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The air was filled with a hundred scents, most of them sick and unpleasant. From the garage where I was imprisoned, there were the remnants of grease, oil, and everything else that would be expected in a place that repaired cars. The smells of blood, sweat, and human body odor came from me, and from the daemonite who’d been keeping a careful watch on me to ensure I couldn’t escape. And then there were the hints of rotten stench which originated from the wyvern that was waiting outside the garage, carried in by its daemonite rider.

I distracted myself by focusing on these scents, as unpleasant as they were, because it kept me from dwelling too much on the fact that I was injured, naked, chained to a raised car lift, and surrounded by enemies who wanted me dead…or worse. I was angry, terrified, exhausted, and desperate…all at the same time. I wanted to escape…needed to escape, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

My eyes went to the daeminite binder, who was one of my biggest challenges. If I was somehow able to escape my chains, he was the biggest obstacle I currently faced to regaining my freedom. The problem wouldn’t be taking him out, it was the fact that he was the only one holding back the wyvern, who was apparently quite eager to eat me. At the moment, I wasn’t armed or in any condition to fight a daemon of that size and power.

And then of course, there was Estrid…who’d orchestrated my entire capture. She’d sent an army of daemons into my home town, slaughtering hundreds of innocent people, all to lure me into her hands. For some reason that I didn’t quite understand, she’d fixated on me. It was probably just the fact that like her, I was both a convert and an atra…the only other one she’d ever met besides Freya.

Estrid told me that she’d brought me here so she could learn ‘atra secrets’ from me, but she hadn’t actually asked me a single question, not even my name. Instead, she’d gone off into a monologue, telling me her life story and everything that she had planned. It didn’t make any logical sense to do that during an interrogation, but she had. Then it suddenly dawned on me why she’d done that. She’d been showing off how powerful she was…and trying to get me to understand her at the same time…because she saw me as a potential kindred spirit.

I felt sick at the realization that Estrid thought I might be like her, and even more so by just how much we did have in common. If things had gone a little different, if I hadn’t had the support I had in Val Halla…things could have gone quite different for me. I briefly wondered if I could use this to get through to Estrid, then discounted it. Maybe something like that would have worked before she’d become a daemonite, but I seriously doubted it would have an effect now.

Then I thought about what Estrid was up to, and the horrific nightmare she was trying to unleash on the world. She was launching a sneak attack into the middle of a nearly empty Val Halla so she could seize control of the anchor and cripple the Val Kyr. With that link between Earth and the Twilight Realm, she’d be able to send armies of daemons to anywhere she wanted, even more than she could with a daemonite ripper. And without that anchor, the Val Kyr would have no way of stopping those incursions. The world would be flooded with daemons.

Suddenly, my daemonite guard yelled, “Val Kyr…” He started walking towards me again with a sadistic smirk and a large wrench clutched firmly in his hand.

Two small daemons followed close behind the daemonite, one resembling a bald and slimy shrew with tentacles while the other looked almost like a two foot tall Furby. At first glance, it might have seemed cute…until I saw the eerie insectlike eyes and the jagged beak. And above all, both creatures simply radiated an aura that screamed ‘wrong’.

“I never imagined I would be lucky enough to get my hands on a Val Kyr,” the daemonite said, looking me over and licking his lips. I shuddered at the look on his face, feeling like I needed a bath just from that. “Our leader has rewarded my service…”

“Estrid wants me alive,” I reminded him, trying to sound confident in spite of the fact that I was ready to piss myself. In fact, my bladder was getting pretty full, so unless they released me to use the bathroom soon, I probably would end up pissing myself.

“You’ll be alive,” the daemonite responded with a nasty smile. “You Val Kyr are resilient that way…like cockroaches.”

The daemonite reached out and touched my shoulder, sending goose bumps all along my naked skin…and not the good kind. I pulled away from him as much as I could, but that only seemed to amuse him more. He slowly brought his hand down, caressing my skin as he did so until he was touching one of my breasts. For a moment, he held me in an almost gentle fashion, then he squeezed as though trying to crush me, causing me too gasp out in pain.

I spat at the daemonite and furiously snarled, “If you touch me again, you sick pile of shit…”

Before I could even finish the threat, the daemonite hit me across the face with the large wrench, grinning as he did so. I bit back my cry of pain and continued to do so as he hit me over and over. In a way, this felt a lot like one of my training sessions with Lindrell or Ionne, except that I wasn’t given a weapon to fight back with. And fortunately, this daemonite didn’t pack quite the same punch.

Once the daemonite was finished, he leered at me as he felt me up once again. This time, he brought his hand down further, stopping with it resting on my stomach. “I wonder if Val Kyr can become pregnant…”

I shuddered at the very idea, and even more at the thought of him being the one to do that to me. He delighted in my reaction, obviously enjoying my disgust and revulsion. Since I didn’t want him to enjoy this any more than he already was, I just snorted and taunted, “Sex with a woman is a lot different than banging one of your daemons. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

There was a flash of rage before the wrench caught me across the cheek again. This time, it was my turn to grin in satisfaction. Of course, that earned me a few more hits, but it was well worth it.

The daemonite left a few minutes later, though the two smaller daemons remained, settling down to act like guard dogs. I watched them warily, but once I was sure they weren’t going to attack me at any moment, I turned my attention back to the task of escaping.

If I’d been jatta, I might have been able to use raw strength to break myself free, and if I’d been kaern, I probably could have messed with the daemonite’s perceptions and somehow tricked him into letting me go. Neither of those was a possibility for me, but the notru method might just work. Though I didn’t have enough raw essence to make the chains all melt off me like one of them might, I did have enough that I was slowly able to damage the chains in a few key spots.

Before long, the chains broke free and fell loose around me. I slowly got to my feet, wincing at the stabbing pain from one of my legs. My broken bones had already healed up a great deal…but not completely. I grimaced and tried to ignore the pain, telling myself that I was healed enough. I had to be.

The daemons snarled and started to approach me, so I tried to treat them like I would a pair of dogs. “Good daemons… Nice daemons… Sit. Stay.” Unfortunately, reasoning with daemons when you weren’t a daemonite was about as effective as trying to reason with a rabid Rottweiler…or a toddler throwing a tantrum. The daemons charged me, but I grabbed a length of the chain and swung it at them, smacking the furby right across the face. “Bad daemon. No biscuit.”

Though the furby was knocked back from the impact, the tentacle shrew came waddling straight at me. It was slow and clumsy enough that I had time to swing the chain and hit it as well. I grimaced as I clutched five foot length of chain tightly, wishing I had enough essence left to charge it up so I could see what the effect would be. I hadn’t ever trained with using a chain as a weapon, so this was a new experience for me.

Normally, neither of these daemons were dangerous enough to be much of a threat to me, but this definitely wasn’t a normal situation. I was naked, injured, and not only without my armor but also without a familiar weapon. I kept flailing the chain at the two daemons, taking turns at hitting them and driving them back. This was taking a toll on my injuries, which were screaming at me to just stop and rest. However, I didn’t dare do so. In my current state, if I stopped, these things would be able to kill me.

“Time for you little bastards to die,” I snarled, taking the opportunity to kick the furby once it got too close. It tumbled across the floor until it slammed into a garage wall. I grabbed the chain with both hands and tied it around the biting and snapping shrew, squeezing tightly until its neck snapped and it stopped moving. I dropped the body to the floor, then turned my attention to the furby, which was coming at me again. A minute later, I’d done the same thing to that daemon.

Since the daemons were dead, I dropped to my knees to rest, but only for a minute. As I got back to my feet, still clutching the chain, I heard voices from just outside the garage. I froze where I was and listened closely, stretching my senses so I could make out what they were saying.

“So, Estrid left you behind too,” the daemonite binder said.

“I’m fucking exhausted,” responded a voice I recognized. It was Nessa, the daemonite ripper. “I just spent the last tweleve hours bringing over more daemons because of your fuck up, and then I had to go and send them all to Val Halla. Now, as much as I’d love to watch Estrid tear those Val Kyr bitches some new holes, I’m too damned tired.”

“At least you got to help with the attack,” the binder told her, sounding more than a little annoyed. “I’m stuck guarding that Val Kyr bitch… We should just kill her and be done with it. Hell, my friend is chomping at the bit to take a nice bite out of her…” There was a sudden pause before he exclaimed, “I can’t feel the daemons I left behind…”

The binder burst through the door, though I was already rushing to that spot as quickly as I could, hoping to catch him by surprise. However, he came in with a gun in hand, so we were both surprised as we came face to face. He screamed like a little girl and shot, while I felt a burning pain in my arm and shoulder, causing me to stagger back.

“I’ve got you now, you fucking bitch,” the binder snarled, pointing the gun right at my face.

I glared at him, staring down the barrel of a gun but feeling more furious than afraid. After everything I’d gone through, all the daemons I’d faced, it would really SUCK to be killed by a slimy and pathetic freak like him.

“I can kill you while attempting escape,” the binder said with a cruel grin. “Estrid can’t blame me for that…for giving you what you deserve.”

“What I deserve?” I responded with a snort of contempt. “You bastards are the ones who just slaughtered half a town…”

“How many of my friends have you murdered?” he spat out furiously. I wasn’t sure if he was referring to how many daemonites I’d killed…or how many daemons.

I was wary of this binder, but still not really afraid. If I hadn’t been so injured, then my enhanced reflexes might have been fast enough for me to avoid getting shot, but I didn’t want to risk that in my current condition. It was frustrating, but at the moment, I didn’t dare do anything to risk getting shot in the face. Even a jatta wouldn’t survive that.

Just then, the goth daemonite Nessa came through the door, holding a shotgun in her hands. She took one look at me, her eyes went wide, and she snarled, “She’s the bitch who killed Marcus.” And with that, she immediately shot at me.

I saw what Nessa was about to do, so ignoring the other gun already pointed at my face, I reacted and started to dive to the side before she’d even pulled the trigger. I wasn’t quite fast enough as several pellets tore into my side and upper arm, but I avoided a direct hit. Unfortunately, as I hit the ground, I now had two guns pointed at me and no leverage in which to escape.

“I’m gonna blow her fucking head off for what she did to Marcus,” Nessa exclaimed.

However, the binder shook his head and reluctantly said, “Estrid would skin us alive…literally.”

“Then what?” Nessa demanded, glaring at me with an expression of pure hatred.

“We chain her back up,” the binder responded in a cold voice, though he was giving me a dirty leer. “Then I do what I’ve been wanting to do since I first saw her hot ass… And when I’m done, all the other guys can have her too… I doubt the boss will mind, as long as we leave her alive.”

I stared at the binder with a growing sense of dread, feeling my fear of him returning. I suddenly wondered if it was talking to daemons that made him so sick and twisted, or if he’d been that way before becoming a daemonite. Somehow, I suspected it may have been a bit of both. Did the daemonites intentionally recruit the crazies? In a way, that would make sense, because I couldn’t imagine many sane people would want to work with daemons. Even Nessa was staring at the binder with a disturbed look.

“That’s just…,” Nessa started, turning to stare at me again. The hatred seemed to waver for a moment, replaced with a flash of pity. “Even these evil bitches don’t…” Then she paused, taking a deep breath and shaking her head. She looked away from me and grimly told the binder, “Do what you’ve got to do. I won’t watch.” And with that, she started walking back towards the door.

“You’re a sick bastard,” I stated, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me afraid, no matter how terrified I actually felt. I was half sure my racing heart was going to burst out of my chest. Instead of letting that happen to me, I’d be better off jumping him…forcing him to kill me. “Let me guess, you got bored of banging daemons and decided to finally try something human…?”

His eyes flashed with hatred. He sneered, “I’m going to enjoy this… I’m going to enjoy giving you everything you deserve, you filthy whore…”

“No woman deserves that,” a voice exclaimed from behind me, an instant before an arrow suddenly appeared in the binder’s head.

For a moment, I just stared at the daemonite, who suddenly collapsed to the ground like a rag doll. Then I sat up and turned to look at the Val Kyr who’d entered the garage through another entrance I hadn’t noticed until now, one I hadn’t been able to see from where I’d been chained up. To my dawning horror, my rescuer was none other than Jass.

Jass notched another arrow and slowly walked towards me, keeping her eyes firmly locked on the door that Nessa had left through just half a minute earlier. When she was closer, she finally looked at me, and to my surprise, there was a brief look of pity before it vanished. I grimaced, not in pain, but in humiliation at being found in this condition and rescued by her. Out of all the Val Kyr who could have come to my rescue, why did it have to be Jass? She hesitated several seconds, then held out a hand to help me to my feet. I hesitated several seconds before accepting it.

“Thank you,” I grudgingly said. Then I looked towards the door she’d come through and started, “The wyvern…”

“Gretchen’s triad is taking care of it,” Jass responded grimly. “Along with the rest of mine. I was sent to scout ahead.”

“And my triad?” I asked hopefully.

“Searching another area,” she answered in a crisp tone. “We found you first.”

I nodded at that, relieved to find that my friend’s hadn’t just written me off as dead. Of course, I had a hard time imagining them actually doing that, especially now that I knew Lindrell was also my mother. That was still unbelievably weird.

After a moment, I asked, “And how thick were the daemons out there?”

Jass gave me a suspicious look. “There were very few.”

“Damn,” I muttered. Sure, the lack of daemons meant that it had been a lot easier for them to rescue me, but I knew where those daemons had gone, and that was very bad news indeed. “I have to warn the Lindrell…”

“Warn Lindrell of what?” Lei called out as she entered through the same door Jass had used, with Natalie right behind her.

Before I could answer, Nessa stepped back through the door that was close to me, freezing when she saw Jass and I standing there while the other daemonite was dead on the ground. A look of shock passed over her face as well as one of fear. She immediately dropped the shotgun and turned to run back out the door.

“NO!” I exclaimed, throwing myself at her in spite of my injuries. Nessa was the daemonite who’d opened the door…who brought the daemons to Australia…and here. She was probably the one who opened the way for all those recent incursions, so there was no way in Hell I was going to let her escape. As I grabbed hold of her arm, I snarled, “You’re not getting away again…”

Nessa screamed in terror and the air around us started to rip and blur. Jass jumped at me, grabbing my arm and starting to pull me back, but an instant later, all three of us fell through.