She’d been a selfish, naive idiot.

That was what it all boiled down to, really. She’d been one of those people, the ones who lived by a ‘oh that horrible thing will never happened to me’ mindset.

Ha.

‘Go on home,’ she’d told her coworkers, the caddys and groundskeepers. An hour later she’d walked across the parking lot of the country club, alone, to where her old little blue bug sat parked beneath a flickering floodlight. The sun had set ages ago, but she had laced her keys between her fingers as a make-shift weapon and told herself it would be enough if something did happen.

Which, of course, it did. And, of course, the keys were useless when someone abruptly seized her around her torso from behind, pinning her arms to her sides, and lifted her clear off the ground. She kicked, and flailed, then when that had no effect she went limp, hollered and shrieked and heard her voice bounce off nothing and no one. She was trapped by bands of iron made flesh.

“Damnation, woman, hold still-” Her attacker’s admonishment was cut off when she slammed her head back and heard a satisfying crunch even as her skull exploded with stars and pain. She heard a hoarse laugh, though not from the one lifting her in a parody of a bear hug.

There was more than one of them.

Well, shit.

Her limbs went numb as icicles of terror spiked through her veins. She stopped feeling where hard, thick fingers were digging into her flesh, stopped feeling the throbbing at the back of her skull. She stopped feeling anything but the need to get away. Her struggles renewed, any semblance of control gone from her thrashing movements.

“Having trouble, Rowe?” Asked the second voice, which she barely heard. The spindly claws of panic were beginning to climb out of a dark pit inside her.

“I wouldn’t be if you’d help me, Nix.” Her captor growled, though now his voice burbled wetly. She’d broken his nose, she realized faintly. That was good, but she still wasn’t free. She screamed again, and then bit the hand that clamped over her mouth to stifle the noise. She heard Rowe let loose a string of what sounded like expletives, though her frenzied mind couldn’t track the words.

“Let her holler,” said Nix, sounding careless. “There’s no one around to hear, I made sure of that.”

The icy panic in her veins became bolts of lighting, aimed directly at her heart. The organ tripped over itself in her chest, and her breath stuck in her lungs. He was right; there were no other cars in the lot, and she’d sent her whole staff home early.

Was she going to piss herself? She was going to piss herself.

This was not happening!

“Where’s Sid?” Rowe gurgled. She felt warmth seek through the hair at the back of her head; blood from his broken nose, she realized. “He said he’d be here.”

There was a third kidnapper? Sid, and he was bringing a car? Shit!

Think, she told herself, You need to think, idiot! She had moments before her chances of escape, possibly even survival, plummeted.

“I’m here, I’m here,” gasped a third voice. This one ran around in front of her, and she got her first look at one of her attackers. He was as tall as any NBA player could dream, and as slender as a reed. He held in his hand some sort of leather package, though she didn’t register more than that; she was too busy gaping in sudden, startled recognition.

He looked, to his credit, thoroughly apologetic as she stared, her struggles ceasing with the weight of her shock. She knew him. She’d hired him!

“Sorry, Karlene,” said Sid, the shy young man with the sweet smile who’d charmed his way into her employ without so much as a resume or reference. He’d said his name was Jon.

“Don’t do this,” she begged, shamelessly, when the hand over her face was removed. She didn’t know what they planned, at the same time believing she knew, and didn’t want to know. She struggled again, but the adrenaline flooding her system was making her shake, and she couldn’t quite get her arms and legs to cooperate as they should.

“Not gonna hurt you, lady,” said Nix, coming into view for the first time. He smiled at her, using far too many teeth in a way she thought was supposed to be rakish. Confusion edged out some of the panic. What kind of attacker bothered to try to charm their victims? The answer that came to her was, in some ways, more horrible than what she had been trying to not think about.

Nix took something from the leather package in Sid’s hands. She saw something sticking out, something that glinted in the wan light of the sole streetlamp. Her stomach gave a sick flip of dread.

“Nothing personal, Karlene, promise,” Sid said, still looking apologetic. “It’s just, we’ve been trapped here so long-”

“Too damn long,” gurgled Rowe. Now that she’d gone limp and trembling, his grip had loosened. Almost the same moment she noticed it, his hold tightened again before she could think of bolting. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have gotten far, not when she’d need to out pace Sid’s long runner’s legs on her shorter, definitely less athletic limbs.

“Quiet, both of you,” Nix snapped, charm vanishing. “She doesn’t need to hear our story, just to bleed.”

Oh, hell, she thought, and screamed again, the loudest, most bloodcurdling scream of her life. Rowe clapped a hand over her mouth once more and no matter how hard she bit he didn’t let go, even when coppery saltiness flooded her mouth and made her gag. She struggled with renewed strength, a fresh wave of terror fueling her kicks and twists. She managed to get one arm free, but it was snatched back almost as soon as she realized it was loose.

She managed to catch Sid’s guilty eyes once, but his gaze slid away from hers as Nix came at her with the thing he’d taken from the leather bundle; a knife. Slender, with a pale bone handle that gleamed sickly in the fluorescent floodlight. It was what she’d glimpsed earlier.

If this were a book, she thought, this is where some dashing hero in a cloak would swoop in, blazing with uncanny skill and sexy wit.

But there was no cloak, no wit. Just the knife, and the hollow of her wrist where Nix pressed it’s needle-like tip as Rowe stretched her arm out to him.

It had to be the sharpest knife in existence, because she never actually felt it penetrate, just a sudden trickle of warmth running down the side of her wrist. Nix brought a small glass vial to her wrist, pressing it against her disturbingly cold flesh to catch the red rivulets. Nix took the gory vial a few steps away, upturning it to let its contents drip onto crumbling asphalt.

Then she saw it.

Etched into the blacktop with dark grey chalk chalk was a circle of markings. There was a pentagram, or something like one, at the very center, surrounded by what looked like drawings by some goth kid trying to be artistic. The sigils looked...familiar, like something she herself might have doodled in one of her darker high school phases.

The puncture mark on her wrist began to burn, the sensation stark against the shock-chilled rest of her. The heat spread as Karlene watched the red drops, nearly black in the dim light, fall from the vial to strike the circle of chalk. Where they landed the lines flared and left behind a scorch mark exactly alike to the chalk that was no longer there. Splat, fizz, flash. Splat, fizz, flash. It happened again and again as Nix walked in a precise path so that her blood fell on all quadrants of the circle.

As he stood back and capped the vial, the scorch marks began to spread on their own, connecting to each other and burning away the chalk. In a moment, the whole design burned as if made from embers.

Rowe pulled her away, and she thought maybe they were done, maybe now that they’d done their insane little satanic thing they’d be focused on whatever came next and she could escape. Rowe shoved her to Sid, and for a moment she felt a spark of hope-

Instead, Sid tied a rope around her wrists while not looking at her, staring instead at where the circle was doing...something. Once she looked at it, she couldn’t look away. The lines were...thickening. Rising. Becoming three dimensional.

“What the…” she breathed, and then she was being hauled by her wrists towards the rising pillar of smoke and ash and charred asphalt. A roar was building in the air, like an entire storm was contained in that five-foot circle.

The swirling column rose higher and higher, the sensation of elemental powers in the air making the hairs on her arms stand upright. As terrified as she’d been before, that terror quieted in the face of the otherworldiness staring back at her from the pillar’s ember-and-ash depths.

“Hold on to me!” Sid hollered in her ear, using her bindings to pull her against him. He ducked into the circle of her arms, wrapped his own around her. With her hands tied and him clasping her so tight, the only way she’d get free was if her hands were detached from her wrists. When he threw himself backwards into the swirling smoke, she had no choice but to fall with him, screaming while he laughed.