Enemies and Lovers Amongst Us (18 page)

His aroused, pungent, sexual scent seeped into her nostrils. The

poison drug may have started to play tricks on her mind, but she had

enough rationalization to realize he wanted to rape her before he

killed her.

No way. No fucking way would she let him lay a finger on her.

Just then Thorak’s voice rang in her ears. “Triala, draw on your

inner strength. You must believe in it, in yourself.”

Was he here? Had he figured a way to break the powerful spell?

A few minutes later she understood the voice was only what her

mind conjured. Thorak was not there.

But he had planted that belief in her years ago right after her

parents’ deaths. And she listened to his advice and came out of her

prison tomb she had cocooned herself in.

If she had done it back then, she could do it again now. She could

draw on Thorak’s advice and look deep within herself for the strength

to overtake this disgusting, brutish Rogue.

And once she had taken back control and found the antidote, she’d

torture him until he told her where the Rogues were holding Sam and

Jake. After she made him spill his guts in the figurative way, she’d do

it in the literal way. She’d slash his abdomen and tear out his

intestines. She’d let him die a slow, painful death, just like he wished

for her.

After all, he was part of the Rogue scum of the Earth and that was

exactly what he deserved.

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Chapter 22

Jake’s eyes fluttered open when he heard his name. His mind,

though, didn’t register it until Sam repeated it a third time in a loud

scream.

“What?” Jake asked as he tried to focus on the strange

surroundings.

“You’re finally awake.” Sam huffed.

“Where the hell are we?” He attempted to move his arms, but

realized they were tied behind him. He was lying on the concrete

floor.

Sam was about ten feet away, lying on the floor bound just like

him.

“I don’t know. Some type of warehouse, I think.”

“What the hell are we doing here?”

“Now
that
I’m dying to know. The last thing I remember was a

man coming to our table and telling us that Johnny wanted to meet us

outside. He wanted to discuss the deal where no one could eavesdrop

on our conversation or negotiations. We followed the guy outside, and

someone hit me on the head.”

It all began to come back to Jake now. He recalled walking out the

back door and hearing a noise that sounded like a blunt blow. He

turned around to see Sam falling to the ground unconscious. Someone

then grabbed Jake from the back and put a cloth over his face. He

tried to struggle free, but the man with the locking grip wouldn’t let

go. He recognized the sweet chloroform fumes and blacked out not

long after that.

He asked Sam with concern, “How’s your head?”

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133

“It hurts, and you?”

“They didn’t hit me. They used chloroform.”

“That explains why you were unconscious for so long. I’ve been

screaming for you to wake up for some time now.”

Jake looked around. “So are we alone in this fine establishment?”

“As far as I can tell, yeah.” He sighed.

“How long do you think we’ve been here?” he asked, hoping Sam

would say not long. He thought of Triala.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think Triala is all right, Sam?” He tried not to sound

worried, but his voice failed him as it cracked at the end of his

question.

“I hope so. Damn. If only I knew who the hell did this to us. Was

it the Rogues or a rival of Johnny’s who didn’t want us bringing

anymore business to the competition?”

His voice trailed off as they heard a sound of a door latch opening,

then closing.

“I guess we are about to find out, partner,” Jake responded as he

gazed in the direction of approaching footsteps.

To his surprise, he saw a man with wavy, dirty blond hair carrying

a woman in his arms saunter into the big space. He walked toward

them, smiling.

“Well, look here. Your lovers are awake.”

Jake’s heart jumped into his throat as he realized the stranger

carried Triala. Her head bobbed back and forth, and she tried focusing

on them but seemed to phase out after a few seconds. His protective

instinct for the woman he loved reared its ugly head as his anger came

to the forefront of his thoughts and actions.

“What the fuck have you done to her?” he screamed while trying

to wiggle his hands out of the tight knot.

“Relax. She’s fine. She just had a little too much of a

hallucinogenic, slow-acting poison to drink, and it went to her head.”

He looked at Triala and asked, “Isn’t that right, baby?”

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Jessica Frost

Jake’s eyes felt like they just popped out of his sockets when he

heard the word poison. His baby love was dying and he couldn’t get

the wretched cord off his bound hands. Rubbing his hands back and

forth, it chafed his skin, making it raw as hell, but he hardly cared. He

needed to break free, kill the bastard, and rush her to a hospital so

they could pump out the poison from her stomach.

When he looked at her face, he saw she said something incoherent

to the slime bag. He couldn’t make out a single word, but he got the

gist of it. If she had complete control of her faculties, she would have

killed the turd on the spot.

“You asshole. Let her go!” Sam threatened behind him.

The guy looked at Triala as he placed her on the floor about

fifteen feet away from them.

Jake was in utter panic when he saw the bastard look her body

over and start to unbuckle his belt. “What the hell are you doing?” he

warned.

The man sneered. “I’m gonna do to her what you guys did to her

in the motel room. I’m going to fuck the brains out of her. And you

are going to watch me do it to her, like I watched you do it to her.”

Then he laughed. “And after that, I’m going to kill you.”

This bastard spied on their lovemaking. God, if only he could

break free of the restraints, he’d jump on him and kill him. But things

couldn’t have looked bleaker. The love of his and Sam’s life was

lying there vulnerable, suffering, and slowly dying, and there wasn’t a

damn thing they could do about it.

* * * *

Time to end things before everything got out of hand, Rotan

thought as he stared on behind the last storage shelf in the warehouse.

Theo was out of control.

Rotan had been hiding, eavesdropping, and spying on Triala ever

since she came out of the women’s bathroom at the club. Thank God

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135

he decided to follow her, otherwise he would have never found out

exactly what stupid plan Theo was up to. K ill the Voyeur Scout with a

slow-acting poison and rape her while she lay there helpless,

hallucinating and dying, and have her human lovers watch on. What

kind of sick crap was that? Damn, Theo Overture didn’t have a screw

loose in his noggin. He was missing all of them. He was so far gone,

he was too crazy for the nut factory.

He took out his nine-millimeter gun and made sure the staggered

box was fully loaded with silver bullets.
Yeah, clear
.

Aiming the gun with his right hand and steadying it with his left,

he closed his left eye and focused on his first target, the pain in the

fucking ass Theo. Only a silver bullet square between the eyes would

kill a werewolf, so he had to make sure his aim didn’t falter, because

if he missed, Theo would run for cover. Then he would have to chase

after him and risk being uncovered by the humans and Triala.

Nah, staying incognito was his haven of safety, and he didn’t want

to jeopardize it. He waited until the perfect opportunity revealed

itself. It came when the moron started unzipping his fly. He had

walked around Triala, staring at her like a hungry, drooling wolf

ready to savor his dinner. A chill of disgust crawled up Rotan’s spine

as he imagined all the vile, sick thoughts that probably ran through

Theo’s mind.

As Theo lifted his head to laugh, Rotan pulled the trigger and

waited to see if he’d hit his target or missed it. Good fortune shone

bright on him then as the bullet pierced Theo’s skull dead square

between his eyes. Theo’s eyes rolled back, and he fell forward, his

legs kicking and his body jerking, like a dead chicken that had its

head cut off.

He heard one of the humans scream to Triala to run for cover, but

she barely responded to his warning by twisting her head from side to

side.

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Jessica Frost

Wasting no time, Rotan aimed and fired two shots at the humans.

Since they weren’t werewolves, his aim needn’t be so accurate. Any

part of the body that proved fatal was sufficient.

From the distance, he could see he hit the one with a ponytail,

who had just screamed, in the chest and his friend in the head.

Satisfied with their deadly inflictions, he focused on Triala.

Unfortunately, trying to kill her wouldn’t be as easy as killing

Theo. In the fetal position she lay on the floor, he didn’t have a clear

shot at the front of her head. Damn! He’d need to get close to kill her,

which meant she’d see him.

Fuck it. He didn’t have a choice, and once she was dead, he

wouldn’t have to worry about her identifying him any longer. He’d be

in the clear, and all his problems would have disappeared. At least his

problem with the Voyeurs finding out about him.

As for the funny feeling he had that this new order of Rogues was

more trouble than it was worth, he’d deal with that later, when he did

a little more digging and figured out who really was the brains behind

the clan and who was the one with the power. Power and brains didn’t

always go hand in hand. Sometimes the brains pulled the power’s

strings, and sometimes it was the other way around. Either way, he

needed to uncover all the pesky secrets behind this mysterious order

he belonged to, the minor ones and the major ones. Then he’d know

for sure if he was on the right side of the upcoming war, the Rogues

against the humans and their Voyeur allies, which his gut and the

Rogues told him would be coming up.

If, after digging, he found things out that told him he was on the

wrong side, then he’d have to negotiate his way to safety by squealing

on his fellow Rogues if he had to.

He shrugged his shoulders at the thought and focused on the

current problem at hand, Triala Barns. He slowly walked over to her,

making sure his footsteps were as silent as he could make them. In her

hallucinogenic state, he doubted her fine-tuned werewolf hearing was

working up to par.

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137

He was just five feet away from her, and he could see her body

trembling. He still couldn’t see her eyes, but he heard her crying. His

heart tightened in his chest. A part of him didn’t want to do what he

was about to do, but the rational part knew he had no choice.

When he took another step forward, a low sound started to buzz in

his ears. At first he couldn’t decipher it, but within a few seconds he

realized that was the sound of sirens.

Damn, the police were on the way. Had someone heard the

gunshots and called the police? How could they have gotten there so

quickly?

Realizing he had no time to finish off Triala, he darted for the

door that he used to enter the warehouse earlier and headed for cover.

He waited in the shadows of obscurity, the place where he felt the

safest and the most at home.

138

Jessica Frost

Chapter 23

Come on, Triala, you have to move. Move!
She panted.

Even though she barely had any control of her body and her mind

kept playing wicked tricks on her—making the room spin and her

vision fade or turn psychedelic colors of purple and pink as if she

were in a warped ’80s disco dance party—deep in her brain she was

still the same coherent Triala.

She had heard three shots ring out. They sounded more like clangs

than shots, but when she saw the bastard fall to the ground, she

understood he had been shot and killed. Who were the other two shots

for? When she struggled with her body and tried to turn to look at

Sam and Jake, she saw two unmoving bodies streaked with red.

Blood!
They had been shot. That was all her sane mind could

make out through the psychedelic trip the poison was assaulting her

with.

Her vision had come true!

The pain in her limbs and stomach was agonizing. She almost

passed out as an unbearable stabbing pain shot through her abdomen.

She clutched her stomach and curled up in a fetal position. The

poison’s deadly progress was obviously accelerating.

Although she knew her death was near, she couldn’t help but cry.

The only men who she had ever truly loved in life lay on the floor

near her dying or, Heaven forbid, dead.