Sacrifice (Dylan Hart Odyssey of the Occult) (22 page)

I crawled on hands and knees, frantically trying to reach my
friend. My knees dragged through my own blood and vomit, soaking the knees of
my pants. The goo on my belly flaked away as I moved.

Only feet from her, my limbs felt as if they were moving
through drying cement. Each step harder than the last. “Come on,” I said under
my breath. Encouraging myself to keep going. I swallowed back more puke and
pushed my hands to move just once more. The tingling in my hands and feet had
made its way up my limbs and to my core. “Tatum,” I whispered with my last
breath.

My lungs still filled with air, but I wasn’t breathing. Not
really. Just as my heart still beat in my chest but it wasn’t my blood it
pumped through my veins. The bit of Azelie’s soul trapped in my gut had finally
clawed its way to the surface.

My legs shifted and lifted my body from the ground without
objection. I stood in front of Tatum. I could see her with my eyes. I could
smell the fire and blood with my nose. I could even feel the heat on my skin,
but I could do nothing about it.

I was trapped in my own body. Seeing from within like a
guest in my own head. Something –
someone
-
else had control. My lips parted and my tongue began to flick out words I
didn’t recognize.

Alien guy manhandled Tatum. Adjusting her body so her head
hung back, exposing her heaving chest. He smiled a sickening grin and ran his
hand over her exposed cleavage.

I kicked and screamed inside my own body. I cursed him and
threatened his unborn children. None of it mattered. I was stuck. I was no
more. Just my shell and Azelie d’Entremonte at the wheel.

Leaving Tatum dangling from her posts in a love struck haze,
Zorin
came to me, touched my face sweetly, and kissed
my ever moving lips. He gripped my arms and trailed down to my hands. Only
seeing what I was allowed to see in my field of vision, I couldn’t eye Azelie.
For all I knew, she was sneaking up behind me with a huge knife ready to slit
my throat.

Zorin
laid his kiss on me. Leaving my lips numb, my chanting
never wavered. Moving back to Tatum, he shoved the groping alien guy away with
disgust. At least the bad guy had manners. Marienne giggled at the two of them
from out of view. “Your penance,” she said, sounding like Azelie in her words.
Zorin
held Tatum by her hair, stretching her long neck. “My
profit.” It was the first time I’d heard the P word. I knew money was a
motivator; it always was.

My hand lifted from my side and a long machete was clutched
in it. My eyes widened, at least the eyes trapped inside my own head did. I
fought my own hand, willed my arm to drop. Begged it to leave that deadly
weapon planted firmly in the gut of Azelie d’Entremonte. No matter how I tried,
no matter what will I pushed through my body, nothing worked. Nothing changed
what was happening.

The force, whatever it was that was controlling me, raised
my arm high into the air, tongue still speaking words that meant nothing to me.
Against my inward pleading, the hand I no longer hand control of yanked her
bodice down, revealing her breast, still riddled with the nibbles of her
vampire lover. Her dreamy eyes slid open and her once lifeless body writhed
becoming aware of the situation it was in. Whatever spell
Zorin
had her under, he’d released her just in time to witness my actions.

Under protest, my lips moved quickly spitting out some kind
of fuckery. Machete in hand, Tatum stared into my eyes. I stared back and
begged God to stop what was about to happen. I pleaded, screamed to Him for
help. To save her before the monster that had infiltrated my body took her
precious life. As far as my feeble little human mind could comprehend, nothing
less than God Himself could stop this.

“Dylan! No!” the voice of my best friend pleaded with me to
stop.

My lips forcibly twisted into a sick grin. Without warning,
down came the machete, my hand still attached. Azelie continued to force my
smile, a sick and sinister sort of smile, but subconsciously, my throat
quivered with disgust. The blade cut deep into the lovely throat of Tatum
Price. Blood poured from the fissure over her naked breasts, and onto the dirt
below her. I screamed, cried, kicked, and begged, but nothing surfaced. Every
emotion, every need, everything I was, was trapped inside my skin suit; someone
else ran the controls. Someone so evil, the devil himself hid from her in the
dark.

Tatum’s body slumped, her arms hanging above her head. Blood
gushed from her wound. Glugging out like a gallon of milk dropped on the floor.
Zorin
pushed her head over her chest and shoved
something under the stream of sticky red stuff. It caught the fluid to contain
it for later use. Sickeningly similar to the buckets of blood I’d dumped back
in May.

Machete still clenched in my fist, I watch with helpless
eyes as my best friend, my sister, bled out from a wound I’d inflicted. Inside,
I screamed. I cried out her name. I called to God and begged him to bring her
back. God wasn’t here. Nothing good and pure could exist in a place filled with
such malevolence.

I fought to escape my trap, to save my dying friend and the
men still, by the grace of God, alive in the shed.

“A perfect blonde beauty,” Marienne boasted.

She practically floated along the dirt in her long dress.
Her elegant fingers tapped along the back of Tatum’s head as she moved around
the front of her, blocking my view. I stood there like a statue. Like Cyrus at
the foot of the stairs. I’d bet my eyes were a putrid shade of zombie white too.
Nothing would wake me from my trap until Azelie chose it to be so.

“Nearly makes amends for my gallons lost. Thanks to some
tubby little cunt.” I could only assume she was talking about me and my death
roll into what I now knew as her five-gallon buckets of blood. She fingered and
fiddled around Tatum’s head, but her back blocked my view from the happenings
at the body.

Oh God, the body.

You evil bitch,
I screamed in silence.
I’ll
fucking rip your pretty little French head from your shoulders,
I promised.
Even if my tubby cunt ghost had to come back from the grave to do it, I’d kill
that vampire snatch. My mouth still mumbled words that weren’t really words.
Not to me anyway. To me, they were nothing but gibberish. To Azelie and
Zorin
d’Entremonte, they were the only thing keeping me
from killing them. Or die trying.

Taking my soul from my body and replacing it with bits of
her own, was punishment enough, leaving me like that for life would have been
hell, but an expected form of payment for my misgivings. Worse than death
itself. Forcing my hand to kill my best friend was so much more than
punishment; it was pure unadulterated evil.
 

My heart thumped in my chest. Harder and harder. She spoke
through my lips continuing to spew magic bullshit no different than before, but
my body was doing something new. My fury was filling my core with hate. Hate
that was far stronger than any voodoo
turdling
Azelie
had to plop on me. I focused on that rage. Stroked it, petted it, and called it
pretty.

“Death be damned,” Marienne said nonchalantly. She turned to
face me, casually rubbing her hands across her face. Like it was cold cream,
she applied Tatum’s blood to her aging skin. Droplets dripped to the high
collar lace over her bust. White lace and blood was a mind altering visual.

“You’re looking a little worse for wear, darling.” She
floated the few steps toward me. Unable to protest physically, I watched as she
smeared Tatum’s blood across my forehead and over my mouth. The tangy copper
flavor seeped onto my tongue as I jabbered on. “There we are. You’ll be good as
new in no time. Let that sweet life seep into your skin.”

Hate boiled up my throat and stung my tonsils. I couldn’t
swallow it back and it flowed up and out my lips in the form of vomit. My lips
never stopped their cadence.

Covered in Tatum blood, voodoo goo, and vomit, while
watching my friend die tied like an animal to a stake, if rage didn’t take
over, sadness would, and I’d never come back from sadness that deep.

You’re all going to
die,
I thought. My hand squeezed the handle
of the machete. Shock tingled my limbs.
I’d
done that. I didn’t know how, but I did it. I concentrated my fury down to one
muscle – the strongest muscle in the human body. If I could force my tongue to
stop fidgeting, even for a second, I could run that fucking blade through
Marienne’s gut.

Tatum was totally limp, dangling lifelessly from her
bindings. Her white bodice soaked through with blood. If I’d had control, I’d
be sobbing while I killed every motherfucker in a ten-mile radius.

“So pretty.” Marienne gazed into my eyes and smiled, proud
like a mother would. “Beauty fades and death is not too far behind. Youth and
perfection come at a price.” Tatum’s blood was drying on her face, but I could
see through the mask. The lines that edged her eyes had faded. Nearly
disappeared completely. “A price not too steep for those willing to pay it.”
She dabbed her index finger on the tip of my nose and giggled. “Now, where’s
that delicious detective?” She glanced around, looking for him in the darkness
around us, and left me standing there, helpless and covered in blood, to find
Mike.

I was wrong, not everything was because of Azelie; it was
because of Marienne. Her motive, having nothing to do with money apparently,
was not my concern. Her demise was all I had in mind.

Stuck in my place in front of the gory mess I’d made, still
rambling on with my new found magical soul in charge, I focused all my
attention at the only thing my eyes could see.
Zorin
stood over Tatum, his back to the darkened woods. He watched me, his perfect
blue eyes piercing through mine and into the soul wreaking havoc inside me.
Something stirred behind him. Silent and unseen to anyone but me. I forced my
consciousness, the only thing I had going for me, to concentrate on that motion
in the dark beyond the death and trees in the forefront. A glint of something
otherwise unseen appeared over his head a second before blood shot over the top
of Tatum’s dead body and splattered across my face. His large form crumbled and
fell to the dirt with a thump.

“Hello, Donnie.” Dominika smiled at me, flashing a set of
fancy fangs I’d never noticed before. She used her foot on his body as leverage
to heave a massive battle axe from his skull. It came out with a slurp and she
slung it over her shoulder.

I never thought I’d be happy to see that woman in my life.

My heart sped with my newly found heaving chest. I breathed
on my own. My lips still moved but the magic that kept me trapped was fading. I
sensed a disturbance in the force.

Dominika whistled with two fingers in her mouth. The crack
and creek of the shed door let me know the men were alive and well, and coming
to my aid. With
Zorin
dead, nothing was keeping them
on the floor. It was like she was calling a couple of dogs. Where she’d come
from would have to be discovered later; we had assholes to kill.

My hand twitched and came up as if to wield the machete it
still clenched, but I wasn’t doing it. Azelie still had control of my gross
motor. Fuck.

“Dominika,” Marienne said surprised. “Thank the gods you’re
here. You’ve come to my aid! An excellent Chancellor you are.” Marienne spread
her arms wide to embrace the Hungarian badass with the axe.

“Fuck you,” she said and swung her battle axe in a full
circle over her head and into Marienne’s gut.

If what I’d learned about these vampire people was true, it
wouldn’t kill her and Dominika knew that. Maim and torture. I liked it.

The skinny alien guy leapt into action. Literally, he jumped
on
Dominika’s
back and clung there like a lanky
monkey. She shook her body but he didn’t budge. Naked Cyrus ran out, his bare
ass a golden hue in the firelight. A fleeting glimpse as they all tumbled to
the ground and out of sight. I felt like the fucking Tin Man. Oil can. Oil can.

Mike came trampling along, still cuffed, hands useless in a
fight. He met my eyes, his twinkling in the flickering light behind me. My lips
still moved and dripped blood and vomit.

“Dylan, wake up,” he begged. It was useless, but I couldn’t
tell him that.

My hand was stuck in the air brandishing the machete. If he
wasn’t careful, his head might meet Mr. Blade in a very unharmonious union.
Oil can
, I thought.
Oil can, motherfucker.

His brows scrunched as if he was trying to figure out what I
was thinking. He didn’t say a word; he just left me. Shuffling and scuffling,
grunting and groaning, and I couldn’t see a fucking thing other than Tatum and
Zorin
dead and bleeding in the dirt.
This must be hell
. A lifetime of staring at your loved one dead.
Decaying. What if she left us here for me to watch her die and turn to bones?
There were a lot of stages between now and bones, and not one of them pretty no
matter who the body belonged to.

My lungs filled with air and I gasped. Eyes widened and legs
buckled as my soul was returned to its rightful owner.
I’m back, bitches.