Jillian dodged around him and grabbed for the door handle again. She yanked with all her might, getting it to open several feet. She wanted to try and tug it open farther—if she couldn’t get through it quickly enough, she was going to be crushed when she tried to escape.
A little more, she told herself, gritting her teeth as she strained to drag the heavy door open wider. Just a little more…
But just as she was about to slip through the opening she’d made, another huge hand grabbed her and dragged her back into the shop. It was the three-headed Trollox customer and he was holding her by her right arm, which meant she couldn’t use the ion-scoop, which she was still clutching in her right hand.
“Got ‘er, Ripper,” he called, to the other Trollox, who was still wailing and cupping one massive hand over his missing eye. “She ent gettin’ away until she pays for what she did to you!”
“Oh, she’ll pay, all right!” the yellow-eyed head snarled, glaring at Jillian. “I was gonna take it nice and easy on her and plant my heir in her belly real gentle-like. Now, I’m gonna rip ‘er open right proper, so I am!”
The hand that wasn’t clutching his wounded eye, fumbled with his trousers, letting out an elephant-sized dick covered in greenish-gray wrinkled skin. It smelled—if possible—even worse than the rotten meat filling the shop, making Jillian want to gag.
She was so scared at this point, she felt like she might be sick or wet her pants. But she was also angry. How dare this big bastard kidnap her and drag her to his stinking, horrible shop and threaten to rape and mutilate her, all because he’d loaned her a fucking handkerchief? What the hell was wrong with him?
“You come anywhere near me with your disgusting dick and I’m going to cut it off,” she said in a shaking voice. “I mean it—you already lost an eye—you want to lose your dick too? I’ll cut the fucking thing off at the root before I let you put it in me.”
“Whew…” The Trollox customer still holding her, shook all three of its heads and the middle head spoke. “You got a feisty one here, Ripper. Seems to me you’re gonna have to do something to tame her before you can implant her with your heir.”
“Reckon you’re right about that,” the yellow-eyed head snarled. Turning, Ripper snatched up the enormous meat cleaver he’d been using to cut up arms and legs earlier. Its blade was reddish-black with rotten, congealed blood but the top of it gleamed silver in the weak overhead lights. To Jillian, it looked as big as a car door.
“Get away from me! Leave me alone!” she gasped, tugging uselessly at the Trollox that held her.
“We only need to use your womb, girly,” the yellow-eyed head informed her. “Don’t need your arms and legs. So maybe we’ll just chop ‘em off and sell ‘em in the shop. We’ll keep the rest of you intact—until our heir chews his way out, that is.”
“Chews his way out! Chews his way out!” the red-eyed head exclaimed. “Hyuck-hyuck!”
Oh my God, he’s going to do it—he’s really going to do it. Jillian shrank away from the enormous cleaver. She felt like a lost child caught in an evil fairytale, about to be eaten by the giant. God, how had she gotten herself into this situation? Was she going to live the rest of her short, miserable life as a quadruple amputee, waiting to be savagely torn apart by a Trollox spawn?
But just as Ripper was raising the cleaver and taking aim at her arm, the door to his shop slammed open and a deep voice shouted,
“Stop! Lay one fucking finger on my Mistress and you die!”
17
Kalis thought he’d gotten there just in time, by the look of things. The two-headed Trollox had a meat cleaver raised over his heads and there was murder in his eyes—all four of them. No, three, Kalis saw, scanning his enemy. One socket was empty—a weltering pool of the foul black ichor that was the Trollox equivalent of blood. Had Jillian done that? He had already respected her, but this raised her even higher in his estimation—she was a formidable female!
“Kalis?” she gasped, her lovely eyes filled with fright. The fear and hope in her face made his heart fist in his chest, but Kalis knew he had to keep his attention on the two males in front of him.
“Get out of my shop!” the three-eyed one snarled at him—he must be Ripper, if the name on the shop window was any indication. He was also Jillian’s abductor, Kalis’s sensitive Kindred nose told him. Even mixed with the effluvium of rotting meat and the stink of the other Trollox, he could pick out the trail he’d followed to get here.