The night of the first attack, one had dragged her into the shadows, then lifted her into the air by her ankles, feet over her head, though she'd kicked and thrashed to be free. As the incubus had flown ever upward, her body had swung loosely like a rag doll. When her head had knocked against a shelf of carved stone, blackness dotted her vision. She'd awakened here on this ledge, somewhere high in the tomb.
Almost there. When she raised herself up on her elbows, she shook so wildly her head bobbed. You can do this, Mari. One elbow in front of the other. Finally... finally, she reached the edge - and barely stifled a gasp. She'd known she was high up, but didn't realize it was this bad. They were at least a hundred feet in the air.
Heights. Just ducky.
When Tera saw Mari peeking over the side, she politely turned up her lantern. Though the other immortals could see in the dark to varying degrees, Mari couldn't, not yet. "Mariketa, are you okay?"
Mari nodded weakly.
"Come, then. I promise I'll catch you," Rydstrom said once more in his deep baritone voice.
During the days, Mari had heard the five of them debating plans of defense or arguing about their escape, and she'd learned their voices and personalities. She liked Rydstrom the best, and not just because he was so stalwart and handsome. For the most part, he was coolheaded, especially for a rage demon, and remained rational even as hour upon hour lagged by.
Yet Cade seemed to be able to provoke him as no other, and the brothers sometimes fought in the heat of the day. "Still acting like a king!" Cade had snapped. "But you're not. No longer."
Rydstrom had answered, "And whose fault is that, brother?"
The two had, in fact, entered the Hie for the means to reclaim their kingdom - lost because of some act by Cade.
As for the archers, Tera was indeed sister to the hotheaded Tierney. And Mari suspected the pretty, brunette elf was also an object of great interest to the second male archer, Hild. Hild was normally silent, but when he spoke the others listened. Mari hadn't discovered if those three had had a specific agenda in entering.
"Come on, Mari! Rydstrom won't let you fall," Cade said, and the others nodded with encouragement. "Just jump!"
Yeah, I'll get right on that. Ge--ronimo, bitches.
Her expression must have betrayed her thoughts because Tera asked, "If you can't jump, then can you work any magick?"
Over the last two weeks on this ledge, each failed attempt had angered the incubi and drained her even more. She couldn't even produce illumination to break up the inky blackness surrounding her.
Mari shook her head. She was simply too weak. She drew away, collapsing onto her back. She wasn't a puss in most circumstances, but she'd been born and raised in an area situated below sea level. She'd never even seen a mountain in person until she'd flown in white-knuckled awe over the Guatemalan countryside with its volcano silhouettes and jungle-covered peaks.
Kiddie Ferris wheels could wig her out - diving from the height of nearly half a football field wasn't forthcoming.
Oddly enough, she had gotten past her other great phobia - the very unwitchly one of large insects. Once she'd become too weary to continue swatting them away, they'd crawled over her in abandon, and she'd simply grown accustomed to them with repeated exposure. If they didn't bite her, she wouldn't bite them...
As she lay there, staring up blankly into the dark, the incubi began to stir once more.
Starved for centuries but unable to die, these beings truly were the living dead. They were maddened from their never-ending captivity and deprivation, yet they retained their brutal strength.
Soon they would rise and continue their nightly attacks on the five below - striving to stamp out the immortals as if they were foreign, thieving trespassers who'd broken into the incubi's home, intending to steal their precious sacrificial headdresses.
And what of her? She'd feared they would try more "unnatural crimes," but so far, other than sinking their teeth or claws into her legs to drag her out of their way, or forcing her to eat and drink things she couldn't even contemplate without retching, the incubi had kept their hands off her.
It wasn't time for a swan dive just yet.
Though she couldn't communicate with them - if they opened the yawning blackness of their mouths, nothing came out but screams or worms - Mari somehow comprehended things about them, like what they expected from her.
They kept her alive, because they wanted to die.
Once beautiful demons, born to seduce sexual energy from females, they'd been rendered into monsters.
And Mari had realized that they knew they were.
On that ledge in the blackness, she'd truly recognized for the first time in her life that some creatures who went bump in the night might hate that they did.
The incubi had sensed great power in her, and believed she could destroy them, but if she could speak their language, she'd tell them they had the wrong girl. Mari was what was known as an underachiever, which even an underachiever knew was sociology code for "overfailer."
She was famous in the Lore for the simple fact that one day she might be worth being famous. All hype - no substance. That was Mari.
Everyone in the covens expected her to do something epic and always kept an eye on her. They wanted her to be worth "awaiting." Even other factions in the Lore monitored her with anticipation because, while most witches possessed the strengths of one, two, or very rarely, three of the five castes of witches, Mari was the only witch ever to possess the strengths of all of them.
In theory, Mari was a witch warrior, healer, conjurer, seeress, and an enchantress.
A potential perfect storm of badassness.
In reality, Mari had lost her college scholarship, couldn't manage even the simplest spells, and kept blowing things up. She couldn't even balance her checkbook.