Page 3 of Lower World
The only one that cared for my safety for as long as I remembered was me. And Veronica, but she paid for it with her life. The thought almost sent me to my knees.
“You did some weird vampire juju to force me to sleep.” Undeterred that she had an enforcer of the Syndicate, a deadly creature poised to attack, in her room, she stomped closer and jabbed me with her forefinger in the middle of my forehead. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I’m sorry.” I had no idea for the life of me why I was apologizing. To a human.
“Oh,” Alice seemed taken aback by it as well as she blinked at me in confusion. I couldn’t help but notice she looked well rested, while a throbbing heartbeat was developing behind my eyes. “Well, I didn’t expect that.”
“What? That I would apologize?” Straightening, I rolled my shoulders to loosen up the kinks in my back from sitting on a plastic chair for hours. This headache was going to be a bitch. I could feel it coming.
“Yeah, usually people would try to lie so they manipulate you into thinking you are being an ass and they don’t have to feel guilty about whatever they did to you.” She avoided my gaze by straightening the threadbare quilt over the double bed before fluffing up the pillow. A cloud of dust puffed in her face, making her cough. “Holy shit, I’ll need to scrub my face with sandpaper to clean it after drooling all over that.” She threw the pillow in disgust.
“I told you I’ll never lie to you.” I was aware that I was having this ridiculous conversation because I was stalling. When I walked out through the door, I’d come face to face with Dominic and Johnathan, so I wanted to delay it as much as possible.
“Can Dominic do it, too?” Alice turned around so fast she toppled on top of the bed before scrambling back to her feet.
“What?” Lost in my dread, I didn’t understand what she was asking.
“Can Dominic force me to sleep, too?” Her eyes were so wide it was comical. “Because he is an asshole, and he would do it every time I annoy him and wants to shut me up.”
“He cannot. Alice …” My mind spun trying to think of a way to ask her not to repeat what I could do to anyone, but she spoke over me.
“Thank God.” She blew out a heavy sigh, her shoulders slumping. “I can just hear him now. You are annoying, human, sleep.” Deepening her voice, she mimicked the shifter perfectly.
I cracked a smile, and she giggled.
“Don’t let him hear you,” I muttered a moment too late.
“Since both of you are awake, we have things to do.” Dominic beat me to it, calling out from somewhere in the house. Damn shifter hearing. Panic tried to choke me, but I forced it down. Whatever happened, I’d deal with it as it came.
Alice blanched, her mouth hanging open. “He will rip my tongue out.” She breathed, and by that she made me laugh despite the dread churning in my stomach.
“He will not hurt you, Alice. The shifter might be grumpy as hell, but he is not a ruthless killer.” I sure hoped my words were true, for both our sakes.
“Says Wonder Woman, who can break him in half. If you forgot, I’m the human.” She hissed and jabbed a thumb at the center of her chest. “I can’t hold an entire roof on my shoulders to save us all. He can snap me like a twig.”
“I will snap you in half if you don’t come out of there,” the shifter in question hollered from behind the closed door.
Alice gulped.
“Come on.” Ushering her in front of me, I guided her through the narrow hall toward the kitchen where I could hear Dominic moving around. “The longer he waits, the more he’ll prickle like a porcupine.”
“Are you trying to get me killed?” Alice dug her heels in, gawking at me over her shoulder. “Because let me tell you one thing about us humans. If our neck breaks, we don’t heal, Brooklyn. We die. Like caput, deader than dead. A corpse.”
“I’m aware what dead looks like.” Nudging her to move, I had to bite my lips so I didn’t smile.
I wasn’t sure Alice knew how refreshing she was to Dominic and me. In our world, no one spoke their mind the way she did. It was all measured words meant to manipulate, as she accused humans of doing earlier, or to make sure you didn’t give yourself away and offend someone so much it would cost you your life. I couldn’t decide what that said about my human friend. She was naïve, or she had no self-preservation. The third option was that she blindly trusted me with her life. That warmed the emptiness I felt in my chest after loosing Veronica yet it scared me, too. Or was I too jaded and broken to be able to understand Alice? What did it say about me that I was hiding things from those I said I trusted?
“You look like shit.” Alice’s comment snapped me out of my head.
Dominic glared at her as he dumped an omelet on a cracked plate. Another one was steaming on a second plate across from him on the small table pushed in one corner with three chairs around it. The kitchen was small to begin with, but with the shifter’s presence it looked claustrophobic. So I didn’t have to pay attention to him, I focused on a tilted cabinet door that had the top hinge broken and couldn’t close.
“Eat,” Dominic snapped at her, moving back to the old stove where a pan was spitting oil from the heat under it.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” Alice murmured under her nose as she darted for the chair to do what he asked.
“You say many things you shouldn’t say out loud, human.” I felt sorry for the eggs he was cracking in the pan.
He crushed the shells in his fist and I had no doubt he imagined either Alice’s or my skull cracking between his fingers instead. Not knowing what to do with myself I shuffled my feet a foot from the door fidgeting like an idiot. For some dumb reason the shifter made me act like a youngling unable to control my actions in front of him.
