by K. D. Jones
“Shh…I don’t want to wake up Lindy.” Talon opened his eyes feeling the burn from the lights. When he tried to get in a sitting position, he felt the room spin.
“Easy. Drink this.” Rage handed him a glass with a green liquid inside. Talon frowned, making his head pound worse. He hated Rage’s remedies. They always tasted like shit, even though they did work. He sipped the green liquid, grateful when he didn’t throw it back up.
“Thanks.” Talon waited for Rage to start grilling him about what happened. “You’re not going to ask me anything?”
Rage sat down in a chair across from him smirking. “I already know. You blabbed everything to me last night in between your bouts of girlie sobs at the Galactic Pub.”
Talon glared at him the best he could. His eyes really did burn. “I didn’t cry.” At least he hoped that he hadn’t. How embarrassing.
Rage let him squirm a little before he responded. “No, you didn’t let the tears fall but that doesn’t mean you didn’t feel them. This human has got you wrapped around her little finger.”
“Don’t talk about Lindy!” Ouch. Yelling made everything worse.
“Hey, I’m on your side about this whole thing. You said she was flirting with another man. Sounds to me like she can’t be trusted.”
“They didn’t have an affair, if anything they just flirted. I found her in my suite immediately after spotting them. I didn’t smell him on her at all. She still smelled like me because she hadn’t taken a shower before she went shopping.”
Rage didn’t say anything else. He let Talon come to the obvious conclusion on his own.
“I’m a total ass.” Talon put his arm over his eyes, finally blocking out the light.
“Yes, you are.”
Talon pushed himself up to his feet. At least he wasn’t swaying on his feet. “I need to apologize to Lindy.”
Rage walked to the door. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks, Rage.”
“No need to thank me. Maybe one day, a long, long, time from now, I’ll have female problems and you can look out for me.”
“You never have problems with females,” Talon laughed but stopped because it made needle-like pressure points hit his head. He walked as quickly as he could despite his protesting body. He entered the bedroom but she wasn’t there. The bed didn’t look like it had been slept in. For the first time he noticed how quiet the entire suite was. He couldn’t smell Lindy. Actually, he couldn’t smell much of anything. It might be the result of having drunk too much the night before.
“Lindy?” he called out for her. She didn’t answer. He had a bad feeling. He frantically searched every room twice. When he checked the closet, none of her clothes were hanging up next to his. He was confused. He went back into the main living area and something on the coffee table in front of the sofa caught his eye. It was a white piece of paper folded up and his name was written on the outside. He picked it up and read it.
Talon,
I cannot deal with this anymore. I am leaving. Do not come after me.
I wish you well,
Lindy
She left me, he thought. The letter fell to the floor. Talon just stood there. He couldn’t see. Was he blind now? He reached up and touched his face. Tears he didn’t even know he was shedding were preventing him from seeing. He hadn’t cried like this since his mother died. He went to his knees on the floor searching for the fallen letter. He was still on the floor when Lesak came looking for him—he never showed for his training.
Chapter Nine
When Lindy finally woke from her drug-induced slumber, she was grateful to no longer be in the little traveling case. She ached all over from where her body had been stuffed like a sausage inside the box. She was laid out on a cot, one of four in a small room. There were no windows, the door appeared to be locked, and she wasn’t alone either. There were at least three other young women about her age.
“Where am I?” Lindy asked the others. Two of them huddled together on another cot and didn’t look at her. The third stood staring at Lindy before she spoke.
“We’re in the holding room.”
“Holding room? What are we being held for? And by whom?”
The other woman shook her head. “Don’t know the names of our captors. But I do know that we were taken to be sold in the slave market.”
Lindy sat up on the cot and hugged herself. Oh God no. Not a slave market. “I have to get out of here.” Lindy tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. “What did they do to me?”
The other woman walked across the room to help her settle back onto the cot. “They drugged you, maybe a little too strongly. You were out for almost twenty-four hours. I was only out for eight, the same as the other two over there.”
She’s been gone for twenty-four hours? Surely, Talon had woken up and found her missing. He would look for her when she didn’t return to the suite.
“I’m Lindy Stamos. Who are you?”
“I’m Melissa Dearling. The two over there are Robin and Vanna.”
“How long have you been here?”
Melissa shrugged her shoulders. “We’ve been shipped around a lot. I think we’ve been at this location for about a week.”
“Will they ship us off again soon?” Lindy was worried. What if they moved her before Talon found her. She knew deep down that he would come for her. It didn’t matter that they had a huge fight. Once he found her, she would clear up this whole misunderstanding. For him to react that way showed that he had deep feelings for her.
“I heard them say something about you being shipped off tonight, but the three of us won’t be shipped out to the next slave market until tomorrow morning.” Melissa went back to her own cot to lie down.
“Why would they separate me from the rest of you?”
“You were a custom order from what I can tell.”
“A what?”
“Someone paid extra to have you specifically taken for their personal collection. You won’t be going to a slave market, but directly to your new master.”
*****
“Get your head into it, Talon!” Lesak yelled from the outside of the Cage. He was worried. Talon was not thinking straight ever since the human had left him. Lesak hoped he would get over her, but Talon seemed to get worse every minute that went by. If he ever saw that bitch, he would give her a piece of his mind. Talon was like a son to him. It killed him to see the hurt that he was suffering.
Talon didn’t bother looking at Lesak. He didn’t care at all about anything. Not anymore. What was the point in trying when everyone he loved leaves him? His father died before he was born. His mother died when he was a kid. Now Lindy was gone.
Talon’s opponent that night was a Voltan. Almost every hold he was put in felt like he was burning up in flames. He welcomed the burn. He wanted to burn up till there was nothing left of him but ashes.
The Voltan could see Talon’s emotional weakness. He took full advantage of it. Several of Talon’s teammates were now yelling at him from the other side of the cage. Talon ignored them. All he cared about was finding oblivion from the pain inside of him.
The Voltan swept Talon’s legs out from under him making him fall flat on his back. Then he mounted Talon facing him. The Voltan slipped his arm around Talon’s head. His armpit area settled into Talon’s throat area. Then the Voltan settled his weight down applying the chokehold.
Talon’s body was on fire. Yes, this was what he wanted, to burn up completely. He started to lose consciousness. He hoped he didn’t wake up. His last thought before he fell into complete darkness was of Lindy, he hoped she was happier where ever she was. The Voltan would have continued to hold Talon down long after he passed out if Rage hadn’t distracted him. The referee called the match.
The healers came to take Talon to the Healing Facility. There had been a lot of damage. A few more seconds and Talon would have died.
Lesak stood at Talon’s bedside in the Healing Facility. The healers
were keeping Talon heavily sedated while they healed him. Rage stood on the other side of the bed.
“He wanted to lose that match,” Rage stated.
“No, he wanted to die in that match,” Lesak replied sadly.
“He can’t go back on the circuit like this; he’s a danger to himself.”
“I know. I spoke with the GCFA board. He is being medically suspended until he has completed counselling.”
“He won’t agree to that.”
“I have already called and made arrangements for him to be admitted to a Rehabilitation Home for those at risk of suicide.”
Rage looked at him in surprise. “You can do that?”
“I’m his next of kin. He is clearly not in the right frame of mind to make any decisions for himself. Damn that human! Do you know where she ran off to?”
“No. Talon had tried calling her parents. They had received a text message from her cell phone stating that she needed some time on her own.”
“What about her friends?”
Rage went to a chair to sit down. “When Talon contacted her friends, they accused Talon of doing something to her. It wasn’t a pleasant phone call.”
“So no one knows where this woman has taken off to?” Lesak looked confused. How could such a small human just disappear?
“No.”
*****
Lindy couldn’t sleep. Once she was able to stand and move around, she spent hours trying to pry the door open. All her efforts proved useless, and she gave up. She paced the small space in the room. Melissa and the other girls were sleeping. She went back to sit on the cot. She had to face facts; she was not going to get out of the room easily.
The door unlocked catching her attention. The other three women woke up immediately. A large man with a bald head came in. There were two armed guards standing behind him. He headed for Lindy.
“Come, little human.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To your master.”
Lindy moved as far away from him on the cot. “I don’t have a master!”
He reached down and grabbed her ankle pulling her across the bed struggling. “You do now.”
Lindy pushed her feet down hard on the ground trying to stay in the room. She went dead weight on him making herself fall to the ground. The bald man cursed, then bent down, lifting her up and throwing her over his shoulder. The position knocked the air out of her. She pounded on the man’s back.
“Let me go!”
The men snickered. The bald man commented, “Nautilus will be pleased, this one has fight.”
Nautilus? Is that who paid to have her kidnapped? She would file that information away for later. She needed to get away from these guys first. She stopped fighting so that she could save her energy. She looked around and noticed that they were in some kind of warehouse. The man carried her down to the bottom level.
“The shuttle is here along with Nautilus’s guards. They wouldn’t say whether Nautilus came or not and no one else came out of the shuttle,” one of the guards commented.
“He’s got the money, he can decide how he wants things to go. Here, watch her while I go out to the shuttle and greet Nautilus’s men.” The bald guy put her down on her feet and left her with the smaller guards.
Lindy looked at the other two men. “I have to pee.” The two men looked at her as if she was crazy.
“I have to pee, bad,” Lindy whined while shifting from foot to foot.
“Take her to the bathroom and I’ll stand guard here,” the first guard said to the second guard. The second guard huffed from having to do something so boring. However, he did walk her to a bathroom down the hallway.
The door didn’t lock—no surprise there. It was the most disgusting bathroom she had ever seen. She wouldn’t have used it even if she did need to go. She looked for a window but there wasn’t one. Think, Lindy, think!
There was a toilet seat loose, she reached down and pulled on it. It took a couple of hard pulls before it came off the hinges. She tried to ignore the thoughts of what all she was touching on that seat. It didn’t matter right now. She stood to the side of the door. “I need help here!”
The door opened and the security guard walked in. As soon as he passed, she swung the toilet seat at his head knocking him down. She didn’t waste any time. She tore out of the bathroom heading in a different direction than where the second guard was waiting. She found a back doorway that led straight out to the alley. She was going to get away! She couldn’t believe it. Just as relief was starting to spread through her, a male voice rumbled behind her.
“Where do you think you’re going, my pet?”
Lindy turned and faced the creepy man that she had seen several times at the GCFA fights, the one that kept watching her.
“Who are you?” Lindy demanded.
“I am Nautilus, your Master.”
*****
“I refuse to be here!” Talon yelled at the top of his lungs as he struggled with the restraints placed on his arms.
“Easy, it’s only temporary.” Lesak tried to reassure him. He had Talon moved to the rehab center while he was sedated. He knew he would never get Talon to willingly come there otherwise.
“I won’t stay. You can’t make me.” Talon looked stubborn.
“If you stay through the treatment period, I will do something for you that you want more than anything.”
“What’s that?”
“You agree to stay—I’ll find Lindy for you.”
Talon stopped struggling and stared into his surrogate father’s eyes. “How do I know you aren’t just saying that?”
“I swear it on your mother’s grave,” Lesak promised.
Talon nodded his head. He didn’t like the idea of being in counselling, but he would do it if it meant that he would get to confront Lindy.
“What do I do first?”
“Stay here for the two months that they recommended. Do the counselling. They have allowed me to set up a training area here for you to work out in. When they clear you, you can begin training full-time for the next GCFA circuit.”
“Okay, I’ll do it. But I want you to contact me the moment you find her. I want her brought back to me so that I can confront her.”
“I’ll agree to that.” Lesak gripped Talon’s shoulder as he leaned down. “You get better, okay.”
Talon looked at him with shadows in his eyes. “I’ll do my best.”
Chapter Ten
Lindy was confused. Why was she just standing there and looking at the asshole that paid to have her kidnapped? She wanted to run away or better yet, knock him on his ass. But her body wouldn’t obey her demands, like it was on pause ever since she had looked into the man’s strange eyes. She found herself almost frozen.
“My name is Nautilus,” his voice was strong and had a strange calming quality to it. When he smiled, she saw two small sharp teeth protruding from his upper mouth. Lindy suddenly knew what he was. The teeth and the eyes were a dead giveaway. He was a full-blooded Dracul. Lindy heard many rumors about the Dracul breed. Some believed they were like Earth’s fabled vampire, that’s where they suspected the name for their breed derived from.
Nautilus stood at six feet tall, slim in build, but he had wide shoulders. His hair was black, skin pale, and his dark eyes had an outer ring that seemed to glow. Both his eyes and his voice were hypnotic. Looking into his eyes had been a mistake.
“I have been anticipating meeting you for quite some time. I suspected there would be fire within your calm demeanor, and I am pleased to know that I was not wrong.” He walked around her. She stood completely still, unable to move.
“Why are you doing this?” She couldn’t understand. The man was beautiful in a dark and deadly way. He could have any woman he wanted. So why kidnap her and force her into slavery?
“Because I can,” he leaned down to whisper in her ear.
Had he read her mind? She wanted to smack him so bad. Her will so strong that she almost manag
ed to move her arm. However, her will broke when he came back around to face her. His strange eyes captured hers once again and she couldn’t look away.
“I have been watching you for weeks from the shadows. Now, I will see you whenever I wish. Touch and taste you as I have dreamed of,” his voice deepened with desire. He reached out a hand to cup her face tilting her up for him to inspect. “Beautiful, you are absolutely beautiful.”
The back door swung open and the bald man and the two security guards came running out. They slid to a halt. The bald man was winded, “You’ve got her? Good. I was worried when I found JL knocked out on the bathroom floor.”
Nautilus gave her cheek a pat before he turned his angry eyes on the three men who almost cost him to lose his prize. “So it is JL’s fault that my expensive acquisition almost got away?”
The bald man nodded his head and stood back. Nautilus approached the security guard named JL. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“The bitch caught me by surprise. I’d like five minutes with her before you take her away. I’ll show her how to respect a man.” He gave Lindy a hate filled look.
Nautilus looked the man in the eyes and made him freeze in his movements. Then he turned to the other guard. “Shoot him,” he ordered.
The other guard looked confused. “What?”
JL didn’t move, but he could talk. “Don’t shoot me. I can’t seem to move. He did something to me. Come on, man, let me go. I’m sorry I let the bitch almost get away. But you’ve got her now, so no harm no fowl.”
Nautilus did not look at JL again. “Shoot him or I will kill both of you.”
The second guard lifted his gun and pulled the trigger. Pop! The bullet hit JL in the chest. But he kept standing. Lindy wanted to look away, but she still couldn’t get herself to move.
“Shoot him till him falls,” Nautilus ordered.
The bald man took the gun away from the second security guard and shot both of them in the head.