Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) (8 page)

The other eyelid lifted. “And what are you going to do if it does?”

Scream. Panic. Cry.

“Try to scoop it up and shove it back in?” Layne shrugged as if he couldn’t care less. “I don’t know. I just thought it would be cool to see.”

For most people, sighing was an afterthought, a natural human instinct. But not Lizzie. Lizzie had perfected the sigh, turning a thoughtless noise into an art form. She could convey a million different thoughts and judgements with a single exhale. For example, the sigh escaping her lips as she dropped her head to rest on the arm of the chair said, “Just when I thought I had completely exhausted my mental capabilities on my own, I tried to have a conversation with Layne Hagan and realized I could, in fact, become even more exhausted.”

Layne was an ass. He didn’t mean to be. Well, not always. The problem was, when it came to Lizzie, he always did the exact opposite of whatever it was he should be doing. He felt like an idiot, which pissed him off, which made him act like an even bigger ass. It was a problem.

He knew he should do something to make things easier on her. Find some aspirin. Bring her some hot chocolate. Drape a blanket over her and convince her to take a little nap to regain her strength. Any of those things would be the right thing to do.

“Well, what did you get?” he asked as his brain screamed for him to shut up and let her rest.

“Not much. I was too tired when he touched me to focus, so it’s a big, tangled mess. Mostly some random childhood memories and general father-related angst,” she muttered into the worn velvet of the chair. “But I think I’ve figured out why we’re here.”

“You mean other than because he’s a bigoted asshole who thinks killing the people we care about would be doing the world a favor?”

“Actually, he doesn’t want to kill us. For Alistair, it’s all about control.” Lizzie massaged the inch of flesh between her eyebrows. “He thinks he’s one-upping his father by having a Shifter and a Seer at his disposal.”

“And just how does he plan to dispose of us?”

“I… I don’t know.” He would have heard the lie without the stutter, but he didn’t press her on it. “He wants to hurt you,” she said, “but that is hardly news.”

No, not news at all. Layne could feel the threat of violence pouring off the Duke of Douchebaggery from the moment they laid eyes on each other.

“Well, that’s good news, because I would like to do some significant damage to him,” he said, already anxious for the moment. Life would definitely be a whole lot sunnier after he planted his fist in Alistair’s face.

Lizzie pulled herself back up to a sitting position. In his head, he was telling her not to do that, to get the rest she needed. In the real world, he simply crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back, putting more space between them to decrease the chance of any accidental skin-on-skin encounters.

“You don’t understand. He doesn’t just want to black your eye or break a finger. He’s…” Something dark passed over her expression. Her gaze was focused somewhere miles - or months - away. “Caroline’s finger. He wasn’t just there. He’s the one who…” She tucked her hands against her sides as if that could stop their trembling. “He enjoyed it. That poor baby was screaming and crying, and he liked it.”

With a blink, she was back in the present. “Don’t provoke him,” she said. “Yes, you’re stronger, and faster, and all around a better fighter, but he’s broken, Layne. He’ll do horrible things you can’t even imagine. You can’t win against someone like that.”

He could, and he would. But first, he had to cut down the risk of collateral damage.

“The moment you get out of this house, you run.” He didn’t even recognize his own voice. It was lower and rougher. Every emotion, including the apathy he worked hard to inject into every word, was gone. If he didn’t know any better, he would say it wasn’t him but his coyote talking. “You run, and you don’t look back.”

“No.”

“Once you’re gone—“

“They know they can’t control you without me, so once I’m gone, they’ll kill you. I’m not going to let that happen.”

She was once again Boadicea. Brave. Strong.

She also happened to be a complete idiot.

“I can take care of myself.”

“Were you not listening to the part of the conversation where I just explained how you can’t?”

“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.
”

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.