I hoped the broad flame-guy's chattering was an affirmative because other hands grabbed me from behind, and no amount of twisting, bucking, and kicking dislodged their strong grips. I faked a scream at the burns, mentally gave myself a standing ovation at how realistic it was, and tried to kick one of the guys in his roasted chestnuts.
He didn't howl with pain, and my foot connected with a hollow curve instead of a bulge.My apologies, ma'am.I adjusted my angle and kicked her in the pussy; she staggered back with a satisfying shriek, giving me a nice shot of magic.
I took advantage of the opening, twisting so all my weight was on the left, hoping to buckle their grips so I could gain an upper hand. My heart pounded, my blood racing. Fuck, this was fun.5
It occurred to me that them dragging me off played into my plan, and would take me into the heart of their cave system, but I was enjoying myself too much to stop struggling.
"Mercy!" I cried theatrically when someone bound my wrists at the small of my back. "Go easy on me, I'm just a girl!"
Maybe it wasn't too late to bring out the ol' fake pregnancy routine? But I'd keep it shelved for now, and see how this played out. Would they throw me to my knees in front of their band leader? Lock me in a dungeon to rot? Try to slit my throat over a sacrificial stone?
None of those quite fit, especially since the fiery fuckers never once hit me to stop my fighting; they only trapped my hands and grabbed my legs, hauling me up into the air. And even this close, there was no violence around the place. No hum of power for me to feed on.
What kind of hippie commune was this when they’d ambushed a poor, unsuspecting visitor and trussed them up in fiery hands?
"This is extremely undignified," I told them as they held me aloft in the air, carrying me like pallbearers with a coffin.
I stopped bucking and struggling at some point, curiosity replacing my eagerness to fight. I hoped my destination wasn't a dank, smelly dungeon. At least kneeling before a leader implied a clean floor.
The fiery fuckers6carried me into the valley between the tall, spiky mountains, and I swivelled my head to see if there were more of their people hiding near the mountains. This whole place smelled of orange dust and baking rock, and I already hated it.
Facing the sky as I was, I didn't see the cave entrances until we were right on top of them, and then I was inside a massive, cavernous space, twisting my neck to see elaborately carved furniture and delicate paintings of fire on the walls.
Okay. Maybe they worshipped a fire god? I could work with that—I had my own flames.
"Uhhhh," I laughed nervously when they set me on my feet on a patch of loose dirt by the back wall, stole my bag, patted me down for weapons they swiftly confiscated—and instantly began driving eight-feet-tall poles into the floor in a semicircle.
I dove for a gap, but fiery hands pushed me back even when I slammed a fist into their stomach.
"You motherfuckers," I hissed when three of them held me still as the others drove in the final poles, essentially building a cage around me. The fun thing was it tookfourof them to drive a single pole into the dirt, so shifting it on my own was going to be a bloody nightmare.
I curled my fingers around the poles like a TV character who'd been thrown in jail, and glared at the streaks of flame.
"You're all going to regret this."
But on the plus side, people who kidnapped a woman were definitely the sort who'd plan to kill the devil. Things were looking up.
When the flames backed up, putting space between them and my new cage, I saw glimpses of skin through the yellow fire. They were in all shades and tones imaginable—pale, tanned, copper, brown, black, onyx—and I'd just decided they were a half-decent community for not being racist, exclusionary jerks like some people I knew7when I glimpsed somethingmorebetween the flickering flames.
Was that … a dick swinging around?
Welp.Therewas another.
And another.
Andtherewere a pair of natural hanging tits, ivory skin topped with rose-pink nipples. Lovely.
I thumped my head against the bars with a groan.
It wasn't a hippie commune.
It was a nudist colony.
6
The devil was not going to be happy.
I'd been locked in this makeshift cage for four days now, and the deadline for my check-in had long passed. At first, it had been entertaining to watch the band go about their daily business, cooking and cleaning and painting elaborate scenes on sheets of white canvas. I figured they sold them in the nearest town, and that's how they had money for the enormous meals they made three times a day. I'd honestly never seen fish so big in my life.
