Night Whispers: ShadowLands, Book 1 by Alisha Rai Page A

dizzy, they came armed with tranqs. Chingado.
     
     
    Jules woke up to the harsh glare of lights trained into her eyes. Her retinas winced from the abuse. There was a dull murmur of noise around her, hands touching her arms and legs, her clothes being shoved aside or unbuttoned and removed.
    She couldn’t push her vocal cords, her arms or her legs into motion. Drugged, her sluggish mind told her.
    Fingers were on her neck, on her collar. Her earpiece had already been taken from her ear. The murmurs grew louder. One face, a female with stringy brown hair and big black glasses, came into focus above her. Her lips formed words, but they sounded like that old vintage Peanuts cartoon to Jules’s ears. Wah wah wah.
    The chick kept tugging at her collar. Good luck getting it off like that. The latch was fairly well hidden.
    The woman tugged at it again. Bitch was cutting off Jules’s oxygen with her tugs. Sadly, she wasn’t hitting the button on the left which would ring James up.
    Yeah, she should totally give her lover man the heads up. He should know that she’d been kidnapped, drugged and pummeled. That was probably important. But she was so damn tired. Later, later, she would ring him up later. Maybe she could engage in a little more of that verbal foreplay with him then too.
    The roaring in her ears cleared long enough for her to hear the woman speak. “Stop yelling at me, you moron.”
    A man responded. “You’ve had this woman drugged on this table all fucking day, and no one thought to question what this collar was?”
    “I assumed it was an electro.”
    “You assumed wrong. It’s clearly some sort of high-functioning technological device.”
    “I’ve been alone here with Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, while you’ve been off—”
    “Taking care of the male.” The man’s voice was icy. “Not to mention trying to contain our adventure from this morning. Do you have any idea what would have happened if word got back to—?”
    “Yes, yes. You’ve given me the lecture before.”
    “If you care about our continued good health, you would listen.” A man came into her field of vision. His hands slipped over her throat, rough and uncaring. “Do we have anything to cut this thing off?”
    “I don’t think so. We could send one of the guards out for a power tool.”
    Wait, what? Cut off her collar? Fear made her heart beat faster. Forget the fact that they were going to try to cut off her collar when her neck was right freakin’ under it. If they cut off her collar, she couldn’t get a hold of James.
    That was untenable. Her heart clenched. Over a year of partnership, friendship, camaraderie and, hell, yes, even caring…they were all tied to that simple, lightweight collar.
    “She’s awake.”
    Bug-eyed lady regarded her dispassionately. “So? I’ll shoot her up with some more of the sedative.” She turned away.
    The man tugged on the collar, his tone of voice conversational. “That must have been you who took out those Shadows yesterday, eh? We wondered. Had we not been dealing with our own problems, we would have come looking for you then.”
    Fuck you.
    The woman came back into Jules’s field of vision. “Stop talking to her like that.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like you’re going to make her into another one of your pets.”
    “She will be another pet,” the man said comfortably. “She owes me, since she killed one of our other ones. Hell, two of our other ones, if the girl doesn’t survive the bite.”
    “Our failures. Who wouldn’t have escaped had you not been so lenient with the hybrid.” The woman slammed the needle she held into Jules’s arm. That little whore.
    She’d be no one’s pet, especially not these people.
    “Don’t worry about sending for a saw. I found the latch here. Let’s get it off and hammer it.”
    Jules made no effort to control her pulse. Panic and anger mingled until she was sure her heart would beat right out of her chest. James. James!
     
    Time flew when