“Wow. That’s even more screwed up than I thought,” Emma said.
Finally having the strength to get up and stretch my tired arms and legs, I rose unsteadily to my feet; an arduous process due to all the muscle cramps I was experiencing. With a grimace I looked around again, and I noticed a water cooler on the other side of the bars, just close enough so that we could reach it.
I gestured towards it. “So they give us water. But what about food? And a bathroom?”
“They come down and bring us food,” Emma said. “And twice a day they blindfold us and take us upstairs to use the bathroom. Sometimes they even give us a towel and let us shower. The bathroom windows have bars on them, though, and there’s always someone right outside the door.”
“A few times they’ve even given me makeup,” Ana said. “I guess they want me to look as pretty as possible for when they give me to one of them. And I’ve overheard them talking about what they’ll need to do to me to change the way I look. They want me to start wearing glasses and dye my hair blonde.”
“Same,” Emma said. “Except they want me to dye my hair black. And they want to change my name to Emily.”
“They seem to pick new names for us that are pretty similar to our real names,” Ana remarked. “I guess it makes it easier for us to adapt that way.”
She had a point.
Seeing as I now knew that some of the police in Bakewell Springs were involved in the shifter’s conspiracy, I figured it would actually be fairly easy for the conspirators to get new identities for the women. New identification cards, bank accounts, driver’s licenses…they could all be faked with the help of the higher-ups.
“What do you do in here all day then?” I asked.
Ana shrugged. “Nothing. There’s nothing to do other than talk to each other.”
I sat down again, trying to wrap my mind around it all. I imagined how some of the kidnapped hikers must have been kept down here alone. The lack of activity and company must have driven them a bit crazy; it was no wonder that in the end they were so willing to cave in to the shifter’s demands and assimilate into the town. Anything to avoid being thrown in this hole again. Or worse, being killed. I wondered how many had died at the hands of the shifter conspirators.
“Do you know where Darren and Shane are?” I asked the two women.
Emma looked away, her eyes brimming with tears again, and Ana remained calm, but I could see the hurt in her eyes.
“They’re dead,” she said. “At least that’s what they told us. Men are useless to them, so they kill them straight away.”
I didn’t even know what to say. I’d never experienced the loss of a loved one like this, so I simply said I was sorry and then lapsed into silence.
The next few hours crawled by, and we tried to keep ourselves amused with conversation. Ana was a fiction writer, and she entertained us by telling us stories that she had written, but even as we listened and attempted to momentarily forget the situation we were in, the air was thick with tension and fear. None of us knew what was going to happen, or if we would survive our ordeal.
A while later, footsteps echoed above us, and another light was turned on elsewhere in the cellar we were trapped in. I looked up to see Sheriff Mills approaching us, and my eyes widened.
“You bastard,” I hissed, gripping the bars and practically spitting venom at him. “You too?”
“I’m sorry, Agent Peyton,” he said, regarding me with a cool stare. “You and Lyndon were getting too close. We couldn’t very well have had you two come and screw up our town traditions now, could we?”
“Where is Lyndon?” I demanded.
“He’s dead,” he replied. Just two words, and both of them felt like bullets in my chest as they hit me.
“No,” I said. “You’re lying. He’s going to come and find me. He already knows you’re all shifters, and he’ll figure out that you’re one of the bad ones eventually. I know Lyndon, and he’s coming for me.”
Truthfully, I had no idea if he would be able to find me. I remembered him telling me that he could catch the scent of other shifters and sniff them out, but he couldn’t hunt down regular humans. If he was out looking for me, he’d have no idea where to start. That’s if Mills was lying like I thought he was, and he was even still alive. My stomach twisted into knots at the thought of him being dead, but I wouldn’t believe it until I saw his body lying before me.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked Mills. He ignored me and rapped on the bars, attracting the attention of Emma and Ana, who had curled up in the corner, obviously hoping he would leave them alone.
“Time to use the bathroom, ladies,” he said. He whistled, and a few seconds later we were joined in the cellar by three other huge, powerful-looking men. Mills let them into the cage they were keeping us in, and two of them grabbed Emma and Ana and then blindfolded them before leading them out. The third held me back from escaping, and I slammed my hands against the bars again as the two women were led out of the cellar and upstairs.
“What, I can’t even use the bathroom?”
“You can later. But first there’s someone who wants to see you,” Mills said, his eyes crinkling around the sides with some sort of perverse amusement. “Come on in, Deputy!”
He turned around and left as Ted entered, and my stomach lurched at the sight of him.
“Myla,” he said, flashing a grin at me. God, how could he act so normally under the circumstances? Was everyone in this town legitimately insane?
“Ted,” I said through gritted teeth. “Why the hell are you doing this? And why the hell did you shoot Dora? It was you, wasn’t it?”
“She talked too much. And as for your first question, I think you already know why,” he said. “We need women. Used to be somewhere near thirty thousand people in this town, y’know? But that’s been going down every year since the boom ended. People were leaving in droves. Add to that the fact that for every girl born here, two boys are born, and we’ve got a bit of a problem.”
He paused, eyes travelling up and down my curves. “And it doesn’t matter what we do to try and encourage people to come. We’ve got the most beautiful land for miles, and for those who aren’t into nature, we’ve got other things to take their interest. They come, but they never stay.”
“Ever heard of online dating?” I asked, glaring up at him through the bars. “I’m sure that’d be a lot easier than kidnapping random women from the mountains! Or you could always move out of town yourself. There are plenty of other nice towns with lots of single women!”
He stepped closer to the bars, towering over me. “You better shut that pretty little mouth and get used to it, because if you keep trying to cause trouble, I won’t have any choice but to turn you into one of us. You know what it’s like to be turned as a human? I’ve seen it. It isn’t pretty. Weeks of fatigue and bone-splintering pain. And then there’s the matter of trying to figure out how to control your animal. You couldn’t handle it.”
He spat on the ground, and I shrank back. He’d finally said the one thing that could scare me into silence. After only having such a short period of time to come to terms with the existence of shifters, the last thing I wanted was to have to come to terms with being made into one of them as well.
I chewed on my lip before looking back up at him and speaking in an almost breathless whisper. “Why me, Ted? I know you all thought we were getting too close to the truth, but why are you keeping me here? Why not just kill me?”
The anger in his eyes dissipated, and seconds later he looked like the same sweet, small-town Deputy I’d met upon my arrival.
“Because I want to keep you here,” he replied, grabbing my hand through the bars. I immediately jerked away, but he kept talking, his voice almost melodic. “The others, they wanted you dead the minute we realized you were on to us. But I said no. I’ve wanted you since I first saw you, and I promised them I’d keep you under control if they allowed me to have you as my mate. I’ve waited a long time for a w
oman like you, Myla. All curves and feistiness. Fertile, too.”
His blue eyes wandered down my body again, coming to rest on my middle before traveling back up. “I know you’ve already been claimed. But you know what? I’m a nice guy. I can live with that. You’re mine now, Myla. Don’t you forget it.”
He turned to leave, and I called out after him. “I haven’t been ‘claimed’ by anyone! The only person who ‘owns’ me and my body is myself!”
He turned to me with a smile. “You really don’t know, do you? It’s all right, my sweet girl. You’ll find out soon enough.”
With that, he turned the lights off and left the cellar, and I stumbled my way over to the makeshift bed I’d originally woken up on. Emma and Ana were returned a few minutes later, and they brought me an apple and a bag of potato chips that had apparently been given to them by the guards upstairs.
“You should eat,” Ana said.
I shook my head and rolled over. I wasn’t hungry; all I wanted to do was sleep. Part of me desperately hoped this was all some sort of nightmare that I could just wake up from if I slept long enough. I finally fell asleep to the sound of Emma crying herself to sleep, and a solitary tear slid down my own cheek before I drifted off.
***
I didn’t know what time it was when I awoke, but Emma was already up and standing near the bars. I could barely make her out in the dim light, and I rubbed my eyes.
“Emma? What are you doing?”
“I thought I heard something,” she whispered, turning her head over her shoulder. “There it is again! Come over here.”
I joined her at the bars, and she was right. There was some sort of disturbance upstairs; crashes and bangs, and what sounded like deep growling as well.
“Has this ever happened before?” I asked. “It couldn’t be some sort of shifter ritual they are carrying out?”
She shook her head and turned her gaze upwards. “This has never happened. It’s usually pretty quiet. Something’s up.”
The banging suddenly got louder, and footsteps pounded down the stairs. I looked out of the bars in apprehensive silence, every hair on my arms standing up as goose bumps broke out across the map of my flesh, and out of the darkness stepped a strangely-familiar man. He looked vaguely like Lyndon, but it definitely wasn’t him.
“Myla?” he said, seeing me at the bars. I shrank back. “It’s all right,” he continued gently. “I’m Jack Lyndon. David’s brother. He called the Grey Division last night, and we just arrived.”
“But…how did you find me? And where’s David?” I asked, certain this had to be some sort of trap. Considering how mentally screwed up the shifters in this town were, I wouldn’t put it past them to play mind games with their victims in order to wear them down to subservience.
“He’s up there fighting them off,” he replied, his tone becoming increasingly urgent. “There’s a lot of them, and more keep arriving. He sent some of us out to find you. You need to come with me.”
His green eyes flared with yellow, and I saw my Lyndon in him more than ever. There was no way he was lying; he had to be his brother.
“Okay,” I whispered. “There’s two others in here with me.”
“Bring them too,” he said, glancing behind him to make sure he hadn’t been seen coming down into the cellar by any of the Bakewell Springs shifters. “Now stand back for a sec.”
Within seconds he had shifted, and I saw that he had an enormous wolf in him just like his brother. After slamming his powerful wolf body against the lock several times, it twisted and then broke. The barred door swung open, making way for us to escape.
“Come on!” Jack said after shifting back into his skin. “They’ll have heard us down here by now.”
We followed him up the stairs, and right away we could see the pandemonium that had broken out in the house we’d been kept under. The place was swarming with a mixture of FBI agents and Bakewell shifters in human form and shifter form, fighting it out, and Jack told us to stay put as he signaled at some agents across the room and then dashed away.
Several of them shifted at his command, and a few more stayed in human skin, weapons ready as another pack of Bakewell Springs shifters poured in from outside to assault them. Blasts of gunfire erupted, and I told Emma and Ana to crouch under a nearby table, hidden from view as the shifters started shooting back at the intruders.
Through the turmoil, I saw Lyndon fighting off one of the local policemen. He had let his wolf out and it was snapping and clawing at the man, but I recognized the white patch of fur on its side. It was definitely his wolf.
“Lyndon!” I cried, trying to plot out a path to him through the ruckus. I stepped over two bodies and kept myself low, trying to avoid any more attention.
The wolf took one last swipe at the man, sending him flying onto his back as blood seeped from a chest wound, and then it shifted back into Lyndon’s skin.
“Myla,” he said, staring at me from across the room. “Get back!”
It was too late. Ted grabbed me from behind and pushed a gun into my hair. “Call off your men, Lyndon,” he shouted. “Keep this going and she’s dead. So are the other two.”
“Let her go,” Lyndon said, slowly stepping towards us. His eyes flared with yellow, and I could tell he wanted to rip Ted limb from limb. However, there was no way he could do that without ensuring my death in the process.
“No,” Ted replied, pulling me against him even harder and tightening his grip on my waist. “She has what I want, and I’m keeping her. Call off your men!”
“How do you think this is really going to end, Ted?” Lyndon said, taking one more step towards us. “I called this in last night. The FBI already has two more teams on their way, and when word gets out to the general public about what you’ve been doing up here for all these years, it’ll be your town’s fault that the shifter community is made public. Not only that, but it’ll be your fault that shifters end up with a bad name.”
Ted yanked the gun away from my head for a second and waved it at Lyndon. “No. It won’t be my fault. This is on you. You’re the one who couldn’t just leave this place. You had to keep messing around, trying to figure us out.”
I winced as he pushed the cold barrel of the gun back against my head, and I saw Lyndon looking over Ted’s shoulder for a second.
“Okay, Ted,” he said. “I’ll let you have her. She was just a distraction for me anyway. I’ve got better things to do back home. Just take the gun away from her head. You wouldn’t want to accidentally kill your new mate, would you?”
Ted slowly pulled the gun away, keeping his narrowed eyes trained on Lyndon the entire time. Somewhere behind us, there was a crash, and I realized why Lyndon had been looking over Ted’s shoulder. Jack Lyndon had just jumped through the window near us in his wolf form, breaking glass and creating a distraction as Ted jerked his head around to see what it was.
I took the opportunity to bite down on his arm, hard, and he shouted with fury as the sudden pain caused a reflex action, making him drop his gun. I tore myself away from his grip and dove for the weapon, and he tried to grab me but was held back by Jack pouncing and shoving him to the ground. Lyndon shifted seconds later and joined his brother, and I watched as their large canines and massive claws sliced into the Deputy several times.
Lyndon’s wolf snarled as Ted tried to shift and block the attack, and he swiped at him one more time; a deadly cut slicing across the side of Ted’s neck. The fight went out of him, and he fell facedown, unconscious.
All around us, the Grey Division FBI agents had finally gained control over the situation, and they were handcuffing bleeding men and hauling them outside. Ana and Emma were still crouched under the table on the other side of the room, covering their faces with their hands, and Jack helped them up, gently patting them on the back and telling them they were finally safe.
I was still on the ground, shaking as I realized just how close I’d come to death, and Lyndon crouched down next to me. He pushe
d my hair out of my face and leaned in, enveloping me in a hug as his familiar masculine scent made my heart soar.
“You know I wasn’t being serious,” he murmured. “What I said to Ted just then. I was just trying to distract him and get him to pull that gun away.”
“I know,” I said. A confusing mixture of emotions flooded through me as I pulled away from his embrace and gazed up at him. I wanted to cry and laugh and scream all at the same time. “They told me you were dead.”
He grinned. “Well, I feel pretty healthy for a supposedly dead guy. Myla…I’m sorry they took you. I shouldn’t have let you out of my sight for a second.”
“How did you find me?” I asked. “You said you can’t catch the scent of humans.”
He rose to his feet and extended a hand to me. “Come on. Let’s get out of this place, and I’ll explain everything.”
Shakily, I got to my feet and followed him outside. Bullet casings littered the bloodstained ground, and dark grey agency cars were pulling away with Bakewell Springs conspirators imprisoned in the back.
I breathed in the cool mountain air, grateful to be out of that awful cellar. Although I guess it was more of a dungeon than a cellar. Lyndon turned to me.
“Myla, after the fire last night, I knew we were both in danger. I called for backup, but I had no idea they’d take you from right under my nose like they did. And even though I knew they were shifters, I didn’t realize Ted and Mills were actually part of this whole thing. I should’ve seen that coming. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”
“It’s okay,” I replied. “I didn’t see it coming either. They seemed so eager for the cases to be solved. But really I think they were hoping we’d give up and leave.”
“You wanted to know how I found you,” he said, stepping closer. “You’re right; I can’t usually catch the scent of a human and track them down. But I could with you.”
“Why?”
He hesitated and looked down at the ground for a moment. It was a rare moment for him; seemingly lost for words.
Once An Alpha (The S Files: Paranormal Investigation Agency – Book 1) Page 12