“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.