Enslaved (Brides of the Kindred Book 14) (49 page)

“No.”
Trin shook her head and backed away. “I can’t do it. Not when I…” She looked at
him longingly. “Not when I still love you,” she said softly.

It
sounded like the entire group of assembled priestesses had drawn in a breath at
once. Betina looked enraged and her mother looked scandalized.

“How
dare
you!” the high priestess shrieked.
“How dare you speak words of sacrilege and shame here in the presence of the
Goddess—in the very inner sanctum of her temple? How dare you love a male?”

But
neither Trin nor Thrace
was looking at her.

“I
love you too, baby” Thrace
said softly. “I never stopped. Please leave this place and come with me now. I
swear I’ll devote the rest of my life to making you happy.”

“The
rest of your life won’t be very long—I can promise you that,
male.”

Suddenly
Betina was right behind him. In one motion she drew the long, jeweled dagger
from her flowing sleeve and with her other hand, she grasped Thrace by his thick, black hair.

“No!”
Trin gasped.

* * * * *

Thrace
was
about to die and he knew it.

He
would have surged to his feet and fought his way free—even with the choke chain
and the manacles he was certain he could have done it—but for the razor sharp
blade pressed against his throat. The priestess behind him held the advantage.
One swipe of the dagger would sever all the blood vessels in his
throat—possibly even cut off his head. There was nothing he could do but hold
still and look at Trin.

She
was crying openly now, tears running down her face as she watched the high
priestess threaten him. More than anything else, her tears made Thrace
crazy. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her, wanted to kiss them
away and promise her she would never cry again.

But
mostly he wanted to kill the high priestess who was holding him for putting
those tears in Trin’s lovely dark eyes in the first place. Trin was his female,
to love and cherish and protect. He needed to keep her safe and happy and this
bitch had broken her inside, filling her head with guilt and her heart with
doubt. Making her hate herself simply for loving him.

And
now she was going to kill him right in front of Trin. He didn’t want to die but
even more than that, he didn’t want Trin to watch him die and think it was all
her fault.

“I love you,”
he
mouthed at her, afraid that if he spoke the words out loud the priestess would
slice his throat immediately.
“Trin, I
love you so much!”

“Please…”
Trin begged, looking at the priestess. “Please let him go and don’t hurt him.
I’ll give the Goddess whatever she wants—I’ll cut off my whole hand and poke
out both eyes. But just please, don’t kill him!”

“Too
late for that, Defiled One.” A cruel, triumphant smile was playing over
Betina’s thin lips. “The Goddess has chosen her sacrifice and it is this
male—the same male that defiled you in the first place. He must die for what he
has done that his blood may feed her hunger for justice.
”

She
started to draw the blade across Thrace’s throat and he felt the
sharp kiss of the cold steel as it bit into his flesh. Already a warm trickle
of blood was running down the side of his neck and soon it would all be over…

“I
don’t think so.”

The
voice belonged to Charlie, who was pushing her way through the assembled lesser
priestesses, a destroyer held in one hand. Thrace cut his eyes to the left and
saw that Becca had the other weapon and was holding it on the two priestesses
who had been guarding them earlier. How had they done it? They must have taken
the opportunity when everyone was looking at him and Trin to catch their guards
by surprise and disarm them.

However
it had been accomplished, the prisoners were free and Charlie was pointing the
destroyer right at Betina. She looked supremely confident and comfortable with
the weapon in her hand—almost as if it was an extension of her arm.

“That’s
right—just hold it right there,” she said, coming to a halt right beside
Betina. “And don’t try anything funny. I’ve been a law enforcer back on my home
planet for a long time and I know my way around a gun. True, this one’s a
little funny…” She gestured with the wide-mouthed destroyer, nudging the high
priestess in the ribs. “Looks like it could blow a hole the size of a barn door
right through you. But its’ still just a gun and I’m not afraid to use it.”

“I’m
not either.” Becca was turning from side to side, keeping the other priestesses
at bay as she made her way to the front of the crowd. Not that any of them
seemed to want to try anything, other than the ones she and Charlie had
disarmed. They were watching with impotent frustration but they clearly had a
healthy respect for the weapons which had been taken from them. A wise choice,
in Thrace’s
opinion. He didn’t know how big a barn door was but it was certainly true that
a destroyer could make a sizeable hole in whatever—or whoever—it hit.

“Okay,
now step away from Thrace
slowly,”
Charlie directed.

Betina
snarled at her. “Why should I? I can cut his throat before you can pull the
trigger—I am sure of it!”

“That
may well be,” Charlie said steadily. “But if you do that, I’m going to shoot
for sure. Ask yourself, hon, are you really ready to die just to make your
point?”

“You…you
blasphemer!”

Thrace
could
feel the high priestess’s hand shaking and for a moment the blade bit deeper
into his throat, drawing another rivulet of blood. He had a sudden moment of
certainty—the priestess was crazy and she was going to do it. She was going to
kill him even if it meant her own death.

He
held his breath and commended his soul to the Goddess.

Please, Mother of All Life, if Trin and I
are not to be together in this life then let us meet again in the next…

Then,
miraculously, the sharp pain against his throat eased and the high priestess
stepped back and away from him.

“Good,
that’s good,” Charlie said evenly. “Just keep going and keep your hands where I
can see them. You—drop that chain you’ve got around Thrace’s neck and uncuff him
now.”

Abruptly
the steady pressure of the choke chain eased and the priestess who had been
holding it knelt before him to unlock his manacles with shaking hands. They
fell to the stone floor with a clatter and she scuttled away, as though
frightened that Charlie might shoot her even though she had obeyed orders.

Thrace
stood
at once and went to Trin. She rushed to meet him and he enfolded her in his
arms, feeling her tremble against him.

“Gods,
baby,” he whispered, trying to hold her carefully because of the multiple cuts
and welts on her skin. “Are you all right?”

“I
will be if you take me away from here. Please Thrace, let’s just go.”

Thrace
’s heart
felt light for the first time in days.

“I
was hoping you would say that. We’re going,” he promised her. “Going right
now.” He looked at Charlie who nodded.

“Listen
up, people,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the frightened
murmuring of the lesser priestesses. “We’re going to leave now and we’re going
to do it
peacefully
as long as nobody
tries anything. You two go first,” she told Thrace. “Becca and I will cover
you.”

Thrace
swung
Trin into his arms, ignoring her halfhearted protests, and covered her naked
body in the folds of the scarlet cloak he still wore. Then he carried her straight
down the aisle at the center of the inner sanctum. The lesser priestesses were
quick to get out of the way, pressing back from him as he went.

Then,
suddenly, Trin’s mother was standing there, blocking his path.

“You
dare,” she breathed, staring up at him. “You dare to try and take my daughter!
And in the middle of her cleansing ritual! Before she has been pronounced
blameless by the Goddess.”

Thrace
was
tired of the older female’s attitude. He could understand why she didn’t like
him and that she felt he had corrupted her daughter—that he could forgive. But
her willingness to stand by and see Trin hurt and tortured—both physically and
psychologically—that was a whole different matter. And it was something he
could
not
forgive.

“You’re
damn right, I’m taking her,” he growled. “I’m taking her because I want to heal
her and take care of her—which is a hell of a lot more than you seem to be
willing to do.”

“You
defiled
her!” Trin’s mother was red
in the face.

“No,
I
loved
her,” Thrace corrected her. “As I love
her still which is why I’m taking her. Now get out of the way.”

But
Trin’s mother wasn’t budging.

“You
defiled her and she allowed it!” She pointed accusingly at Trin who was curled
against his chest like a wounded animal. “Allowed it and
enjoyed
it! Her pain and suffering are necessary. They are the
only
way to pay for such blatant
sacrilege.”

Thrace
looked
down at his beloved—at the raw, red scratches that marked her lovely, creamy
brown skin…at her ragged hair. And then he thought of the other damage which
had been done—of the suffering she must have endured when her beloved pets were
killed in front of her…the agonizing she must have done the night before when
she was trying to decide whether it would be easier to chop off a finger or
poke out one of her eyes. And all to please some puritanical code the
priestesses had cooked up, no doubt just to scare the other females into
submission and keep themselves in power.

Thinking
of all that had been done to Trin was enough to make the Rage drop over him
again like a red cloak that clouded his vision.

“She’s
suffered enough,” he growled, fighting to keep his temper in check. “Now
get…out…of …my…
fucking way!”

Despite
his best efforts, his voice rose to a roar on the last words and he saw Trin’s
mother flinch back. Her face had turned from red to white and she stared at him
with shocked eyes.

“I’d
do what he says, lady,” Becca said softly, coming up behind him. “If you don’t
watch it you’ll push him into Rage—that’s the state of berserker fury that
Kindred or Havoc males go into when their females are threatened and it’s
not
pretty to see.”

“Or
easy to stop,” Charlie added.

Trin’s
mother stepped back but she still wasn’t done.

“Lonarra,”
she said, addressing Trin directly. “Lonarra, listen to me—you can’t go with
this
male.
You can’t throw away your
life like this!”

Trin
had been pressing her face to Thrace’s
chest but now she turned her head and looked into her mother’s eyes.

“I
have to go,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Mother, but I
have
to.”

“You’ll
regret this!” The high priestess’s voice rang out behind them and Thrace
half turned to see what she was doing.

He
was afraid she might be holding a weapon on them but instead, Betina was
standing directly in front of the looming gray statue of the Goddess of
Judgment, her arms raised dramatically. In one hand she held the jeweled dagger
and in the other a golden bowl.

“You
will regret it!” she repeated. “For I curse you now, Lonarra Trin,
former
Daughter of Zetta.”

In
his arms, Trin jerked and gasped as though the priestess had physically struck
her. Her mother, whose face was already pale, suddenly went as white as snow.

“No,”
she whispered hoarsely. “Oh, no—not that! Not a blood curse—anything but that!”

“I
curse you, Lonarra” Betina went on relentlessly. “I curse you that your sins
will
never
be forgiven. They will
linger in your mind and haunt you all your days. And when you die—Goddess will
it shall be soon—your stained and degraded soul will be condemned to the Hell
of Defiled Women where you shall burn in fire and drown in blood for all
eternity!”

“Please,”
Trin whispered. “Oh Goddess, please no…”

“And
I seal my curse so, with
blood.”
the
high priestess finished triumphantly.

She
drew the sharp blade of the dagger down her forearm, opening a long, shallow
cut which began to bleed at once. Blood spattered upon the stone floor and one
of the lesser priestesses rushed forward to take the golden bowl and catch some
of the scarlet drops in it. Betina took the bowl from her and knelt before the
statue of the Goddess of Judgment.

“Oh
Goddess of Judgment, drink of my blood and know of my devotion. Seal my curse
to this female’s soul that she may never feel joy again and take her soon to
Hell!”

“Please,”
Trin whispered again and when he looked down, Thrace saw her eyes were filled
with tears. “Please, Thrace,
get me
out
of here!” she whispered
brokenly.

“Of
course, baby.” Thrace
felt a stab of shame. He never should have kept her here, listening to all that
crap the priestess was spouting. But for a moment he’d felt frozen to the
spot—unable to move as she carried out her bloody incantation.