“Go easy, Olla. I’ll find you. I’ll be the guy with grey eyes and a scar down his face.”
“Hurry, please,” she said around sobs and disconnected.
“What’s going on?” Ryen stood with his arms crossed over his bare chest. He wore trousers and the fresh scent of soap.
Even with the threat of danger looming, Drekk couldn’t stop himself from taking another whiff. Ryen smelled so damned good. “I have a small job to do.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
“You’re staying here. If I’m not back in a few hours, Rafe will contact you. Cuffs, resistance enforced.” Drekk ignored Ryen’s glare. “You can’t leave the building. Sorry, Ryen, but you’re a liability until you can fully function. I won’t endanger those women for you. I can’t.” Drekk smiled to take the sting out of his words. “While I’m gone, work on pleasuring yourself. We’ll compare notes later tonight.” Stars willing.
He took a deep breath and psychically prepared for a long trip thanks to Olla’s coordinates. Then he let himself go. Landing in the middle of a battleground, Drekk quickly assessed the situation.
Three women and eight worn, weary girls tensed with dread when he neared.
“Is he one of them?” the youngest asked another, most likely her sister due to the resemblance.
“I don’t think so.” Olla’s familiar voice answered. “Drekk?”
“At your service.” He frowned at the squalor of their surroundings. What looked like a large warehouse was covered in filth, river dredge and a plethora of nasty insects. The centre of the area was dimly lit and filled with wooden boxes and metal containers large enough to fit a small house. Still, the condition of the space didn’t sit right.
Not what he’d expect for a slave auction, even from the Ebrellions. No one sane could consider this a fitting station to hold women for sale. “They aren’t planning on selling you?”
“Me and the other women will make ‘willing’ brides,” Olla said with disgust. “The others,” she paused and toned down her voice. She hurried to Drekk and whispered in his ear, “The others are for sacrifice. To their gods for safe passage through the great void.”
“Terrific.” No bartering for any of them. Cheltam couldn’t fix this one. “I’ll be right back.”
Drekk grabbed one of the girls and teleported with her into the location he and Rafe had agreed upon. Erin stood waiting, her war face on. One look at the pitiful young girl with him and her fierce demeanour crumbled.
“Come here, sweet.”
The girl ran to her open arms.
“I have ten more coming. Be ready,” Drekk warned and shot back to the cell in the middle of the warehouse.
He made eight more trips, tiring rapidly. On his ninth trip with just Olla and another woman left, he found the pair cowering behind a few large crates.
“Hurry, Drekk. The others are coming back. I can hear them,” Olla warned.
Drekk heard them too. Swearing, he grabbed the other woman and jumped into the temporal stream.
He stumbled when he returned to the room in Tekar filled with crying females.
“Here.” He handed her to Erin. “That’s ten. Just one more.” He leaned over to catch his breath, tense knowing time was of the essence.
Rafe joined them and locked the door behind him. “The others are upstairs. I left them secured in the parlour.” He blinked in surprise. “Damn, Drekk. You did it already. Wait, I count ten.”
“Gimme a break. I’m travelling several hundred miles here. It’s not as easy as you might think. Olla’s last. I’ll be right back.” He missed what Rafe said in response and appeared just in time to watch a hulking Ebrellion shake Olla like a rag-doll.
“Where are the sacrifices?” one of the two next to him said with a growl.
Though the Ebrellions looked human, rumour had it they shapeshifted. A rumour Drekk had no intention of putting to the test. He didn’t want to know what the hell they could do. Several blasts of his pistol took care of the asshole holding her as well as his friends.
“Come on,” Drekk shouted over the growing din outside the warehouse.
Olla ran to him. She’d nearly reached him before her eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled to the ground.
“Mine,” one of the bastards roared as he exited a hallway Drekk hadn’t noticed in the dark. The Ebrellion aimed an oddly-shaped gun at Drekk.
Drekk dodged the discharge as all hell broke loose. He reached Olla when an explosion took him off his feet. Crashing into a metallic container hard enough to break a few ribs, he slid down in a heap of pain. Spotting Olla, it was all he could do to focus when she blurred.
Several more Ebrellions had joined the one that shot Drekk. Yet shots firing around him showed the Ebrellions weren’t alone. Either the Mardu gangs had found them already or...shit. The men streaming through the new hole in the ceiling didn’t speak Mardu. They sounded Ebrellion. When they began shifting, Drekk saw more than he wanted.
Giant six-legged thrells— wild, vicious canine variants found in the Anate Jungle—now stood in place of the bastards shooting at their own kind. A monstrous brawl erupted around him and Olla. Drekk crawled to her, sucking up the pain. Before he could reach her, claws raked his back, shredding his armour.
More a hindrance than a help, the armour gave him a fit before he twisted loose of it.
Drekk barely managed to get to his sword and lop off a few threll limbs before their hideous shrieks summoned more of the bastards to him.
Damn it to hell. Drekk hurried to heal his wounds as he fought but it was slow going.
Teleporting so often and in such distances had weakened him. He did manage to stop the bleeding on his back, though the wounds remained raw, his ribs still cracked.
An Ebrellion lifted him off his feet and slammed him into another container, undoing the work he’d just done on his back.
Annoyance grew into that familiar fury that scared the shit out of him. Unable to stop himself, Drekk released a large amount of pheromone into the air and relieved the itch in his arms. Several of those nearest him faltered. He made quick work of them with the claws in place of his hands, but not before two more opponents landed a few punches.
Knocked to his knees with an uppercut to the face, Drekk shook his head, dazed out of his rage as his hands returned to normal. Before another of the Ebrellions could attack, one of his own kind pulled him away. A battle cry turned the fighting downright savage as more aliens entered the place until the warehouse was crawling with them. They fought each other and soon what Drekk recognised as Mardu gang members.
Not a war he needed to be in the middle of. On his hands and knees, Drekk crawled to Olla. Not sure if she suffered from any internal injuries, he forced some of his blood into her mouth and made her swallow it.
Fatigued, he fought to hold onto his awareness. Drekk felt the energy of the battle around him. Blinking through the blood dripping down his face, he noted one set of eyes focused on him and knew he needed to leave before he was no longer able.
Everything around him grew hazy. Shit, have to go...now.
Drekk closed his arms around Olla and reached deep within himself. Fuzzy, he pictured the one thing he couldn’t stop thinking about, even this far gone. He’d almost made it into the temporal stream when a hand grabbed his leg.
Ryen cursed again and resumed pacing. That fucking drun. Leaving Ryen here to ‘pleasure himself’ while Drekk battled it out with Stars-knew who. Did Drekk know how damned condescending he’d sounded? A liability, he’d called Ryen.
I know I have control issues, but I can handle myself in a battle. To lock me inside like an animal at the observatory? I am going to seriously kick his ass when he gets back. If he gets back, his conscience added, which pissed him off even more. The thought of not being able to tell Drekk off annoyed him. That the male might be broken and bleeding somewhere while Ryen paced safely in Drekk’s house angered him. Not seeing Drekk alive again, ever, panicked him to no end.