She toyed with the possibility that Su-Chong had killed Mei-Xing and hidden her body where it would never be found. The idea did not sit right with her. No, somehow the girl had escaped—and that thought only served to incense Fang-Hua more.
Where has the little chit hidden herself all this time? she raged. Why were my men unable to find her?
The days after Su-Chong’s body was delivered to the funeral home were no different from any ordinary days. His burial was accomplished with no fanfare, no publicity, no ceremonial respect. Afterward, Wei Lin went to his office and Fang-Hua attended to her duties.
Outwardly Fang-Hua was cool and composed, but inwardly she screamed in pain and frustration. And unease.
She watched Wei Lin warily. Her husband had to be considering the deeper implications of Su-Chong’s death on his own lineage and the Chen family line. Those implications terrified Fang-Hua.
The fact was, Wei Lin required another son, and Fang-Hua could not give him one.
The one son Fang-Hua had borne and the financial power she wielded in her own right had been all that had kept Wei Lin attached to her. But now Su-Chong was gone. Wei Lin could—would likely—divorce Fang-Hua and marry a young woman capable of giving him many sons.
A servant interrupted to announce unexpected visitors: Jinhai and Ting-Xiu Li.
What? The little whore’s parents? The rage burning within Fang-Hua tore at her belly. With great self-control she tamped it down.
I can give nothing away, she whispered to herself. I must speak and show nothing to make them or Wei Lin suspicious of me.
She no longer had to fear her son exposing her secrets to her husband. That danger, at least, was past. Only Bao Shin Xang and Mei-Xing Li—a living Mei-Xing who should be dead!—posed threats.
Prudence required Fang-Hua to remain unperturbed and gracious to the Lis, thanking them for their visit, though it was unwarranted—even inappropriate!—given the circumstances of Su-Chong’s death.
The servant ushered Jinhai and Ting-Xiu Li into the room. They were dressed in formal black, the only color suitable for an unmarried son’s death. Jinhai bowed and his wife followed suit.
How I hate them! Fang-Hua sneered within herself. Oh, if only Jinhai knew what I know, how I have defiled their daughter, she gloated. But, of course, she and Wei Lin were “close family friends” with the Lis. Fang-Hua would be forced to accept their condolences—uncalled for as they were—most graciously.
What was this? She had not been following the conversation and now Jinhai was babbling about something . . . something unsuitably sincere for the occasion.
“. . . and so we grieved as you must be grieving, behind closed doors, not even able to mourn her publicly,” Jinhai murmured, his eyes downcast. “We were cut to our cores, and nothing could console us. Until we met with a Christian minister. He showed us from the Christian Bible how to have a relationship with the living God, the Creator of all things.
“Such peace we now have in our souls!” he exclaimed. “Such happiness in our hearts. And so we have come, humbly, to offer our sympathy and to also offer to share what we have found in Jesus, the Christian Savior. We—”
“Thank you . . .” Fang-Hua interrupted, drawling her words, “for your concern for us. Your friendship with our family has always been and will always remain a great . . . honor.”
Although her words were spoken in a soft and silky voice and her face remained placid, her eyes sought out Jinhai’s and hardened.
You should know that I hate you and yours, Fang-Hua told him with her eyes. With my words I honor you, but look into my soul, Jinhai Li. Look deeply and see how I despise you.
Jinhai stammered to a stop, the hairs on the back of his neck pricking and rising. Fang-Hua’s gleaming eyes belied the sweet words she mouthed. The ill will emanating from her was palpable.
Disturbed and shaken, Jinhai bowed deeply; his wife, although confused, followed suit. “Please call on us if we can assist you in any way,” Jinhai murmured, his words soft. He backed away, pulling his wife with him, and left the Chen home.
~~**~~
(End of Excerpt)
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Stolen
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Soiled Dove Plea
Gentlemen of the jury: You heard with what cold cruelty the prosecution referred to the sins of this woman, as if her condition were of her own preference. The evidence has painted you a picture of her life and surroundings. Do you think that they were embraced of her own choosing? Do you think that she willingly embraced a life so revolting and horrible? Ah, no! Gentlemen, one of our own sex was the author of her ruin, more to blame than she.
Then let us judge her gently. What could be more pathetic than the spectacle she presents? An immortal soul in ruin! Where the star of purity once glittered on her girlish brow, burning shame has set its seal and forever. And only a moment ago, they reproached her for the depths to which she had sunk, the company she kept, the life she led. Now, what else is left her? Where can she go and her sin not pursue her? Gentlemen, the very promises of God are denied her. He said: "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." She has indeed labored, and is heavily laden, but if, at this instant she were to kneel before us all and confess to her Redeemer and beseech His tender mercies, where is the church that would receive her? And even if they accepted her, when she passed the portals to worship and to claim her rest, scorn and mockery would greet her; those she met would gather around them their spirits the more closely to avoid the pollution of her touch. And would you tell me a single employment where she can realize "Give us our daily bread?"
Our sex wrecked her once pure life. Her own sex shrink from her as they would the pestilence. Society has reared its relentless walls against her, and only in the friendly shelter of the grave can her betrayed and broken heart ever find the Redeemer's promised rest.
They told you of her assumed names, as fleeting as the shadows on the walls, of her sins, her habits, but they never told you of her sorrows, and who shall tell what her heart, sinful though it may be, now feels? When the remembered voices of mother and sisters, whom she must see no more on this earth, fall again like music on her erring soul, and she prays God that she could only return, and must not—no—not in this life, for the seducer has destroyed the soul.
You know the story of the prodigal son, but he was a son. He was one of us, like her destroyers; but for the prodigal daughter there is no return. Were she with her wasted form and bleeding feet to drag herself back to home, she, the fallen and the lost, which would be her welcome? Oh, consider this when you come to decide her guilt, for she is before us and we must judge her. They (the prosecution) sneer and scoff at her. One should respect her grief, and I tell you that there reigns over her penitent and chastened spirit a desolation now that none, no, none but the Searcher of all hearts can ever know.
None of us are utterly evil, and I remember that when the Saffron Scourge swept over the city of Memphis in 1878, a courtesan there opened wide the doors of her gilded palace of sin to admit the sufferers, and when the scythe of the Reaper swung fast and pitiless, she was angelic in her ministering. Death called her in the midst of her mercies, and she went to join those she tried to save. She, like those the Lord forgave, was a sinner, and yet I believe that in the days of reckoning her judgment will be lighter than those who would prosecute and seek to drive off the earth such poor unfortunates as her whom you are to judge.
They wish to fine this woman and make her leave. They wish to wring from the wages of her shame the price of this meditated injustice; to take from her the little money she might have—and God knows, gentlemen, it came hard enough. The old Jewish law told you that the price of a dog, nor the bite of such as she, should come not within the house of the Lord, and I say unto you that our justice, fitly symbolized by this woman's form, does not ask that you add to the woes of this unhappy one, one only asks at your hands the pitiful privilege of being left alone.
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The Master, while on Earth, while He spake in wrath and rebuke to the kings and rulers, never reproached one of these. One he forgave. Another he acquitted. You remember both—and now looking upon this friendless outcast, if any of you can say to her, 'I am holier than thou' in the respect which she is charged with sinning, who is he? The Jews who brought the woman before the Savior have been held up to execution for two thousand years. I always respected them. A man who will yield to the reproaches of his conscience as they did has the element of good in him, but the modern hypocrite has no such compunctions. If the prosecutors of the woman whom you are trying had brought her before the Savior, they would have accepted His challenge and each one gathered a rock and stoned her, in the twinkling of an eye. No, Gentlemen, do as your Master did twice under the same circumstances that surround you. Tell her to go in peace.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soiled_Dove_Plea. Public Domain.
~~**~~
A Prairie Heritage
One family . . . steeped in the love and grace of God, indomitable in their faith, tried and tested in the fires of life, passing forward a legacy to change their world. The compelling saga of family, faith, and great courage.
Book 1: A Rose Blooms Twice
Book 2: Wild Heart on the Prairie
Book 3: Joy on This Mountain
Book 4: The Captive Within
Book 5: Stolen
Book 6: Lost Are Found
Stealthy Steps
Nanostealth, Book 1
Vikki Kestell
My name is Gemma Keyes. Other than my name, I am utterly forgettable—so those who never paid much attention to me in the first place haven’t exactly noticed that I’ve disappeared. Vanished.
It’s much more complicated than it sounds.
I should tell you about Dr. Samuel Bickel, world-renowned nanophysicist. We used to work together, but I’ll be candid with you: He’s supposed to be dead. Well, he’s not. (Imagine my surprise.) Instead of the proverbial “six feet under,” he’s subsisting in an abandoned devolution cavern beneath the old Manzano Weapons Storage Facility on Kirtland Air Force Base here in Albuquerque.
“I need to show you what I’m protecting here, Gemma,” he insisted.
I stared into the clear glass case. I could hear . . . humming, clicking, buzzing. A faint haze inside the box shifted. Dissolved. Came back together. It reminded me of how mercury, when released on a plate, will flow and form new shapes. Only this, this thing was “flowing and forming” in midair.
“Do you see them?” Dr. Bickel asked.
“Them?” I was confused. My mouth opened to a stunned “o” as the silver haze dissolved into blue letters.
H E L L O
Dr. Bickel hadn’t pressed any buttons. Hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t gestured.
He grinned. “Ah. They’ve noticed you. They know they haven’t seen you before.”
“Well, I wish they wouldn’t notice me!” I choked on the words, my eyes fixed on the glass case.
And I need to warn you about General Cushing. The rank and name likely conjure images of a lean but muscled old soldier, posture rigid, iron-gray hair cut “high and tight” framing a weathered face cemented in unyielding lines.
Let me disabuse you of that impression.
General Imogene Cushing is short and a tiny bit plump. She wears her silvered hair in an elegant braid knotted at the nape of her neck, and she knows how to smile sweetly.
With the deadliest of sharks.
You wouldn’t suspect a two-star general, an Air Force O-8, of being a traitor, would you?
Nanostealth
Stealthy Steps, June 1, 2015
Stealth Power, 2016
Stealth Beyond Borders, 2017
Girls from the Mountain
Girls from the Mountain follows the series A Prairie Heritage and profiles four of the young women of Palmer House. Read their life-changing stories and, while doing so, catch glimpses into the lives of Rose and Joy Thoresen and others at Palmer House in the years following Stolen.
Why the series title, “Girls From the Mountain”? This conversation between Joy and Grant excerpted from The Captive Within explains.
Joy was thoughtful. “You said something just now . . .”
“Hm? What was that?”
“You called them girls from the mountain. I rather like that.”
“Certainly less degrading than ‘former prostitutes.’” Grant smiled his endearing half-smile.
“Perhaps that is how we should refer to them from now on. Of course, when the Lord gives us women from Denver, the phrase will no longer apply.”
“Denver is surrounded by mountains. I don’t see a problem with it. It could be our own little code for the young ladies of Palmer House.”
Tabitha
The first of these stand-alone books, Tabitha, features the fiery redhead whose equally fiery temper and affection for her family at Palmer House vie for dominance in her life. In the weeks before Tabitha returns to nursing school, Rose Thoresen challenges Tabitha to write her testimony for other women who will someday live at Palmer House and who will likely face the same need for spiritual and emotional healing that Tabitha herself has faced.
Book 1: Tabitha, Late 2015
The Christian and the Vampire
A Short Story
What happens one sultry summer night when a Christian and a vampire meet on a fire escape and agree to engage in a cordial conversation? A touch of hilarity, plus eye-popping—and Undead heart-starting—revelation as vampire myths and legends give way to greater Truth!
Buy The Christian and the Vampire in Kindle format from Amazon.com.
Excerpt
“Oh, I’m just in the mood for some good conversation. Cordial conversation, I assure you.” The shadows twisted and I thought he turned toward me. “What do you say, Taz?”
“I can always agree to a cordial conversation.”
“Ah. Good.”
I saw that flash of white again and the faint outline of a sharp jaw. His voice was young and cultured, and I guessed his age at about thirty, but . . . but his elegant manner belied that relatively youthful age. Something distinctly mature emanated from him, and I warned myself not to base my estimation of his age on his appearance.
“I watched you work down in the Glades tonight,” he murmured, “and I confess I am somewhat curious . . . about you. . . Taz.”
He paused before adding, casually, “Dear me. This rusty old fire escape doesn’t lend itself much to comfort or civility, does it? Might we be more at our ease inside?”
“You want me to invite a vampire into my home.” I waggled my eyebrows and just looked at him. Like, really?
He giggled low in his throat, tickled that I’d found him out so quickly. “But surely you’re not afraid?”
I shrugged. “Not afraid. Just not stupid.”
He spread his hands again, a self-deprecating gesture. “It was just a . . . cordial suggestion, Taz.”
“Well, could I offer you something to drink?” I smiled this time. “In the spirit of cordiality, of course.”
It was quite interesting how his eyes flared red. I hadn’t been 100 percent certain where they were until they did.
Annnnnd apparently I’d ticked him off.
The Christian and the Vampire: A Short Story
About the Author
Vikki Kestell’s passion for people and their stories is evident in her readers’ affection for her characters and unusual plotlines. Two often repeated sentiments are, “I feel like I know these people” and “I’m right there, in the book, experiencing what the characters experience.”
Vikki holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Learning and Instructional Technologies. She left a career of twenty-plus years in government, academia, and corporate life to pursue writing full time. “Writing is the best job ever,” she admits, “and the most demanding.”
Also an accomplished speaker and teacher, Vikki and her husband Conrad Smith make their
home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
To keep abreast of new book releases, visit her website, http://www.vikkikestell.com/, or find her on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/TheWritingOfVikkiKestell.
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