Once An Alpha (The S Files: Paranormal Investigation Agency – Book 1) (12 page)

                            Chapter Fifteen

I awoke in a strange, dark place. My head was killing me, and my palms were damp with perspiration. Groggily looking up, I saw two feminine figures hovering over me, and one spoke in an anxious voice.

“Oh, thank god you’re awake,” she said. “We were afraid you were dead.”

I sat up, rubbing my temples. I was on some sort of crude makeshift bed on a dirt floor, and I cast my eyes around, scanning my prison. It appeared that we were in some sort of large cellar, only there were bars across part of the room, locking us in. A dull globe partially lit the room, dark shadows dancing in the places it didn’t hit.

“Where are we?” I asked. The two women moved closer, and one gave me a cup of water.

“Drink,” she said in an accent I couldn’t place while my weary mind adjusted to my new surroundings. “Don’t worry, it’s not drugged or anything.”

As she leaned in and held the cup to my lips, I recognized her green eyes and strawberry blonde hair in the dim light.

“I know you,” I said, before gratefully accepting a sip of water. My mouth was parched, and the cool liquid soothed my aching throat as it went down.

“You’re Emma Tillbrook,” I continued. “We met the other day out on the hiking trail. You were camping near us.”

She nodded. “Yes. God, I wish we’d listened to that man you were with. He came to warn us. But Shane was so sure we could deal with anything out in the wilderness.”

Her eyes brimmed with tears, and one spilled down and over her cheek. “This is Ana,” she said, pointing to the other woman, a tall brunette.

“Ana Markovic?” I asked, although I’d already guessed her answer.

“Yes,” she said. “How do you know my name?”

“I’m an FBI agent,” I replied. “My partner and I were sent to Bakewell Springs to investigate your disappearance, along with the others that have happened over the years. I spoke to your mother the other day.”

“Is she okay?” Ana asked, her lip trembling as she sat on the floor cross-legged.

“She’s worried about you,” I said. “But I told her I’d find you. I just didn’t exactly expect to find you like this. How did we all get here?”

Emma sat down on the ground as well. “Shane and I were attacked in the middle of the night, and so was Ana and her boyfriend Darren. We heard strange noises and footsteps, and then suddenly we were being attacked. Some… some creatures dragged Shane away. I heard him screaming. Then they took me, and I woke up here.”

“Practically the same thing happened to me,” Ana said. “We thought we heard something. Darren went to check it out and never came back, and then something came and took me.”

“Do you know where we are?” I asked.

They both shook their heads.

“All we know is that they are keeping us here until they’ve decided who they’re going to mate us with,” Ana said. “I’ve seen them and heard them talking when they’ve come to check on us. They are some sort of horrible creatures. One minute they look human, and the next they look like wolves or bears. Only bigger than usual. They shift when they are trying to scare us. They’ve told us that we need to mate with them, and that if we ever try to escape they’ll kill our friends and families.”

“I believe them,” Emma said. “You should see them. And the way they talk about us…like we are nothing but vessels to carry their young. They’re keeping us here until they think it’s safe to integrate us into their town; until we’re too beaten down to ever try and leave or tell anyone who we really are. I’m pretty sure most of the town is in on it. Bakewell Springs…BS. BS for bullshit. These people are screwed up.”

I nodded. “My partner and I figured as much. Some of them are good, and they tried to help us. We started getting threatened, and our informants were dying left right and center. Then they tried to burn down my motel room, and after that they got me. The police are in on it. The one that kidnapped me is a Deputy who I’ve actually been working with.”

“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 woman 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.