Captured by a Priest

“Hey,” Nanette called to me.

Somehow without meaning to, I had managed to move ahead of her, lost in my own thoughts. The branches of the bushes and brambles around my feet snatched at my clothing as we trekked our way through the woods. Absent-mindedly, I would tug my pants away from the choking foliage and put them back into place when the branches snagged them. My responses as we moved through these woods had been automatic, at best. Which was probably the reason why Nanette was trying to garner my attention.

“Hey,” she called out again, lengthening her strides to fall in step beside me.

Somehow, she managed to move like a graceful feline, whereas I was the loud, clumsy bull. I managed to take out all the obstacles so that she had an easier path, I told myself. However, I knew that was far from the truth. I really was the loud, clumsy bull compared to the lot of them.

“I have a name,” I grumbled, glancing at her with a small scowl. Her small, pretty face looked genuinely perplexed by my behavior, causing a slight sensation of guilt to tug at me.

For a moment, that thoughtful perplexity lingered before her face changed. Nanette lifted her brow in a lovely arch, her nose wrinkling as her lips twisted in consternation. Leaning forward, she lowered her voice. “Yes, and to speak it would let all those beautiful lycans running around these woods know you’re here. That way, when the alarm is sounded, they will know exactly where to find you,” she whispered in my ear. She shifted her upper body back away from me and look at me thoughtfully. “Even if you are being snide, I am glad you at least are responding. I was worried that you might still be in shock.”

For a long moment, I didn’t respond to her comment. Instead, I just kept my focus on what was in front of me. One foot fell in front of the other as we passed tree after tree, all of them looking very much the same as the last. A nagging voice at the back of my head quietly questioned whether we had seen any of these trees before, and if, in fact, we were heading in a straight line. As many zigs and zags that we took in these woods to circumnavigate clearings and such, I debated whether or not we were looping back around to the lycan city we had just come.

Pushing the nagging voice to the back of my skull, I said the next thing that popped into my head. “You killed a man,” I told her. My words were spoken calmly, as though I was speaking about the weather as opposed to someone’s life.

“I did,” she admitted, her tone mirroring my own. She tucked a strand of pale blonde hair behind her ear and tilted her head to the side to get a better look at me. “Is that what this is all about? Me giving mercy to Topher?”

“Mercy?” I felt my whole face widening with shock. “You call what you did mercy?”

My feet had halted their forward movement as I gave her my full attention. Her own feet stopped after mine, allowing her to advance in front of me a few steps. When she turned her body slightly to look at me, her face softened.

“What I did was a mercy,” she replied, her voice so soft it was as though she was speaking to a spooked animal. Maybe that is exactly what I was. “I know you don’t know much about Hoylan, let alone Kolbeck and our kind, but what I did was to prevent Topher from experiencing worse…much worse. King Hoylan would have tortured him in ways that you can’t imagine, and take great pleasure in doing so.”

Bile started to rise in my throat at the mention of that vile man, forcing me to taste the bitterness when I thought of what he might have done to Topher, let alone what he said he wanted to do to me. The hint of joy that tainted his words as he spoke to me through the bedroom door was enough to realize just how much he enjoyed taunting his prey.

“Why would he torture his own kind?” Certainly, there was something redeeming about the beast. There had to be, right?

Turning more fully towards me, she grabbed my hands gently in hers. “Because,” she started, her eyes drifting over my face as she searched for the right words to say. “The moment Topher saw you, he would have tried to take you to his master. If he saw you and didn’t stop you, Hoylan would have killed him, and Topher knew this. I couldn’t let him take you, and he would have died trying. Dying at my hands was a lot less painful than dying at Hoylan’s. Do you understand?” She gripped my hands with a little more pressure, a plea there that was undeniable.

Why did I not listen when they were teaching me about their ways? Oh, yeah…I wasn’t planning on staying.

“If I had stayed hidden?” The logical part of my brain wanted to snatch my words back from the air that stretched between us. Knowing the answer to that may well unravel me.

She let her eyes drop to where she held my hands and sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. It was almost as though she were speaking the words without uttering a sound, but I promised myself that I would not break down without hearing the words.

When her head gently tipped to the side and she gently released my hands, I knew she was no longer contemplating my question. In some ways, I had been spared, but I had no idea why.

I opened my mouth to whisper her name, but she clapped a frantic hand over my mouth and shook her head violently. With her finger, she pointed to the left to indicate the direction we should head. Removing her hand slowly from my mouth, she reached down to once again grab my hand while pressing her other finger to her closed lips to indicate that we needed to move quietly.

The forest was still, the air seeming to grow stale as I tried to breathe without making a noise. My feet shuffled clumsily across the floor of the woods, crunching against the leaves and branches there. Though I might be exaggerating about the amount of noise I was making, at that moment I felt very much like a bull in the china shop. Except, in my head, all the china had already crashed to the floor and I was the bull thrashing madly about the shards.

Another sound from far up in the trees caught my attention, my neck craning up to see what all the ruckus was about. Nanette had other plans. Before I could get a good look, she was pulling me behind her as we made a beeline in the opposite direction from which we had come while removing her weapon from its hiding place. She was pulling me behind her so quickly that I was not even sure my feet were touching the ground.

Several feet ahead of us, more loud thuds sounded in the air causing Nanette to slide to a halt, her feet skidding to a stop on the dead leaves and branches that littered the forest floor. My own feet floundered beneath me, propelling me forward and landing me heavily against Nanette’s small frame. Yet, she barely budged.

The sky was only just starting to peek around the horizon, but the figures ahead were in near darkness. Their black robes and hoods that they wore allowed them to conceal themselves from my prying eyes, but Nanette didn’t give me too much of an opportunity to peer any deeper.

Pulling me sharply behind her, she darted to her left once more, except this time we were definitely heading back towards Kallan…and Hunt. Whoever these people were, they seemed to scare the hell out of Nanette. When Hunt looked like the best possible outcome for her, I knew we were in trouble.

More thumping noises sounded in front of us, followed shortly by more to our left and right as more figures fell from above and landed on the ground beneath them. Nanette skidded to another stop, my breath coming out in gulps as I fought to catch my breath. From each direction, dark-clad bodies slowly circled around us, making all possible escape routes close in on themselves.

“Stay behind me,” she told me, clutching the glinting metal dagger tightly in her hand.

My head craned to each side of me and I groaned. “I don’t think it matters where I stand,” I replied glumly, peering around at all the robed figures.

Whoever they were, those figures in black had us surrounded. Nanette spun around to face the crowd that was forming more closely behind us, which put us face-to-face with a man I had seen only once before.

My eyes widened in surprise as I faced the one person I never thought to see again. A man that both saved me and made me fear for my life in the same breath. “You!”

“You were never supposed to take another breath, and yet here you stand.” The expression on his face was both admiring and bitter if such a thing could occur at the same time on a person’s face. Those sharp, silvered eyes skated over me like a scalding knife.

As I stood beside Nanette, I could feel her questioning eyes on me but chose to ignore her for the moment. “Well, as you see, I quite enjoying breathing,” I replied, a snarky tone grating through my words.

“So, I see. All the better for us, now isn’t it?” The sliver of a smile bled over his lips, and I could feel a cold shiver run up my spine. “At least, knowing what we do now,” he supplied cryptically.

I narrowed my gaze on him, folding my arms across my chest in irritation. “And just what is that supposed to mean,” I snapped at him.

Nanette grabbed my arm, pulling me back a few paces that I had not realized I had taken at some point towards this monstrous but deadly man. She kept a cool gaze on the man before us, though she was very aware of every move he and the others made. “You have men planted in Crescent Lake,” she suggested, though truthfully she said it as if it were a foregone conclusion.

Crescent Lake? It was clear that is what they called the place we had just come from. At least, I suspected so.

“Very astute. Your grandfather would be so very proud.” His smile lit up his face as he watched hers, enjoying the discomfort he was providing.

The pressure on my arm from Nanette’s hold started to grow more painful as her grip intensified. Her lips pressed into a firm white line, and I half wondered if she would crack her teeth from the pressure of her clenched jaw. Instead of rising to the bait that this man offered, she merely glared at him with a ferocity that made me apprehensive.

Wrenching my head one way and then the other, I was determined to find a way out of this mess. This man was more unsettling than Hunt, himself, and I certainly did not want to stand here and find out why he was baiting us. However, looking at our current situation didn’t offer much hope for an escape. I would worry about her link to the priests later.

Each of the black-clad figures kept their faces concealed in shadow, a blade very similar to that of Nanette’s in one hand. Those blades these people carried looked far too much like hers to ignore. Add that to the fact this man mentioned her grandfather as if he knew him and you had a connection that led Nanette right to this deadly lot. The sheer heated intensity of her projected disgust for them was all that kept me from pulling away from her. No one could be that good of an actor.

“Did you come all this way to finish the job? Prevent me from breathing further,” I taunted. The thought that maybe I should temper my words and my tone came a little too late, but if this was my last few minutes of breath, why change now?

The man’s fluid moves hypnotized me, luring me into its flow with a fascination that bordered on lunacy. With the ease of skill and decades of discipline, he reached for a blade at his belt. His slender fingers circled around the handle lovingly as though it were a person and not an inanimate object. The dagger-like blade slid easily from its confines and soared through the air with a precision that was singular.

His actions only took less than a second, though time stood all but still as my mind numbed at the sight of the weapon flung it in our direction. My heart stopped beating its frantic pace in my chest as the blade propelled through the air, my breath growing shallow of its own insistence. The glint of bright metal flashed in the semi-darkened morning sky, the sound as it sailed through the air as soft as butterflies whispering wings, and the deadly look of its sharpened pyramidal point caused me to gasp in lieu of my next breath.

Before I could blink, the blade whizzed past my head, catching a few strands of my air as it blew past me. The tendrils of hair that it brushed against delicately floated past my shoulders as they made their descent to the floor of the forest. There were no other sounds around us, no movement. The moment took on a surreal feel as the forest waited to exhale.

The moment my body started to relax, I closed my eyes and took a mental inventory of my body. There was a moment of disbelief as I assessed whether there was actually any damage done. The only difference was that the arm that Nanette had once held was chilled where her hand had once been.

Trying to breathe through my worst fears, I hesitantly peeked through my lashes to find Nanette. My heart thundered in my chest as I sent up a silent prayer to the gods that she remained uninjured. Her height still stood beside me, anger flaring in her eyes as her lips curled in a snarl. Even if it was momentary, my heart soared to find her still very much alive.

She didn’t speak, but her glare never shifted from his face. It was a silent war of the wills, but one that I had little hope she would win. The anger spiraled off of her in droves, but he was as at ease as if he had these sorts of encounters on a regular basis.

Feeling a sense of relief, I exhaled. Without turning to look at him, I felt a grunt of satisfaction as I verbally patronized him. “You missed,” I offered, hoping the insult would break the tension that was mounting between the two of them.

Goading him had the desired effect, at least until he turned those cold, silvered eyes on me. “Did I,” he asked, completely unaffected by my insult as humor tinged his voice.

The tension returned in my muscles before I was able to follow the path the dagger had made. When I finally did, I saw the target crumpled on the ground. The weapon was sticking menacingly through the boy’s windpipe, a solid strike that would offer no noise in its execution. Those cold, dark eyes of the boy stared unseeingly up at the sky, the hood of his uniform no longer concealing his features. How I wished the hood was back in its place.

The boy looked slightly younger than Tala, an age where life and all its wonders had only started to become more interesting. And his life was snuffed out just like that. There was no rhyme or reason for such an act.

“He-he’s just a boy,” I said, my heart aching for the life lost. I whirled around to face the monster that had little regard for life, my fists clenched tightly at my sides. “He was just a boy!” My words were ripped from me in anguish. “How could you just-” I didn’t know what was going to come out of my mouth, but the warm hand on my arm had returned to prevent me from advancing on this man.

The man smiled at me. “Weakness should be dealt with.”

“Weakness? He’s a boy!” My teeth gnashed together as I fought my desire to storm over to this arrogant ass and pound him square in the face.

He took a step towards me, bearing down over me aggressively even though he remained a few steps away. I met his gaze unwaveringly, refusing to allow him to cow me as he spoke. “He was a weakness. His misstep alerted you to our presence.”

Trying to futilely shake Nanette’s hand off my arm, I glared at him. “You killed him because he snapped a twig?” I couldn’t believe what he had said. Killing someone because they accidentally made a noise just seemed inconceivable. “You are a monster,” I spat at him. Every nerve in my body started firing off all at once, signaling a danger I didn’t see coming.

When he went to grab for me, Nanette swung me behind her out of his reach. The blade she carried was slicing through the air in a fluid motion, making contact across the meaty part of his cheek. That is when all hell broke loose.

The coordination of these priests was so well-timed it would be awe-inspiring if they weren’t so deadly and focusing their intent on us. Without any weapon of my own, I quickly scanned the area around my feet and found a branch nearly as big around as my wrists. Though it was a dying limb, it was long enough to keep space between me and the oncoming attackers.

Wielding it before me, I brandished it in the air a few times so they knew the extent of my reach. Though they were unimpressed with my means of protection, they didn’t make any sudden movements. The closer they got, the wilder my swings would get.

Behind me, I could hear the striking of metal on metal. Nanette was holding her own but in a much deadlier fight than I. The distraction cost me a few seconds I didn’t have. One of the figures rushed me to my left. Before he could make contact with my body, I dodge out of his way as I swung the dead branch down over his head.

The branch cracked about his head, but I refused to relinquish the battered weapon. It would no longer serve me as well, but there were no other branches on the ground that would serve me any better. Glancing down my front, I noticed the bottom of my cotton shirt was tattered. While wielding the now broken branch before me with one hand, I ripped off a wide strip of cotton from the bottom of my shirt and wrapped it around my knuckles. Though my hands were not very soft, I knew that they would be aching and bloodied if this fight went in the direction I thought it would.

I didn’t have to wait long. The priests used the trees surrounding us to their advantage, advancing closer to me without being able to see them until it was almost too late. One swung from a low-hanging branch, crashing into my arm and knocking the branch out of my hands. I stumbled back a few steps, grabbing my arm as a jolting pain ricocheted through it. When he stood back on his feet, he advanced forward, but I was not about to let him take me. When he got closer, I threw my fist hard into his smirking jaw.

The jab hit hard, knocking him away from me as he stumbled backward. Though I had wrapped my knuckles, I felt the shock of pain through my hand before another person converged on me.

Sucking back the pain, I threw another fist at the woman that crowded into my space. She dodged my blow and smiled at my surprise. This woman was fast. As I was ready to throw another punch at her condescending smirk, my arm was snatched and I was thrown around behind Nanette once more. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I was more disappointed or grateful. A part of me was enjoying the feel of my fist connecting with their face.

The clanging of metal started up behind me once more, the sound sharp and disturbing in my ears. Those that she left in her wake were either wounded or starting to make their way towards me once more. The clanging behind me was so noticeable it started to reverberate up my spine. Then it struck me: they were not using their weapons against me.

Another male figure rushed me from the front, while one rushed my side. Waiting for the man before me to get within arm's reach was painstaking as I tried to time my steps. When I knew he could not dodge me, I reached out for the arm that held his weapon. The weapon he refused to use against me would be the death of another. Using his weight to swing him away from him, I guided the weapon in his hand to thrust into the side of the other. It would not be enough to kill him, but it would put him out of commission for the time. That was all I could ask.

“Gotcha,” the original priest grunted out, not loud enough for many to hear.

The man had moved so fast that I didn’t see him until he had my back held against his front. With deft hands, he wrenched both my wrists behind me in one swift movement. Slapping something cool against them, I gasped as they clamped tightly about my wrists. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a bar slid easily from the contraption to place a clamp around my neck. Other clasps flew out from the device to wrap around my arms above and below each elbow.

Within milliseconds, the cool metal device had completely restrained the top half of my body. A pulsing vibration pulsed against my trachea where the metal clamp met flesh, becoming more unpleasant when I tried to swallow or talk.

Nanette was still engaged with others that were determined to test her mettle. Her blade struck hard against theirs, but she no longer had me watching her back. I tried to call out to her, to warn her, but the shock of the clasp around my neck prevented me from making any noise as it sent the pulse back down through my windpipe. I gasped for breath after the shock died down. No sound fell from my lips, and the reminder of the devastating shock of the collar prevented me from trying once more.

Regrouping, I swung a strong kick around me to hit him soundly in the thigh. He grabbed the device that bound my upper half by the metal bar that ran down my back, pulling me back towards him as he whispered fiercely in my ear.

“You will pay for that,” he told me.

My legs came out from beneath me as he threw me to the ground and threw a similar device that had my upper body shackled at my feet. I tried frantically to dodge the throw, but it moved as though it was honing into my body. The cool metal stung my skin as it smacked hard against my ankles. Then, as it had around my wrists, a metal bar extended upwards as though it knew exactly what it was doing. The clasp moved around my waist to hold me still before anchoring the areas above and below my knees with strong, metal-like bands. I felt completely and utterly trapped.

His complete constraint of me took less than a minute, leaving me no doubt that Nanette had no chance to stave off this same humiliation. In fact, it left no doubt that this man could have easily captured us without attacking us. So, why didn’t he?

“Enough!” He called out loud enough to disturb the birds in the trees if there had been any. His barking command garnered the attention of Nanette as she wheeled around on him. Snatching me up from the place that I had landed on the ground, he placed his blade up to my neck. “Drop your weapon,” he commanded, his voice calm and steady as he enunciated each word. Nanette’s eyes took inventory of those around us, calculating in her mind what it would take to divest ourselves of the last remaining few. “Don’t even think about it,” he said, digging the blade into the tender part beneath my chin.

“You won’t kill her,” she said, her eyes wary as she watched the movements of those around her. “You need her!”

He shrugged noncommittally. “Maybe, maybe not. What you must realize at this point is that these,” he indicated the people in his group with his blade, “are merely trainees. They need work…a lot of work.” The scratch on his face appeared to be healing already, and I was stunned at how rapidly his body did that. “But, I do not. You cannot win against me, and I think you know that.” He kept his eyes trained on her, but his blade stayed pressed sharply against my neck. “Now, I bore of this little…game. Drop your weapon.”

A figure was quietly approaching her left side as she watched the priest that held me to him. My eyes were wide as he moved closer to her. Frantic, I tried to call out to her, but the device at my throat sent that vibration back down my throat and pain enveloped me once more before it finally receded. When I opened my eyes, it was clear she got the message. Her blade ran through the man before another approached her from the rear. She was outnumbered. Removing the blade from her previous victim took too long, and the others were able to converge on her small form.

Within seconds, they had restrained her in much the same way that I was. Blood trickled down the side of her face, her outfit in ruins. The fire in her eyes blazed as she fought against the restraints. It seemed that we were well and truly captured.

“Your orders were to not harm them…in any way,” the man yelled at them with a bitterness that could practically be felt.

One man dipped his head forward, and this priest marched forward on him with me in tow. With a swift movement, he thrust the blade into the cavity where his heart would be. The man looked down at his chest, surprise raising his brows as his mouth rounded on a silent vowel.

My own shock caused me to utter a muted sound, the vibrations stilling and sending a pain spiraling in my chest. Before the pain could release me from its grip, the man had thrown me over his shoulders as though I weighed nothing at all and walked towards a semi-clearing. Metal doors squawked in the air as he moved me closer to what looked like a metal box on the back of a truck.

Stopping before the open doors, he shifted my weight. The priest threw me into the confines of the solid, metal box, my hip crashing hard into the metal bottom of this prison. The only light that shone into this massive box was through the entrance where he now stood watching me.

He let his gaze trace over my body, making me feel vulnerable in its wake. Though I couldn’t curl my body into the fetal position to hide from his view due to the metal contraptions holding me in place, I tried to wiggle myself out of his view as best as I could. If I could have clawed his eyes out, I would have.

“Seems such a waste,” he mused, his eyes lingering on the fullness of my hips. Then he brought his eyes to hold mine once more. “But, when the price is right, we don’t ask questions. But…” A slow, seductive smile slithered across his face. “...maybe a taste can be bargained for,” he smirked as he clasped the sides of the doors. My stomach lurched as the creaking of the doors echoed in the space where I lay helpless. Shutting the doors firmly, the man left me in complete darkness.