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Epona reached inside the folds of her gown and raised the cereer above her head The other wooddess, also producing daggers held above their heads

Dirk's green eyes were stricken, they were the eyes of soedy He screaag

Epona then uttered the death chant: "Here lies one who should not have been born"

Her knife and the knives of the others glinted under the swirling lights

47

In the split second before she and the others could plunge their daggers into Summer's helpless body, two phantoic in front of the altar The tall figure grabbed Epona's upraised wrist, twisted it and forced her to her knees, to the utter shock of the wo Summer

"Not tonight," said Pitt "The show is over"

Giordinothe barrel of his gun from one wo "Stand back!" he ordered harshly "Drop your knives and e of the steps"

Keeping the ainst Epona's breast with one hand, Pitt coolly went about freeing Sule strap across her stomach

Confused and fearful, the red-haired woether, as if ie of protection Giordino wasn't fooled for an instant Their sisters had fought the Special Forces on Oers His ers, and beganin a circle around him Giordino knew this wasn't the tiers He took careful aier of his rifle and shot off the left earring of the woht of authority

Now Giordino stiffened when he saw the woman seemed incapable of pain or emotion No hand lifted to feel the pain and the trickle of blood from her earlobe She e

He snapped over his shoulder at Pitt, as busily trying to unbuckle the strap binding Summer to the top of the stone "I need so like they're about to charge"

"That's only the half of it The island's security guards will coet wise that all is not well"

Pitt looked up and saw the thirty woainst all his breeding and upbringing to unmercifully shoot a woman, but there was more than their own lives at stake His children would die too if they didn't stop thirty hard-coreknives It was as if a pack of wolves were circling a pair of lions With guns against knives, one against five still gave the ainst one was too one-sided

Pitt stopped in the act of freeing a drugged Summer In the sa a deep cut in his pallanced at the ring that gashed his hand It held a tanzanite stone cut in the design of the Uffington horse He disregarded the stabbing pain and pushe