Sacrifice Me: The Complete Season One Read online

  Sacrifice Me

  Sacrifice Me (The Complete Season One)

  By Sarra Cannon

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Sarra Cannon

  eISBN: 978-1-62421-031-0

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Cover Design by Robin Ludwig Design, Inc.

  http://gobookcoverdesign.com/

  Editing Services by Janet Bessey at Dragonfly Editing

  http://dragonflyediting.blogspot.com/

  Formatting by Dead River Books

  http://www.deadriverbooks.com/

  Find Sarra Cannon on the web!

  http://www.sarracannon.com

  To Bella Roccaforte.

  For lake retreats, all-night writing sessions,

  and for always believing in me.

  You are a true friend.

  Oh, and for coming up with the name Rend,

  which turned out to be absolutely perfect.

  Episode 1: The Demon

  Episode 2: The Dream

  Episode 3: The Darkness

  Episode 4: The Dying

  Episode 5: The Devil

  Episode 6: The Doorway

  Episode 1: The Demon

  Prologue

  When you are about to die, they say your life flashes before your eyes. Life's last gift. A single moment of clarity so you can see all the things you did wrong.

  Every bad decision.

  Every mistake.

  Every horrible word you said to someone when you really just wanted them to love you as much as you loved them.

  It’s easy to get lost in the regrets of our past, thinking that if we’d only chosen something different, we might have been able to save ourselves a hell of a lot of heartbreak.

  Only, the thing is, we should really be giving ourselves more credit for just surviving the best way we know how. It’s not like we made those bad decisions on purpose. Well, not most of the time, anyway.

  At any given moment, we’re all just doing the best we can to survive and make a place for ourselves in this shit-storm we call life.

  Looking back, it’s easy to forget just how broken we were when we made those bad decisions. And most importantly, it’s easy to overlook the fact that if we were really able to go back in time and change things, sure, we might avoid some of the worst heartaches of our lives, but at the same time, we also might not be standing here, right now, with the one person we love most in all the world.

  What if I'd never opened that invitation?

  What if I'd thrown the whole thing in the trash and gone about my life?

  What if I'd never stepped foot inside Venom?

  These questions flash through my mind in those last moments, but then all I can think is that one small change—one “better” decision—and I might have missed him altogether.

  So you know what? If I had the chance to go back and do it all over again, I wouldn’t change one painful, gut-wrenching, dangerous, terrifying moment of what I’ve been through over the past two weeks.

  Even knowing it meant the death of me, I’d go through it all over again, just for him.

  Little Bird

  Two Weeks Earlier

  “Happy Birthday, sleepy head.”

  I pulled my pillow over my head, trying to ignore my roommate, Katy, but I should have known better. She was not one to give up easily when she set her mind to something.

  “Get up,” she called in that sing-song morning voice I hated and loved at the same time. “I made you breakfast and everything.”

  I peered out from under the pillow, one eye open. “Chocolate chip pancakes?”

  She raised an eyebrow and tilted her head to the side. “Of course.”

  “With maple syrup?”

  “I even made a Starbucks run this morning and got you a Caramel Macchiato,” she said. “You’re all set to go into a sugar coma before your first class of the day.”

  I rolled over and grabbed her hand, bringing it up to my lips in a quick kiss. “I don’t deserve you,” I said.

  “You deserve so much better,” she said. Her mouth twisted into a frown, and I knew she was thinking about my mother.

  Katy had been my best friend for as long as I could remember and I knew that look. She was feeling guilty because on her twenty-first birthday, a month earlier, her mother had shown up in a limousine to take her for tapas at Mercat.

  My mother, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found. She disappeared on my eighteenth birthday, three years ago, without so much as a fuck-you.

  “Don’t give me your guilty face,” I said. “I don’t want pity pancakes.”

  She rolled her eyes. “These are not pity pancakes. They’re friendship, happy twenty-first birthday pancakes and they were made with love,” she said. She smacked my bare thigh. “Now get your ass out of bed before it gets cold.”

  I groaned and forced myself out from under the warm covers. Twenty-one. A major milestone in the lives of Americans everywhere, but I wasn’t any more excited about this birthday than any of the twenty that had come before. Not that I could remember every single one, but you get the point.

  I had already been drinking with a fake ID for the past two years, so the idea of going out to a bar didn’t excite me. And the idea of being one year older was more terrifying than anything else. One year older meant one year closer to graduating and having to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.

  But the smell of pancakes and coffee cheered me up.

  Katy had set up our breakfast for two on the small bar that separated our tiny living room from our even tinier kitchen. Beside my plate, there was also a long silver box with a dark red card on top.

  “What’s this?” I asked, eyeing her. We never exchanged gifts. Mostly because I could never afford it and she lived in constant guilt about being rich. “Katy, what did you do?”

  She shook her head and sat down, taking a bite of pancake. “It wasn’t me, I swear. Someone delivered them while I was out getting the coffee. They were waiting by the door when I got home,” she said. “Have you been seeing someone new?”

  This was such a ridiculous question that I didn’t even justify it with an answer. She should have known better.

  I was never seeing anyone new. Or old for that matter. I didn’t believe in relationships and no matter how many times Katy tried to set me up, nothing ever stuck.

  I stared at the box as I took my first bites of birthday pancakes. I couldn’t even think of one person who would have sent me flowers. I had no family. No close friends outside of Katy. I had never been in a serious relationship.

  And nothing good could come of birthday flowers from a stranger.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked.

  I eyed the silver box, a strange feeling fluttering in my stomach. “Eventually,” I mumbled, mouth half full. “Maybe.”

  She grabbed the card off the top and waved it in my face. “Just see who it’s from. Maybe you have a secret admirer.”

  I set my fork down and swallowed, hesitating. Part of me wanted to dump them, unopened, into the trash.

  But my curiosity got the better of me. I lifted the silver lid off the box. Inside, nestled in black tissue paper, were the strangest, most beautiful black roses. I'd never seen anything like them, but they were exactly my taste. Rare and dark.

  I bit my lip and shifted in my chair.

 
My hand trembled as I took the red envelope from Katy and tore it open. The paper was heavy. Expensive and smooth to the touch.

  Inside, there was a short note written in large, swoopy black letters.

  Happy Birthday, Little Bird

  Don't you think it's time you learned to spread your wings?

  VENOM, Hubbard Street, Chicago

  My stomach twisted at those two handwritten words near the top of the card.

  Little Bird.

  It was what my mother had always called me.

  Catch-22

  I couldn't get my mind off those black roses. I walked around the whole day with the strangest feeling that someone was watching my every move.

  I had become so paranoid that I nearly made some freshman piss his pants in the hallway of the student center. I thought he was following me. Apparently, he was just lost.

  I didn't like the thought of someone sending me flowers and knowing my birthday and my mother's pet name for me. It had completely unnerved me, which I also hated because I figured that was probably the point of someone sending me black roses in the first place. By the time I met Katy for coffee after our last class of the day, I was a complete mess.

  “I know you don't want to hear this, but what if the roses are from your mom?” Her forehead wrinkled as she said it, as if she half expected me to haul off and punch her in the face for even suggesting it.

  The truth was, I had already considered that myself. Considered it and dismissed it. “She would never send me something so expensive,” I said. I pulled the note out of my backpack where I had stuck it inside my Economics book. “Black roses can't be cheap and did you feel this paper? No, someone spent some money on this. Definitely not my mother.”

  “What does this bottom part mean?” she asked. “What's Venom?”

  “I'm not sure, but Hubbard is just south of here. I think this is close to the House of Blues,” I said. “There are a lot of clubs and bars down there. Maybe Venom is a bar.”

  She started to speak, but I held my hand up, knowing what she was about to suggest.

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  “But—”

  “No.” I slid the card back inside my book and pulled out a copy of today's newspaper. “I've actually been thinking maybe I'll stay in tonight. I don't really have the money to go out, anyway. I need to find a new job. Do you want to order pizza or something instead?”

  I opened the paper and skimmed the help-wanted ads looking for something close to campus. I'd been working at a twenty-four hour diner a couple of blocks north of our dorm for the past six months, but I'd had the privilege of being fired two days earlier.

  It wasn't even my fault. One of my labs ran long and there was no way to sneak out without getting slammed with another absence. As much as I couldn't afford to lose my job, I definitely couldn't afford another absence in that class.

  I was barely hanging onto my grades as it was. I had to maintain at least a B average to keep my financial aid and just one month into the first semester of my Senior year, I was already at risk of getting a C in two classes.

  Of course, with my life, it was always a Catch-22. I was behind on my grades because I had to work nearly full-time to afford tuition and basics like, you know, food. But I was late for work because of class. Keeping things balanced was a nightmare and some days I felt more like a professional juggler than a college student. I resented people like Katy who didn't have to work at all. But I'd been making this work. Three long years of busting my ass to put myself through school all on my own. I wasn't about to watch it all go down the drain with less than a year left.

  I needed to find another job.

  “Pizza, are you kidding me?” she asked. “Seriously, what do you want to do? I told Jennifer and Ash I'd text them as soon as I knew where we were meeting up.”

  “I'm not going out,” I said, burying my head deeper in the paper. Usually I was the first one up for a good time, but those roses had left me with a churning stomach. Besides, I was on the cusp of poverty.

  Katy slammed her hand down on my newspaper and stared at me until I lifted my eyes to hers. “You can look for a job tomorrow,” she said. When I reached for the paper, she pulled it farther out of my reach and stuffed it in her purse. “Please. Just for one night, let's go out and have some fun, okay? I need this.”

  I leaned back against my chair. “Well, as long as it's all about you,” I said. “That really takes the pressure off.”

  She rolled her eyes and downed the rest of her coffee. “You know what I meant,” she said. “We've all been looking forward to taking you out tonight. It's going to be fun, I promise. Just give me one night. Let's let go of the stress of jobs and school and guys and all that bullshit and just have fun, okay? You deserve it. You've been working so hard lately. It'll be good for you.”

  I sucked a deep breath in through my nose. I knew she was right. I really did need this. I was no fun when I was stressed and ever since the semester started, I'd been a big old ball of stress twenty-four-seven. Being without money and having no one to rely on sucked.

  “I don't have any money,” I said.

  “It's your birthday. We'll take care of everything. All you need to bring is you. Besides, you'll get a job. You always do.”

  I could see the sympathy in her eyes, but I also knew she didn't truly understand what I was going through. She'd never had to work a day in her life, and if she ever needed money, all she had to do was call her mom. She had no idea how lucky she really was.

  “Come out with us,” she said, taking my hands in hers. “I'm begging you. We don't have to go to that Venom place if you don't want to. We'll go to Smart Bar or something. I promise, we'll make it a night you'll never forget.”

  I finally gave in and agreed to go out, not knowing at the time just how much that night would live up to her promise.

  Lying To Myself

  Four hours later, I had managed to squeeze myself into my tightest pair of jeans and a plain white tank top. I couldn’t afford fancy clothes, so instead I went with tight and sexy.

  I was relatively tall at five foot eight, but I still loved to wear super high heels. The higher the better. I’d managed to snag a pair of used white Christian Louboutin knock-offs at a thrift shop downtown a few weeks ago and I proudly pulled them on tonight, instantly growing three inches taller. The black rose lace overlay on the shoes gave me chills. It was almost as if I could feel fate tapping on my shoulder.

  “Wow, you look hot,” Katy said when I walked out. She had already started drinking and her face was flushed.

  I twirled, my long black hair flying up around my face. “Better than my diner uniform, eh?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Anything is better than that hideous thing,” she said. “Plus, no hat. Win, win.”

  “You ready to go?” I asked.

  She wore a skimpy black dress that showed off her curves. Unlike me, she was petite at five-foot-four.

  “Yes. I just need to grab my ID.”

  “Okay, me too,” I said. I walked back in my room to grab my license and the last of my cash, just in case. As I pulled them out of my top drawer, a tattered picture fluttered to the floor and my heart sank.

  I should have just left it where it was, but what can I say? Sometimes I can be a real glutton for punishment.

  I squatted down to pick up the folded picture. It was worn thin from folding and unfolding and being carried in pockets and wallets for years, but the smiles on our faces were still visible despite the creases.

  This was one of the only pictures I had of my mom and me. I had a clearer, less messed up version on my computer, but in a rare not-drunk-or-messed-up moment, my mom had been sweet enough to actually have this one printed out for me. As much as I wanted to hate her for all she’d done to me, looking at this picture of us together still brought a smile to my face.

  And tears to my eyes.

  God, I missed her so much.

  Three years ago today she had vanis
hed from my life without a word. No note or text. No phone call. Nothing. She just packed up all her stuff and took off, as if she’d been counting the days until my eighteenth birthday so she could abandon me without taking any grief for it from child services.

  She’d broken my heart more times than I could count, but none of it compared to the brutal beating my heart took when she left.

  At first, I’d told myself she was coming back. She’d just gone on a bender somewhere, too drunk to come home or too high to remember her own address. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d done something like that, right?

  But after a month had gone by, the truth had started to sink in. I tried calling the police but they weren’t interested in tracking down a woman like my mother. She was a grown woman, free to come and go as she pleased. There was no sign of a struggle or hints of foul play, so what could they do?

  They told me they’d look into it, but that was the last I ever heard from them.

  It was as if she’d simply disappeared into thin air.

  Some birthday present.

  “You coming?” Katy yelled from the other room.

  I took a deep breath and stuffed my sorrow back down in my gut where it belonged.

  She isn’t worth my tears.

  It was a lie I’d told myself a thousand times, but sometimes lying to myself was the only thing that allowed me to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  “Yep, be there in a second,” I said.

  I refolded the picture and stuffed it back into the drawer, then headed out to celebrate.

  Tear-free.

  True Friends

  “Here’s to twenty-one effing years,” Katy shouted. She lifted two shots off the top of the bar and handed one to me, then raised her hand high into the air with a whoop.