Twenty-Sided Sorceress 3 - Pack of Lies
Page 14
So I settled for a Star Wars reference instead.
“I know,” I said, burying my head in his shoulder.
And somehow, with those two words, he heard all the things I had meant to say.
Tess watched Samir from the corner of her eye as he spoke quietly into his cell phone. Tension built in his broad shoulders and his golden eyes flared with power as he snapped the phone shut and turned away from the huge picture window that overlooked the valley below his mansion.
“The assassin has failed,” he said.
“I told Tess it wouldn’t work,” Clyde said in his nasal, whining voice.
Tess vowed, again, to rip out his vocal cords before she killed the little bastard. But Clyde was still Samir’s apprentice, sharing her station in life like a sibling. Samir expected them to get along. So she could go on pretending.
She was faking the rest of her life—why not this little thing, too?
“It was diverting,” Samir said. “But now it is Clyde’s choice.”
Tess knew what Clyde would choose. She looked over to where he sat, resting like a fat and pampered lap dog on the white leather sofa. His blonde hair was artfully messy, his silk shirt unbuttoned just enough to show off the smooth muscles of his chest. He was slight but kept himself in excellent shape. Samir preferred his lovers to be in shape. He required beauty in all things around him.
“I want to go,” Clyde said. “Enough fooling around. Let me bring you her heart myself.”
Jade Crow. Samir’s obsession. It grated on Clyde. He hated that Samir cared more for a woman who had left him years ago than for the man who lived with him now, fawning after his every whim.
Clyde did not understand Samir. He was young, and he did not see the danger in a life lived too long yet. Boredom was a terrible burden, and Samir was easily bored.
Soon, Tess knew, Samir would grow tired of Clyde. Then the young sorcerer would become another heart for the reaping.
Tess did her best to never be boring. A delayed execution was better than nothing.
She looked at Samir, drinking in his aquiline, dark features, and his masculine beauty. She focused on her attraction to him, pushing down her revulsion, her fear, shoving it aside.
“I wish to go as well,” she said. She lifted a thin shoulder as though to say “why not?” To convey to him that she merely wanted in on the fun, that this wasn’t an important request either way. If she showed it was important, he might refuse her out of spite. Or start asking her questions that wouldn’t be safe to answer.
“I don’t need her,” Clyde said, staring daggers at Tess.
She smiled blandly at him. “Of course not, dear.”
“Enough, both of you.” Samir chuckled and shook his head, his expression benevolent and amused, but his golden eyes sharp. “You will both go. Bring me Jade’s heart. I will make a new container tonight. I will be watching closely. Do not fail me.”
“What about her friends?” Clyde asked. “That big blond guy?”
“Do with them whatever you like,” Samir said.
Clyde’s smile made Tess’s skin try to crawl off her bones. She bit the inside of her lip and kept her feelings off her face. Clyde’s expertise was in raising demons, in perverting spirits of nature. He reveled in cruelty in ways that surprised even Samir on occasion.
Which was probably why Samir let him live. For now.
Tess’s talents were subtler. She would find a way to make Clyde’s rapid bull-in-a-china-shop methods mesh with her own. She smiled at Samir and inclined her head. “We will not fail you,” she said.
Turning away before her face could betray her thoughts, she left the study. Only when she was safely behind her own wards, in her own room, did she relax.
Jade Crow had escaped Samir, not once, but twice. She had thwarted his attempts to find her for many years. And now she was visible again, surrounded by magic and inhuman friends. She had killed the assassin Tess had suggested they send after her. Tess had known that Samir wouldn’t mind fattening Jade up a little more. Just as she knew he half expected his errant former protégé to kill both his apprentices.
Their lives meant nothing to Samir.
But Jade’s life. Her life might mean something to Tess. Win or die, Tess was certain that the beautiful Native American sorceress held the key to Samir’s death.
And that was something Tess was very interested in indeed.
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Also by Annie Bellet:
The Gryphonpike Chronicles:
Witch Hunt
Twice Drowned Dragon
A Stone’s Throw
Dead of Knight
The Barrows (Omnibus Vol.1)
Chwedl Duology:
A Heart in Sun and Shadow
The Raven King
Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division Series:
Avarice
Short Story Collections:
Till Human Voices Wake Us
Dusk and Shiver
Forgotten Tigers and Other Stories
About the Author:
Annie Bellet lives and writes in the Pacific NW. She is the author of the Gryphonpike Chronicles and the Twenty-Sided Sorceress series, and her short stories have appeared in over two dozen magazines and anthologies. Follow her at her website at “A Little Imagination” (http://overactive.wordpress.com/)
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Also by Annie Bellet:
About the Author: