Series: The Sacrifice Series by Natasha Knight
Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Emmanuel is on my heels as we make our way back to the car. I drive this time.
How can Willow be gone? Her door was locked—unless one of the staff forgot to lock it after bringing her dinner. And Bec, how would she get Bec out of the house? She was too weak.
Emmanuel is on his phone. I’m not sure who he’s dialing, but whoever it is isn’t responding. The roads are deserted as I peel out of the parking lot and speed to Eden’s Crossing. Given the late hour, we arrive in record time. I can see from the end of the street that the gates stand open. I’m sure we closed them after we left. They’re automated and programmed to react to a sensor on our vehicles, requiring a manual code to get them to open or close otherwise.
I’m turning onto the driveway when the headlights of my car shine over a vehicle where there shouldn’t be one.
“Stop!” Emmanuel calls out. He’s seen it too.
My brakes screech. He pushes his door open and is out the instant the vehicle stops moving.
I follow him, glancing up at the dark house. Bec’s hospital room is not visible from here. The only light that’s on upstairs is Grandmother’s, but that’s not unusual. My own bedroom and Willow’s room are dark.
“This is Raven’s car,” Emmanuel says, his voice too quiet when we reach the purple Volkswagen Beetle.
He opens the driver’s side door. I hear a sound coming from the back seat where the door stands slightly ajar. Sure enough, when I pull it open, familiar green eyes greet me from inside a carrier. Fiona, Willow’s cat, meows, pushing her paws against the door. I open it to lift her out. Expecting her to scratch, I hold her at arm’s length, but she just mewls.
“What the…” Emmanuel starts from the driveway and when I turn, I find him picking up one of Bec’s protein drinks, which is spilling out of a tote I recognize. I’d seen it among Willow’s things. There’s a latex glove on the ground alongside it.
I tuck Fiona under my arm and pick up the tote. It’s heavy, and when I glance inside, I am reminded how just when you think things can’t get worse, they do.
Oh, how they fucking do.
Because there in the tote is the heavy, ancient tome from the library. The Book of Tithes. I keep it locked away because I don’t ever want Willow or even Bec to come across it. Inside it is a history of the Wildblood and Delacroix catastrophe, from the detailed account of Elizabeth Wildblood’s hanging and through the years right up to the day I signed my name on the dotted line. The contract binds me, as the Penitent, to make a sacrifice of the Wildblood witch and pay the Tithe owed, to feed the ever-hungry Shemhazai so that he would protect our family against Elizabeth Wildblood’s curse. At least until it all begins anew when the next Penitent and Sacrifice are born, the cycle seemingly on repeat.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
“Brother?”
I look up at Emmanuel—and at what he’s holding: a cross and two beads linked by silver rings. A rosary, or what is left of it, because it’s broken.
And it’s smeared with blood.
2
WILLOW
Raven glances at me from across the van, fear flickering through her eyes as the man at the wheel turns us down a dusty road. Tires crunch over gravel, eating up the distance between us and the lights of civilization. I don’t know where we are or where we’re going, but with every second that passes, I know we’re inching closer to our doom.
My mind is in overdrive, bouncing from one scenario to the next, searching for solutions where there aren’t any to be found. Logically, I know that. We’re outnumbered. The driver is a man I don’t recognize, while Caleb is in the passenger seat, and behind us are two additional men in a separate truck. They’re The Disciples, men born from a religion modeled after the early Puritans—or so they claim.
I’ve had time to learn about them since my first entanglement with Caleb Church, but their beliefs aren’t the kind you can learn from a textbook. They change the rules to suit themselves, deciding the fates of anyone who encounters them as if they are the very god they claim to worship.
During his previous attack on me, Caleb told me he was a prophet. He believes—as do the rest of The Disciples—that they have all been chosen for a higher purpose. According to them, they’re holding VIP tickets to the kingdom of heaven. In the meantime, they’ve convinced themselves they’re here doing God’s work, ridding society of the damned.
It’s what they plan to do to us.
My stomach lurches as the van hits a pothole in the road, sending all of us careening into the hard metal walls. It’s a utility van, stripped bare of comfort, and we’re all sitting ducks in the back. Bec moans from beside me, and guilt wraps its insidious claws around me as I look at her.