Sacrifice Me: The Darkness (Episode 3) Read Free

colder, warmth leaving me as if his very touch
was draining my body of its will to live. My knees went weak and my
head felt fuzzy.
    “Don’t touch me,” I said, my
voice trembling.
    “Or you’ll what?” he asked,
amused.
    Behind me, Rend’s voice came out as a low
growl. “Or I’ll rip your goddamned arms off,” he
said. “Let her go.”
    The dark man’s body slid off me like a
shadow, more cloud than solid form.
    I backed toward Rend’s voice. The door to
this room hadn’t even opened. How had he gotten inside?
    Rend extended his hand and an orb of light formed
against the darkness, illuminating a long hallway instead of a room
like I’d expected. He moved in front of me, putting himself
between me and the dark man.
    “You aren’t welcome here, Fallon.”
Rend said. “You know that.”
    “You cannot deny me entrance to this place,”
the dark man said. He didn’t seem afraid despite the conviction
in Rend’s voice. “You and my master have an agreement,
remember? I’m sure he would be happy to refresh your memory, if
need be.”
    It wasn’t lost on me that suddenly this
man’s associate had been upgraded to his master.
    Rend dropped his hand, but the orb continued to
float in the air in front of him. “Maybe your master is the one
who needs reminding,” Rend said. “The witches who work
here are under my protection. He has no right to them, and he can’t
step foot into my club.”
    “The devil’s in the details, my
friend,” the dark man said. “This girl is special. For
him, she’s worth breaking a few rules. Even your rules. I’ll
go for now, but you can’t stop this, Rend. You would do well to
politely step out of my master’s way. You wouldn’t want
to risk everything you’ve built here, would you?”
    “Get the hell out of my club,” Rend
said, raising his voice.
    The dark man lowered his head in a bow, then
disintegrated into black smoke and shadows.
His Words
    Rend turned to me, and I threw my arms around him,
my entire body trembling against him. He held me close until I’d
calmed down enough to untangle myself from him.
    “Who was that?” I asked.
    “His name is Fallon,” he said.
    His face was all hard angles in the dim light of
his glowing orb.
    “Franki, I’m trying to be very patient
and understanding here, because I know you’ve been through some
shit over the past few days, but my patience is running thin,”
he said. His voice was calm and even, but his muscles were tense.
    I pulled away, startled. Was he seriously
reprimanding me after what I’d just been through?
    “Why would you follow him back here?”
he asked, some of his anger leaking into his tone. “After
everything that happened the other night, why would you follow
another stranger into a dark hallway, out of view from me and the
rest of the staff?”
    I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. It was a fair
question. How did you explain to someone like him that sometimes I
was too stubborn to be smart?
    “I looked for you,” I said. “I
felt him watching me again, just like the other night. But you
weren’t at the bar, so I figured you were behind the curtain.”
    “Why didn’t you come back there to
talk to me, then?”
    “I was going to,” I said. “I was
on my way back there when this guy appeared out of nowhere. He
blocked my way, and I knew the second I looked at him that he was the
one. He said things to me. He threatened me.”
    “So you thought it would be a good idea to
go with him into a dark, secluded place?”
    “Hey, I didn’t know this was a dark,
secluded place,” I said, gripping my arms, still shivering a
little.
    Rend shrugged out of his black jacket and put it
around my shoulders. I mumbled a thank you and slipped my arms
inside, inhaling the scent of him and wishing it didn’t send a
wave of desire through me.
    “Azure told you this door was off limits,
right? Staff isn’t allowed back here in the first place and you
knew that. You better start explaining yourself,