The lie came so easily to him.
And yet, it was not quite a lie. Raven could not claim a man. But she could cloud his thoughts long enough to defend herself from him. Justice had the knife wound in his leg to prove it.
“Ask him how he knows that,” she said to Undertaker, her gaze never leaving her stepfather. “Ask him how he touched me, and for what purpose.”
Justice slapped her hard across the face, and her head snapped back. Pain blossomed, blinding her. The world darkened.
“You disrespect your mother’s memory when you speak like this. She was an innocent, lured by a demon—just as you tried to lure me. She raised you to be better.”
Raven’s eyes watered, the pain now more than physical, but she refused to shed tears. He had not married her mother out of love or respect for her innocence. She had been a beautiful woman, a master artisan and an asset for him to own, nothing more, and he had destroyed her.
Raven touched the back of one shackled wrist to the corner of her mouth and wiped away a trickle of blood. It left a dark smear on her skin in the fading light. Undertaker had given her candy when she was a child, yet he’d neither made a move to protect her from Justice’s blow nor uttered one word of protest against it. Pity for him displaced the hurt in her heart. He was simple-minded and easily led. She read no malice toward her on his part.
Her chin went up and she gazed steadily at both men. “There is no need for either of you to touch me. I will walk on my own.”
She displayed all the dignity she possessed as she crossed the small jailhouse and stepped into the cool embrace of the night.
Inside, she was shaking with anger and fear. She did not want to die.
But living would come at a heavy price.
…
He had been wrong. No celebration was planned.
With his angular face freshly shaven, shoulder-grazing black hair damp and tied back with a worn leather thong, Blade noticed the increased activity in the dusty, darkening street the instant he stepped from the bathhouse.
He’d bought a change of clothes to wear, leaving what he already owned behind to be laundered. A wool-lined coat of soft, supple leather that fell to his hips, allowing for easy access to his knives, was his one major investment. Cold ruled in the mountains.
While he was happy to be clean again, he disliked the feel of his knives in their new and unfamiliar hiding places. He especially disliked it now, when night was falling and people had gathered in tight little groups, their hushed voices filled with unmistakable tension.
Years of training, received long ago but never forgotten, had him react to it out of instinct. He inched the knife in his sleeve closer to his palm as he pressed deeper into the shadows. Invisibility was an assassin’s greatest weapon.
He eavesdropped on the conversation of three men who were standing around the corner of the building from him, on the street.
“She has always been strange.”
“Perhaps,” a second conceded. “But being strange does not make her spawn.”
Blade’s interest spiked. The goddesses had disappeared from the world nearly thirty years before, and more recently, demons had been scoured from the earth. During the years in between, the shapeshifting demons had ruled the desert, luring mortal women to them for pleasure. Half demon spawn, like their fathers, were male—monsters born in demon form to mortal mothers who had not survived their delivery. Demons, in turn, killed spawn at birth. Blade knew of only one true, living female spawn in existence—and her mother had been a goddess, not a mortal woman.
“She bewitched my son,” the first man complained to the second, defending his stance. “If not for Creed’s interference, he’d be her slave now. With Creed gone, I don’t know what will happen to him. He has started to follow her again.”
“Creed thrashed your son to within an inch of his life for following her around like a pup in the first place,” a third man pointed out. “He claimed your son tried to touch her against her will.”
“Creed spread that lie because he is already bewitched by her.”
“If he is bewitched, how could he leave her for training?”
“Who says no to assassin trainers when they are recruiting?”
No one could deny the truth of that observation, Blade thought. Those who declined recruitment ended up dead.
The second man spoke up again. “I’m not certain luring a man for pleasure warrants burning a woman at the stake.”
The third man murmured an uneasy agreement.
“It’s not the pleasure part that warrants it,” the first one insisted. “It’s the bewitching. Raven enslaves men. You’ve seen how the young ones look at her, and how she pretends not to notice. People always said her mother slept with a demon,” he added. “But when it was a girl that was born, and the birth didn’t kill her, everyone thought they were wrong.” A note of worry crept into his tone. “Who knows how many more spawn there might be? What if there are more like her?”
Blade, from his hiding place in the shadows, propped his broad shoulders against the wooden wall of a building and tipped his head back to stare at the emerging stars, lost in thought.
Women had only the protection of men in this world. Some men were better protectors than others. Many were no protection at all. But who was he to judge?
He had once been an assassin, although he had never worked in the service of the Godseekers. He had been strictly for hire, killing men, women, and children alike, without the luxury and freedom of choice. Once he had reached a level of skill that let him name his own price, he had become more selective in the work he accepted.
Even at his lowest and most desperate, however, he had never deliberately made anyone suffer. Whether the woman named Raven was spawn or not, he wanted no part of this.
What was happening here was not his problem....
About the Author
Paula Altenburg lives in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, with her husband and two sons. Once a manager in the aerospace industry, she now enjoys the luxury of working from home and writing fulltime. Paula also co-authors paranormal romance under the pseudonym Taylor Keating. Visit her at www.paulaaltenburg.com.
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