“I can take care of myself, but you—“
“Can’t?” If looks were weapons, Lizzie could slay an entire army. “I was eleven years old when my dad left and my mom decided getting out of bed was just too much effort. I was still in elementary school when I had to start taking care of myself, but I didn’t break.
“Two years later, representatives from the Alpha Pack showed up at my house. They were huge, terrifying men with harsh accents and harsher eyes. They offered to let me join when I turned sixteen. My mom told them there was no need to wait and packed up my suitcase that afternoon. I was scared and heartbroken, but I didn’t shatter.
“And then, as if learning to navigate the politics of the Alpha Pack when I could barely navigate my way through the halls of the Den wasn’t enough, a rebellion started. I knew standing with Scout was almost certainly a death sentence, but I found the strength to do what was right. So, I want to know, where exactly do you get the idea that you have to protect poor, fragile me?”
“I’m not trying to protect you; I’m trying to save your life.”
“And I’m trying to save yours.”
She didn’t understand. Without her, there wouldn’t be anything left of him to save.
“You forget,” he said, his hands balled up into tight fists as if he could physically hold his emotions in check. “One of us here is expendable, and it’s not you.”
“No one is expendable, least of all you.”
“Why not?”
Her eyes locked on his. “Because I said so.”
Chapter 9
Layne had never been good at staying still. He liked to move, to roam. When he wasn’t actively on the move, he was pacing. When he couldn’t pace, he fidgeted. Motion was as necessary as breathing to both his coyote and human halves. His father knew this and used it to his parenting advantage. Toby Hagan’s favorite punishment for his son was to send him to his room for long stretches of time. Once, when Layne had been messing around with a water hose he wasn’t supposed to touch, and ended up flooding Gramma Hagan’s shed, he’d been forced to stay in his room for five hours every night for a week. At the time, Layne thought it was the height of all the misery he would experience in his life.
He couldn’t have been further from the truth.
This was worse. Much worse.
True, they weren’t exactly locked in a six-by-eight-foot cell with only a metal cot and old slave spirituals to keep them company, but a prison is a prison, even if the space they occupied had as much square footage as some people’s houses.
And just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, the day of the full moon came. Lizzie had known something was up, but since Alistair wasn’t directly involved, she didn’t know what exactly to warn him about.
Not that a warning would have helped.
After lunch he’d been taken to what appeared to be some type of garage. Mack and a camera on a tripod were waiting for him.
Over the next several hours he endured the kind of torture that would make most movie villains cringe. He literally thought he would die before the moon rose, but was still semi-clinging to consciousness when Mack dropped him on the bare earth just moments before sun finished setting.
When the Change came, it patched him back together. Claws grew where fingernails had been removed and fur covered new, unmarked flesh. His joy at being whole again was short-lived, however. A collar was slipped over his neck before he could get his feet under him and Mack renewed his efforts, leaving a half-dead coyote for the sun’s rays to turn into a fully-healed boy.
Ironically, he was grateful for the drugs they were feeding Lizzie. True, she couldn’t contact Scout, but she also couldn’t connect with him while he was in his coyote form. She didn’t have to hear his weak and pathetic cries for help. As far as she knew, he was enjoying his Change in a fenced-in yard where his biggest problem was a lack of rabbits.
He wished.
With all the torture they dolled out under the full moon, it was surprising how hands-off they were the rest of the time. In fact, life inside the apartment was almost idyllic.
The first week had been the hardest. He had more injuries to recover from than he cared to admit, and getting used to living with a three-year-old had its own set of trials and tribulations. The worst part, though, was watching Lizzie fade a little more with each passing day. Twelve-hour sleep marathons were her specialty. She would pass out for half a day, wake up, eat less food than Caroline, and then head back to her bed less than eight hours later. Then, the pattern would repeat. After the fifth day, Layne put his foot down.
“No,” he said, filling up the doorway between the hall and her bed. “You’re staying up.”
Lizzie rubbed at the dark circles under her eyes. “Layne, move. I’m sleepy.”
“It’s the drugs.” At least, he hoped it was just a side effect of the drugs. “You need to stay up. Eat. Move.”
“I need to sleep,” she said, trying to squeeze around him. She might have managed it if she wasn’t so opposed to touching people.
Layne slid his body a little to the left, bringing his hip less than an inch from the small of her back.
“Of course, I could let you just waste away and die. It would make things much simpler for everyone. SHP wouldn’t have to bother with killing you later.”
With one of her Oscar-worthy sighs, Lizzie pulled herself back into the hallway.
“I’m just so tired,” she said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “So tired, Layne. And everything hurts.”
“What happened to your I-am-woman-hear-me-roar routine? I thought you were tough enough to handle this.”
“I just need to rest—“
“You just need to move your ass and get strong. We’re getting out of here, even if I have to carry your weak and scrawny ass, but it’ll go a hell of a lot smoother if you can do a little of the heavy lifting.”
Her shoulders sank even lower.
“You’re right,” she told the carpet. “Tomorrow I’ll start—“
“Today.”
“But I’m so—“
“Today,” Layne insisted. “Now.”
He wasn’t sure how, but eventually he won. The SHP hadn’t been kind enough to furnish them with workout equipment, but he wasn’t some spoiled city kid with a gym membership. He showed Lizzie all the exercises he and his dad would do in their garage every night and then taught her some of the moves he’d learned in his grandfather’s dojo. She grumbled and complained the entire time, but the next day, she looked more like Lizzie and less like a rag doll wearing her face.
Their days took on a routine. Lizzie would train with Layne every morning after breakfast while Caroline spent quality time with Peppa Pig. After lunch, he would do some strength training while Lizzie knitted. In the evenings, they would sit down with Pari and Caroline and watch some insipid kid’s movie involving either Disney animated magic or talking animals.
It was the evenings that bothered Layne the most, and not just because he now had a favorite princess. It was the normalcy of it. Sitting on the couch, listening to Caroline’s off-key voice singing along with the television while Lizzie knitted and Pari cleaned, Layne felt like he was part of a family, and not one trapped in a wing of a giant mansion in the middle of only God knew where. He would find himself forgetting why they were there and what was at risk, so he started writing “Stockholm Syndrome is for chumps” on his arm with a marker every morning. If anyone else noticed, they didn’t say anything.
Actually, for the most part, they didn’t say much to each other period. It wasn’t like they’d all taken a vow of silence or anything, but conversations were mostly limited to what they were going to eat, watch on TV, or do with Caroline, who saw Lizzie and Layne as her personal entertainers. That’s why when he heard Pari start a conversation with Lizzie in what they’d begun referring to as the family room, he paid attention.
“She idolizes him,” Pari said. Layne could hear the swip-swip-swip of a rag brushing
back and forth across the counter, which was probably already clean enough to eat off of. Everyone had their thing that kept them from going insane. Layne worked out, Lizzie knitted, and Pari cleaned. “She thinks he is so strong and brave. That he’ll protect her.”
It didn’t take a genius to figure out who she was talking about. Currently that person was sitting on his back as he did push-ups in the spare room next to his bedroom. On her head she was wearing a little gray hat with ears Lizzie had knitted. According to Caroline, when she wore it, she was a coyote like him. As far as he knew, she hadn’t taken it off since pulling it down over her ears the moment Lizzie finished it.
She was an annoying little brat, but Layne would kill anyone who tried to hurt her again.
“He will, if he can,” he heard Lizzie reply. She probably thought she was talking low enough he wouldn’t hear since the new moon was so close. Unfortunately for her, his hearing was still strong enough to pick up on every noise in their tiny little world. “We protect our pack, especially the pups.”
“But Caroline and I are not part of your pack.”
“Of course you are,” Lizzie said, and Layne couldn’t agree more. Pack was about more than family lines or sworn oaths. True pack was about caring for the good of the group more than your own wants and needs. Somewhere over the past few weeks, Caroline and Pari became included the number he would die to protect.
There was nothing but the sound of more scrubbing for several long minutes. Layne was just about to tune back out when Pari said, “He’s in love with you.”
Layne’s rhythm faltered, causing him to faceplant onto the carpet. Caroline, who was counting each pushup, did a flip over his head, landing in a sitting position just a few inches in front of him. He waited for her to start crying, but instead she turned around and smacked him on top of the head. “Bad horse,” she said. “Now we have to start at one again.”
He wanted to tell her to shush, but didn’t, knowing it would only cause her to talk more.
What had Lizzie’s response been? She’d said something, he’d heard her voice, but he couldn’t make out the words over Caroline’s chatter.
“I don’t suppose you’re talking about Alistair, are you?”
Well, that he heard. Just the sound of that idiot’s name on her lips made him want to fly into a rage.
“Do I look stupid to you?” Pari asked. “I’m talking about that puppy who follows you around with his heart dangling from his sleeve.”
One, he wasn’t a puppy.
And two, his heart wasn’t dangling from anywhere. He was keeping the tiny piece he had left caged up inside his ribs.
Lizzie’s knitting needles stopped clanking together. “Layne and I… we’re complicated.”
Complicated.
That was putting it mildly.
“Love is always complicated,” Pari said. “Complicated and dangerous. You can’t let them know how the two of you truly feel about each other.”
Layne didn’t see why Alistair and the rest of his SHP sheep couldn’t know that Lizzie loathed him. Lizzie apparently didn’t either, because she didn’t say anything.
“How many people do you think he would kill to keep you safe?” Pari asked, but again, Lizzie didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
They all knew when it came to Lizzie, he had no limits.
Chapter 10
“How many people do you think he would kill to keep you safe?”
Lizzie’s stomach knotted because she knew. Layne would kill as many people as possible if it guaranteed her safety. And in the process, he would lose everything good inside of him.
She couldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t. Pari may have already guessed how far Layne would be willing to go for her, but no one had any idea the lengths Lizzie would go to - had already gone to - to protect Layne.
She would give them whatever information they wanted and would endure whatever torture they concocted for her without flinching. If it came down to it, she would choose his life over her own. The one thing she couldn’t do, however, was tell him to hide what he felt for her.
“This is his problem, not mine,” she said, her eyes fixed on the knitting in her hand. Maybe if Pari couldn’t see her face she wouldn’t know she was lying. “You should be talking to him about this. Not me.”
Pari placed her carefully folded rag in the sink and turned around, resting her hip on the edge of the counter. Lizzie and Layne had placed a bet on Pari’s actual age. Lizzie thought she was just a few years older than them, and therefore guessed twenty-two. Layne was convinced Pari was old, and guessed thirty. They’d tried to subtly get the answer, but Pari was tight-lipped when it came to just how long she’d been on this earth. At the moment, her posture said young while her eyes whispered she wasn’t just old, but weary as well.
“I am talking to him,” Pari said. “I know how Shifter hearing works, and I know his isn’t anywhere near human levels no matter what the moon might say.” She turned to address the door leading to the hallway. “Not that he would need it to hear us talking when he’s lurking in the hall.”
The door swung open and Layne entered, ducking as he came through the doorway so the little girl on his shoulders wouldn’t hit her head.
“How did you know I was there?” he asked.
Pari held out her arms, and Caroline lunged, nearly taking off Layne’s head in the process.
“Did you know the human body is more than sixty percent water?” Pari rubbed her nose against Caroline’s, which made the little girl giggle hysterically. “I always know where you are,” she said.
Layne slung himself into an antique Queen Anne chair, which whined under the onslaught.
“That’s creepy.”
Pari snorted. “And being able to hear a little girl’s nighttime prayers from four rooms away or being able to pull thoughts out of someone’s head isn’t? Don’t forget, one person’s creepy is always someone else’s normal.”
“Question,” Layne said, leaning forward. “Do women get a book of all these lame axioms at some point or is knowing them an after-effect of child birth?”
“It’s from going through life observing and learning. It’s not our fault that women observe and learn more than men,” Pari said.
“What does observe mean?” asked Caroline, who had wiggled away from her mother and was now climbing up on Layne’s shoulders.
“It means watching everything around you like a nosey busy-body,” Layne said. “You know, like how you’re always looking to see who is getting what in the kitchen. You’re observing.”
Caroline shook her head, causing the pom-poms on her hat to dance around her shoulders. “Nuh-uh. I’m not observing. I’m just making sure you’re not going to steal my biscuits.”
“Cookies,” Layne corrected.
“Biscuits,” Caroline insisted.
It was an argument that could go on for hours. Lizzie knew because they’d had the same one two days ago. It began at lunch and Caroline’s last word when she left to get ready for bed that night had been, “Biscuits!”
While they furthered the divide between American and British English, Lizzie asked Pari a question she’d been wondering about since they’d first arrived.
“Where is Caroline’s father?”
The only indication Pari heard was a brief pause in the swish-swish-swish of the feather duster she was using to move nonexistent dust from one side of the fireplace mantel to the other.
“Did they kill him?” Lizzie persisted.
“As far as I know, Caroline’s father is still keeping the pubs of Falkirk in business,” Pari said, the feather duster now in hyper-drive.
That wasn’t exactly the answer Lizzie was expecting.
“Don’t you think he’s looking for you?”
The feather duster sped up to impossible speeds and then stopped all together.
“Would you be looking for a one night stand you had four years ago?” Lizzie felt her eyes grow round. Pari gave her a wry smile
. “I didn’t think so.”
“But Caroline—“
“But Caroline what? Should know her father? He should at least know she exists?” Bright pink feathers flew around in agitation as Pari brandished the duster like a weapon. “You don’t think I already know that? Because, trust me, I do. I’ve had a while to think about it.”
“Then why didn’t you—”
“Tell him?” Pari laughed and the sound was sadder than any country song Lizzie ever heard. “I would have to know his name first.”
Lizzie wasn’t sure how to process this information. She knew people did that of course. Her life was far from sheltered, and it wasn’t like she thought Pari was a bad or amoral person. Far from it, actually. Over the past month, Pari had proven to be a kind, thoughtful woman and amazing mother. It was, she supposed, she simply couldn’t imagine herself in the same situation. When she did what a person must do in order to make a baby, Lizzie wanted all the love and romance found in the pages of her books. She knew it was a naïve fantasy, but she didn’t think she would be able to go through with a quickie with a nameless stranger she met in a bar.
The harder thing for her brain to accept was the loss of another fantasy. She’d allowed herself to believe there was still a chance someone was coming to save them. In her daydreams, a dreamy guy in a kilt would kick down the door, take one look at Pari and Caroline, and sweep them into a loving embrace while shooting the SHP member who had tried to sneak up behind them. He would have a whole army with him, and when one of the other soldiers led Lizzie outside, she would see Charlie, Scout, and the rest of the Alpha Pack waiting for her. They would take her home and everything would go back to normal.
The loss of that fantasy hurt more than she was expecting.
Being a prisoner of the SHP was wearing away at something deep inside of her. Every day was filled with fake normalcy. It was like being trapped in a play where she hadn’t learned her lines but knew them all the same.
With Pari and Caroline she was the family friend. She would partake in idle chit-chat and indulge the little girl with hours of playing.
Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) Page 8