Sacrifice Me (3 page)

Especially not my mother.

Yet here he was. The one person in the world who
might have answers about where she was or what kind of mess she’d
managed to get herself into, and all I could think about was if I
would ever again feel the burning heat of his skin against mine.

“Morning, boss,” Azure said, looking
from him to me and back again. “Seems your new employee has a
lot of questions, so, I guess I’ll just leave you guys to it.”

Rend nodded, but never once took his eyes off me.

Azure passed by him, then threw one last bitter
glance back toward me before she walked out the door.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” he
asked.

“I’d rather have some straight answers
about what’s going on and what I’m really doing here,”
I said.

He gave a slight smile, amusement dancing in his
dark black eyes. I wanted to get closer to see if there was still
that hint of silver in them or if I had dreamed it up. “It
wasn’t an either or kind of question, you know.”

I relaxed my shoulders and walked over to pour
myself a cup. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t
do well with secrets and vague hints at things. I like honesty.”

“Even when the truth is hard to hear?”
He crossed over to stand beside me and grabbed a cup for himself.

“Especially when the truth is hard to hear.”

Our arms nearly touched and I had to work to
control my heartbeat. Dammit, this guy was really getting to me.

“You keep surprising me,” he said.
“I’ve been around for a very long time, and believe me
when I say that not many people can surprise me anymore.”

I laughed. “You can’t be that much
older than I am. You’re what? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?”

He gave me a sideways glance and a somewhat
frustrated groan.

“What now?” I asked.

He laughed. “Come on. Let’s go to my
office where we can talk.”

I finished pouring some creamer into my coffee and
followed him down the hallway toward a set of black double-doors at
the very end.

Azure hadn't brought me back here to this end of
the hallway.

I expected to walk straight into his office when
he opened the door, but instead there was a large open seating area
with a door on the left, a door on the right, and a wide staircase
straight ahead that led up to a second floor.

Rend headed for the door on the right, opened it,
and motioned for me to go on in.

His office was not at all what I’d expected,
either. I had pictured a small room that looked like the manager’s
offices in other bars or restaurants where I’d waitressed.
Usually there would be the standard metal desk cluttered with bills
and notebooks and binders. Maybe a few pictures of family members. A
filing cabinet or two. Harsh fluorescent lighting.

But this was nothing at all like that.

Rend’s office was a work of art. To begin
with, it was huge. Instead of bright overhead lights, there was a
warm amber glow coming from a series of round orbs hanging like
pendants from the ceiling. A dark leather couch was pushed against
the wall on one side of the room with a gorgeous Persian rug and a
deep mahogany coffee table in front of it.

His desk was an equally gorgeous color of deep
mahogany brown, intricately carved. A real antique that looked like
it probably cost a fortune. Instead of stacks of papers and binders,
his desk was clean and organized. A sleek, flat-screen computer
monitor was angled off to one side. My eyes were drawn to a beautiful
green stone sitting on the edge of the desk. It almost looked as if
it were glowing from within. I wanted to touch it, but wondered if it
would be rude.

Behind the desk was a wall of floor-to-ceiling
bookcases lined with leather-bound books. Some of the titles weren’t
even in English.

And he thought I was full of surprises.
He
didn't seem like the literary type.

The entire room was decorated to perfection. It
was warm and comfortable, yet somehow strong. It matched him
perfectly, even down to the strange painting of a dark and stormy sea
with high cliffs as black as obsidian.

He followed my gaze toward the painting. “Do
you like it?”

“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“Haunting and sad in a way. Violent. Like a scene from a
dream.”

When he didn’t say anything else, I tore my
eyes away from the painting to find him still staring at me. Would I
ever be able to look into his eyes and not feel breathless?

He looked away first this time. “Have a
seat,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“Thanks.”

I sat in a large comfortable leather chair across
from his desk as he took his place behind it.

“What kind of stone is this?” I asked,
again wishing I could touch it, but feeling that, like him, it was
off-limits. “Is it an emerald?”

The question was ridiculous. An emerald that big
would cost a fortune.

“No,” he said. “It’s
actually something I made in my lab.”

I looked up, questioning.

“We’ll get to that,” he said.
“Eventually. But first, you had some more pressing questions
you wanted answered?”

I took a sip of my coffee. It was strange. Now
that I had him here, I couldn’t think of exactly what I wanted
to ask him most. All of my questions were jumbled up inside my brain
like a ball of rubberbands.

“Why am I working here?” I asked.
“It’s obviously not something you wanted when you told me
to get lost and never come back.”

He cleared his throat and leaned back in his
chair. “That was before you got attacked in an alley and needed
rescuing. What in the world possessed you to go out that back door,
anyway?”

“I thought I was asking the questions,”
I said. His was not one I was prepared to answer just yet.

“Fair enough,” he said. “For
now.”

“You told those men I was one of your
girls,” I said.

“To protect you,” he said. “If
you work here long enough, you’ll begin to see that this club
is a sort of middle ground. A safe zone for people from all sides of
the game to gather and have a good time. It's a place where people
from different sides can come to talk things out without fear of a
war breaking out around them.”

War? Jesus.

“Why is it that everything you say just
leads to more questions?” I asked, shaking my head.

He laughed for the second time since we’d
met and the sound sent a shot of warmth through my middle.

“I know you’re hungry for answers. I
can’t blame you,” he said. “But I need you to
understand that I couldn’t possibly explain everything to you
all at once. It would probably leave you comatose and drooling on the
floor if I did that to you.”

“That’s a pretty image,” I
mumbled into my coffee cup.

“If I had my way, I’d turn back time
and convince you to think twice before ever walking through the doors
to my club,” he said. “The world you’ve stumbled
upon here isn’t like the world you’re used to. There are
people, things—dark things—here that can’t be
easily explained. It’s very dangerous, especially for a girl
like you.”

His tongue stumbled a bit over the word girl.

“And what kind of girl am I?” I asked.

He leaned forward and placed his hands together on
the desk, looking me right in the eyes.

“That’s the real question here, isn’t
it?”

I gripped the edge of the chair.

“Your whole life, you’ve been
different, right?” he began, but didn’t wait for an
answer. “Strange things happen around you when you get angry or
sad. Any time you have a strong enough emotion to really move you,
you feel something deep inside you shift. You feel like you’re
on the verge of something both exciting and terrifying at the same
time.”

I listened without taking a breath. I was afraid
that if I breathed or moved or reacted in any way, I might break into
pieces. He was talking about my darkest secrets, rattling them off as
if they were common.

“It manifests in different ways for
different people,” he said. “For some, it’s objects
that fly across the room. For others, it’s a thunder storm that
can’t be explained. Or maybe it’s an extreme heat that
gathers at your fingertips.”

He paused and even though I tried to hold it back,
a memory flashed through my mind.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice low and
oddly comforting.

I gripped the chair harder, resisting.

I had never told anyone these things. Not even my
closest, most trusted friends.

“Franki?” he said after a moment had
passed in silence.

I shook my head and looked away, feeling those
damned tears welling up in my eyes again. I hated that he could bring
this out in me. I had worked so hard for so long to control every
emotion, and here he was, breaking me down as if I were made of
paper.

He stood and moved around the desk. Panic
tightened my chest, and I wished I could just disappear into
nothingness.

Rend knelt down on the floor beside my chair and
placed his hand on top of mine. My entire body tensed, and with that
one touch, a raging river coursed through me, threatening to crash
over every single wall I’d built up to keep others out.

I yanked my hand away and stood, walking over
toward the painting of the dark cliffs and the violent sea.

“I know it isn’t an easy thing to talk
about,” he said. “Not when you’ve spent a lifetime
with no one to confide in about it. But, you have to believe me when
I say that it gets easier once you realize you’re not alone.”

I refused to look at him even though I could feel
that he was moving closer.

“There are so many others who are like you,”
he said. “Thousands of women and girls who have abilities that
can’t be explained without opening your mind to the possibility
of magic.”

I flinched at the word. Magic was a kid’s
game. Cheap tricks and illusions meant to awe and entertain crowds.
It wasn’t real.

He was standing behind me now, so close I could
feel his warmth radiating against my back. I didn’t know if I
wanted to lean into him or move away. All I could do was stand there,
staring at that painting.

“A good friend of mine painted that,”
he said. “Years ago. More than a century ago by now.”

I glanced over my shoulder so I could see his
face. “How is that possible? How could you have a friend that
old?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell
you, Franki. Not everything in this world is what you thought it
was,” he said. He lifted his hand to my arm, running his
fingertips across the dark bruise. “People like those men in
the alleyway last night? I know it sounds impossible to you now, but
some people can live for a lot longer than a normal human lifespan.
Some people—some beings—are immortal, while others are
human but capable of great power. Once you open your mind to that
truth, a whole new world will open up right before your eyes.”

My body trembled at his touch. At his words. I
wanted to dismiss them and tell him he was crazy. But I couldn’t.
I knew he was telling me the truth. I had denied it for so long, but
there was a reason I had worked so hard to control my emotions.

I’d pushed the truth of it so far back into
my mind that I refused to discuss it or even allow the thought to
enter my consciousness most of the time. But I couldn’t ignore
it any longer.

“That’s why Katy got sick when she
drank that Dragon stuff last night, right? Why she threw up and I
felt so alive?” I asked, turning slowly toward him, my heart
beating so fast I thought it might escape from my chest and fly away
with little hummingbird wings. “She’s not like me.”

He shook his head. “No, she’s not.”

I brought my eyes to his, afraid of the way it
would make me feel, but needing to be able to look at him when he
said it.

“What am I?” I asked in a whisper, my
voice quivering.

He met my stare and brought his hand to my cheek.

“You’re a witch.”

For a moment, I thought he might kiss me.

His face was so close to mine, and oh god, I
wanted him to. My mind and body were on the edge, emotion flowing so
strongly inside of me that I needed some kind of outlet. I needed
something to balance me out before I lost control.

He must have felt my need, because he pulled his
hand away as if I’d burned him. He stepped back, every muscle
tense.

“I know it’s a lot to take in,”
he said, his tone matching my desire. He was just as on edge as I
was. “You need to know the truth, though. Understanding the
threat is the only way I can protect you.”

“From people like those three guys last
night?”

“Them,” he said pacing the floor in
front of the couch, “and much worse.”

I took deep breaths, trying to still the wave of
emotions crashing over me.

“Worse?”

“There is evil all around us,” he
said. “Back home, living your normal life, you probably weren’t
using your powers at all, I’m guessing?”

I shook my head, rattled by the use of the word
powers.

“If someone extremely sensitive to our kind
got close to you, they would recognize you for what you are, but most
people would never know,” he said. “The second you walked
through the door to this club, though, you introduced yourself to a
whole world of those who would kill to take you for their own.”

“Why?” I asked, my hands curled into
tight fists at my side. “If there are thousands out there like
me, then why would anyone care about one more?”

He let his head fall back slightly, as if I’d
asked him an impossible question.

“On this side of the curtain, there is a
constant war for each and every witch or demon that walks this
earth,” he said. “Lesser witches than you have started
battles that saw a hundred dead in a single afternoon.”

He came close to me again and my need to touch him
flared like hot coals pressed against my skin.