Alphas Unleashed 2 (2 page)

"It is the single thing that drives me forward." He gave me a long look, "don't you hate what they've done to you? Has your life been so good, that you don't wish them all dead by now?"

I searched my soul for an answer, and was surprised with what I realized. "No, I don't wish them all dead. If I could I would simply not think about them ever again. If I could be human, or even if I could just go somewhere that vampires had never been, that would be okay. I wouldn't want to spend my life hating them."

I wondered if by saying that I was painting myself as better than Marcus. But it was the truth, I wasn't going to lie.

"Then you have not truly suffered."

"Excuse me?" I said. I couldn't believe him. To say that I hadn't suffered! I had spent my entire life running, and cold, and afraid, expecting death to find me any day. All while he had been holed up in his mansion, peering in to microscopes.

"I'm sorry if that offends you, but it's the truth. You should know that Connor is compelled by that same force, to kill our enemy. Though he does not have my scientific training so he carves up his skin instead. If you aren't driven to kill vampires that is good. You're right, a peaceful life would be better. But if you don't want every vampire dead then you haven't experienced what Connor and I have."

I felt anger and panic and rage, I felt it all bubbling up and I got up from the chair and left the room without a word, before it all came out in a rush. I walked quickly down the hall, but I could feel the tears coming, the sobs, and I didn't want Marcus to hear that. Desperate, I picked a door at random and opened it, rushed inside and closed it behind me.

I sunk to the floor, buried my head between my knees and cried.

He was so cold and distant and just... disdainful. How could Connor expect me to care about someone like that, much less sleep with him? Worse, the thought of my body compelling me to, of having no choice.

I felt the panic rising.

I wasn't going to do it. I would convince Connor to run away with me, and we could start our own pack. Or I would run away by myself if I had to. Maybe after my mating heat was over I would come crawling back. If they would still have me. Anything but mate with Marcus.

Anything but that.

When the tears had stopped and the sobbing had ceased, I finally took a good look at the room I was in. There was some furniture, but it was all buried beneath dusty old sheets. But some of it looked... it couldn't be.

I got to my feet and slowly walked towards the sheet draped over the almost familiar shape. I lifted up one corner, just to peak, then peeled back one whole side of the sheet.

It was a crib. A beautiful wooden crib, though it didn't appear like it had ever been used.

I looked around again now, more closely, picking out shapes in the dark room. Against the wall was a dresser. I opened it up and found a mixture of pink and baby blue clothes, all neatly folded and arranged, ready to be used. And then I saw, over in the corner of the room, several cans of paint. I went and checked and sure enough, one was blue, the other pink. The walls still white.

And against another wall a stroller still in the packaging, not yet assembled. I remembered then something Connor had said to me, in the early morning when the security guard had been found dead. He had told me that he thought other people had lived in the mansion once, that something terrible had happened, something that Marcus never talked about.

A room full of baby stuff that had never been used. A baby that had never arrived.

Suddenly I felt like I was trespassing, seeing things I shouldn't. Marcus wouldn't have wanted me in there. I quickly went to the door and peaked out. Down the hall I could still see Marcus' door slightly ajar, but no Marcus. I slipped out of the room and gently eased the door shut, then quickly left his wing of the mansion, not daring to make a peep until I was back in the part of the mansion that Connor had taken over for himself, where Marcus never seemed to come.

I knew that I should have left it all alone, let Marcus have his secrets, but some part of me had to know. What had he suffered that was so terrible, that had put him on the path he seemed destined to go down, no matter how self destructive it was?

I went and found Connor in his room, lifting weights. Normally I loved watching him lift weights, but I was too worked up to enjoy the view.

"Connor I need your help," I said.

"Did you talk to Marcus?"

"That's what I need your help with."

Connor put down the barbell he was pushing up over his head and looked at me. "What do you mean?"

"Remember just after we met, after they found the security guard in the lobby all ripped apart."

He nodded.

"And you told me about how you had found things around this place, that made you think that maybe there were things that Marcus wasn't telling you. Do you remember that conversation?"

He nodded.

"Can you show me?"

Connor frowned, "what did Marcus say to you?"

"I want to understand him, but I don't think that's going to happen by talking to him. Please?"

Connor grabbed his shirt from where he had tossed it and put it back on. "Come on," he said.

We walked out of the wing of the mansion that was Connors, but not towards Marcus' portion of the building like I had thought. Instead Connor ascended the stairs, taking them two at a time and forcing me to hurry after him. I hadn't been upstairs yet. There had never been a reason to go up there.

Connor led me down another hallway of closed doors. The whole mansion had that kind of eery, abandoned feeling. Like we didn't really belong there in that building. Like we were temporary.

Connor tried one door, then closed it and tried the next one, then he beckoned me inside, and closed the door behind us once I had joined him.

Inside the dark room were boxes and boxes and boxes. Floor to ceiling. "One weekend, when I was here my myself, I explored the entire place. There isn't much around. Mostly it's just old furniture covered by sheets. But not in here."

Connor went to one particular stack of boxes and opened it up, then pulled something out, "here," he said, holding out a piece of paper to me, "take a look at this."

I took it, and what I thought had been a piece of paper in the low light was actually a photograph. I took it to the window, pushed open the heavy drapes and held the photo up to the sunlight. There were three people in the picture. They all looked like they were standing on the front steps of the mansion. It looked like two brothers and a sister. They definitely looked related. The oldest of the two brothers looked like Marcus. He was serious in a suit and tie, and his slight smile didn't touch his eyes.

The younger brother and the sister were both smiling, and had a kind of easy grace to them. They were dressed more simply, and both had long, flowing hair. I flipped the picture over and on the back there was a label. 'L to R: Marcus, Amelia and Abel Thorne.'

Wait, I thought. I flipped the picture back over and made sure. The older brother wasn't Marcus, that was Abel. At least according to the picture. I looked again, more closely. The two brothers resembled each other, there was no reason the youngest one couldn't be a young Marcus. It was just that smile. I had never seen Marcus smile like that.

But what had happened between then and now, to change Marcus so much? That was what I felt I had to understand, to understand Marcus.

"And this one," Connor said, bringing another picture to me at the window. I handed the other one back to him and took the new one. It was young Marcus again, a little older than he had been in the other picture. It was just him and another girl, though it wasn't the sister from the other picture, Amelia. It was someone new.

They were holding hands, both of them grinning. He was wearing a basic suit and vest, no jacket, and she had on a pretty white dress, with flowers braided in to her hair.

I flipped the picture over but there was no corresponding label to tell me who the mystery woman was.

"Do you think it's a wedding dress?" I said, holding the picture up to Connor.

"Yea it is," Connor said, "there's other pictures in the box, from the ceremony."

I studied the picture more closely. It was hard to tell where it had been taken. It had been summer, by the looks of it. They both looked so happy. It was hard to imagine that this grinning young man had been Marcus once upon a time.

"Do you know her name?"

"Ailsa," Connor said, looking over my shoulder at the picture. "It was on one of the other pictures. I never found out much more than that. There's lots of pictures, but not much else. Nothing to give it any sort of context. There's pictures of Ailsa's two brothers at the ceremony, but no other family on her side that I can tell. And there's lots of Marcus' parents too, and some more of the brother and sister. Lots of older ones, going back to when they were kids. But soon after the wedding the pictures just stop."

"Ailsa," I said to myself, testing the name on my lips. It was a strange name. I didn't think I'd ever heard it before. Where had they all gone? What had happened? I imagined that big mansion filled with life and happy voices and laughter. It was such a strange idea though. The silence of the mansion was oppressive.

"Come on," Connor said, dragging me away from the window. He took the picture from me and put it back in the box. I started to look through the box, at the stacks of other pictures, but Connor shooed me away and put the lid back on. "There aren't any answers in there," he said.

We drifted back to his room, but neither of us were feeling particularly up beat after our little field trip. More and more I felt like whatever had happened in the past haunted that mansion. Those pictures, and all the things for the baby that had never arrived. It was depressing to think about it all, but I couldn't help picking those thoughts back up and turning them over in my mind, trying to puzzle out what had happened.

Maybe if I understood what had happened, I could understand Marcus.

~~~

I couldn't sleep that night. I kept tossing and turning, preoccupied by thoughts that wouldn't leave me alone. I had to know why the pictures had stopped. I just did.

It was the middle of the night, but I had a feeling that Marcus would be awake. I tiptoed out of Connor's room, leaving him snoring softly on the king sized mattress and silk sheets that he had found especially for me, and quickly made my way over to Marcus' wing of the mansion.

I went to the first door I had found him at, but hesitated there, trying to figure out what I was going to say. 'Hey Marcus, I went snooping through all your stuff and I want you to tell me about your mysteriously missing family.' That wasn't going to have quite the intended affect. I would be lucky if he didn't throw me out on the lawn, or lock me in a room until my mating heat began.

And then I started to have second thoughts. I was right outside his door but what had I expected to happen? Some sort of moment of emotional truth? To break through Marcus' cold outer shell? It had sounded like a good idea from Connor's warm bed, but standing there, in front of Marcus' door, I had a feeling it would go very badly.

I was just about to turn around and go tiptoeing back to Connor's room when the door, slightly ajar, was suddenly flung open.

I jumped and actually squeaked a little in fright before I managed to get myself under control.

Marcus glanced past me, down the hallway, then back to me, "are you coming in or not?" He didn't wait for an answer, just left the door ajar and went back to his laboratory.

It was easy to forget just how frighteningly good the guy's senses were. Especially Marcus. Half the time he seemed more wolf than man, with his intense stare and tightly coiled way he seemed to hold himself.

I stepped in to the room and fiddled with the door a little, still trying to think of what I was going to say. Maybe he somehow sensed what I was going to ask him, and wouldn't be offended at all. That seemed a little like wishful thinking though. Werewolves weren't mind readers.

"After our conversation this afternoon," I started, and Marcus continued to stare in to his microscope. "Marcus can you look at me, this is important."

He looked up from his desk at me, then swivelled his chair away from the desk and gave me his full attention, penetrating gaze and all, and suddenly I wanted to tell him I'd changed my mind and he could go back to working. But no, I needed to get it done and said.

"After we talked, I was upset," I decided on the spur of the moment to skip the part where I found the baby's room. That seemed a little too personal and painful, "and I went back to Connor. I wanted to understand who you are better, and Connor had mentioned before to me that he had found things in the house that made him think that there had been more people, more werewolves, living here once." I paused, letting that part sink in, but Marcus only continued to regard me with those cool eyes, giving no hint of a reaction.

"Connor showed me a room upstairs that he found once. There were pictures, of you and your family, you and your wife, here at the mansion." I fidgeted, waiting for some reaction, anything, but Marcus was a wall. "I just..." I trailed off. I didn't know what else to say. I hadn't thought I would get that far.

Marcus sighed and got to his feet, "come with me."

He left the room, and I hurried after him, a little unsure if I should be. Was he angry? Was he going to dole out some punishment for snooping through his things and uncovering all his secrets? Suddenly I felt like I should have recruited Connor for this, to have him by my side if nothing else. He wouldn't have liked the idea, I would have had to convince him, but I could have.

Marcus took us deeper in to his side of the mansion.

"Where are we going?" I said, trailing behind him.

"You'll see." There was no malice in his voice, but he didn't sound exactly happy or thrilled either.

Finally we came to another door, a closed door. For this one Marcus produced a key from his pocket, and inserted it in to the lock. It was the first locked door I had seen in the entire place.