Blood Ties (NaNoWriMo 2015)

Fifty

"I'm sorry?" I repeated, looking at the woman who looked perfectly serious to me.

"You need to come with me," she repeated. "Right now, it is urgent." Her voice was still even and calm and she even offered a hand to help me up.

"I think I'll just stay here," I told her. "I don't make it a habit to go off with strangers."

"I am no stranger," the woman replied. "I was sent by a friend of yours."

I'd have remembered a friend that had a friend who dressed like that. "I don't recall your name ever being mentioned."

The woman loomed over me, dark green eyes misting over and turning white. My blood turned cold as I recalled the night Archie dragged me down into the temple. I was not eager to repeat that performance again. "Alright!" I said, forcing cheer into my voice. "Lead the way, wherever that happens to be."

The woman, priestess, I realized nodded to me and her full mouth pulled up into a soft smile. "Good, follow me." I did as I was told and we got some strange looks as we moved, but I held my head up and ignored them. This would have been far worse had she been carrying me over her shoulder like Archie did.

"What are you doing?" I asked as we left the room and she lead me into the kitchen. It wasn't devoid of people, but it certainly wasn't bustling like a beehive either.

The priestess ignored me. "This will do," she grabbed my arm, pulling me towards a stainless steel countertop and sink. "Be still," she bent down, grabbing a steel mixing bowl and began to chant in the same unfamiliar words I remembered Archie using.

I didn't try to ask what she was doing, I knew she would not answer me. Her green eyes whitened further, barely any of the vivid shade visible now. She pulled the skirt, for lack of a better word, up her leg and grabbed a gold knife from the sheath strapped to her thigh. Chanting still, I waited for her to cut open her arm, as I'd seen Archie do, but that did not happen. She reached out, hand gripping my forearm and pinning it down. Before I could even utter a word, the tip of the blade sliced open my arm, from my wrist to elbow.

"Ow!" I growled, dropping every cussword I knew. "What the fuck are you doing?"

No answer, turning her attention to the bowl, she jerked the knife towards it, spraying the inside with droplets of blood. She set the knife in the bowl and turned on the faucet, chanting still and let some of the water trickle into the bowl. It turned pastel pink before a swirling mist formed above it. It glowed sliver and then the priestess looked from it to me, any color in her eyes now gone. She uttered one word, I didn't know what it meant, but I recognized the sounds enough to place a language, Latin. "Praedico," and then the mist rolled off the bloody water and swirled around my head like my own personal storm cloud.

Pressure built up behind my eyes, my mouth tasted like tinfoil and I screamed as I fell to the ground. I wanted to ask what she'd done to me! Why had she- Richard, she was in league with Richard! That was my first thought. Why had I been stupid enough to go some place alone with a stranger? I screamed again, and the pressure came to an all time high, I thought my head would explode. Then nothing, nothing at all.

***

Everything was coming to me in flashes, brilliant and brief flashes. Moving fast like I was passing them by in a train, enough to catch a glimpse, but not enough for details.

Damon's mouth trailing along my collar bone, the air around us stiflingly hot and humid. A female walking towards me, dressed in white. "You're safe now," and then the smell of burning flesh, screams that tore at my eardrums and ripped my heart out. Something hot and salty in my mouth, choking me, fire flaring up in my ribs.