“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.”