Blue Dream (Kreuzberg Dragonshifters Book 1) #Wattys2016

Blue Dream Part 14

Paul regained consciousness slowly, blinking in confusion at his unfamiliar, dingy surroundings. The last thing he remembered was walking towards Lindemann's Luthiers, excitement rippling through his body at the thought of seeing Richard again, followed by a sharp twinge in his neck, followed by blackness. He groaned, rotated his neck to relieve the stiffness within the muscles there. He licked his lips, which were as dry as his throat and his tongue and he coughed weakly, discovering a bad taste there; his limbs felt groggy and heavy, mind still teetering in the brink of unconsciousness and he couldn't shake the sudden realisation that he might have been drugged. He tried to stand, yet he found that he was bound, by wrist and by ankle, to an old and rickety wooden chair, that creaked and groaned beneath the shifting of Paul's bodyweight, yet still refused to budge or to yield him any kind of freedom at all.

He groaned for a second time, feeling, again, the effects of an incredibly dry throat. That one croaky noise filtered through dead air, and seemed to echo queerly in the shadows surrounding him. He squinted around, hoping to determine where he was, yet he couldn't glean much from his surroundings; all that he could determine with any clarity at all, was that he was in some kind of nondescript warehouse somewhere, replete with rubbish strewing the floors and broken windows, broken walls, broken everything surrounding him on all sides. He wasn't even sure as to what the warehouse had once produced, to help him triangulate his location; all that was left was dust and memories, and the shards of broken dreams laying scattered in nondescript lumps of metal upon the floor.

Paul detected movement, from somewhere off to his left and he turned his head, awkwardly, feeling as though the neck muscles should creak and break beneath the sudden alert tension that liberally thrummed through his body. He caught movement again and saw that the American man who'd visited the store earlier in the morning was there, in the shadows yet walking towards Paul; the man was still in his ridicuous Hawaiian shirt and plus-fours, yet he looked, impossibly, even more menacing than he had earlier in the day.

"Where's Richard Kruspe?" the man asked again, moving forward to loom over Paul.

"I told you, earlier; I don't know," Paul said, defiantly. "I don't even know who that is. "

"You're a fucking liar," the man shouted, all but spitting in Paul's face with his vehemence. "I can smell him all over you like a rash. Now where is he, or I start cutting."

He hefted a pair of bolt-cutters in the air; Paul didn't know what he intended to do with them, but he suspected he would lose a few toes or perhaps a few fingers in the near future, if the American had anything to do with it.

"You don't scare me," Paul said, and whilst he wasn't scared - yet - he knew he soon would be.

He wondered what the hell was going on, why this man wanted Richard so much and whether he was the man in the car that had been shadowing Flake and himself for the past two days.

"You should be," the man said. "If Richard's told you about me, then you definitely should be near shitting your pants."

Paul kept silent, wondering if he was right to assume that this was one of the men that had held Richard captive whilst he was in New York. The man shifted, apparently dissatisfied with Paul's silence and lack of reaction.

"Answer me, or you start losing fingers," the man said, as he leant down to glare ferociously at Paul at close range.

Paul was struck, once again, by the man's luminous eyes that reminded him so much of Richard's, and he felt clearly the heat baking from his skin, something else that was remeniscent of Paul's lover. He smelt something odd on his skin, something reptilian and cold, almost snake-like and realised, only belatedly, that he'd noticed that about Richard, too.