The Alphas Game - Complete Set (13 page)

Chapter4

Secrets are dangerous things. When they’re discovered they often have disastrous consequences, both for the people keeping the secrets and the people that discover them. It’s my job to find secrets, so as a result I know a lot about them. The truth is that everyone has secrets. Everyone has something that they don’t want anyone else to find out. Most people don’t have deadly secrets, but there are a few people that do. Those people will do anything to keep those secrets from being revealed and that’s when my job gets especially dangerous. I’m used to danger, but I’ve never stumbled on something like this before.

When she opened the door the first thing she noticed was the smell. Something was rotten in there, and there was a lot of it. The acrid odor of death seemed to rush out of the room the moment the door had been opened and it rushed over her like a hail of debris in an over-packed closet. She placed the crook of her elbow over her mouth, and it managed to cover a little of the stench. She gulped, trying to contain the bile that was rising into her throat.

She pulled her penlight out of her pocket, not entirely sure if she wanted to see what existed in the dark space, but she made herself do it anyway. She hit the button and shone it into the room. As the dim light shone across the scene it took her a moment to make anything out.

There was blood everywhere. It was covering the walls and the floors. It littered the ceiling of the little room, causing the contents of her stomach to wrench out of control and spill onto the floor. Holding her hand over her mouth she knew that she had to get out of there. She had to escape. Even with the minimal light that the penlight threw onto the scene it was nothing but horrific. She shuddered at the sight.

Forcing herself to stay focused; she shone her tiny light over the scene again. Making a quick count she was able to identify five right hands. “Five victims, oh my God.” She wanted to vomit again and stepped back from the door, pulling out her cell phone.

She was ready to call as she stepped back, but her actions were stopped by a noise behind her. She tried to determine whether or not the noise was just more rubble falling, but it didn’t quite sound like the sound of plaster or other debris hitting the floor, instead it felt like footsteps. Slowly she turned around, shining her light in the direction of the noise, but she couldn’t see anything other than a strange distortion. It looked like it must have been dust, but she was sure that it wasn’t.

“I’ve found your bodies.” She announced, not really knowing what else to say.

“I know.” The words were a harsh whisper. She didn’t recognize the voice, but she recognized the state of the crime scene. “You’re not going to leave here alive, I hope that you know that.”

“I’m going to leave.” A swipe of her finger hit the call button. She was calling Grey because he was the person whose information was already on the screen before she noticed that she was being followed.

“Why don’t you put the phone down?” The voice was filled with that quiet violence that made her blood curdle in her veins.

“OK” She ended the call and placed the phone on the ground in one smooth motion. It was a quick almost imperceptible motion; one that she hoped hadn’t been seen.

Some unknown item stomped on the phone, crushing it into pieces, but she was still confident they would be able to track her previous call and be able to find her a little quicker. She just hoped that they would figure it out quickly. She wasn’t a match for a fairy that she couldn’t see. “I don’t like the way you’ve been acting.” There was a sneer in his voice, but she couldn’t see his face.

“You don’t have to like the way I’ve been acting. I’m a free woman.”

“You’d like to think that wouldn’t you.” The voice countered. He wasn’t whispering any more. “You’re not free. No humans are free. You’re only chattel, bound into service. You just don’t see it. Even people, who see us, know about us, are bound to us and by us. That’s why you had to call your little shifter friends for help. You can’t handle us. We’re in charge and there’s nothing you or your little human friends can do about it. You hide us in the darkness because you’re afraid of us, you don’t want to face the fact that you are all prisoners to our desires. You make no decisions without our consent, you make no discoveries that we have not discovered first. We own the world and you are just merely blind little peasants struggling to grasp at the truth and injustice of it all.”

“Wow, you sure are full of yourself.” She didn’t believe him at all, but that didn’t matter much. The secret society of supernatural creatures that hid in human society stayed secret by their own choice and by the blindness of humanity. She shook her head. “We don’t belong to you and we never will.”

“And the assertions that you make only cement your place among our servants. You have trapped yourself into this revolving door of servitude, by denying it instead of fixing the problems in the past. Humans are sub-beings, barely sentient and deserve to be taken out of their misery.”

“I suppose that’s what you’re trying to do.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I want humans to be free of their chains. I’m giving that to them. I’m freeing them and I’m going to free you. I’m going to help you.”

“I don’t want help like that.”

“Now, now, now, you need the help and beggars can’t be choosers.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue after he spoke.

“I didn’t ask for your help and I certainly wasn’t begging for it.” She was starting to understand what this guy was doing. He thought that he was saving humanity by killing them. “Let’s talk about you. Is there anything that I can help you with?”

“We’re not talking about me.” The voice was hissing now. The words had obviously upset him. “You are trespassing on sacred ground. This is my space and you don’t belong here.”

“I’ll leave then.” She started to move towards the stairs that would lead her way up. If this man considered this place to be holy it meant that she was in serious danger. It made the moment sink in, activating the flight response, she just had to figure out a way to get out of there. Her eyes flickered around the room, but she couldn’t see much more than vague shapes of furniture and rubble. She needed to orient herself, to determine where she was. Forcing her mind to obey she began to carefully remember which direction the stairs were from her location.

She had only taken a single step when something grazed her arm. She moved to brush it aside thinking that it must have been a spiderweb or bit of debris hanging from the ceiling; the truth was that the woman was paranoid enough at this moment that she might have just imagined it. That wasn’t the truth, she wasn’t being paranoid, there was something wrong with this touch. The graze turned into a hand, gripping her upper arm. She still couldn’t see who it was. It was dark and he seemed to have some sort of stealth ability, something that shielded him from her vision. She had one way to win this, and one way only. She had to escape, but the problem now was to figure out how to get out of there in a hurry.

He pulled her roughly towards him. She could feel the heat of his body against her skin. He was a little cooler than a normal human. It was curious how much all of the supernatural creatures that she had encountered over her years of working with them varied in their body temperatures. The shifters were actually a bit warmer than humans. Part of her wondered if it was just her imagination, but this wasn’t the time to think about that. She had to focus; she had to get away from him.

She brought her knee up and was able to count her lucky stars as it connected with soft tissue. She had hoped that her judgment of the man’s body position was correct and it was. Her blow had landed square in his groin. It was obvious from the sound that he made as she connected. It was the same sound that every man made when they received a blow to that sensitive area. She whooped and pulled out of the hold, the aggressor couldn’t concentrate on that anyway, he had bigger problems, problems that her knee had damaged severely.

Remembering the direction of the stairs once again she rushed towards them, but there was still debris on the floor and her light had fallen to the ground somewhere behind her. She didn’t remember dropping it and this was the first time that she noticed that it was missing. She stumbled and lurched forward, knowing that she had to get away.

She could hear the footsteps coming up behind her as she reached the stairs. She climbed up as high as she could, knowing that she had to reach the ledge above her head and climb out of the same hole that she had entered, but the steps were coming closer. Rosie wasn’t sure that she was going to make it in time. Forcing doubt out of her mind she stumbled up the last few steps and reached up to grab the edges of the hole that they had pulled her out of not so long ago. She gripped the edge and was starting to pull herself up when she felt arms reach around her waist.

She screamed, but it didn’t seem to be helping. Kicking out she felt her legs connect with something solid, but once again she couldn’t see it. Grunting in effort she kicked again trying to get the man off of her. It was already getting hard to hold herself up. She cursed herself for not keeping up with her daily exercise routine, but wasn’t ready to give up yet.

Alfi wasn’t going to give up that easily, he took the blows and kept trying to pull her down. Unfortunately, her legs seemed to possess inhuman strength and she was fighting for her life. She tried to pull herself up, screaming for help the entire time.

It didn’t take long for one of the guards to notice. He began to rush over, but realized quickly that the entire structure was unstable so he picked his path with a little more care. “What are you doing in there?”

“I’m being attacked.” She was in shock that he didn’t notice that there were more pressing matters to attend to, like saving her. “I’ll explain it later.”

“I’m coming.” The man was matter of fact as he carefully climbed over the rubble, trying not to fall into the rubble and still hurry fast enough to save the screaming woman who was pulling herself out of the rubble.

Rosie kicked again, trying to keep herself up and out of the hole. She didn’t want to have to fight her way back up again. Her kick connected with something hard and strong. It must have been bone and she hoped that it was his face. She relished the thought of bruising his pretty face.

He let go of her, she had no idea why, but was thankful for it nonetheless. She used the moment to pull herself further out of the hole and into the starlit night. Not that the stars were easy to see in the middle of the city. She grunted as she managed to get out past her waist before she felt a hand wrap around her ankle. “Damn it let me go.”

“You’re mine, bitch.” The threat rang through her body, sending shudders through her spine. The involuntary motion made her lose a bit of her hold and she started to slip back into the hole.

“Give me your hand.” She hadn’t realized that one of the security guards had gotten to her, but was thankful for it. She reached for his hand and he used momentum to wrench her out of the evil fairy's grasp. Her breath caught up to her as she was realizing that she had almost lost it.

“He’s down there.” She was swearing. “There’s someone down there, and he’s been killing people.”

“I don’t see anyone.” The guard looked down the hole and couldn’t see anything. He was absolutely certain that the woman was making it up to get out of trouble for trespassing at a crime scene.

“Of course you don’t see anyone, he’s hiding now.” She didn’t know how much he knew, so she wasn’t going to frighten him with the details that there were sentient beings other than humans that roamed the earth. “He’s got a room full of dead bodies down there.”

“I think that they would have noticed that when they did the initial inspection.”

“It’s in a secret room that wasn’t damaged.” Rosie stood to face the man, knowing that she was going to have to ask to use his phone to call for some help.

The man scoffed in response but allowed her to use his phone to call Kevin and Grey, knowing that if he arrested someone who was working on the case he might lose his job.

Chapter5

Grey came to get her, carefully making his way onto the scene to pick up the woman who happened to be wrapped in a blanket on the edge of devastated ruins of an Asian Buffet. “What the hell were you thinking?” Grey looked like he had been stabbed through the heart. “Do you have any idea how stupid that was? Why would you do something like that?”

“I don’t need to hear this right now. We’ve got to get someone down there. There’s a room full of dead bodies.” Rosie was trying to bring the attention back to more important parts of the story. “Alfi’s killed at least five people.”

“Are you sure?” Grey glanced at the hole.

“I counted five right hands. That means that there are at least five people dead in that basement.” She was confident in her assessment.

“Where are they?”

“There’s a secret room down in the basement. I can’t get any of these guys to believe me.” She motioned toward the other FBI agents that had just arrived a few minutes before. She started to tell the story, tell them everything that she had discovered down in that basement. She didn’t know what everything was, but she assumed that the bread tie had held some sort of recording device and that the room must have been used before. “You have to send someone down there.”

“We can’t just send someone down there. It hasn’t been deemed safe yet.”

“What have you guys been waiting for? It’s been forever and there might be clues down there.”

“We had to wait.”

“What were you waiting on?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. With this job comes some bureaucracy, and that means that we wait when we’re told to wait.”

“A serial killer has been set loose on the streets. We can’t just wait for what the bosses tell us to do.” 

“We can’t just go and break the rules again. I’m already in enough trouble for that stunt we pulled with the note. I can’t risk it.”

“People’s lives are at stake, and you’re worried about your career.” Rosie was furious. She stood up from the curb that she had been sitting on, ready to fight to the death for her cause.

“I’m sure it’s going to be rushed now.” Grey was trying to stop a fight before it started. He regretted the fact that he had made it seem like his career was more important than catching a serial killer that had been let loose on the streets of Tampa. “I’m pretty sure that you were just seeing things. Do you think that it might have been a vision?”

“It was not a vision. Don’t you think by now I’d know how to tell the difference?” She was offended by the question, the implication that he presented even if she had felt that doubt a few times during that situation. “He’s got to have another way in or out. He has to have a way that he’s been getting in and out of there and we’re just wasting time. We could have him by now if you guys would just stop worrying about getting a little hurt.”

Grey shook his head. “We can’t go in until the Director clears it. He hasn’t done it yet.”

“I think Schmidt’s been acting a little shady lately.” The accusation came out before she thought about it and immediately wished that she could take the words back; The instantaneous regret

“What are you talking about?” Grey didn’t understand. He didn’t always go by the book, but still it seemed wrong to start breaking the rules again so soon after his last infraction. He wanted to climb down into the hole and have a look.

“I’m just saying nobody’s exactly been in a hurry to check out that basement. That seems a little weird, doesn’t it?” She was backpedaling, trying to cover the unfounded accusation that she had just made.

“Look, you’ve had a tough night. Let’s just get you back to my place and get you cleaned up.” Grey chose not to allow the fight to begin and she was grateful for it, she followed him to the car and stayed silent until they reached his apartment.

The trip only allowed the entire situation to sink in. “How could I be so stupid?”

“What do you mean?” Grey looked across the room at her. He was mixing a drink for her, hoping that the stress of her encounter wouldn’t be too difficult for her to handle. She’d been through so much lately and he didn’t know what she was going to do once all of this ended. She seemed to be on the verge of tears half the time, but as soon as she realized that someone was watching her she put her game face back on and was eager to get on with the case.

“I was stupid. I went in there by myself.”

“You weren’t expecting anyone else to be there.” Grey was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Kevin is arguing with the director, trying to get things sped up.”

“I’m gonna get fired.”

“No, you’re a consultant, you won’t get in nearly as much trouble as I would have.” He brought her a chilled glass full of red liquid and ice.

“What is this?”

“Cherry cider, cherry soda and vodka.”  He held up the glass and she could see that the liquid was thick and bright red. She was reminded of blood, but shook the thoughts out of her head. She wasn’t going to think about that right now. There were better things to do than focus on the painful sights that she had just seen. He walked over and handed it to her. “It’s surprisingly good.”

“That sounds delicious. What’s it called?” She sniffed at her glass and the sweet aroma washed over her senses. It certainly didn’t smell like blood.

“I don’t know if it has a name, but my frat house called it Not-A-Keg.” He sniffed his own glass and was brought back in time.

“What kind of name is that?” She took a sip, testing the beverage. It was fuzzy and sweet with just the slightest hint of the bitter alcoholic undertones. “This could get dangerous quickly. You can barely taste the booze.”

“I have no idea who came up with it, but you can hardly believe that half of that glass is vodka.” The werewolf laughed jovially. His smile warmed her, dispelling the bitter cold that had settled inside of her since she had witnessed the pile of bodies in that tiny little room. She hadn’t realized that it was there until after that moment and was thankful that it had faded.

“They’re still in the area.”

“I know. I don’t understand why they would stay.”

“Maybe there’s still unfinished business.” Rosie shrugged. Already the drink was starting to improve her mood.

“There’s nothing in Alfi’s file to indicate an attachment to this place.” His voice was curious as he sat down next to the psychic detective.

“There has to be something keeping them here.” Rosie wondered as she took another sip of her drink. She was half way through the glass and was starting to feel a nice buzz starting to form around her head. She settled down next to Grey, placing her head on his shoulder.

He wrapped his arm around her, hugging and holding her close. The FBI agent breathed in the musky, slightly floral scent of her. He had always loved that scent. He buried his nose into her hair and just breathed, in and out, memorizing the subtle details that made her scent one that was truly unique.

“Are you sniffing me?” Rosie looked up at him.

“I just noticed that you were wearing perfume. I thought it was a little odd to wear perfume to sneak into a crime scene.”

“I put it on this morning. There shouldn’t be much of it left.”

“Well, it certainly smells amazing.”

Her eyes glittered in amusement. She had caught him sniffing her head, but it didn’t seem creepy or strange. She was just close to him and he was relishing in her scent. It was a common motion for two people who had grown close and she didn’t know whether she liked or not. It was going to take some time to decide.

She was still looking up at him when he leaned a little closer. She didn’t pull away, instead choosing to stay where she was and let his lips slowly lower onto hers. She gave herself into the kiss, allowing her body to melt into his, with his hands running up and down her body, touching her back.

Her hands gripped his shirt and she pulled him closer. He pulled his mouth up, whispering words against her lips. “I want you.”

“I want you too.” The words were breathy and full of lust. She couldn’t deny the feelings that were rushing through her body after having heard him say those words to her.

It was all he needed to hear. He started to struggle with her clothes, wanting them removed as quickly as possible. The rush didn’t help matters, but he managed to get them removed with only a few challenges and one or two broken buttons and seams.

She started to unbutton his shirt, fighting with the cloth and forcing it to obey her commands. She pulled him up to her, touching her bare chest to his, sliding the skin against hers as they moved closer to each other. He lifted her hips up over his and her long legs wrapped around his waist as he kissed her again, pushing his tongue in and out of her mouth. She loved feeling his skin on the inside of her thighs. She shifted her body, trying to find a more comfortable position, but all it did was cause Grey to lose his balance. He stumbled backwards and started to fall onto the couch. 

Shifting her legs so they wouldn’t be landed on she moved her knees to alongside his thighs, bringing her legs to his side instead of behind him. She held on as his butt slammed onto the couch. She felt his manhood touch her lips, brushing against them and automatically positioning itself for entrance. She didn’t have to decide what to do; her body seemed to react on its own. He moaned as she shifted her body back and forth, allowing her wetness to coat the tip before she was ready to take him in. She slid down the shaft, deliciously reveling in every inch and the sharp intake of breath that came from him as she moved her body to the natural rhythm that the two of them had been feeling since the time that they met that short time before. Shifting her legs for better traction she began to move her body up and down.

He was entranced by the motion of her body, the feel of her wetness moving up and down against him, the sight of her breasts bouncing up and down in front of his face. He moved his head forward and caught one nipple between his lips and started to suck lightly on it. As her speed increased he started to suck more and more, eventually moving his teeth along the flesh, gently scraping it.

The moment his teeth touched her nipple she brought her breath sharply into her lungs. She moved faster, up and down the entire length of him. He pulled his lips away. “I’m not gonna last much longer.” Grey moaned.

“I’m not either.” Rosie responded and the words seemed to set their mutual release into motion. The careful control and planning left them and they started to move with great urgency. Their bodies writhed and moaned, making strides to become closer than they ever had been.

They crested the wave together, instantaneously launching into their release. When they had finished she fell into his chest and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his chest. She hugged close to him and didn’t say anything. There really wasn’t anything that they needed to say in that moment that hadn’t already been said. It was a beautiful moment that seemed to be touched by a bright light. Silence was truly golden, magical, and awesome to behold while she listened to his heartbeat in his chest. The loud thumping slowed as he rested, until it was a gentle beating that signaled contentment.

They didn’t have too long to enjoy the moment however, since a chattering phone interrupted the silence and brought them both back to reality. It was time to get back to work. Kevin was calling. Rosie couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt when she saw the name on Grey’s phone and stayed silent while the plan was put forth.