Fighting With Him

Chapter 28

I don't know how long I just lie there. The ground is wet and soggy and I'm cold, really cold, but the pain distracts me from all of that. I know exactly what is happening to me, I recognise the signs that my body is trying to get across to me but even so I don't know what to do. I know because I remember. I remember going into shock, I remember how I felt like I was shutting down, how it felt for the world to shrink away. How my body automatically kicks in with its survival instinct. I hear their approach before I see them, the squelching of heavy boots on wet mud, and then I am staring at legs. Three pairs of them.

I look up and straight into the barrel of a gun that is pointed directly at me, the man at the end ready and waiting for any sudden movements or just any excuse to squeeze the trigger and finish the job he started. A howl rips from my lungs mixing with a yelp as a heavy force presses down on my back leg intensifying the pain, black spots appear in my vision and the part of me that is still human wants to throw up. When my vision in more blackness then actual sight I let go and it carries me away.

"What I don't understand is why she is still alive." A gruff voice that is strangely familiar comes from my left. I try to concentrate on it but my head swims with the effort.

"There isn't enough paper in the world to list things that you don't understand." Another voice grumbles, a third laughs. Three males, three familiar males, I know who they are. My body stiffens and I open my eyes but it does no good, my eyes are covered with a strip of black material and all I can see are a few lighter spots where the material is at its thinnest. I try to use my other senses and inhale a lungful of the air to break it down. Left over Chinese food, sweat, aftershave, shifters but under that is the unmistakable scent of rubbish and manmade planet destruction. The noise, from what I assume is an open window, is also a big giveaway. Car horns, foot traffic, and hundreds of different conversations flood into the room on the bitter winter air. We are in the city.

I am in the city, miles away from my home and my pack, miles away from Liam and my family, with Alpha Peters' henchmen. Gap tooth, the guy with the black hair, and the tall one... I really need better names for these losers.

I try to move my head but everything is sluggish and there is a dull throbbing in my right thigh, "Hey look, girlies awake... you look tense girlie." I open my mouth to speak but only manage an unintelligible mumble. Light blinds me as the cloth is torn from my head, along with a clump of my hair, and I blink rapidly to try to clear it.

I expected dingy, dirty and disgusting but what I get is shiny, trendy and extremely clean. We're in what is obviously a hotel room from the two bed layout and the pamphlets on the obligatory desk, right next to the tray with the kettle and the little sachets of coffee. Apparently I have seen too many episodes of CSI or too many action movies because I wasn't expecting such nice surroundings. Even the left over Chinese I could smell is coming from a neatly tied plastic bag inside the little trash can under the desk.

I use the reflection in the wall mirror to look out of the window, it's still pretty dark out although it seems like dawn is approaching as the blackness becomes an inky blue. I haven't been out long.

"Hello again." The tall one who from now on shall be called Jasper smiles at me from one of the beds. The black haired guy who I'm going to call Horace is spread out on the other bed. I have been placed on the sofa and I haven't even been restrained, the reason for that becomes obvious when I attempt to move, I can't get my body to do... anything.

"What have you done to me?" I struggle against my own body's resistance, thrashing and trying to force my limbs to move, well in my head that's what I am doing when in reality nothing happens, I am perfectly still.

"So much for gratitude." Gap tooth laughs. "We've fixed you up girlie."

"Why can't I move?" Panic makes my words shrill and rushed.