The usual prickling of discomfort at distance from my mates hasn’t started up. We haven’t experimented with getting farther apart since we confirmed our love for one another. Maybe our bonds have settled down with our acceptance of them?
One small plus in a big heap of minuses.
The van’s back doors swing open. I’m lying on my side partly facing them, so I have an awkward view of the several humans standing stiffly outside, staring at me as if they expect me to erupt into vengeful flames.
As far as I know, that’s more Sorsha’s area. Maybe they got the two of us confused, just looking for a shadowkind with some sort of vibrant hair?
I manage to speak, though my voice comes out reedy. “Why did you take me?”
One of the humans makes a scoffing sound. “You’re one of those monsters. You were messing around with the shadows. As if things aren’t bad enough already.”
I swallow against the pain. “I was… trying to make it better. Calm down the flood. Stop the real monsters.”
Another of my captors snorts. “Why would you want that? You’re getting what you want, aren’t you? Taking over the world?”
Taking over the world? My mind spins, and a response I haven’t totally thought through spills out. “That sounds like… too much work.”
Then I blank out completely.
I wakeup sitting in a folding lawn chair with my skin no longer crisscrossed with net webbing. That should be an improvement, but a deep throbbing around my arms and legs tells me I’m not exactly home free.
Shiny cords that must be woven with silver and iron gleam around my wrists and elbows, restraining me to the chair’s arms. From the gnawing sensation across my lower legs, there are more tying my calves to the aluminum base.
The plasticky fabric against my butt and back feels awfully flimsy. I’m not sure my captors have given their current plan the most in-depth consideration. It’s not as if the chair would hold me back if I decided to throw myself at them.
I am still stuck to it and in my physical form, though. They’re just lucky I’m not the havoc-wreaking type.
My impressions of my men have dulled with the distance, but I can still tell none of them are currently overjoyed. Pain and fear trickle through me.
I need to get back to them—so they know I’m okay. So I knowthey’reokay.
A few humans are sitting in similar chairs across from me. When one of them gives a shout that my eyes have opened, ten more come hurrying over.
The woman in the middle chair stands up. A silver-and-iron badge glints on her shirt, and something long and sinewy glints as it streams from her hand.
It’s one of those shiny whips of light the hunters also use. These people don’t look like the hunters I’ve seen before, much more nervous and jittery rather than grim and jaded, but they’ve stocked up on all the tools of the trade.
I can’t taste the woman’s emotions while she’s wearing that protective badge, but I’m familiar enough with human interior states that I don’t buy the toughness she’s attempting to exude. She’s hiding her nerves pretty well on the outside, but a faint tremor ripples through her voice when she speaks.
“You’re the one who made a big deal on TV about being here. You’re mixed up in this disaster the most. You’re going to tell us what you really want, or I’m going to make you.”
She lifts the whip threateningly.
What I really want is to get out of this chair, wave good-bye, and hightail it back to the city. Somehow I don’t think that’s what she means, though.
It’s not as if my broader intentions are particularly horrifying either. “I want to get all that murk off the city so the people who lived there can go home safely. And to figure out why it came out of the rift in the first place so we can make sure no one’s hurt the same way again.”
The humans all peer at me so blankly that I start to wonder if I accidentally spoke in a language they don’t know. Did the pain rewire my brain so I’m accidentally using French or Cantonese or Klingon?
The woman who’s leading the interrogation waggles the whip. “Then why were you over there sending your weird powers into it?”
Okay, so she did understand my explanation. They just don’t believe it.
I exude as much reassuring warmth as I can summon when I feel like my limbs are about to burn off, which I’ll admit isn’t a whole lot. “My powers—which I really don’t think are all that weird; you should see what this squid shifter I met can do—seem to lighten up the darkness. I’ve been thinning out the murk for a few days now. When more darkness was spewing out, I got my mates to help me in the hopes that we could stop the situation from getting worse.”
A man who’s still sitting in one of the chairs folds his arms over his chest. “Then why did the darknessstopspewing after we tackled you?”
My spirits lift. “We must have had enough of an effect before then. That’s great!”
