Sacrifice (Dylan Hart Odyssey of the Occult) (21 page)

I didn’t fight her. Hell, it didn’t even cross my mind. I’d
let my heart make a decision before my head could tell that stupid heart to
fuck right off. I knew that, really, deep down inside. I knew I was completely
and totally fucked. It made no difference. It was too late. She had me. I’d
given in. She had won me over and all it took was my dead daddy. Everyone had
something, that one thing they would lay down and give their world over for,
and mine was my father, better than a boyfriend or something equally
meaningless and facetious.

She kissed me, nothing like her colleague, but not any less charmed.
Her soft lips pressed against mine, not hard or yearning like Mike or Cyrus,
but poised and meticulous. I didn’t kiss her back, though her precision called
for it. A handful of heartbeats passed, and she was finished. Her lips left
mine swollen and faintly longing. The moment my eyes met hers, my feelings of
hope and rapture were lost. Euphoria became pain that shot through my limbs,
resembling electric shock. My gut ached as my lungs struggled to take in air.
Convulsions began in my legs and moved up and out, until waves began rattling
my head back and forth.

She’d kill me before I got to see my dad. Maybe that was how
I’d see him, on the other side. A deal I wanted, and a deal I was getting. My
penance, she’d promised, my penance was all she wanted. Repayment for blood I’d
spilt, literally. Promises of resurrected fathers were a farce created in my
own head. Her motive hadn’t budged. What was a little lie to coax her victim
into handing over their soul?

She released me and I fell to the dirt. The drumming stopped
in unison.

“
Zorin
,” she called and the
drummer came to her side. Her small pale hand touched his face and looked at
him longingly. “Brother, would you please.” She handed him a leather pouch.

I coughed and sputtered, trying to find my life again. She’d
been inside me, in my soul. She’d taken a piece of me with her when she left,
but it was the bit of her she’d left behind that churned and clawed under my
skin.

“You bitch,” I coughed and spat; blood hit the dirt. The
claws were all too real. Gutting me from the inside out. I stumbled to my feet.
“I’ll fucking kill you,” I said breathlessly. The fighter in me scrambling to
maintain control. “My dad,” was all I could mutter out.

She chuckled and waved her hand in my direction as if to
shoo me away as she walked around the far side of the fire.
Zorin
,
kin to my enemy, came to me. “Fuck you too.” I was losing steam. My legs
trembled under my weight as I tried to get to my feet.

He dug in an unseen pocket and retrieved a small doll made
of many things. Fabric, thread, blood, bits, pieces, it was all there. It
looked surprisingly like me. Complete with matted black hair atop its fabric
head. He smiled and kissed the creepy little thing. My heart sputtered. He
looked into my eyes and blew a soft breath against the doll. My lungs filled
with air. I looked at the doll again; the hair was mine. Kinky and frizzy and
black. I reached up to my own hair with unsteady hands and felt my head. My
matted hair. The hair that voodoo cunt had snatched from my head during our
second encounter. In the back, near the nape, a prickly patch of broken hairs
tingled my pins and needles fingers. My body was beginning to feel tingly and
numb, like it was going to sleep.

Holding the leather pouch in one hand, he tossed the doll
toward the fire. Instinctively, I lurched for it, jumping to my feet without a
second thought. Quite obviously there was a chance I’d burst into flames if the
damn thing hit the fire. I missed it and it fell to the dirt. Nothing happened,
but it didn’t matter. I believed. That was all they needed.

On my feet, pain cut through my body. I closed my eyes and
prayed it would go away. I begged God or Satan, or whatever the fuck was
listening to make the pain stop. I wanted nothing more than to see my dad, to
hug him, to breathe him in; and Azelie wanted nothing more than to make me
suffer, and she was surely getting what she wanted. It became more apparent
every second I gritted through pain, that she would never produce my father. I
would never get what I wanted. The only thing to do now was take the bitch down
with me.

 
Zorin
took me by the arm. “Down,” he commanded.

I refused. I still had a tiny bit of my own will. For now.
“You’ll have to do better than that.” Blood filled my mouth from my gut and soaked
my teeth and lips. The man and his sister were attempting to rip my soul out
through my mouth and I was still looking at him like he was for dinner. I was
losing the fight and my little trinket wasn’t enough to save me this time.

The fire sat dead center, with Azelie on the other side of
it. The sexiest, most dangerous man I’d met in my life, whatever I had left of
one, wrenched my wrist behind my back until I complied and dropped to my knees
on the ground. Holding my hair in one hand, just the way I liked it,
Zorin
pulled my head backward, tilting my face toward the
starless sky. Long dark fingers smeared a sweet smelling paste across my
forehead and dotted down my nose. I fought against his hold, but my muscles
refused to work. My limbs flopped pathetically around my sides and through the
dirt. With gumption, the man released my hair and shoved me toward the flames.
My face hit the dirt first. Sand coated my lips and stuck to the blood and
tears on my face.

The blood in my mouth, the stench wafting around my head
emanating from the wreath of decay on my head, one more disgusting straw and
this camel would blow chunks all over the d’Entremonte tribe. “They’ll find
you,” I coughed out. “They’ll come for me.” I didn’t really know who would
come, but someone had to. My mom would send someone when I didn’t come home.
They’d come to find Tatum. And Cyrus. Malcolm would come, if he were still with
the living. He’d send Dominika and bring all his henchmen with her. They’d
come.

“Who’s that?”
Zorin
asked, his
Cajun accent not nearly as thick as his sister’s.

“My friends,” I promised, empty yet full of false hope.

“Your friends?” Azelie laughed, a heavy belly sort of laugh.
“Oh, my
darlin
’, you have no friends.”

I sniffed snot back into my nose as I tried to get up from
the dirt again. My bare stomach stung and burned from the paste or the dirt, I
didn’t know which, but it didn’t hurt as much as that bitch digging around in
my gut fucking hurt. I wanted to die, wanted it to end, but I’d never let that
bitch be the one to take me out.

“Yes, I do, and they’re bigger and
badder
than you!” I yelled, using all the energy I had saved up. “They’ll come for
us,” I whispered.

My gut wrenched when I finally sat up on my butt. Azelie sat
on a stump, flames flickering between us. A full mask with long black reaching
horns had replaced her skull headdress. Her arms lay slack on her thighs.
Spread near her feet, her tools of the trade lay in wait. A small bowl filled
with rusty nails, jars and corked beakers, herbs and gore, all waiting for her
to put them to work.

Rustling from the trees took my attention. From the dark,
something white flashed.

No more dead things, please. Inside, I sobbed. Outwardly, I
spat blood in the dirt and snarled at whatever was about to come for me. I
moved my legs under my butt and prepared myself for one last fight. I had
nothing left to give but my life, and nothing to lose but my pride.
Which do you think I’d give away first?

Motion and white again. Light from the fire hardly picked up
the change in color. Red and white. Red. White. I blinked my eyes tightly.
Golden light flicked across the landscape only in the foreground. All else was
dark.

Through the trees nearest me it came. Red. White. Red.
White. Tumbling. Flaming red and ghostly white. I couldn’t even muster a scream
when it rolled into view. Red hair spilled around my knees when the head of
Malcolm McTavish hit them like they were bowling pins at the end of the lane.

On a different sort of day, I’d be thanking them for ridding
my life of such an awful human being. Or whatever the fuck he was, but not now.
He was my saving grace, him and his vampire brigade. They’d come looking for
him. Someone would come. They had to.

“What, no strike?” Marienne and her perfect white lace
emerged from the woods.

“Gutter ball, bitch,” I said, sputtering blood.

“Does nothing wane your will?” Her French accent far more
beautiful than Azelie’s.

“Nothing on this Earth.” My dad popped in my head and I shook
it away. Hopes of seeing him were gone. I was a fool, a grief-stricken idiot.

The hem of her lacey white skirt dragged through the dirt,
mucking up the color to a grey. She bent at the waist to meet my eyes. Her brow
cocked she said, “We shall see.” She stood and turned from me. “How’s my
detective?”

I pursed my lips and bit my tongue. She was trying to push
my buttons. Pride. It would be mine even in death.

Another rustling from the woods.
Zorin
stood over me, ensuring I didn’t somehow break the mystical hold he and his
bitch sister had over me. The hold that grew stronger by the minute. If I
needed a guard, it meant they weren’t certain I was theirs. A glimmer of hope
flittered through my bones and flipped off the bit of Azelie’s soul that partied
in my gut.

I scooted away from him an inch or two while he watched the
movement in the woods. Rocks surrounded the fire pit, containing the blaze. I
tried to move close enough to one. Just one piping hot rock would be enough.
It’d burn the hell out of my hand and I’d likely not get away at all, but it
was all I had.

Eyeing the rocks, I tried to make my movements
inconspicuous. That bitch was still in me, her evil soul wreaking havoc. I
looked up as
Zorin
continued eyeing the woods.
Whatever was coming couldn’t be half as nasty as my future if I stayed there
and let them take me completely.

The rustling grew louder. Whatever was coming would appear
any second. That was my moment. Figures appeared through the trees. It was
time. I reached out and touched the rock closest to me. It was hot, so fucking
hot I could hardly touch it. Azelie’s soul gnawed at my insides. I reached out
again and grabbed the hot thing.

“Dylan?” a sobbing familiar voice called to me. So
desperate. So sad.

“Tatum.” I dropped the rock and with it my heart.

The only thing still on this earth, aside from my mother,
who could thwart my prideful plan. She wore the dress I’d seen her in last. It
was tattered and most of the buttons were missing down the front. She hadn’t
been back to House of Porte. If she had, she’d been there in that. I closed my
eyes and recalled the basement and the rusty red stained drain in the cement
floor.

“No,” my chin quivered.

“Dylan, why are you here?”

“You,” I whispered.

“Stupid bitch.” Her lips moved but no words came out. Her
blonde hair was matted with dried blood. Hers? I didn’t know, maybe Malcolm’s.

I nodded. I agreed. It was stupid. All of it. Every last
fucked-up second of it. And it was all my fault.

“Let her go. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let her go.”
She was a bitch. I was so mad at her. But she was the closest thing to a sister
I had and there was no going back on family. I had let go of my soul to bring
my father back from the dead. I’d lay down my life to preserve the family I had
left on this earth.

“I knew you’d see it my way,” Marienne hissed.

I snarled at her. She’d die. Whether I did it or someone
else, that bitch would die. She smiled at me and her eyes wrinkled around the
edges. She was older than Malcolm, Cyrus and Dominika, and was showing it.

The pain in my gut seared with a burning ache that settled
in my loins. I spat again, more blood. I fell to my hands. My hair singed, that
close to the flames, and wafted a stench to my nostrils that turned my gut on
its ass. Blood and burning hair was too much to stomach. I wrenched in the dirt
and heaved bile from my lips. Burning hair was the disgusting last straw. My
already aching stomach screamed from within from the pain.

“No! Stop!” Tatum protested.

I looked to find her kicking and fighting Marienne’s alien
minion and
Zorin
. They dragged her toward two posts
jutting from the ground. She fought hard, just as I was sure she’d done for
days. I was exhausted. My body only running on adrenaline and pride, and I knew
she was no different.

Zorin
released her arm. She swung at him, but he ducked away. He
lowered his muscular upper half to meet her eyes. His large hands held either
side of her makeup smudged face. As he did me, he wooed her into submission.
Fifty shades of fucked.

Her limbs went slack and she succumbed. Twiggy alien guy
held her tightly as Dreadlocks wasted no time ripping her already torn dress
from her body. White bodice and matching panties lay undisturbed beneath all
that black pinstripe fabric. Only Tatum could be tied up and tortured for days
on end in a corset, and still have breath left to fight.

Partially naked, they tied each of her arms to either post.
Zorin
laid a kiss on her forehead before he left her there
alone, and love struck. Arms above her head, Tatum’s long legs dragged through
the dirt as she dangled by her wrists from the posts on either side of her limp
body.