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My vision grew darker and darker, until I couldn’t see. I closed my eyes and hoped for the best—this had to be some kind of nightmare, right? That was all this was. Soon, I would wake up, and we would be just fine, asleep in our beds, with no one breaking in to hurt us or take us away.
* * *
When the van doors opened,I jerked back to consciousness. Had I fallen asleep? Maybe I’d passed out from the concussion. My head still hurt, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as before.
We’d been driving for about half a day, or at least that is what it felt like. We’d stopped for bathroom breaks, and they’d given us water, and at some point, a sandwich. This stop seemed more permanent though, like we’d finally reached our destination.
“Get out,” a man growled.
The blood on his face had dried, only making him look more menacing than when I’d scratched him up, and now, his eyes were brown rather than black.
How was that possible?
I shook my head and held Emmie tighter against me.
Another man joined them, and he held up his hand. I watched as his hand transformed into a hairy claw with razor-sharp talons.
Emmie whimpered and burrowed harder into me. I stared at the claw. It shouldn’t have been possible, but what I looked at definitely wasn’t a dream… was it? Had I hit my head that hard?
Shifter.
Circe had told me this world existed. If she hadn’t told me about this just a few nights ago, I would have been sure I was hallucinating this whole thing, but it was real. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was right in front of me.
“Come on, honey,” I said and moved. “We’ll be okay.”
I hated saying things like that when I wasn’t sure, but I willed them to be true. I didn’t want to get hurt just because we weren’t working with these guys who wanted god-knows-what from us.
We got out of the van, and Emmie stood next to me, holding so tightly onto my hands, my fingers were going to turn blue. Her long dark blonde hair was a mess, and her pajama pants had been ripped on the knee. How had that happened? Had they hurt her before they’d gotten to me?
My blood ran cold when the man with the dried blood stepped closer and sniffed me. I watched his eyes change, becoming darker until they were completely black. It seemed to have replaced at least half of the whites of his eyes along with the iris, and nothing was normal about that.
“What do you want?” I asked. I tried to sound confident, demanding, but my voice was thin and trembling.
“Take her away,” the other guy said, and the first guy grabbed me by the arm.
“Let me go!” I screamed. I tried to wrench free, but his grip was like a vise around my arm. “You’re hurting me!”
He ignored me, walking on as if I weighed nothing, dragging me along no matter how hard I fought. Emmie still held my hand, and I made sure not to let go under any circumstance.
When I walked with the guy, it hurt less, and following was the only way forward right now. As soon as we arrived at wherever he was taking us, I could figure out a way to escape, but getting away from this brute right now wasn’t going to be possible.
He walked us to what looked like nothing more than a shed, yanked open the door, and shoved us inside. He slammed the door shut behind us, and I heard the lock turn.
I threw myself against the door right away, shaking it, but we were locked inside, and I heard his footsteps retreat so that we were completely alone.
I looked around and hurried to a window, but it was barred, and when I slid it open and shook the bars, I realized those were solid, too.
There was no way out. I spun around, looking everywhere for a way out, but we were locked in with no escape for the moment.
“Mommy?” Emmie asked in a small voice.
“It’s going to be okay, honey,” I said. “We’re together, and that’s what matters, okay?”
“Where are we?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t know why we were here, either.
Two cots were pushed up against the wall. They’d prepared for us to be here, unless they kept people here more often. I shuddered at the thought. When I watched true crime shows, it was always horrible thinking about what those people must have gone through, but I’d never thought that I would go through something like that, too. What if they killed us? What if they took Emmie away from me? Or worse, what if they killed me, and she had to live without me in this great, big world?
