Light flickered behind my eyelids and I realized I hadn’t opened them yet. Springing them open, I tuned into the voices in the room.
A man was standing over a woman who sat in the corner of the room. I was in some type of hut with bamboo slat floors and bamboo slat walls, crudely tied together with twine.
“The skin is too damaged from the accident, I will have to sell her in pieces,” the woman was saying as bile crept up my throat.
The man growled. “Then we will heal her first and we can get a better price.”
The woman was silent. “You’re lucky the demon has been bound by the cuffs, or she’d have ripped you limb from limb.”
The man snarled. “Can you heal her or not? I’ll give you ten percent of what she fetches at market.”
The woman sighed. “Fine, but I want twenty percent. Fully healed, her skin alone will fetch enough for both of us to retire on.”
I bit down on my tongue to keep from crying out. Yanking my wrists, a tear slid from my eye as I realized they were bound in front of me.
No. No. No.
“I heard the witches like the bones more than the skin,” the man said.
The woman scoffed. “I’ve been doing this over fifty years. Trust me, a freshly-skinned demon fetches no greater price.”
Freshly. Skinned. Demon.
Demon?
I screamed then. I mean, if I was going to be skinned alive, I might as well fucking put up a fight, and if I didn’t scream I was going to lose my mind.
The man crossed the room quickly and held up a steel mallet.
Oh God.
“Wait!” the witch cried from the corner. “Don’t bash her brain in, I need it whole.”
Oh. My. Leaning over, I vomited onto the man’s bare feet.
He sighed, looking over at the woman. “Can I wash this off? Or is vomit worth something too?”
The woman scowled at him, stepping out from the shadows. “Everything on this little demon is worth something. You don’t pluck a hair from her head without my say so.”
He pulled a knife from his belt and nodded. “What should I start with?”
The woman had stepped into the firelight and I could see her more fully now. She was younger than I thought. I mean, she said she’d been doing this for fifty years, but she looked early thirties. Stocky, with thick wavy hair and a harsh face, she wore dirty clothes that looked like they’d been pieced together. Life had not been kind to this woman, I could see that. But on top of that she was … what was she? I inhaled, confused by her pointy fey ears and yet vampire smell.
She looked right down at me, took in my confused appearance and laughed. The sound made my skin crawl. “You trying to figure it out, love?”
I nodded. Anything to keep her talking and not skinning me alive. Where was Walsh? Was he dead? My memories were fuzzy. The nice Paladin man had tried to help me and then they killed him. Walsh would have seen the dozen hunters and surely turned back for help … right? He’d tell Sawyer and Sawyer would come for me … he wouldn’t leave me here.
The woman reached out and grasped me by the hair, pulling me up into a sitting position. I hissed as pain shot up my skull, my wolf coming to the surface; pelts of fur rolled down my arms and I growled.
She grinned. “There you are, little demon.” Then she pointed to herself, and the dude standing next to her. “We areIth-a-cki.” She spoke slowly like I was stupid. “Part fey, part other magical creature. It’s rare, but sometimes interbreeding with a fey results in pregnancy, and when it does…” She clicked her tongue: “You better flee to the forest, or the fey will kill that baby before it’s born.” She grinned, showing a missing front tooth. “We’re bad luck. Just. Like.You.”
My heart pounded in my ears as I processed what she said. The breeds couldn’t intermix, or at least that’s what I was always told. If a vampire and a werewolf had sex, a child would never result. Just like a dog and a lion couldn’t have a baby. But maybe … the fey DNA was closer … like a lion and a tiger.
The Ithaki were … ligers.
Before I could respond, anything to keep her talking, and not cutting, there was a shout of alarm outside.
That’s when I heard it.
