Imelda sat before the flickering fireplace as the rain beat against the roof of the house. Her brown hair was damp and plastered to her flushed cheeks, but she made no move to fix it. A book lay open in her lap, though Imelda's thoughts were far away from the print on the pages.
Her uncle had once again offered to open his home to Imelda and he had warned her that he would no longer support her if she stayed in her home. She was realizing that she would have to make the choice sooner or later, and later was approaching far sooner than she expected.
Ever since Imelda's mother had died, he had been struggling to find a way to keep Imelda in his household, but he had never succeeded.
Until now.
For as long as Imelda could remember, she had lived with her mother's friend, Sarah, and her uncle had seemed content with that arrangement. Two years ago, however, Imelda decided to go back to her home and live by herself, taking the money that her uncle gave to Sarah for her care in order to do so. The shrinking bag of coins in her belt served as a constant reminder of her dependence on her uncle.
But Imelda didn't understand why he wanted her to live with him so badly. He had never actually visited her with the exception of her earlier birthdays and, as far as she knew, he hadn't so much as lifted a finger to help her father when he became an alcoholic. Even if he was her mother's brother, Imelda couldn't say that she trusted him.
Somehow, despite thoughts weighing heavily on her mind, consciousness slipped from her body and she drifted to sleep.
* * *
A blood chilling scream assaulted Imelda's ears. Her eyes snapped open, though all she could see were the flames slowly dying in the fireplace. All of her senses were suddenly sharp. She could feel the cold floor beneath her cheek and hear how the rain had turned to sleet. A sharp taste floated on her tongue... As if she had placed a metal spoon on it. Imelda listened, wondering if it had been a part of her dreams until the screaming started again.
It was woman's scream. A man swore and the shrieks continued, seeming to get closer to her. She heard the man shout and all sound immediately ceased. The change was so abrupt that Imelda sat up and quickly pulled herself to her feet, her heart pounding loudly in her ears. She listened carefully for any sound and slowly wrapped her fingers around the knife that rested in her belt. Imelda held it in front of her and waited, every muscle tense, for the next noise.
One second passed, then another.
A man shouted on the other side of the door and the wood bent in, immediately breaking apart into hundreds of slivers that flew across the room. Imelda raised her arm to protect her face and watched in horror as a hooded figure jumped through the doorway. The black hood shadowed his face, but she could feel his eyes lock on her and see the shine of his teeth as he pulled back his lips into a smile.
Out of instinct, Imelda held out the knife, making sure it separated her from the intruder. He laughed, his voice like someone dropping logs on a pile of wood, and raised his right hand in her direction.
"Surmarsi!" he yelled.
Imelda twisted her knife and was about to throw it when she was struck by an invisible hand. Her throat constricted and she couldn't breath as the room began to swim around her. Her body was frozen in place. She felt her heart slow its beating and her thoughts start to fog as she quickly began to shut down.
The man lowered his hand and grinned darkly. An ashen hand reached from behind him and grabbed the back of his neck, pushing him forward. He screamed as smoke floated from his cloak and the next figure glided in. The new intruder pulled the man along for several strides before releasing his neck, dropping him on the floor.
"Idiot," the figure hissed as she pulled off her hood to reveal her long, silver hair. "You just about killed her. Parmarsi!"
Immediately, air flowed into her lungs and her body started to work again. Imelda struggled to cry out, but she couldn't make a sound. She still had no control over her arms or mouth and her legs were held in place.
"I don't know why we were assigned to fetch this... child," she said, stepping closer to Imelda. "Though she does strike me as an interesting little mutt."
The woman laughed and took the blade from Imelda's hand, tossing it beside the crumpled man on the floor. She thrust out her pale arm and grabbed Imelda's face with her hot hand, forcing Imelda's head to move from side to side as the woman examined her. Imelda struggled with all her might to regain control of her body and break through the hex.
"Ah, it looks as though we shall be traveling with an honorary deihher tonight," she said to her comrade, who was beginning to pull himself off the floor and pick up the discarded knife.
Imelda didn't understand. If anyone looked like a deihher, it was the woman. Her silver hair and purple lining around her black, iris-less eyes seemed to come right out of the horror stories that ran through the town. Except that she wasn't a wolf.
The woman ran her fingers through her captive's hair, causing Imelda's scalp to tingle. She abruptly took her hand and smacked it across Imelda's face.
"Most likely a traitor's offspring. I don't know what he would want with any of that sort, past revenge. But Christopher has always had a way of choosing," she stared at Imelda with a mixture of distain and hunger. "But if he is wrong, we could always use another Aninoid."
"You should not refer to your superior in such casual terms," the man said sharply, glaring at her murderously from beneath his charred hood.
The woman waved her hand dismissively and turned to face her challenger. "To call him otherwise would be to grant him respect, and since he has done little over the past years to impress me, he has earned none."
Imelda concentrated, focusing all her energy on moving her hand. Her fingers twitched.
"The man who reawakened the art of our magics? The man whose ancestors survived our people's fall?" he growled, stepping in front of the woman and drawing his massive body up to full height.
Imelda slowly broke through her paralysis and reached her arm toward the fire poker on the floor. She hoped that she could knock out the woman with it and have recovered enough speed to evade the man. She knew that if she were captured again she would be worse off, but she couldn't wait for them to reveal what they were going to do with her.
"He's a coward," the woman laughed mirthlessly. "The only reason his family survived at all is because they placed themselves before their cause. They should have all died with the failed magic user those centuries back so we could have started over without his leadership."
Imelda's hand brushed against the metal rod.
"We would not have half the spells we have now if it wasn't for his family's survival."
She wrapped her hand around it and began to lift it up behind her.
"You are as arrogant as he. I suppose that if he asked of you to-" a loud clattering cut the woman off when the poker fell to the floor.
The two intruders stopped and stared at Imelda. I'm dead, Imelda thought. She waited for them to say the word to freeze her heart again, forcing her body to shut down as she slowly suffocated... But it didn't happen.
"You're a slippery little snake, aren't you?" the woman said with little emotion. She closed her eyes and thought for a moment, seeming to think that their captive was no threat. "The average length of the partial immobilization spell on a non-magic user is an hour, fifty-two minutes and twenty seconds." She opened her dark eyes and stared at Imelda. "While the average duration of the spell on a person of typical magical capabilities is approximately an hour and four minutes."
"Did you cast the spell properly?" the man demanded.
"Of course I did, but how can this be? We can't have been here for more than twenty minutes."
Imelda realized that they had forgotten her, for they were too busy arguing, and began quietly edging around them as fast as her stiff legs could move her. They continued to bicker, discussing things that Imelda knew nothing of, as she approached the gap where the front door used to stand. A meaty fist came down on the side of her face and she crumpled halfway through the doorway, dazed and bleeding from her split lip. Splinters dug into her arms and neck and a lump already began forming on her head as sleet rained down on her face.
"You little-"
"Calm yourself. We were sent here to take her back with us in one piece. She's no threat to us. But tie her up. I don't want her jumping out of the cart."
The man stepped away from her to find something to bind her with. Imelda looked outside and noticed that the town was completely quiet. The neighbors hadn't heard the noise before. Imelda coughed up a clot of blood that had gone down her throat and took a raspy breath.
"HELP!" Imelda yelled into the night until the word faded into a frantic scream.
Thin, long fingers pressed down over her mouth, cutting off her cries and causing her lip to bleed all the more. The heat that radiated off the hands was so intense that Imelda was sure that her face was being incinerated. The woman's deep eyes entered Imelda's vision, seeming to steal all the light from the room. Imelda couldn't look away. She felt her body melt into a strange mixture of calm and raw terror.
"You're safe, child," the woman said softly, holding Imelda's gaze in hers. "We're taking you where you belong. We are going to take care of you."
Imelda felt her ankles being bound, then her wrists. But that didn't matter. She was going to be taken where she belonged. They were going to take care of her.
She was lifted off the ground and carried the rest of the way out of the house into the freezing rain. A cart pulled by two horses was waiting outside. Waiting for her.
The man placed her limp body on the bundles in the cart before sitting up front to drive the horses. The woman, however, sat next to her in the back, placing a bag of items beside her. Her hood was up again, but Imelda could still see her dark, abysmal eyes whenever they looked down on her.
Imelda lay there, feeling content. There was something wrong and she knew it. Something was wrong with the way the bags below her smelled and felt, but she couldn't concentrate. She turned her head to the side and watched the wheels as they rolled over the paved road. The path was flat and empty until they passed a motionless body. Imelda blinked. Black hair was sprawled around the woman's pale face and her neck was twisted at a grotesque angle.
"Sarah?" Imelda gasped, staring at the mangled body of her recent guardian.
