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“Good,” Philotes said, breathing a sigh of relief.
“How is that good?” I demanded. “They have her, Philotes! They took her, and gods know what they’ll do to her!”
“I know,” Philotes said. “But if you can feel her, it’s a good thing. It means she’s alive.”
ChapterTwenty-Seven
Lorraine
No, no, no!
How had they found me? I was supposed to be safe in the cabin, safe in the forest where magic created a barrier to hide me. That’s why I’d been there all this time instead of going home, so they couldn’t find me!
“Stop fucking fighting!” one of the men grunted when I clawed at his face. He had his arms wrapped around my waist, and I kicked and clawed and screamed.
It felt like my screams were muffled and didn’t travel very far. Something was messing with the way things should have worked. Then again, since I’d been taken the first time, nothing had been normal.
I may not have been heard when I screamed, but I refused to stop fighting.
“Help me out, will you?” my captor panted to the other guy.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Grab her legs!”
When the second guy grabbed my legs, I planted a foot in his jaw and kicked as hard as I could. He fell backward, cursing loudly.
“You deal with her yourself, you son of a bitch!” he growled, rubbing his jaw as he pulled himself up again.
“I can’t do it alone!” the first one shouted, his voice gravelly in my ear. “He said she wouldn’t be this much trouble the further we move away!”
He?
“Just keep fucking going,” the second one growled.
I let out another scream, which didn’t travel far at all, and kicked and fought as hard as I could. My captor tried to wrap an arm around my neck. I dipped my head, and the moment his arm touched my face, I sank my teeth into his flesh. He howled in pain, dropping me.
When I hit the ground, I scrambled away, pushed up, and ran.
“Not so fast!” the second guy shouted, grabbing my arm.
I swung around and punched him in the face. He cried out and cursed another string of powerful words. I spat at him for good measure. When I yanked free, it was my chance to get away. It was my chance to?—
Something hit me over the head so hard, I saw stars. I took another step forward, and another, trying to get away, but my balance was off and I couldn’t see anymore. My vision blurred, darkness crept in, and I felt the world tilt on its axis. I hit the ground, pain shooting into my left shoulder when I landed on it. My head continued to spin as the two men’s voices danced around me, somehow sounding further and further away even though I felt hands on my arms and my legs.
The darkness dragged me under, and then I didn’t know anything anymore.
The blackness lasted a long time. I came to, aware that I was moving. I kept my eyes closed in case I was being watched and tried to take stock of my surroundings.
The two men talked to each other, not too far away from me, but the gentle rumble of an engine beneath me drowned out their muted voices. I peeked through one eye to confirm that we were in a car, and the two men sat in the driver’s and passenger’s seats.
I lay on the back seat, my head throbbing like a bitch. Whatever I’d been hit with, it had been a hard blow.
I was getting sick and tired of being knocked over the head and taken away.
I tried to study my captors without them realizing I was awake. They looked vaguely familiar, and I was sure they were the same guys who’d taken me the first time. They were both burly. The one had a scar on his cheek that ran over his eye, giving him a perpetual frown. The other I couldn’t see, but I could hear him. He sounded like he was the one in charge.
I dubbed them Thing One and Thing Two.
