Read Encounters (The Elder Origins #3) for Free Online

cloaked, and determined not to let them see her eyes. She walked forward intending to pass them as if she hadn’t heard them, but they began to close in on her. She thought of running back to the city walls, knowing they wouldn’t be able to catch her. She kept her eyes cast downward so they couldn’t see them. Nothing but her cloak revealed about her, she allowed them no trace of pale skin from under the fabric. Had she thought to look at them, she would have noticed their coloring had a likeness to hers. She pushed her senses through the men just before her to see their intent. If their words made no sense to her as they called out to her, their emotions would no doubt reveal them.
    She jerked her head up in astonishment. These were no mere men.
    Madison’s feet moved with speed she hadn’t used since running from the Vam-pyr-ei-ak. She sped away to the city wall. Not bothering to leap for its edge this time, she threw her body forward to surpass its height completely. A heavy rock like force met her in the air and hit her back, wrapping its arms around her. She hit the ground beneath her and it gripped her even tighter. She couldn’t move under his weight. Their force left a gaping hole in the earth. She tried desperately to wrench herself from his hold. But others grabbed for her arms and roughly wrestled them to her back, tying them tightly with a spiked metal chain. She felt it dig into her skin so deep that it couldn’t heal. Her skin tried desperately to crawl over her wounds, but it only embedded the sharp edges into her skin. They turned her right side up, causing the metal to dig even deeper into her arms and hands behind her. She cried out in pain. One man took the remaining chain and lodged it into her mouth, cutting the sides of her lips and cheek. When she tried to close her mouth to stop them, the spikes had the same effect. The barbs gripped to her jaws.
    The man who tackled her to the ground lifted her up with ease and thrust her on his shoulder.
    The more Madison tried to writhe her way off his body, the more the chains dug into her skin. Her cries were loud enough to awaken sleeping people near the city’s edge. The men leapt over the stone wall as easily as she had and began to walk toward the half-built cathedral.
    Men, women and children peered from outside windows and opened their doors enough to see what was happening. Madis on could feel their eyes gaze on her. The man carrying her said words to them. Something to the effect that one had tried to escape, and to stay in their homes. The man carrying her wasn’t immune to her picking up on his emotions. He wished for them to stay inside until the burnings began.
    Madison could clearly sense the mind of this man with her in tow. He and the other men behind him, seven in total, were just like her. They had been turned into the same beastly creature as she.
    She tried to lift her head to see where she was being taken, although it was obvious that she would be imprisoned with the others. She couldn’t see the path or the passageway through the cathedral she was being carried through. There were so many steps that she lost count, and the cries of others caged like animals was all that she could decipher in the darkness only lite by a few torches. She heard a metal door being opened by a chain wheel just a few feet from her. She could barely see above the men’s feet, but the dungeon’s doors had the same spikes along the metal. The sharp points were small in shape, but effective. She wouldn’t be able to break through the cell without serious effort, nor without escaping her chains, which lodged deeper into her skin when the man dropped her onto the cold stone floor. She spit out blood from her mouth onto the ground and coughed in an attempt to get out some she had swallowed.
    She heard the chained cell door drop behind her as she was left gagging with no one to hear her. But one man stayed behind. He motioned for the others to leave him alone