Visions of Magic

Chapter 6



More scared than she’d ever been, Shea fought back as strong hands grabbed her and dragged her off her feet. Before she could take a breath to scream, a heavy hand dropped over her mouth. She tried to bite it, but failed.

“Lock her down!” A different voice, deeper, whispered the command. More than one man was circling her, touching her, wrestling her to the ground.

“Watch her hands!” someone else muttered viciously.

Her hands. The energy pulse. The fire. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she wasn’t going to allow them to hurt her, either. She lifted both palms, but dropped them again when she was slapped so viciously that her head snapped to one side and tears spurted from her eyes.

Still, she kicked out wildly, and in her blind attempt to free herself, connected with someone. She heard a grunt of pain. Then another man grabbed her ankles and held her still. Shea bucked in their grasp, writhing and struggling, but they were too strong and there were just too many of them.

Fear rose up fast and thick inside her. Her mind raced and her heart beat so frantically, she felt as though it would pop out of her chest. She’d been caught. Before she’d made it a mile from Torin’s home, she’d been found and trapped. And if she didn’t think fast, she was going to disappear at someone else’s hands.

Something cold draped around her neck and even while she struggled, Shea sensed a weight dropping onto her soul. She felt heavy, leaden. Her body wasn’t affected by whatever they’d done to her, but her soul was being crushed. She tried to lift her hands, but couldn’t find the will. The spark of energy she’d felt that afternoon when she’d faced the mugger was blocked up inside her, struggling, as she was, to escape.

“Stupid witch,” one of the men whispered, so close to her ear that she felt his hot breath on her skin, “you think we’ll give you a chance to fry us the way you did that poor bastard today?”

Oh, God. “I didn’t—”

Someone slapped her again, but she couldn’t see who. It didn’t matter. They were all against her. All of them working in concert to keep her from escaping. They might as well have been one entity. In the darkness the men surrounding her were merely darker shadows. Moving, constantly moving, as if they were being careful to not make themselves targets.

She couldn’t hurt them—and they knew it, so their caution was simply born of their underlying fear. That she understood. Hadn’t she been living with ripe, glorious fear for more than ten years herself? Hadn’t she jolted at every knock on the door? Every ring of the phone? And what good had any of it done her?

She’d still ended up here, a captive lying in the dirt, with strangers’ hands moving over her as she lay trapped. Whatever “power” she might have had was asleep. And she wished to hell it wasn’t.

Yes, this afternoon she’d killed a man with magic and had been sorry for it. Now, she would give anything to have that power at her command. She had to get away. And there was no chance of escape now. That strong hand stayed cupped over her mouth while she was forced onto her stomach. Bits of dirt and gravel dug into her face. Her arms were wrenched behind her back and a plastic zip tie was fixed around her wrists, digging painfully into her skin.

She moaned and squirmed against the restraints until a new voice entered the fray and Shea stilled to listen.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice, excited, breathless. “I was right. I knew it, I told my husband when I saw her at that man’s balcony, ‘that’s the woman from the news,’ I said. The witch who killed that poor man today.”

That was how they’d caught up to her, Shea thought with an inner groan. A civilian had spotted her and turned her in. But who did the woman call? Who were these men and what were they going to do to her now?

“Yeah, it’s her, lady,” a man said in a voice hoarse from too many cigarettes. “Now get on back to your house. We’ll take care of this.”

Take care of it how? Shea wondered frantically. Were they going to kill her? Torture and rape her first? Witches had no rights and she knew that a grateful public would no doubt pin a medal on anyone who could prove he’d killed one.

Suddenly Torin was looking much better to her. Now she wanted nothing more than to be back in that luxurious room with the tall, fierce-looking man standing between her and danger. If that made her a coward, she was willing to live with it. But since she was on her own, she had to try to reason with the men hulking around her.

How many were there? Three? Four?

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and the taste of fear was sharp and bitter on her tongue. She squirmed ineffectually against the man holding her from behind, but managed to twist her face free of the other man’s hand.

“Stop, please . . . I’m not what you think.” Lies. She was exactly what they thought she was. What she’d denied being for ten long years. And the worst part? They all knew it.

“Hear that?” a man on her right said, then mocked in a falsetto tone, “Please.”

“Don’t listen to her,” another one told him. “She might spell you.”

If only she could.

Someone snorted, then ordered, “Go get the van.”

Van?

They were taking her somewhere. And how would Torin ever find her?

She shook her head, desperate now to somehow reach these men. “I don’t know any spells. Really. I’m not what you think. I’m a sixth-grade science teacher. That’s all. This is a huge mistake.”

Her only hope was to convince the men she was innocent. But, she reminded herself, mistakes happened all the time these days and women still disappeared.

“Gag her.”

“No!” She was already bound—if they gagged her too, she didn’t think she could stand it. Shea pulled in a deep, terrified breath. She was out of time, out of hope. No one was riding to her rescue. There was no cavalry and she’d just run from the one person who might have kept her safe.

She was falling into a hole of her own making and now she could do nothing to keep it from growing even deeper. She was flipped over onto her back and despite her pleas, one of the men leaned down to fix a gag to her mouth. And she got her first good look at her captors.

Black uniforms. Yellow armbands. Gold badges that winked in the indistinct light.

The Magic Police had finally caught up with her.