Accidental Acquisition by Evangeline Anderson
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.”
There was some other stuff she remembered too—mostly depressing statistics about how if you did get taken to a secondary location, you had much less chance of ever getting rescued and a much better chance of getting killed. But since Jillian couldn’t help the fact that she was being hauled off to the Trollox’s house for “tea,” she tried to concentrate on the first part about being an inconvenient victim.
Apparently she wasn’t inconvenient enough, though, because before she knew it, they had reached a low building on the corner of a broad street. Unlike the main part of the Buy-All-Sell-All, which had lots of stalls and booths, the Dark Market had more permanent structures. The place Ripper was taking her looked like a corner shop in a big city—a bodega, maybe. A sign on the window in glowing, blood-red holo-letters said, Ripper’s Fine Meats.
“Hush now, girly—all that racket hurts Ripper’s ears,” the yellow-eyed head told her. Keeping her firmly under one huge arm, the Trollox fished some keys out of his pocket and unlocked the shop door. He pushed inside, with Jillian still tucked close to his side and shut the door behind him, though he didn’t lock it this time.
“Let me go!” Jillian shouted, for probably the hundredth time. She was getting hoarse from all this useless shouting and screaming but damn it, she wasn’t going to just give up!
She sucked in a breath to scream some more—and coughed it out again, almost gagging on the horrible smells that assaulted her nostrils.
As a professional chef she knew the smell of a butcher’s shop—even the best ones had the thick, salty scent of dead flesh. And Ripper’s shop was not one of the best. A good butcher shop was cold, for one thing, which kept spoilage to a minimum. Ripper’s Fine Meats was warm—much warmer inside than it had been out in the Dark Market. The smell of old blood and rotten meat rose strongly in the clammy, humid air—it was disgusting.
Then the huge Trollox flipped on the lights in the darkened shop and the rancid smell suddenly took a back seat to the horrors that were revealed.
It was all Jillian could do not to scream when she saw what was displayed in the long butcher’s case that ran the length of the shop. In the first bin were a bunch of jumbled, fleshy things that she at first thought must be some kind of mushrooms. But then she read the little sign at the front and saw that it said, Humanoid Ears—five credits per scoop.
Wait…ears?
Jillian couldn’t believe what she was seeing but it just kept getting worse. The next bin held noses and the one after that had fingers of all shapes, sizes, and skin colors. But it got worse—in the far case, she saw piles of legs—some cut off at the calf and some that were both thigh and calf, with the foot still attached. There were arms too. Some still had hands clenched into fists as though their owners had died in agony. There were long loops of intestines, buzzing with flies and a bucket of toes marked, Half off—twelve for a credit!
And there, displayed on the cutting board in the middle of the shop, was an entire human-looking head. It was a man’s head, with short black hair and olive skin, Jillian saw. It was impossible to say what color the eyes were since they had been removed. Its mouth was open, as though in a cry of pain and it was balanced on the ragged stump of its neck, staring sightlessly over the shop.
Jillian stared around with wide eyes. It was like walking into a serial killer’s lair or opening Bluebeard’s locked room and seeing the butchered remains of his dead wives—horrifying.
Oh my God! She felt her heart stutter like a faulty motor in her chest as the reality of the scene hit home. He’s going to kill me! Going to chop me up for parts and sell me like a butcher sells a cow or a pig! Oh my God, I am in so much trouble here!
“Please!” she gasped, barely able to talk, she was so terrified. “Please, don’t kill me! I know I owe you something for the handkerchief you gave me, but you can’t do this—you can’t just chop me up and sell me off in pieces like this!”
The yellow-eyed head gave a high, evil cackle.
“Oh, is that what you think we’re going to do, girly? Well don’t worry—we have other plans for you first—yes, we do!”
“Yes we do! Yes we do!” the red-eyed head yelled and laughed hugely. “Hyuck-hyuck-hyuck!”
There was a tall, narrow jail cell made of rusty iron bars at the far corner of the shop. Ripper took Jillian over to it, swung open the door, and shoved her inside before snapping a thick padlock through the latch.
“Now you stay there until we’re ready for you, girly,” the yellow-eyed head instructed. “We have plans for you, so we do!”
That was exactly what Jillian was afraid of.
“Please!” she begged again. “Just let me go!”
“Oh we will…we will. But not until you’ve paid your debt,” the yellow-eyed head said, leering at her. “You see, girly, the part of you we wants most isn’t your sweet little hands and feet—not even those luscious breasts—they’d fetch a pretty credit, so they would! No, what we wants from you is the use of your womb.”
“My what?” Jillian stared at him, uncomprehending.
“Your womb,” Ripper’s yellow-eyed head repeated. “Humanoid females are good incubation vessels for Trollox heirs and you look like a good, fertile one to us.”
Jillian opened her mouth to deny this—she wanted to point out her age and say that there was very little chance of her getting pregnant at this point. But then she looked around the shop and shivered. If the huge Trollox had no use for her womb, how long would it take him to decide he ought to chop her up for parts after all? How long would she last if he decided she didn’t have what he needed?
“You…you want me to be your surrogate?” she asked, her throat tight with horror. “You want to—what? Use some kind of turkey baster and inject me with your sperm to make me…make me pregnant with your child?”
The thought sickened her—especially when she remembered that Trollox spawn chewed their way out of the womb when they completed their gestation. But at the moment, she was grasping at straws and even being a surrogate for a Trollox seemed better than being chopped up with the huge meat cleaver she could see sticking into the butcher’s block beside the sightless, decapitated head.
“Surrogate? Oh no, girly—Ripper will inject you with his seed, all right, but he doesn’t need to use any ‘baster,’” the yellow-eyed head informed her, while the red-eyed head roared with laughter. “No, Ripper will inject you with his shaft—you wait and see, you’ll love being so filled with Trollox meat.”
The huge Trollox grabbed the massive bulge in his rough trousers and both heads laughed this time—the red-eyed one with its usual, stupid hyuck-hyuck-hyuck and the yellow-eyed one with a high, evil cackle that sounded like a witch in a fairytale explaining how she’s going to cook the children and eat them up.
He’s talking about raping me, Jillian thought, her stomach turning with revulsion. Oh my God, that’s horrible! Just the thought made her sick—and scared to death. The Trollox was huge—over ten feet tall with body parts to match. He probably had a shaft like a bull—how the hell did he think he was going to get something like that inside her?
It’s going to hurt and it’s going to be horrible, she thought grimly. And then again, Oh God, I am in so much trouble!
Ripper started to say something else, but just then the door jingled and another Trollox—this one with only one head—walked into the shop.
“Open, are you?” he demanded, stumping up to the counter. “I’ve a mind to buy some parts for humanoid stew.”
“Open for business. Yes, indeed,” the yellow-eyed head agreed. Ripper took a stained apron off a hook on the wall—it had two loops at the top instead of one—and pulled it over both heads before tying it in the back. “Now then, now then—what can we get you?” he asked the other Trollox.
“Hmm…looks like a good selection.” The other Trollox inhaled deeply, his snout-like nostrils flaring in apparent appreciation. “And halfway rotten, by the scent of it. Just what I like!”
“Nothing fresh in here, no sir!” Both of Ripper’s heads lifted proudly. “And if you’re looking for extra rot and corruption, let us recommend these week-old intestines. Haven’t been cleaned a bit—still full and mighty tasty!” the yellow-eyed head added.
“Mmm—sounds delicious! Yes, give me some loops of those,” the other Trollox said eagerly.
“Very good.” Grabbing a hook from the wall, Ripper speared a long, glistening length of intestine and began shoveling it into a greasy paper bag. “And might we interest you in some buttocks? Plenty of fat for your broth. One cheek or two?”
“Two!” the Trollox customer agreed eagerly. “And a scoop of ears as well—we likes to throw them in the hotter until they’re nice and crisp!”
“Mmm—you have good taste, so you do,” Ripper’s yellow-eyed head complimented him. The red-eyed head simply rolled its eyes and laughed stupidly.
But Jillian couldn’t watch anymore. She turned, as well as she was able in the narrow cell, trying to look out the shop window to see if anyone was coming. But the red holo-letters of the sign got in the way and obscured her vision. And anyway, who did she think was coming for her?
For a moment she thought about Kalis and the way he had looked into her eyes and said, “I’ve been dreaming of you for two years.”
But, no—she didn’t think she could count on the big Kindred bodyslave to help her. Surely he must have been in on her drugging and dumping. He had been the one massaging her, after all. Maybe he had even been the one who drugged her in the first place and dumped her in the Dark Market.
Shouldn’t have trusted him, Jillian told herself grimly. Hadn’t she sworn never to trust a man again after what Brad had done to her? And then, in the space of a single day, she’d broken her own rules and gotten herself into much worse trouble than her brief marriage had caused her.
She couldn’t count on Hard or Kind, Suzanne’s Twin Kindred mates, to come after her either, Jillian thought. She had stupidly allowed herself to be lured into the Yonnite spa without telling anyone where she was going. Nobody was going to miss her until sometime tomorrow, when Suzanne came to find out how the prep for the VIP dinner was going and found that Jillian wasn’t in the kitchen of the Pat-ar.
And by that time I’ll be pregnant with a Trollox spawn or chopped up in pieces and laid out in those trays in the butcher’s case and Trollox customers will be buying me by the pound, she thought, feeling sick. God, wasn’t there anything she could do to help herself?
I tried to help myself—I used my poison checker to test that weird tea Mistress Douchenbag gave me, didn’t I? How could they have drugged me when the poison checker said everything was okay?
She still had it in her pocket—she could feel the lump. Jillian decided to pull it out and test it to see if it was broken in some way, just for something to do. It was foolish, of course, but maybe it would take her mind off the fact that Ripper had pulled one of the humanoid arms onto the butcher’s block and was whacking it into chunks with the enormous silver cleaver.
She reached into her jeans pocket but instead of the poison checker, her seeking fingertips found the crinkly plastic of a grocery bag, wrapped around something hard.
“What in the world?” Jillian muttered to herself. Reaching deeper, she pulled out the bag-wrapped object, opened the bag, and looked inside.
For a moment, she wondered why in the world she had a melon baller with her. Then she suddenly remembered.
Oh—the ion-scoop. Of course!
For a moment she was excited—but then she frowned. What could she do with such a small instrument? She remembered Mistress Douchenbag’s claim that it could “cut through anything” but was it true—or more of the wily Yonnite’s lies?
Well, there’s only one way to find out, I guess.
Jillian looked over her shoulder. The first customer had left, but another Trollox customer—this one with three heads—had come in and was asking for a scoop of fingers and a measure of eyeballs, so Ripper was busy. She didn’t think he’d notice the hum of the ion-scoop over the sound of his own loud conversation with his customer, whose heads kept talking over each other.
Carefully, she flipped the switch in the handle and, holding the scoop down by her side, she pressed it against the rusty iron bar by her leg.
At first, she didn’t think anything was going to happen. Then, with the feeling of a knife cutting through the tough outer rind of an aged cheese, the scoop dug into the rusted iron and dug out a neat little solid chunk of metal.
Jillian gasped in surprise and turned off the ion-scoop to examine the results of her experiment. She expected the chunk of rusted metal the scoop had dug out of the bar to be molten hot but to her surprise, it wasn’t heated at all. It was cool to the touch—as cold, in fact, as the iron bar it had been scooped out of.
This was an amazing discovery and Jillian tried to think of the best way to use it. Part of her counseled patience. Just wait until tonight when Ripper’s gone to bed. Then you can use the scoop to get out of the cage and run back to the exit of the Dark Market and get out of here!
But there were several problems with this plan. First, she had no idea if Ripper planned to leave her in the iron cage or not. What if he decided he couldn’t wait to impregnate her and wanted to start tonight? She couldn’t bear the thought of being raped by the huge, smelly, disgusting creature. Ripper was like something out of a nightmare—an ogre from a fairytale come to life. She had to get away from him as soon as possible.
Her second consideration was the fact that she was disoriented on this side of the wall that separated the markets, and she had no idea how to get back to the curving archway with its long black curtain. God, she wished she had a better sense of direction! But she had to admit she was lost and she had an idea that running through the Dark Market after night had fallen might be even more dangerous than traversing it during the day. So it was probably better to try to get away sooner rather than later.
Plus, she just wanted desperately to be out of the stinking butcher’s shop filled with rotting humanoid body parts.
If I ever get out of here, I’m going vegetarian, she promised herself. Hell, I’ll go Vegan. I never want to see meat again!
But that was a promise she’d only be able to keep if she escaped in the first place. Hastily, she examined the cage, trying to find a weak point. If she just kept scooping chunks out of the metal, Ripper was bound to notice.
The latch on the front of the cage was held in place by the thick metal padlock the Trollox had used to lock her in. It was a massive piece of steel, as big as Jillian’s closed fist and quite heavy when she reached through the bars and weighed it in her hand. But the metal loop that held it in place was only about as thick as her pinky finger. Which was thick enough to keep just about anybody in…
Unless they happen to have an ion-scoop, Jillian thought. Removing just one chunk of metal in the right place ought to do it. She just needed to cut the lock from the latch and then she could swing the door open and run to freedom.
She waited until she was sure that both of Ripper’s heads were busy talking to all three of his customer’s heads. Then, when she was certain her captor was completely distracted, she reached her hands through the bars of the cage. She cupped the heavy lock in one hand and used the ion-scoop with the other.
As quietly as she could, she pressed the scoop to the loop of the lock, right in the center. This time the resistance was harder to push through—it was more like trying to cut through a thick, tough watermelon rind than aged cheese, Jillian thought, and she didn’t have a very good angle. But she gritted her teeth and kept pressing until at last, a large chunk was carved out of the loop and the heavy lock fell into her hand.
She nearly dropped the damn thing—it weighed a ton! But though she strained to hold it, she somehow managed to lower it down to the floor with a barely audible, chunk.
Jillian stole another glance at the other side of the room. Ripper had his back turned, getting something that smelled noxious and was covered in flies from a chest behind the case, and his customer was watching him eagerly with all three heads. It seemed like there would never be a better time to slip out.
Slowly, the ion scoop still clutched tight in her right hand, Jillian swung the cage door open and stepped out onto the cold, dirty floor. She was still barefoot, so she was able to creep almost silently across the shop, ducking low to avoid attention.
She had almost made it to the front door when one of the customer’s three heads turned in her direction and frowned.
“Hey,” it snarled loudly, to be heard over the babbling of the other two. “Ent that your fresh meat escapin’, Ripper?”
The huge Trollox turned around and both the yellow and the red set of eyes narrowed at once.
“Stop her!” the yellow-eyed head bellowed. “That’s the vessel I’m going to grow my heir in—don’t let her go!”
Panic clawed at Jillian’s throat and she lunged for the door. But she hadn’t counted on how heavy it was—it was solid iron or steel and had obviously been built for the Trollox and his fellow Trollox customers to use—not little humanoids, who were half their size. Though she pulled and dragged with all her might, the heavy door hardly budged.
Still, it did move some, and she had enough adrenaline flowing through her veins that she might have dragged the damn thing open… if Ripper hadn’t taken two long strides from behind the counter and leaned one massive hand against it.
“Now then, girly…” The enormous Trollox leaned down to her level, frowning as though she was a kid who’d been caught breaking the rules. “You can’t leave yet—you haven’t paid your debt!” the yellow-eyed head told her.
“What? You loaned me your handkerchief so I’m supposed to let you ‘borrow’ my womb in return? I don’t think so!” Jillian snarled.
All her life, she’d read about the “fight, flight, or freeze response”—the way a person instinctively reacts to any kind of life-threatening peril. Jillian had never been put into such imminent danger before and she’d had no idea what she would do if faced with such a situation.
Now it turned out that—at least in this situation—she was a fighter. When Ripper’s huge hands came around to grab her once more, she reached up with the ion-scoop and swiped at his face—neatly scooping one glowing yellow eyeball directly out of its socket.
