Once An Alpha (The S Files: Paranormal Investigation Agency – Book 1) (9 page)

I returned to the office and informed Lyndon, and he glared at me. “Don’t go telling anyone else about what we’re doing. Even Ted.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because we don’t know who we can trust here. If the wrong people find out we are digging around, we could be in for some trouble.”

“I guess so,” I said. “But maybe it would help if we went and saw Heidi again. We could show her photos of other people that have gone missing over the years and see if she knows anything about what happened to them.”

He nodded. “Good idea. I’ll give them a call and find out what the best time to visit her tomorrow might be.”

He wandered over to the corner of the room, speaking into his cell phone, and he returned a minute later, his face ashen. “Myla.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Heidi’s dead. The nurse said that only a couple of hours after we left, she went into cardiac arrest.”

“Oh, shit,” I whispered. It wasn’t completely unwarranted that she had died; after all, she was a very old woman, and heart failure was a common occurrence in the elderly. But it just seemed like far too much of a coincidence that she just so happened to die within hours of speaking to us.

We worked quietly for another few hours, neither of us needing to say what we were thinking. By now, it was palpable. Something really strange was going on in this town, and someone didn’t want us to know.

“I think we need to call it a night and head home. What do you say?” I said.

“Sure.”

We drove in silence, our minds still consumed by the case, and just as we pulled onto the side street where our motel was, Lyndon pulled over. “I just realized we forgot to grab something for dinner,” he said. “I’ll drop you here and you can go shower up while I pick up some stuff. Any preferences?”

“Hmm,” I replied, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “A Lyndon rump steak would be nice.”

“Hey, hey,” he said, playfully batting me away. “Why are you always sleazing onto me? Finally run out of men to trick into bed with you?”

“Oh, shut up,” I said, cheeks turning hot with embarrassment as I recalled saying virtually the same thing to him and then almost falling straight off a cliff only a week or so earlier.

I gave him another kiss and then headed over to the motel. Lyndon beeped the car horn at me and turned around, heading back down towards the main strip, and I waved and entered my room, deciding to watch some trash TV and shower later instead.

Half an hour later, I wondered what was taking Lyndon so long. It was a Friday night, so perhaps the wait for takeout food was longer seeing as everyone was out for dinner.

Shadows passed over the blinds a second later, and it looked like a car had just pulled in.

Finally.

“About time, Lyndon!” I called as I opened the door and looked for him. Odd. He wasn’t there, and neither was our rental car. I must have just seen the shadow of another passing car. I turned to go back inside when a figure stepped out of the darkness to my side and growled something at me. The deep, unfamiliar voice made my blood run cold in my veins.

“Agent Peyton, I presume?”

Chapter Ten

My heart raced as the figure drew closer. It was clearly male, and a hell of a lot bigger than me. He wore black jeans and a black hoodie, and I didn’t recognize him from anywhere.

“You need to stay the fuck out of our business,” the brawny man hissed, getting right up in my face and towering over me.

“Who are you?” I asked, slowly reaching into my waistband for my gun. “What business?”

Lightning-quick, the man grabbed my hands and pinned them over my head, slamming me up against the wall. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop sniffing around our town.”

His rancid breath wrinkled my nose and almost made my eyes water, and I squirmed under his powerful grip as I hissed back at him. “Are you threatening me?”

He leaned his face even closer to mine. “Oh, it’s not a threat, little lady. It’s a promise.”

“I’m with the FBI. You know how much trouble you’ll get into for assaulting a federal agent?”

The man laughed nastily and then picked me up, slamming me against the wall again, harder this time, and I cried out as the back of my head smacked against the hard surface. I kicked out at the man, struggling against him, but he was far stronger than I was. That was one of the things that had always annoyed me about being a woman. It didn’t matter how much smarter I was than a guy, they could still overpower me with their physical strength nine times out of ten, and there was nothing I could do about it.

He tightened his grip on my shoulders.

And then things got even weirder.

I heard a deep growl to my right, and I glanced over to see an enormous grey wolf sitting on its haunches, hackles raised and baring its sharp white teeth as its yellow eyes glowed. On its side, it had a small white patch. It growled again.

Within seconds, the wolf launched itself at the man who was attacking me, and the man shouted before undergoing some sort of hideous metamorphosis. I watched in stunned silence, unable to believe my eyes as the man’s skin rippled into dark fur, and his limbs twisted until they were those of an animal. His flat face grew outwards into a muzzle, and before I knew it there was another fully grown wolf in front of me, brawling with the other one.

It dove through the air and went straight for the other wolf, and I watched, shocked into immobility by the sheer insanity of what was unfolding before me. What the hell had I just witnessed that man doing? And what were these creatures? They looked just like wolves, only now that I thought about it, they were far too big. They were more like wolves on steroids; so large I was sure they had to be the result of some breeding experiment gone wrong.

And then there was the matter of the man who’d threatened me. Had I
really
just seen him… shift? Maybe when I’d hit my head on the wall I’d started to hallucinate.

I wanted to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming or simply seeing things, but I was too scared to move.

The first wolf crouched and leapt as the other one dove, catching its assailant in mid-flight and clamping its powerful jaws over its front leg. He swung it over to the left, and the second wolf’s body slammed against the wall with a whimper, a bloody mark sliding down along with it.

It got back up and tried to swipe at its enemy, but the first wolf swiped its deadly claws, slicing across the second with ease until it whined and dashed away. I expected the first wolf to keep chasing it, but instead it stood there staring at me, amber eyes shining as it panted.

Still unable to believe what I had just seen, my mouth dropped open as I gasped for air. The wolf padded towards me, and within a flash it was undergoing the exact opposite transformation that the man had earlier. Claws retracted into nails and the muzzle receded into a face as its limbs twisted, and then its fur disappeared, giving way to human skin. It all happened so fast that I could barely see more than blurry motions, and only seconds later Lyndon was standing before me, his shirt torn at the side and his face grazed, blood dripping down over his jaw and from his fingernails.

I gaped at him in horror, and he stepped even closer with a grim expression on his face.

“Like I said the other night, Myla…we need to talk.”

Chapter Eleven

“Get away from me,” I said, backing away and pulling my gun out as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I aimed it directly at his chest. “You aren’t Lyndon. I don’t know what you are.”

He held his hands out towards me and then raised them in the air in surrender. “Myla, it is me. I told you we needed to talk, and this is what we needed to talk about. Shifters are real, and I know that because I’m one of them.”

My face contorted in confusion, and I waved my gun at him. “No! It can’t be! This must be some sort of sick joke.”

He took a slow step towards me. “Myla, listen to me. Let’s go inside, and I’ll explain everything. Put the gun down. You know I’d never hurt you.”

I chewed on my lip, considering my options. Lowering the gun, I finally replied. “Fine. We’ll go inside. But I’m holding on to my gun just in case.”

He grinned. “That’s my Myla. Smart as hell.”

I kept my eyes trained on him as he went into my motel room, and I told him to sit down on the bed while I stood near it, watching him with narrowed eyes.

“Talk.”

He nodded. “Okay. The other day you asked why I was assigned to the S Files. Well, it’s because of what I am. Director Armstrong is well aware that I am a shifter, and he figured my presence in the department would prove useful. And he was right, in a way. The minute we got to this town I could smell that something was up.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my mind still whirling. My entire worldview was flying out of the window; every core belief challenged as I tried to wrap my mind around the concept of shifters really existing.

“It’d be real nice if you put that gun down, you know,” he remarked.

“Fine,” I said, sighing and putting it on the coffee table to the right of the bed. “But don’t get any ideas. Now keep talking.”

“I could tell something was up because of how it smelled. Usually, in any other regular town or city, I can catch the scent of animals, like pets, and also other shifters. But there aren’t many; the regular human population far outstrips them. But when I arrived here, it just smelled… different. The air was thick with shifter scents.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the town is probably filled with them. I’d say over seventy percent of this town is made up of shifters. At the very least, half the town. So from the very start I suspected that the shifter presence in this community had something to do with the disappearances. But you’re the one who figured out what they were doing, Myla. I couldn’t have done this without you. And now you’re in danger, because they know we’ve figured them out. That man who attacked you just now…he must be one of them.”

I slowly shook my head and then sat down, and he gently rubbed my back. “I just… I can’t believe this. This whole time I thought anything paranormal could be explained by science. Shifters were meant to be a myth! Just stories in children’s books.”

“I know,” he said. “This must be hard for you to comprehend right now. I get that.”

“So tell me,” I said. “I need to know more about shifters. How does Director Armstrong know? Is he one of them as well?”

Lyndon snickered. “That old fuddy-duddy? Nah. But the government has known that we exist for quite some time. They just thought it would be easier if we kept it out of the public eye. The shifter community has always been pretty secretive, because they’ve never really known how all the regular humans would react if they found out. And then the higher-ups at the FBI figured we could start the S Files to investigate any occurrences that could be explained by shifters gone bad.”

“Oh.” My mind was absolutely blown, and the cogs of my brain whirred around as I started to recall some things. “Is that why you were sniffing the air like a dog that day when we were in the mountains?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t think you were looking. I was going to tell you, Myla, I swear. I just didn’t know if you were ready yet. I almost thought you’d caught me when you said my eyes had looked yellow that first night that we…well, you know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I can’t help my wolf tendencies from coming through when I’m excited or aroused. Believe it or not, I’ve been with a lot less women than you probably assume, mostly because I’m worried they’ll notice and freak out.”

“Tell me more about you. Were you born like this? What can you do?”

“Shifters are usually born, but humans can be turned too. Also, any human woman impregnated by a shifter will bear shifter young. Dominant genes, I guess, but you’d know more about that. Anyway, a born shifter can pick a spirit animal when they come of age, and that animal is then within them for the rest of their life. I chose wolf. And as for what I can do, well that really depends. We’re very similar to humans in that we differ on an individual basis. Some are good people, some are bad. Some shifters are better at sniffing out things than others. It depends how much of your life you spend in shifter form, basically. I myself can sniff out other animals and shifters, but not humans, and I can’t tell if they are male or female unless I am really close to them. But some shifters spend something like ninety percent of their time in animal form, and their skills are incredible. You could hand them a piece of jewelry that belonged to someone, and they’d be able to tell you if that person was male or female, shifter or human, or even their age down to their exact birthdate.”

“Wow,” I replied, sucking in a deep breath. I could still scarcely believe what he was telling me.

He moved closer to me. “Look, Myla, I’m not wrong about this town being made up of a bunch of shifters. We can’t trust anyone, okay?”

I nodded. “So what do you think is going on here?”

“I think they sometimes run out of mates to breed with, and not wanting to be incestuous, they kidnap visitors and force them into mating. I daresay they make them change their identities and modify their appearance somewhat so that no one will suspect, and they probably threaten them with death if they ever try to leave. But I can’t be sure about that just yet.”

“Hmm. What does the scientific community know about shifters?” I asked, turning to him with a quizzical look in my eye. “I mean, have they ever been studied? Had their genomes mapped so we can figure out how they may have evolved, or their relation to regular humans?”

“As far as I know, no studies have been conducted. None that I’ve heard of, anyway. Like I said, most shifters want to keep to themselves, and being part of a study would draw attention to them.”

He grinned, and then continued. “I knew you’d ask that, though. I was kinda worried you’d want to put me on a slab, jab me with needles and slice me open like a piece of meat to figure me out, being the scientist you are and all.”

I returned his smile. “Well, I have to admit you would make a very sexy lab rat.”

He laughed, a deep hearty sound that reverberated from his chest and made my nether regions tingle.

“So are we good?” he asked. “You believe me, and you’re not going to pull a gun on me again?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I’m sorry about that, I just didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

“Perfectly understandable.”

I didn’t know why, but I suddenly burst into a fit of hysterical giggles. Maybe it was the pressure from the case and then almost being attacked, or maybe it was the fact that all my preconceived notions about the world had been turned on their heads.  Perhaps a combination of both.

“What’s so funny?” Lyndon asked curiously as I practically shrieked with laughter, tears running down my cheeks. He watched me laugh for a second, and then he joined in. It was contagious.

“It’s just so fucking stupid!” I gasped through giggles. “I’ve been running around thinking how logical and knowledgeable I am, and then you come along and are just like, oh, by the way, I’m a
werewolf.
”

“Yeah, and then you start waving a gun in my face, threatening to shoot me,” he said, guffawing. “Jesus, imagine if you actually had!”

“Why is this so funny?” I asked before erupting into another fit of laughter.

“No idea,” he said. “No idea. Maybe we’re just going nuts from all the stress.”

At the mention of that, I suddenly remembered Heidi’s death and sobered up again.

“Lyndon…do you think Heidi really had a heart attack?”

“Do you?”

I shook my head. “No. I mean, I can’t say for sure, but I think someone found out she talked to us. For all we know the staff at the home were shifters and smelled a rat when we came in.”

“None of them were shifters,” Lyndon said. “None of the staff, anyway. Several of the old folks were. I could smell ‘em. So maybe they told someone else.”

“And then they came in, killed her and made it look like her heart had failed.”

“I’m willing to bet they didn’t even do that. The doctor who pronounced her dead and the local medical examiner who picked up the body probably lied and fudged their reports.”

“You really think this conspiracy goes that high up?” I asked.

“Not sure. But we’re bound to find out sooner or later. Just remember what I said; don’t trust anyone.”

Lyndon folded his arms as I nodded. “There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What’s that?”

“The night we went camping. Remember when we heard something and I ran off?”

“Yeah?”

He stared across at the wall on the other side of the room, seemingly not wanting to meet my eyes. “It’s my fault. I could’ve done something.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I caught the scent of shifters out in the woods, somewhere along that trail. It was faint, so I couldn’t tell exactly where they were. But I had a gut feeling something wasn’t right, so I let my wolf out and hunted around. Didn’t find anything. But then I saw the Australian couple’s campsite. I went over to them and warned them. I told them I couldn’t explain why I was there, but I was an FBI agent, and they needed to leave the area to be safe.”

“And then?”

He sighed. “They said they couldn’t hike back down into town. It was ten at night, after all. And then I told them to come and camp with us instead, so I could at least protect them. But they told me to fuck off. They thought I was some sort of weirdo creep trying to kidnap them. I showed them my badge and everything, but they still didn’t believe me.”

“Oh god…Lyndon, it’s not your fault they went missing,” I said, my heart overcome as I shared in his grief. He’d been carrying around this guilt for days now. “There was nothing more you could do. They told you to leave them alone. I mean, really, what more could you have done?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I could’ve tied them up and dragged them back to our tent.”

“Yeah, because that would have gone down so well. Seriously, there wasn’t anything you could have done. You warned them, and you offered them a chance at protection. The rest is on them and the shifters that took them.”

He nodded. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell myself. But I still just feel like shit about it, y’know? Once you’re an alpha, you feel responsible for everyone around you.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean about still feeling like crap over things that are out of your control. Alpha?”

“If you reach a certain age and have done certain things, you’re made alpha of a pack. Pack dynamics vary depending on the structure. I’m the alpha of the Grey Division. Well, one of them, anyway. It’s so big that in order to maintain control, there needs to be more than one. It’s a pack made up of cops, security guards, agents from the FBI, CIA and NSA, and so on. I and the other alphas are responsible for them and their safety, and for the safety of their families too.”

“I see.”

We sat in silence for a moment, lost in our thoughts.

“Wanna hear something stupid?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“The other night when you said you needed to talk to me about something, I thought you wanted to talk about us and tell me you didn’t want to be with me. That you weren’t a relationship type of guy, and that this was all a vacation fling or something.”

He stared at me with one eyebrow raised. “Well, I’d hardly call this a vacation, even though we’re away from home in a supposedly idyllic town. So there goes that theory of yours. And as for the rest…I can’t believe you’d even think that.”

“Why?” I asked, my eyes widening and my lips slightly parting.

“Because,” he said, leaning in and tenderly brushing a strand of hair from my face. “I thought I’d made it clear. You’re mine, and I’m yours. I’ve wanted this for a long time, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that end the minute we step foot back in DC.”

He laid me down on the bed, running his fingers through the wild curls in my hair as I willed my racing heart to calm down. It was just all so much and so overwhelming; I was cracking up from the pressure of the case and the seemingly constant fear that haunted me, knowing something wasn’t right about this town. But with every touch of his skin on my own, I felt myself being soothed a little more.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I’ve been an idiot.”

“Shh,” he said. “It’s all okay.”

He leaned down and pressed his face close to mine, and I smiled up at him. He moved his lips to mine, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him close, desperate for his touch. His tongue slid into my mouth, tenderly exploring and writhing with mine as my fingers weaved into his hair, and his hand moved behind my neck, cushioning my head as he kissed me.