Looking around, I was surprised that I didn’t see Bayne or the girls.
Then again, knowing him, he was busy accepting tokens of their gratitude. I guess he really was half incubus. I’d catch up with him at Llewellyn’s later; right now, I needed to go see Charmaine and let her know the job was done.
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~*~
My boots rang hollow on the stones as I crossed the floor, and I wondered, for the umpteenth time, if all temple designers feared being snuck up on. If not, why did they always have to make each step announce your presence so resoundingly?
She came from around the corner, moving so smoothly she
seemed to float above the ground rather than walk upon it. A wide smile danced upon her lips as she saw me, standing in the middle of the great chamber in her temple of lies. Her eyes seemed to glow, maybe with delight or relief. I gazed into her eyes, mesmerized by them. If I live a hundred years, I’ll never see another pair of eyes like hers.
"So you did it," she cooed, coming to within a hair’s breadth of me.
"Yes. You don’t need to worry about Xaphan anymore."
It felt pretty damn good to say those words, to feel as though I’d finally made up for my betrayal twenty years ago. Yeah, I was feeling pretty good—until I happened to glance down at her robe.
Where the symbol of Rakkir was usually pinned, there was
ripped fabric.
Damn it!
It all made sense now. The girls hiding in the shadows, the
ease with which I’d entered Xaphan’s chamber, the Rakkirian
symbol lying in the dirt within it. It all made sense. I looked up into Charmaine’s eyes, not wanting to believe what I knew to be true.
"You’ve been turned."
The girls weren’t hostages; they were whores playing at being held captive. No doubt they had disabled many of the traps in the factory. Charmaine didn’t need me to destroy Xaphan because he threatened her girls; she needed me to get rid of competition. I’d been used, taken in, and set up using my own guilt.
I wondered, as I reached for my compact, about Bayne. Would
the girls try to attack him? He could take care of himself—even taken by surprise, he would outmatch them. But how many would he be forced to slay? And how long ago had Charmaine become a
vampire? Had she really been saving girls from the street all this time, or merely making them work for her? A priestess of Rakkir—
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who better to be a vampiric pimp than she? Surely her God was proud of her.
All these thoughts flashed through my mind as I fumbled
around in my pocket, extracting the compact I thought I’d no longer needed. As I opened it, flooding the room with sunlight, only one thought remained.
Hell of a way to treat a friend.
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Acknowledgements
A Love Story was previously published as Shades of Green by
Sam's Dot Publishing in 2010.
Lost and Found was originally offered as a free read at
http://www.rhondaparrish.com.
Sister Margaret was originally published by Wild Child
Publishing in 2006.
About the Author
When she isn't procrastinating with video games or crafts,
Rhonda writes YA, fantasy and horror and maintains a website at http://www.rhondaparrish.com.
Also, she loves sushi.
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