Definitely a cult leader. That thing shining in his eyes was fervor, and not the good kind. Alistair was willing to burn cities to the ground to bring his vision to life. And he’d done a great job of packaging it, to make it sound like a vision she could get behind. Did she want to live in a world where she didn’t have to worry about someone finding out what she was? Ummm… Hells yes. Sign her up for that.
It was a shame Alistair wasn’t actually dreaming of a future where supernaturals could come out and live as equals with their normal human neighbors. If she hadn’t already known what he was about, referring to her kind as “nonhuman” would have blown his cover. Sometimes prejudices can be uncovered with a single word.
But instead of correcting his deeply ingrained hatred of all supernaturals, she said, “My name isn’t Elizabeth. Everyone always thinks it is, but Lizzie isn’t actually short for anything. It’s just my name.”
“Lizzie,” he said, tipping his head in acknowledgment of the correction. “You still don’t trust me, do you?”
“This,” she said pointing to the side of her face, which she knew was several interesting shades of purple and blue thanks to the mirror hanging in her bathroom, “isn’t cosmetic. And I’m not a doctor, but I think I either have some deep tissue damage or broken ribs going on because breathing isn’t quite the pain-free task it’s supposed to be. So, no, I don’t trust you. Quite frankly, I’m terrified of you.”
Layne stiffened beside her, and she regretted not sharing the same link Shifters and Seers did under the full moon. Life would be so much easier if she could just send him a telepathic message to let him know she wasn’t hurt quite as bad as he thought, nor did she doubt his ability to protect her. As it was, she just gritted her teeth and hoped he didn’t burst into a full-on Layne tantrum.
“Oh, Lizzie,” Alistair said, his mask melting into one of remorse. Not that she believed it for a moment. She knew what he was up to, had since he made the mistake of touching her. “I know I’ll never make up for what happened to you before you came into my care, but I promise you, I never meant for you to be hurt. I want to protect you. Look.” He passed the bag he’d brought with him to her. She unzipped it to find not only several spools of high-quality yarn, but also three pairs of some of the most well-made leather gloves she’d ever seen. “I know you said you can make your own, but I didn’t want you to have to suffer until they were done. These will do, won’t they?”
“They’re lovely,” she said, and meant it. When at home, she preferred fingerless gloves, but when she went out in public, there was nothing better at keeping her defenses up than a good pair of leather gloves. If she was actually going to have to go on missions like Pari, she would need them. “Thank you very much.”
Layne plucked one of the gloves out of her fingers and examined it as if he was considering buying a pair for himself. “While you’re passing out gifts and asking for wish lists, I have one small request,” he said. “Can we get some food that hasn’t been drugged?”
Alistair’s shoulders tensed even as his face screwed up into a look of confusion. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the way the food your little cook lady just brought up smells like medicine. We’re not going to eat it, so can you bring us something that hasn’t taken a pit stop at the pharmacy first?”
Alistair stood. “Your food is fine,” he said, straightening his cuffs. “Midge is an excellent cook.”
“Yeah, I’m sure her meth is the best.”
“I’m afraid I have other things to do,” Alistair said, ignoring Layne. “I’ll come back to check on you as soon as I can.” He bowed as if they were in a Jane Austen novel and headed toward the door.
“We’re not eating poisoned food,” Layne said. It was a warning, or perhaps a dare.
With one last glance over his shoulder, Alistair met Layne’s eyes. “Then you will starve.”
Chapter 7
Layne waited until the tumblers in the outer door fell into place before he exploded off the arm of the chair.
“You. That room. Now,” he barked, pointing towards the door connecting them to the other sitting room. He put every ounce of his considerable dominance into the command, but being a high-ranking member of the Alpha Pack herself, Lizzie just pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow.
“You’re supposed to say ‘please,’” came a helpful reminder from the couch. “And we ask. We don’t tell.”
Lizzie’s cheek twitched with a poorly suppressed grin.
“Lizzie, will you come into the other room with me, please?” The words came through clenched teeth. As much as Lizzie would love never having this conversation, she knew there was no way he was going to relent. Layne Hagan simply didn’t know how to let something go.
Refusing to be completely biddable, Lizzie held up her banana peel and waited until Layne snatched it from her with a grunt of annoyance before pulling herself off the chair. “If you’ll excuse us,” she said to Pari and Caroline, who were looking at the pair of them like they had become some sort of farm-themed cartoon characters.
She tried to measure her steps and not favor one side more than the other, but knowing he was watching, it was nearly impossible. Every ache and pain seemed magnified times a hundred under his gaze. Realizing she wouldn’t be able to sit down with anything resembling grace, she settled for leaning against the arm of a chair.
She barely had time to draw a breath before Layne was in her face.
“How bad are you hurt?”
“How badly are you hurt?” she countered. He might have been able to hide his limps and shallow breaths a bit better, but there was no denying the raw skin circling his wrists or the way the white of his right eye was nothing but a red, bloody mess.
Layne’s chin jerked up a notch. “I’ll heal.”
“And I’ll what? Be bruised for the rest of my life? Just because I don’t Change under the full moon doesn’t mean I don’t have a normal human’s ability to recover from injury. I’ll be fine in a few days.”
This close she could see the flare of his nostrils and all the tiny lines that formed in his pursed lips. “Lizzie…”
Whoever coined the phrase “stubborn as a mule” should have spent a little time with a coyote Shifter.
“I’m bruised and sore, but nothing serious,” she said. “It hurts to take deep breaths, but I’ve seen enough broken ribs to know mine are fine.” At least, she thought they were. She realized she never bothered asking any of her friends exactly how a broken rib felt, but surely it was different than the sharp ache in her side.
Her face must have given her thoughts away because Layne’s jaw set even more firmly. “Let me look.”
“At what? My ribs with your x-ray vision?”
“You’ve seen people hobbling around the Den whining about having to spar with the Alphas,” he said. “I’ve been in the gym and seen what they look like after they’ve hit the wall. Not to mention the up-close-and-personal I got back in February when Joshua thought it would be fun to forget how freakishly strong he is and punch me in the side.”
Annoyingly, he was right. Layne was a trained fighter, which meant he knew more about this sort of thing than she did. Not for the first time, she resented her position in the Alpha Pack. She was treated like a precious jewel, which sounded nice until you started feeling strangled by the fine velvet you were wrapped in. Most of the time, she was okay with it. Lizzie was a girl of simple pleasures. A rainy day, a big picture window, a cup of hot chocolate, and a good book was her idea of heaven. But every once in awhile, she craved something more. Something bigger. Some days she wanted the bloody-lipped lifestyle the other half of the Alpha Pack lived.
Well, maybe not the bloodied-lip part. Getting beat up sucked.
But even with the pain, fear, and helplessness she felt, part of her was secretly glad to finally have an opportunity to do something for the Alpha Pack other than sit around and be a reminder of the power it held.
Since Scout and Liam took over her Sight wasn’t actually needed, especially with Talley around. “Princess Lizzie,” Layne would call her, mocking the way she had all the advantages of being a member of the elite group without putting in any effort or making any sacrifices.
She was definitely making sacrifices now.
“Fine,” she answered, standing. Layne hadn’t changed positions. He was still glowering over her, and since he was standing too close in the first place, there was now a mere inch between their bodies. With anyone else, it would have been enough space. Not with Layne. The world tilted as she was flooded with emotions. They washed over her, a deluge of grief, guilt, longing, and fear. It rocked her to her core, yet no one would ever know it by watching. These emotions, this turmoil, was like an old friend. She could weather its attack without batting an eyelash because she knew what was coming. No matter the day, year, or situation, the chaos of Layne’s emotions was a constant.
“You’re going to have to step back if you expect me to do anything other than stand here and look pretty,” Lizzie said, her voice a perfect balance of bored and annoyed.
Layne stood his ground for several heartbeats out of principle before finally stepping back. Once he was out of her space, she turned and slowly lifted the bottom of her shirt. Another Shifter would have probably just yanked the thing over their head and been done with it, but Lizzie wasn’t as comfortable with being undressed as her pack mates. Instead, she lifted the shirt to the edge of her bra and held it there. The sound of Layne’s quickly indrawn breath seemed loud in the quiet room.
“Where does it hurt?” he asked.
“My side. My back.” My front. My lungs. My spine. You know, everywhere.
He stepped towards her again, and she could feel the heat of his body on her bare skin.
“I need to…” He trailed off, unable to ask permission for the one thing she rarely allowed anyone for any reason. There was no need for him to touch her. Even if her ribs were broken, there wasn’t anything either of them could do about it.
“Go ahead.”
Where the hell had those words come from? It wasn’t what she had intended on saying, but there was no taking them back now.
It felt like hours went by as she stood there, exposed, waiting for him to do something. Anything. And then his hand was on her side as his thumb gently smoothed down her back.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his honest regret chiming louder than his words in her head.
She should have told him it was okay, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t the amplification of the noise coming from him causing her to shake so hard her vision wobbled. She was prepared for that. What she wasn’t prepared for, what she didn’t know she would need to prepare for, was the feel of his hands on her skin. It wasn’t a sexual touch - he was checking to see if under an expanse of ugly bruises was a broken bone - but her body didn’t seem to know that. As his fingers slid around towards her sternum her breasts got the ridiculous idea that they were his destination and started tingling with excitement.
Bad. Bad. Very Bad.
“Okay, then,” Lizzie said, stumbling into a chair she was so anxious to get away. She jerked her shirt back down and crossed her arms over her traitorous chest. “Satisfied?”
Wrong word choice. Very wrong. Because it was Layne, and it was her, and even with the six inches separating them she knew he was nowhere near satisfied and never would be.
Damn. It.
She knew what would happen. She knew how letting him so close would end, yet she let him touch her. Why was she so stupid? Was she a masochist or sadist? Which of them did her subconscious want to punish more?
“I don’t think anything is broken,” Layne said, unconsciously flexing his hand. “But you’re hella bruised. You should be putting some ice on that to keep the swelling down.”
She was too raw to snap back at him. She mutely nodded her acknowledgement, hoping he would let it drop. The last thing either of them needed was for Layne to see how much his touch affected her.
“I’m going to kill them for touching you.”
It was a quiet promise, but even as her heart gave a misguided flutter, her own panic trumped everything else either of them was feeling. Layne wasn’t making idle threats. He really intended on killing Alistair, Mack, and whoever else might have been involved in their abduction. She knew it with the same certainty she knew the sky was blue.
As members of an Alpha Pack formed through Challenges and force, both Lizzie and Layne had done things in their lives that would make most adults cringe. If Child Protective Services had any idea what went on at the Den, the two of them would have been whisked off years ago. But through it all, neither of them had done anything that would leave permanent scars on their soul like taking a life.
“No,” she said. “No killing. Good guys don’t kill people.” Layne opened his mouth, but Lizzie cut him off. “Even if they are bad guys. We remove them from society, lock them up in Arkham Asylum, but we don’t kill them unless it’s absolutely necessary. Life, even a life lived badly, is precious. Taking one should be the absolute last resort.”
“They hurt you, and they’ll hurt you again. Did you see that little girl in there, Lizzie? That tiny little kid with one of her freaking fingers cut off? They did that to her and she’s practically a baby. What do you think they’ll do to you?”
Lizzie understood his anger. She couldn’t think of Caroline without wanting to turn into a full-on rage monster herself. But going out with guns blazing wasn’t the answer. For one, she wasn’t comfortable with their chances for success. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Layne. She did, probably as much as she did any senior member of the Alpha Pack. The odds, however, were not stacked in their favor.
She hadn’t been talking out of her ass when she said she didn’t support the taking of human life either. Like The Shadow, she knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men. And evil did lurk. Everyone had at least a touch of it. But everyone also carried love and light inside them. She’d yet to meet anyone who didn’t have something worth saving.
And no one had more light and love hiding in their heart than Layne. Sure, he was a complete pain in the ass most of the time, but at his core, there was no one filled with more hope, faith, and goodness. Life had done it’s best to beat it out of him, but so far, it hadn’t won. But if Layne was to kill someone? If he was to take a life with his own hands? Lizzie had seen what taking a life, even in self-defense, had done to the Alpha Female. Scout still cried out so loud some nights Lizzie could hear the screams in her room.
So there would be no killing on Lizzie’s watch. And if worse came to worst, well then, she was Alpha Pack too, wasn’t she? She might not have been trained as a soldier, but the Stella Polaris didn’t leave her Seers defenseless. Lizzie didn’t know how to fight, but there was more than one way to kill someone.
“They aren’t going to do anything to me,” she said with way more confidence than she felt. “All we have to do is play along, and I’ll be safe.” At least, she would be for a while. Alistair wanted to control her, to have one of the all-mighty Seers under his thumb, and he wasn’t a stupid man. He knew he would get much further with charm than force. “I’m going to do whatever it is they ask me to do until we get rescued.”
“Rescued?” He said it as if he’d never heard the word before.
“Yes, rescued. You know, that thing our friends are planning at this very moment. The one where they’re going to come sweeping in here, kick everyone’s ass, and then take us out for ice cream while yelling at us for going and getting our fool-selves kidnapped in the first place?”
“So you’ve been in contact with Scout? They’re coming?”
“Well, no. Something is wrong with the brain-to-brain network, but it’s the Alpha Pack. They’re coming.”
Sadness. Dread. Hopelessness.
The emotions rolling off Layne forced Lizzie into a chair. Her own heart was aching, and she didn’t even know what the killing blow was yet.
“They’re not coming,” he said, fishing a folded up piece of paper out of the back pocket of his pants. He worried the corner of it for a long moment before handing it over. “This was sitting on the desk in my room.”
It was a print-out of their local newspaper’s website. The headline screamed, “Two Local Teens Killed In Illinois Accident,” and the picture was of the SUV they had been driving when Psycho Soccer Mom ran them off the road. It was mostly charred, but that wasn’t the part of the picture that caught Lizzie’s attention. Instead, her focus was snagged by the blond girl barely visible in the background. Even with a bad printer and pixilation Lizzie could recognize Scout and the defeated angle of her shoulders.
No. No no no no no no no.
“They think we’re dead,” she said through numb lips as she quickly scanned the article. “They’re not coming because they think we’re dead.”
“Where did the bodies come from?” she asked. The article said their remains had been found inside the vehicle, burned beyond recognition.
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. Whoever those people were had lives. Friends and families who will miss them.” Friends and family who would never know where their loved ones had gone. Did they already know they were missing? Were they looking for them? Would they look for years and years, never quite believing the worst was true? Lizzie didn’t know what would be worse - the uncertainty or knowing you would never see someone you cared about again. “They killed two people, Layne. It matters.”
Layne dropped down next to her. “How much do you want to bet SHP sent a nice little note to the Den taking responsibility for our deaths?” He scrubbed a hand over his face and let his head fall into the crook of the high back chair. He looked much older than his seventeen years. “They’ve cut us off completely.”
Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) Page 6