The Sacrifice (25 page)

“Don’t bother. It’s broken.”

Chapter Seventeen

The deep, familiar voice from behind me makes my heart sink. I
turn slowly to see Aiden standing there, wearing a disapproving look on his
face.

“Master,” I begin. “I can explain…”

“No explanation is needed,” he says crisply. “I can see well
enough that you’ve disobeyed me.”

Feeling backed into a corner, I try a counter attack. “How did you
even get here? I never heard your car driving in.”

“I saw your cousin driving away as I was coming up the drive. I
stopped the car and walked the last bit of the way.”

“In order to sneak up on me!” I say accusingly. “You were hoping
to catch me doing something wrong.”

“No, I was hoping
not
to.” He frowns. “I was afraid you’d
disobey orders and remove the harness if you had your cousin over.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” I demand. “It’s one thing to wear it around
you,
but it’s just plain
weird
to have it on around family.”

“It was my order that you wear it without fail all day, every
day,” Aiden says quietly. “You agreed to that, Emma.” He takes a step toward
me, looming over me, looking every inch the intimidating vampire master that he
is. “I also gave orders that you not touch yourself.”

I feel my cheeks getting hot. “What…what are you talking about?”

Aiden looks at me angrily. “Don’t lie to me, Emma—I can stand
anything but that. I can tell you’ve allowed yourself a sexual release.”

Now I’m blushing all over. “How can you possibly know that?”

He lifts his nose and inhales deeply as though testing the air. “I
can smell it,” he says, his voice dropping to a menacing purr. “Your pent up
desire, your desperate release. You
deliberately
disobeyed my orders and
made yourself come.”

I open my mouth to deny it…then remember my crazy multiple
orgasm-fest when I was trying to get the damn harness off. “Okay,” I say at
last. “I did but it
wasn’t
deliberate. It was an accident.”

He raises one very skeptical eyebrow at me. “You had an orgasm by
accident?
Emma, do you think I’m stupid?”

“No, of course not! But if you’d just let me explain—”

“Let
me
explain something to
you.”
He grips my chin
firmly with his long, cool fingers and holds my eyes with his own, speaking
with a quiet intensity that shuts me up. “I need
your sexual tension
just as I need
your complete submission. Not just for me—there are other
forces at work, other things at stake than just the two of us and this petty
little game we’re playing.”

“
What
other things?” I demand. “Why don’t you just tell me
instead of hinting around all the time?
I’m
the one who’s expected to
submit.
I’m
the one who has to wear harnesses and straps and let you
fuck me naked in public. Did it ever occur to you that if there’s a bigger
reason for all this, maybe I’d like to be in on the secret too?”

His face is closed and he drops his hand, releasing my chin from
his punishing grip. “You’ll know everything in the fullness of time. But not
now—not yet.”

“When?”
I
explode, so full of frustration I can’t hold back anymore. “When are you going
to tell me? Or are you just going to keep me in the dark as long as it suits
you? Is that how you treated Katherine?”

His gray eyes flash silver and I know at once I’ve gone too far. I
shrink back away from him but he never lifts a hand to me. He just stands
there, looking at me. “Where did you hear that name?” His voice is cold and
quiet but his eyes are terrible to look at.

“It doesn’t matter where I heard it,” I say, but the courage has
leaked out of me at the sight of those eyes. It’s not just anger I see in their
silvery depths but pain—somehow I have wounded him. And though I’m hurt and
upset and completely pissed off, I never wanted that. Never wanted to hurt him.
“You loved her, didn’t you?” I say softly. “Would you have kept her in the dark
if there was something important going on?”

“No.” His voice is bitter and he finally looks away. “It was
she
who kept
me
in the dark. And then her secrets killed her.”

“Aiden—” I start to say but he shakes his head.

“No more. I cannot speak of this.” He turns to go, his broad
shoulders tense under his expensive gray suit jacket.

“Wait!” I exclaim. “What about dinner? And…everything else?” I’m
trying to ask him if we’ll ever get back to our regular routine. It seemed
bizarre to me at first but now it’s the norm and well, I
miss
it. I miss
Aiden.
His hands on me, his lips and mouth exploring my body, the soft,
caressing way he calls me 'darling'. But now, even though he’s standing in the
same room with me, he seems remote—unreachable. It’s as though he is standing
on a distant mountaintop I can’t climb.

“Aiden,” I whisper. “Master,
please
…”

“I’ll have Barnes bring a tray to your room,” he says, not turning
around. “Your education is suspended for now. Do as you please.” Then he stalks
out of the room. I hear his footsteps and then the heavy sound of the front
door closing.

And I know he is gone.

I mope around the room the rest of the evening and finally go to
bed early after barely picking at the tray Barnes brought me. I’m so miserable
I can hardly see straight, which is stupid, right? Anyone would think I had
fallen in love with Aiden James and was depressed because he didn’t love me
back. Which is stupid—too stupid for words.

But not too stupid for tears. When I finally turn out the lights
and slide beneath the sheets, I feel them hot and salty on my cheeks. Angrily,
I swipe them away. What’s wrong with me? Why do I care so much if he’s unhappy
with me? If I hurt his feelings? He hurt mine too, damn it! And he’s clearly
keeping secrets—not telling me things I need to know. There’s a mystery here
somewhere and Aiden is trying his damndest to keep me from solving it.

I tell myself these things and try to work up a good fit of
righteous indignation but all I can manage is a horrible headache right behind
my eyes. Goddess, there’s no use denying it—I have feelings for that damn
vampire. And it makes me miserable to be fighting with him.

You more than have feelings—you love him,
whispers a little voice in my head
but I push it away. I can’t be in love with my vampire master. After all, our
arrangement may feel like an eternity sometimes, but it’s strictly temporary.
The Laws of the Sacrifice state that once a year is up, I’ll be set free. Then,
Aiden will choose someone else—another Sacrifice at next year’s Sacrifice
Ceremony. And he’ll probably find one who’s a lot more compliant and eager to
be mastered than me. Someone who’s prettier and slimmer and not a dud and…Goddess,
I hate her already and I don’t even know who she is! But just the
idea
of anyone else with Aiden makes me feel crazy.

I don’t know how long I lie awake in the darkness, tossing and
turning, my brain churning in endless circles. Because Aiden has told me to do
as I like, I put on a silky white nightgown I found in the back of the wardrobe
out of spite
. I’m not sleeping naked if I don’t have to!
I tell myself
defiantly.

But the nightgown keeps getting twisted around my hips and
bunching up underneath me. It’s irritating in the extreme and after a month of
sleeping nude, it feels too hot and confining. Finally I pull it off and drop
it over the side of the bed. Then and only then, when I feel the cool whisper
of the sheets against my naked body, do I finally drop off to sleep.

An uneasy dream twists my thoughts. Someone is hurting someone I
love. Someone who takes care of me, who I need to take care of in turn. They
are coming for her but I won’t let them hurt her! I’ll fight—I’ll show them
what I can do, that I’m not too little or too young to control the power. I’ll
show them…

Bright orange shadows dance against my closed eyelids, driving the
uneasy dream away. Somehow I know that something is wrong. I open my eyes to
see flames flickering around the curtains of one of my windows. The smell of
smoke assaults my nose. Panic leaps inside me like a living thing—fire! My
room’s on fire!

I jump out of bed and run for the door but the metal knob burns my
hand. I jump back with a cry. Black smoke is seeping under the door and the
flaming curtains have fallen onto the bed where I was lying just a minute ago.

I go to the other window, the one not yet on fire, but I’m small,
my arms are those of a child. There’s no way I can lift the heavy glass and
wood. I push against it anyway, trying with all my might, not wanting to die in
the hell my room has become.

Outside the glass I see a face. A leering, laughing, swarthy face
with short stubby horns on its forehead. He is mouthing something to me but I
can’t hear his words. I know one thing though—if I go out, I’ll be in as much
danger there as I am here in the burning house.

With a little moan, I back away from the window. I find a dark
corner and curl into a ball, my arms wrapped around my knees. I don’t know what
else to do.

“Emma? Emma!” A familiar voice screams my name. The door burst
open and I see my mother standing there. She is coughing and choking, the smoke
filling her lungs but still her first thought is of me. Seeing me in the
corner, she runs to pull me into her arms. “Oh sweetheart!”

“Mamma?” I’m crying now, my hot face pressed to her neck. “I’m
scared.”

“Don’t be,” she tells me. “We’ll get out of this but you have to
be very, very brave. Now tuck your head in like this…”She tucks my exposed head
and hands into my long nightgown and holds me close to her body like a precious
bundle. “I’m going to run through the house, Emma,” she tells me. “It’s on fire
but I’m going to use magic to keep us safe—to keep
you
safe. Do you understand?”

From within the protective covering of my nightgown, I murmur a
muffled, “Yes, Mamma.” But I’m not sure how she’s going to do it. Even as a
young witch who hasn’t yet come into her powers, I know that fire is the easiest
element to call…and the most difficult and dangerous to control. Not only that,
it’s drawn to witches—it hungers for us. That’s why our kind was burned at the
stake in the old days—once the flames tasted them, there wasn’t enough magic in
the world to keep from being burned alive. But the sound of my mother’s voice
says she’s going to try.

“Here we go, sweetheart!” I feel the swaying motion of her
running, still clutching me tight to her. The heat is intense, the flames
licking at us like hungry tongues but somehow my Mother keeps them off. I hear
her chanting under her breath, feel the magic flowing out of her like
water…like blood.

Even as a child I know this isn’t right. She’s giving too much,
expending too much energy—too much life force. It’s as though she’s cut a vital
artery in her arm and the flow is all that is keeping us safe from the flames.
But how long can she keep it up? And how can she live if she gives herself away
so recklessly?

I hear her voice weakening and the swaying is more pronounced. She
is stumbling now, fighting her way through the burning house with only one
thing in mind—saving me. Getting me out in time before the blazing roof
collapses. I don’t know how I know that’s what she’s thinking but I do. And
then I know something else—she doesn’t think she’s going to make it herself.

I want to push my head out of my nightgown and protest. To tell
her she has to stay with me—that she can’t leave me. Like so many free-spirited
witches, my mother is a single parent. She’s all I have in the world. Oh, I
have other family but none so dear to me as her. None whose hearts are linked
to mine by an unbreakable bond.

Suddenly I hear a loud thumping—like someone banging on something.
I push my head up and out of the confines of my nightgown and find myself
almost suffocating with smoke. My mother has reached the front door of our
modest little house. She is still clutching me to her but she can’t get the
door open. She’s kicking it with her bare foot as she jiggles the knob, all
while still keeping me safe in her arms. I can feel her distress rising, like a
silver mist between us.
Please,
she’s thinking, throwing her thoughts
out into the night like a cry for help.
Just help me save my baby. Just help
me save Emma…

Suddenly the door leaps open, as though someone has yanked it from
the outside. I tumble out of my mother’s arms and onto the hard wooden porch,
bruising both knees. I turn, expecting to see that she’s come with me, out of
the inferno.

Instead I see her still in the house—just inside the
doorway—wreathed in flames.

“Mamma!” I try to go to her but something or someone holds me
back. A strength I cannot fathom is keeping me from getting to her. “Mamma!” I
scream again but she only shakes her head.

“Go, Emma!” she shouts above the roar of the flames. “I love you
but you have to go!”