The Sacrifice (31 page)

“Huh?” I’ve been concentrating on the path so fiercely that the
soft, feminine voice takes me by surprise.

“They’re being hunted to extinction.” A pretty co-ed holding a
clipboard is standing right in our way, her eyes earnest. “They use these
magnificent animals for all sorts of home brewed remedies—the meat, the paws,
even the coat is used.” She thrusts a picture of a yellow and black striped
tiger lying majestically on a rock into our faces.

Lexy takes the picture and studies it. “Huh. Well, it sounds like
none of it’s going to waste,” she says at last, giving the picture back. “I
mean, they’re using the whole thing, right down to the last whisker, right? So
what’s the problem?”

I can tell my cousin is being sarcastic but by the way the co-ed
is gaping at her, it’s clear she has no idea. “You don’t understand,” she
begins again. “These people are
killing tigers.”

“I’d kill one too, if it came too close,” Lexy says with a
straight face. “I mean, if it’s you or the tiger, who are you gonna choose? I’m
not living
The Life of Pi
over here.”

“It’s
wrong
to kill tigers.” The co-ed is speaking very
slowly, as though Lexy was a learning disabled kindergartener. “They’re
endangered
.
That’s why I’m going to give you a chance to sponsor one—”

“Sponsor it to do what?” Lexy demands, obviously really enjoying
herself now. “Go to tiger summer camp or something?”

“Well, no…” The co-ed looks taken aback. “I mean—”

“What do tigers do all day anyway?” Lexy asks. “Just lie around
and eat, right? I wish somebody would sponsor
me
to do that.
I’m
and
endangered species—there’s only
one
of me and I bet there are a lot more
tigers than that.”

“Their numbers are dwindling every day.” The co-ed sounds like
she’s reciting from a brochure somebody at the save-the-tigers place made her
memorize. “Look.” She thrusts another picture in Lexy’s face. “This one’s name
is Sheba. She’s a beautiful female and she’s pregnant. We think she’ll be
having her cubs any day now.”

“So she’s a pregnant unwed mother who needs my support.” Lexy
looks sympathetic. “Now I get it. Poor thing.”

“It’s very sad.” The co-ed looks like she might actually start
crying. “I’m glad you understand.”

“Of course I understand—I’m not a
republican
.” Lexy pats
her arm. “Unfortunately, my democratic ass is completely broke. So I’m afraid
you’ll have to find someone else to support Sheba. Unless, of course, her
baby-daddy shows up. Maybe he could get a job and bring home the bacon for a while.”
She looks at the co-ed seriously. “
Do
tigers eat bacon?”

“No, but—”

“Excuse me, Ms. Krist. I’ve got a whole different animal I think
you might be interested in. Right in my fucking pants.”

A musky, animalistic odor assaults my nose just as the deep voice snarls
in my ear. I jump in surprise and start to turn but I’m already being held fast
in two hard hands. The speaker turns me to face him and I see the slotted
yellow eyes of a goat.

“Hello, Emma,” Emilio Sanchez grates, grinning at me. “Long time
no see.”

Chapter Twenty-one

I open my mouth to scream but Sanchez has a meaty palm slapped
over my lips before I can make so much as a whimper. I want to gag at the gamey
smell of his hand but I try to bite him anyway. Before I taste blood, he yanks
his hand away and backhands me. My head rocks back and I see stars exploding in
my field of vision as pain blooms across my cheek. I stagger backward but the
satyr catches me by the elbow and yanks me back up. He pulls out a roll of duct
tape and slaps a thick piece over my mouth while I’m still stunned.

“Figure that oughta shut you up for a little while, girlie,” he
mutters in my ear and proceeds to tape my wrists together too. "Don't know
why you're so surprised. I brought you the warning this day was coming,
straight from the Council itself. Didn't you get the message?"

The message…he must mean the cryptic quote in the cardboard box he
delivered to me. My head is aching and the world around me is reeling but from
the corner of my eye, I see that Lexy has been similarly bound and gagged by
another satyr. The save-the-tigers co-ed is long gone. I have a faint hope that
she might have run to fetch the campus police…but then I see her body, face
down on the ground.

“She’ll wake up eventually,” Sanchez grunts, nudging her with the
steel toe of his work boot. “The Council said no witnesses—wipe her, Grant.”

I look on in amazement as a man who is clearly a warlock bends
down and presses the tips of two fingers to the unconscious co-ed’s temple. He
murmurs a forgetfulness spell and I know when she wakes up she’ll have nothing
but a headache and no memory of what happened.

Male witches are rare and I thought I knew most of them in the
community but this warlock is new. Why is he working with a satyr against his
own kind? And what do they want from me? I stare at Sanchez uncertainly,
looking for clues, trying to figure this out. As always whenever I’m near him I
smell burning, hear crying. This time I don’t try to shut it out. I reach for
the memory, wondering why it seems so familiar…trying to figure it out.
The
eyes…the slotted yellow eyes outside my bedroom that night…
But
what
night? Why—?

“You better wipe the other one too,” Sanchez says, nodding at
Lexy.

Lexy shakes her head, her auburn hair whipping wildly around her
face as the warlock called Grant approaches her.

“Hold her,” Sanchez tells the other satyr. He’s a big, burly guy
with hands like meat hooks, which he digs into Lexy’s upper arms, making her
moan in pain.

Grant manages to catch my cousin’s chin and press his fingertips
to her temple. He mutters under his breath for a moment while she stares at
him, wide-eyed. At last he draws back, an unhappy look on his face.

“Well?” Sanchez demands.

Grant frowns. “I couldn’t do much. She’s a powerful witch and she
has a strong family behind her. They’ll be able to tell she was tampered with.”

“That’s too fucking bad.” Sanchez spits to one side, a gob of
greenish goo staining the concrete walkway. “Finish the job or kill her
yourself—I don’t care which. But the Council says no witnesses so there better
not be any. Understand?”

“No one ever said I’d have to work against my own kind when I took
this job,” Grant protests.

“Your kind doesn’t mean
shit.”
Sanchez’s inhuman eyes
narrow and he pokes a finger at the warlock. “And your only job is to do
whatever the Council tells you. Now come on—we’re supposed to be there soon.”

The two satyrs tow Lexy and I off the path—despite our kicking and
struggling. Grant walks to one side, his lips moving silently in a
don’t-notice-me
spell. I can feel his magic tingling against my skin, enveloping us all in a
silent, invisible net. We walk right past a pair of campus security guards and
neither of them notices a thing.

It doesn’t take long to get to a black, windowless van—the exact
kind of vehicle I imagine a serial killer driving. I nearly lose it
here—kicking and clawing—as well as I can with my hands taped in front of me,
that is. Finally Sanchez belts me in the face again, stunning me. I fall to the
ground as Lexy makes indignant noises through her gag. I know she wants to come
running to my rescue but her own satyr guard has a firm grip on her.

“Listen up, girlie,” Sanchez says, bending down to look at me. “Settle
down if you don’t want more of the same. I’d tell you that I don’t like hitting
women, but that would be a lie. I really fucking enjoy it—makes me hard, you
know?” He grabs his crotch and shakes it at me, laughing. “In fact, when this
is all over I might even fuck you.”

The casual way he says it and the gleam in his slotted yellow eyes
makes me cold all over. I feel frozen as they load Lexy and me into the back of
the van and clang the doors shut, leaving us in darkness.

“Where are they taking us?”
I
hear Lexy whisper in my head. I want to answer her but
the mind voice, also referred to as the “witch-whisper” is yet another piece of
magic I was never able to manage. It used to drive me crazy because I could
hear everything my cousins said without being able to reply. So I know it’s
useless, but I can’t help trying to talk back.

“I don’t know,”
I send in Lexy’s direction.

In the dimness of the van, I see her eyes widen.
“Emma—you did
it! You talked to me! I heard you!”
She nudges me with her foot.
“Try
again.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Oh my Goddess!”
Despite the desperate situation we are in, she is suddenly
ecstatic for me.
“You can do it—you can mind talk! I always knew it—I knew
you weren’t a dud! First lighting the candles and now this—your magic is
finally coming in, Emma. I just know it!”

“It’s awesome,”
I admit. I don’t know where the magic came from but I can feel it
filling me slowly, like an empty cup being filled one drop at a time.
“But
it doesn’t get us any closer to getting out of here.”

“What does Sanchez want with us, anyway?”
She shivers.
“Ugh—I always
hated him.”

“I don’t think it’s us they want—it’s
me,”
I send grimly.
“Maybe….maybe
Aiden was right about him having a lot of enemies that want to get to me.”
Just
thinking it makes me feel sick. What are they going to do with me? Will they
kill me just to make Aiden mad? And who are “they” anyway?

“Sanchez said something about the ‘Council’.”
Lexy sends back and I realize I
have let the last thought slip past my mental barrier.
“Do you think he
meant the Vampire Council?”

“I have no idea. I hope not.”
I can’t imagine being brought before that most ancient and
powerful ruling body. Why would
they
want to see me?

We mind talk back and forth together over the twenty more minutes
the van is in motion but neither Lexy nor I can solve the mystery. We do,
however, make a plan of escape. Having our hands bound and our mouths gagged
rules out casting a spell. But we can still kick our captors in the balls when
they open the van. We wait, lying on our backs, tense and terrified but
determined to do whatever we can to get out of this situation.

The van has been moving smoothly up until now but suddenly there’s
a lurch and it starts rocking and jouncing over uneven ground.

“We’re going off road,”
Lexy sends, her eyes wide with fear.
“They’re taking us into
the wilderness somewhere.”

I want to protest that there isn’t a whole lot of wilderness
around Tampa but apparently our captors have found some. We jounce around,
being thrown against each other, unable to brace ourselves because of our bound
hands. I’ve always been prone to motion sickness and the violent motion makes
me nauseous. Then Lexy bumps her head and gives a little cry behind her tape
gag.

I’m still trying to crawl over to her and see if she’s okay when
the van stops with a jolt and the back doors swing wide.

“C’mon out now, girlies,” Sanchez says, reaching in to haul me
roughly to my feet. “No funny business or—”

I kick out and catch him squarely in the balls.

He goes white, then green, then his face turns a dark shade of
purple. But through it all, he somehow manages to hold on to my arm. I couldn’t
get away anyway, I realize with despair. I can’t leave Lexy here alone and she
seems stunned and woozy from the blow to her head. All I have done is succeeded
in making my captor even more angry.

“You’ll pay…” Sanchez finally manages to wheeze out, pinching my
arm viciously until I yelp in pain. “Maybe not now but you’ll be sorry. I’ll
make
you sorry.” He raises his hand, no doubt to hit me again.

“We don’t have time for this.” The warlock, Grant, is suddenly
there looking worried. “The ceremony has to start as soon as the moon is
directly overhead. Come on.”

“Fine,” Sanchez growls. He and the other satyr pull Lexy and I out
of the van and follow Grant, who is leading the way.

What ceremony?
I think wildly, trying to look around as we stumble over the uneven
ground. Unfortunately, it’s pretty dark aside from the quarter moon rising
overhead. All I can make out is that we seem to be in the middle of a field
with trees on either side. There are no landmarks, no way to guide myself even
if I could break away from the satyr’s punishing grip.

They drag us up a gently rising hill and through some trees. Suddenly
we’re standing in front of what looks like a miniature castle. That’s crazy
though—there aren’t any castles in Florida! Except here one is, right in front
of me.

There are torches burning in holders at the rounded front entryway
lined with jagged metal spikes.
What’s that called? A portcullis?
my
mind babbles as we are dragged through the gates.