I pushed out my hands to zap the man into an ice block, but suddenly, I found myself flying into the air. I sailed upwards to the cloud-tornado like a plastic bag in the wind. As if I weighed nothing. My breath left my body. I squinted my eyes against the pressure of the wind and tried my best to cover my face. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t control my body.
Soon I was sucked into the clouds, into the stars, unable to see my surroundings, my house or the man. Only darkness circled me.
And then, the wind stopped, and I dropped to the ground. Slow at first, my dress acting almost like a parachute around me. Then, when the grass, no longer a street, came closer, I fell with a fast and hard thud. My body bounced against the ground, my head following. Soon, more darkness surrounded me as my vision dulled and my mind shut down. Consciousness leaving me.
CHAPTER2
LILA
When I opened my eyes, my face was in the dirt. I sat up and immediately regretted it, as my brain felt like it was rattling around in my skull. I grabbed my head and winced.
“What the hell just happened?” I said to absolutely no one.
I looked around. There was a thick forest of grass and tall skinny trees in front of me. It went too deep for me to tell from sitting down. I looked to my right and left, and all I saw were more trees. I twisted around and looked behind me. I was facing a narrow road, but there were no white or yellow markings to signify lanes. That was an accident waiting to happen.
Something gigantic flapped its wings above me, and I looked up to see what looked like a pterodactyl flying through the sky. I couldn’t tell if that was actually what it was, but it was incredibly large. However, the bird creature was only one of my worries because in the night sky were not only extremely large and bright stars that looked like lightbulbs floating above me, but there was a gigantic pink moon. It had to be three times the size of what I knew the moon to actually be.
Either I had hit my head and was dreaming or…I was definitely not in Baltimore anymore.
Was I hallucinating? Maybe I was still knocked out. Would I know if I was unconscious?
I pinched my arm, and it had the nerve to hurt. I wasn’t sure if that was a sign that I was awake, but it would have to do for now. So, if I was awake, then the next question was where the hell was I? I was no world traveler, but I’d gotten around. I was also smart enough to know that no matter where I went on this great earth, the moon and the stars would all look the same. The moon for sure didn’t change to pink no matter what continent I was on.
Therefore, if I was awake and the moon really was pink, then one could only assume one thing: I wasn’t on earth anymore. Where had that creepy asshole sent me? As far as I knew, humans were only living on earth, so my choices were pretty limited.
Okay, activate panic mode.
A sudden noise off to my right stole my attention. I looked down the road to see what appeared to be a set of headlights. Cars? I squinted my eyes. Something was off. The vehicle that I could now see seemed to be hovering in the air, no wheels. Was I in the future? What the hell was going on?
I needed to decide whether I wanted to get up and wave my hands for help or hide. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that I was going to get help just because I asked for it, and I had no idea if whoever was coming my way was even friendly. The asshole sent me here after all. For all I knew, they were the collection coming to get me.
I looked back to the woods and moved to my knees, quickly crawling down the slope of grass I was sitting on further into the crowd of trees. I then got to my feet and ran behind a tree. I decided to err on the side of caution and evaluate any help I’d be asking to get.
I expected the flying car to go past me, but it stopped right in front of my area. Shit. Had they seen me? Why did they care about some person in the woods? Maybe they really were the collectors.
I moved further behind the tree for more coverage, thinking of my next move. Something told me I’d have to be ready to fight. Why couldn’t I have been wearing tennis shoes? My feet were screaming at me. I needed to find help and some flats.
“Hello, there,” came a deep voice from my left.
I screamed and jumped back. Catching my heel in something in the grass, I fell to the ground. Looking up in the shadows, I saw what appeared to be a man over six feet tall walking toward me. With the unusually bright stars, I could make out that he was dressed in dark clothes but not in a style I’d ever seen before. The clothes, a jacket and pants, seemed like leather cut in a tailored fashion but still loose enough he could stretch easily. On his feet were thick, dark boots. He was fair-skinned with short, tousled jet-black hair. But his clothes, skin, and hair weren’t what stood out the most. No, his glowing, icy eyes were the showstopper. They were so bright in the dark, it looked like he could shoot lasers out of them. Maybe he could.
He grinned, his mouth wide with full lips, and…was that a hint of a fang over his bottom lip? My heart raced, body screaming in a red flag warning. I didn’t care how cute this guy was, he was definitely a predator. He crouched down, running those laser eyes over me. I heard rustling behind me, possibly his cohorts, but I dared not take my eyes off him. “What do we have here?” he asked. I noticed he had an accent. It sounded very Irish.
I pursed my lips together, refusing to speak. Something about him told me I did not need to volunteer how dire my situation was to him. That something might be the dagger he was casually juggling between his hands like a ball.
“She doesn’t speak?” He sniffed the air and then sighed. “Human…sort of.” His eyes seemed to glow brighter. Bells began to ring in my mind urging me to get up and run for my life, but my body was being a stubborn bitch.
“We don’t get much of those here,” said another male voice from my right but I didn’t look in that direction.
The silver-eyed man shook his head slowly. “No, we don’t. And I like her smell. Bet her blood would taste just as good.”
Before I could blink, he pounced on me, pushing me down on the ground and forcing himself between my legs so I couldn’t kick him in the balls like I had planned. The cold metal of the dagger was now pressed against my neck.
“Shall I cut you up, pretty lady?” he asked, still grinning.
I strained against him, fearful adrenaline pumping away in my body. He was as heavy as a boulder, but I kept pushing at him. If he was going to cut me up, I wasn’t going to make it easy.
“Can’t trust humans in our realm. Kill her,” cried the other male voice.
