The Sacrifice (32 page)

Inside, the space opens into a narrow courtyard. At the end of it
is a single black door with no knob. For some reason, the very sight of that
door makes me cold with dread.
No, not behind the black door! Anywhere but
there!
It’s almost as though I’ve been here before. But I know I never
have. I’m just afraid of the door because I don’t want to see who or what is on
the other side of it. Right?

Sanchez raps almost gently on the door and calls in a surprisingly
respectful voice, asking for entry. Slowly, the door swings open and Lexy and I
are shoved into a large, stone room, our reluctant footsteps echoing as we
stumble in.

It’s almost as dark inside as it is outside. To one side of the
vast room a fire is crackling in the fireplace. But the room is so huge it
barely illuminates anything. On the stone floor, a circle about eight feet in
diameter is drawn. No, not drawn, I realize—carved. There is a half inch deep
circular trench gouged into the flagstones. Who the hell could have made it so
perfectly round and why do I find the long curving, empty groove so disturbing?

“Watch out!”
Lexy
gasps in my head.
“Don’t step into the circle—it’s a trap. Can’t you feel
it?”

I do feel it now—the familiar prickling sensation of magic—very
strong magic, crawling over my skin. But before I can step back, Sanchez has
ripped the tape off my mouth and shoved me over the circle’s lip. I stumble and
come to a halt in the empty center, feeling like I have somehow come to rest in
a dangerous place—the eye of a hurricane that may whirl me off my feet and into
an abyss at any moment.

“Emma Krist,” a low, hissing voice whispers from the perimeter of
the circle. It sounds to me like what a snake would sound like if it could
talk.

“Who…who are you?” My voice is shaking. I take a deep breath and
try to sound a little less like a frightened rabbit. “What do you want with
me?”

“We are the Council,” the voice replies.

We? Who the hell are 'we'?
Looking out around the edge of the circle, I get my answer. There
are
eyes
out there. Vampire eyes. They gleam in the flickering firelight
like the predators they are. Like wolves around a campfire at night, waiting
for the flames to die down enough to attack. I count twelve pairs staring at me
from all around the strange, circular groove that has been carved into the
solid stone floor. Every once in a while one of them will lean forward, giving
me a glimpse of porcelain white skin, but for the most part they are just eyes,
watching me…waiting. But waiting for what?

I decide to try again. “What do you want from me?” I ask, looking
around the circle, trying to meet all their eyes in turn. It’s not easy—they
don’t move or twitch occasionally like humans. They stare, unblinking like
snakes. Why have I never noticed these traits in Aiden during the time we’ve
been together? Is it because he’s been making an effort to seem more human,
less predatory, less frightening? Or is it because he spends the majority of
his time with mortals like me, away from his own kind?

“Tell her,” whispers the one with the snake voice.

Grant steps forward. “Emma,” he begins, steepling his long fingers
and looking at me intently. “Do you know about the spell of binding that holds
our supernatural community together?”

“Yes,” I say, nodding.

Grant looks surprised but pleased. He nods. “Not many do. But I
take it Aiden James—the Sovereign vampire—has told you? How it was first cast
by a witch called Katherine and has been in effect, binding us all together,
ever since?”

Slowly, I nod. “Yes. But I don’t understand—”

“The spell is old—it’s losing power,” one of the vampires from
around the circle says. “You might say it’s fraying around the edges. If it’s
allowed to unravel completely…”

“The whole community will come apart like a badly knitted
sweater,” another says. “There will be fighting, corruption, unrest between the
different supernatural races—we can’t afford that.”

“It will draw human attention,” the one with the snake voice says.
“This must not be!”

“All right, I get it.” I raise my hands in a gesture of
acceptance. “But…what does that have to do with me? I mean, other than the fact
that I’m this year’s Sacrifice?”

“You are a direct descendant of Katherine, born on the same day of
the same month that she died, over a hundred years apart,” Grant says. “That
makes you her heir—and the only witch who can renew her spell.”

“
What
?” I stare at him, uncomprehending. He’s joking—he
has
to be joking, right? Aiden never told me this. Never told me that I was
related—intimately related—to his long lost love.
That’s the only reason he
wants you,
whispers a nasty little voice in my head.
Because you remind
him of Katherine. Because you’re the closest thing he can get to her now that
she’s dead.

I push the voice away with effort. Grant is saying something else
and it must be important, the way the vampires of the Council are leaning
forward, pinning me with their cold, inhuman stares.

“You must take up the strands of the spell and weave them back
together,” he is saying, looking at me earnestly. “Use your magic to renew the
spell—it’s the only way.”

“But…I don’t have any magic,” I protest. None to speak of, anyway.
Lighting a candle and being able to mind-speak, which any self-respecting
beginner witch can do—doesn’t qualify me to renew the ancient, powerful spell
cast by my terrifyingly talented ancestress. “I’m a dud,” I tell Grant. “I
always have been.”

He looks upset. “If you can’t use magic, you’ll have to use blood.
It’s the only other way.”

I look at him, aghast. This is how Katherine died. She used up her
magic and then had to resort to spilling her blood. Suddenly I have a clear
flash—an image of this very same room and these very same vampires, sitting in
judgment around the circle. I see a small, feminine hand holding a sacrificial
knife. The knife’s silver blade flashes and a spurt of crimson splashes out
onto the unforgiving stones.

Somehow the blood finds its way to the long, circular groove of
the circle I am standing in right now. Slowly, slowly it begins to fill the
deadly trench gouged in the solid stone. Katherine’s blood flows faster and
faster but the circle is greedy—it drinks her blood and demands more. Her
intent is to fill it up, to fill the entire eight foot circle with the scarlet
ribbon of her own life. But somehow no matter how much she bleeds, it is never
enough. Never enough…

“No!” I gasp as the vision recedes. “No, I can’t! I can’t die like
she did. I
won’t.”

“You will do whatever is necessary to renew the spell…or die
trying,” the snake-voiced vampire hisses at me.

“No, she will not,” a familiar voice says and the black door with
no handle bangs open.

Chapter Twenty-two

Aiden strides into the room, a look of cold rage fixed on his
face.

“Aiden,” I whisper. “Master…”

“It’s all right, Emma,” he says softly, but his eyes are scanning
the circle, taking in the vast strength arrayed against us. “I’m here now. I’ll
protect you.” He addresses the vampires, staring them down, each in turn, as he
speaks. “How dare you? How dare you take what is rightfully mine for a second
time without asking? I told you I would not tolerate such an insult again.”

“Calm yourself, Aiden,” the snake vampire advises. “It’s hardly
our fault you chose to attach yourself twice to the only witch capable of
mastering such an advanced binding spell.” He frowns at me. “Although this one
claims she cannot. She says she’s a ‘dud’ who has no magic.”

“She has magic,” Aiden asserts, raising his chin. “Magic in
abundance. It’s simply dormant inside her—buried in a place she can’t reach.”

“She’d
better
reach it and quickly,” Grant says, with an
uneasy look at the assembled vampires. “She must renew the spell tonight—it’s
frayed almost beyond repair. If she can’t do magic, she will have to give her
blood.”

“No,” Aiden thunders and his eyes flash silver. For a moment I
think he’s scarier than any of the ancient vampires sitting around the circle.
Then his face clears and his voice calms. “No,” he says more softly but no less
vehemently. “There is another way.”

“What way?” I ask, afraid that I already know the answer.

“Emma will not be using her blood to mend the binding spell,”
Aiden says. He strides into the circle, entering the magic, to stand beside me.
“I will use mine instead.”

“That is unacceptable,” the snake vampire hisses. “You are a
vampire—your blood has no magic.”

“I have had Emma’s blood,” Aiden contradicts him. “I had it at the
peak of her cycle—I drank from the fount between her thighs when her magic was
strongest. Her blood flows in my veins.”

“Is this true?” the snake vampire demands, staring at me with
cold, glittering eyes.

Blushing and stammering, I admit that it is. Then it’s Lexy’s turn
to chime in.

“You really did that?”
she demands, shooting me an incredulous glance.
“You let him go
down on you during your time of the month?”

I squirm uncomfortably.
“I was in a lot of pain and he made me
feel better. You know how bad my cramps get. Besides, what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is that you’re never supposed to let a vampire near
you during that time. It gives them too much power—binds them to you way too
tightly.”
She
sounds really upset.
“I can’t believe no one ever told you that before.”

“Well, I guess I would have known if I had any magic to speak of
or the inclination to sleep with half the vampire community,”
I shoot back, losing my patience.
“But
honestly, Lexy, I had no idea.”

She seems about to send me something else but then the snake
vampire speaks again. “You would bleed for this witch…this insignificant mortal
with lifespan a fraction of your own?” he demands, speaking to Aiden.

Aiden nods. “I would,” he says quietly. “Emma is not insignificant
to me—I would endure anything to keep her safe. Give me the knife.”

My heart is in my throat as one of the vampires stands and moves
from the shadows into the light for a moment. He shows a flicker of white skin
as he hands Aiden a long, curving, silver blade. Then he slips back into the
darkness and becomes just a pair of eyes again.

Aiden holds the knife in one hand and begins to roll up his sleeve
with the other. He is wearing a tastefully tailored charcoal suit but he has
removed the jacket, revealing the crisp, white, cotton shirt beneath. Under
that, his skin is almost as pale as the shirt. But a fine tracing of blue veins
runs just under the surface, pulsing with blood he’s determined to shed.

“Aiden,” I say. “Please, I don’t want you to do this for me.”

“Be quiet, Emma.” He frowns at me darkly. “There is no choice. One
of us must shed blood and I’ll be damned if it’s you.”

“But—”

“Be still and let me concentrate,” he commands, cutting me off.

I feel sick as I watch him make the first slice. Without
flinching, he draws the silver blade across the white skin of his forearm. I
know how much it hurts him—a thousand times worse than it would a mortal whose
body would give blood much more easily. But he says nothing, just holds his arm
over the circular trench, letting the droplets fall, like black rubies, into
its hungry mouth.

I can feel the blood working, can feel the frayed strands of the
spell coming together but slowly…so
slowly
. Before they are nearly woven
together, let alone sealed, the cut on Aiden’s arm closes. His mouth thins to a
white line but still he says nothing. He only raises the knife and cuts himself
again.

And again and again and again.

It’s agony to watch him torturing himself like this and to know
that he’s doing it for me. He’s bleeding himself dry so I won’t have to. Saving
me the way he wasn’t able to save Katherine so many years ago.

But after the fifth or sixth cut, I realize with horror that it’s
not going to work. The magic is coalescing too slowly, the circular trench
etched into the floor is too thirsty. Aiden doesn’t have enough blood in his
body to make this happen—especially considering how much blood a vampire body
needs to function. He’s going to die if he keeps this up—surely he knows that.

One look at his face tells me he does. But it doesn’t seem to
matter to him—he’ll do whatever it takes to save me. Even if it means giving
his own life.

“Master,” I whisper, putting my hand on his arm to stop him before
he cuts the seventh time. “Please, no. You’re…you’re killing yourself. There
has to be another way.”

“There is no other way,” he murmurs, shaking his head. “Once I
thought there might be but this moment has come too soon. We were not prepared,
for which I blame myself.”

“What do you mean?” I demand. I’m beginning to panic at his rigid
refusal to stop. I can’t lose him like this. Can’t let him sacrifice himself
for me. “What are you talking about?”