Page 4 of Misfit Monsters
But she looked so lost…
Now I have more injuries to make up for. More hurt to balance out.
I’ll find a way. There has to be a way. For now?—
A sudden force blasts straight through the shadows to slam into me.
I reel through the patches of darkness. Before I can get my bearings, another blast of the unexpected energy smacks me.
This time it digs in, like fingers clutching around my mind. The force wriggles through my thoughts.
I have the sense of a presence at the other end of that grasp, as if I’m a fish hooked on a lure.
The lure yanks at me. It’s so snagged in my head I can’t do anything except follow.
I stumble through the shadows, a silent wail building inside me. No, no, no.
It’s been years since I felt this sensation, but I know it too well. It’s one of them, one of the mortals with magic.
A sorcerer is reeling me in.
Not just me. As I’m dragged forward with increasing speed, my essence brushes against other beings in the shadows alongside me. We’ve all been caught up in this vast net of sorcerous compulsion.
An impression of words hum through my essence.Come. Come to me.
I squirm and flail, but my ephemeral body won’t respond. It just flows on toward the call.
I’m trying so hard to fight that I barely notice my surroundings until my forward momentum slows.
Alongside the other shadowkind creatures hauled by the sorcerer’s power, I dip under a rusty fence that surrounds a large, mostly empty lot. Weeds sprout up from the cracks in the pavement.
Five figures wait for us by a parked van. Three of them are human; two are higher shadowkind like me. The two shadowkind and two of the humans stand poised around a waist-high metal box.
An icy shiver passes through my being.
I know a cage when I see one.
The third human keeps reeling me in with his magic. When I’m about ten feet away, he loosens his hold just slightly, his dark gaze sweeping over the lot as if he can see us even in the shadows.
He’s definitely not the other sorcerer I’ve known. This man is a lot younger—maybe mid-twenties, as well as I can judge mortal ages. Since all shadowkind pop into being fully grown and unchanging, I don’t have a ton of observations to go by.
Even though he’s younger, he’s awfully strong. His power shows not only in the invisible force clamped around me but in his chiseled jaw and the muscles filling out his broad shoulders as well.
With a twitch of his hand, he flicks a strand of wavy black hair away from his eyes. Then he chants another command in a low murmur I can’t make out.
His magic wrenches me right out of the shadows into my true physical form, not the human-like one I can use as a disguise in the mortal realm.
My translucent body shimmers with a passing gust of wind. It’s nothing but light from the vague shapes of feet to my glowing blob of a head.
All around me, other shadowkind pop out of the darkness too: mostly lesser creatures with their animalistic bodies but a few scattered higher beings as well: an imp with purple skin and spiky ears, a centaur in the midst of rearing his horsey front legs, and a nearly transparent wind spirit whose blustery hair is having a really bad day.
The sorcerer looks only at me.
His voice comes out steady and hard. “That’s the one. Take her in.”
2
Periwinkle
