I blinkmy eyes to the sound of arguing above me and immediately go tense.
“What have you brought to my doorstep? She is obviously the enemy. Look at her! She’s covered in blood.”
“Your nose is bad, brother,” comes another tense voice, “but even you can scent she is no angel.”
Immediately my body tightens further. I try to scramble to a sitting position, but hands force me back down.Don’t touch me, don’t touch me. I fight like a wildcat to get away.
Or I would, except that my vision’s blurry, and my dizzy head makes me swoon back to the hard surface below.
“Heal her,” demands the low, harsh voice. The hands release me, and I can breathe again. “I thought her a threat and chased her. She ran into a tree. Use your gift and make her better. Now!”
“Well, then, why not just useyourgift and carry her to her maker! Then our problem would be gone.”
My vision’s still blurry as I try to blink past something crusty on my eyelids, but I can make out two large, terrifying figures. Imust have hit my head harder than I thought because instead of double vision, I’m having triple. One of them looks like he has three pairs of arms. And he’s. . .blue.
Wait, big blue monster. . . why is that ringing a bell? I shake my head as my eyes go to the creature he’s grappling with and blink again. But no matter how many times I blink, he still has a lion’s face, mane, hugewings?—
None of this makes any sense, but it’s obviously a bad scene. If my father taught me anything, it’s to use every distraction to your advantage. They’re busy with each other? Great. Time to make my escape.
I start crawling across the stone floor toward the door.
Which is when someone else comes in. A normal, human-looking woman. Does this mean I’m coming down from whatever hallucination. . .? I look back at the grappling monsters. . . who still look like monsters.
“What’s going on here?” asks the woman, hands on her hips.
Maybe I can just army crawl past her and get thehellout of this nightmare?—
“Oh my god!” she shrieks, looking down at me.
Or not.
She immediately bends down, looking at me. I avert my eyes and stare at her thick boots. “Are you okay? Oh my god, your head.” She reaches out and pulls back at the last second when I flinch away. “We need to get you cleaned up, or?—”
She turns and looks toward the two creatures on the other side of the room, who have stopped fighting. “Abaddon. Can you heal her?”
I do not know what’s happening, or how I got here, or who?—
I try to start crawling toward the door again as the woman argues with one of the hallucinated creatures.
Just need to get somewhere safe. Get away first. Then I’ll think through my options. Regroup. And then I’ll?—
I’ll. . . what?
As my mind tries to reach for the next thought beyond my immediate fight and flight response, it all comes rushing back.
Dad and I at the cabin. All our lieutenants. My uncle’s betrayal. Realizing too late we were among wolves when we expected the safety of family.
My breathing comes faster as red rage sweeps through me. Automatically, I reach down to my thighs for my knives. . . but they aren’t there. I’ve been disarmed. Sons of bitches! But did they find the?—
Crouching, I reach for my ankle sheath as a voice behind me roars, “Fine! I’ll heal her. But we will get to the bottom of what she’s doing here, even if I have to lock her in the dungeon for answers.”
Right. I remember trying to grapple with the six-armed blue one. My smallest blade won’t do anything against these science experiments on steroids.
Right now, it’s time torun.
I drag my exhausted, dizzy body to my feet and book it toward the door. I don’t make it three dashes before running into a solid body suddenly filling up the threshold I’m trying to sprint across. My entire body freezes at the touch, and I try to spring backward, almost falling on my ass.
“Who is this?” comes a voice as my arms pinwheel, and I try to twist in the air to brace for impact.
