Blood Sacrifice (Faith of the Fallen Book 2)

by West,Cassandra Sky

  “I don’t have your numbers,” Sing said as he pulled out his phone.

  “Savanna?”

  She sighed. Casting magic frivolously was never advised. She’d argued with herself over it. Mostly she worried what Connor would think.

  Her dagger slid across the back of her arm drawing a thin line of blood. Both the men winced at the casualness of her cutting. She held out her hand and spoke the words of power. A window in her mind opened. With the blood fresh on her dagger, she drew a line in the air to each of them. The window in her mind expanded to include them all. Like a shuttered door it opened and expanded as she added each person.

  This picks up surface thoughts nothing more. No in-depth mind reading,Savanna informed them.

  Awesome! We need to put you on the payroll, Sing’s enthusiastic tone came through clearly.

  Connor’s eyes found her. Savanna tried to not make contact but she couldn’t help it. If he was going to judge her now, he should know. A witch’s powers could be scary to no one more than the witch herself.

  There was no judgment in his eyes, only wonder.

  This is amazing Savanna. Can anyone do this? he asked her.

  She shook her head, blood magic isn’t just incantations and words it’s the blood. If you’re not a witch then you can’t access it. She held up her hand, No, I don’t know how Illyana taught it to Dupree. She’s old and powerful and obviously she knows more than I do.

  Okay, we’ve got our assignments. Don’t take any chances and don’t get bit, Alexi thought to them.

  The four split up. The women watched as the two men walked south before Alexi motioned for Savanna to cross the street. Savanna nodded, leaving Alexi to go up the West side while she walked up the East. The streets were unusually quiet for this early in the evening, it was almost as if the people in the area could feel the wrongness of the zombies.

  She wanted to talk to Alexi, to ask her how she felt. Having a child was huge and it wouldn’t be too hard to track her down. But there was no time. The ride here had been in silence, interrupted only by Connor calling Sing in.

  Turning East, Connor’s voice drifted into her thoughts. She smiled. Hearing his voice did that for her.

  Anything asked Alexi.

  Nothing so far responded Sing.

  Savanna shook her head, it was too easy to get lost in thought. She scanned back and forth, trying to be more like Alexi, who always seemed to be alert. How she did that Savanna had no idea. The woman seemed always on the ball, never caught off guard. Savanna couldn’t keep her head out of the clouds for more than five minutes before…

  The sky spun above her. Pain blossomed in her face followed by a numbness that stretched from her jaw to her right eye. Cold hands encircled her ankle. Something dragged her across the pavement. Gravel bit into her skin and scratched her leather coat.

  Alexi, help! She finally managed to think.

  Alexi’s scream of rage echoed in her ears. The hands let go. Savanna rolled over and then pushed off with her feet. She could see Alexi wrestling with a monstrously large man. His face hung off his skull in leathery strips.

  Alexi roared as she lifted him off the ground. His skin pulled off his flesh where she held him. His girth collapsed on her as her hands pushed through his putrid flesh.

  “Shit!”

  Connor, Sing, get here! Alexi yelled in her head.

  Savanna stumbled up with a hand on the car to steady herself. The zombie snapped its mouth open and closed as it tried to bite Alexi. She desperately pushed against him, but she couldn’t get a hold. His flesh was too rotten for her to get a grip.

  Savanna scrambled for Alexi’s dropped shotgun. The unfamiliar metal filled her hand. She pushed the barrel against the things skull.

  “Shoot it,” Alexi hollered.

  Savanna closed her eyes.

  The gun exploded death outward sending fire roaring down the barrel to vaporize the dead man's head.

  ***

  “Are you okay?” Alexi asked as she pulled her up. She brushed bits of flesh off of Savanna’s coat. The poor girl was frozen in an opened mouth astonishment.

  “Savanna, it’s okay hon, you saved me. That thing would’ve eaten my face,” Alexi said with a grin. She put her arm around her, “It’s okay,” she whispered as she hugged her close.

  “I never shot anyone before,” Savanna said lamely.

  “And you still haven’t,” Connor said as he came up around the car, his shotgun shouldered and in the ready position.

  “Zombies aren’t people,” Sing added as he mirrored Connor from the other side of the parked car.

  Alexi passed Savanna to Connor who immediately wrapped her in a warm hug. Something Alexi couldn’t do. Despite being able to walk in the sun her body still didn’t generate heat. She put it out of her mind. There were other things to worry about than angsting over her lost humanity. She retrieved her dropped shotgun, “Well, we know we’re in the right place. Let's see if we can find one that we can control.”

  The neighborhood was full of brownstones, alleys, and backyard gardens, it was a veritable cornucopia of hiding places for zombies. With the possibility of death at every corner hanging over them, they moved carefully from block to block. Alexi led the way, with Connor and Savanna behind her, and Sing following up the rear.

  “It’s barely dinner time, where is everyone?” asked Sing. The city was never quiet. Cars, trains, the bustle of life, could all be heard in the distance. But no on ventured onto the streets anywhere they could see.

  “Magic,” Savanna said quietly. “A powerful compulsion to stay away. Like an itch on the back of your neck or that sudden desire to run on an empty street… magic.”

  They walked in silence for a moment.

  “Well great, now that’s all I can think about,” Sing muttered.

  “Got one,” Alexi said. The unmistakable sound of tearing flesh and crunching bone filled her sensitive ears, followed quickly by the intoxicating smell of fresh blood.

  Her nostrils flared and she had to bite her lip to keep her fangs from growing. The kill was new and the blood could still feed her…

  She shook her head and dropped into a crouch to peer around the corner. The monster huddled over a twitching body of a man in a suit. Blood pooled around him, far too much for him to still be alive.

  “Sonofabitch…,” Connor said under his breath.

  Alexi’s anger flashed and she wanted nothing more than to blow the thing back to hell. But they needed to capture it. She signaled for Connor to move to the other side, and for Sing to watch their backs.

  You know we have this nifty telepathy…Sing thought. She could sense the sarcasm in his thoughts.

  Yeah yeah, old habits and everything.

  With the zombie preoccupied and everyone in position, Alexi moved forward. She held her shotgun at her side and down. The fat one they fought before came apart in her hands. It would be hard to capture any of them if they were all so rotten that they disintegrated every time she got her fingers on them. This one looked fresh enough that she hoped their plan would work.

  Inch by inch she moved closer. Her movements were cloaked in a silence only a vampire could achieve. She sensed Connor not far behind her. When she made her move, he would make his.

  Another few feet…

  The thing paused in it’s eating. Bits of intestine hung out of its mouth like macabre spaghetti. Alexi froze. She was too far away to get to it safely. A few more feet and she would be close enough. It buried its face back in its victim. The sound of its feasting sent little shivers down her spine.

  Put it out of your head girl. You can’t help him.

  One last step put her within ten feet of it. Shotgun in one hand, she shook out her other, trying to settle her nerves. So far she fought two of these, and both were immensely strong. Perhaps even stronger than herself.

  On 3…2…1… She charged. The second her foot hit the ground on her first step, it looked up. Its eyes still the color they were in life
, but with a pasty white fog about them. It gurgled as it braced itself. Alexi slammed into it, knocking them both to the ground. The creature struggled with her as she forced it down to the ground. A meaty hand smacked her face. Alexi shook her head to shrug off the blow. Her hands found one of its arms and she dove on it, trusting Connor to back her up.

  It roared as its other arm was pinned under Connors weight. The thing struggled and surged with strength, nearly lifting Alexi off the ground with one arm. Alexi twisted around, locking his arm between both of hers and slamming her leg down over his chest to pin him. Sing dove in and scooped up both of its feet, locking them with his legs as well.

  “Savanna, hurry,” Alexi shouted. The thing was barely under control. It raged against them. Connor bucked as it tried to lift him with one arm.

  “Holy shit this thing is strong,” he said.

  Alexi couldn’t look away from it as Savanna began chanting. Her skull ached as she felt the magic build behind her. Because it wasn’t directed at her, it didn’t burn or pound, but the dull roar was always there whenever magic was used.

  Purple light spread out from behind her. Alexi focused hard on the beast not wanting to lose her grip for even a second. The light settled on the creature as Savanna’s chanting grew in volume. The power behind her words was undeniable as the dawn.

  “Freeze,” she finally said in English. The thing immediately stopped struggling.

  “Amazing,” Sing whispered, “Absolutely amazing.”

  The trio rose from the ground, wiping their hands off and shaking away the bits of goo from the thing. Only then did Alexi see Savanna. The girl cut her hand wide open. Hunger rumbled in Alexi, even though she fed recently, the smell of fresh blood from the zombie’s kill, along with the gaping wound in Savanna was enough to make her lick her lips and her fangs grow involuntary.

  Savanna noticed too.

  “I have enough to hold the spell for about an hour. Can you stop the bleeding,” she held her hand out to Alexi.

  “Wait, what,” Connor asked in a stunned voice.

  Alexi nodded, she took Savanna’s hand in her and held the girls palm up to her lips. Savanna’s blood delighted her senses as much as any baked good would have in life. Without thinking about it, Alexi let her tongue slip out to dip in the pool of blood that was in her palm. A shiver of went down her spine.

  Focus.

  Alexi sighed, ran her tongue along the wound to close it, and to pick up as much blood as she could.

  Embarrassed at her momentary lack of control and with the sudden attention on her, Alexi thrust Savanna’s hand away and walked a few feet with her back to the trio.

  “How did you do that?” Sing asked her.

  “What?” asked Alexi.

  “Heal her wound.”

  “I thought…well if I run my tongue along a wound, and if it’s small enough, the flesh knits together as if it were never there. I thought it was a thing we could do to conceal our feeding?”

  Alexi tried to force the blush down she was feeling but there was no beating it. Talking about feeding, especially on her friend, felt personal. It was bad enough she did it in front of people, now she had to discuss it. In her head, she couldn’t help but imagine the horror the two agents had to be disguising from their face.

  Connor moved to Savanna’s side, holding her hand out to marvel at the closed wound.

  “You don’t understand Alexi,” Sing said. “Vampires can’t do that. Haven’t you ever wondered why their long term victims are covered in scars?” he said.

  She shook her head. Sing went on, “They can’t keep feeding on the same people because their bites create scar tissue on the vein. Eventually, they either have to enthrall them, turn them, or kill them. Once all the easily accessible veins are covered in scar tissue the victims become malnourished and die. I know we speculated that you were a ‘new’ kind of vampire…,” Sing looked her dead in the eye, “but I’m starting to wonder if you’re a vampire at all.”

  SEVEN

  “Stand,” Savanna commanded the thing. It lurched to its feet. Connor took a step back from it. He held the shotgun pointed at the things head. The barrel of his rifle didn’t waver an inch.

  “Now what,” asked Sing.

  Alexi took a second to examine the zombie. It still felt weird to call them that, even in her head. It wasn’t like the world wasn’t strange already. Vampires, werewolves, witches, and demons… what difference did zombies add? Still, it seemed different to her. Vampires were selective of who they turned, and as far as she knew, witches were born. Werewolves…well she didn’t know. But zombies…the things acted like a wild animal, more than an intelligent being.

  “Shit,” Sing jumped to one side. The half eaten woman on the ground stirred. Her hands twitched as she tried to push herself up. With most of her abdomen gone she had no muscles left to sit or stand. Alexi racked the slide of her shotgun, pointed the barrel at the womens head, and squeezed the trigger. The boom deafened her for a moment. The womans head vanished in a splatter of blood and bone, then it was gone.

  “Savanna,” Alexi said with fear in her voice. Not an overt terror, but a creeping fear of what may be to come.

  “I saw,” her friend replied, “lets get moving.” The zombie she controlled lurched forward and past her. It walked with a side to side gate from one of its knees refusing to bend.

  “Saw what,” Connor asked her after they fell in behind the zombie. Sing stood next to Savanna as they walked, Alexi and Connor hung back to cover the rear.

  “How do vampires convert humans,” Alexi asked. It had been something she thought often about, she certainly didn’t want to accidentally convert anyone. For the most part the two people she fed from were immune to vampirism.

  “It’s elaborate. First you have to turn them into a thrall. After so many days of drinking their blood, and letting them drink yours, you can do a ritual. Why? You didn’t,” his voice trailed off nervously.

  “Me? No, I barely know how to make someone a thrall. I don’t think I could do it randomly. It’s…intimate.”

  “Then why ask. Are you planning on enthralling someone?”

  “I did, twice. Once with Victor, and the other time with Savanna.”

  She felt Connor stiffen beside her. The idea of a ‘good girl’ vampire was still knew to him. To his credit he didn’t immediately shoot her.

  “Don’t be so alarmed, Connor, it didn’t take. Her witches blood prevents any kind of alteration like that. At least that’s what she told me. I did it to save her life, and it worked, but after that our connection faded. With Victor I could feed from him without drinking his blood. Not the case with Savanna.”

  They walked together in silence for a few moments. Their instincts worked on par with each other. Alexi covered the left, while Connor the right.

  “I didn’t know that about witches. The Arcanum has these libraries, with thousands of years of text. It’s impossible to get all the information ever. Our research department tends to be very stingy with what it hands out. But, if you work long enough, these things become knowledge.”

  “Well, it’s not like you can just wikipedia ‘witches’, without getting a million books and TV shows. I don’t think anyone has all the knowledge. My point is though, I can’t accidentally make someone a vampire, correct?”

  “Affirmative, there’s a ritualistic component.”

  “Then we have a big problem,” she whispered, as if saying it loudly would make it worse.

  “What?”

  “That thing turned the girl into a zombie in less than five minutes. What happens if they get out there to the public? What happens if they go on a mindless rampage?”

  Connor’s face went white as a sheet.

  “Your talking about the end of the world.”

  “Yeah, zombie apocalypse pretty much sums it up.”

  ***

  “Well, who wants to go into the dark and scary hole first?” asked Sing. He didn’t expect an answer. Four years
as infantry, another four as a Ranger, and eight as Special Forces, and he didn’t want to go down in the hole. The zombie already dropped down ahead of them. At the bottom, it picked itself up off the ground and waited patiently.

  The drop was at least thirty feet. Rusted rungs embedded into the old stone of the sewer led the way down. The vampire brushed her way past, took one look, and hopped in. She dropped like a stone, flexing her knees when she hit the bottom as if she stepped out of a tall truck. Sing’s knees hurt watching her.

  “I'll go next, Sing you bring up the rear,” his partner said. It was a good plan. Someone needed to protect the asset, and tonight, it was him.

  Sing put his back to the girl, woman, he reminded himself. It was just, and he knew his partner had a thing for her, but she looked like she was sixteen, not nineteen.

  There was a lot they didn’t understand about witches, about everything. Personally, he didn’t understand how Alexi and Savanna came to be on their side. It was like fate played a cruel joke on the girls. They were good people trapped in the bodies of unspeakable evil. In a thousand years of existence, the Arcanum hadn’t recorded any instances of a vampire, or a witch, who weren’t seriously evil. There were plenty of people who called themselves witches and even some who could do a little magic. But, witches like Savanna? Evil, pure and simple.

  Then there was Alexi, who broke a hundred rules of being a vampire. Which begged the question, was she really a vampire? Sing had his doubts about her, but she didn’t exactly confide in him or Connor about her life.

  “Okay, you’re next Savanna,” Connor said after stepping off the last rung.

  Sing shouldered his shotgun uneasily. He took his hand off the pistol grip to wipe it on his pants.

  “Connor, down,” Alexi’s shouted from below. The roar of her shotgun punctuated her statement.

  Arms lunged at Sing from the shadows. A man, nearly twice his size, came out from under a pile of garbage. Sing swung the barrel around. The zombie batted it aside.