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CHAPTER ONE
Life hasa funny way of hitting you with a freight train and dragging you into the wilderness of fate.
My date with the locomotive came one foggy fall eve as I was walking home from my work as a librarian’s assistant. There I was with hardly a coat on after having been nearly suffocated by the stifling heat of the library.
“She could at least set the thermometer to seventy. . .” I mumbled to myself as I flapped the sides of my coat to draw in more of the cool air.
I paused and took in the view around me. The commercial street stretched out before me, as empty as a display coffin and just as quiet. With it being Friday night, all the employees had evacuated the vicinity. Nobody wanted to be caught dead or alive within five city blocks of their workplace.
I sighed and continued on my way down the lonely street with only the streetlights as company. “Come on, Rose. Just a few more blocks and you’re home free.”
My feet quickened their pace, but they couldn’t outrun the creeping fear that nagged me. Some primal instinct at the back of my mind told me there was danger afoot, and more so thanyour average night of walking through the darkened city streets. I kept looking over my shoulder expecting something to pop out.
I should have been paying attention to the shadows ahead of me.
A noise from somewhere made me freeze. My heart thumped hard in my chest as my eyes darted over the area. That’s when a dark figure stepped out of the shadows of a nearby alley. Their towering height and build told me it was a man. He wore a cloak and hood which partially covered a roughly-made doublet with pants. Leather shoes with rough straps covered their feet, and the figure had a leather belt around his waist.
I nearly swallowed my tongue when two more emerged from the darkness behind him. They stood shoulder to shoulder with the smallest of the three in the middle.
I gave them a shaky smile. “Isn’t it a little early for Halloween?”
One of the caped figures drew a large dagger out of their belt. The glow of the streetlight glistened off the shimmering blade.
My pulse quickened and I threw my arms up before I took a step back. “H-hey, wait a second. If it’s money you want, you’ve got the wrong working girl.”
One of the figures stepped forward and stretched out one hand toward me. A small stone sat in their upturned palm, and a soft white light emanated from the rough orb. The person drew their hood back and revealed herself as a woman. She was about thirty with long brown hair that disappeared under her cloak.
A grin stretched across her face as she shook her head. “Oh no. We’re quite certain we have the right girl.” She turned her face to one side and nodded. “Go get her.”
The two men leapt forward like monkeys. I screamed and spun around, but I’d only gone a few steps when they caught me. One of them held my arms while the other wrapped a bandannaover my mouth. The stench from the cloth was disgusting and made me gag.
“I told you to wash that damn thing,” the other man scolded his companion.
His compatriot shrugged. “I figured it would knock her out.”
“Less chatter and more hefting,” the woman called to the pair.
The men worked quickly and my legs and arms were soon bound. One of them hefted me over his shoulder so I faced behind us. I was carried into the alley where the shadows were so deep I could barely see the litter-covered ground.
“I’ll never get used to this filth,” one of the men muttered as he kicked a can. “Looks like the worst parts of the pirate islands.”
“Then you’ve never seen the Hills of Slaughter,” the woman commented with a slightly bemused tone to her voice. “They’ve left more than just memories on those steppes.”
“I heard about that,” the other man spoke up as he adjusted my weight. “Didn’t they even leave the guns because they thought they were cursed?”
“Will you two keep quiet until we’ve reached the door?” the woman snapped.
The men were silenced by her irritation and we continued onward. My captors trudged along until they were about halfway down the next block. They were as shadows themselves, so quiet and unobtrusive were they as they slipped into another alley.
They hurried down the narrow street until they reached a door. This wasn’t any ordinary dirty alley entrance, however. A light caught my attention, and I twisted around to see that the door had a slight white glow around its border, and a fresh coat of white paint covered its front. The entrance also didn’t have a frame but rather seemed to float in front of the brick wall that surrounded it.
The woman grasped the fancy curved handle and opened it. I jumped as a fresh forest breeze wafted over me. Darkness lay beyond the door, but a few black outlines showed there was more than just a dingy room beyond the doorway.
And I knew I didn’t want to go in there.
I began to thrash in my captor’s grip. One of my flapping feet managed to hit him in the chin. He grunted and yanked me off him, spilling me to the ground. “Knock that off!” he snapped as he grabbed my arm with such a grip that I felt a bruise form underneath his fingers.
“Knock that off, Blake!” the woman snapped at him. “If you can’t handle the girl then let Saber carry her.”
