Page 7 of Taken By Raider Kings
Her legs flew out in front of her as the rest of her was wrenched violently back, a hard hand clapped over her mouth, and she was too breathlessly stunned to do more than let out a choked cry—a muffled, lonely sound, not worth much with the wind rattling empty branches overhead.
A motor turned over, buzzed into life.“Get us out of here,” the man said, and tossed Sophie into a dark, enclosed space as if she weighed nothing.She landed on something soft, her forehead cracking what felt like a face, and there was a yelp as if she’d kicked a puppy.
“What the hell isthis?” A girl’s voice, young, and a sudden sound like a sheet popped smooth before being laid over a bed, resolving into a low rumbling growl much different than the mechanical engine.
“Keep your mouthshut,Julia, until I tell you to open it.”He sounded furious; the voice was deep, commanding, and faintly familiar.Sophie struggled to sit up as the vehicle—it was definitely a van—pulled away from the curb.
What the hell?Someone grabbed her shoulders, shoved her so she half-flew across the narrow space to landhardon something softer than metal but far more solid than upholstery.
“Ooof.”A hard huff of expelled breath.“Careful, there,” the man continued.“Be easy with her, dammit!”
“Who is it?”Another male voice.
I’ve been kidnapped.Oh, God.Lucy— “Lucy!”she gasped, and erupted into wild thrashing.Her elbow whapped something soft, and heoofed again.It might have been funny, really.Downright hilarious, if it hadn’t been happening to her.
Her wrists were grabbed, and the hand clamped over her mouth again.He held her easily, as if she were a child.
Terribly, hurtfully strong hands keeping her immobile.Fresh panic turned the space behind her eyelids red; Sophie’s stomach cramped, her heart hammering hummingbird-quick.
“This is our new shaman.”Silence greeted his statement.At the same time, that thundering growl swallowed the hum of the engine afresh, shaking through her frozen, terrified body before settling into something very much like a purr.“You can smell the potential on her.She was back there, near theupir.I think it ate her friend.”
Lucy!Sophie got a good mouthful andbit,hard as she’d ever driven her teeth into anything in her life.So hard her jaws ached, in fact, and there was a hiss of indrawn breath.Her eyes rolled, and she worried her jaw back and forth.
Warm coppertaste filled her mouth, too thick and slippery to spit.
“And she’s blooded me,” the man continued, without any discernible change in tone.“Which takes care of that.So all of youbehave, or I’ll have your hides.”
A sharp intake of collective breath, like wind through a field of wheat.A deep, charged silence returned, reverberated.The van’s tires hummed.
“A shaman?”A very young male voice, and it sounded shocked enough for all involved.“Really?A real live one?”
“A potential.”The man’s voice rumbled against her back.“She’ll trigger to us soon enough.”
It was dark inside the rocking van; the vehicle took a corner at high speed and Sophie’s frozen body pressed back against whoever was holding her.
Lucy, oh, God.The image of the body in the alley, its throat torn open and legs splayed indecently, just wouldn’t go away.It couldn’t be possible, it justcouldn’t.
Sophie made a low, despairing sound in the back of her throat.The freeze response broke; she burst into motion once more, getting exactly nowhere.The borrowed skirt was riding up, too, adding a whole new dimension to the situation.
The liquid in her mouth coated the back of her throat, terrible iron-hot slickness.He didn’t move his hand, hard fever-warm skin quivering against her lips—small, utterly weird movements, as of tiny skittering legs under the surface.
She blinked, her glasses knocked askew.Glittering eyes peered at her.A passing streetlamp’s reflection boiled through the interior, outlining a young woman with long dark hair with one hand clapped to her cheek and a slim young man who looked enough like her to be a twin, with the same narrow nose and winged eyebrows.The young man crouched on the van’s middle bench seat, easily swaying back and forth with the motion of the vehicle, the pale streak over his left temple shining briefly.
“Slow down, Eric,” the voice behind her rumbled.The growl was coming from his chest, and his hand jammed her glasses uncomfortably high against the bridge of her nose, almost into her forehead.
It washim.The guy who had bumped her at the bar.
The van slowed.“What the hell just happened?”the driver asked.
Think, Sophie!Three men and a woman.They’d justkidnappedher, for God’s sake.And Lucy… Lucy was…
“Kyle took on a rabidupir.Least, I think it was bloodsick.Sure acted like it.”He paused, his hand peeling away from her mouth.“And Julia had to go and get involved.”
“I didn’t—” The girl cowered as the man holding Sophie made another deep, strange sound.
Definitelya growl.She froze, her brain nearly smoking with the effort of attempting to deal with this new absurdity.The alleyway became more distant and dreamlike with every passing moment, horror forcing memory to recede.A mental reflex, hatefully familiar.
Oh, Jesus.Please.Lucy’s slack colorless face, the horrible gaping below her chin, the blood-drenched thing with its twisting, plum-colored leer—the Latin Lover who’d been grinding with Lucy on the dance floor, there was no mistaking that ruffled shirt.
