Animal Control
"No!" Omiah screamed, her body twisting like a live wire as the kidnapper wrapped his arms around her middle and lifted her off the sidewalk. She flailed her legs but only succeeded in banging her shin against the sliding door of a van idling nearby. She got a good fistful of her kidnapper's hair, which was more like a pelt than human hair. And he smelled like a wet street mutt.
The kidnapper snarled and put his teeth to her throat. "No Thorne!" the van's driver shouted. "Stand down!" The man behind the wheel was twisted around, with his seatbelt still on, to keep an eye on the proceedings.
The kidnapper, Thorne, kept his mouth on Omiah's throat for a few hot breaths before tossing her inside the van as if she were a paper doll. She slid across the dirty floor and banged her head against the row of seats in the back. Her vision went black as the door slid along its track and slammed shut.
"We do not bite our own kind!" the driver hissed at Thorne as he climbed into the passenger seat. The massive weight of him made the van lurch alarmingly to the right as Thorne settled in.
"I'm not one of you!" Omiah spat at her kidnappers, but her voice shook. How did they know? she thought desperately.
The driver turned around again and looked at Omiah for a long minute. His eyes were the telltale yellow of a Wolf. Finally he spoke. "Sit back and hold on tight, pup."
With great effort, Omiah lifted herself onto the seat and pulled the seatbelt across her chest. As it clicked home, she asked with forced calm, "Where are you taking me?" The driver answered by revving the van's engine and tearing away from the sidewalk.
Omiah gazed out of the tinted window and saw looks of shock and horror on the bystanders' faces. She noted, bitterly, that no one had stepped in to stop the kidnapping. Cowards, she thought as she sat back and rode the long journey back to the wild woods — back to where she came from — and already thinking of a way to escape again.
