sweet little bird, how I have waited for this moment,” she said, kneeling before me. “All these years of searching for you. All my plans have finally come to this. Making sure you found the book. Making sure you carried the stone near you at all times. Planting the feather that would bring me to you when you called. I had no idea when I first found the soul transference spell just how I would get you to cast it willingly, but there is always a way.”

  Willingly? Soul transference?

  Oh, dear God, what have I just done?

  “Always a way, my little bird,” she said, embers flashing in her eyes. “I have wanted you for so long, and you are finally mine.”

  She lifted a gnarled fingernail toward my face and stroked my cheek. I was powerless to move or speak. I tried to reach for the well of power within me, but even that was frozen in time. Useless to me now.

  “You are just as young and beautiful as I once was,” she said. “As I will be once again.”

  The Mother Crow closed her eyes and ran her hand along the edges of my body until finally reaching into the pocket of my jeans and taking out the black stone. The stone she’d said was a portal stone.

  She lifted it to her lips and exhaled.

  A tendril of dark power travelled from her open mouth toward the stone, and it began to glow with a dim light.

  She laughed again and held the stone high into the air, a victory move, but I still did not understand what she thought she’d won. My life? My power? What did she want from me?

  What, exactly, would she take from me?

  As if she’d heard my thoughts, she looked at me and smiled.

  “Everything, my dear. I will take it all.” She leaned forward, placed her lips to my ear, and whispered, “I accept your sacrifice.”

  With that, she slammed the black stone hard against my chest, just above my pounding heart.

  The stone burned me all the way to my core as it embedded itself into my skin, carving its way through my flesh until just the very surface of one side still showed.

  A darkness like none I’d ever felt—none I’d ever feared—seeped into my veins, and I suddenly understood with the clarity of a thousand nightmares just what I had done. What she had planned for me all along.

  The Mother Crow did not mean to sacrifice me in some great spell.

  She meant to take my body for her own. To transfer her soul into me.

  But what would happen to mine in the process?

  “You are mine now, Mary Francis,” she said as a piece of her dark soul wound its way around my insides. “You are me, now. And I am you.”

  No. Please, no. Rend, I’m sorry.

  But Rend could not help me now. No one could help me.

  “Come now, little bird,” she said. “We have work to do.”

  She took my hand and dragged me toward the swirling darkness, where I disappeared from sight and finally took my place among the crows.

  * * *

  The End of Part 1.

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  The story continues in Sacrifice Me, Season 2: Part 2, releasing on May 7th.

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  About the Author

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  Sarra Cannon is the author of several series featuring young adult and college-aged characters, including the bestselling Shadow Demons Saga. Her novels often stem from her own experiences growing up in the small town of Hawkinsville, Georgia, where she learned that being popular always comes at a price and relationships are rarely as simple as they seem.

  Sarra recently celebrated seven years in indie publishing and has sold over half a million copies of her books. She currently lives in South Carolina with her programmer husband and adorable redheaded son.

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