The raiders struck before the sun had fully cleared the mountain. Callum heard them coming, and rolled from his bed, his hand reaching for the crossbow hanging on the cabin wall. He died before he could use it to defend either himself or his family.

The shuttered window of his cabin erupted in a shower of wooden shards as his bare feet touched the floor. With a snarl as fierce as a winter wolf’s, but coming from a form shaped more like a man, the raider came through the window, it’s momentum matching Callum’s own as he leapt across the room.

It tore out his throat as his hand touched the crossbow’s stock. A second invader followed the first, and Callum’s wife screamed.

Her grief was short-lived. A third raider burst through the door in a swirl of snow , and silenced her shrieks before she could draw breath to scream again. A fountain of red spray drifted softly down amidst the tearing veil of white, brightening the raider’s gray skin with scarlet. As the droplets began to darken, their leader looked for his designated prey.

He’d been sent for the hunter’s daughter, and it did not take him long to find her. She was at the edge of the loft, looking down at those that had come. Her long hair hung loose in a soft brown veil and her full lips moved silently beneath cheeks that had lost their color. It looked all the world like she was trying to calm her mind enough to gather the energy for a spell.

Her hands weaved the signs. Her lips parted, and she forced the words past a throat that threatened to close off any sound. The first of the raiders leapt toward her, his clawed hands reaching out to grip the boards at her feet.

She stepped back, voicing the final word of her incantation, and one of those below her became a statue of ice. It didn’t even have time to roar a protest. The raider, clinging to the edge of the loft, laughed.

Callum’s daughter looked at him, and the words of her next summoning died in her throat. The raider hanging from the boards at her feet was dead, yet he lived, and moved, and swung himself into her loft with the ease of any man she’d known.

The creature was something of a mage as well, for he stretched a hand toward her, and she found she could not move or speak or draw the breath to scream. From below her, came the sound of meat being torn, and wild beats feeding.

“Maelinnaaa,” the thing before her crooned. “We have traveled far in our search for you. Come with me, now. No harm will be given you.”

No harm to what? Maelinna wanted to scream, but found that only her feet and legs would move as the beast turned to the loft’s ladder-like staircase.

Maelinna willed herself to run. Perhaps she could fling herself from the loft’s edge and die, before the creature could wreak its foul purpose on her. She tried, but her feet only moved to stand behind the thing, and her hand reached out to grasp its proffered fingers before she let it lead her down the steps.

The carnage on the cabin floor nearly broke the spell that held her. The beasts, those other raiders, were feeding from the still-warm bodies of her parents, but that was not the worst. As she followed their leader toward her front door, her father stirred.

Hope that he still lived warred with fear of the same, as she watched the raiders move back, letting him rise to stand among them. For a long moment her father swayed on his feet, looking groggily at the faces of the monsters surrounding him.

And then he looked past them, and saw his daughter.

“Maelinnaaa,” he whispered. “Come. Your papa is hungry.”

Maelinna saw the change in her father’s face, and shrank from him. She was relieved when her escort moved between them, even if his words were less than comforting.

“Not yet,” he commanded. “The Lord wants this one. Go with your brothers. They will show you where you may hunt, and on whom you may feed.”

The raiders around Maelinna’s mother began to back up, but Maelinna did not see any more. The raider’s leader grasped her wrist, and towed her from the cabin’s fading warmth. The predawn chill clawed its way though the thin covering of her night gown, as she followed him outside and her feet sank into the powder of newly fallen snow.

Now, she understood how the raiders had come so close to the cabin without her father hearing. She understood more, when she saw the nature of the beasts the raiders rode.

Horses they might once have been, but now they were creatures a fearsome as their riders. Some power had been spent in their making, for their eyes glowed with red unlife, and sharp fangs protruded from behind their lips.

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As one they turned their heads in her direction. Their lips curled, and their jaws parted. Gray tongues, elongated and narrow, lapped the air for a taste of her scent, and the lead horse pawed at the snow, nodding its head up and down in approval.

Maelinna had seen such a gesture before—when she’d brought hay to her pony. It made her pull against the hand that held her, and her captor paused, turning his gaze toward her.

“It is not far,” he said. “We shall not need the horses.”

Maelinna felt a calmness in his words reach out and wrap itself around her, so she no longer felt the need to free herself from his grasp. This new peace lasted until the raider murmured a few soft words under his breath. The sense of them jarred against her mind, but Maelinna could not raise the strength to fight it, and the spell bonds tightened their enshrouding weave.

Suddenly her feet would not move, and her arms dropped to hang like wooden beams at her sides. The raider let go of her hand before her grip could trap his fingers, and then, when he saw she was perfectly still, and her fear was mirrored in her eyes, he wrapped his arms around her, and carried her.

He did not have to take her far. An area had been cleared of snow, and stripped bare of vegetation. Colored yarn was tied between sticks of willow and larch in a spell pattern Maelinna had never seen before. She stared, trying to decipher its purpose.

Grandmama would have known, Maelinna thought, as the raider set her down in the center of the pattern. The raider’s hands rested hon her hips for a long moment, his fingers lingering as he pressed his face close to her neck, and drew in a deep breath of her scent.

Maelinna saw his face twist with abruptly stilled desire, as he took his hands away from her, and stepped back from the circle.

“You would have been a worthy meal, indeed,” he said, just before the yarn exploded into colored flame and Maelinna felt herself carried to another place.

The raider’s spell was broken by the transportation wards. She felt them tear as the yarn-woven spell took her further and further from home. The morning’s cold combined with the ice of teleportation to take the feeling from her limbs, and soon she became afraid that she would freeze to death in the whirling limbo that held her.

Maelinna flailed, trying to keep her balance as the spell cast her across an unknown distance. She landed hard, the jarring of dropping onto stone, driving her to her knees, her palms stinging where they slammed into the floor.

For a long moment, she crouched there, gasping for breath, but relieved the penetrating cold had diminished. This reprieve was short-lived, ending when strong hands seized her before she could recover. She didn’t even have time to protest before she was lifted from the ground.

“So glad you could make it.” The voice that reached her was male, and smooth as velvet.

She was set back on her feet, and strong hands pinned her arms to her sides, before releasing them to slide around her arms wrapped her from behind. A soldier moved into view, crouching to grasp her ankles.

Still shaking with cold, and disoriented from her journey, Melinna tried to center herself. She could sense a presence, one that was neither human, nor undead like the raiders at her cabin. Blinking rapidly, she adjusted her eyes to the dull light of her destination, and looked around.

The entire room was made of stone, and she could see no windows. There was a wooden table at one of the room, with a bench on either side of it. There was also a small cabinet and a fireplace. These she noted as she was carried back away from them, supported by the arms across her chest, and the hands wrapped around her ankles.

Shifting her gaze to focus on the soldier holding her ankles, noting the they were female, and not male as she’d initially supposed. Not that that made it any better. Sharp green eyes returned her gaze, hard as stone and set in a face fast losing its tan to being inside too long. Short brown hair curled around the face, framing it, but failing to soften the deep lines, there.

Maelinna turned her head, trying to see the man pinning her arms. She could not, and his grasp crushed her against his chest so she couldn’t tilt her head back far enough to see his face. The carried her only a short way, before lifting her, and laying her on a surface as hard and smooth as polished stone.

One set of hands pressed down on her stomach and chest, steadying her as the other clasped metal shackles around her wrists and ankles, moving around the altar with swift efficiency. Chains rattled, pulling her hands above her head, until they touched two different corners. The same rattle pulled her legs slightly apart, taking her heels to two other corners, where the chains tightened to keep them there.

Terror, deep and cold, froze her limbs and caught her voice, silencing it, and her heart thundered in her ears. She flinched as the hands holding her down were lifted and chains passed across the top of her chest, her diaphragm and her hips. These, too, rattled as they were pulled tight, and she gasped.

As if in answer, lamplight flared and a third person stepped up to the altar. The sight of him made her whimper, and she found the strength to pull against her bindings. They rattled, and the apparition smiled, his features enhanced by the darkness that shrouded them, until they stood clear in her vision. The look of them made the winter’s cold see balmier than a fine spring day, and wordless fear clawed from her lips.

“Shaikhan did well,” the newcomer said, and Maelinna felt some other, darker power echo his words with satisfaction.

“Well, indeed,” it murmured, as the man raised fingertips to her cheek, tracing it to the edge of her mouth.

Maelinna shrank away from him, from his eyes so dark they were almost black, from the shadows an secrets hiding in their depths. His hair stood in dark contrast, a dark chestnut, that glinted with auburn highlights in the lamps. The sight of it soothed her, and she stilled.

Until he smiled, baring teeth that were frightening in their perfection.

The presence that came with him frightened her even more, and she felt the blood drain from her face. Her captor noticed the change, and with none of the growing amusement she sensed in the presence that rode him, he spoke.

“Don’t be afraid, little morsel. We will not keep you for long.”