Contents
Cover
Author's Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
INTRODUCING RAYNA TAN
Also By Wesley Lowe
About The Author
Acknowledgements
Ritual Sacrifice
By
Wesley Robert Lowe
Copyright © Wesley Robert Lowe 2016
All Rights Reserved
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, events, business establishments or locales is entirely coincidental or used fictitiously.
Author's Note
Prez, Chin’s eldest daughter, is a cult leader with a purpose. With cash and influence from her followers, crooked politicians and her father, Prez can build a casino empire on the backs of an unsuspecting Native American Tribe. That is unless family nemesis – Noah Reid stops her first.
WARNING! THIS BOOK CONTAINS CONTENT OF A SEXUAL NATURE AND VIOLENCE AGAINST ANIMALS
While not pornographic, there is a certain amount of strong description of human sexual depravity.
As in other books in this series, there is also a certain amount of intentional harm that animals are subjected to.
Neither of these is used gratuitously but is integrated into the book as essential story components. This being said, it will undoubtedly offend certain readers.
The events in this book take place primarily in two time zones: Pacific standard time and China standard time. China is fifteen hours ahead of Seattle and for certain chapters, where it might make things clearer, the area’s local time is indicated in the heading.
Chapter 1
Present Day—Oregon
A large, dark room with twenty-foot ceilings. Images, statues, and symbols of dragons throughout.
Floor-to-ceiling banners of fire-breathing monsters. Winged horny creatures with eyes of emeralds. A serpentine beast with several heads…
At the doorway, a huge, scaly, winged lizard exhales fire at all who enter.
A pair of stone Chinese dragons flanks the stage at the front of the room.
Half a dozen multicolored dragons hang from the ceiling, glaring with fiery eyes.
And most eerily, holograms of these legendary reptiles fly, wander, and waft through the room.
The dragons are from everywhere. Ancient Rome and Greece. Germany. China. Korea. Finland. Japan. The Philippines.
This is the Temple of the Dragon, and this is Friday night in Salem. If this were the Salem of colonial Massachusetts, every one of the thirty people in the room would be burned at the stake.
But it’s not. It’s Salem, Oregon. The flock of acolytes is just another one of the myriad of secret cults and belief systems that are part of contemporary North America.
Not.
***
Concrete pillars flank each end of the foot-high raised platform. To each pillar is attached synthetic fiber rope. At the end of each rope is a live, adult Komodo dragon. Each greenish-gray dragon is six feet long and 120 pounds with vicious inch-long, serrated shark-like teeth that can eviscerate a wild pig—or human—in seconds. With forked tongues flickering, the Komodos, the world’s largest lizards, try hard to break free, but with the ropes’ breaking strength of over three thousand pounds, this is an impossibility.
Why the aggression?
The goal of these cannibalistic serpents are two live, infant Komodo dragons, ten-ounce creatures with touches of orange and yellow with jagged patterns of white on their leathery, scale-covered skins. An exotic, thirty-two-year-old Chinese woman, standing in the middle of the stage, holds the babies close to her face and licks their flickering tongues as they shoot out.
Astonishingly, the woman is even more mesmerizing than the dragon. With a jet-black skirt that hangs to the floor, the buttons of her scarlet top are undone, revealing taut, full breasts, each with a dragon tattooed on it. Further enticing is the gold bling on her ears, fingers, belly button, and nipples. Her makeup is like that of a Japanese geisha—white skin, black mascara on the eyebrows and eyelids, crimson lips with touches of red at the extremes of her eyes. Following the Japanese tradition, her hair is pulled back into a raised bun.
The woman raises the young innocents, arms outstretched, in the direction of her spellbound acolytes.
Her velvet-toned voice resonates as she addresses her captivated acolytes who stand in front of the platform.
“Friends, lovers, followers. I will need you more than ever. We have been preparing for this moment for ten years, and the time is now upon us. Are you ready?”
With a united voice, the devotees intone robotically, “We are ready.”
It’s a disparate group. Male and female. White, black, Native American, and Asian. Anorexic, obese, and buff. Hetero. Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Ages eighteen to sixty-eight. All are nude. All have dragons tattooed on parts of their bodies. Notably, the right cheek of each bum features a Komodo dragon.
They are from all walks and stations of life. Democrat and Republican. Wealthy, middle-class, and poverty-stricken.
The woman suddenly turns to one adult dragon and throws one of the infant dragons up in the air. Then whipping around, she throws the other baby toward the other adult Komodo.
Both Komodo dragons jump so hard that they break the impossible-to-break ropes. Sharp incisors pierce the tender flesh of the young dragons, and they devour the infants quickly.
The large reptiles then sidle up to the fearless Chinese woman, flanking her on either side.
“Do you want your dream so much that you will do the impossible?”
Murmurs of agreement.
The woman’s face glows as her skirt drops to the floor, revealing a body that is so sensuously sculpted that Venus herself would not be competition.
Carnal majesty embodied.
The reason she has such a hold on every man and woman in the room?
This woman is Chin’s eldest daughter, Prez.
Chapter 2
Fifteen Years Ago
A small private plane lands on the remote volcanic island of Rinca, one of the more than eighteen hundred islands that compose the Indonesian archipelago.
Teeming with flora and fauna, Rinca has yet to be contaminated by human civilization. Wild boar, horses, Timor deer, and water buffalo are but some of the mammals that wander freely. Someday, coffee aficionados will discover that civet cats live here too, and pick coffee beans from their dung, but for now, only a few souls who venture to this tropical paradise enjoy the “cat shit” coffee. Visitors must be careful of snakes, especially the deadly green pit viper, Russell’s viper, and a species of spitting cobra snakes, all of which make their home in the island’s dry savannah.
Why did he bring me here? What is special about this place? I mean, he hasn’t even taken me to Disneyland before, and we’re here in Timbuktu.
These are the legitimate questions on the mind of a seventeen-year-old girl who steps off the plane with her middle-aged Chinese father.
After all, he hasn’t been much of a father. To date, his parenting skills have been limited to providing the girl’s mother with enough money to live like a queen on Seattle’s Mercer Island where software billionaire Paul Allen allegedly lives.
However, the daughter is going to graduate from the island’s well-recognized high school, and the father feels that it is time for him to direct her to her proper path of life. It’s taken them over a day to fly here, but the enforced time on private planes has given father and daughter a chance to get to know each other.
She has been more than a pampered, rich kid. She’s got quite the intellect and not only got straight As throughout elementary and secondary school, she was one of the only twenty students out of a million that year achieved a perfect 2400 on the SAT.
Every school she applied to accepted her. After all, in addition to academics, she was a fantastic debater, beauty queen and black belt in kung fu. For her, it was a tossup between MIT, Columbia, or USC, but her father had another idea. Why not consider the University of Oregon?
His reason was quite compelling. If she chose U of O, he would give her two million dollars, instead of the one he was planning to give his children when they hit eighteen.
To decide took less than a second… and the extra bucks quickly made up for the years of neglect.
Prez, after all, had inherited another of her father’s traits. She is driven to succeed, and two million was a whole lot better than one in trying to make her mark in business.
She didn’t need to ask why U of O was so important, but her father told her anyway. MIT is in Boston, Columbia is in New York and USC is in Los Angeles, where she would be just another smart kid among thousands of other smart kids and in a big city where she was not likely to be noticed—even with all her accomplishments. And she would likely be another rich Asian in a school where rich Asians were not exactly uncommon.
But in Eugene, Oregon, she was going to be a big fish in a small fishbowl. Besides, it was only an hour’s drive to Salem, Oregon’s capital, where her father wanted to start developing some contacts.
Chin knew that because of his own background, Prez could never make it in Washington, D.C. Even though his lawyer, Garret Southam, was a master of covering tracks, Chin would not risk the full wrath of the United States government coming down on him if someone made the slightest error and revealed his identity as a wildly successful, and even more wildly ruthless, Asian Triad leader.
That’s why Oregon was perfect. The legislature met only once every couple of years, and state lawmakers made only twenty grand per year, if that. They would be easily bought and keep their mouths shut.
It just needs time to nurture.
***
But that’s thinking way too far in the future for Prez. She just wants to know why Chin took her to Rinca.
That’s simple. To be properly initiated her into her future, she must understand who she is.
One of the few things that Chin gave her in life was the moniker, “Prez.” Prez was short for president. A most unusual name, Chin, like so many other parents, had high aspirations for all of his children, but especially his firstborn. By giving them all titles of leadership, this would etch into their psyche that greatness was expected of them. His sons were King, Prince and Duke. Chin’s other daughter was Queenie.
In addition to their names of authority, the Shaolin master also gave his progeny a sobriquet of one of the Five Animals of the Shaolin. King is Snake; Queenie is Crane, Duke is Tiger; Prince is Leopard. Prez is Dragon.
The trip to Rinca was actually a little late for Chin. For his other children, he had introduced their animal namesakes to them at an earlier age. This was much easier because there are real tigers, leopards, cranes and snakes in existence.
However, when Prez was born (and for many years after that), Chin did not know of the existence of dragons in the world. Like most, he believed that these amazing, flying, barbarous creatures were simply mythical. Two months ago, when he heard mention of something called Komodo dragons, he decided to investigate them for himself.
He went to the island of Komodo, where most of the dragons live, and was in awe. They were real dragons. They were the largest lizards in the world. They were strong. and they were ferocious. One bite could be lethal—either from its sharp rows of teeth or from the venom that was released into the bodies of its victims. They were beasts worthy to be associated with the Shaolin; they were worthy to be associated with him.
Now that he discovered dragons were a reality, he had to take Prez.
But not to Komodo Island. While not an American theme park, Komodo Island was becoming a destination for those who sought the exotic. There were too many people, and frankly, many of the Komodos had lost their fear and killer instinct—they had become habituated to man. Glorified pets, cages and enclosed compounds were their homes.
No, Chin’s world is merciless. Untamed. He would take her to nearby Rinca where the animals on this small island are truly wild. The lizards here are free, savage and feral.
Just like Chin.
Just like how a child of Chin should be.
***
Rinca is less than eighty square miles in area. Roads are nonexistent, so Chin and Prez spend their time walking from the shore where they camped overnight by aqua-blue ocean. Although it’s only 5 a.m., they can tell that it’s going to be a blistering hot day as they walk through the open grasslands.
On the hunt for Komodos, Chin carries with him two kinds of Shaolin weapons: a fork that resembles the tri-pronged spear of Neptune and a number of hand darts. Prez thinks they are more for show to impress her so she doesn’t say anything.
In less than an hour, they’ve encountered half a dozen of these powerful, prehistoric lizards. The ones they have seen so far have been younger—less than five feet in length, but now in front of them, less than fifty yards away, a monster almost ten feet long and three hundred pounds lumbers in their direction.
Its tongue starts to flicker in and out—a sure sign that it senses their presence.
Prez grabs her father’s arm in fear.
“I’m ready to go home now.”
“No. This is why we are here.”
Chin takes off his shirt. Prez gasps—her father’s physique makes the college guys she’s slept with look like pipsqueaks.
Chin throws a dart at a passing Komodo rat. Deadly accurate, the dart’s tip enters right in the middle of the rodent’s head between its eyes, killing it almost instantly.
Chin quickly picks up the still-quivering carcass. He lifts it over his head and squeezes the life out of it, showering himself with its blood.
The Komodo has been watching with more than passing interest. The smell of the blood on Chin arouses the beast. Forked tongue flickering, it moves quickly and directly to the attack.
Prez watches in morbid fascination as her father picks up the forked trident and runs right at the Komodo.
Ten yards away from the beast, the martial artist springs into the air above the advancing Komodo.
The Komodo stops and tries to leap up, flashing its razor-sharp teeth at its prey. Chin, on his descent, evades the open jaws and plunges the fork directly on the top of animal’s head. However, the skin of the dragon is so tough that the fork does not pierce its armor-like exterior.
The trident snaps, and Chin tumbles to the side of the Komodo, falling on sharp rocks that cut into his back.
The scent of even more blood energizes the animal, and it quickly turns to pounce on the Tiger Master.
With not enough time to jump up and escape, Chin starts rolling in haphazard fashion, somehow evading the beast’s biting attack.
Chin grabs a handful of dirt
and throws it at the Komodo’s eyes. It distracts the beast long enough for Chin to grab a rock and leap to his feet.
The Komodo recovers and lunges at Chin with mouth wide open.
Chin steps backward, all the while facing the animal. If he turns around to run, that might give the Komodo enough time to jump on him.
Then, disaster.
Prez screams, “Daddy!” and starts running at the dragon.
She had pulled the dart out of the dead rat and jumps on the lizard. She aims the dart at the Komodo’s eye, but the beast jerks its head away.
The dart breaks against the leathery skin, and the Komodo starts gnashing its teeth at Prez.
Prez faints and drops to the ground. This is not due to fear but because the animal has the worst breath she has ever smelled. Rumor has it that there are glands in the lower jaw that secrete toxic proteins. Whatever the reason, having the Komodo bite her will likely lead to death. If it’s not the toxins, it’ll be the bacteria-riddled saliva.
Chin launches another dart at the eye of Komodo just as it’s about to chomp on Prez’s neck.
Bull's eye. Directly into the pigmented iris. The dragon pulls its head back and yowls in pain.
It starts flailing, giving Chin enough time to scoop his unconscious daughter out of harm’s way.
Chin picks up the three-pronged side of the broken fork.
With gelatinous clear fluid seeping out of its injured eye, the Komodo renews its assault. As the Komodo approaches, Chin shoves the prongs into the animal’s face. The remarkably agile animal swipes it out of harm’s away.
Chin launches a kick with the strength and accuracy of an NFL field goal kicker at the animal’s throat.
It has nary an effect on the dragon, and it flicks its tongue even more rapidly at Chin—it senses victory.
RITUAL SACRIFICE: The Ultimate Alpha Female & Political Corruption on the West Coast (Noah Reid Action Suspense Thriller Series Book 5) Page 1