Chapter 1 #2
“Calm, female,” the man said in an accent I couldn’t place, but in a soothing voice that made me want to relax.
Did he deadass refer to me as female? I narrowed my eyes at them, flicking my gaze over to study the second man. He had blond shoulder-length hair and a very light eye color.
And pointy ears.
They both did.
What the fu—
“You have three seconds to get off my property,” I told them in a stern tone. Adrenaline surged through my body, and the sound of sand rushing in my ears made me realize how much danger I was in.
I was completely alone.
At the docks.
“You need to come with us,” the blond man said in a bored tone. He looked me up and down with a look of dismissiveness. As if he were inconvenienced by being on my boat, he demanded that I go with them.
I snorted at them, “Absolutely not.”
Then I noted their pointy ears again. Their clothing. It was dark, so I couldn’t catch all the details, but they wore leather chest pieces and thigh coverings. Their long-sleeved shirts and pants looked…odd.
A European style, maybe?
Perhaps that’s why they had accents, but I couldn’t place where in Europe they were from. I was determined to figure it out. If anything went down, I would need to remember as many details as I could about them when I filed a police report.
With their fake-pointy ears, I wondered if they were actors of some kind? There was a Renaissance fair thing forty minutes north up in Buena Park. Perhaps they came from there? But I couldn’t recall for sure, because I wasn’t tapped into Live-Action-Role-Play culture.
They had black, thin scarves around their neck.
It almost looked like a headpiece I’d seen snowboarders wear under their masks, which didn’t bode well for me.
If they had those facial coverings, but were showing me their faces now, it probably meant that they didn’t plan on me being around to identify them after this.
Shit.
“Please,” the brunet said, lifting his hands up higher to prove a point. “We don’t want trouble, just come with us.”
I frowned, glancing at my bag a foot away.
“Why?” I asked, stalling.
The blond man rolled his eyes. “Because we have orders.”
The brunet threw the blond an annoyed look, before focusing back on me. “I’m afraid we have to bring you with us—but please trust that we don’t want to hurt you.” Was I more valuable to them without bruises or cuts, or scrapes? My stomach twisted at the thought.
“You expect me to just go with you?”
“You are coming with us whether you want to or not, human,” the blond responded with a downturn of his lips. With his words, ice-cold, paralyzing fear started to drip down my spine, coating my bones, stiffening my muscles.
Terror consumed me. My heart was beating too fast; it couldn’t have been healthy.
Usually, I was excellent at regulating my emotions. But I couldn’t grab hold of this sudden panic. The adrenaline from the surge of my anxiety was paralyzing. It gripped me like a vise, making me feel like a ghost watching my own body react.
I’d never experienced dread like this, and I had no idea why this was my body’s reaction to these men. To the blond’s voice.
It made it difficult for me to keep a level head, but something in my chest wanted to just get this over with and go with them. The fear of the unknown was scrambling my nervous system, making it almost impossible to properly formulate a plan to get myself out of this.
Almost impossible.
“Okay.” My voice shook, exposing my fear as I stepped toward my backpack.
The brunet threw an annoyed look at the blond, “You did not have to use your sinndra on her, you impatient prick.”
Slowly, stiffly, I reached down to grab my backpack.
“She was being unreasonable,” the blond replied, unrepentant.
As if in response to his words, my fear was starting to fade, but the men looked disarmed by my fear, so I leaned into it while I opened my bag and started slowly going through it, “L-let me just make sure I-I have everything.”
Jesus, was it because they were tall? Larger than any man I had ever seen? Perhaps that’s why my fight, flight, or (in this case) freeze instincts were at the wheel right now.
“Hurry up,” the blond muttered, standing taller as he glanced around the docks. “It reeks here.”
“Do not be rude,” the brunet grumbled, studying me. “But we do need to hurry.”
I nodded, stepping toward them. “Okay.”
I waited until the blond reached his hand toward me, because I determined him to be the bigger threat at the moment. His obvious disdain and annoyance gave me less of a chance to make it out of this, whereas I suspected the brunet man had some compassion. He was trying a gentler approach with me.
Perhaps it was their weird version of the good cop, bad cop act.
When the blond reached for me, stupidly expecting me to take his hand, I wrapped my fingers around the police stick that I carried around in my purse my entire adult life. Ever since I stole it from one of my foster fathers the night that he—no. I shook my head, pushing the horrid memories away.
Instead, I snapped the police stick open.
And thwacked it across the blond’s head.
This was the very first time I actually had to use it, but I couldn’t feel excited about it.
Because even though there was a satisfying sound when it connected with his skull, he didn’t drop to the ground as I expected. He stumbled, bracing himself, shouting in a language I didn’t understand. Then he kicked his leg out and swiped my feet, and I fell to the ground.
“Our orders were unharmed,” the dark-haired man growled, reaching down for me.
I grunted and tried to hit him with my police stick instead, but he snatched the weapon and yanked it out of my hand. I watched in horror as the brunet gripped both ends of the police stick with his large hands, bent it in half, and tossed it overboard.
Through my shock, I still managed to punch the brunet in the face.
Hard. Right across his cheek and nose. Blood should have started spouting from his nostrils at this point. But he barely flinched from the hit, even though my knuckles were throbbing now.
What the fuck, what the fuck.
My dread spiked again as the blond reached down to wrap his fingers around my biceps and yank me up, but I was panicking. Flailing. Screaming.
“You escalated this,” the brunet scolded his companion. Then he started shushing me as he grabbed both of my wrists, turning me to face him as he said, “We don’t want to hurt you.” The only proof I had that I had just successfully punched him in the face was a quick sniff and twitch of his nose.
“But I’m going to hurt you,” I promised, lifting my knee up to impact him in the groin.
His clear, bright eyes widened in pain before he grunted, tightening his hold on my wrists to a painful grip.
His accomplice groaned behind me, and when I turned around to see where he was, he released one of my biceps to snap his fist back and punch me in the face.
The base of my neck made an audible cracking sound, and as stars danced across my vision, fear that I was now paralyzed flittered through my mind.
The brunet shouted something at his companion from somewhere nearby. I was so disoriented that I couldn’t stand. As soon as the two men let go of me, I collapsed to the deck of my boat.
Desperately blinking, I rolled to the side to see the men bickering with each other in another language. The blond was glaring down at me with disgust, and the brunet was shoving him hard. Scolding him.
Even while seeing double, I rolled onto my stomach and started slowly army crawling to the main cabin.
“Stop.” The blond’s voice was the only warning I had before something heavy pressed itself down on my ankle.
I heard, rather than felt, the snap of the joint. White hot pain scorched my leg.
I shouted in anger, looking over my shoulder to glare at the blond, who smiled mischievously down at me. The brunet shoved him off of me, kneeling to grab my arms and pull me up.
I spat in his face.
He blatantly ignored it as he spoke in a soft voice, “We don’t want to hurt you, but we must hurry.”
“Say that—” I clenched my teeth through a groan of sharp pain as the brunet failed to get me to my knees, “to my broken fucking ankle.” Then I wrenched my grip out of his and clawed at his eyes as aggressively as I could.
He shouted, and the cry of his pain made my mind go dizzy again.
He dropped his hold on me, covering his eyes, which were finally starting to bleed.
As the brunet struggled to collect himself, though, the blond grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked me up to him.
My feet were dangling, unable to find purchase, and I thought my scalp might be on fire due to the burn of his grip on my hair.
I desperately clutched his fist as he held me close to his face, desperate to bring relief.
“You’re difficult.” He leered at me with a gross smirk, ignoring me when I spat in his face, too. “That just means you’ll be that much more fun to break.”
I screamed, kicking him once with my non-injured foot, before he roughly threw me into the main cabin of the boat. The door was open; my head made impact with the doorframe as the rest of my body flew through the threshold.
Warm wetness started to soak my head as I collected myself enough to realize that I was on my back on the main level, where the lounge area and a small kitchen were.
My head was throbbing; my ankle was on fire.
My neck was in the worst pain I’d ever felt.
I may not be paralyzed, but I definitely had a spine injury of some sort.
Heavy footfalls entered the cabin, and the blond’s face towered over me.
Then he kicked me in the head again.
Everything went black.
A thick, heavy fog surrounded my existence.
“Don’t!” I didn’t recognize that masculine voice at all. “Don’t accidentally kill them, Aud.”
“I—I—” That was Audrey, and she sounded distraught.
Everything was weighted down on me. I couldn’t move my body. It took every ounce of concentration and determination to open my eyes. But I did. And through the threshold of the cabin entrance, I saw Audrey standing on the deck.
“Who sent you?” That was the man’s voice I didn’t recognize. He was new and had long curly hair. He towered over Audrey but stood at her side, facing the men. I blinked, and Audrey quickly flicked her wrist, throwing the two men who attacked me right off the boat and into the harbor.
Then everything went black again.