Page 52 of Taken By Raider Kings
Thatwas one thing she didn’t miss—all those eyes, watching and weighing and judging.
But Zach was something different.She could still feel his hands on her, calluses rasping against her skin.A gentle touch, as if caressing something precious, soft reverent fingers instead of hard biting knuckles.
Will you stop, Sophie?
The cricket-voices got louder.She pushed them away, the maneuver easier with a warm lump of food in her belly.Finally, a meal that wasn’t all industrial grease.Julia was a good cook, if impatient.And Sophie had obsessed over every meal even before the last chef was fired for burning Marc’s potatoes.Between the two of them, everything had turned out fine.
She was warm enough, and so very tired.Every inch of her was weighed down with soft downy fatigue.
The streetlamp outside faded a bit.Maybe her eyes were playing tricks.Her lids drifted closed, and when they lifted heavily some while later, the room was much darker.
A faint brush of moving fabric.Zach, shifting outside her door.The cricket-buzzing voices rose, then fell away as she concentrated on making them shutupso she could get some rest.It was like a radio playing softly in a nearby room, just loud enough you couldn’t simply tune out.
And highly, highly annoying.
The rectangle of light on the wall blinked, fuzzed.The sense of someone breathing outside her door leached away, the hall floor squeaking slightly.There were other quick little sounds, too, as if others had gotten up.
What’s going on?She rolled over again, irritated, and arranged her head on a bent arm once more.God, can’t I just sleep?Please?
The room darkened.The wind picked up outside, sleet rattling against the roof, and a bitter taste invaded her tongue.Maybe it was indigestion.
But it tasted like dirt.Something ugly, rotting, and covered with grimy slime.
She pushed herself up on her hands, her left palm—despite seemingly happy to heal up quickly—sending a bolt of red pain up her arm.Ow.I hope that’s not getting infected, that would just cap the whole damn?—
The window exploded inward, glass raining down.Sophie cried out, curling up, arms reflexively raising to protect her head.A staticky half-breath sense of thunderstorm building, the hair-lifting moment before the first lightning strike.
They poured into the room, a tide of jerking, leaping, half-seen shapes.There wasn’t even time to scream before they were on her, cold hands gripping like iron vises, their eyes dripping bleeding hellfire, a tidal wave of rank foulness.Blankets tangled around her like a shroud before she thrashed, striking out with hands and feet, realizing she was, after all, screaming.
The last things she heard were crashing howls and Zach yelling her name before darkness closed over her head.
* * *
Utterly black, and it felt like a very, very small space.Flat hard floor—cold, probably concrete.Something was dripping, and there was an odd jumble of sounds—screeching, clicking, tearing noises like thick dark meat pulled from recalcitrant bone.
“That’s just fine,” a woman said, and Sophie recognized the voice just as she realized she was tied up.Thick coils of rope cocooned her body.“We’ll make an example.”
What the hell?The last she knew, she’d been in bed—no, the window had broken.
And now…
“She’smysacrifice,” Marc said petulantly.
She’d know that voice anywhere; her heart fell before leaping to block her throat.
It was odd, though—it sounded as if he had something in his mouth.Her ex-husband lisped over the sibilants, and Sophie had a sudden, horrible vision of yellowed, malformed fangs, long and sharp, affecting the way the tongue moved.
It was sodark.She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed; she only listen.No, that wasn’t quite right.
The ghostly faces were visible, not quite glowing with their own light.They pressed close, and the cricket-sound as their lips moved had a hard time getting through all the squealing and ripping, the thumping, and the wet dripping.
“She’ll suffer later.We’re going to send a little message to those animals.That’s enough, children.”Delia Armitage sounded normal, at least.Except for the cold, suppressed glee in her tone, as if gossiping over a table at a charity dinner.Sophie had heardthatparticular tone many times, usually just before someone’s reputation was stained.“Be mannerly, now.”
Sophie blinked, tried to move, strained to see.It smelled so horrible, spoiled meat and a queer brassy tinge, the reek clogging her nose, sending icy shivers down her aching back.The crunching and slurping tapered away; in the pregnant pause afterward the reedy cricket-sounds grew clearer.
They almost, almost became real words.The ghost-faces pressed close, some contorted with worry.Others looked painfully sad; no few of them had sharp teeth, bright and regular like Zach and his family when they went werewolf.Carcajou, that was the word.
Zach.Had they hurt him?
