Stolen

by Kelley Armstrong

"I'm sorry."

  "After that, I was the heir by default, much to my father's chagrin. If he hadn't had a stroke after my brother's death, he'd probably have taken the reins back rather than hand them to a woman. Like I said, old company, old family. A daughter's place is to marry well and bring fresh blood to the board of directors. Technically, I run the company, but in reality I'm only a figurehead, a woman still reasonably young and attractive enough to trot out at major functions, show the world how progressive the Bauer family is. CEOs, VPs, they do all the work. They think I can't handle it. It doesn't matter if I'm twice as smart as my brother was. Twice as ambitious. Twice as driven. But you must know what that's like."

  "Me? I don't really--"

  "The only female werewolf? A bright, strong-willed young woman invading the last bastion of male exclusivity? Come on. This Pack of yours. They treat you like some kind of pet, don't they?"

  "Jer--They aren't like that."

  She was quiet. I glanced up from my breakfast to see her watching me with a smile of satisfaction, as if I'd said exactly what she wanted to hear.

  "You get respect?" she asked.

  I shrugged, hoping it would wipe the satisfaction from her smile. It didn't. Instead she inched forward in her chair. Her eyes burned with the same intensity I'd seen yesterday when she'd asked me about my life.

  "You enjoy special status, don't you? The only female."

  "I wouldn't say that."

  She laughed. Triumph. "I've talked to that other werewolf, Elena. Patrick Lake. He knew every thing about you. You speak for the Pack leader. You intercede with outside werewolves on his behalf. You can even make decisions in his stead."

  "I'm just a glorified mediator," I said. "When it comes to mutts, I do more housecleaning than policy-making."

  "But you are entrusted with the power to speak for the Alpha. Immense power in your world. The trusted aide of the most important werewolf and the lover of the second most important. All because you're the only female."

  She smiled as if unaware she'd just insulted me. I wanted to tell her that Clay and I fell in love before I became "the only female werewolf" and that I'd earned any status I had with the Pack. But I wouldn't rise to the bait. I didn't need to. She only paused for breath before continuing.

  "Do you know what's the worst thing about my life, Elena?"

  I thought of rhyming off a list, but doubted she'd appreciate the effort.

  "Boredom," she said. "I'm tied to a job no one will let me do, stuck in a life no one will let me lead. I've tried to take advantage of it, the spare time, the money. Mountain-climbing, alpine skiing, deep-sea diving. You name it. I've done it. The riskier and more expensive, the better. But do you know what? I'm not happy. I'm not fulfilled."

  "Huh." A head ache knotted behind my eyes.

  Bauer leaned forward. "I want more."

  "It must be difficult--"

  "I deserve more," she said.

  Before I could try another response, she stood and sailed from the cell like a prima donna after her greatest performance.

  "What the hell was that about?" I muttered after she'd left.

  The head ache tightened. Damn it, I was a mess. Trampled spine, punctured stomach, and now a head ache. I thought about Bauer. Enough of your problems, lady, let's talk about mine. I chuckled to myself, then gasped as the laugh sent splinters of pain coursing through my skull. I rubbed the back of my neck. The pain only worsened. When I lay on the bed, the light overhead scorched my eyes. Damn it. I didn't have time for a head ache. I had so much to do. Finish breakfast, shower, scrub the bloodstains off my shirt, plot how to escape this hellhole, and foil the villians' evil plans. A very busy timetable for someone confined to an underground cage.

  I forced myself up from bed. The sudden movement felt like needles stabbing through my eyes. Tension head ache? All things considered, I was entitled to one. Rubbing the back of my neck again, I headed for the shower.

  "Elena?"

  I turned and looked around. No one was there.

  "Ruth?" I said, though the voice didn't sound like hers. It wasn't the way Ruth had communicated with me either. Ruth's voice had been audible. This one was more something I sensed or felt rather than heard.

  "Elena? Come on!"

  This time, I smiled. Though the voice was still a whisper, too faint to recognize, the exasperation was remarkably identifiable. Paige.

  I closed my eyes, prepared to reply, and realized I had no idea what I was doing. It wasn't like talking to Jeremy. With Jeremy, communication took place in a dream state, where I imagined I could both see and hear him. It sounded and felt like natural conversation. This didn't. Paige's summons was the proverbial "hearing voices in your head," and auditory delusions weren't part of my normal psychopathology. How did I answer back? I tried mentally forming a response and waited.

  "Come ... ena. Answer ... !"

  Okay, she couldn't hear me and I was losing her. I concentrated harder, picturing myself saying the words. Silence returned.

  "Paige?" I said, testing the words aloud. "Are you there?"

  No response. I called her again, mentally this time. Still nothing. The knot in my head loosened and I began to panic. Had I lost her? What if I couldn't do this? Damn it, concentrate. What had Ruth told me? Relax. Clear your head. My head was clear ... well, excepting the frustration zipping through my brain. Concentrate, concentrate. No good. The harder I tried, the more I feared I couldn't do it. Now I was stressed. And Paige was gone. I took a deep breath. Forget this. Go have a shower. Dress. Relax. She'd try again ... I hoped.

  Paige's second attempt came about two hours later. This time I was lying in bed, reading a boring magazine article and half asleep. It must have been the perfect telepathy environment. When I heard her call, I responded without thinking, answering in my head.

  "Good," she said. "... there."

  "I can barely hear you," I said.

  "That's ... you don't ... experience."

  Although I couldn't hear the full sentence, I could guess at the missing content. I couldn't hear her because I was new at this. The problem had nothing to do with her inexperience. Naturally.

  "... Ruth?"

  "She's okay."

  "Good." Louder, clearer, as if the reassurance added to the signal. "How about you? Are you okay?"

  "Surviving."

  "Good. Hold on then."

  "Hold--?"

  Too late. The signal disconnected. I was alone. Again. Damn her.

  Twenty minutes later. "Okay, I'm back."

  Paige. Another easy contact, probably because, once again, I wasn't expecting it.

  "You ready?" she asked.

  "For what?"

  The floor slid out from under me. I twisted to break my fall, but there was nothing there. No floor. No "me." The order to move came from my brain and went ... nowhere. I was pitched into complete blackness, but I didn't lose consciousness. My brain went wild, issuing commands, move this, do that, look, sniff, listen, scream. Nothing. There was nothing to respond. I couldn't see, hear, speak, move, or smell. Every synapse in my brain exploded with panic. Absolute animal panic.

  "Elena?"

  I heard something! My mind scrambled back to sanity, clinging to that one word like a life raft. Who said that? Paige? No, not Paige. A man's voice. My heart leaped with recognition before my brain even figured it out.

  "Jeremy?"

  I said the word, didn't think it, but said it and heard it. Yet my lips didn't move and the voice I heard wasn't my own. It was Paige's.

  I saw light. A blurred figure in front of me. Then a mental pop and every thing became clear. I was sitting in a room. Jeremy stood in front of me.

  "Jer?"

  My words. Paige's voice. I tried standing. Nothing happened. I looked down and saw my hands resting on the arms of a chair, but they weren't my hands. The fingers were shorter, soft, bedecked with silver rings. I followed the line of my arm. Brown curls spilled over my shoulder, lying atop a dark green lily-o
f-the-valley-print sundress. A sundress? This was definitely not my body.

  "Elena?" Jeremy crouched in front of me--or not me. He frowned. "Did this work? Are you there, sweetheart?"

  "Jer?" I said again.

  At the bottom of my field of vision, I saw my--the--lips move, but I felt nothing. Even my field of vision itself was skewed, the angle all wrong, like I was watching the scene through an oddly placed camera. I tried to shift upward, add some height to my position, but nothing happened. The sensation was unsettling to the point of panic. Was this what it was like to be paralyzed? My heart fluttered in my chest. I didn't feel it pounding, only perceived it in my mind, some gut-level awareness of my body's normal responses to fear, knowing that my heart should be fluttering, even if it wasn't.

  "What--" I began. The voice was so alien in my ears that I had to stop. Swallowed. Mentally swallowed, I mean. If my throat moved, I wasn't aware of it. "Where am I? Who am I? I can't move."

  Jeremy's face clouded. "Didn't she--?" He muttered something under his breath, then started again, calm. "Paige didn't explain?"

  "Explain what? What the hell is going on?"

  "She's transported you to her body. You can see, hear, speak, but you won't have any sort of mobility. She didn't explain--?"

  "No, she dumped me into limbo and I woke up here. Showing off."

  "I heard that," a distant voice in my head said. Paige.

  "She's still here," I said. "There. Somewhere. Eavesdropping."

  "I'm not eavesdropping," Paige said. "You have my body. Where am I supposed to go? I wasn't showing off. I knew you'd want to speak to Jeremy, so I wanted to surprise you. It should have been a smooth transition, but I guess your lack of experience--"

  "My lack of experience?" I said.

  "Ignore her," Jeremy said.

  "I heard that," Paige said, quieter.

  "How are you?" Jeremy asked. He laid his hand on mine. I saw it, but couldn't feel it and felt a pang of loss.

  "Lonely," I said, surprising myself. I lightened my tone. "Not for lack of company, though. Seems I'm quite the popular 'guest' around this place. But it's--I'm--" I inhaled. Pull yourself together, Elena. That was the last thing Jeremy needed, to hear me on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Where had this come from?

  "I'm tired," I said. "Not sleeping well, not eating well, no exercise. So I'm touchy. Cabin fever, I guess. Physically, I'm fine. They aren't torturing me, beating me, starving me. Nothing like that. I'll be okay."

  "I know you will," he said softly. He pulled up a chair. "Do you feel up to talking about it?"

  I told him about Bauer, Matasumi, rattled off some details on the guards and the other staff like Xavier, Tess, and Carmichael, giving him a rough picture of the situation. I explained as much as I could about the setup of the compound, then about the other captives, remembering Paige's silent presence and stopping myself before talking about Savannah.

  "I'm only interested in getting you out," Jeremy said when I'd finished. "We can't worry about the others."

  "I know."

  "How are you holding up?"

  "Fi--"

  "Don't say 'fine,' Elena."

  I paused. "Is Clay ... around? Maybe I could talk to him ... Just for a few minutes. I know we have to keep this short. No time for socializing. But I'd like--if I could ..."

  Jeremy was quiet. Inside my head, Paige muttered something. Alarm zinged through me.

  "He's okay, isn't he?" I asked. "Nothing's happened--"

  "Clay's fine," Jeremy said. "I know you'd like to speak to him, but it might not be ... a good time. He's ... sleeping."

  "Sleep--?" I began.

  "I am not sleeping," a voice growled from across the room. "Not voluntarily, at least."

  I looked up to see Clay in the doorway, hair tousled, eyes dimmed by sedatives. He lumbered into the room like a bear awaking from hibernation.

  "Clay," I said, heart tripping so fast I could barely get his name out.

  He stopped and fixed me with a scowl. My next words jammed in my throat. I swallowed them and tried again.

  "Causing trouble again?" I asked, forcing a smile into my voice. "What did you do to make Jeremy drug you up?"

  His scowl hardened with something I'd seen in his face a million times, but never when he looked at me. Contempt. His lips twisted, and he opened his mouth to say something, then decided I wasn't worth the effort and turned his attention to Jeremy.

  "Cl--" I began. My gut was solid rock. I couldn't breathe, could barely speak. "Clay?"

  "Sit down, Clayton," Jeremy said. "I'm talking to--"

  "I can see who you're talking to." Another twist of the lips. The briefest glare in my direction. "And I don't know why you're wasting your time."

  "He thinks you're me," Paige whispered.

  I knew that. Deep down, I knew that, but it didn't help. I saw the way he looked at me, and it didn't matter who Clay thought was there, he was looking at me. Me.

  "It's not Paige," Jeremy said. "It's Elena. She's communicating through Paige."

  Clay's expression didn't change. Didn't soften. Not even for a second. He turned his stare to me and I saw the disdain there, stronger now, hard and sharp.

  "Is that what she told you?" he said. "I know you want attention, Paige, but this is low. Even for you."

  "It's me, Clay," I said. "It's not Paige."

  He sneered, and I saw every thing there that I'd never wanted to see in Clay's face when he looked at me, every drop of contempt he had for humans. I'd had nightmares of this, seeing him turn that look on me. I'd woken sweating, blood pounding, absolutely terrified, the way no childhood nightmare had ever frightened me. Now I looked at him and something snapped. The world went black.

  CHAPTER 21

  REBIRTH

  I awoke on the floor of my cell. I didn't get up. Had I been dreaming? I wanted to believe it, then chided myself for such a silly wish. Of course, I didn't want it to have been a dream. I wanted to believe I'd talked to Jeremy, conveyed all my observations to him, set the wheels of rescue in motion. Who cared about Clay? Okay, I cared. Cared more than I wanted to most times, but I had to put this thing in perspective. Clay hadn't looked at me that way. At least, he hadn't intended the look for me. Obviously he wasn't getting along with Paige, and frankly, that didn't surprise me. Where humans were concerned, Clay wasn't Mr. Congeniality at the best of times, and certainly not when said human was an overconfident, outspoken witch young enough to be one of his students. I lay on the floor and told myself all this, and it didn't help a bit. I felt ... My mind clamped shut before the last word escaped, but I pried it back open. Admit it. I had to admit it, if only to myself. I felt rejected.

  So what, right? I felt rejected. Big deal. But it was a big deal. Too big a deal. The second I owned up to the emotion, it engulfed me. I was a child again, taking the hand of a new foster parent, clasping it tight and praying I'd never have to let go. I was six, seven, eight years old, faces flipping before me like pages in a photo album, names I'd forgotten but faces I'd recognize if I saw them for a split second on a passing train. I heard voices, the drone of a television, my small body held tight against the wall, barely daring to breathe for fear of being overheard, listening to them talk, waiting for "The Conversation." The Conversation. Admitting to each other that it wasn't working out, that I was "more than they bargained for." Convincing themselves they'd been tricked by the agency, fooled into taking a blond-haired, blue-eyed doll, a broken doll. They hadn't been tricked. They hadn't listened. The agencies always tried to warn them about me, about my past. When I was five, I'd seen my parents killed in a car accident. I'd sat on the country road all night, trying desperately to wake them up, crying for help in the dark. No one found me until morning, and after that, well, I wasn't quite right after that. I withdrew into my mind, emerging only to throw fits of rage. I knew that I was spoiling things for myself. Every time a new foster family took me in, I swore to myself I'd make them fall in love with me; I'd be the perfect
little angel they expected. But I couldn't do it. All I could do was sit in my head, watch myself scream and rant, wait for the final rejection, and know it was my fault.

  I never tell that story. I hate it. Hate, hate, hate it. I refuse to let my past explain my present. I grew up, I grew stronger, I overcame it. End of story. From the time I was old enough to realize that my problems weren't my fault, I'd decided not to shift the blame to all those foster families, but to get rid of it. Throw it out. Move on. I could imagine no fate worse than becoming someone who tells the story of her dysfunctional childhood to every stranger on the bus. If I did well in life, I wanted people to say I did well, not that I did well "all things considered." My past was a private obstacle, not a public excuse.

  Clay was the only person I'd ever told about my childhood. Jeremy knew bits and pieces, the parts Clay felt necessary to impart in those early days when Jeremy had to deal with me as a newly turned werewolf. I'd met Clay at the University of Toronto, where I was an undergrad with an interest in anthropology and he was giving a short lecture series. I fell for him. Fell hard and fast, not impressed by his looks or his bad-boy attitude, but by something I can't explain, something in him I hungered for, something I needed to touch. When he favored me with his attention, I knew that was something special, that he didn't open up to people any more than I did. As we grew closer, he told me about his own screwed-up childhood, glossing over details he couldn't impart without revealing his secret. He told me about his past, so I told him about mine. As simple as that. I was in love and I trusted him. And he betrayed that trust in a way I'd never completely recovered from, as I would never recover from that endless night on the country road. I hadn't forgiven Clay. We'd moved past talk of forgiveness. It wasn't possible. And he'd never asked for it. I don't think he expected it. Over time, I'd learned to stop expecting myself to be able to give it.

  Clay's motive for biting me was inexplicable. Oh, he'd tried to explain it. Many times. He'd brought me to Stonehaven to meet Jeremy, and Jeremy had been planning to split us up, and Clay had panicked and bit me. Maybe it was true. Jeremy admitted he'd intended to end Clay's relationship with me. But I don't believe that Clay's bite had been unplanned. Maybe the timing was, but I think in some deep part of his psyche, he'd always been ready to do it if the need ever arose, if I ever threatened to leave him. So what happened after he bit me? Did we make up and move on? Not on your life. I made him pay and pay and pay. Clay had made my life hell, and I returned the favor tenfold. I'd stay at Stonehaven for months, even years, then leave without a moment's notice, refusing all contact, cutting him from my life completely. I'd sought out other men for sex and, once, for something more permanent. How did Clay react to this? He waited for me. He never looked for revenge, never tried to hurt me, never threatened to find someone else. I could be gone for a year, walk back into Stonehaven, and he'd be waiting as if I'd never left. Even when I'd tried to start a new life in Toronto, I'd always known that, if I needed him, Clay would be there for me. No matter how badly I fucked up or how badly fucked up I was, he'd never leave me. Never turn his back on me. Never reject me. And now, after more than a decade of learning that lesson, all it took was one look from him, one single look, and I was curled up on the floor, doubled over in pain. All the logic and reasoning in the world didn't change how I felt. As much as I wanted to believe I'd overcome my childhood, I hadn't. I probably never would.