Page 35 of Virgin Sacrifice

I raced through campus. The cobblestone paths and concrete sidewalks that wove between the manicured lawns and gardens of the main campus quickly gave way to unpaved trails that cut through grassy fields before disappearing into the dense woods that surrounded Hollow Oak to the northeast.

My chest ached and my heart pounded furiously inside me as I sprinted through the trees. Adrenaline surged through me even as my lungs cried out for oxygen—I couldn’t allow myself to slow down. Running was my only chance of escape.

I ran, as fast as I possibly could, from Locke Blackwell. From Alister and Nixon. I ran from the growing sense that something dark and malevolent was chasing after me, the promise of my suffering on their lips. I ran from all my monsters, both past and present, who consumed my thoughts and haunted my dreams.

When Mami first rescued me, we struggled together. Her with the guilt of having left me with my father, and me with the trauma of what I had endured at his hands. Therapy had never been an option. Even if we could have afforded it, we couldn’t risk anyone finding out what Mami had done.

In the beginning, we muddled through it together, just the two of us.

She poured herself into empowering me, empowering herself, to take back what we had lost. She began by teaching me Spanish, insisting it was the first step in connecting me with the parts of myself my father had denied. Next, she shared her love and knowledge of plants, of their many different uses in medicine. She taught me what she knew as a nurse about the fine line between life and death so that I would never have to fear it again. When I grew older, she coached me through her rituals, sharing with me the power of beauty, of wearing a mask.

Death is inevitable, life is the contradiction.

Time passed and her work started to pick up. It felt like she was on the road more and more. I don’t know if she threw herself into it to cope or if it was just her way of taking control of our lives, but I was increasingly alone as a result.

All the skills and knowledge Mami passed on to me helped to heal me and make me strong. But I needed more. I could only channel so much of the chaotic energy inside me into school.

I needed my own rituals. So, I took up running, among other things.

Over time, I built up my speed and stamina, and I was decent enough these days. I wouldn’t make the cross-country team or anything like that, but my thick thighs could carry me pretty swiftly for a good hour or more.

I wasn’t sure exactly what it was about running that soothed my troubled mind. Maybe it was because I could pretend that I could finally escape the way I never could as a child. Maybe it was just that the endorphins soothed my central nervous system in a way nothing else could.

Regardless, it was one of my coping mechanisms of choice, and since I had come to Hollow Oak, I found myself in the woods often enough that I had learned the many trails that wove through them like the back of my hand.

My encounter with Locke had once again left me agitated and unsure, even days later. At the same time, I could feel the heavy weight of the twins’ eyes on my back with increasing frequency. The unease I had initially felt at the attention of the Blackwell men was slowly transforming into an obsession.

I was starting to wonder if there was more to Autumn’s rumors about them than I had initially assumed. I couldn’t say exactly what it was that changed my mind, but it was becoming clear that the Blackwells were more than capable of having blood on their hands.

Two days ago, I found a heart sticker on the bench outside Jackson College House, and this afternoon, I found another one inconspicuously stuck on the frame of the door to my Intro to Japanese classroom. In any other life, I might have dismissed it as a coincidence. But after what I had survived, I had to be smarter than that. I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that it was the Blackwells who were targeting me.

What I couldn’t figure out was why. They hadn’t uncovered Mami’s and my secret. There was no way Locke wouldn’t have used it if they had. But there was no denying that I was on their radar, and it was a decidedly unfortunate thing.

At least the twins didn’t follow me out here, and I could run in peace, soaking up the beauty of the dense woods that surrounded me. Out here, the forest included maples and hemlocks, but it was the massive red oaks, with their wild, twisted branches, that gave the woods an almost wicked feeling.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Although Frost’s words were written for a snowy evening, they felt right for the magnificently ominous woods that surrounded me. Some of the trees were older than the university itself, and I could only imagine what crimes they had silently witnessed over the years. I liked to believe that, like a quiet stranger, the woods held more dark secrets than most of us could conceive of.

According to the university historians, Hollow Oak’s namesake tree was a magnificent red oak that had stood in the northwest corner of the main quad. The mighty giant had been felled by lightning in 1986, and today, a small sculptural oak stump, complete with a commemorative plaque detailing its storied history, stood in its place. As the plaque would tell it, long before the university was founded, the large tree had been a meeting place for the locals to gather to share news or readings. Folks would meet to read scripture, to announce a birth or a death or a wedding. It was said that when the Blackwell family came to colonize the lands in the mid-1700s, they founded the university around that very same tree.

It was a cute story, but anyone who had spent time in the woods surrounding the university would have taken the tale with a grain of salt. More than one mighty oak stood in the woods, hollow and proud, and I imagined that many a darker deed than the simple sharing of news had transpired in their presence. Especially if the Blackwells were involved.

I was aware that my musings were entirely without evidence—the products of my overused and abused imagination. I supposed my daydreams were my first escape long before I took up running. Logically I knew that I was no safer in these woods than anywhere else on campus (if anything I was more vulnerable out here alone), there was something about the darkness of the forest that soothed me.

Despite my romantic delusions, I wasn’t entirely foolish. I ran without earbuds and did my best to remain alert. While I tended to lose myself in my thoughts, I kept both my eyes and ears attuned to the quiet woods around me. Though I might feel at ease out here, I couldn’t forget that girls were disappearing from Hollow Oak.

Sometimes I crossed paths with other runners. However, today I was alone. The only sights and sounds came from the woods themselves, as squirrels chittered away over the quiet hum of bugs, and an easy evening breeze shivered through the trees.

The sun was just beginning to set in the sky when I finally made my way back to the main campus. It was late October now, and the air was starting to feel cooler as dusk crept in earlier and earlier. Compared to the suffocating heat of Texas, the chill here felt like a welcome respite. As my feet padded lightly and swiftly through the now-quiet campus, I felt something as close to peace as I could get.

I knew it wouldn’t last.

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