Sacrifice Me, Season two

by Sarra Cannon

  “The demon who killed the Devil should not be allowed to fill his seat,” Barker shouted. “This is outrageous.”

  Abagore stood and raised his hand to quiet the room.

  “I agree with your argument, Brother. However, we are bound to the rules of the Enchiridion, and according to the rules, a Council member is permitted to nominate any vampire who is a member of our Brotherhood,” Abagore said, sneering as he looked at Silas. “Since we are now presented with two candidates, the Council would like to express our hope that the vampires in this room will make the right choice. If we allow any vampire to simply kill a member of our Council and then take his place on the throne, this will weaken the entire Brotherhood. It simply must not be allowed. I trust that you will all vote for the worthy candidate and not the murderer who kneels before us.”

  Murderer?

  Every vampire in this room was a murderer hundreds of times over. Even me.

  I could barely contain my complete and utter disdain at Abagore’s words, but I kept my expression neutral.

  “The voting will now commence,” Raum said.

  Each vampire filed to the front of the room where they took a ritual dagger to their wrist and placed a single drop of blood into one of two large golden bowls. There were far too many passing by for me to keep count of how many votes Dagon and I had each received.

  I was forced to remain at a kneel as each vampire placed his vote, and those two hours were torture.

  Had we reached enough? Would those who swore to fight at our side tonight vote in our favor? Or would they turn their back on their promises?

  When all was said and done, I would either rule or die.

  But when the voting was over, Gideon’s announcement brought the room to its knees.

  He shook his head with disgust and looked out over the Grand Hall.

  “The decision will not be made tonight, I’m afraid,” he said. “The vote is an exact tie.”

  I let out a breath of relief as the room around me erupted in conversation and protests. A tie was not as good as winning outright, but at least it wasn’t death. Not yet.

  Dagon and I looked at each other, and he didn’t even try to hide his shock. He’d been looking forward to watching me die.

  Abagore slammed his scepter down on the stone floor once again, bringing the room to at least some level of order amongst the chaos.

  “What do we do now?” someone shouted. “We can’t just let them go. They deserve death for what they have done.”

  Abagore once again called the room to order, and the vampires in the room finally took their seats. He exchanged words with Gideon and Raum for a moment, and they seemed to be arguing.

  Obviously, like Dagon, they had expected an easy victory.

  Finally, they parted and looked to Silas, who smiled.

  “What does the Enchiridion say?” Raum asked. “Does it account for a tie?”

  “It does,” Silas said, pulling the small black book from the space beside him on the throne.

  The other three Council members took their seats as Silas rose to his feet. He stood with such confidence, and I realized at that moment that just as the others had been sure of a victory, Silas had been absolutely sure of a tie.

  How, exactly, had he worked that out? Had he been campaigning on my behalf before tonight?

  “In the event of an even vote, the Enchiridion states that the senior ranking member of the Brotherhood of Darkness shall choose a task for the candidates to complete.” He looked to me, and I could see the smile in his eyes. “Something that advances the purposes of the Brotherhood in a substantial way.”

  Just what did he have up his sleeve?

  “The candidates will have exactly one week to complete this task, and though they are pitted against each other, the rules strictly state that neither the candidates nor any other member of the Brotherhood may harm the opposing candidate,” he said. “So, no trying to kill each other.”

  He smiled again, specifically aiming the expression at Dagon, who had no doubt already been planning how best to murder me when this meeting was over.

  “You will both be given an item related to your task that will be imbued with a spell that alerts the Council the moment the task has been completed, and by whom. The first candidate to complete the task wins the throne,” he said.

  “As the senior member of this Council,” Raum said, standing, “I will need time to contemplate which task would be most appropriate for our two candidates.”

  “I’m sorry, Raum, but you are not currently the senior member on this Council,” Silas said.

  Raum stepped back, eyes filling with rage. “I was the first member inducted after the Brotherhood of Darkness was formed,” he said. “I sit as the longest-reigning member of this—”

  “My father, Solomon, was one of those founding members,” Silas said. “He outranked you, and now I am the one sitting in his seat, am I not? My father is still alive, remember. So, as his emissary, I am technically the senior-ranking member of this Council, and I will choose the task.”

  The three other members tightened their fists and leaned their heads together, but there was no arguing to be done. Silas was right, and they themselves had proclaimed him as the current ruler in his father’s seat. They couldn’t take that back now.

  Finally, they parted, their eyes lowered to the floor.

  “I take it you’ve already thought of an appropriate task?” Abagore said, baring his yellowed teeth.

  “In fact, I have,” Silas said, smiling again.

  I shook my head, unable to believe how much planning this must have taken. How much time and thought he must have put into this exact moment.

  Why hadn’t he simply come to me and told me about his plan? That, at least, would have relieved some of the worry on my shoulders. Why keep me in the dark?

  “Let’s hear it, then,” Gideon said.

  Silas looked down at the two vampires kneeling before the platform.

  “Dagon and Rend,” he said, his eyes meeting mine. “Your task, for the advancement of the Brotherhood of Darkness, and in securing your seat on the Council, is to kill the leader of a coven known to us as the crow witches. You are to kill the Mother Crow.”

  Two Steps Ahead

  Franki

  Marco lay Katy’s sleeping body on the bed.

  Her face was peaceful, but the bloody scratches on her arms told me that she had fought hard against the crows who had come to the apartment.

  I closed my eyes against fresh tears.

  She must have been terrified when they broke in to attack her. Was it just one witch who had hurt her? Or had several of my so-called sisters gone to make sure my best friend was cursed?

  If they thought I would simply come to them when they called and join them in whatever dark magic they wanted to perform, they had another thing coming. I refused to be called their sister and carry out such horrible acts in the name of the Mother Crow.

  No, I would seek her out and put a dagger in her heart, if I could.

  The possibilities were already racing through my mind as Marco set the black stone the crows had left on the table beside the bed Rend and I shared.

  The note had said that soon, the stone would be activated, and that when the portal to the crows opened, I was to go through willingly to join them. If I didn’t, Katy would die.

  But how did I know they wouldn’t let her die, anyway?

  I couldn’t exactly trust them to honor their word, and I wasn’t going to give up the life I had built here for some empty promise.

  What I could do, instead, was go through the portal and put an end to the Mother Crow. If I searched Rend’s laboratory deep down in the mountain, I could probably find some potions that would help me to defeat her. There were daggers down there laced with poison, too. We had taken some of them to the battles against the Order, so I knew exactly where to find them when the time came.

  But how long would I have until that stone began to glow?

/>   I bit my lip and stared at the black stone.

  If Rend made it through the Council meeting only to come home and find that I was gone, he would never forgive me for putting myself in that kind of danger.

  Surely he couldn’t expect me to just sit here and watch Katy die, either. I needed a plan, and I needed one fast.

  “Franki?”

  I turned to find Azure standing in the doorway.

  “What?” I asked, my voice harsher than I intended for it to be. I just really hoped she hadn’t come in here to lecture me. I didn’t need that right now.

  “Can I come in for a minute?” she asked.

  I sighed and took Katy’s hand as I sat beside her on the bed. “Of course,” I said. “I take it Connery told you what we found at the apartment? She’s been put in some kind of sleeping curse.”

  “I saw Marco carrying her through Venom when you guys came back,” she said, taking a few steps into the room. “I asked him to work the bar for a while so I could come and sit with you. I thought you might need someone to talk to.”

  I shook my head. Katy was the one I usually talked to about the things that were bothering me. Or Rend. And neither one of them were truly here with me now.

  Azure wouldn’t have exactly been my first choice as a replacement, though.

  “I understand how you must be feeling,” she said.

  “You do?” I asked, glancing up at her.

  She nodded and stepped closer, as if she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to be here.

  “I know what it’s like to feel powerless when someone you love is in danger,” she said. “To feel like it’s all your fault that they got dragged into something dangerous.”

  I turned toward her slightly. Was she talking about Rend? Or someone else?

  I realized I didn’t really know all that much about Azure. I knew she’d been one of Rend’s closest friends for a really long time, and that she helped to start Venom, but beyond that, we hadn’t talked about many of the more personal details of our lives.

  She sat down in the mahogany chair near the bed and pulled her legs under her, almost like a child.

  “My sister was killed by a vampire,” she said. “Her name was Celeste, and she was really my half-sister, but we had grown up together. We were very close in age, and for most of my life, she was my best friend.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t know.”

  “We grew up in the land of the Summer Court.”

  “I don’t know what that is,” I said.

  Azure smiled. “It’s one of the fae lands,” she said. “Far from the human world, but close enough if you know how to travel between worlds.”

  My eyes widened. I had wondered how it was possible for Azure to look so young when she’d been around for so long, but I’d never had reason to ask her about it.

  “You’re a fairy?” I asked.

  “I’m exactly one-quarter fae,” she said. “My father was a demon like yours. A vampire. My mother was half-witch, half-fae. When I was just a baby, she took me to the Summer Court to raise me as part of her mother’s family. That’s when she married a fae named Kallan and they had a daughter.”

  “Celeste?”

  She nodded. “We were only a year apart in age, and sometimes it felt more like she was my twin than my half-sister,” she said. “Celeste wanted to stay in the land of the Summer Court forever, but as we grew older, I was the one who became curious about the human world. Maybe it was the darker sides of my father’s soul that made me want something different than the eternal summer of the fae lands.”

  She shrugged, as if trying to shrug off the shame she felt at wanting something different in her life.

  “I wanted to explore my human side. To know something different for a while,” she said. “I told Celeste she didn’t need to come with me. I could take care of myself. But she insisted that wherever I went, she wanted to go with me. She was sure that after a few months in the human world, I’d be ready to return to the Summer Court where I would fall in love and get married, just like our mother had once done.”

  “So, she came with you?”

  “She did,” Azure said. “That was a long time ago, now. More than eighty years ago. Everything was very different back then. Even more dangerous than you can imagine. But I thought I could take care of both of us. I knew how to fight. How to cast all kinds of magic to keep us glamoured or safe if we needed to disappear.”

  My stomach knotted. This wasn’t going to end well. I could feel it in the melancholy tone of her voice.

  I clutched Katy’s hand tighter.

  “For a while, we managed to stay mostly under the radar. Since we weren’t exactly witches, the Order of Shadows didn’t really pay any attention to us,” she said. “But the vampires were something else, entirely.”

  I swallowed hard and kept my eyes on her face as she told her story.

  “I wanted to look for my father,” she said. “I’d never really known him, but just like you, I wanted to understand the darker side of my nature. I knew that vampires were dangerous, but in my mind, I thought how dangerous could they really be? He was my father, after all. He’d loved my mother once, and I assumed that once he met me, he’d love me, too.”

  “Did you find him?” I asked.

  Azure fidgeted in her seat. “I did,” she said. “And he wanted nothing to do with me. He told me to go far away from him. That I’d only get myself killed trying to get to know him better. Of course, I didn’t listen. I kept trying to talk to him, thinking that if he’d just give me a chance, he would want me in his life.”

  She swiped a tear from her cheek.

  “Then one night, when I had followed him to try to get him alone, I accidentally stumbled on a scene of unimaginable horror,” she said. “My father and his group of vampires were taking down a small group of witches in an alley in New York City. At first, I didn’t understand what was happening, and I tried to get them to stop. When my father turned and saw that I was there, he screamed for me to run, but it was too late. The vampires he was with didn’t care that I was his daughter or that Celeste was my sister. All they knew was that our blood smelled powerful.”

  My hand lifted to my open mouth in a gasp.

  “It was stupid,” she said. “He tried to warn me that his kind was not exactly sentimental and loving, but I wanted so badly to know him and to be a part of his life that I wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “They captured Celeste and took her away from me,” she said. “To them, her blood was more powerful and mystical than mine, and they wanted to take her back to their lair so they could drain her over and over again. That’s what they like to do with the more powerful witches, you know? They drain them nearly to the point of death and then leave them there to recover. And once they do, they drain them all over again. A never-ending supply of fresh blood and power.”

  I looked away. I did know that, because I had seen it with my own eyes in the dungeons of the Devil’s castle last year when he took me prisoner. There were other witches down there—even children—who had been tortured in that way.

  We had managed to save the ones who were still alive when the Devil died, including a young girl by the name of Annabelle who had gone to live in Harper’s domed city in the Shadow World.

  “My father managed to save me, but he couldn’t save us both,” she said. “He told me to go back to the Summer Court and stay there for the rest of my life. The human world was too dangerous for someone like me, he said. That was why he’d sent my mother back in the first place. But I couldn’t just leave my sister there.”

  I glanced at Katy. I completely understood what Azure was talking about. Sometimes you have to face incredible danger, no matter how stupid it may seem, to save the people you care about the most.

  “I put a plan together and went to the lair one night after most of the vampires had gone out to hunt,” she said. “I fo
und Celeste chained to a mattress in the basement, her body covered in bite marks. She could barely raise her head, she was so weak.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said softly. “Azure—”

  “I was able to get her out of the chains pretty quickly, but before I could carry her out of there, two of the vampires came home,” she said. “I fought them off as best I could, but they were stronger than I thought they would be. They overpowered me and chained us both to the bed. They each fed from us until dawn, over and over, but it was too much for my sister. She’d already been through so much, and her body couldn’t take it. I watched her die, knowing it was all my fault for ever leaving our home.”

  I wanted to go to her and wrap my arms around her neck. I had no idea Azure had been through so much in her life.

  No wonder she felt so close to Rend. She’d lost a sister, too.

  I couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like for either of them.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “How did you escape?”

  A small smile lifted the corner of her lips. “Can’t you guess?” she asked, meeting my gaze.

  “Rend,” I whispered.

  She nodded. “He found me there, drained and near death,” she said. “I thought he was coming to put an end to me, but instead, he broke the chains around my wrists and carried me out of there, fighting his own thirst the entire time.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the scene. How strong he must have been, even back then, to resist such powerful blood. How angry the other vampires must have been at his betrayal.

  “He brought me back to his lab. Nursed me back to health,” she said. “He saved my life, and for that, I owe him everything.”

  “I’m so sorry about your sister,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  “After what happened, they banished me from the Summer Court forever,” she said. “And I can’t blame them. Celeste was such a pure, beautiful woman. She wanted nothing more in life than to fall in love, have children, and settle down forever with a lifetime of summers. It was my fault she ever left the fae lands to begin with, and I have to live with that shame every day.”