Something moved in the darkness ahead and Caitlanna froze. Several curses rested on her lips but she kept silent. Had she been discovered? The movement grew closer and her heart pounded in her ears. Dizziness threatened and she pressed one dirty hand against the cave wall to steady herself. If she extinguished her clay lamp, could she see well enough to get away from an attacker? Would he turn her in before he raped her? Probably not. Her father’s sword rested against her back and she shifted it, the heaviness reassuring her. She had let the others believe she knew how to use it.

When a ratmouse scrambled past her with a noisy piece of something glimmering from its teeth, she let out a relieved snicker, and wondered whether she could keep her composure much longer. She ignored the pile of useless jewels and reached a shaky hand into the crevice. Her heart thudded against her ribs.

Concentrate, she told herself. Don’t drop it. You can do this.

She pushed sweat and stray hairs from her brow with the single swipe of her arm and withdrew the treasure from its tiny tomb. Lamp light reflected on the face looking back at her. The Mask of Tamirella. It was here, just as her father had suspected. She forced her hand steady as she clasped the famed artifact and drew it from its time-rotted box.

Caitlanna cradled the find as a new mother would hold her infant. So small was the Mask, barely as large as her hand, and the pale features as delicate as a young child’s. She fingered the ancient, brittle material and wondered at such craftsmanship. Tears flooded her eyes, blurring her vision. She blinked hard and wished that her father had lived to see this. He’d searched his entire life for the Mask only to meet his premature death in a cave-in.

The others from Cait’s excavation group had gone to camp for the night and she was alone, grateful that the threat of rain had forced them to make camp on elevated ground some distance from this site. No one would hear her, she hoped. If they found her out, they might let her go because she wasn’t yet a full-grown, but she would be beaten for stealing, of that much she was certain. She might not be full-grown but men noticed her developed body, slim as she was. And, as further punishment, every man here would probably take pleasure with her before they released her. The Shore Sanction didn’t have the best reputation. She fought a shiver and reassured herself that she was alone.

Fear of the cursed artifact tempered many local archaeologists into remaining far away from this entire area, but Caitlanna didn’t buy into all that curse stuff. Mutants, dagbeasts, illness, hunger, those existed. Curses were fables of the ignorant. Her father had taught her well and this find would bring a good price, not to mention a possible promotion from striker status to finder.

Carefully, she wrapped her treasure in a ragcloth and placed it in a wooden box that had been padded with straw. Her fingers traced the carved initials in the top of the box, FHM, her father and first primary caregiver, Finder Hendrake Mullen.

“I found the Mask,” Cait uttered in the damp quiet of the cave. Her father’s image popped into her mind, almost void of features now. She fought a sigh that she’d forgotten what he looked like. Her tunic clung to her sweaty body and she adjusted it before taking up the clay, fat-burning lamp. A noise outside caught her ears and her heart sprinted. She waited a moment, shielding the lamp light from the cave entrance, but no one came inside.

Once her heart calmed, she headed out into the hot, stagnant night with the lamp in one hand and the box under her arm. She took in a long breath of sea air. It smelled of rain. The rise and fall of waves met her ears. Graypony drank from the makeshift trough just outside. He whinnied once, as though to scold her for sneaking up on him. When she smoothed his rump, he turned back to his water.

The full moon glimmered off the sea and gave off enough light to make out the landscape. Caitlanna scanned the shadows for danger. No one seemed to be around and she relaxed. Thankfully, no one had noticed she was missing from her blankets.

Why would they? she thought. Unless one of the men decided to take her for his pleasure and found her tent vacant. She hastened her movements.

Daisy gazed out at the desert wash behind her Scottsdale, Arizona home and uttered an inferno spell to reheat her tea. The air immediately surrounding her grew static, as it always did with spell casting, but dissipated as the spell found its object of intent. The result was instantaneous. After a few sips, she set her cup on the flagstone and leaned back to let the spa jets massage her muscles. The warm water soothed her and she began to drift toward sleep.

A hand caressed her stomach. It moved to her breast. She mewed at the pleasure, hovering between sleep and wakefulness. The hand gave a hard squeeze. In an instant, Daisy shot up out of the water, coughing and spitting.

What the hell?

What was with the weird dreams lately? Her third this week. They began in an erotic fashion but always ended in pain.

Maybe I’m a closet masochist.

To get her mind off those uneasy thoughts, she dove into the adjoining pool. The frigid water shocked her muscles and she came up gasping.

“Shit,” she uttered. But it worked and all she thought about now was the cold.

With another inferno spell, she heated the pool to a tolerable temperature and started a few laps. Some spells came as easily to Daisy as breathing and she used them to assist her in daily life. This world was hard enough on those without paranormal abilities not to use them. And being an inherent witch gave her certain advantages.

Daisy began to tread water in the deep end. Her eyes drifted to the wash on the other side of her wrought iron view fence then moved upward. The desert sky burst with orange and pink hues, like soda spewing from a bottle, as the sun dove toward the horizon. A fuchsia-colored glow reflected off the nearby McDowell Mountains where she’d spread her mother’s ashes. Though it had been five years, she missed the woman terribly. Probably always would.

Saguaro cacti looked like many-armed sentries standing guard in the wash, and she imagined them watching over her mother’s spirit. Quail cried their mournful ga-gaa-ga-ga songs, interspersed with an occasional pip-pip-pip. In the dim light, Daisy could just make out the teardrop-shaped plumes bobbing on their heads as they marched in a line. She smiled and continued to tread water.

A silent owl flew overhead, landed on the view fence and gazed down at her, eyes as round as marbles. She usually thought owls were beautiful, but this one left her with a less than fluffy feeling. In fact, she felt there was some wicked intelligence behind those large eyes, and it looked directly at her, or perhaps into her. Daisy shivered despite the warm water. As she backstroked to the shallow end, the owl’s eyes followed her.

“Go away,” she uttered, sounding more like a frightened child than a thirty-five-year-old inherent witch.

Much to her relief, something caught the owl’s attention and it flew off. Seconds later, the shrill screech of a desert hare meeting its death reverberated through the wash and she winced. Then it went silent. She pushed away disturbing thoughts about nature’s cruelty and took in a deep breath to calm her nerves. The distinct scent of creosote, with its minute, waxy leaves, wafted to her, reminding her of the monsoon season. The desert had been Daisy’s home since birth and she let the familiar sights and sounds put her at ease as she finished her laps.

When she’d had enough exercise, she swam to the beach entry and rested. Movement caught her corner vision and she turned to the wash. A dark figure stood just the other side of the wrought iron slats, under the nearest palo verde tree, an unruly thing with as many thorns as leaves. Daisy couldn’t make out the distinct green bark in the waning light but that didn’t matter. She saw the man.

Her heart tap-danced against her ribs. “Hello?” she said, hoping he was just a neighbor who’d wandered off the marked trail. “Can I help you?”

The figure said nothing so she readied a trussing spell. When the figure didn’t move, Daisy scrambled out of the pool and shrugged her robe on over her shivering body. After she shoved damp feet into flip-flops and wrapped her wet hair in a towel, she took another glance around the wash. No one. The sky had already gone purple and her paranormal blood didn’t give her night vision.

A passenger jet hummed overhead, lights blinking in a consistent fashion, on its way to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. Two other planes crisscrossed the sky on their way to and from Scottsdale Airport, bringing a burst of engine and propeller noise down on Daisy. Normally, she would execute a muzzle spell to keep them from disrupting her quiet, but she didn’t bother tonight. She watched the passenger jet streak across the night sky, a couple of stars peeping out in the backdrop.

Thank goodness Noah would be home soon from his business trip. Not that she couldn’t defend herself if she had to, but she felt better when her husband was home where he belonged.

She studied the wash again. Perhaps a nearby saguaro had been the culprit, its shadowy visage fueling her imagination, though she was fairly certain she’d seen a man. Maybe he was another paranormal, but she had no idea what kind of powers he possessed. There were many types of paranormals, of which inherent witches were one. Most paranormals had no distinguishing marks and there were a number of them living in and around Scottsdale.

He didn’t seem eager to show himself again, and she didn’t intend to stay out here to find out whether he could overpower her. Safe as her North Scottsdale community was, no one was completely protected anyplace, especially a woman alone, inherent witch or not. If attacked, Daisy would fair better than a mortal woman, but she had no desire to test her magick out on that theory. No damn desire at all.

As she wriggled a few more feet, the stench of dirty bodies and stale urine assaulted her senses. She swallowed hard to keep her stomach from protesting the familiar smell. She hated this strange planet. The bright suns that made her eyes hurt. The fast rains that left flooding in their wake. But most of all, she hated the Morgee. The metallic aliens that enslaved children, using them up as though they were nothing more than tools to be replaced when they wore out. The way had used her too. Until she’d escaped. In Janai’s fifteen years, nothing had been so sweet as that day.

And here she was now, right back in the slave camps she’d so desperately run from. Her mind threatened to shut down, her bowels to loosen. Terror put her on the brink of being ill. She took in a long breath and forced her mind to calm in order to concentrate on her task. No point terrorizing herself more than necessary.

The slave cavern was just ahead. This time of night, the children would be asleep and their captors regenerating. She didn’t know exactly how many she’d be rescuing this time, but she knew words in the languages of each of the invaded worlds, so communication wouldn’t be a problem.

One knee scraped across a jagged area of the tunnel and she winced, forcing herself to ignore the sharp pain. Flickering light filtered into the tunnel from an opening ahead – firelight – and the cavern suddenly seemed impossible to reach. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She focused on steadying herself.

She scooted a few more inches, quietly slithered out of the hole, and crouched behind the large boulder that kept the fresh tunnel hidden from view. Her eyes focused into the dim light. She counted five children sleeping around the small fire. The slave groups were getting smaller. Her camp had lost a child seemingly every moons phase. She expected little resistance from the slaves, since they were used to taking orders, and the meager food supplies weakened them.

One of the children began to stir. Janai quickly made her way to a red-haired, Earth boy and cupped a hand over his mouth as he awakened. Pale as he was, her gray skin looked almost white next to his. He started to protest, and she used the weight of her body to hold him down. He was smaller than she was and she had little trouble restraining him.

“Quiet,” she whispered urgently into his ear, as she absently shook a stray, white curl from in front of her eyes. “You want the soldiers to catch us?”

Realization and fear lit the boy’s eyes. Her hand tightened over his mouth as he shook his head in response to her question.

“Wake the others,” she ordered. They had to hurry. “And keep them quiet.”