Secrets Of The Alpha 2: (BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (His Secrets Series) (10 page)

Chapter 10

“That cunt!” I wanted to shout.

Her voice was enough to rouse the homicidal maniac inside me. I would have loved to be given just five minutes with her. Just hand me a hunting knife, and I would have shown her all the tricks my grandfather taught me about carving good game.

“We trained you, Hughes, ever since you were a little boy, and we believed in you,” she was yelling. I looked at Nathan and raised an eyebrow.

Did she just say they trained him ever since he was a little boy?
If I didn’t know any better, I could have sworn that the interrogator, Gloria Darling, and everyone else in their weirdly happy family fit the profile of a terrorist cell. Only sadistic terrorists would deny children of their childhood just so they could train them to kill on impulse.

Nathan raised his hand giving everyone a signal to get ready, and I felt my heart skip a beat. This was it. This was the moment of truth.

“What happened, Hughes? You were one of our most promising candidates,” the interrogator said. From where I was standing, I could see that her words were slowly beginning to get to Nathan. He looked like he wanted to pounce at one of them and rip them to shreds.

“Or should I ask ‘who’ happened, Nathan? Would that be the right question?” There was still no answer from any of us.

“So, I have to ask, Nathan. How does it feel to be a monster like the enemy? Do you like it so far? Is it something you are willing to die for?” The interrogator asked. She was pressing all the right buttons with Nathan Hughes, and I know that she knew it too. I would have loved to put a bullet right between her eyes.

“Because if you are not willing to die for it, you can still do the right thing and make us proud. And you can still save your lovely little family.”

That was it. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“What have you done with my family?” Nathan suddenly yelled at the dark hallway.

“Oh wow, we got a bite.” This was Gloria Darling’s voice. “But somehow I wasn’t expecting him to be the one to out them,” she added, and we heard a crowd of people, men and women, chortle with laughter.

My grip around Vincent’s hand tightened and Vincent turned to look at me. There was an unusually calm look in his eyes as if he didn’t feel like we were in imminent danger. He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it.

“Don’t worry, Nathan. Your family’s fine; they are safe.” The interrogator suddenly laughed. It was a cynical laugh, one that made me want to lunge into the hallway and snap her neck.

“But you know as well as I do, Nathan, that those are just words. For all you know, they could be at the bottom of the ocean off Hollywood beach.” I saw Nathan running his fingers through his hair in despair.

This bitch was heartless. I would have expected her to do that to me, to Vincent, or even to Fran, but to Nathan for God’s sake; they were old friends. She had just said that she had known him ever since he was a boy. You’d think that she would at least be nice, keeping this in mind. My heart went out to Nathan as I saw him struggling against himself. He would have been pacing up and down if he could. The very reason he had sought out his number one enemy was to protect his family against himself, but it was like by coming to Vincent, he had plunged the ones he loved right into the fire. No one in that room could fathom the kind of pain he was in… except for maybe Vincent.

“I am the only one who can guarantee their safety, Nathan, and you know it, but I will only grant you that if you do the right thing,” the interrogator went on.

“You are not a monster sweetheart,” Gloria said. “You are one of us. You know we will take care of you and your family, but we have a bigger mission at hand, and we have to take care of that first, don’t you agree?” She went on. Nathan dropped his head and sighed.

“Yes we do,” he said in a soft voice, surprising all of us. I looked at him, surprised that he would turn on us this quickly.

“What the hell are you doing?” I whispered harshly as he looked at Vincent. “You know she is kidding. She is using your family to get to you, and you are falling for it you, son of a bitch!”

The hatred in his eyes was evident. It took all the strength I could master not to light up my pouch and throw it at him. Fran looked at him more surprised than the rest of us were. For her, this was more than just surprise, it was betrayal. She moved closer to Penny for comfort as he slowly began walking towards the enemy’s camp. As he walked towards them, the string on his pouch caught fire. I wasn’t sure if he knew it. It could have been accidental or a calculated move. I couldn’t really tell.

“See, isn’t that so much better?” Gloria asked. I could almost picture that sick smile on her face.

Nathan suddenly threw the gunpowder at her, and it exploded. Suddenly, everything went haywire. There were gunshots being fired, and we all cowered, trying to get to safety. Suddenly, there were two thuds on the ground. When the smoke cleared, we saw Gloria and Nathan on the ground.

“No, no, no!” Fran shouted as she ran to the flame and ignited her pouch before she flung it down the hallway.

Vincent and I began chucking pouches at them too. He was still holding my hand.  I noticed Penny chuck her pouch at the gunmen before she ran and hid behind a potted plant. It was obvious that she had never had to face this kind of excitement before. I mean, if she had, she would have probably been stronger and braver than she was being right now. But I didn’t have the time to focus on all that. I had to be strong for me and for the man I loved.

I threw another pouch down the hallway before I looked at Fran who was still looking at Nathan trying to wake him up, but he wasn’t moving. She suddenly looked up in anger and began throwing her pouches at the hallway without even lighting them. I could see that she was upset, and the anger was making her not think straight because she was not even hiding or making an effort to protect herself from the hail of bullets. I wanted to yell at her to be careful, but she seemed to be in a world of her own just throwing pouches. I suddenly gasped when I saw her suddenly fall.

Please God no,
I thought as I looked at her. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her moving. A bullet had caught her right in the shoulder, but at least she was still alive. I was breathing heavily as I looked at Vincent. It seemed like all hope was lost. This was it. This was how it was all going to end, and as much as I hated it, the interrogator and her people were going to be the ones to win this war.

Just when I had given up hope, Ophagia lit up her pouches and began walking down the hallway.

“No,” I whispered as I saw her flinging the pouches at the gunmen. I could still hear shots being fired, and I was sure that she was right in their range.

“Ophagia!” I called out when I saw her clothes catching fire.

She was throwing her pouches at the enemy in rapid succession, burning a good number of them but their bullets were hitting her over and over, yet she looked unusually calm. As she went on chucking her pouches, the sound of gunfire was slowly dying down. Her risk was actually paying off. Soon, there was no more gunfire. She had singlehandedly taken them all out. I gasped when she suddenly collapsed.

Vincent let go of my hand and ran across the room to get a rag. I ran over to where she was as Vincent came running back holding a rug in his hand. He patted off the flames as I looked on.

“Ophagia,” I called out to her softly, but there was no answer. It was then that I saw just how much she was bleeding.

“She is bleeding…there is so much blood,” I suddenly said in a panic.

Vincent ran his hands over her torso trying to plug the bullet wounds, but they were too many. We couldn’t stop the bleeding. And what we didn’t know at that time was that Ophagia had left us the minute her body dropped. I looked up at Vincent, tears welling up in my eyes. I wasn’t particularly a big fan of Ophagia in the beginning, but I had grown quite fond of the woman. And now she was gone; she had given her life to save us.

Fran, who had been writhing in pain ever since she got shot, pulled herself to her feet and ran over to where Nathan had fallen to check up on him. She looked at him and got to her knees. She pressed her hand on his chest and smiled when she felt a faint heartbeat.

“You’re okay…you’re okay,” she said under her breath. Nathan’s eyes fluttered open, and he looked up at her. “You’re okay,” she said again. He began pulling himself up ready to fight.

“I need to get them before they get us,” he was saying as he struggled to get up. Fran shook her head and put her hand on his shoulder.

“It’s over. They are gone,” she said.

“Gone?” He asked.

“Dead,” she confirmed as she looked into his eyes.

“Dead,” he echoed.

Fran started bringing her face down slowly. Nathan didn’t move away. In fact, he leaned in and met her lips in a long celebratory kiss. Fran angled her head, and she was just getting into the kiss when he suddenly pulled away from her. He shook his head.

“I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have…I don’t know what I was thinking,” he started as he looked at her. He looked guilty as ever.

“No, I’m the one who…” Fran started before he shook his head.

“No, I’m the one who should be apologizing. I am the one who crossed the line and…I have a family to look out for. I shouldn’t have led you on like that,” he said in a soft voice.

Fran nodded. She pretended to understand, but Nathan didn’t know that she was gravely upset. She looked at him and nodded again before she helped him up even though they were both in pain.

Just then, Penny came over to where Vincent and I were and looked down at Ophagia looking to help. But it was too late. There was nothing she or any of us could do for Ophagia now.

“We need to go,” Nathan said as he looked around. “If there are more of them out there, they will be coming in any time now. We need to get out of here before they do,” he added as he looked at Vincent who was still distraught over Ophagia’s death. I put a hand on his and looked into his eyes.

“Baby, Hughes is right,” I said. I could see the pain in his eyes. This must have been the greatest loss he had ever had to endure.

“Come on,” I said as I stood up. Vincent was reluctant to leave Ophagia.

I knew that he was thinking that it was wrong to just leave her lying there like some piece of trash. I knew he would have wanted to give her a decent burial, but there was no time for that. We needed to get a move on. He looked over his shoulder as he followed the rest of us out of what used to be Ophagia’s lair. We followed Nathan up to a staircase and began following his lead going up the steps to get out of Ophagia’s underground home. I was almost at the top when I suddenly heard a loud boom. The lights down there were flickering, and I could have sworn I felt the house shaking.

“It’s them. They are already here,” Nathan said. “Come on, hurry up,” he called out to me as I made my way to the top followed by Penny and, finally, Vincent.

‘What the hell was that?” Penny asked.

“They are firing projectiles at the house. They are trying to bury us underneath the rubble,” he said as he began running down the hallway and into the main house. We all ran into the kitchen, and I gasped when I saw all the SUVs that surrounded the house. The whole place looked terrible.

We’ll never get out of here alive,
I thought as I looked around. Just then, I saw a projectile heading straight for us.

“Get down!” Vincent yelled as he grabbed me and Penny and flung us to the floor. Nathan flung himself at Fran and climbed over her. I closed my eyes when I heard an explosion rocking the mansion. I was now panicking. It took a few minutes before Vincent pulled away from me.

“You okay? Are you hurt?” He asked, and I shook my head.

“Penny!” Vincent called out. There was a cough before we heard Penny’s feeble voice.

“I’m okay,” she said as she waved her hand in front of her face.