Page 25 of Conan
“Seriously?” Liam asks, his eyes wide as saucers.
“Seriously, my man,” I confirm, taking another pull on my cigarette and letting the smoke bloom out from my mouth. “Man, we could tell you some stories.”
“Is that a violation?” Niles questions.
“Nah. We won’t use any names or places so you’ll never figure out who or where they’re about. We’re safe sharing,” I answer.
For the next hour, we share war stories with them. By the time we wrap up, we have them in our web and have set up a time to meet the four of them for dinner.
By the end of the night, they’ll be our shadows and that’s when we’ll start reeling them in and making them feel as if we’re their new best friends.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
DEMI
“How doyou think the guys are faring?” Luna asks me as she rubs circles over her baby bump.
“Knowing David, Liam, Niles, and Joey like I do, they’re probably glued to our guys’ side,” I hypothesize.
“Why do you think that?” she continues with her line of questioning.
“Because they’re the biggest, baddest men in attendance. And if I know anything about them, the Deviants have drawn them in hook, line, and sinker.”
Luna mulls that over before concluding, “Like kids on the playground. You find the one who is the biggest threat and make them your friend.”
“Exactly like that,” I confirm. “When they see themselves as the biggest threat they thrive on it, but when they’re not, they bow down and play follow the leader.”
“Riding others’ coattails doesn't ensure your safety and status. One day, people are going to realize they need to stand on their own two feet,” Luna surmises.
“But why do all of the hard work when you have others around to do it for you?” I ask. “That’s who the four of them are. Cretins, bottom feeders, I could go on.”
“No need, I get the picture you’re painting for me, Demi. It’s just sad that it’s their go-to method for survival.”
“They saw me as the weaker sex,” I admit, lowering my voice.
“Maybe. But, Demi, the only way they could take you down was to drug you and weaken you. They knew you’d fight back and possibly whoop their asses if they tried while you had your wits about you.”
“That’s a true observation,” I mumble, picking at my nail beds. “I could whoop their asses which is why they made sure I was weighed down and incoherent by whatever it is they gave me.”
“Were you still aware of what was happening to you?” Luna asks me. I know she’s in research mode, but I can still feel the empathy coming off of her in waves which makes it easier to talk to her about this whole ordeal.
“Kinda,” I answer, thinking back to that dreadful night. “It’s still fuzzy. I’ll get flashes and snippets of pictures, but not much else. I do recall my limbs feeling heavy, and immobilized. I could barely open my eyelids, they’d flutter open every so often but mostly, they stayed closed because it took too much effort. It was like treading my way through mud.”
“Do you remember them saying anything to you?” she inquires.
“No, not really. My ears were affected as much as the rest of me was. I felt like I was in a dream I couldn’t wake up from. At times I wanted to fight, and at others, I only wanted to sleep. I was extremely groggy.”
“Damn, Demi,” she whispers. “I can’t even imagine how scared you must’ve been.”
“There are no words to describe how petrified I was, Luna. I’d never been so drained in my life, it was as if I was drifting in and out of my mind for days afterward. It took me a week to put together what happened to me. I don’t even remember how I got home. I have a lot of time that I’m still drawing a blank on.”
“And you were out of town, right? Having that much time lapse is freaky, Demi. Do you know if that’s normal?”
“I looked it up, and it has been reported that some suffer the effects of date rape drugs for weeks if not months. Others recover quicker, I just happen to fall into the former category. Even today, I wonder if it did more damage to my system than I’m willing to admit.”
“How so?” she probes.
