Page 4 of Hidden Sacrifice
I marveled at how quickly my little fox had picked up the vampire-fighting style. She flipped from one side of the trees to the other, making lightning-quick attacks before disappearing again as she turned into a literal shadow. Demons were nowhere near as fast, and we could only cloak in the shadows. Her time in the vampire realm was beneficial to her.
It didn’t take long before Jasper and I were facing off against the vampires, at first one-on-one, but eventually, we worked up to team practices. Demons against vampires always ended with a demon win. Recently, Mor insisted we mix the teams into one demon, one vampire. Learn how to move with each other’s powers. Jax never took part, but I felt him hiding in the shadows, watching, every time.
Sleeping arrangements were unspoken, everyone in the same room. Jace cuddled up against me every night, sandwiching me against Mor. Sometimes, he even threw his leg around me in the middle of the night.
We spent every day and every night together. We needed to get out.
“Let’s go on a recon assignment to the human realm. Scope out the haunted house and all. We can make a date out of it,” I said over breakfast.
What do you mean my wings are different colors?I smacked the side of my head sharply. I did not have the energy to deal with the disembodied voices in my head right now.
Mor pulled her fangs from my arm, wiping the excess off her face as she looked up at me. Her eyes lit up, and she bounced with excitement. I had felt the waves of boredom suffocating everyone in here. Something needed to be done before monotony turned into drama. Demons do it far too often.
“Sounds good,” Jasper said, putting his tablet down.
“I have potions for Mor from Aggie,” Jax said, rummaging around in the backpack he brought.
“Ugh, I hate that stuff. We aren’t going anywhere near a state I’ve lived in; can’t I just be me?”
“I’m afraid not, my fox. Can’t have anyone seeing you or taking a picture of you.” I brought one of my knives out and slashed a deep cut into the palm of my hand. Tipping the blood into my mostly empty glass of poison. “Drink it, and then you can wash it down with this.” Shaking the glass back and forth, I watched as the toxic contents swirled precariously close to the rim.
Mor drank the vial Jax handed her in a single gulp, before grabbing the glass filled with my blood to wash it down. Her mouth scrunched up as she downed the spell, looking like she had just sucked on a lemon. After drinking my blood, the look on her face told me that it was a suitable chaser.
“If you focus on what you want to look like, you can pick your form while the spell sets,” Jax told her, which likely would have been more appropriate to say to her the first time she had taken it.
It almost looked like black paint suddenly dropped on her head as her hair turned dark as night. Her brilliant green eyes stayed the same, but her hair shifted into blunt bangs. I watched her stretch, and her body seemed to elongate. If I concentrated, I could see past the illusion. She wasn’t physically taller.
“There, I’m at least five inches taller and have black hair; no one will be able to recognize me.”
She still looked like my fox. I liked the dark hair on her.
“Alright, if everyone is ready, let’s go,” Jasper said, getting up from the table, making the legs of the chair squeal as they slid across the floor.
I donned my illusion to a more mundane look, changing my runes into something that resembled tattoos, while also covering my pointed ears. I knew Jasper and Jax were doing the same as well.
“Here,” Mor said, handing me a sweatshirt. “Vampire speed,” she said with a grin, wiggling her eyebrows at my confusion. She was fucking fast.
“We go in, stick to the shadows, and watch the house until nightfall. I want notes on every person that enters or leaves the house.” Jax began his recon speech.
“Where is the house again?” Mor asked with clear boredom. Only Jax could take something fun and suck the joy from it. It was a gift.
“Wateree, South Carolina.”
Recon assignments are vital for things like this. Arriving at our destination, we saw a single rundown manor that no one had lived in for decades. The next house was miles down the road. We wouldn’t need to sit and watch the humans. There weren’t any around.
“Does that mean we can go in and see if any ghosties come out?” Mor asked as soon as the haunted manor came into view. Excitement rolled off her. She had come a long way from the tiny little pet I saw through a window.
“The years in the notation must be wrong. If there is a ghost in there, it’s had a lot of time to get powerful. We can’t just run in there,” Jax said slowly. His emotions were running all over the place when it came to her. What he needed was some time alone with Mor.
“Fox, fly in a bird with me.” I sat down on the ground and pulled Mor down with me, cuddling her back into my chest. We weren’t going entirely into the birds, but if we wanted to get close enough to sense for other souls, we needed to have quite a bit of pull. I snagged a nearby bird and felt Mor near me as a raven swooped next to me.
“Stay close, little fox, and keep your shield up. We want to get close enough to sense if there is something there.” I muttered, knowing my natural lips were whispering into her ear. It wasn’t easy to keep partially in my body while mostly out.
“I’m not going anywhere without you,”she whispered back into my mind.
I headed for the roof of the building, checking from the top down. We circled the area before dropping to the next floor of the house, getting near to the windows. Nothing stirred inside the dusty manor, and I couldn’t sense a single soul.
I returned to my body, loving the feeling of Mor cradled in my arms. I squeezed her, but her body didn’t respond.
