TEN
Though Elizabeth was inclined to find Maxwell to be an irritant in most cases, there were few times when he was more annoying than when he was making it harder for her to get even basic things done. It seemed absurd to say that someone of his stature was underfoot, and yet he was rather adept at being just that, like some sort of overgrown cat.
Well, she supposed that comparison was unkind. Yusuke was actually very good at staying out of the way.
All she wanted to do was pack up her bag to get ready for work later in the afternoon. That was all Elizabeth wanted to do. Was it so much to ask for? No, she was pretty sure it wasn’t. She was pretty sure that a bit of peace and quiet wasn’t so much to ask for either.
And yet, there was Maxwell, watching her calmly as she shoved her work gear into her battered leather backpack, tossing things in with a carelessness that was unusual even for her farm equipment.
He was silent at first, and Elizabeth wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that he was content to just stare at her in silence. Not that she actually wanted to talk to him, but it would have been better than the way the hair on the back of her neck stood up, as if he was going to lunge and gobble her down like a lamb cutlet.
Eventually, though, he began to speak. It was sort of inane at first, as if he just wanted her to relax.
“Are you always this enthusiastic about getting ready for work?” he wondered wryly, as if he was familiar enough with her to really make jokes like they were old friends. “Or have you just been thinking about what I said about you deserving a more glamorous job?”
“I’m plenty enthusiastic about work,” she deadpanned in reply, focusing on her bag with a single-minded sort of intent. “Just not when I’m being puppy-dogged.”
Maxwell huffed out a reluctant laugh. “Touché,” he offered. “I would say I’m offended, but I suspect that was the point.”
“Less offense, more discouragement,” she corrected, though it sounded more like she was simply agreeing with him. “I doubt this is that interesting for you either,” she added, changing tactics and attempting to appeal to his self-interest.
“Everything about you is interesting,” he returned, earnest and without even a moment of hesitation. It made Elizabeth’s guts clench up, and she had to fight back the urge to jump to her feet and flee.
Just a while longer, and Ambrose would be back, and he would take her to work, and by the time he picked her up again, Maxwell would be long gone for the evening. She just had to wait him out.
It got considerably harder to do that once he decided to change tactics, as he realized that the route of small talk and flattery wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He made a low, thoughtful noise almost like a hum, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but think that it boded badly. As if he had made some sort of choice he had been attempting to avoid up until then.
“I was at your house.” He sounded very matter-of-fact as he said it.
“We’ve been over this,” Elizabeth pointed out, her tone distracted. She didn’t even bother to look up at Maxwell, her attention still fixed on her phone. “We don’t really need to go over it again.”
“I don’t just mean the fight,” he replied, and slowly Elizabeth looked up at him, her eyes gradually widening. “I mean a few nights later, when you left again, and a few nights after that.”
The world seemed to grind to a halt, and Elizabeth half expected to be flung out into space like she was on a malfunctioning tilt-a-whirl. That didn’t happen, of course, and after a moment, she managed to get her jaw to work, forcing words out. Well, forcing a word out.
“Why?” Her voice felt and sounded like it was echoing down a distant tunnel, tinny and small. “What did you need from there?”
“You,” he answered simply, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. “I saw you during the fight. I nearly took a bite out of you actually, which was a horrible lack of foresight on my part, and I’m very glad I didn’t get a chance to.”
“But why me?” she demanded, her voice turning shrill. “What do I have to do with anything? We don’t even know each other!”
“You were rescued by an uninvolved bear in the middle of that mess!” He almost sounded like he was praising her, and for a moment Elizabeth felt ill. “How could I not be fascinated?” he asked, and by then he had his hands wrapped around her shoulders. “I knew I had to know more. I knew I needed you. I hadn’t been a human in years, and I turned back just for you!”
“It’s not like I asked you to,” she snapped, yanking herself out of his grip as she rapidly back-pedaled several paces, stopping only when she got to the stairs that led down from the porch.
“Of course you didn’t,” he agreed easily enough. “You didn’t know me. But now—”
“Now,” Elizabeth cut him off, “you can fuck off before I have you hauled off for harassment!”
Maxwell’s expression blanked for a moment, before it slowly turned stormy. “I wouldn’t recommend that,” he replied, his tone carefully neutral. “It wouldn’t go well for whoever showed up to haul me away, and I know you would feel badly if anyone else were to get hurt on your behalf.”
“Then, just leave before it needs to come to that!” She threw her hands up as she said it, nearly shouting by then.
Maxwell rolled his eyes, and in that moment, Elizabeth knew she wasn’t going to be able to simply walk out of the situation.
Maxwell cleared the space between them in three rapid steps and caught her with an arm around her neck. It tightened as she thrashed, and in moments, the world began to get hazy, spots swarming at the edges of her vision and gradually tunneling inwards. She struggled for as long as she could, until her vision blanked out entirely, and she gradually went lax. After that, she wasn’t aware of anything else around her.
*
She was awake only briefly. Maybe it couldn’t even be considered as being awake, considering how floaty and hazy the world seemed around her. She didn’t know where she was, but it smelled like gasoline and leather, and it was very dark. She could hear a rumbling noise, steady and constant, but she couldn’t piece together the puzzle to make sense of it.
Nothing really made sense then. Everything seemed like it was floating just a bit too far out of reach, like reaching for seashells as they were swept away by the tide.
It didn’t take long before even that vague consciousness fled from her, and she drifted back into unconsciousness once again.
*
When Elizabeth woke up, everything was dark. She didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary, but she reached up to paw at her face just to make sure that she wasn’t wearing a blindfold or something like that. When all she felt was her own skin and hair, and nothing even remotely like cloth, it just confirmed that wherever she was, it was dark beyond compare. She sat up slowly, shuffling on all fours to make sure she wasn’t going to trip or land on something sharp in the pitch-black darkness.
Wherever she was, it wasn’t particularly large. Within a few moments, she had determined that all four walls were well within her arm’s reach from where she sat in the middle of the space. The room hardly seemed bigger than a closet. And while she had found a door, a brief investigation had proven that she wouldn’t be able to open it, as the knob refused to do more than shimmy slightly. She couldn’t say she was surprised. No one was going to throw her into a closet just to leave the door unlocked so she could swan on out of her own accord.
She felt her way around the closet, feeling carefully from one corner to another, until she had checked over every inch of the floor, and once that was handled, she carefully got to her feet and started to check every inch of the walls that she could reach, until she was positive that there was nothing in the closet other than her, and thus nothing she could try to use to heave the door open. She tried shoving her shoulder against it and kicking at it, but it held strong despite her best efforts, and she tested the knob and the hinges for any sort of weakness, succeeding only in almost tearing out one of her nails. The door wasn’t going to open any time soon, she decided, least of all from her influence from inside.
Finally, she heaved a sigh and sank back down to the floor, her back sliding down the wall until her legs were folded beneath her. She could keep trying to shove the door open to no avail just to be rebellious, but it wasn’t going to do anything for her except wear her out. And considering she didn’t know what else was coming, she wasn’t particularly keen on tiring herself out when she may very well need to act in a hurry later.
She supposed she should have been scared. It would have made sense. She had been captured and locked up in a closet, and she had no idea where she was and only a vague idea of what her kidnapper wanted. It would have been perfectly logical for her to be terrified out of her mind. In fact, the fact that she wasn’t was probably cause for at least some concern.
But she couldn’t bring herself to feel afraid. Nervous, yes. Of course she was. But the true fear was minimal. Maxwell had taken her from Ambrose’s house. Ambrose, Mara, and Yusuke would all realize she was gone in an instant, and lacking any foreign smells other than Maxwell’s, they would jump to the only available conclusion: that he was the one who had taken her. They would be hot on his trail in seconds, and they would find her. She knew they would. And when she thought about it like that, being afraid felt a little pointless. She wouldn’t deny that she was in danger, but she knew she would be out of harm’s way long before anything could happen.
With that in mind, she settled in to wait, making herself as comfortable as she could in the meantime.
*
There was a crack of light under the closet door at last, dim though it was, and Elizabeth sat up at attention as soon as it appeared. Whatever was going on, something was going to happen soon. She shuffled forward, pressing her ear to the door once she was close enough.
She could hear something walking around, though not with any sort of human gait. Instead, it walked with four legs, each footfall heavy. And they weren’t coming straight for the closet despite the fact that it had to smell like her, so that meant it was Maxwell. Elizabeth couldn’t really bring herself to feel surprised that he had given up his human form again the instant he got what he was after.
Soon enough, the paws passed again, and the dim light vanished. With a sigh, Elizabeth settled in to wait once again. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
*
With a jolt, Elizabeth woke up, looking around rapidly before her current situation came rushing back to her. Right, she was in a closet and couldn’t see anything. She could hear all sorts of things, though. At that moment, she could hear the sounds of scuffling from outside the tiny room, as if someone was trying to break the house down with determination and spite alone.
She shuffled forward and pressed an ear to the door again, but while she could hear all sorts of crashing sounds, she couldn’t actually make out what was going on. She had only a moment to listen before she heard the sound of cracking wood and something snarling, just before the closet door was wrenched open with a sound like snapping timbers. Elizabeth squealed and tipped forward, falling face first into someone’s knee, someone’s very bare knee.
“Graceful,” Yusuke drawled, before he turned away and shifted back to his cat form. He gave himself a shake and sprang away, towards where the front door had been until a moment ago, assuming its abrupt loss was the cause of the sound of cracking wood.
Elizabeth blinked after him, before she hurriedly got back to her feet and darted over to the doorless doorway. She peered outside carefully, watching Yusuke bound away from the house. Slowly, she looked around, finding the door and enormous splinters on the porch, and she stepped over the mess carefully as she made her way out of the house.
She still wasn’t actually sure where she was. She wasn’t sure how long she had been unconscious, so she had no way of knowing how long Maxwell had traveled once he had her. It looked like, wherever the house was, it was still somewhere rural, but she didn’t know if that meant they were still reasonably close to home, or if she had been dragged so far from home that they had passed through the closest city and out the other side. She supposed it didn’t really matter, though. Either way, the cavalry had arrived, and they would see her safely home once Maxwell was handled.
Speaking of the cavalry…
Elizabeth followed the sounds of snarling around the side of the house, until she could see Ambrose’s hulking form, along with Yusuke and Mara. The three of them were circled loosely around an enormous wolf. Despite the fact that he was out numbered and outmatched, he didn’t seemed to have any plans of giving in, as he kept turning from one to the other to the other, teeth bared.
Ambrose, Mara, and Yusuke seemed unintimidated, to say the least.
For a long moment, no one moved, save for a few shuffling paces to one side or the other, but the growling was like a constant rumble, as if someone had found a way to miniaturize a thunderstorm.
And then, all at once, the stare off seemed to shatter, and almost as one, Ambrose, Yusuke, and Mara lunged.