Chapter Three
Horror wedged into Tia’s soul. One moment, the world had been perfectly sane, or as near to sane as you could get in a world that routinely indulged in war, suffering and strife, and where people still abused one another on a daily basis. The next moment, after following Danny out of the club, things had taken a drastic shift into madness. She saw him cut into a corner of town notorious for drug dealers and sexual assault, and decided right there and then that she wouldn’t be stupid enough to go there alone, and she wondered what on earth had possessed her to even contemplate following the man outside. If he had grabbed a cab, that would be the last she would see of him. If he turned out to be as dangerous as her instincts screamed at her, then that would maybe become the last of her.
Nope. Insanity averted, she began to venture back into the club, texting her friend again to say she wasn’t going to stalk the guy – except a hard, rough hand clamped down on her shoulder.
In shock, she whirled around to face four men, all with eye colors varying from deep brown to sickly yellow. Her bowels turned to water when the tall, chestnut haired one grasping her shoulder then spun and shoved her forward.
“She can be bait,” he said. “The target was interested in her, enough to actively leave her alone instead of use her for happy fun snack time.”
Target? Bait? Snack? “What the hell is happening?” Tia said, trying to break out of the man’s steel grasp. “Why are you doing this? Let me go!”
“Nuh uh, sweetheart,” the man growled. “You’ll be taking a little trip with us downtown. No harm, well, very little harm should come to you… in theory.”
The other three strode ahead, grinning, leaving Tia with the far stronger, amber glare of the man, who now clamped a hand over her mouth and bustled her along the street. She bit his palm viciously, but all it brought her was a sharp thud to the side of her head, and temporary unconsciousness. When she recovered from the inky blackness, the man was ready for her. “You can scream all you want now, sweetheart. No one here will hear, or care. If you do scream, though, I can’t guarantee your safety. Just saying.” He gleefully squeezed her throat, making her choke and gasp, making a mockery of the notion of safety.
Confusion and fear flooded Tia. She struggled to think, to understand what was happening. Sweaty, rough hands grasped at her flailing limbs. The stench of sweat and rotten food made her want to gag. “Why are you doing this?” She managed to force through her throat. Every time she raised her voice, the man’s grip became harder. He could quite easily snap her neck without a second thought. Tia sensed the strength under his skin, knew that there was absolutely nothing she could do, even though her body involuntarily kept fighting, thrashing like a fish trapped in a net.
“Never you mind why. But if you keep asking stupid questions – well, if you keep talking, really, I’ll kill you.”
Tia immediately bit her tongue. Fear and rage burned, along with disgust when she felt a distinctive boner pressing against the back of her thighs. Even if the man wasn’t planning to rape her here and there or kill her, he obviously enjoyed her struggling, the sheer power he had over her. He made audible sniffing sounds next to her ear, and laughed quietly.
“I can smell your fear…”
Of course you fucking can, fucker, Tia thought savagely. Who wouldn’t be afraid? She swallowed her mind-numbing panic and tried to manage the shaking in her limbs, even as he moved her closer to what sounded like the stirrings of a fight. Shrieks, yelps and howls ripped the atmosphere.
Fear intensified. It sounded like a pack of dogs fighting. Is he going to feed me to dogs? She frowned at the thought. The man has me in a vice grip and that’s the first thing I think of? Her thoughts shot in all directions, fuelled by terror and the vain attempts to calm down her racing heart, to remind herself that panic was what got stupid people killed.
Why the hell was this man so strong? Why was this even happening, whatever it was? Bait? Target? Snack?
A gurgling scream penetrated the air, and out of the shadows stumbled a… something. At first glance, Tia couldn’t make heads or tails of it. She saw fur, an elongated snout, glinting brown eyes dumped on a bulging body of fur and claws. Second glance made her mouth drop open in astonished horror, as another shape bounded from the darkness into the sliver of light offered, and tore into the brown eyed something. Tooth, fur and nail collided – the jaws of the second one clamped around the throat of the first and bit hard, yanked harder. An explosion of blood and bone erupted where the throat of the first one once lay, safely tucked inside. The gore and spray of arterial blood caused Tia to retch weakly, and she felt the alcohol of that evening well up from her stomach into her mouth. With a disgusted snort, her captor tilted her over the side, away from the fight and from him as she heaved, and vomited out acid and alcohol. She dimly registered the boner digging into her thigh shrinking, and allowed the thought that maybe if anyone wanted to rape her in the future, maybe she should puke on them. This came accompanied by hysterical internal laughter, as she felt her mind breaking apart, piece by piece.
This was not turning out to be a fun evening. Werewolves, Tia contemplated weakly, letting the idea worm into her consciousness as she stared at the ground where her vomit congealed. She wanted to black out again. Fucking werewolves. And not the Twilight kind. I’m officially mad. Or I’m still unconscious, and my body’s lying in a ditch somewhere. That notion comforted her more than the prospect of werewolves tearing each other’s throats out in front of her. Or of considering that the nice, insane world she lived in was a lot more fucked up than people gave it credit for.
“I have your girlfriend here!” The man holding her barked, grabbing her painfully by the hair mere seconds after she had wiped her mouth. Roots gradually began twanging off her scalp. “You come near and I’ll break her bones without a second thought! Surrender!”
All that greeted her captor’s words was ominous snarling. Tia glanced up again, groggy and weak, the side of her skull throbbing, and watched as one of the werewolves, with his snout area wet and leaking, fixated yellow eyes on her. The monster took a step forward, the lips crinkling, that dreadful rumbling sound reverberating throughout the alleyway. How could no one hear this? Surely there had to be people nearby.
Frantic howling behind the yellow eyes one caused their focus to snap back, as a new mountain of fur and flesh lunged into him. They bit, scratched and rolled in the grime of the alley, smashing against red brick wall, against dumpsters. The horrible thing about this, Tia realized, muzzily, was that this would sound like nothing else but a drunken brawl. And everyone knew better than to come down into somewhere like this to investigate the sounds of violence. That would be plain suicide.
“Where is that fucker?” The captor spat, pressing his bulk into her back. “That’s the older one. Disgusting bastard.”
He was talking to himself, but Tia started making stronger connections in her brain. The confusion of her purpose here evaporated, as she linked the amber eyed Danny with the result of her current situation. Somehow, impossibly, the four men were hunting for Danny. That could be the only thing that could even begin to remotely explain why she was trapped in the arms of a man who could snap every bone in her like a twig. It didn’t really explain the whole werewolf thing, but it was a start.
Why are they hunting him? She flinched as the tussling werewolves rolled closer. If they’re the same?
“Fuck it.” Her captor, apparently bored of standing there holding her like a puppet, whammed her on the side of the head again. The first hit dazed her, made her consciousness swim. The second sent her collapsing onto the ground.