Loving Lucius (Werescape) (9 page)

Immobile, Tacitus heaved me backward two steps and loomed, a force to contend with. "Go cool off, Lucius. Clear your head. You're not thinking rationally now. Because of her. Because of the aliens."

What the fuck. So much for friends and family. This place began to reek of betrayal. There's nothing worse than Shifter stink.

"Go on. Tear out of here. Run it off," Tacitus growled.

****

When Lucius strode into camp in the morning, he couldn't have even noticed I breathed the way he coldly walked right past me to his saddle and prepared for departure. Just what was so wrong with me sleeping with a rifle? After all, the Guardians had vanished. Didn't anyone realize a woman needs the little comforting reassurance a weapon offers? Especially if she wasn't good enough to have a man do the honors? Oh well. Time to forget about him. My sanity is best kept for keeping my secret instead of obsessing over a Shifter who doesn't consider me mate-worthy. Forgetting him would be difficult. When he'd touched me, when he'd set off a thousand fires in my body by touching only my finger, I can't fathom ever driving the thought of him from my mind. Him. The only man who'd ever made me want to be a woman in a man's world. But I will.

We left the island and rode until shortly past midday where we stopped at an old clapboard house. Bits of white paint curled here and there where they still managed to cling to the home they once perfectly coated. But nobody could call this building a home. The windows had been covered with weathered two-by-fours--who knows when. And the roof had collapsed inward on one end.

Lucius left us eating whatever we could forage from the saddlebags.

But he did something odd. I couldn't help but watch him climb up a thick pole, one like a log stripped of its bark then painted black. At the top, he used a tool to sever the end of one of three metal lines. The end fell to the ground but remained elevated to something it was attached to east of the dilapidated building. Then Lucius carried on with the other attached metal lines. Doing something mysterious, only to finally slide back down the pole and join us to eat.

"Lucius?" Violet called, chewing on some hulled walnuts.

He rolled his blue gaze up from the saddlebag he dug through where he sat not far from my little sister. "Yes?"

"Why did you cut that thing?"

His brow pinched curiously. "To send a message to the place I want it to go."

"A message? Like on paper?" she asked.

Violet wasn't one to not ask a question. And her heightened intelligence drove a fascination she had with languages and communication. A fascination that would reveal her heightened intelligence and get us even deeper into trouble. "Violet, don't bother Lucius."

"It's alright." He rose, waving Violet to follow him and led her to the pole.

So damned far away that I can't intervene to tie her tongue or dodge the bullets certain to fly with his questions and her answers. There's no other reason he'd want to spend time with my little sister. And now he blatantly ignores me. Why? Because I'd wanted to defend myself with a rifle? What harm could that do? He's too suspicious. Too dangerous. I need to calm his fears. How?

Violet walked back alone with a grin on her face. "You won't believe it, Elise!" Her voice piped higher than the tin whistles played by traveling musicians. "Lucius says those wires carry sounds to distant places." She plopped down on her knees, overjoyed in the new bit of science she learned. "Instead of letters on paper, the sounds tell someone on the other end which letters to write on paper. With a sound
pattern
."

God. Not that word. Pattern. I'll never be able to keep Violet's mouth shut now that we're discussing her favorite subject. And people can pass the word that we're alive. And that spark twinkling in Violet's eye means she's contemplating coding something. Using the game of hidden messages to challenge me to a duo of mind games. This isn't the time to toy with me when her ability to create indecipherable codes could be discovered. Then, everyone will know we're alien hybrids.

My heart rammed into my throat.

"What's wrong, Elise?" Violet pealed.

I need air. Time to choke down the lump of bad news. A place to think out our situation. To plan. I tried to rise but fell on my palms in the grass.

Scuffed combat boots stepped into my path.

Lucius.

"Get up. We need to talk," he growled slightly while speaking.

He must despise me. So, talking is bad. Especially after he ignored me all morning.

"Leave her alone, Lucius," Marcus warned. "You're scaring her."

"It's my call. Mind your own business."

And now they're arguing about me. That's a good diversion. Maybe Lucius will go away. I got my palms beneath my shoulders and tried to push up from the dry dust.

Lucius knelt, with his glowing Wolf gaze locked upon me.

A stare that weighed me down more than gravity.

"What are you hiding, Elise?"

Something completely disconcerting twisted in my gut under his heightened censure. What can I say? If I told him what I am, would it matter? The knowledge does nothing but plague me. It brought three enormous aliens to Sherry's bedside too. Nothing good came from that. Only fear. I have loads of fear already. Confessing to a person who hates me will only cause more problems. "Nothing I know can change anything," I softly replied, staring down at the hem of his bloused camouflage pants.

Well, except my chance at a normal life. And that's what I want. Just as normal a life a person could grasp AEI. One with touching. Yes. And a comforting hand to hold. To touch. What's wrong with me having those things?

He grated his teeth for a second.

I could hear the sound of teeth grinding against teeth.

"Then tell me about this nothing you know because something made your heart thrash out a warning before you fell flat on your face."

"Gods-damn-it, Tacitus," Marcus hissed, "make him leave her alone."

"Let it go, Marcus," Sherry's big Shifter calmly warned. "She's acting strangely. He has every right to question her."

But why question me? What good will it do? I can't tell them the truth--a truth that only implicates my young sister in the process. Even upon threat of death. Violet will suffer. I can't be the cause of her pain. I focused on the splotched greens of the fabric stretched over his bent knee and got my own knees beneath me.

His glare bore through me as I rose to my feet, him rising simultaneously.

I tried to turn away. Stepping sideways to find someplace to hide from the heat of his stare. But his wide camouflaged impenetrable mass kept cutting me off. Why? What had I done other than breathe?

"Start talking, Elise," he warned, his jaw squared with determination.

"I haven't done anything wrong." I sucked in a breath and met his glare. "Why are you doing this? I'm the one being forced from my home, from everything I know, into the wilderness."

He only blinked.

Unaffected.

"Please, Lucius," Violet begged. "Elise wouldn't hurt anyone."

****

Protect
, Wolf snarled and clawed at my ribcage.

Oddly, as if the pain would still my tongue. Make me grab Elise's humbled form and pet her until she calmed. Like I could concentrate on anything other than Wolf's demands!

The world slipped away while I towered over her cornered and defensive-yet-seductive curves.

And Violet's mind-numbing words echoed in my mind.

Shit. Deep down inside, down in the darkest part of me, something screamed I'd made a fatal mistake. That there's no going back and undoing the damage I'd done. That I had to apologize to Elise for terrifying her.

Hell. How when something is still wrong here? Terribly wrong. And if I betray anyone, my family or my friends, I betray humanity. Because the Gods-damned aliens want us all dead. This is more than aliens wanting Shifter mated pairs. Something is wrong here.

But a little voice whispered somewhere so far back inside my head. Something so brutally true. Something so obvious…She is what they're after.

Protect mine
, Wolf roared.

Elise flinched at the sound.

"It's alright, Lucius," Violet called.

What else could the girl say to change things? I slid my gaze to the little one who stood clutching her hands together like pious Christians I'd seen in old artwork from Bibles.

Not a good sign when we were all better off the more distance we kept between ourselves and Prophets or Believers.

She blinked those dark gray eyes at me. "Healers don't hurt people either."

Mouthy Red clasped a palm over her own mouth a step away from Violet's innocent expression.

Staring past me. At Elise. What the fuck's going on? Why can't they tell me? I can't help them if they don't explain. Can't they understand? I turned back to Elise.

Who stared at the ground. Her dark shiny hair now coated in dust from when she'd fallen. Beaten. Whipped by me. Hell. I had to somehow fix things between us. "I'm going to say this once."

Nobody moved.

"It's my responsibility to protect my friends and family."

She wouldn't look up at me.

Is she even listening? "I'm taking you to my home. To your new home. And if there's something you can tell me to help you, I need to know. I can't slay the demons of your past if you don't tell me what they look like."

She nodded but never lifted those haunting gray eyes from the ground.

There's nothing else I can do. I walked back through the angry stares, passing the wide eyes of the little sage, and joined the horses.

We'd send the telegraph, then reach my sire's outpost before sunset. Once home, what Elise hid becomes my sire's problem. And I can find a way to make peace with Wolf.

****

The Guardians hovered, their gazes glancing at me, nervously after Lucius left me standing among everyone. Completely humiliated.

My knees wobbled.

The world started to sway.

I managed to reach the section of log where my food waited and sit before I toppled over. But far worse things than fainting could happen if my secret was revealed. How had Langston lived with this fear the twenty-four years of my life? Oh how I owed him more than the last words he heard me utter. I scrubbed my palms over my face.

Something brushed my side.

"Are you alright?" Sherry whispered.

Consoling. Arms snaked around my shoulders.

She'd make me look like a sobbing woman. I dropped my hands and tried to sit upright, sucking in a deep breath. "Yes."

Sherry squeezed me anyway.

So long I thought I inhaled a few red hairs.

She shoved me at arm's length and assessed me with that brutal gaze of hers. "He's crazy."

No. No he isn't. But I can't say that when it means I'm hiding something. Even concealing a secret that affected my sisters. "When I speak with his sire, everything will make sense." I whispered and patted her shoulder. "Go on. I'm alright. Besides, it takes a lot to kill a healer." I forced a smile, realizing it couldn't hurt joking about healers when Violet kept blurting the point.

She grabbed my cheeks with both palms and stared into my eyes. "Know I see right through you. I can see your sadness. And your pain. I'm sorry, Elise. I know you just want somewhere to live a normal life. And now you can't even do that in this fucked-up god-forsaken wilderness." She grabbed my head, shoving my nose into her t-shirt, and tried to suffocate me with the longest bloody hug before leaving me to my thoughts.

To sit by the big Tacitus and finish eating. Her Shifter. Lucky Sherry. I'm alone. So damned alone, left to fight a battle for my sisters that they know nothing about.