Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) (19 page)

Inside the drawer were Lizzie’s underclothes, which were somewhat distracting, and a folded up piece of paper. Mindful of the cameras in the room, he opened it without taking it out of the drawer. He read the words three times before they started making sense, and then he read them twice more. Once he was certain of what he was reading, he closed the drawer and walked back to the room where Pari and Caroline were watching the Disney Channel.

“What?” Pari asked when he paused in the doorway.

“Get ready,” he said. “It’s time.
”

Even though they were wrapped in gloves, Lizzie’s fingers were cold and numb. More than once the books in her hands threatened to tumble to the ground. Her insides were quaking so hard she thought her vision would blur from the jarring.

As Alistair silently led her to the first floor where the library was, she tried to take note of anything she might have missed on previous journeys. She looked in every corner, but still she didn’t find any cameras. The first time Alistair led her through these halls she could hardly believe how lax everything was once they were outside of the apartment she shared with Layne, Pari, and Caroline. But as far as she could tell, once you were past the two guards who stood in front of the vault door separating the apartment from the rest of the house, there was nothing in the way of security.

Wasn’t there a saying about putting all your eggs in one basket? Something about that not being a good idea?

Alistair turned the old fashioned key and threw open the doors to the library. A blast of warm air hit Lizzie in the face. Flames danced in the fireplace despite the warm autumn day. His prized bottle of Scotch, most of its contents drained, sat on the desk next to a laptop. Lizzie picked up these details as a reflex. The majority of her concentration was on the ravaged shelves and floor littered with books.

“I was angry,” Alistair said with no real emotion, surveying the damage as if seeing it for the first time.

Lizzie was used to being around people who walked a very thin edge. Shifters are constantly torn between the animal’s instinct and human logic. Usually logic won out, but near a full moon it was a crap shoot. Some of the calmest, most steadfast Shifters randomly flew into rages at the slightest provocation when the moon hung heavy in the sky.

Alistair made Shifters look like bedrocks of stability. Lizzie was touching him and still had no idea if he was going to rage, laugh, or cry next. He was completely and utterly unstable. One slight change could either bring him back down or cause him to erupt.

He was dangerous, and becoming more so every day. Layne was right. Their time was running out.

“You have to understand,” Alistair said, letting the door shut behind him. A second key sat in the inside lock, and he turned that one, sealing them inside, before sliding it into his pocket. “Until Miles directed my attention to the cameras last night, I thought you and I had a bond. Something special. To find out otherwise was… disappointing.”

Lizzie dropped her hand from his arm and bent to pick up a stray page from the floor. It was a list of descendants, but from whose line she didn’t know. A quick glance at Alistair confirmed her suspicion. He still had no idea of what the library really contained.

Was it okay to thank God for people being so enraged they didn’t even pay attention to what they were destroying?

“I was so patient with you.” He dropped himself into an upholstered chair he had brought in when they began spending more and more time in the room. “You didn’t want to be touched, so I didn’t touch you, even though I ached to feel your skin and taste your lips. But I took it slow because I respected you. Because I love you.” His eyes were glassy when they met hers. “Was all of it a lie, or was there a time when we actually had a chance?”

A pang of pity-laced guilt shot through Lizzie’s heart, but she quickly squashed it. He didn’t really love her. He never had. Lizzie knew what love looked like, and what Alistair felt was a warped and twisted thing bearing little resemblance to what she had with Layne.

Still, this was difficult. Logically, she knew he was the bad guy. He was holding her captive and forcing her to help him with his campaign of prejudice and fear. Once a month he allowed one of his people to torture Layne to the brink of death. Good guys don’t do things like that. But if there was one thing her Sight had taught her, it was no one is truly good or bad. Everyone exists on a spectrum, and most hover near the middle. Sure, Alistair leaned more bad than most, but he wasn’t completely devoid of goodness. He donated to charity, even going so far as to spend his holidays volunteering at soup kitchens. With his friends, of which he had many, he was always the first to help out when they needed it, whether it be lugging boxes up ten flights of stairs when they changed apartments or sitting with them in a hospital waiting room while waiting on news of a sick relative. It wouldn’t be hard to get a roomful of people to attest to the goodness of Alistair Halifax, Viscount of Langford.

Unfortunately, his generosity didn’t extend to anyone he considered other. He was willing, and happy, to damage those he considered less than human. What she was going to do was necessary, but that didn’t mean it would be easy. She hoped one day she would be able to forgive herself.

“There never was, nor will there ever be, an us,” she said as she picked up a leather-bound book and slid it onto the shelf.

He clearly wasn’t expecting her outright rejection. “I’m sorry. What?”

“You’re human. Did you really think I would lower myself to get involved with you?” Her voice was taunting, but she couldn’t look at him. Her acting skills weren’t exactly what one would call good. “I need a real man. Someone strong and cunning. A Shifter.”

She’d expected the one taunt to be enough to push him over the edge, but he still clung to control.

“Really, Alistair, you couldn’t even hold your own father’s attention once he discovered the truth about Shifters. What on this earth made you think you could possibly capture mine?”

He sat staring at nothing. His breaths came quickly and color rose up his neck and over his ears. Just one more nudge…

“You’re completely worthless to me. What would I ever do with a pansy-assed loser like you? I would be better off with a girl,” she said, echoing what he’d heard from his father the majority of his life. The cruel words did the trick. Alistair lunged, never once taking the time to alert anyone else there was a problem. Since they were so far from the part of the house still in use and no cameras peered down from the ceiling to catch their actions, they were on equal footing for the first time. The SHP cavalry wasn’t coming. It was time to do things Layne’s way.

It was really too bad that chance hinged on Lizzie’s ability to disable a man who was both bigger and more furious than she was.

Relax your muscles. Stay loose. Wait until you know you can land the blow to take a swing,
the Alpha Female’s voice echoed in her head as if she could still communicate with her.

Taking the advice she’d been given many times before in the training gym, Lizzie took a deep breath. She’d purposefully moved herself further and further away from Alistair while she’d attempted to provoke him. He came crashing through the books he’d unwittingly left as his own obstacle. “You bitch,” he spat out as he neared. “You bloody whore.” His hands shot out to shove her against the bookcase. Lizzie jerked to the side, but not quickly enough. She avoided the full brunt of it, but her left shoulder slammed painfully against the sharp edge of one shelf.

The pain was staggering, but she ignored it as she hammered her right fist into his lower back. She must have found his kidneys, because he went down to his knees, blocking her next strike, which was aimed at his man-parts. Instead, her knee caught his chin.

His hands found their way to her waist. Before she could escape his grasp, he threw her to the floor. Her head bounced against the hardwood, and a ringing filled her ears. For a few crucial seconds, she couldn’t move. Alistair took advantage of her temporary paralysis and straddled her body. This time his hands went to her throat.

“Slut. Whore.” It seemed his speech was limited to the derogatory names men had been using to try to lower women for centuries. “You stupid bitch.”

Any sympathy she harbored for the viscount vanished as she struggled to breathe. With one final burst of strength before she lost consciousness, she brought up her knee as hard as she could. This time, it founds its mark, and Alistair crumbled to his side. The moment his hands fell away from her throat, she scrambled backwards until she hit the desk. Using the leg, she pulled herself up just as Alistair also regained his footing. Lizzie skirted the edge of the desk, trying to put more space between them. Flight was trying to browbeat fight into retreating, but she refused to budge. She had to win this fight. There were no other options. Alistair would never let her live after this, and once she was gone, Layne would be next.

Standing her ground, Lizzie waited while Alistair made his way across the room. Instead of attacking outright again, he paused with the desk wedged between them. He was obviously in pain - a bruise was already forming on his jaw and there was an obvious limp to his gait - but he was nowhere near being defeated.

“I loved you.” It was more of a question than a statement.

“And yet you kept me prisoner,” Lizzie replied. “Let me and the others walk out of here and this will all be over.”

Alistair relaxed against the edge of the desk and snatched up the glass that had seen a lot of use the night before. “Lizzie, you know I can’t do that.”

The smack of the glass hitting the edge of the desk distracted her. It was already too late by the time she realized he was coming at her. It wasn’t until she saw blood on the shards jutting out from the broken glass and felt white-hot pain blaze across her cheek that she fully understood what he had done.

He lunged again, but before he could repeat the damage on the other side of her face, Lizzie grabbed the heavy bottle of Scotch off the desk and swung with all her might.

Glass to face, tit for tat, and whatnot.

The bottle was made of too stern of stuff to break, but it still served its purpose. Alistair crumbled to the ground. Not giving herself enough time to think about the savageness of her attack, Lizzie continued to pound him with the bottle. Foul-smelling liquor splashed into her face, making the already painful cuts scream out in agony, but she didn’t stop, even when Alistair quit fighting. She was on autopilot, her arms swinging with no conscious thought until the bottle slid out of her hands. She didn’t check for breathing or a pulse as she rummaged through his clothes, not wanting to know the extent of the damage she’d done.

The pockets of his jacket held not only the key, but a switchblade as well. A quick search through the desk yielded a handgun. It wasn’t much of an artillery, but it was better than what she’d walked into the room with. Without another glance at Alistair, she sprinted for the door, making sure the lock was engaged and both keys were in her pocket before making her way back through the long winding halls. The journey was made more difficult by her blurred vision. She attributed it to adrenaline until she realized she could hardly open her left eye. The bottom of her shirt was wet with blood when she pulled it away from her face, but she could see better.

Her body was starting to realize the amount of abuse it had received, but she pushed on. This wasn’t over. If anything, the hardest parts were yet to come.

She’d never been one of the Alpha Pack’s best marksmen, but she knew enough about shooting a gun to be able to raise and aim the pistol in her hand with complete confidence as she topped the stairs.

“Open the door,” she said, leveling the weapon at first one guard and then the other. One of them reached for his rifle, but the other held out a hand to stop him.

“We’ll open it,” the second one said. “Let her have her moment. Backup is already on the way. There is no way she’s making it out of here.”

Mr. Gun-At-The-Ready thought about it for a second and then curled up one side of his mouth. “I’ve been aching for a little action around here,” he agreed and began punching a code into the door.

“Hold your arms out. No, not that far out. Okay, now bring them just a little closer together.”

Layne threw the ball directly into Caroline’s outstretched hands. She clapped them together two seconds too late, and the ball dropped to the floor and rolled back towards Layne.

“I don’t like this game,” Caroline whined. “It’s no fun. I want to go to watch princesses now.”

Layne took a deep breath so he wouldn’t yell at the kid. It wasn’t her fault she was bored and he was ready to crawl out of his own skin.

Back to Plan A. Wait for me in the hall. Be ready to go.

What kind of note was that? Didn’t Lizzie realize what she was doing to him by leaving him behind to play catch while she was doing God-only-knew what?

But if she wanted him to wait in this hall, he would, even if it took her days to come back to him.

Keeping Caroline there, however, might be beyond even his impressive abilities.

“Not just yet, Buttercup,” he said, walking over to Caroline to arrange her arms in the best ball-catching position. Caroline was a good kid and without a doubt the smartest three-year-old he knew, but there wasn’t much chance of her having a future in sports if her early skills were any indication. “We’re going to hang out here—”

As if on cue, the locks cut off his speech. Pari was immediately there, pulling her daughter in tight behind her with a shushing noise. Layne rolled his shoulders and walked towards the door separating them from the rest of the world. He had no idea what was going to be on the other side, but every instinct he possessed told him to be ready to fight.

In the months they’d been there, not once had they accidentally opened the main door while any of the prisoners were in the hall. The SHP were smart enough to know once Layne was within reach of that open door, there would be no hope keeping him contained. Since it was opening with the three of them standing five feet away, something was up. He could only hope it was the something Lizzie had been planning.

A hiss of hydraulics warned him the door was moving, but before it opened more than an inch, he heard two gunshots in quick succession. All the blood in his limbs rushed to his head and heart, preparing him for battle. Without thought as to what he was doing or the consequences, he hauled the door back to find two dead guards crumbled in the doorway. On the other side was Lizzie. Blood covered the majority of her face and shirt, bruises were forming around her neck, and in her hand was a gun.

“Alistair.” The name was something more primitive than a growl. He longed to see the leader of the SHP’s insides on the outside.

“Taken care of.” The words were little more than a rasp, barely audible.

He didn’t ask her to clarify. The haunted look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know.

“Knife or gun?” she asked, holding two weapons out to him. He grabbed the knife and heard Caroline whimper behind him.

And if Alistair wasn’t dead? Well, then Layne was going to enjoy disemboweling him with his own hands.

Lizzie offered the gun to Pari next, but she refused it. “I don’t know how to use it.” She glanced down at the two dead guards. “And obviously you do.”

Lizzie nodded, and Layne noticed her eyes didn’t ever dip anywhere below their shoulders.

Later,
he thought, hoping she could hear his words through whatever was going on in her own head.
We’ll deal later. Right now, we have to keep fighting.
“It’s not over yet,” he finished aloud.

“Any idea of numbers?” she whispered.

“They’re moving around too much for me to get a clear count, but I’m guessing about a dozen.” If they were a little closer to the full moon, he would have been able to count the heartbeats, but they were still more than a week out.

“How close?”

“Wave one is coming right about…” A head became visible around the curve of the elaborately carved stairs and Layne sent his blade flying. “Now!” he shouted before leaping over the banister and catching the second assailant in the head with his feet. He jerked the knife out of the first guy’s neck and spun, driving the blade into the third guy’s stomach. He tried not to notice how that guy’s stomach was right below a pair of very non-guy-like boobs.

Like Lizzie, he would wait to fall apart later, when they had the luxury of processing all the damage they’d done.

Lizzie stood at the top of the staircase, gun aimed at the melee. Pari stood behind her, Caroline wrapped protectively in her arms. She hummed a lullaby as she shielded her child’s eyes from the violence.

Layne knew a fourth person was coming up the stairs, but the moment he started to meet the challenge head on, Number 2 decided a concussion wasn’t enough to keep him down. It only took two quick jabs to return him to the land of the unconscious, but it was two jabs too long. Before he could turn, two arms, each as long as he was tall and possibly even bigger around, wrapped around him, trapping his arms by his sides.

It was a hold he’d gotten out of at least a hundred times in practice, but none of those practices had been against someone topping out at over seven feet and weighing in at a good three hundred pounds. And then there was the little fact of the gun gripped in the gorilla’s right hand.

Sure, his aim couldn’t have been very good in that position, but a shot to the face was still a shot to the face, even if it missed all the death-on-the-spot parts.

“You made a good run of it, girlie,” the mountain at Layne’s back said, “but it’s time to put the gun down now.”

Layne’s eyes met Lizzie’s. “Shoot him.”

Lizzie took a deep breath and adjusted her aim.

“Are you that good, love? Can you shoot me without shooting him?”

The hesitation and doubt was written so big across Lizzie’s face they could be read from space.

“You can do it, Lizzie. Just pull the trigger.”

She was like a statue. He wasn’t sure she was even seeing them.

“Lizzie, pull the trigger.”

Behind him, his assailant coughed.

“Pull the trigger!”

More coughing, the kind that took everything you had. Being strapped to someone who was coughing like that was like being on the suckiest Disneyland ride ever.

“Do you mind? We’re trying to fight to the death here.” To punctuate his final words, Layne brought his heel down on the guy’s instep. Before he could do anything else, the big guy’s arms fell away and he fell to the ground, clutching his throat. His coughs were losing strength and foam was forming at the corners of his mouth.

“What the hell…?” Not that he was looking a gift horse in the foaming mouth or anything, but whatever that was wasn’t right.

“The human body is over sixty percent water,” Pari reminded him. “When some of that water moves from where it’s supposed to be and into your lungs, you drown.”

Of course you would.

And of course Pari could drown a man just by thinking about it.

Right.

Great.

Good to know he had yet another thing to freak out about the moment he had a few seconds to spare.

“Move or stand our ground?” Lizzie asked, showing some sign of life for the first time in several moments.

There were maybe five or six more SHP sheep milling around downstairs. Odds weren’t bad, or they wouldn’t have been if they had been on equal footing. The problem was, those guys downstairs were not only on their own turf, but they were fresh and ready for a fight whereas Layne’s team was decidedly not.

Lizzie was swaying on her feet. There was no way to know how much blood she’d lost, but it looked like a lot. He wasn’t sure she would be able to walk down the stairs. Kicking ass while doing it? Out of the question.

“I’m not swaying on my feet. I’m slow dancing to music only I can hear.”

Well, at least her Sight and sass were still functioning properly. Surprisingly, that knowledge actually made him feel better.

He jogged up the steps and handed Pari a gun he pulled off the drowned guy. “Safety. Trigger. This is where the bullet comes out,” he said, pointing at the barrel. “Make sure that part is pointing at the bad guys.”

“There is no such thing as bad guys,” Lizzie said, rubbing her face on her shoulder. The material clung to her face for a brief moment before she jerked it free. “There is us and them.”

“Us are the good guys,” Caroline said, her words muffled since her face was buried in her mother’s neck. “Them are the bad guys.”

Layne dropped a kiss between to pigtails. “Well said, princess. Well said.” He met her mother’s eyes over her head. “If you had to, how many more times could you do that thing you did?”

Pari’s chin lifted, and her eyes narrowed. “As many times I need to.”

Bullshit. She was nearly drained. He could see it in the tight lines around her mouth. She might be able to do it once more before collapsing, but maybe not. There was no point in relying on her ability to pave their way to the front door, but Layne felt confident if it came down to it, she could protect Caroline, and that was all that really mattered.

The rest of it was all on him.

“On us,” Lizzie corrected.

On them. Right. Because what he really wanted was his mate, who was already injured so badly he was in a near panic over the possibility of losing her, to fight some more. That sounded like a really awesome idea.

“I’m not leaving you, Layne.”

It was a promise. One he hoped like hell she would be able to keep.

A burst of static had him turning towards the stairwell, his grip on the knife in his hand tightening.

“Sterling? What the bloody hell is going on up there? Report.”

Layne looked around the hall in confusion. “Speakers?”

“No,” Lizzie said. “There aren’t any cameras or anything outside of the apartment. I think it’s a walkie-talkie.”

“A walkie-talkie?”

“It’s a communication device,” Pari explained.

“I know what a walkie-talkie is.” He was a boy whose father served in the United States military after all. He had at least seven different sets growing up. “I’m just appalled that we let ourselves get kidnapped by a cult so freaking lame they still use walkie-talkies. What do they think this is? An 80s movie?”

Another burst of static.

“Sterling?”

A door opened somewhere downstairs, and Layne could finally hear what was being said clearly.

“They’re not answering. Gear up. We’re going in.”

Definitely six of them. Six trained fighters at peak performance. He could take them one at a time but—

One at a time.

With a burst of inspiration, Layne hopped down three steps and rummaged through the giant’s pockets until he pulled out a walkie-talkie that had to be at least as old as he was.

“It’s been a bit of bugger,” Layne said into the device, dropping his voice down to a convincing bass and adopting an even more convincing British accent. “I need some bloody rope.”

“What? Have you neutralized the situation?”

“Rope! I need rope!”

Layne heard a long stream of curses come from downstairs, and then the door closed and a single set of footsteps made their way towards the stairs.

He honestly couldn’t believe that worked.

“Someone’s coming,” he informed everyone with less sensitive ears. “You guys take cover.”

“I thought we’ve talked about this,” Lizzie said, giving him a bloodied smile that made her look like a crazy person. “We’re in this together.”

He wanted her protected and safe, but if there was one thing he’d learned as a member of the Alpha Pack, it was that you had to let people fight their own battles.

“Pari?” he asked, already anticipating her answer. “For Caroline’s sake?”

“What my daughter needs is to get out of here, and our best chance of that is by doing this together.”

“Keep your guns up and the safety off.” It took Pari a second, but eventually she found out a way to hold the gun and Caroline at the same time. “Don’t let anything get beyond the stairwell. Understood?”

They both nodded, and he moved onto the top step. If whoever was coming up the stairs came around the corner shooting there wasn’t much protection he could offer them, but it made him feel better to put his body between theirs and the danger.

“I got your bloody—”

So, not shooting but complaining.

And better yet, it was his old friend Mack. Layne couldn’t help the grin from stretching across his face. He had a score to settle. Channeling Keanu Reeves, Layne quirked his eyebrows and beckoned Mack with two fingers.

“I should have put you down when I had the chance,” Mack said, stepping around the bodies littering the wide staircase.

Unlike Layne, Mack hadn’t been trained in martial arts since he was old enough to walk. He was, however, solid as a brick wall and in possession of a big-ass knife. Said knife hurled towards Layne’s stomach. Layne blocked it, but Mack had put enough force and speed behind the strike Layne nearly lost his footing, causing his own strike to hit the other man’s shoulder instead of his neck.