Blind Salvage: A Rylee Adamson Novel(19)

She stared straight ahead. “Yes, ma’am.”
A few minutes later, we were pulling into ‘The Landing Pad,’ Dox’s bar and hotel. I sat up, slowly, to see that Liam and Alex were already there. Alex was panting hard, his overly long tongue hanging out, and as soon as the truck door opened, I could hear him complaining.
“Too fast, Boss. Feets hurt like hell.” He shoved one of his paws under Liam’s nose, as if to make his point, and Liam bit him. Not hard, but enough to make Alex back down. The submissive werewolf slunk over to the truck, his eyebrows drawn sharply over his golden eyes. “Damn bossy Boss.”
Dox opened the doors and held his hand out to me. “Louisa said you were ok to walk once we got here, just nothing else.”
Good, at least I had that going for me. I put my hand in his and he helped me down out of the truck. Nothing hurt yet, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t soon enough. I clutched one arm around my middle, to brace my ribs.
Sure, I would heal fast, probably be a hundred percent in two or three days. That didn’t mean during that time things wouldn’t hurt, or that I couldn’t re-injure myself.
Dox helped me into one of the spare motel rooms set off the side of the Landing Pad, and Liam slipped inside, still in wolf form.
“Dox, would you look after Pamela and Alex for a bit?” I lowered myself onto the bed and kicked off my boots.
“No problem. They get in my hair and I’ll just feed them some ogre beer.” He winked at me, and then closed the door behind him as he left. Thank the gods for loyal friends I could trust.
Liam shifted as soon as the door was shut. Closing in on midday, and all I wanted to do was sleep, but first I had to hear his side of the story.
“What happened at the castle?” I peered up at him as he slid my jeans down over my hips. My shirt was cut up the middle so that was easy enough for him to slide off, and in any other circumstance, my blood would have been pounding at the care he was taking with me, his fingers brushing lightly against my skin here and there. As it was, I was just grateful to have someone looking out for me for once.
“The red caps surrounded us, and Pamela said she was right behind me. I got you down the stairs, realized she wasn’t with us, and went back for her.”
He pulled back the covers and helped me into bed, then crawled in with me, pressing his body along the length of mine, laying his arm across my hip to avoid my ribs. Heat from his body wrapped around me, burrowing under my skin, and with it came a sense of calm.
He tucked his mouth close to my ear. “She had killed all but two of them, and they had her pinned down, unconscious. I killed them, then brought her down to you.”
I breathed in his smell, fought the drowsiness that pulled at me. “And at Louisa’s place?”
A rumbling growl escaped him. Maybe Pamela and Crystal weren’t the only ones who needed to learn some control. This was not good; I needed them to be able to work together.
“She wrapped me up so I couldn’t move.”
I waited for him to say more, and when he didn’t, I didn’t dig. There was no point. If he could move past the incident at the house, it wouldn’t matter what had happened. We were a family, and I had to believe that above all else, Liam and Pamela would hold to that.
Now if I could just figure out who had wanted to keep us in London, and who had saved our asses on this side of the veil. Then I could relax. Or at least know whose ass to kick, and whose to—no, not kiss. Thank, who to thank.
Liam’s breathing evened out in a matter of minutes, a tactic I’d never really learned. As drowsy as I was, there was too much going on inside of my head, and too many questions left unanswered for me to just ignore them.
Of course, when Giselle materialized on the rickety chair across from me, I suspected I was asleep, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.
“Rylee, you are sinking fast. You know that, don’t you?” She leaned back in the chair, looking as solid as if she were really there. There were subtle differences though. Her hair was no longer white, but had darkened to the dirty blonde I remembered from pictures long before I’d met her. More than that, her eyes were clear of the madness she’d suffered from for so long. She laced her fingers, tucking them under her chin. “You cannot run from what you are.”
“Are you a ghost, or am I sleeping?” I asked softly, not wanting to wake Liam.
Giselle smiled. “You are awake. I heard your call for me, when your heart broke. But I couldn’t cross the water. It is a barrier to much of the supernatural.”
I wanted to get up, to reach out to her, but I knew that as a ghost, she would be immaterial. A tear slipped from my eye, and I scrubbed it away. Probably just a result of the herbs Louisa stuffed into me. “I thought you’d abandoned me.”