Page 71 of Midnight Moon
Poppet?
“What do you want?” I repeated. My pulse spiked when four more cloaked figures stepped out of the night, flanking the man in front of me.
Shit.
How long would it take for someone to search for me?
I’d said I’d be back in ten minutes.
Hunter would want to leave the cabin to find me sooner than the rest, but Stephanie would talk him out of it. She knew I wasn’t lying when I said I needed space.
Right now, I wished my best friend wasn’t so thoughtful.
“You have two choices, Blair Hemmings, daughter of the Moon Goddess. You can come with us peacefully, or we will neutralize you.”
I blinked at the odd title tacked onto my name, then focused my attention on the not-so-great options he’d presented.
“Neutralize me? You mean to kill me on pack lands?”
I didn’t know much about sorcerers, but I was a master of pack law. To kill a shifter on pack land, unprovoked, earned the offender a quick trip to the chopping block themselves.
It didn’t matter that these people weren’t shifters, the rule would apply to them. No way would Alpha Kurt and the Badlands shifters let this slide on their territory.
“Make your choice,” the cloaked leader commanded, ignoring my question. “You have five seconds.”
“What did I even do to you?” I shouted, praying someone would come across us before I had to fight for my life. I didn’t need experience fighting someone with magic to know I would lose.
“You stole from us, and if you do not wish to give it back willingly, we will take it from your corpse.”
Was he serious?
“I didn’t steal anything! I don’t even know who you freaking people are!” This had to be a case of mistaken identity or something. Nothing else made sense. I’d never met a sorcerer before, let alone stole from one.
The cloaked man’s response was to begin chanting.
Dread washed over me when his four companions joined in. Each voice sounded masculine.
Their actions confirmed they were sorcerers. I’d seen enough movies to know they were building up to casting a spell, and I didn’t want to be around when it was ready.
I held my hands up, as if they would be enough to deter whatever was about to come my way. “Listen, there’s been a mistake. Don’t do anything drastic. We can talk about this.”
The sorcerers continued to chant.
As their words grew stronger, air began to press against me. The pressure came from above and below and from either side. The force grew painful. In seconds, I struggled to breath.
I fell to the ground, struggling to lift my hands against the immense pressure to claw my throat.
Oxygen. I needed oxygen.
Darkness crept into the edge of my vision.
I stared at the billowing cloaks of the sorcerers, silently cursing them while also wondering what in the world I could have done to get on their bad side.
The pressure abated.
Then, a flash of white light flew from the leader’s fingers and struck my chest.
Never, in my life, had I felt such agony.
