Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) (4 page)

“I’m sorry. We’ve done this all backwards and wrong.” Lizzie attempted to look like the helpless girl everyone assumed her to be. “I’m Lizzie,” she said, reaching across the divide to offer Pari her hand, “I would say it’s nice to meet you, but the situation is about as far from nice as you can get. But still, it’s nice to meet someone who hasn’t tased or punched me in the last twenty-four hours.”

Her hand held awkwardly between them for a long time, but finally the other woman grabbed it.

“I’m Pari. And I would have really rather not have met you myself, but since you’re here, we might as well make the most of it.”

Her control was in shreds. She had no filter, nothing to separate all the noise into individual pieces of information. It was like standing in the middle of a concert right after the band first walks onto the stage. There was nothing but a deafening roar, so loud it was almost as if there was no sound at all. Their hands disengaged, and Lizzie still didn’t know what kind of person Pari was or what she really thought about their arrival. She’d only managed to get one thing from their brief contact, but thankfully, it was the most important.

“She’s telling the truth,” she told Layne, swaying a bit as she tried to remember how to breathe. “She’s one of the good guys.”

Pari’s jaw tightened and something hard and painful flashed in her eyes. “There are no good guys here. No innocents. Trust me, I’m not on the side of angels.”

She might not have been. If Lizzie had been in top form, she would have known for certain. On her best days she could cut through the noise to find the true flavor of a person’s soul. But today wasn’t one of her best. The only thing she’d picked up from the noise was that Pari truly hated Alistair, was here against her will, and honestly hoped no harm came to Lizzie and Layne.

“So, that’s what you can do,” Pari said. “You’re a human lie detector.”

“No, the lie detector thing is just a convenient side effect of her real talent.” Layne pulled himself off the wall and stalked towards Pari. “She can look straight into the core of you and See the very essence of who you are. Your most secret hopes. Your greatest fears. She can See all your sins laid bare.” He was standing directly in front of Pari now. Layne leaned over her, not enough to make her shrink back against the chair, but enough to prove he was bigger and stronger despite being at least five years her junior. “Lizzie can See the exact location of your heart so that when the time comes, she can rip it out and leave you nothing more than a hollow shell. No, Lizzie isn’t a lie detector. She’s much, much more terrifying than that.”

Heat crawled up Lizzie’s neck and enflamed her face. Even her eyes stung from the blaze. It was a fire fueled by rage. It had to be, because the only other option was guilt, and she’d relieved herself of that particular emotion where Layne was concerned a long time ago.

“Gee, Layne, I didn’t realize you were a poet.” Her voice was shaky, but maybe if she ignored it they would as well.

“Is it true?” Pari asked. “Did you just violate my brain? Did you take knowledge that does not belong to you?”

And therein lay the problem with her power. There were many different types of Seers in the world. Some were considered minor powers, like Talley’s mother who could See colors and patterns. It was a cool talent, one that had made her very rich, but in the world of Shifters and Seers it was considered so minor as to be almost nonexistent. Lizzie’s Sight was considered one of the most remarkable gifts. It was the reason she was chosen to join the Alpha Pack when she was only thirteen. Soul Seers were highly coveted, but also greatly feared. Even within their own packs they were simultaneously revered and ostracized. Everyone wanted the knowledge she could steal for them, but no one wanted their own brain raided.

“No, your thoughts are still your own,” Lizzie assured the other woman. “Burn out. You know how it is.”

The other woman didn’t seem satisfied with that answer, but she nodded all the same.

“From now on, just try to avoid touching me as much as possible.” She hadn’t been able to completely read Pari, but she’d gotten enough to know she didn’t really need to.

“As long as there is some sort of barrier between us, like cloth, I usually don’t get any stray thoughts, but sometimes I do. It’s best to just stay as far away from me as possible.” Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she could see Layne’s lips tighten at her words. “I’ll try to keep my distance from Caroline as well, but honestly, you might want me to read her every once in awhile. I can usually understand what a kid wants even better than they do.” Because kids didn’t always understand things like exhaustion or hunger.

“Thank you for your consideration,” Pari said.

“She didn’t do it for nothing,” Layne said as if he had a right to speak for her. Lizzie didn’t fail to notice the way he was trying to paint her in the same broad strokes of villainy as Pari painted Alistair. “We showed you ours, now it’s time for you to show us yours.”

At first Lizzie thought perhaps Pari was ignoring Layne’s request. Instead of answering, she grabbed a glass from the side table. But instead of taking a drink, she held the glass in front of her and concentrated on the water inside. Nothing seemed to happen for the first few seconds, but then Lizzie saw it. The water was moving. A few seconds later, all the water was out of the glass and floating in the air like a ribbon. It floated to the center of the room and then wound itself into a circle. The circle turned into a watery snowflake. The snap of Pari’s fingers broke the silence of the room. The snowflake scattered into a mist that fell on the room, leaving tiny droplets in Lizzie’s eyelashes.

“That’s Caroline’s favorite trick,” Pari said, brushing the moisture off her shoulders.

“You’re a Thaumaturgic.” Even though she hadn’t been conscious of it, she must have picked up on something when she’d touched her earlier, because the moment the water started rising out of the glass, something - a
so-that-is-what-that-was-about
something - clicked in her brain. “That’s cool,” Lizzie said. “I have a friend who can control earth.”

Pari’s eyebrows were dark and high arching, which meant she looked more expressive than most people when she drew them together in confusion. “A Thauma-what?”

After Pari’s display with the water, Layne started pacing around the windows once again. He flicked back a curtain and scowled at the landscape. “Thaumaturgic,” he said somewhat off-handedly. “Noun. A person who can manipulate some particular form of matter. Example sentence: Pari is a Thaumaturgic who can control water.” Whatever he was looking at outside ceased to hold his attention and he turned once again towards Pari. “Can you change its form? Turn a plain glass of water into ice or vapor?”

“I don’t know what this Thaumaturgic thing is, but I’m a Water Fae, and Water Fae can only move water from place to place. We can’t change its form or make it appear out of nowhere.”

Layne met Lizzie’s eyes. “Fae?”

“It’s another word for fairy,” she told him. Before falling in love with historical romances she’d had an appetite for fantasy novels. She was particularly fond of the ones where young girls were whisked off to magical lands with strange but beautiful creatures. That changed when she was actually whisked off to a not-so-magical castle with beautiful but cruel creatures.

She had a feeling Pari could strongly identify.

“So… you’re a fairy?” Layne snorted. “No offense, but Lizzie here looks a lot more like a Scottish water fairy than you do.”

Pari waved a hand in front of her as if she was sweeping away the comment. “You’re making judgements on who and what I am based on my appearance. How could I possibly be offended by that?”

And with that, Pari won over Lizzie. She knew the woman was trustworthy, but when it came to actually liking her as a person, Lizzie had been very much on the fence. It wasn’t the normal place for Lizzie to be when it came to people. Making freakishly accurate snap judgements wasn’t that hard when you could know the whole of a person’s life with a single touch. But between her battery being low and Pari being harder to read thanks to her Thaumaturgic (or Fae) status, Lizzie wasn’t sure how she felt about her until she firmly put Layne in his place with a bit of finely crafted sarcasm.

Of course, to the casual observer, Layne didn’t look so much put in place as annoyingly oblivious, but Lizzie wasn’t the casual observer. She knew Layne inside and out, and she knew how to look not at his eyes, which always looked cold and unforgiving, or his mouth, which was stuck in a constant smirk, but at his ears, which when embarrassed, turned a shocking shade of red.

“So, Fairy Princess, tell me,” he said, pacing away from them as if he didn’t give a damn when the exact opposite was fairly obvious. “How do we get out of here?”

“It’s simple,” Pari answered, doing a rather good imitation of Layne’s faux-apathy. “We don’t.
”

Layne Hagan wasn’t what his grandfather would call a “go-getter.” He maintained a C-average at school, not by putting in the minimum amount of effort required, but by doing nothing at all and still somehow squeaking by. When it came down to it, Layne was lazy and unmotivated. He knew it, and quite frankly, wasn’t the least bit ashamed of it.

But what no one else seemed to have figured out was should he ever find a valid reason to get involved, there would be no stopping him. His teachers and guidance counselor were shocked when he managed a near-perfect score on both the ACT and SAT, but he wasn’t. Lazy isn’t the same as stupid, and unmotivated isn’t the same as weak. So when Pari said they weren’t getting out of there, he immediately dismissed that as an option. For once, he was motivated, and there would be no stopping him. They were getting out, and soon.

“Don’t worry, Tinkerbell. It’s alright. The Big Bad Wolf is here, and he’s going to help you break out of this lantern.” Layne studied the window once more, looking for a way to open the damn thing. “All we have to do is find the latch.”

“One, you’re a coyote, not a wolf. And two, you’re mixing your stories. There isn’t a big bad wolf in Peter Pan. Just a little boy who refuses to grow up.”

Of course Lizzie would point out all the ways he was wrong. It was her favorite pastime, closely followed by telling him over and over again he was still a child. 

“And three, that is fifty millimeter reinforced bulletproof glass. No amount of huffing and puffing is blowing that down, and even if it did, it’s a ten meter drop to the well-alarmed grounds,” Pari added ever-so-helpfully. “You might want to save your breath.”

“As if I’m going to take your word on it.” Layne pushed on the window as if he could somehow determine the nature of the glass by its lack of give beneath his fingers. “For all I know, the only thing holding us here is you saying we can’t leave. It might be as simple as walking out the door.” Although, she was probably right about the window. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t catch any outdoor scents. Those things weren’t just solid, they were sealed tight.

Pari stood then, and for a moment, Layne was distracted by just how pretty she was. Maggie, the artist who would be his aunt just as soon as his Uncle Charlie got off his ass and married her, had once told him that humans perceived symmetry as beauty. Pari had perfect symmetry. Her cat-like eyes were the exact same size, her lips balanced one another perfectly, and her butt and boobs stuck out just the right amount to make your eyes linger. She was hot. Ridiculously so. And yet Layne couldn’t stop himself from comparing her to the redhead who had gone a few days without a bath or brushing her hair.

He was insane. But knowing you had a problem was the first step in getting better, right?

God, he hoped so.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Pari said moving towards the door Alistair and Mack had left through moments earlier. “Maybe it is as simple as walking out. Here.” The door opened easily for her. “Go on. Give it a try.”

She was setting him up. Even the little ankle biter she’d sent away earlier would be able to tell it was a trap, but Layne’s major personality flaw, aside from crippling apathy, was a brand of arrogant stubbornness passed down from generation to generation of Hagans. Yes, it was a trap. And by God, he was going to walk straight into it and burst through the other side.

He didn’t say anything as he walked out the open door. He figured the roll of his eyes said everything needing to be said. The door led to a hallway that looked like something out of a Stephen King novel. The carpet was a deep crimson with a swirly gold pattern. The walls had dark wood panels on bottom and were papered with a pattern done in deep crimson with hints of gold on top. The ceiling was the same kind of wood as the bottom of the wall. The space where the wall met the ceiling was filled with wood carved into the same swirling pattern as the gold on the carpet.

Perfect symmetry, yet it was way more creepy than beautiful. He’d have to ask Maggie why that was.

“Redrum. Redrum,” he muttered to himself as he crept down the hallway. He tried a few of the doors, mostly finding rooms empty of everything but dust. At the end of the hall was another door. He tried it, but the handle wouldn’t turn.

Layne spread his legs, bracing himself, and then rammed his shoulder against the door.

It didn’t even rattle.

He tried it again, putting more force behind the shove. The door stood unmoved as if he hadn’t done anything more than look at it. His shoulder, on the other hand, felt as if it might not be in the exact right location.

“That,” Pari said from behind him, “is a vault door painted up all pretty to look like a normal door. It can only be opened from the outside, where two fully armed guards are standing with the American-made semi-automatic rifles they’re overly eager to use.”

Well, that would be why the door wasn’t budging.

“And if I made it past the guards?”

“Everything is alarmed, and there are always at least five more members of the SHP here, although it’s usually more. They aren’t all trained, but each and every one of them believes we are something other than human and shouldn’t be allowed to live.”

There was a chance he’d underestimated their captors. The odds weren’t in their favor, but if he could get the door open, escape might be possible.

“How often do they open this?” he asked, already calculating how to best take out two armed guards without getting himself good and dead.

Pari looked at him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking and considered him the world’s biggest idiot for even entertaining the idea. “We get one hot meal a day, but they only deliver it when we’re in our suite with the doors closed. Other than that, it’s closed.”

Lizzie had followed them down the hall. Layne wished she hadn’t. She looked like she would crumble if he breathed too hard, not that she would ever admit it. She could be on the cusp of passing out and would swear that she was good to go for another mile.

What she needed was someone to take care of her when she refused to take care of herself.

“Lizzie, you look like hell—”

Her bourbon-colored eyes narrowed to slits. “Funny, somehow personal appearance has slid down to the bottom of my shit-I-care-about list in the past few days.”

Damn it. Why did he always have to say things the wrong way?

“I’m just saying maybe you should go lay down or something.”

“What? So you can keep trying to break down an unbreakable door? No thanks. Someone has to hear what we’re up against and come up with a solution a bit more thought out than, ‘Layne angry! Layne smash!’”

This is how every conversation between them went. He would say something stupid, she would fire back with sarcasm. He would try to explain himself, and then she would cut him to the quick so badly he would want nothing more than to run away and find a nice quiet place to cry like the sniveling brat she reduced him to.

Layne clenched and unclenched his fist a couple of times to work out some of his tension so he could actually speak again.

“What about when you go on your missions or whatever?” he asked Pari once he was able. “They open the door and you walk out it then, right?”

Pari shook her head. “Nope. As far as I know, I’ve never walked through that door.”

“But I thought—“

“I’m never conscious when I leave. They drug me, and I wake up in some random country with a headache the size of your ego and an assignment. Once I’ve completed it, they drug me again, and I wake up in my bed here. I don’t even really know where here is. England is as specific as I can give you. I don’t think we’re in the north, but I can’t be sure.”

Hope was dwindling, but not completely gone.

“On your missions, are you out in the big, wide world?”

“Yes.”

“Guarded?”

“Yes.”

“Heavily?”

Her eyes darted to the left, and he knew he’d found the weak link.

“Not heavily. No.”

Of course she wasn’t. How else would she have managed to mail a letter to the Alpha Pack? And if they gave her enough breathing room to mail a letter, then they would have enough breathing room to escape.

“What I don’t get,” Layne said, not bothering with explaining his train of thought, “is why you haven’t tried to escape before now.”

Pari crossed her arms over her chest. “Besides the fact that my daughter remains here while I am out on assignment? Should I just leave her here then?”

“You could come back here with reinforcements and save her. I might not really get the whole parenting thing since I don’t have any kids or parents of my own, but I’m pretty sure most moms don’t want to raise a child in captivity. Why haven’t you tried to escape for her sake?”

“And bring them where? You forget, I have no idea where we are!”

“Have you even tried to figure it out?”

He’d meant his questions honestly, but somehow bitterness and judgement had slipped into his voice. Not surprisingly, Pari didn’t respond well to being accused of being a negligent mother. Her entire body went tense, and Layne braced himself for the coming blow. But when she uncrossed her arms, she didn’t send her hand on a collision course for his pretty face, but dropped it in defeat.

“I tried,” she said, lowering her voice. “I tried to escape. Once I gave Alistair’s name to the authorities, they would be able to track him down, right? So, I gave my handler the slip and ran through the streets of Paris. I was standing in the police station when they found me. The man didn’t say anything. He just handed me his phone and—” She touched the corner of her eye with one finger, stopping the tear gathered there. “Have you stopped to wonder why you’re here, Layne? They want Lizzie. She’s the talented one. Why wouldn’t they just kill you and bring her alone? Why would they drag along a Shifter? You’re young, but still dangerous. They know that. It’s the whole basis of their belief that we’re too dangerous to live. So why are you here?”

He hadn’t stopped to think about it. Granted, he’d only been fully conscious for about an hour, but still. It was an important question.

“They want to see what he really is.” Lizzie’s eyes found his. “I Saw it when he touched me. I don’t know exactly what they have in mind, but I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”

“Of course it isn’t. Nothing here is,” Pari said before waving them down the hall. “Come with me. I want you to see what they’re capable of.”

He and Lizzie followed her down the hall. Lizzie was stumbling. He wanted to reach over and support her as she walked, but he stuffed his hands into his pockets instead.

When they neared the room they had originally been in, Pari paused outside one of the doors and tapped on it gently before slowly opening it.

“Hey, Caroline of mine, what are you doing?”

The room was similar to the one they had been in before. Hardwood floors with threadbare rugs. Faded wallpaper. Mismatched antique furniture. It was like the set of some creepy-ass horror movie with ghost children dressed in Victorian garb.

“Mum!” Caroline abandoned her coloring to fling herself into her mother’s arms. “I made you a picture!”

“Oh, thank you,” Pari said, scooping Caroline up and settling her on her hip. “You always make me the prettiest pictures.” Pari took one of Caroline’s hands and held it up. “Do you know what this is?” she asked Layne. “This is the hand of an artist.”

He spent a good five seconds in complete and utter confusion before he saw it. Where the kid’s pinkie finger should have been was nothing more than a little nub.

Layne’s eyes burned, and he thought he might puke up what little food he had in his stomach. Lizzie made a strangled noise in the back of her throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her sit down. Her face shouldn’t have been able to get even paler, but it did.

“They seem to have an unlimited supply of drugs here, but they didn’t use any. She was awake the whole time. I know, because they showed me a video.”

His stomach was getting serious about this whole puking thing.

“They assured me next time it will not be something so insignificant as a finger.”

Lizzie was staring at the floor as if she needed it to keep her grounded in the here and now. “But she’s a baby,” she whispered. “Who does that to a baby?”

“These people,” Pari said. “The ones who brought you here against your will. The ones who will use us until we can no longer serve their needs, then toss us in the rubbish bin. These are men and women fueled by hate. They’re not going to let you walk away.”

It seemed hopeless. They were unequipped to fight their way out of the house, and to run off during a mission meant sacrificing whoever was left behind. But the SHP had made one fatal error. Layne might not be walking out of here, but Lizzie would. All he had to do was convince her to do it.