“It’s not here. I’ve looked everywhere.”
Ena froze. Someone was in the altar room. Someone whose voice she didn’t recognize.
“Well, look again. It has to be here,” a different male voice replied in a hushed tone.
Thieves, maybe? Mortals didn’t usually dare steal from witches, not given how much they relied on their services, and because everyone knew they were no match for witches’ magic. These men were clearly sorely mistaken about whose house this was, or they were simply stupid.
Mustering her best powerful, pissed-off witch face, Ena approached the door and threw it open. “What in Gaia’s name do you think you’re doing in here?”
The altar room was in complete disarray with books strewn everywhere and chests opened, their contents emptied onto the floor. It was obvious they’d been searching for something. Standing in the mess were two large men wearing Samhain masks, one in the shape of a gray wolf, and the other a black-eyed raccoon. They both whipped their heads to look at her, clearly startled by her sudden appearance. Then malice filled their eyes as they moved towards her.
Realizing her intimidation hadn’t worked, Ena reached down into her Knowing, planning to call on a spellword to knock them down with a blast of wind while she ran to get help, when she felt hervisanissurge upward, begging to be used. It filled her body with the same warm, growing sensation she’d felt during the Summoning. The feeling of it startled her, and in that extra second of hesitation, she saw the eyes of the two men flick over her shoulder, looking at something behind her in the doorway. She went to turn when a strong arm looped around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides, followed by a large hand that covered her mouth, preventing her from speaking her spellword.
“I wouldn’t do that, little viper.”
Ena froze. That voice…it was familiar. She inhaled sharply through her nose, and then the scent hit her. Stone and cedar. Woodsmoke and honey. No way.
“It’s not here,” the man with the raccoon mask said, speaking to her captor. “What do we do?”
“We need to move now, before more of them find us,” the other with the wolf mask added.
“How will we find it now? We need something to go on,” the raccoon man said frantically.
“It’s fine. If it’s not here, I know how we’ll find it. Grab those ropes,” the man holding her said, nodding his head in the direction of the ceremonial bindings used for handfasting that were sitting in a bowl on one of the bookshelves.
The wolf man grabbed them and walked over towards Ena. “What’s your plan?” he asked the man holding her.
“Tie her up, rip up that tablecloth over there, and gag her with one of the strips. She’s coming with us.”
The man in the wolf mask didn’t hesitate to follow her captor’s orders as he approached her with the rope while the raccoon man ripped the tablecloth off the altar table and tore it in shreds. Ena started thrashing frantically, and yelling as much as the man’s hand over her mouth would allow, but when the raccoon man joined in to hold her still, the three of them easily overpowered her.
Pushing her hands together, they wrapped the handfasting bindings around her wrists. Then, as the man holding her removed his hand from her mouth, they violently stuffed a large ripped-off piece of the tablecloth into her mouth and secured it with another long strip tied tightly around her head. The feeling of suffocation was intense, and the cloth dried out her mouth, making her want to gag. Fighting the urge to vomit, which would inevitably cause her to choke given that her mouth was blocked, she inhaled deeply through her nose.
The man who’d been holding her turned her around and, tilting her head up, she finally saw him. His face was partially covered by a reddish-brown and tan mask decorated withfeathers to look like a hawk, but she’d recognize those light-green eyes anywhere.
Too shocked to move, she just stared at him. He glanced down at her with zero recognition, then grabbed her and heaved her over his shoulder. Finally snapping out of her stupor, she started wriggling wildly again, but his arm clamped around her legs, stilling her movements. Without the use of her hands, she was wholly incapacitated. Fear set in at the intense feeling of powerlessness.
“Quick, let’s get her to the horses,” hesaid to the others.
“What if they follow us?” the man with the wolf mask asked him.
He paused for a second, then spoke decisively. “Burn it down.”
“Wha—??” Ena tried to speak around her gag. Twisting her head, she saw the man with the raccoon mask raise his hand. It was glowing a deep red, like hot coals in a fire, and she could feel the heat emanating from it even though she was several feet away from him. He placed his hand on a pile of books on the ground, and they caught fire instantly.
In that moment, Ena knew she was not dealing with mortals.
These were daemons.
As the fire from the books began to spread, they fled through the kitchen and out the back door of the house, her captor gripping Ena tightly over his shoulder. They moved quickly past the herb-drying shed and laundry tub, then into the dark forest that surrounded their village.
Ena couldn’t raise her head enough to see, but she could hear the flames of the fire spreading, spitting, crackling in the house behind them. Could no one at the bacchanal see it yet? They would soon, and they’d come running to put it out.
But while they were putting it out, these men would have ample time to escape in the dark…with her.
She started to scream, trying desperately to call for help, but her sounds were muffled by the gag in her mouth, and her tongue couldn’t move properly to form any words.
The men continued to jog quickly, moving deeper into the woods. After a while, her voice started to get raw with the effort, and she had to stop. She couldn’t hear or see the light from the fire anymore; they were surrounded by only trees and darkness.
