Sacrifice (Dylan Hart Odyssey of the Occult) (5 page)

Her old hand instructed me silently to kneel down to her
level. It seemed like the dumbest thing I could do at the time, but she jutted
out an old, knobby finger and pointed it sharply at the ground. I did as she
asked; all the while praying to God, she didn’t have a sword or something she’d
promptly whack my head off with. Instead, she scooped up a dollop of the
mixture she’d put together and swiped it down my face. It felt like maple syrup
and smelled like a
Porta
-John. Without dropping her
smoke, she mumbled a string of words in Spanish. My one semester in high school
didn’t help me to understand. Unless she really did say the words banana and
peanut tennis shoe, but I doubted it.

Being an against-the-grain type of girl, it took a lot to
drop to my knees and allow a creepy old woman to rub poop on my face, but when
an evil bitch plays around in your head, you’d be surprised what you’re willing
to do to make it stop. Especially when the chance of a second witch lady on
your enemy list was high.

“You’ll leave, now. Drive the day until you get to a place
you’ve been before. You’ll find my boy there. He won’t be alone. Bring him back
to me and I’ll give you what you’re looking for.” Her hand rested on my
forehead.

“What’s all over my face, lady? You generally rub shit on the
faces of people doing you favors?” I asked, instead of shutting the fuck up
like I should do.

She scoffed, “That
shit
on your face is the only thing keeping your devil at bay.”

Umm, what?

“What exactly am I looking at here? Curse wise. Soulless,
living-dead thing? Or just a dead thing?”

“Go get my boy.” Her hand left my head and waved me on like
I was an annoying child at her feet.

“I don’t even know where the fuck I’m going,” I stood and
shouted.

“You’ve been there before. You’ve been with my boy,” she
promised.

“
Gah
! What are you talking about
lady? Cyrus, back me up here. I’m going nuts!”

“Lupe, please don’t toy with her. She won’t take it well.
She’s not the type,” Cyrus spoke like he was bored.

“Your eyes have seen Zephyrinus in a place away from here. A
town in a valley. You saw him and he saw you,” her wrinkled old lips talked
freely while still mashed around the butt of her cigar.

“A town in a valley?” I stopped bitching for a second and
tried to think. No sleep, no food, no way out weighs heavy on brain function.
“Fresno? Are you talking about when I was in Fresno?”

She shrugged and nodded at the same time.

Jesus, why didn’t
she just say that from the get go?

“Who is he? If I saw him, I need to know where so I can find
him again.”

She grabbed my arm with the hand not covered in poop-smear.
Her grip surprised me. The tighter she squeezed, the narrower my vision
appeared. Tighter and narrower until only a pinpoint of light was exposed and
my fingers tingled from lack of blood. Behind my eyes, not really in my vision
at all, a familiar scene began to unfold. A tiny pixie girl, a vampire pixie to
be exact. Tatum standing near me. A campus filled with students lugging books
and chatting on phones. The girl gabbed on in front of me. I was seeing a time
that had passed months ago. A time before I was vampire tainted, a time when I
was just a girl ready to write a book, before vampires and blood and voodoo
curses. My eyes trailed from the tiny blonde girl to a group of students
standing yards away. They stood in a circle. Words in my
vision
were mostly a mumble, but my memory of the fleeting moment
reminded me of the feeling the group of students gave me. How uneasy they made
me. Someone mentioned witchcraft in that conversation, I think. Then suddenly,
as if I was standing on a skateboard careening out of control, I was suddenly
inches away from the face of an olive-skinned boy, standing in the circle of
people. I didn’t remember him honestly, but I tried my damnedest to memorize
each feature on his face. Without warning, my vision returned and I was back in
the magic room. Lupe had taken her hand away, and all eyes were on me.

“What in the holy
fuckle
donkey
was that?” I asked, out of breath.

“Do you really want to know?” she asked with a sinister
sneer.

Without words, I shook my head quickly.

“Now. Go. Move quickly. Your time is fleeting.” The words
she used didn’t match her accent or socio-economic class, but took nothing away
from the urgency they held.

Cyrus pulled me by the arm toward the entrance to the hovel.

“Quickly,
mija
. Your
shit-smear
has a shelf life,” Lupe’s
grandson called from behind us, cackling like a damn hyena as if he too had
been inside my head.

Cyrus pushed open the glass door releasing a jingling bell
noise from above us. The sun hit my skin and forced my eyes into a squint.
Music and noises of people hustling about filled my ears. Trumpets and horns
blared into the air. Kids giggled and yelled for each other in Spanish. My eyes
finally adjusted and took in the sights. The once dead street was now filled
with people. Rose wreaths adorned the heads of women and girls. Painted skulls
and skeletons danced on sticks jutted upward above the crowd. Shit still
smeared down my face, I stopped and gawked at the scene.

Sombrero wearing skeletons jiggled at the ends of sticks
carried by overzealous men. Women twirled their huge, layered skirts as they
danced in the street. Girls, covered in roses, carried bowls of fruit behind
young boys with faces painted like skulls. My nerves were shot. I had no room
in my psyche for such shenanigans.

“What is this?” I muttered to Cyrus as he continued to pull
me toward the car, me stumbling behind him.

“Day of the Dead,” he responded bluntly.

How befitting. A day to celebrate dead things. I thought
perhaps I should reconfigure the black shit on my face to a skull like war
paint and join the crowd. Maybe the evil things at my back wouldn’t recognize
me. Maybe they’d pass right over me in the crowd. I could get lost in a sea of
death. How poetic.

Cyrus shoved my fat ass in the car, shit smeared and all. My
limbs began to feel a bit tingly like they were taking a nap. I could feel the
blood in my head rush elsewhere, quickly leaving it in a fog of knowledge and
fear. I knew my name and where I was, but my superior brain function ceased.
Reality had grabbed a beer and kicked its feet up on my coffee table. The
asshole was making itself right at home.

 
The muscles under my
skin crawled and my stomach turned. A fluttering in my chest reminded me I was
still alive, but threatened to flitter right out and hit the windshield. I was
a fairly tough bitch, but even I could only hold the crazy in for so long
before it burst through my seams. Now that shit was knocking at the door.

Cyrus pulled into the crowd of people lining the streets.
Workers of some kind were setting up parade barriers along the sidewalks and
blocking off the side streets as we passed. I didn’t say a word. Didn’t dare
open my mouth for fear something unearthly would spew from the depths of my
trembling soul. I felt tears well up behind my lids. Opening my eyes wider to
avoid leaking a telltale tear down my cheek, I focused on my breathing, in and
out, in and out. Slow and steady. Flashes of Azelie cackling like a cartoon
villain invaded my head. I cringed, while she laughed the laugh of victory. She
laughed at me. She laughed because she’d won. She had overpowered me.

Like a switch had been flipped, fear turned to rage. The
thought of that woman taking me over, taking me and all that I could ever be,
filled me with a fire I’d never felt before. Survival was all that mattered.
Staying alive, whole, and pure. Okay, not soulless and
zombified
anyway.

A steadying breath poured through my lips. I used the back
of my sweaty hand to swipe the shit-smear from my face. “Get me to Fresno.”

“What’s the plan?” Cyrus asked, sounding more like a minion
than a cohort.

“I’m gonna kill a bitch.”

That is when
Manslaughter becomes Murder One. The plan
.

Chapter Four

We drove along the freeway, the daylight coming to a head in
the sky. Cyrus’s driving was better this time around, but it wouldn’t have
mattered to me either way. I was focused on one thing, and it was my own
preservation. Over the hours in the car, my nerves had leveled themselves out.
There was no guarantee they’d stay that way, but it gave me time to let my
muscles and nerves take a chill pill. And I still smelled like shit.

Hours had passed since we weaved through the skeleton
partygoers in the streets of East L.A. and we were in the flat, farmland area
of the Central Valley. A place I never thought I’d visit again. Up ahead, a
packed gas station reminded me of my first trip to Fresno.

“Do you need to stop?” Cyrus asked, his swollen brows and
nose finally returning to a normal shape.

Very conscientious of him worrying about my urinary tract.

“No.” I’d pissed in that bathroom once before, a time that
seemed like years ago, but it had not even been a year ago.

Flat land stretched on ahead as far as I could see. Highway
99 seemed a fairly popular route otherwise. I guessed it was just about the
only thing to get you to that place. I didn’t think another freeway ran through
Fresno from the rest of the state.

“How are you feeling?” Cyrus asked, suddenly filling the
silence.

Geez, that was about as bad as asking me what I was thinking
about. I hated chick questions as much as I hated chick-flicks, chick-lit,
chick-drinks; you get the idea. Why the fuck did I need these things just
because I owned a vagina?

“I’m feeling like I need a beer.” A cigarette would be just
as splendid. “I’m smoking in your car.” I wasn’t usually a cigarette dick, but
extenuating circumstances and all.

He didn’t say no, so I took it as an invitation to smoke it
up. I rolled the window down, even I didn’t like the damn smoke in my face.
Sweet smoke filled my lungs with the first exquisite drag. I closed my eyes and
let the cooling smoke escape my lips. Attempts to quit recently have been
futile.

“Can I drag that?” Cyrus asked as though he was a regular
smoker, and not a beautiful specimen of a human being whom likely never touched
a carbohydrate in his life, let alone inhaled cancer-causing, skin-wrinkling
cigarette smoke.

“Sure.” Suspicion rose in my head as to why he’d ask for a
drag. Was he planning to toss it out the window? That prick. He’d better not;
I’d kill us both clambering after it.

I handed him the lit cigarette hesitantly. He took it gently
from my finger and he pulled a drag. A second later, fancy smoke rings billowed
from his perfect lips.

My brows were lifted to the sky when he handed it back to
me.

“Did I lip it?” he asked.

“Uh, no, I just didn’t think you smoked.”

“I guarantee you, there is a lot more you don’t know about
me.”

Likewise, buddy.

I had two choices, either ignore the comment and continue to
obsess over my impending death and/or life of torment, or take the bait and
maybe shed some much needed light on a billion and one things.

“Oh, yeah? Like what?” My usual banter was lacking to say the
least. It was probably squashed to death by unadulterated fear and hatred. No,
no, that usually fueled my fire. Maybe it was exhaustion. Hunger was in a close
second. If I dropped a few pounds by the end of this hurricane of shit, it
might all be worth it.

“You want a list?” he chuckled a bit.

“Lay it on me. And stop chuckling like we’re headed to
Disneyland or something. I’m trying really hard to
maintain
here, and the thought of you laughing is making me want to
punch you in the throat.” My voice was bland and steady, not matching what was
actually coming out of my mouth.

It was quiet in the car for a long time after that comment.
It made no sense to want to punch him in the throat. I supposed, in his utterly
annoying way, he was trying to make me forget about my situation a bit. It
crossed my mind that perhaps I wasn’t holding it together as well as I’d
thought. Maybe my need to kill that tiny little bitch wasn’t as strong as I’d
originally assumed.

“I’m sorry you’re scared,” he said finally.

Am not.

“Well, it is what it is.” What a fucking liar I was.

“That’s a lie and you know it. Whether you want to admit it
to me or not, you’re scared. You’re scared and rightfully so. Azelie
d’Entremonte is a terrifying individual.”

“You should know with your in-depth monster knowledge.”
Snark
was just squirting from my lips like verbal diarrhea.

“What exactly do you think I am?”

He loaded that question with hollow points. How did one
answer a question like that?
You’re a
drop dead sexy vampire boy and I’m not sure I’m okay with that or not.
I
mentally scoffed. Either I was okay,
and
 
had
learned and accepted what I
thought was true, or I wasn’t and I was just avoiding the inevitable. If this
were a movie, there sure as shit would be vampires – but this was reality, and
modern vampires were creatures created by producers and authors for tweens and
horny housewives. Any form of legit ‘vampire’ myth mentioned nothing about sexy
underwear models and their ridiculous ginger vamp bosses. Everything I’d ever
learned about ‘vampires’ defied what I’d witnessed thus far.
Fuck my life.

“I honestly don’t know. I’m pretty fucking confused
actually.” There, I guessed I could be honest about something.

“Do you want to stay that way?”

Jesus, what is he
trying to do to me?

“Fuck, no! Who do you think you’re talking to? Of course, I
want to know. Will I believe you…I don’t know. At this point, I guess I can’t
not
believe. If magic and curses and
evil voodoo bitches are real and dangerous as fuck, why can’t vampires be
real?” Hey, that made a lot of sense. Finally, something that came from my
mouth did.

“Well...that’s not entirely accurate, but it made a lot of
sense.”

See. I told yah. “So…please enlighten me. It’s not like I
have anything else to do.”

Playing nonchalant made my skin tingle with the need to know
all he had to tell. Honestly, after beheading two vampy boys, I’d kind of
washed my hands of all things vampire – with the exception of sending flowers
to Cyrus while he recovered from a gunshot wound. Over the last few months, my
interest grew – every conversation I had with Tatum, when I got one, formed
more questions than they answered. Her new lifestyle with her vampire boy toy
kept her from me quite a bit, but our times together, were filled with tales of
sex, blood, and weird industrial rock and roll – and funky costumes and rituals
and not near enough insider information to satiate my vast curiosity. By the
time I was offered an all-expense paid trip to New Orleans and the annual
vampire soiree, I couldn’t refuse. Tatum’s coaxing really twisted my arm, so to
speak. Could you blame me? What other chance was I going to get to really get
dirty – or bloody, to be more appropriate – and uncover Sanguinarian
secrets.
The internet really did have its limits despite
popular belief.

“What do you want to know?”

Tatum’s coaxing was at the behest of Cyrus himself – so I’d
start there. Then we could move into the heavy shit.

“Why did you ask Tatum to drag me to the vampire ball?”
There, the easy part was underway.

“I like you,” he said. I blushed. Okay, maybe that wasn’t
the easy part.

“Uh, okay, different question.” I turned my face away from
him so he couldn’t see my flushed cheeks and ridiculously girly expression.
Even in times of danger, there was a real girl living inside me. I ate her up a
long time ago, but she just wouldn’t die.

“Why? Not the answer you were looking for?” I wasn’t looking
in his direction, but I could hear his stupid grin through his words.

I shrugged, as indifferently as I could be.

“It’s not a lie. I like you. I loath attending those things.
Full of ritual and ceremony. Wall-to-wall arrogance and flamboyancy. All so
theatrical and unnecessary. I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d rather spend
that miserable time with than you.”

“Oh, thanks, drag me to hell along with you. “

“Your cynicism was my saving grace. I wanted your crude
attitude to get me through without wanting to cut out my own tongue.” I
scoffed. “Your chunky ass is just a bonus.”

My head whipped to look at him. I’m sure the look on my face
was awful and full of shock, in a very unattractive manner. “Say what?”

“You heard me. I like your ass”

“A: where is this language coming from? And B: since when is
a big, fat ass attractive?”

“Since…always. I’m not sure why this century has shifted the
spectrum of beauty and disfigurement – atrociously skewed tastes if you ask
me.” He talked as if it was no big deal.

Sexy
McSexyman
had just proclaimed
his love for a nice, fat ass, which I had, and a cynical wit, which I also had.
He’d never actually straight out said, ‘I like you’ before, maybe if he had, I
might have been more willing to give it a shot. But in the back of my head, I
always wondered when the gag camera was going to pop out of a houseplant, and a
crowd of people were going to start laughing at the fatty and her gullible
sensibilities. If it weren’t for some horrid bitch trying to snatch my soul, or
my head, or whatever the fuck she was trying to do, I’d have him stripped to
nothing but those fancy panties he paraded around Los Angeles in by now. Just
for that, I was gonna kill her twice.
You
know what I mean.

“Where the fuck did they manufacture you, and are there
anymore?” I asked, still astonished by his most recent disclosure. In the grand
scheme of things, Cyrus’s liking fat asses was not the biggest revelation on
the horizon of this conversation, but this fat girl could have her fifteen
minutes dammit.

He chuckled but cut it flat, “That’s not what you wanted to
know about really? Is it?” He paused long enough for my face to switch from
astonished to confused. “You want to know about vampires.”

Well, now that you mentioned it. It was the only fucking
thing that had driven my miniature obsession with these assholes for half a
year. I thought this loudly and with vigor, but I didn’t say it. I still wasn’t
completely comfortable admitting that I really did want to know. Because
wanting to know more implied that I thought for a second there were actually
real living, or not so living, breathing, or whatever they did, vampires
walking around like you and me.

Instead, I said, “Do you have something I might want to
know?”
Spill it!

“Don’t pretend with me, Dylan Hart. I know your skin is
itching with anticipation.” The words slipped through his lips with a hint of
sexual tension.

I shrugged sheepishly and pursed my lips a bit to prove my
nonchalance.

Another deep chuckle rolled through his chest before he
continued, “You act as though your life over the last handful of months hasn’t
been consumed by vampires. Why else would you have agreed to attend Masque de
Sang? The last run-in with those types of people nearly cost you your freedom.
Hell, your life. But you didn’t stop, not even when it meant your life.”

“I had to help Tatum. Those blood-crazed
asshats
broke into her house and took her in the middle of the night. Don’t you
remember?” I defended quickly.

“That brings me to another point that’s been on my mind.
Something I don’t think you’ve put in that head space of yours yet.” He took a
breath. “Would she have risked her life to save you?” Low blow to the gut from
the sexy guy in the driver’s seat.

I didn’t answer. I opened my mouth to sass him more than
once, but nothing sounded logical. I could say yes. Shit, a year I ago, I’d
have said yes and known it down in my gut, but now, I wasn’t sure. My brain
could hardly handle my current minute-by-minute manic depressive, emotionally
jaded mental state let alone make judgments on the potential loyalty of a
friend who was currently being pretty fucking
douchey
.

I finally decided to say, “
That
Tatum would have.
My
Tatum. Before she was
his
Tatum.”

“My dear, she was
his
Tatum much longer than you were aware.”

“Then why is she so much different now? Why did we go from
zero to sixty in a matter of months?” I sounded whiny and pathetic, two things
I was never okay with.

“I can only assume she was hiding it from you, for whatever
reason she had, and once the cat was out of the bag, she didn’t have to hide
anymore. She was free to be with Malcolm as often as she chooses.”

The sound of his name brought a sneer to my face. I hated
Malcolm McTavish with the fiery passion of Satan’s asshole. I hated him for
taking Tatum away from me. For taking her away from herself.

Talking of ginger vampires and fair-weather friends
delivered Tatum on a silver platter to the forefront of my mind. Wanting
nothing more than to just have something normal happen, I pulled my phone from
the depths of my messenger bag and checked for missed calls. Nothing. Not even
Mike, which surprised me.