Or tried to, anyway. Whatever drug she’d been given was still in her system, making her clumsy and weak. As she turned, her feet got tangled in each other and she started to fall.
A massive hand, as big as a shovel, scooped her up before she could hit the dirt and Jillian found herself tucked under the Trollox’s arm like a stray cat.
“Come on now, girlie—let’s go get that tea and talk about your debt,” the yellow-eyed head said.
“No! No, let me go! Let me go!” Jillian beat weakly at the giant’s leg, which was clad in some tough material that scratched her exposed skin like sandpaper.
But all her shouting and struggling did no good. She was still dazed and weak from the drug and she couldn’t do any damage to the immense Trollox or get herself free.
“Help! Help—he’s kidnapping me!” she screamed, but nobody paid any attention to her at all.
Nobody cares! Oh my God, I’m in so much trouble here—nobody gives a damn if he takes me!
She felt like a kitten being dragged away by a rabid Pit-bull. Because Ripper was holding her facing backwards, she could see the golden light from the other market—the Buy-All-Sell-All—getting fainter and fainter as he carried her deeper into the Dark Market. It was her last glimpse of freedom and it was getting dimmer and dimmer and farther and farther away.
And there was nothing Jillian could do to stop it.
14
“Kindred’s fuckin’ heavy!” one of the males carrying Kalis grunted.
“Weighs more than five males his size—what is he, made of stone?” another gasped, as they lugged him along.
“Never mind, lads—we’re almost there,” Torris’s deep voice boomed. “Just through the entrance to the Dark Market and dump him where we left the female—right in the corner where the wall juts out.”
“Don’t like the fuckin’ Dark Market,” the first voice said. “Not fuckin’ safe—not even for a good-sized male. You know, I heard they have stalls selling humanoid flesh in there? You can buy a couple of hands or a bucket of ears or a loop of fuckin’ guts—it’s enough to make your skin crawl!”
“Which they also sell by the pound, I’m sure.” Torris sounded bored. “Just hurry up and we can all get back to the spa. You’ll be massaging Mistress Leatherback before you know it, Yandor.”
“Maybe if you’re lucky, she’ll let you lick her pussy afterwards,” another male said, which resulted in a burst of trollish laughter.
“Rather lick Leatherback’s pussy than be chopped up and sold for parts,” Yandor muttered sullenly. “Come on—let’s hurry it up, can’t we? We don’t want this fuckin’ Kindred to wake up before we dump him!”
To Kalis, the voices seemed to be fading in and out, but they were getting stronger. He tried to blink but his eyelids seemed to be made of lead. Still, he could tell sunlight was shining down on his face by the warmth and the golden glow of the sun overhead. He was likewise able to tell when they entered the Dark Market—the golden light above turned blue and dim and there was a sudden chill in the air.
At last, they dumped him—a jarring jolt went through his entire body and made his teeth click together painfully as he hit the ground. It fucking hurt, but Kalis was glad of the pain—it helped drive back the drug that had incapacitated him. At last he was able to open his eyes—not that any of the bodyslaves who’d carried him there noticed.
“Huh—look at that,” Yandor said, scuffing at the ground beside Kalis’s head. “Looks like someone already got that little female, even though we only dumped her twenty minutes ago. Wonder who took her?”
“Best not to ponder,” Torris said pointedly. “She’s gone now and she’s not coming back. Come on lads—back to the spa!”
And the lot of them trooped off, staying close together and hurrying to get out of the Dark Market.
Kalis didn’t pay them any attention. He was too busy trying to catch Jillian’s scent. His sensitive Kindred nose told him that she had lain here in the dirt—almost exactly where he was lying himself—for some time. Also, though it was difficult to tell in the darkness, he thought there were signs of a struggle in the dirt. Someone had certainly taken her—but who?
He forced his body to move, fighting the drug that had infected him with weakness. He had to get to Jillian—had to follow her trail and find her before it was too late!
Luckily, he hadn’t had nearly as much of the drug as she had—and he was bigger, so it wasn’t quite so overwhelming. He managed to get to his feet, shaking his head to clear the ringing in his ears. He inhaled deeply again, searching for Jillian’s sweet, unmistakable scent. Kalis had only followed it a few feet before he found something that used to be white, lying in the dirt.
Stooping, he picked it up and examined it. It was a large piece of white cloth—or it had been white, before someone had wiped smears of oil and dirt all over it. Kalis put it to his nose and inhaled deeply—a whole bouquet of aromas assaulted his senses.
First he smelled the unmistakable scent of the massage oil used by the Yonnite Spa. Second, Jillian’s sweet, feminine scent was also faintly wafting from the crumpled cloth. And third…
Kalis frowned and inhaled again, praying he was wrong. But he knew by the scent that he wasn’t. The odor was the unmistakable stink of Trollox—the same Trollox, in fact, that had tried to lure Jillian away earlier with the dropped grample.
Squeezing the dirty cloth tight in his hands, Kalis gave voice to a low growl that came straight from his other form. Should he change now, the better to track her and kill her abductor when he found them?
But then he remembered the horrified look on Mistress Douchenbag’s face when she’d seen his Ursus—he didn’t want to see that look in Jillian’s lovely eyes. Also, he wasn’t sure he could change if he wanted to—shifting forms took a great deal of energy and the drug was still in his system. Plus, he didn’t think or reason as well in his other form. Though it was immensely strong, the Ursus thought like the beast it was—not like a humanoid.
Reluctantly, Kalis decided to keep to his first form—at least for now. Later on, if he had to change forms and let his Ursus take over, he could. For now, he just had to pray to the Goddess that he got to Jillian in time.
Lowering his head to catch the scent trail, he pressed deeper into the Dark Market.
15
Jillian screamed and cried and carried on, despite the fact that no one seemed to care. Still, she wasn’t going to just give up and let the big Trollox do whatever he wanted to her without a fight.
“Make yourself an inconvenient target,” she’d once heard a self-defense instructor say. (She wished now that she’d taken the entire course, instead of just two classes before she quit.) “Shout and scream and wiggle and fight—try not to let the assailant take you to a secondary location.”
There was some other stuff she remembered too—mostly depressing statistics about how if you did get taken to a secondary location, you had much less chance of ever getting rescued and a much better chance of getting killed. But since Jillian couldn’t help the fact that she was being hauled off to the Trollox’s house for “tea,” she tried to concentrate on the first part about being an inconvenient victim.
Apparently she wasn’t inconvenient enough, though, because before she knew it, they had reached a low building on the corner of a broad street. Unlike the main part of the Buy-All-Sell-All, which had lots of stalls and booths, the Dark Market had more permanent structures. The place Ripper was taking her looked like a corner shop in a big city—a bodega, maybe. A sign on the window in glowing, blood-red holo-letters said, Ripper’s Fine Meats.
“Hush now, girly—all that racket hurts Ripper’s ears,” the yellow-eyed head told her. Keeping her firmly under one huge arm, the Trollox fished some keys out of his pocket and unlocked the shop door. He pushed inside, with Jillian still tucked close to his side and shut the door behind him, though he didn’t lock it this time.
“Let me go!” Jillian shouted, for probably the hundredth t
ime. She was getting hoarse from all this useless shouting and screaming but damn it, she wasn’t going to just give up!
She sucked in a breath to scream some more—and coughed it out again, almost gagging on the horrible smells that assaulted her nostrils.
As a professional chef she knew the smell of a butcher’s shop—even the best ones had the thick, salty scent of dead flesh. And Ripper’s shop was not one of the best. A good butcher shop was cold, for one thing, which kept spoilage to a minimum. Ripper’s Fine Meats was warm—much warmer inside than it had been out in the Dark Market. The smell of old blood and rotten meat rose strongly in the clammy, humid air—it was disgusting.
Then the huge Trollox flipped on the lights in the darkened shop and the rancid smell suddenly took a back seat to the horrors that were revealed.
It was all Jillian could do not to scream when she saw what was displayed in the long butcher’s case that ran the length of the shop. In the first bin were a bunch of jumbled, fleshy things that she at first thought must be some kind of mushrooms. But then she read the little sign at the front and saw that it said, Humanoid Ears—five credits per scoop.
Wait…ears?
Jillian couldn’t believe what she was seeing but it just kept getting worse. The next bin held noses and the one after that had fingers of all shapes, sizes, and skin colors. But it got worse—in the far case, she saw piles of legs—some cut off at the calf and some that were both thigh and calf, with the foot still attached. There were arms too. Some still had hands clenched into fists as though their owners had died in agony. There were long loops of intestines, buzzing with flies and a bucket of toes marked, Half off—twelve for a credit!
And there, displayed on the cutting board in the middle of the shop, was an entire human-looking head. It was a man’s head, with short black hair and olive skin, Jillian saw. It was impossible to say what color the eyes were since they had been removed. Its mouth was open, as though in a cry of pain and it was balanced on the ragged stump of its neck, staring sightlessly over the shop.
Jillian stared around with wide eyes. It was like walking into a serial killer’s lair or opening Bluebeard’s locked room and seeing the butchered remains of his dead wives—horrifying.
Oh my God! She felt her heart stutter like a faulty motor in her chest as the reality of the scene hit home. He’s going to kill me! Going to chop me up for parts and sell me like a butcher sells a cow or a pig! Oh my God, I am in so much trouble here!
“Please!” she gasped, barely able to talk, she was so terrified. “Please, don’t kill me! I know I owe you something for the handkerchief you gave me, but you can’t do this—you can’t just chop me up and sell me off in pieces like this!”
The yellow-eyed head gave a high, evil cackle.
“Oh, is that what you think we’re going to do, girly? Well don’t worry—we have other plans for you first—yes, we do!”
“Yes we do! Yes we do!” the red-eyed head yelled and laughed hugely. “Hyuck-hyuck-hyuck!”
There was a tall, narrow jail cell made of rusty iron bars at the far corner of the shop. Ripper took Jillian over to it, swung open the door, and shoved her inside before snapping a thick padlock through the latch.
“Now you stay there until we’re ready for you, girly,” the yellow-eyed head instructed. “We have plans for you, so we do!”
That was exactly what Jillian was afraid of.
“Please!” she begged again. “Just let me go!”
“Oh we will…we will. But not until you’ve paid your debt,” the yellow-eyed head said, leering at her. “You see, girly, the part of you we wants most isn’t your sweet little hands and feet—not even those luscious breasts—they’d fetch a pretty credit, so they would! No, what we wants from you is the use of your womb.”
“My what?” Jillian stared at him, uncomprehending.
“Your womb,” Ripper’s yellow-eyed head repeated. “Humanoid females are good incubation vessels for Trollox heirs and you look like a good, fertile one to us.”
Jillian opened her mouth to deny this—she wanted to point out her age and say that there was very little chance of her getting pregnant at this point. But then she looked around the shop and shivered. If the huge Trollox had no use for her womb, how long would it take him to decide he ought to chop her up for parts after all? How long would she last if he decided she didn’t have what he needed?
“You…you want me to be your surrogate?” she asked, her throat tight with horror. “You want to—what? Use some kind of turkey baster and inject me with your sperm to make me…make me pregnant with your child?”
The thought sickened her—especially when she remembered that Trollox spawn chewed their way out of the womb when they completed their gestation. But at the moment, she was grasping at straws and even being a surrogate for a Trollox seemed better than being chopped up with the huge meat cleaver she could see sticking into the butcher’s block beside the sightless, decapitated head.
“Surrogate? Oh no, girly—Ripper will inject you with his seed, all right, but he doesn’t need to use any ‘baster,’” the yellow-eyed head informed her, while the red-eyed head roared with laughter. “No, Ripper will inject you with his shaft—you wait and see, you’ll love being so filled with Trollox meat.”
The huge Trollox grabbed the massive bulge in his rough trousers and both heads laughed this time—the red-eyed one with its usual, stupid hyuck-hyuck-hyuck and the yellow-eyed one with a high, evil cackle that sounded like a witch in a fairytale explaining how she’s going to cook the children and eat them up.
He’s talking about raping me, Jillian thought, her stomach turning with revulsion. Oh my God, that’s horrible! Just the thought made her sick—and scared to death. The Trollox was huge—over ten feet tall with body parts to match. He probably had a shaft like a bull—how the hell did he think he was going to get something like that inside her?
It’s going to hurt and it’s going to be horrible, she thought grimly. And then again, Oh God, I am in so much trouble!
Ripper started to say something else, but just then the door jingled and another Trollox—this one with only one head—walked into the shop.
“Open, are you?” he demanded, stumping up to the counter. “I’ve a mind to buy some parts for humanoid stew.”
“Open for business. Yes, indeed,” the yellow-eyed head agreed. Ripper took a stained apron off a hook on the wall—it had two loops at the top instead of one—and pulled it over both heads before tying it in the back. “Now then, now then—what can we get you?” he asked the other Trollox.
“Hmm…looks like a good selection.” The other Trollox inhaled deeply, his snout-like nostrils flaring in apparent appreciation. “And halfway rotten, by the scent of it. Just what I like!”
“Nothing fresh in here, no sir!” Both of Ripper’s heads lifted proudly. “And if you’re looking for extra rot and corruption, let us recommend these week-old intestines. Haven’t been cleaned a bit—still full and mighty tasty!” the yellow-eyed head added.
“Mmm—sounds delicious! Yes, give me some loops of those,” the other Trollox said eagerly.
“Very good.” Grabbing a hook from the wall, Ripper speared a long, glistening length of intestine and began shoveling it into a greasy paper bag. “And might we interest you in some buttocks? Plenty of fat for your broth. One cheek or two?”
“Two!” the Trollox customer agreed eagerly. “And a scoop of ears as well—we likes to throw them in the hotter until they’re nice and crisp!”
“Mmm—you have good taste, so you do,” Ripper’s yellow-eyed head complimented him. The red-eyed head simply rolled its eyes and laughed stupidly.
But Jillian couldn’t watch anymore. She turned, as well as she was able in the narrow cell, trying to look out the shop window to see if anyone was coming. But the red holo-letters of the sign got in the way and obscured her vision. And anyway, who did she think was coming for her?
For a moment she thought about Kalis and
the way he had looked into her eyes and said, “I’ve been dreaming of you for two years.”
But, no—she didn’t think she could count on the big Kindred bodyslave to help her. Surely he must have been in on her drugging and dumping. He had been the one massaging her, after all. Maybe he had even been the one who drugged her in the first place and dumped her in the Dark Market.
Shouldn’t have trusted him, Jillian told herself grimly. Hadn’t she sworn never to trust a man again after what Brad had done to her? And then, in the space of a single day, she’d broken her own rules and gotten herself into much worse trouble than her brief marriage had caused her.
She couldn’t count on Hard or Kind, Suzanne’s Twin Kindred mates, to come after her either, Jillian thought. She had stupidly allowed herself to be lured into the Yonnite spa without telling anyone where she was going. Nobody was going to miss her until sometime tomorrow, when Suzanne came to find out how the prep for the VIP dinner was going and found that Jillian wasn’t in the kitchen of the Pat-ar.
And by that time I’ll be pregnant with a Trollox spawn or chopped up in pieces and laid out in those trays in the butcher’s case and Trollox customers will be buying me by the pound, she thought, feeling sick. God, wasn’t there anything she could do to help herself?
I tried to help myself—I used my poison checker to test that weird tea Mistress Douchenbag gave me, didn’t I? How could they have drugged me when the poison checker said everything was okay?
She still had it in her pocket—she could feel the lump. Jillian decided to pull it out and test it to see if it was broken in some way, just for something to do. It was foolish, of course, but maybe it would take her mind off the fact that Ripper had pulled one of the humanoid arms onto the butcher’s block and was whacking it into chunks with the enormous silver cleaver.
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