One of her talons dragged over my leg, and the laughter that sent another fresh wave of fear through my bloodstream echoed around us.
"I expected more from the one they all feared," she said, her heavily accented words slamming straight into my chest. "And I didn't expect you to be so careless." Her teeth made another appearance as she grinned. "So idiotic."
My lips parted, words on the tip of my tongue ready to defend myself, but I stopped. The words lodged in my throat, because I knew she was right. I was foolish and I had no one else to blame but myself.
"He's going to be so pleased," the one standing behind said. Hissed, more like it, but I couldn't move my eyes from the woman in front of me.
I could taste the fear crawling through my body. I could feel it gripping my insides, rendering me powerless when faced with someone like this. I could also feel her power—theirpower—working in sync, wrapping around me tightly even without their hands touching me. But my own power stayed silent, descending back into the pits of my soul, abandoning me when I needed it the most.
Please, I whispered internally.Please, help me. But the hum of power I was getting used to was nowhere to be found. I dug and searched and prayed it was somewhere around my heart like it was before, but I couldn't touch it. I could see it, like a fog ascending from the ground, running away from me, as if it too didn't want to participate in this ordeal.
"Who are you?" I asked, proud of the steadiness of my voice, even when everything inside me screamed. The urge to run, to hide, to cower in front of these three creatures, was strong, but I stood my ground. If I showed them how much I feared them,that would be the end for me, I knew that. Just like I knew they weren't here to kill me.
That would've been too easy, and had they wanted to do that, they would've done so already.
Unless… "You can't kill me, can you?" I asked, sounding braver than I actually was.
The one in front of me glowered, her eyes turning into slits, shining with the yellow hue of her pupils. Her talons suddenly dug inside the flesh below my knee, and a bloodcurdling scream erupted from my lungs, leaving my throat raw. "No," the psychopath chuckled, "we can't kill you. But we're going to have fun trying at least."
"Practicing," another voice piped in, but I was too lost to the pain to try and figure out which one spoke.
"How long do you think she can stay awake after the blood loss?" another asked as my head thumped to the ground after the bitch that dug her talons in me twisted her hand, cutting through my flesh. I bit down on my lower lip, trying to stop myself from crying. But it was useless.
Hot tears cascaded down my cheeks as I tried pushing against her, against the hold she had on me, but something cold trickled through the veins in my legs, stopping them from moving. I couldn't… I couldn't move them.
"Paralytic," she announced when my eyes crashed with hers. "Such a powerful little tool we have. Don't you think so?"
Her sister, twin, triplet, whatever they were, walked to my side, grinning maniacally at me before she knelt down, her talons shining viciously in the moonlight. "I—" My words cut off when another set of talons dug in my stomach and that vicious cackle erupted from the one that walked to me.
"Oh, she's bleeding a lot," that third voice piped in, and as I looked up, another pair of yellow eyes was leaning toward me, her black wings spread around as if she would take flight. "Ihope you can heal quickly." The third one smiled as she stepped behind my head.
Her knees came to the sides of my head, just above my shoulders, and before I could look up, something sharp tore through the T-shirt I wore, and into my skin just beneath my artery, cutting off any rational thought.
I was choking.
My throat froze, my lungs struggled to work, and as my eyes looked up at the skies and the moon peeking through the treetops, I kept repeating one thing as my eyes became heavy. As the power of their paralytic cut off rational thought and the ability to stay awake.
I didn't want to die.
I don't want to fucking die.
"No!"tore from me as I jumped up from the cold, hard ground, my eyes finally opening to the world.
My heart kept racing as the blurriness started disappearing from my eyes, making me see my surroundings for the first time. The smell of mold, rust, and rotting reached my senses, making me open my mouth and stop breathing through my nose. Thedrip, drip, dripkept coming somewhere from my right, but it wasn't the possibility of getting drowned that had my panic skyrocketing.
It was the sight of the metal bars in front of me that almost made me stop breathing. It was the gray, cement ground I was laying on that had me pull back all the way to the cold wall behind me.
My hand went instinctively to my leg, to the place where those talons bit through my skin, but the sight of golden shackleson my wrists stopped me momentarily. Dried blood covered my hands—my blood, no doubt—but the shackles… the shackles weighed heavily on my skin, their edges cutting through the skin at my wrists, and the more I moved, the more the burning increased, coming straight from them.
"What the fuck?" I mumbled to myself, looking at the shiny objects on me.
They fucking shackled me like an animal and threw me into this… this rotten place.
Lowering my hands slowly toward my leg, I pressed around, expecting the pain to erupt through me any moment now, but when my fingers pressed against the place where that fucking beast sliced through me, there was nothing. Nothing but the holes in my pants and dried blood that definitely belonged to me.
Rolling up the legs of my pants, wincing through the painful burning coming from where the shackles cut into my skin, I halfway expected to see stitches—something. Anything but the clear skin staring back at me, just covered with blood.
Did I… Did I somehow heal?
