Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
“Mulberries,” I whisper and look up at the moon.
It’s one thing to think you’re being noble and heroically sacrificing yourself for the greater good.
It’s another thing entirely when your plan goes horribly awry and you find yourself tied down in the middle of a pentagram and runes while a group of mages sings show tunes to pass the time while they sacrifice you.
Okay, that’s not all the truth. I don’t think it’s show tunes they’re singing.
Although, if they are, it’s not like I would know.
I was only introduced to what a show tune was last week when there was a town viewing of The Sound of Music.
I wasn’t sure what I thought about musicals, but if they all had leads that were half as dashing as Captain Georg von Trapp, then I was a show tune gal.
“The end is near. Oh fearsome savior, Jaakobah the Destroyer, we sing to you. Hear our plea, that all that look on thee would tremble and fear. We sing the end is near!”
“It had to be a doomsday cult, didn’t it?
You all couldn’t have worshipped something like a fluffy bunny?
It had to be a demon destroyer?” I pull at my restraints but they hold tight.
That doesn’t stop me from kicking at a mage that gets too close.
Whoever sent these mages isn’t singing about the end of summer.
I know cults and this is a cult, and when cults sing about the end it’s never good for the girl they call The Chosen One.
Buffy.
I turn my head and try to look through the dancing mages. I can’t see much from where I’m laying but I’m sure she’s about to burst through the trees to rescue me. Any second now. Yup, any second now.
The head mage pulls out a horn and blows on it which just sends the dancing mages into a frenzy. They start moving faster and faster around me as they sing.
“Buffy, please,” I whisper. “Where are you?”
Did Charlie get to her in time? Why did she trust someone like Roy and his lackeys?
I had thought the cult members that hadn’t fallen in line with the new order were liabilities.
I’d wanted them gone even if that meant forcing my own parents out into a world they didn’t know, but that was because I knew people didn’t change.
Not my parents, not the man I almost married, no one and nothing would change, not when they thought they could get back what they lost. But Buffy was kinder, she always had been, my sweet best friend trusted too easily, loved so quickly, but that was what made her Buffy.
If she didn’t get here in time she was going to blame herself for this.
I knew she was. I take a deep breath and then another to stay calm.
Please, please, please let Charlie have made it to her first. All around me the mages keep singing, and now that the horn has been added to the mix some of them are even feeling spry enough to add a little deranged shimmy.
“Your dancing sucks,” I tell a mage that’s just done a spin. “Yours too,” I add to the one closest to me. They look at me like I kicked her puppy and that makes me feel a little better.
“Bring me the knife!” The head mage barks out.
“Gladly.” The mage I just insulted pulls a knife out from their robes.
It’s wicked looking. The handle curves in, like a horn, and the blade isn’t just one but two.
There’s two damn blades on this thing? I don’t miss the smug look they give me as they step over to the head mage but I don’t let them see I’m scared about the knife.
They were going to sacrifice me anyways, right?
And besides, last time I didn’t know but this time I do, and in all the time I was held by the Founders and Buffy searched for us, I always wished I’d done more when Roy pulled that knife on me.
I’d spent hours wishing I hadn’t sobbed and begged when they’d dragged us away, that I’d been braver and not scared when I realized what was really happening.
I’d wished I had fought harder. That I’d been stronger.
“Give ‘em hell, Meadow.”
I’d wished exactly to do that, hadn’t I? No time like the present to make amends for the past.
“Can we get a move on?” I ask.
“What, you have somewhere else to be?” The mage snaps back at me.
“As a matter-of-fact, I do, and even if I didn’t, I’d sacrifice myself to not listen to your stupid singing all night. Just get on with it.”
He stops advancing and raises a hand to point at me. “You insolent girl. How can The Chosen One be so defiant? This is what you were always meant for.”
That’s me. Meadow. Always meant to die by some psychopath with a god complex and a kink for demons.
“Yeah, what else is new?” I spit at the head mage when he approaches. The mages in a circle around us gasp and whisper at the act of defiance.
“You're a nasty girl,” he mutters and points the knife at me. “A most unworthy offering to our Lord of War and Strife.”
“Oh no. Really? What happened to all the sweet talking from before? I’m not The Chosen One anymore?”
He slashes at the air with the knife. “The gods and powers that be act in mysterious ways. You are still The Chosen One, despite your barbed tongue. You are the perfect vessel to receive our Lord, make no mistake you impetuous woman. Your life is forfeit now and forever.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before.”
“You make light of our most holy act!”
“Listen, fellas, when you’ve been sacrificed once already it kind of loses its wow factor the second go around.” I settle back into the dirt and look away from him and up to the sky. I’d rather look at the moon and stars than him. “Just do what you need to do and zip it.”
Above me the stars swirl and I know it’s my fear that’s making the sky move the way it is.
I can be afraid. That’s perfectly normal but I won’t show these losers that I’m scared.
The night sky spins again around me and this night melds into the last time I was almost sacrificed.
I can see the stone circle, the Founders’ Circle, the way the moon hung heavy and low in the sky is much like tonight.
It’s all so much the same that when the head mage goes on talking, I don’t hear him.
I hear Mister O’Hare’s voice. The head of the Founders, the man that had made certain my fate was sealed as a Blossom.
I don’t know anything about this head mage, or their doomsday show tune cult, or what they’re calling forth. I also don’t care.
The only thing I care about is my friends, so I think about them.
I imagine what I want to have happen. Manifesting is what Nina called it I think.
I manifest Charlie finding Buffy in time and stopping her before she walks into a trap.
I manifest Roy getting kicked out of Sweet Tooth and I manifest Buffy beating the brakes off these mages.
None of that happens though.
What does happen is the head mage lifts the knife high in the sky. The flash of metal comes into my field of vision even though I’m trying my best not to look at it.
“Accept this offering, Lord of War, Bringer of Chaos. Jaakobah the Destroyer!” I should be thinking of a way to get out of this, maybe considering the pros and cons of a getaway by rolling away versus just laying here and being sacrificed but I’m not.
The ground beneath me moves. At first I think it’s like the stars that still dance above me courtesy of my anxiety, but when the ground shakes again with a rumble that genuinely makes my teeth clatter together I know it’s not in my head.
It’s real. The ground is shaking.
“Jaakobah!” The mage yells. “We invoke thee! We call you forth now.”
There’s a low growl and the ground trembles. I turn my head to look in the direction of the growl, because I know exactly where it came from.
The boulder.
I gasp when I see the boulder. It’s glowing.
Through the crevice a light shines but it’s not just there, it’s all around it.
Under it, around it, the light is golden and warm, it illuminates every crack in the rock.
It looks like when I blasted it with my magic but the light is so much warmer than the silvery hue of my magic.
A spiderweb canopy of golden light spiderwebs out across the rock and shines out into the night like the sun.
Around me, mages drop to their knees and shield their faces while I keep staring.
The light burns my eyes but I don’t look away.
If that’s Jaakobah then he’s going to kill me. I’m not going to turn my face from it. I’m going to see it coming. I refuse to be scared.
“We invoke thee through this most holy offering. Come forth and accept your bride.” The head mage comes closer, he brings the knife down so that’s hovering above my chest. All it would take is a jab from him to have it pierce my heart.
I ignore the knife and keep looking at the bright and shining rock.
I should be scared but I’m not. The knowing that I had in my dreams is here now.
“Even if you left, the dreams would plague you still…”
The demon, Jaako-lantern or whatever it is, was right.
My dreams do plague me just like they always do but I don’t fight it now.
I let it come to me and settle. I relax in my bonds and stare unblinking into the light ahead of me.
My eyes start to burn and water. It’s not just a matter of wanting to see my end that keeps me staring. I want to look now.
I have to.
“Accept Jaakobah the Destroyer or perish.” The mage’s knife drops closer, the tip of the double blades slices through my shirt and I feel the cool metal of the blades press to my skin. “Now, which will it be Bride of the Hell Maw? Do you accept our Lord of War and Chaos?”
A tear slides out of the corner of my eyes and then another joins it. My tears hit the dusty earth and I feel the ground shake. Around me mages moan in fear and cower low to the ground, the ones that don’t stumble and fall from the force of the quaking ground.
The head mage stays steady. He doesn’t notice the world around us and neither do I. “Will you be his anchor in this life and in the next? Do you accept Jaakobah?”
“I do,” I whisper. Everything goes still for a second, even the wind stops blowing. Silence heavy and whole falls down around us. The mage pushes the knife down and everything goes white.