Penance by Debra Dunbar

Author:Debra Dunbar [Dunbar, Debra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

What did she mean? I tried to sit upright and failed, my body cold and trembling. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to curl into a ball and drift into nothingness. Everything hurt and I couldn’t get warm. Was this some kind of delayed detox? This body, this flesh felt like a betrayal, like a horrible weakness that I needed to shed if only I knew how.

“What are you?” she asked again, this time with a hint of firmness. Had I imagined that fear in her eyes? Because it was nowhere to be found right now.

“I—I don’t know.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and held on tight, trying to keep from shaking myself apart. “I don’t remember much of anything. I woke up on the truck with the other women. I had track marks on my arms, so I think I was a junkie they grabbed off the streets.”

She looked at my arms and shook her head. “They beat you, just as they beat the other girls out there, but you are now uninjured. Every bruise has faded and vanished. There’s not a scar on you. Not a mole or a freckle. Not a wrinkle or blemish. Your skin…and your hair…”

I had figured that my flawless skin was why the men had taken me. I doubted a passed-out junkie was their ideal candidate for this sex slave ring. None of the other girls were users, although with the exception of Pistol and Kitten, they were all girls who wouldn’t be missed or whose families would have difficulties in finding and/or rescuing them.

“You fixed your injuries.” Her voice was full of wonder. “The dead man had beaten you. The other two beat you. I’ve done nothing to repair your injuries. You’ve done it yourself. Are you part demon? If so, you must be more than a half-demon hybrid.”

“I don’t know.” I did know that the thought of being part demon made me shiver with revulsion. I couldn’t be a demon, could I? If so, why was my memory gone? If so, then why couldn’t I kill those two guards and whisk us all to safety? It made less sense than Mess’s guardian angel theory.

The woman crawled closer, looking to be in just as much pain as I was. “You are the most stunningly perfect human I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen the most beautiful nature can provide. You resist compulsion. You fight against me with the force and power of a demon hybrid. No matter what I do, I can’t change your red hair. And any pain I inflict on you rebounds to me three-fold. What are you? Was your sire a powerful ancient and your mother a werewolf or Nephilim, perhaps?”

“I don’t know,” I insisted.

The pain she’d tried to inflict on me rebounded three-fold? How could that be? I had no idea how she’d survived it if that was the truth because I never could have made it through three times what she’d just done to me.

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