Vanish (Firelight #2)(42)

“Where are you taking her?” I shout in my guttural tongue. “Miram! Miram!”

Then they come at me with their groping hands.

“Careful that one doesn’t burn you,” one of the hunters advises.

Blurry figures surround me. I fight the drugging sensation that makes me want to curl into a small ball with a smile on my face and sleep.

I rise up to my knees in a final attempt to escape . . . to get away, flutter my wings and take to the skies. I cry out and fall back down, face-first in the loamy earth. Useless. Raw pain fires through the membrane of my wing, deep into my muscles.

Warm blood flows, gliding down my back, and pooling at the base of my spine. I feel its trickle. Smell the richness.

I drop my head. My hair falls in a fiery curtain around me. And I see it. See the telltale shimmer of my blood, a lustrous purple dripping like spilled ink to the ground.

Still, I fight the numbing lethargy threatening to swallow me. My arms shake trying to lift myself back up. My body is so heavy. Lead.

What was in that vial?

Desperate fury pounds through me, blistering along my veins. I want to unleash myself, burn them all, punish them for what they’re doing to me—and all they plan to do. Things so terrible we’ve never been directly told. No one sits us down in primary school and explains what really happens once a hunter captures us and turns us over to the enkros, but I know. I saw Will’s father’s study—the furniture covered in draki skin.

I open my mouth and release another gust of fire—my last hope. A thin thread of flame spills past my lips. This time the fiery breath withers almost the moment it’s released, dies in a trail of steam.

“Will,” I croak, my eyelids heavy, impossible to hold up anymore.

Hard hands grip me on all sides, lifting me up. I turn my face and try to blow flame on the arms, but only choke out a weak rivulet of steam.

What did they do to me?

They bind my hands, my wrists squeezed so tightly blood ceases to flow. Even groggy, I feel this new pain. I’m flipped on my stomach, straddled. Again, I’m just an animal, a beast. A scream rises in my throat as my wings are bound tight to each other, preventing them from moving, preventing me from flight.

I’m tossed through the air, striking hard, smooth ground. The surface is cold and frigid against my hot flesh. Not dirt then.

Doors slam. I’m in the back of a vehicle. A van. It begins moving, bumping over the ground, weaving through trees and clawing foliage. Taking me farther from the pride. Farther from home.

I can’t fight anymore. My lids sink over tired eyes. Even with my body’s discomfort, with the sting pulsing in my wing, vibrating deep into my shoulder blades, I can’t resist the drug’s soporific effect. My cheek presses down on the cold metal floor and I slip into sleep.





Chapter 18

Pain greets me when I wake.

I take several slow blinks before I manage to fully open my eyes. The torment in my head rivals the intense throbbing everywhere else in my beaten and broken body and I have to close my eyes again for several moments before opening them again.

My wings throb. I try to move the gossamer sheets, and the pain jolts deep, radiating along my entire length. I’d forgotten they were strapped together. I curl up into a small ball and moan my misery.

After a while and several deep breaths later, I lift my head, peel my cheek from the cold metal floor of the van. I shake my head, wondering if I’m even awake, wondering if this is all a nightmare.

I catch the sound of a whimper nearby. I turn, spot Miram pressed along a far wall of the van. With great effort I lift up, so glad to see her that for a moment the pain doesn’t matter. At least we’re together in this metal box.

“Miram,” I whisper, dragging myself closer to her, relieved that she’s here.

She’s visible, of course. Her eyes lock on mine.

I wet my dry lips. “What . . .”

“What happened?” Miram finishes my question. “You,” she says. “You always happen. I suppose it’s not such a surprise this would be your fate, but I can’t believe I’m here, too. That you’ve dragged me into this . . .”

“We’re going to get out of this,” I promise. It’s all I can say, all I can believe.

“Yeah,” she snarls. The ridges of her nose flex with hot emotion. “And how are you going to manage that?”

“I’ve escaped them before.”

“Okay.” She nods her head savagely, sandy brown hair tossing wildly around the tan, neutral tone of her draki flesh. “How? How are we going to do that? How’d you do it last time?”

Will. Will is how I escaped. Except he isn’t here. I have to figure a way out of this for myself. For both of us.

Miram fills the silence, her voice eerily flat. “They’re taking us to the enkros. We’re as good as dead.”

“You don’t know that,” I whisper, testing the plastic ties at my wrists with my teeth. Useless.

“Oh, face it, Jacinda. Where else could we be going? Alive? They haven’t killed us. Clearly there’s a reason for that. They’re saving us for something. For . . . them.” Them. The monsters of our childhood nightmares. Heat feathers along my flesh.

She’s right. I know it of course. That’s how hunters live. They flourish through selling my kind. I can’t deny this.