A Secret Fate (31 page)

Eric hugged Carly and gently removed the tape from her mouth. Stroking his finger down her cheek, he said, “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry you had to stay here.”

“Dad, what is going on?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll explain it all soon,” Eric assured her as he untied her hands. Taking her arm, he tugged her with him, still pointing the gun at Cael and Addie.

Within seconds, Siana appeared next to Carly.

“Mom?” Carly cried, falling into her arms. “I didn’t see you when I walked in.” How could Carly not have noticed Siana’s sudden appearance? Addie thought. It must have been the strain from being held captive and she imagined that must have been terrifying for Cael’s sister.

“It’s okay, sweetie, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

“Siana! I told you to stay put,” Eric said. “I’ve got this.”

“You’ve got this? It looks like you want to kill our son.”

“What?” Carly looked at Cael, then back at her mother and father. But no explanation came from anyone.

“What a nice family reunion. It almost brings tears to my eyes. Not!” Joseph cackled like an old witch in one of Grimm’s fairytales then hawked up a loogie, spitting it out on top of Cael’s shoe.

Cael looked down at the mess, but showed no sign of disgust. His composure was remarkable and Addie didn’t think she’d have been able to act as unaffected. Cael’s lack of emotion seemed to stymie Joseph for a moment as he stared into Cael’s eyes then made a tsking sound. “Let’s get this over with,” Joseph barked. “A sibling for a sibling and his girlfriend.” He snickered. “That was the bargain. Although, we don’t really need your son, but I knew we’d never get the MacKenna woman without him. I promised I wouldn’t hurt him.”

There was no way they could ever hold Cael captive. Addie wondered just how much they knew about him or about her, for that matter. How much had Eric divulged to these creeps? Did they know she could blow each one of them up as simply as throwing a baseball? Or did they only know about her bond with the crystal? God, she hadn’t tried her firepower since the episode in the kitchen and she hoped there wouldn’t be a repeat of that incident.

As they got closer to the cage, the monster thing grunted and reached its arm out through the bars.

Joseph stood a few feet back from the bars just out of the creature’s reach and spoke in a smooth reassuring voice. “Be nice. They’re here to help. If you were able to wear panties, I’d suggest not getting them all in a bunch over our visitors, but with all that elephant skin sagging around your private parts, you really don’t need underwear, or clothes of any kind anymore, do you?” He laughed, which seemed to irritate the creature even more, causing it to jump and shake the steel bars. Drool dripped from lips bloodied by pointed and jagged teeth.

“Now, now Elizabeth. Mind your manners. You’re going to frighten our guests.”

Elizabeth? This horrible creature was a female, was once a woman according to Joseph. Elizabeth made a soft, high-pitched squeal-like whimper and hung her head as if in despair. She understood what he said. My God, what had they done to this woman to make her this way? Addie began to feel sorry for her. Then Joseph took the crystal out of his pocket and Addie tried not to gasp and lunge for it. Instead she stayed calm and pretended it didn’t mean anything to her. Joseph dangled it in front of Elizabeth, just out of her reach. Elizabeth grabbed for it but of course, Joseph only taunted the poor creature, making her angry. She began shaking the bars and making loud screeching noises that turned quickly into growls. “Now be a nice monster. You’ll get your turn to come out and play soon.”

“Stop it!” Addie said. She hadn’t meant to speak out loud, but she couldn’t stand to see the poor woman tortured like that. “You’re the monster!” Addie pointed at Joseph. “Why are you tormenting her?”

Joseph cocked his head and walked closer to Addie. Cael took a step in front of her and Joseph stopped in his tracks. “Don’t worry, Cael. I won’t hurt
her
. You see, I need
her,
she’s the only one that can get this to work.” He held the crystal up before tucking it back into his pocket. “I’ve heard great things about this crystal, and I need Miss MacKenna here to make it work with Elizabeth. You see, Elizabeth has the strength and the intelligence to perform, well, extraordinary things, but she needs to appear as a normal human in order to infiltrate any government entity. No one will hire her looking like that,” he scoffed at the creature in the cage. “Sorry, darling, but you know they would run screaming like frightened old ladies if they saw something like you coming at them. So, this is why you are here, Miss MacKenna. We need you to make the crystal do its magic and help poor Elizabeth be all that she can be and restore her back to her human form when she’s not, let’s say, in working mode.” Joseph turned slightly and pointed the gun toward Cael. “You, the neglected son, on the other hand, are dispensable.” He chuckled softly before firing the gun. In a split second, Addie’s mind took control, jarring the gun just enough for the bullet to miss hitting Cael in the chest, instead penetrating his right shoulder. Siana and Carly screamed as Cael fell backwards, landing on the hard, cold cement floor. Addie sank to the ground on her knees by his side and Siana joined her.

As Addie placed her hands over the wound, she looked back at Cael’s father. Eric turned his pistol toward Joseph and shot him point-blank in the head, a clean shot right above his ear. Joseph fell to the floor as blood pooled around his head. “You said you wouldn’t hurt my son, you son of a bitch. Now you’ll never hurt anyone again.”

The other two Intel refugees and the woman who’d brought Carly in quickly scattered, the woman and one of the men escaping through the door leading outside to the dock. The guy with the grassy stuff on his arm headed toward another door but turned to fire his rifle. Addie held out her hand and a ball of fire formed in her palm. As smoothly as though she were throwing the winning strike in the World Series, the fire whirled across the room, catching the guy’s weird covered arm on fire. As Addie watched the icky greenish-brown weed ignite, it came to her. “Peat moss. That’s what that stuff’s called,” she uttered and turned to help Cael, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw the guy, burning arm and all, raise his automatic rifle in her direction. Before he had a chance to pull the trigger, she already had another fireball formed in her hand and let it rip across the room, hitting him dead smack in the chest. He slumped to the ground burning and screaming so loudly she wanted to cover her ears. Not wanting to take any chances, she swiped her hand through the air, sending the rifle across the room.

“Nice. Remind me not to get on your bad side, Addison. Ever,” Eric said.

“You’re not such a bad shot yourself,” she said before turning her attention to Cael, lying on the floor, blood pooling out from under him.

“The plan almost worked,” Eric said.

“You were pretty convincing.” Addie knelt down next to Cael and tugged his shirt open and off his shoulder. The bullet hit the exact spot where she’d blasted a hole in him before and she cringed, knowing it was going to take a long time before it stopped hurting even after she healed him. He’d been such a baby about it back then, and she almost smiled remembering how he’d pouted. They even managed to have awesome sex afterward even though he’d been in pain.

“You can heal him, right?” Eric asked.

“Yes,” she nodded, placing her hands against his skin, softly chanting the healing words as the bullet slowly began making its way back out. The slug fell to the floor with a clink before resting on the cement beside Cael. Then she heard the awful roar coming from Elizabeth, a little closer than she thought it should be. Someone let Elizabeth out of her cage.

Chapter 29

Cael coughed and opened his eyes to see Addison’s fretful brown ones as she chanted in Latin. Her hands were on him, right where that God-awful pain stabbed in his shoulder. He’d been shot, he realized, and she was healing him. The pain subsided and she stopped chanting, sighing with what he thought had to be relief. His mother was on the other side of him and helped him to sit. Taking a quick scan of the room, he saw Joseph on the floor, a bullet hole through his head. He knew he’d heard another gun shot. Thank Christ.

“Your father shot him,” Siana supplied, but as she said the words, Cael gaped when he saw Elizabeth pick Eric up, holding him by his throat, growling and snarling inches from his face. It looked like she was about to bite off his head but instead, she tossed him across the room. Eric’s back slammed against the wall and his limp body fell to the floor. Cael squeezed his eyes tight, realizing his stupid pride had kept him from getting to know his dad again and now his chances were gone. Siana and Carly gasped and ran to Eric.

Elizabeth crouched down beside Joseph. Placing an enormous mangled hand under his head, she tilted his face toward hers. With her other deformed and giant fingers she took his left hand, cocked her head, staring at the wedding band as a tear ran down her cheek. “My God, Cael? Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Addison asked.

“Maybe. Elizabeth was his wife?”

Elizabeth looked up at that, made a grunting sound along with what appeared to be a nod. More drool dripped from her scarred and bloodied lips as she croaked out a sob.

“He did this to his wife? What did he do to her to make her that way?”Addison said.

Elizabeth roared and slanted her head, studying Joseph’s dead body. Cael watched her, unsure what she would do next, but he certainly didn’t expect to see tears running down her bumpy brown cheeks as she stood over Joseph’s corpse.

“Are you okay?” Addison asked.

“Yeah, you?”

She nodded as the glass-shattering roar that escaped from the beast startled them, prompting them quickly to their feet, ready to run.

Cael tugged Addison. “Can you burn her?”

“What? No! This isn’t her fault, Cael. She’s a victim in this, just like us.”

Cael stood as Elizabeth approached, growling and snarling. He shook his head. “That may be but I think someone forgot to tell her that.”

“I can’t just kill her. She’s not to blame.”

“Addison, if you don’t kill her I will. She just murdered my father.”

Addison glanced over at Eric. Siana held Cael’s father—her husband—to her chest, stroking his head, crying.

“We need to get her away from Joseph so we can get the crystal from him,” Addie said.

“Can’t you use your powers?”

“I tried. I think whatever that glow is coming from under Elizabeth’s flesh is preventing me from getting a clear connection with it.”

“We'll need to distract her.”

Elizabeth growled again, sounding much like a gorilla this time. She took another step toward them as Cael reached for his gun, but before he could get it out, Elizabeth was on top of him, tackling him to the floor. Cael thought he would die from the smell alone and when he dematerialized from underneath her, her heavy body slumped on the cement floor. She shook her head, confusion evident on her distorted face, looking under and through her legs for Cael’s body.

Cael pointed his gun at Elizabeth.

“Wait! Don’t shoot her. Let me try to talk to her.”

“Seriously?” He gave her an incredulous stare. “Okay, but if she makes one wrong move I'm not going to think twice about shooting her.”

Addison took a couple steps toward Elizabeth and stopped a few feet in front of her. “Elizabeth?” she prompted softly, but the creature ignored her. “Elizabeth, please,” she tried again. “I know you must have loved Joseph very much. It’s hard to lose someone you love. Believe me, I understand how difficult this must be for you. I recently lost my own fiancé. He’d been caught up in some of this supernatural stuff, much like you, and he disappeared. I had no idea if he was alive or dead. Although we weren’t married yet, like you and Joseph, I loved him very much and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to go on without him.”

Cael listened to Addison, saddened with what she was revealing. His heart broke for the pain he must have caused her while he’d stayed in Bora Bora all that time, never contacting anyone, letting anyone know he was alive, never knowing there was someone like her to contact.

“He would have given his life for me,” Addison continued and Elizabeth stopped stroking Joseph's hair at that statement, looked up at Addison and growled, making her stop in her tracks. “You see, we had a very special bond, like you and Joseph must have had. In fact, at times I think we felt as if we were actually one soul. The worst part about all of it was that when he disappeared, something else awful happened. He lost five whole years of his memory, which included his relationship with me. So, when he came home, he had no recollection of what we’d once shared. I know firsthand how it feels to lose someone you gave your love to, trying to accept that they won’t be there anymore. Elizabeth, please. We can be friends.” Addison reached her hand out, palm up, coaxing the grotesque creature to come to her. “Come with us. I know we can help you. Maybe we can help each other, you and I. We won’t be able to bring Joseph back to you, but you and I can try to fill the emptiness of that cavern deep in our hearts.” Elizabeth stood and before Addison had a chance to move, the creature lunged at her. Cael shot off a couple of rounds from his gun but Elizabeth didn't go down. He wanted to shoot again, but Addison was in the way. He dematerialized and re-appeared at Addison’s side, clutching her firmly in his arms before flashing Addison away from Elizabeth’s grasp. When they re-materialized several feet away, Elizabeth seemed disoriented, stunned with what happened. It took her several seconds to regain her balance as she focused on them again and the heavy awkward steps she took in pounded against the floor.

Cael shot off another couple of rounds from his Glock but they didn’t even penetrate her rough skin. “Addison, a little help here, please.”

“I don’t want to kill her.”

“Well, she wants to kill us, so do something. Now!”

Addison held out her hand and flames ignited in her palm. She threw the fireball at Elizabeth, catching her in the arm. The monster howled with pain but continued toward them.