A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 59 The Hunt 3

When the salad was done, she wiped his mouth softly with a napkin, gazing at him intently. His eyes had finally adjusted to the sunlight streaming through the open door, enabling him to see the stillness in her gaze again. Enabling him to look around the room a bit closer.

He guessed there were at least fifty cages in the small shed, of all sizes and shapes. They were all handmade, rough constructs woven out of wicker and bamboo, tied together with some type of red, shiny rope. And in every cage, there was an animal. As he looked at them, as his nose began to sort through the scents in the room, he understood a little more why he had been so consumed with panic when he had woken.

The room was filled to the rafters with the unique scent of pain. Of suffering. He glanced around quickly, cataloging what he was seeing. Every animal in the cages was in some way wrapped in a bandage or splint.

The girl was watching him scan the room, and when his eyes flicked back to hers, she smiled gently at him.

"See? I told you I don't hurt wild things. I only care for them."

Callin risked speaking, now that she was addressing him directly.

"They were wounded somehow and you took them in? You care for their wounds?"

She nodded. "Yes. They were all wounded when they crossed The Silver Line. So I took them here. Here I practice my healing arts. I care for them."

Callin wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. "What silver line? How do they get wounded?" Trying to keep her talking. Hoping that the water and the salad would bring his strength back. He had no doubt that he would be able to break the handcuffs, as long as his strength would come back. He just needed time.

"The Silver Line in the woods. I go there and I bring my binoculars and look for little wounded wild things. Sometimes I find some, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I even dance along the line. And once in a while I even step into it. But that hurts. But that's ok because The Silver Line brought me you." She said happily.

Callin wasn't sure if she was so mind-broken that she was incapable of really communicating anything of relevance. But then his thoughts wandered to the first time he had seen the psychic perimeter ward that Jacob had surrounded the mansion lands with. To his psychic attuned eyes, it had actually looked like a faint, silver line hanging in the air. Like a ghostly veil, or a thin ghostly wall. And he remembered that feeling of icy tendrils dragging at his thoughts, at his very core, when he had stepped through it. He had crossed that line recently, on his headlong flight through the woods. Jacob had extended his psychic wards far indeed.

Callin felt his stomach twist and grumble at him, complaining about the salad teaser. He needed real food, not just rabbit food. He needed a big juicy steak or a cheeseburger. It would make his strength come back quickly. He could feel it, his power and his strength a sluggish river just wakening inside of him.

"I'm gonna have to bring more salad, maybe some fruit and bread. You are a hungry wolf!" The girl said with a giggle, hearing his stomach growling still. She was crouching so close to him that her hair was brushing his bare chest, a soft, tickling sensation he was trying, and failing, to ignore.

He was trying to piece it together. The psychic ward Jacob had surrounded the mansion lands with was hurting animals? And apparently this girl? He wondered if she was already insane when she found what she called The Silver Line, or if it had fractured her mind.

"I need a hamburger or a steak or something. And some clothes." Callin stated, meeting her eyes with his own. Trying to hold her flighty attention long enough to impress on her how important this was.

She scowled down at him, her big, dark eyes flashing. "No. No creature must die for your pleasure."

Callin blinked at her, then remembered the scents that clung to her clothes. The salad. Even her pale complexion. She was a vegetarian. It made sense, her commitment to helping creatures. She couldn't eat them if she was a healer by nature.

"You're a healer by nature. You don't eat meat. I'm a predator by nature. Remember my fangs? I eat to survive, not for pleasure." He said, trying to show her that he understood her, and trying to get her to understand him.

She stood up as her cell phone started to buzz in her backpack, pulling it around in front of her so she could dig around inside. Callin felt like he had lost her attention already as she peered intently at the screen, then began tapping at an amazing pace at it.

"What's your name? I'm Callin." He said, hoping to get her to focus on him. Hoping to still convince her to bring him some real food. Hoping to get her to see him as a person.

She looked up quickly, that same unusual, bird-sharp move he had seen earlier. "Names. Words. Sounds in the air. Teardrops falling, pain in the air. Raindrops calling, rain without a care. Pain. Words are pain. Shh, Wolf. You are my Wolf. You'll always be there."

After this strange, poetic litany, she bent her head back to her cell phone and resumed texting, almost all ten fingers flying over the screen. Callin sighed. He had heard a fractured mind resort to rhyming years ago. It was a memory filled with pain, and not one he wanted to dwell on at the moment.

"You can call me Layla." She said without lifting her eyes from her phone.

Then, she lifted her eyes and looked down at him. He was spread-eagled on the mattress, his nearly naked body bathed in the warm, morning sunlight from the open door. The angle of the light enhanced the ripple of hard muscle, his lithe, animal-like build giving him the appearance of some otherworldly creature to her eyes.

"Oh, you truly are beautiful! I can't wait to show you to my friends!" She said, engaging the camera in her cell phone and lifting it up, framing her shot.

Callin gaped at her, then turned his face away as he felt his cheeks heat up. He couldn't believe he was having his picture taken when he was like this. By some tiny, stunningly beautiful pixie of a girl who was utterly insane. Who was planning on sharing the picture with her friends, no less.

She laughed at his blushing cheeks, crouching next to him and lying one warm hand on his chest, making him twitch in surprise.

"A bashful Wolf! So sweet. My Wolf forever." She said softly, leaning towards him as her eyelids lowered.

Callin felt her lips brush his, her scent invading his mind through her nearness, through the intensity of her blood song. Even with his eyes shut he felt like he could see her, like he could see the blazing life force in her without needing his eyes. Her lips were insistent, her scent, her nearness, crushing his already weakened control. He felt himself reacting helplessly, felt himself kissing her back, almost as if he were looking at his own body from a great distance away. Almost as if she were draining his own life force.

They both jumped when her cell phone rang suddenly, filling the woodshed with its harsh, electric song.

She quickly stepped outside before she answered it, yet Callin still heard her worried exclamation.

"What!? I'll be there in a few minutes! Tell her to hold on!"

Then he sighed with relief as he heard her footsteps racing away.