Moonlight's Ambassador (Aileen Travers Book 3)(87)

Movement shifted behind her.

"Watch out!" I cried as Theo appeared, a tire iron in his hand. She started to turn when he brought it down hard on her head, the crack of her skull loud in the sudden silence, his face a murderous mask.

Lisa dropped to the ground unconscious, blood pouring from the wound on her head. Theo panted above her, the tire iron clutched in his hand.

"Bitch," he spat, throwing the tire iron to the ground. "You want to get soft; you can join them in their fate."

He grabbed his sister by the feet, dragging her across the clearing to a tree. There, he sat her up before stalking back out of view.

I hissed at her. "Lisa, wake up. You need to shake this off. Get up now."

The crunch of snapping branches alerted me of his return, and I fell silent again, dropping my head back to the dirt as I played unconsciousness. I watched through cracked eyes as he took a bungie cord and wrapped it around her feet before doing the same with her hands. Next, he took a chain and finished tying her to the tree. The same aura that had been on Caroline's cage and my chains in the shack covered the silver he used on Lisa.

Finished securing his sister, he made his way back over to me, checking the chains that still tied me to the ground. I feigned sleep, not wanting him to know I was awake lest he decide to fix that. My bonds must have passed his inspection because he aimed a kick into my side, one that had me fighting not to grunt or groan—the bastard had a pretty sharp kick—before he wandered out of view again.

I waited several moments, listening before I lifted my head and looked around as I took better stock of the place where I'd been staked out. I was in a small clearing on mostly flat land, trees all around. They were young trees as evidenced by the thick underbrush that surrounded me. To be honest, my new accommodations didn't tell me much. I could have been anywhere in Ohio.

Lisa was still unconscious against her tree. I scanned the clearing as far as I could with my limited mobility, my gaze coming to a stop as a pair of bare feet came into view.

I released the unconscious breath I'd been holding at the sight of Caroline slumped, boneless against the ground. Unlike me she wasn't tied face-down, her arms held immobile by stakes in the ground. She lay on her side, her face slack in sleep, the pinched, tight look from earlier gone as she rested, blissfully unaware of our current predicament. Looking closer, I could just glimpse something barely visible around her neck—a collar with a silver chain attached to it running from a loop in the front to wrap around the base of a tree. It was thinner than the chain he'd used on Lisa, probably so it could snap when the demon wolf made her appearance.

I dropped my face back into the dirt, trying to ignore the discomfort in my body. This wasn't good. Nobody knew where we were, and given where I estimated the sun to be, I figured it was already late afternoon. There were four to five hours until the sun set.

I tugged on my arms again, testing the strength of my bindings. My right arm didn't budge, but the left had some give in it that hadn't been there before. I turned my head, trying to get a better look at that arm, rotating the wrist so I could see it better. It looked like Lisa had undone one of the loops.

Perhaps if I could loosen it just a little more, I could slip free. My wrist twisted and jerked as I tried to fight loose, my heart leaping every time there was the slightest give. It wasn't much. Soon the skin around my wrist turned bright red as the rope and chain bit into my skin, abrading it until blood oozed from the marks.

The afternoon slid by as I struggled to free myself, each moment ticking by with an inevitable finality. When I couldn't summon the strength to continue, I rested for a moment, my eyes sliding shut as the sun sapped more and more of my strength.

Forget the fact that I was tied down. Given my current state, I wasn't sure I could make it more than a few steps once I did manage to free myself. The sun felt more taxing than it had just a few days ago. Could be because it was at its strongest and most intense, or maybe it was the fact that I'd been lying out here exposed for an indeterminate length of time. Maybe I was just weaker despite the top me up from Liam and Thomas. Torture tended to do that to a person. If I survived, I'd have to ask Liam.

I gritted my teeth, tugging and pulling on my arm as my hand slipped an inch, and then two out of the loop. The skin at my wrists tore further, the blood making the task a bit easier. With one last final wrench, I pulled my hand free before collapsing face first back into the dirt, the last of my energy sapped.

My eyes drifted shut as I promised myself a break. Just a minute, and then I'd go back to working myself free. My body relaxed into the earth's cool embrace as I drifted, half aware of the sun blazing down on me and half dreaming.

I was on a rocky beach, the shoreline a mass of rugged cliffs behind me, and the water a dark, stormy gray before me. This weird half-existence tugged at my focus, and for a moment I felt myself slipping back into my body, the sun an insidious thing above me.

"Aileen." Liam's deep voice pulled me back into the dream. I looked over to find his gaze steady on me, his hair a mess as if he'd been running his hands through it, and his clothes in a state of disarray. Normally, he was well dressed, his outward appearance another facet of the cool confidence and seductive vampire that was Liam. At the moment, his shirt and pants looked like he'd been wearing them for days, wrinkled and mussed. His skin was sallow, the skin under his eyes bruised and delicate-looking.