Charming (35 page)

These men were hired to capture me, but by who? Questions swam through my groggy mind. Questions I was too afraid to try to make sense of or answer.

I kept my eyes shut. Boredas and his not-ashamed-to-hit-a-girl buddy weren’t talking. Who knew where they were, but I certainly didn’t want to open my eyes and find them staring at me.

Wriggling my fingers, I tested for any weakness in my bindings, but my effort was useless. Tape held me tight.

I lay still, too scared to move, listening for any sound, any movement. I heard the wind blowing through the trees, heard the roof groan, mice scratching in the wall, but nothing else.

Did they leave me alone?

Click
,
click
,
click
.

The noise sounded far away. Maybe it was just the mice infestation.

I shuddered. How bad was this place?

I had to see. I couldn’t take blindness any longer. Barely opening my eyes, I squinted around the candlelit room. My stomach churned. Decayed animal carcasses littered the floor. A raccoon or two, maybe a cat or dog…

Maybe the smell wasn’t the couch after all?

Empty bags of potato chips, soda bottles, pizza boxes—these things were tossed about. Cleanliness obviously meant nothing to these guys. My hope for survival diminished, deflating my lungs. Hot tears slid down my cheeks, soaking the upholstery beneath me. I didn’t care. I wanted to burn this place down, burn it and the people in it—well, the crazies anyway.

A laptop was the only sign of electricity—or modern times. It sat on the edge of an ancient writing desk nestled against the wall by the stone fireplace.

Psycho Number One and Two were not in the room, so I fully opened my eyes and tried to see what displayed on the screen.

Black background, white banner across the top with someone… no,
something
—an elven woman and some big, toothy monster-looking thing. An RPG Paused button blinked in the center of the page. RPG? Role-playing games? My kidnappers were role-playing?

Oh
. It all made sense now. Boredas, hunter, Copper Rocks—these idiots took their game playing too seriously. Somehow they confused me for part of their made-up world. This was bad. Really bad. Maybe I could talk my way out of it? Maybe I could… wait, Psycho Number Two said they were paid to catch me.

Nothing made sense.

A door banged closed somewhere to my left. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath, but it did little to calm my pounding heart. My hands were cold yet sweaty, and my feet were freezing.

“She’s still asleep, but it looks like she’ll wake soon,” a man said, his voice too close. He probably stood right above me, staring, thinking about what he planned to do with me. “She’s shaking.”

One of them slammed something down.

“You shouldn’t have hit her.”

“Oh, come on, I was just having a little fun. You shouldn’t have untied her. You know she could easily slip away if she comes into her powers.”

Insanely delusional.

“She doesn’t have a clue about her powers.”

Plastic crinkled—
I hope that’s not to wrap my dead body in
.

“She’s scared, Ruckus. This poor girl has lived in the realm of man her entire life, given up by her parents when she was a baby, and now her father wants her back to off her publicly—”

I held back a scream. They
did
mean to kill me. And it sounded like they’d been role-playing for years. I wiggled my fingers, trying to dig my nails into the sticky tape. I had to get away. I had to get free. Why couldn’t my problems just be about Mark and Derick? Why did I have to get caught up in some kidnapping scheme? Some sick, twisted scheme at that.

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft, brother.”

“Not soft. But look how beautiful she is. Imagine—”

Footsteps. Heavy, fast footsteps. They stopped right in front of me. A clammy finger trailed from my temple to my collarbone, and I couldn’t hold back the trembling any longer.

“I thought you might be awake. You should not eavesdrop. It is rude.”

I opened my eyes and faced the men, anger filling every inch of me. I was going to die anyway. “Kidnapping, stuffing a girl in a trunk, punching said girl and tying her up on a couch with intent to
kill
her is rude. Me overhearing you say all that is unfortunate.”

Psycho Number Two knelt, smiling and revealing all his crooked, yellow teeth. He looked nothing like his friend, and I already knew Ruckus wasn’t as nice. Not that either of them could have been deemed ‘nice’.

“Such spunk. But we do not intend to kill you. Your father will handle that.”

“My father is probably worried sick about me right now. Maybe he’s out looking for me—or at the police station trying to get help. You have me confused with some disgusting game.”

He looked over his shoulder and grimaced. “Game, huh? Is that what you think? It’s just a game to you? We fight
wars
. We battle
good
—”

“For evil,” Psycho Number One piped in.

Short, dark, and hairy growled. “It’s not
just
a game. There is so much more you do not know. You will be taught. Then you will be killed.” He chuckled and cupped my cheek with his huge hand. “And such a shame. You would make a fine breeder.”

Bile rose in my throat, and I spit it in his face.

Rising to his feet, he backhanded me.

Ringing split my head in two, and my cheek vibrated with heat.

I inched myself against the couch and tried holding back tears, but the stupid things slipped out anyway. I didn’t want to die.

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