"Hannah you better come in here!" Skye called out in an anxious voice to me. Sprinting from the last room I had cleared, her words steered me towards the back bedroom, Joy's old room. There had been so many awful things that had happened to me lately, I took a deep breath before entering, in anticipation of another blow.
"In the the bathroom," she called out, guiding me towards the far end of the room. As soon as I turned the corner I could see her.
"Leighanne," I breathed, rushing towards her crouched form that looked to be cowering in the tub. She was breathing, which was a relief, but there was blood covering the tub, as well covering the sides of her face. A large gash covered on eye, the skin split so far that it looked like a fake Halloween prosthetic.
"Hannah?" she asked when her eyes landed on me. Skye had backed up until she was behind me, a kindness for Leighanne who seemed to be far too fearful of her.
"Yes it's me. Are you hurt anywhere else?" My hands began probing for where her restraints were, but if she was hurting somewhere else being careful would help. Leighanne shook her head, the motion making some of the blood leave her face. Her head injury must be substantial.
"This is my friend Skye. She's just like me, but with no filter. You can trust her." Leighanne looked from me to Skye, her face screwed up in what looked like a tentative smile. "Speaking of you my dear assistant, can I get some scissors? Maybe some ice, whisky, and a first aid kit?" She didn't even question me, Skye just exited the bathroom, closing the door discreetly behind her.
"Hannah, you're in danger. The man that did this to me, threatened Joy, he's been keeping us here for the last week in the hopes you would come here. He wants you." She steeled herself for another comment but I stopped her.
"He's dead," I explained, attempting to prepare myself for what was coming next.
"Oh my god," she said, wetting a washcloth that was stashed under the sink. Some of the blood on her face was so caked on I was beginning to get worried the process of cleaning her up might be more painful than helpful. Leighanne let me do it anyway, carefully concealed winces popping through every now and again.
"Where's Joy, she should be in here celebrating that you rescued us." The cloth stopped on her cheek, halted completely from what it was about to do. Leighanne noticed it the second it happened, her body going totally limp. I almost didn't catch her in time as she slid in the tub, her head almost below the top crest of porcelain.
"I killed him Leighanne. It's not a consolation, not nearly enough of a death as he deserved, but he can't hurt anyone anymore." Her eyes were still closed tight, as if she didn't want to ever open them again. It was painful just to look at. Joy and Leighanne were close, so close that I had once suspected they had a relationship that went beyond the bounds of normal friendship.
"Joy sold you out pretty quickly," Leighanne said with a startling laugh. It was worse than tears because I wasn't sure how to handle it all. "Altier, or whatever his name really is, told her he was going to ruin her. There were threats all round, but it didn't seem like he really knew anything substantial about us. It took her less than an hour to tell him everything. That's why I'm here. Nothing I said helped, Joy just ignored me all together, and when I started to try and reason with her she and Altier put me in here." There was stunned, and then there was this level of shock. It didn't take long to prioritize everything, to block out hurt feelings and analyze the important parts. This had become a necessary skill for someone that had to deal with the things I did. Desperation caused rational people to do the unthinkable.
"Leighanne, look at me." She obliged, her face screwed up into something that was expecting anger. "Altier is a century old vampire, with only the most vile of family connections. Joy could have held out this whole time and things wouldn't have been different. She was faced with an impossible situation, brought on by me, and she dealt with things the only way she knew how. That is not betrayal Leighanne, that's a survival instinct. It was her choice to make, and it kept you alive. There is no blame or shame in that." Big fat drops were rolling over her cheeks, smearing with the blood to look like pink tinted tears.
"She's really dead?" Leighanne asked, and I recognized the need of her to hear me say it.
"Joy died without pain, something I cannot say for Altier, or for the rest of the bastards that think they can get away with meting this kind of death on me."
A few knocks later and Skye came in, arms full of small baskets, and a large bottle of Jack under her arm. That was going to become a necessity for everyone involved soon.
"There wasn't a clean needle, nothing near good enough for her face, so she's going to have to get her eye checked somewhere," Skye explained, reaching into one of the containers and handing me some kitchen shears. It didn't take me long to her her untangled, the shears made quick work of the rope.
Each of us took an arm and with careful grace managed to get Leighanne out of the tub. Her legs couldn't quite hold her up, and Skye swiftly picked her up, holding her deftly in her arms. It should have been me to do it, but my new found strength hadn't really settled into my conscious yet. It'd never even occurred to me. Skye headed for the bed, placing Leighanne in the middle.
"Bring the Jack please," Leighanne called out, much to the amusement of Skye and myself. I quickly complied, knowing that there were times that simply required a strong drink.
"You have clothes somewhere?" I asked Leighanne, glancing down on her bloody and dirty clothes. There was little doubt that they had never been changed. She nodded, but didn't say anything for a moment.
"In the spare room there's a closet packed with my clothes." There was a tinge of blush that touched her cheeks, just a spot of pink in an otherwise very dull face. Her skin was so dark that the lack of blood made her seem paper thin, as if with one blow it would all fly away.
"Leighanne, who you chose to love is none of either of our businesses. As long as you're not dating a midnight fairy, I could care less who you share your heart, or your bed with. Joy was a great person, and she was lucky to have you." This seemed to ease something inside her, some muscles held taught now relaxed. "The gods know I've picked some real fucking winners," I murmured.
"You do have a startling ability to draw every creep ass in a twenty mile vacinity. You have beer flavored nipples or something?" Skye asked. I was so damn grateful to her for lightening the mood that I didn't even mind what she was saying. Although, she had a valid point.
"The funny thing is, Jameson and I were together when we were very young. But even with all that, I still drew the eye of every lone wolf, every degenerate shifter that came through our clan. Being latent, it was something that called to their male bravado's. A woman in need of protection and all that. Most of their intentions were far from securing my safety, but it's what drew them to me." Leighanne was staring at each of us while we talked, most assuredly piecing together what I was, or wasn't, or used to be. It was confusing for me too.
"And now you have all the strongest males battering their horns over you. Liam has never shown ANY interest in a single female in all the time anyone has known him, never had a shifter come in and gotten any attention from him. Then you came along." Her face and tone spoke of bitterness, but it was tough to tell who she directed that to.
"And then I came along," I parroted back, looking under my lashes to tell if she was mad. In truth, it wasn't only me that was holding back, Skye had never once mentioned Liam before.
"A midnight tried to mate with you Hannah. You must be putting out some strong signals to get a faerie try that with you. Mating with another species, especially a shifter, is one of their cardinal laws. It is the very definition of forbidden," she said, looking in the moment like she could take back what she said.
"He tried to rape me while I was drugged on his poison. If it's a signal, I'll gladly shut it the hell down," I told her, a shudder shaking my spine at the vague memory of him touching my fur.
"You know that's not what I mean." Skye looked like the picture of abhorred apology. We were silent for a moment, and while sharing had never been my strong suit, there was a comfort in my vulnerability that permeated the space. It was an alluring safety.
"I know, it's been just so hard adjusting to everything. Sometimes, I feel like Elijah is just a memory, just as elusive as the morning fog. He's there, I can feel him, see him, hear him, but it's always out of reach. The closer I get the more he retreats, my fingers can never get a hold of him, but they keep reaching." Leighanne, who up until this point was keeping up more or less, frowned at us.
"I'm going to need some filling in," she said, her brows creased in frustrated confusion.
"Skye will fill you in. She tells it so much better than I," I said, throwing a wink at her before retreating from the room, in search of some clean clothes for us all.
"That was delicious Skye," I proclaimed, shortly padding my distended stomach. After taking a few hours to get everyone, and everything clean, Skye decided to raid the pantry.
The way this whole journey had gone, it was a wonder what would come at us next, so fitting in meals when we could became prioiorty number one. Shifting took major calories, and my partial shifting, combined with the silver, had me suspecting I was going through more than the average bear.
"It was the first real meal I've had in the few days at least," Leighanne said, sobering us all with her comment. We all had kept the late lunch talk to polite and casual conversation, avoiding the heavy topic that seemed to looming over us like a rain cloud prepped to strike. There was no avoiding the details now, time was never going to be on our side.
"If you feel comfortable talking about it, can you tell me anything Altier said that might help us?" I asked Leighanne, trying to ease my way into speaking about something that was so clearly still raw for her. She took a large sip of water before answering, her breath blowing out with force.
"Joy and I were coming back from the bar last week, Altier was already in the building then. The first thing he asked us was if we knew where you were, or if you had contacted us recently." The thought of contacting Joy had always come to mind, but we were too busy running to do anything about it. The relief was overwhelming, but it was also laced with guilt. I had brought this here to them.
"His name was Altier LeFevre, and he works for someone that wants me dead. He was actually the son and brother of someone who wants me very dead. If I had known you were in danger, it wouldn't have helped. We got here as soon as we could, but there was no way to predict they had already targeted you." Skye had caught the last name, sending out a half growl when she realized just who that creep was. Leighanne needed to know less, for her protection, and for the sake of my new plan.
"He said you were a threat to his seethe, and that you were on the run, looking for somewhere to lay low. When it became clear to him we hadn't heard from you, Altier was going to kill us. It was Joy's guess that you would return here eventually, and once you did she promised to lure you inside for him to catch. Like I told you before, she threw you under the bus," Leighanne said, her cheeks finally flush with color.
"It was a smart move," Skye told her, interrupting the very same thing that I was about to say. "Stalling for time was the best thing you could have done, being stubborn would have only sealed your fates." Leighanne nodded absently, as if she was hearing what we said, but didn't quite believe it yet.
"Well he seemed really pleased with that guess, almost like he was desperate for it. Joy told me to play along, and I did for the first day or two, but we argued about everything when he wasn't in our ear shot, which unfortunately wasn't very often. Then he bound and beat me a little. I'd been in the tub ever since. They kept most of their conversations from that point on a secret." She was rubbing one of the rope burns on her arms a bit, gingerly tracing it's outline with her fingertips.
"Did you hear him speak to you at all about someone else coming here? Any kind of communication with someone, or persons going in and out?" Skye asked, going into full beta mode. Was that the dynamic we had now? Often lone wolves formed their own semi small clans or packs, and it seemed like we had tentatively taken up the same kind of connection. Time to file that away for later.
"No, there wasn't much phone calls. He made a few, but they were all in French, and the only word I could interpret was no," Leighanne explained.
"That's okay, I got him to talk a little before I ripped his throat out. He wasn't in any kind of power position. Soon, his father will know just how powerless he really is now." Skye and I shared another inappropriate smile at Altier's expense.
"How are you going to do that?" Leighanne asked then, the thirst for more blood shining in her deep eyes. Revenge did strange things to people. As if it stripped all the layers of civility of a person, baring the more savage elements most tried to suppress.
"That depends entirely on you," I told her shocked face. Leighanne looked eager though, the feelings of powerlessness probably leaving in it's wake anger. It had been a very familiar patter to me, and exploiting that now left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. Necessity was one hell of a bitch sometimes.
"What could I possibly do? I'm the only human here at this table now Hannah, and as much as getting revenge for Joy seems appropriate, trading my life for some satisfaction seems like a waste." It was odd for someone to have such good clarity at a moment of intense pain, but Leighanne seemed to have it. Only those that walk with death multiple times can achieve that balance. Poor girl.
"I need to get into the seethe, sooner rather than later if that's possible at all," I explained, taking my time to phrase everything right. "The man that killed Joy is after Elijah, and possibly some of the other shifters in the area as well. Elijah and Evan are the only two that can do something about this, but I have to get to them and explain what we know." Leighanne already looked grim.
"No one hired us for any of the wedding celebrations Hannah. Joy was a little ticked at that, mainly because she blamed what happened last time, and when she called to try and get some business she was swiftly shut down," she said, with a tone of regret for having to tell me.
"Did Joy keep her correspondence? Emails? Notepads? Anything that we can gleam a schedule of events from?" I asked, quickly scanning the options that were left available. They could have moved the wedding up, or changed the original date, and we needed to know when everything was going to go down.
"I think so. Getting the emails will be easy, but I'm not sure what you can do with all that." I nodded for her go and get what she could, there was never a bad thing having too much information.
Skye turned her chair towards me then, face looking as grim as Leighanne's had. "What's the plan now? Without Joy, getting in is going to be difficult. You want to try calling the contacts and getting us some time that way? It could be possible to give them something free, maybe entice them to bring us on for one of the dinner parties or something."
"No contact is better. I think crashing might be the best way to go." Skye found this plan exponentially more funny than I did.
"You want to crash the wedding?" she asked, her face taking in my own like I had told her that I shifted into a unicorn. The smile that twisted my mouth wouldn't stay hidden.
"No, we are going to crash the bachelor party."