Sin and Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF

left her weak and terrified.
    “ I can't tell you what I
don't know.” Her meek lie was met with a vicious backhand. Fresh
blood pooled under her tongue. For a moment, her world was nothing
but white noise.
    “ Today, you will tell me or you will
start losing pieces of yourself faster than you can count them.” He
snatched a scalpel off the tray with a menacing gleam in his
eyes.
    “ I told you I don't
know. I don't know !”
    Snaring her under the chin
with one hand, he brought the scalpel right to the edge of her eye.
“You didn't even blink at the map, which means you know exactly
what it is and where it leads. Tell me. Tell me where to find Eden
or I will carve out your eye, so help me.”
     
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    With a sudden, violent
crash, the door to the chamber burst open. The blade nicked the
skin of her brow when the Templar spun around in surprise. Furious
shouts and commands overlapped each other.
    “ Get on your
knees!”
    “ Put the gun
down!”
    “ Drop it—now!”
    “ I said , on your knees.”
    Evelyn twisted her wrists
to try and loosen the ropes. She didn't know what was going on, but
she wouldn't waste the opportunity to get her hands free. Dizzy and
weak, the task proved difficult. The bonds were too
tight.
    “ Don't make me tell you
again.”
    The Knights, surly and
growling, got on their knees.
    It gave Evelyn a glimpse of
the man who'd burst onto the scene. Over the heads of the Templars,
she made sudden eye contact with a man taller than any of those in
the room—which was saying something—and just as broad. Evelyn's
first impression of him was a shocking one. He had a lion's mane of
sandy blonde hair to his shoulders, a chiseled jaw, and the palest
green eyes she'd ever seen. When he turned them on her, they were
sharp and intense. Assessing. Dressed all in black, with a long
sleeved shirt that fit high on the throat and snug across his
torso, he made an imposing figure that she found it impossible to
look away from.
    “ Move it or we're both
dead.” He gestured to her with the hand not holding the gun. Get up. Come here. Hurry.
    She heard the unvoiced
commands as clearly as if he'd said them aloud and lurched to her
feet. Sometime between yesterday and now, she'd lost her other
shoe. Barefoot, she shuffled around the kneeling Knights, leaving a
wide berth between them, and made for the door.
    “ Stay close,” he ordered
when she was within reach. Sliding a hand around her upper arm, he
escorted her out of the room with his gun leveled at the Knights,
and then down the dark corridor. Like he expected there might be
others.
    There probably were. Evelyn
suspected the numbers of the Templars ranked into the hundreds, at
least. She stumbled once and he caught her against his side,
letting her use his body to lean on. Over a thin layer of material,
she felt the strain and flex of honed, hard sinew. Weakness and
dizziness came in violent waves that she battled with every
step.
    “ You! Stop!”
    At the juncture of another
corridor, someone called out from the far end.
    The man at her side didn't
even pause. He fired into the darkness and hustled her the other
way with haste. Up a stairwell that she remembered coming down.
Through a door he kicked open with a boot. Out into the night that
disoriented her as much as the confusing hallways had. She couldn't
get her bearings and had no time to.
    He ushered her by the arm
toward a car waiting at the curb, letting her go at the last second
to open the door. “Get in.”
    Evelyn had no choice but to
do what he asked. With pain screaming along her nerve endings she
slid into the passenger seat. Out her window, she could make out
the rising spire of what appeared to be a church. The stone walls
were inset with arching panes of stained glass, the details lost
with the darkness. The Knights had been keeping her in the basement
or some other subterranean room. So far, none of them had burst out
from the door to give chase.
    After he got