Rafferty woke up on something soft. The room was dark, the only light a narrow, pale shaft of moonlight, full of frenzied dust. At least, Rafferty assumed it was moonlight, which meant she had been unconscious for hours.
That's not good.
She tried to get up, but the dark held her firmly after only a few inches. Rafferty realized that her abductors had used the dragging rope to tie her to a bed. In the dim light, she could see a small dark shape on her left ankle, and another up near her right knee.
There was a table nearby, and a gleam where one of her bracelets caught a bit of the light. Too far away for her to reach. Her sword was nowhere to be seen. They had left her her boots, however. If she could manage to get one of her feet free, or even loosen the ropes, she could tap them together and push her way out. They must not know that.
Whoever they were.
The door opened, and someone entered. The figure stopped in the shaft of light. Rafferty watched as it discarded the dark clothes it wore, a feminine shape emerging in bits and pieces until a young woman in diaphanous wisps of clothing stood in the moonlight. She was younger and thinner than Rafferty would have guessed. She still wore her mask, nestled in her long silvery braids. Under the left eye were the letters HA and under the right were the letters TE.
The woman knelt, rummaging in the dark pile of clothes until she pulled out a jar. She unscrewed the lid, and dipped her fingers inside. She stood, and rubbed what looked to be powder or dirt into her arms and chest. Rafferty thought the stuff was dark red, or maybe brown.
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The masked woman turned and looked at Rafferty, and then approached. Rafferty felt a strange pang of jealousy at how much definition the girl had around her stomach. There was a tattoo of a crescent moon wrapped around her navel, which ended up at Rafferty's eye level.
"Hey, beautiful," she said to Rafferty.
Rafferty pulled hard against her restraints, which earned her a scoff from her visitor.
"You know what we can't figure out? Why you're here. Care to share?" she asked, almost conversationally.
"There's a missing girl. We heard she might be here," Rafferty said carefully.
"She's not," came the reply.
"Did you eat her?" Rafferty asked, a little stronger.
This earned another scoff.
"We only eat boys. And there are no new members of the sisterhood, so your missing girl's not here," she said.
The stranger leaned forward and tapped the small dark thing on Rafferty's ankle. It hurt just a little when she did that, and the thing quivered like it was made of jelly.
"Looks like it's full," she said, and plucked it off of Rafferty's skin. When she held it up to the light, Rafferty saw that it squirmed between her fingers. The jelly thing was a leech.
"We use blood from the Masters to do our work, but we've never met any of your kind before. We're curious to see if yours might be useful," she said.
She tipped her head back, and raised her arm. She closed her fist around the leech and squeezed. Blood ran between her fingers. She pushed the mask up her face, just a bit, and stuck out her tongue to catch the falling drops.
The stranger let out a deep, satisfied sigh.
"Bright. Acidy. Alive," she said, licking some of Rafferty's blood off her lips.
She looked directly at Rafferty.
"Delicious," she said, and smiled.
"We're going to mess you up," said Rafferty, as tough as she could.
That got a laugh. When she was finished, she placed one finger on Rafferty's knee.
"I'll come back when the rest of these are full. Then we can have some fun," she said, and wiggled Rafferty's kneecap playfully.
Rafferty tried to kick as hard she could, but the ropes held.
Her captor walked away, but stopped short of the door, and turned.
"By the way, all of your friends are dead," she said before leaving.