Chapter 2

The words continued to pour from my mouth, but under the girl's clear, wide eyes, I wasn't sure I meant them. She was just a girl - nothing special, I tried to tell myself. This had to be done to protect us from the Berkano vampires, vicious monsters who preyed on witches and humans.

I snatched her thin, bony arm and yanked her to where I'd been standing behind the noose, desperately trying not to think. The rope didn't feel real against my palm when I looped it around her neck or when I tightened the hangman's knot. It felt as if I were pantomiming inside an empty room.

She watched my every move, perfectly still except the tears tracking down her dirtied cheeks. "Was that you who was singing?"

Her raw, breathy voice scraped goose bumps up my arms. It sounded as if she hadn't talked in a long time, like her throat had dulled from neglect.

I blinked down at her. How long had it been since she'd spoken? She seemed older than her size and unnaturally quiet compared to the unholy terrors about her age who lived in the church. The Rift, which was the cause of the division between witches and vampires, was said to have happened on a Sunday, a sacred day. I glanced down at her stained dress and shoes. A church day. But that had been almost twenty years ago.

"Meet your salvation," I whispered, but it was directed to her and not the rest of the church.

I floated away from her toward the end of the rope that would be her undoing. This little girl, this survivor, had more courage than I did. I wound the rope around my fist, not really seeing it, then wandered my gaze over the sea of about a hundred people watching me expectantly, not really seeing them, either. They depended on me for their safety. I couldn't risk their lives to save one girl's. That wasn't fair to them.

As soon as I tugged at the rope behind the pulpit, the girl's heels lifted off the ground. Still, she didn't make a sound. She just watched me with eyes the color of a storm-filled sky, something I had only seen pictures of in books. I pulled tighter until the tips of her church-going shoes dug half circles into the carpet.

An annoyed cough sounded from the first pew, and I didn't even have to look over to see that it had been High Witch Allison. Dad had always made the sacrifice quick, and I was drawing it out inch by slow inch. I wished I could cover the girl's head with the sack, but that wasn't part of the ritual.

With a deep breath, I glanced again at the balcony. Hendry was gone, likely because he expected me to fuck up.

I jerked the rope hard. The girl's feet lifted high in the air. Her legs kicked, her face turned crimson, and her eyes bugged. I was killing her. A little girl who had just as much right to live as the rest of the congregation, and I was killing her. Who was the vicious monster now? The Berkano? Or me?

Something clicked at the back of my throat in time to the little girl's jerks and spasms. A scream, I realized too late, one that crawled over my tongue with monstrous claws and erupted in a shattering, "No!"

I released the rope. The girl plummeted to the carpet, and the rest of the world blurred past as I dashed toward her and scooped her up in my arms. Without missing a step, I plowed around the second pulpit on the other side of the dais and then behind the piano. We could cut through the hallway behind the baptismal into the choir room and then...what? Outside? The Berkano were likely flocking here because of my botched sacrifice.

The piano player stood when I passed, her jaw dropped to her chest, and the top edge of her bench knocked into my kneecap. Hard. The pain brought reality rushing back in a symphony of shouts, shifting gears, and the heavy thud, thud, thud of steel beams falling into place to keep us all locked in one room in case of an emergency. Which this was.

I hugged the girl tighter and ran harder. Before I slipped into the hallway, something pounded the ceiling hard enough to flicker the overhead lights. The congregation cried out, their voices panicked. The Berkano vampires were here. They knew what I'd done, and there wasn't any place we could go. I had about as much chance of survival outside as I did in here because footsteps pounded after me.

The narrow hallway was dark, but I didn't dare flip on the lights. I went by feel alone. As soon as my foot touched the slight buckle in the tiles, I flashed my right hand out to the side, careful to keep hold of the girl with the rest of my arm. My knuckles scraped a doorknob, and I turned it and shouldered my way inside. I leaned us against it to close it again with barely a click. Two breaths later, footsteps thudded past, punctuated with loud wheezes. That was Kit, running when he shouldn't because of his asthma. But more would be coming.

Above our heads, a terrible screeching chased a shudder down my back, followed by another. And another.

The little girl trembled in my arms, offering the smallest bit of comfort that I wasn't alone with my fear. We couldn't stay in here because there was nowhere else to go in the foot of space we shared. Junk crowded this room in almost a completely solid wall from floor to ceiling. What to do?

Before an idea could form, the door at my back burst inward, and all the air in my lungs flushed out.