couldn’t budge them. What the hell was going on? What was in that blanket that it could take Torin down like that? “Who are you people?” she shouted. “What do you want?”
“That’s enough of that, missy,” the older woman said, shaking her head. “Keep your voice down. No point in shouting-no one’s going to come to help a witch!”
Shea’s stomach sank. Oh, God. They were here for her. To take her who knew where. Maybe there were prison guards waiting in the parking lot. Maybe… no. She deliberately stopped her imagination from racing ahead of the situation. The woman had said no one was coming to help her. Which probably meant that no one was coming, period. These people, whoever they were, were most likely doing this on their own.
“Just look at you.” The older woman clucked her tongue in disgust. “Naked as a jaybird, and him no better!” She whirled around, faced a teenage girl and shouted, “Tessie Marie Grainger, you close your eyes this minute. I’m not going to have to explain to your mama that you saw a naked man while you were under my protection.”
The blond girl in question stared at Torin a moment longer, then reluctantly closed her eyes. But the smile on her face said the memory was a satisfying one.
Shea squirmed and futilely twisted, trying to get free of the two men holding her arms behind her back. But their grip on her was so tight, so strong, she couldn’t even snap her fingers to clothe herself. Instead, she was forced to stand naked in front of a room full of psychotic strangers. She felt their gazes on her like a caress from a dirty hand.
“Who are you?” she demanded, tossing her hair back and lifting her chin in helpless defiance.
“Watch your tone now, missy,” said the woman who was clearly in charge as she reached down to toss the edge of her blanket across Torin’s lower body. “Honestly. You magical people, not a sense of propriety among you. Both of you naked and it not six o’clock in the evening. No doubt you were having sex and it’s barely dark out. Is it any wonder God-fearing Christians have to take matters into their own hands?”
Shea snorted at the woman’s sanctimonious tone. “Don’t make this about religion,” she said. “It’s not. This is just fear. You’re afraid, so you’re striking out.”
Martha humphed. “Looks to me as if you’re the one afraid here.”
Torin groaned and struggled to sit up. He failed and his gray eyes flashed a warning that told everyone in the room they had better hope he didn’t get free.
“Don’t you waste your time there, mister,” the woman told him. “I knitted that blanket myself. There’s threads of white gold mixed in with the yarn, so it’ll hold you.”
Well, that explained why the blanket was having such an effect on Torin. It also cut short any hope of him escaping that blanket and getting them out of this. Shea’s gaze swept the room, going from one face to the next. They all looked so… normal, she thought. Except for the fact that they were carrying clubs and guns and were holding her and Torin captive. Her gaze swung back to the older woman standing in front of her.
“You knitted a blanket with white gold threads?”
The woman turned to look at Shea, eyes wide. “Well, of course. How else could we control him while we take you? And let me tell you, missy, white gold thread yarn is pretty darned pricey.”
Shea almost laughed. Almost. She was being held prisoner again, but this time, it wasn’t prison guards. This time it looked like a local chapter of the PTA, for heaven’s sake. “What is it you want from us?”
“Well, first things first, I think,” the woman said. “My name’s Martha Chapman. I’m the president of the local Seeker society.”
Seekers. A hard ball of ice settled in Shea’s stomach. She knew that organization. She knew about the experiments. About the tortures. About the deaths of too many women-witch and human alike-to count. She looked at the faces surrounding her through new eyes now and she didn’t like what she was seeing. They didn’t look crazy.
Just determined.
“Ah,” Martha said, giving her a pleased smile. “I see you’ve heard of us. Isn’t that nice?”
“You don’t have to do this,” Shea told her, frantically racking her newfound memories for a spell, a chant, anything that might come in handy at the moment. But her mind was drawing a blank when she most needed it. “We’re leaving town. We would have been gone in another half hour.”
“Well,” Martha said, moving to the bed and dragging the floral bedspread off, “isn’t it lucky we showed up when we did, then? Tony? Hank? You keep a good hold on her now, while I wrap this blanket over her.”
“She’s hard to hold, Martha,” one of the men said. “We could use the cuffs.”
“Of course. Don’t know what I was thinking.” Martha turned and looked at a young man. “Michael, go fetch the cuffs from the car.” Then she turned back to wrapping the blanket around Shea’s body. “For pity’s sake, a woman tattooed. And on your breast, too! You would feed your babies with that awful ink covering what God gave you? You witches just have no shame at all, do you?”
It was clearly a rhetorical question. Shea tried to pull away from the woman. There was a fanatical light in those pale blue eyes that was damn unsettling. She was caught, she thought, shooting a quick look at Torin as he lay immobile on the floor. The blanket with white gold threads covered his body from the chest down and when he looked at her, she read helpless fury in his eyes.
“Her man there’s got a matching tattoo, Martha,” one of Shea’s captors said.
“So he does.” Martha turned around to look at him, flat on the floor. “Heaven only knows what that might mean. But, doesn’t matter much to us, now, does it? It’s not him we’re here for, anyway.”
“I don’t like the look in his eye, Martha,” one of the men offered. “Think we should just shoot him now and be done with it.”
Panic reached up and clutched at the base of Shea’s throat. Torin was immortal, yes, but what if they shot him in the head? What would that do to him? Besides, she couldn’t bear the thought of these maniacs shooting Torin at all.
Whatever she was going to do, she would have to do on her own. And fast. They had to get out of here. She couldn’t be taken by the Seekers. God knew where she’d end up. And even though Torin was immortal, she knew all too well that he could be wounded badly enough to put him out of commission.
“You might have a point, Tony,” Martha mused, as if trying to decide whether to have potatoes or rice with dinner.
“What are you going to do with me?” Shea spoke up into the charged silence, hoping that if she kept them talking, she could take their attention away from Torin and stall them somehow. Give herself time to come up with something.
“We’ll be taking you to Dr. Fender, dear,” Martha said, her tone as soothing as her eyes were mad. “He’s moved his laboratory to upstate New York, so we have quite a long trip ahead of us.”
Shaken, Shea drew a deep breath and swallowed hard. “You know who Fender is. Then you must know he’s a monster. He tortures women. Kills them.”
Martha slapped her. “Nonsense. He’s never harmed a human woman. It’s only witches he’s interested in! Now, no more of your witch talk. Fender is a great man. He’s at the vanguard of our movement. The light of knowledge in the darkness. Through him, we will be purged of your evil and take your powers unto ourselves for the glory of God.”
Shea’s gaze slid to Torin and she felt a surge of something hot and frantic pumping through her. She had to get them out. But how? These were not the kind of people she could reason with. And if she were to admit the truth, she didn’t much want to reason with them anyway. What she really wanted to do was howl and scream and throw punches and spells.
Martha was in her face again, turning her chin until their gazes met. “Don’t you get any ideas now, missy. Those cuffs we’ve got for you are white gold. You’ll be quiet enough for our little trip, I’m thinking. Give you plenty of time to say your prayers to whoever it is your kind prays to.” She paused and frowned. “What’s taking Michael so long? Shauna, you go check on him now.”
A woman standing at the back, her hungry gaze fixed on Torin, jolted into action and ran for the door. Apparently they all took their orders from Martha. Shea continued to search her memories. More desperately now, since she knew the moment the white gold cuffs were on her wrists, her magic would be dampened and she and Torin would be at the mercy of these… people.
From the corner of her eye, she caught movement. The young blond girl was edging closer to Torin. No one else seemed to notice. They were all too concerned with Shea, keeping her under control. But Shea kept one eye on the girl as she moved close enough to Torin to slip one foot beneath the blanket covering him.
