Page 74 of Whispered Warnings: Part Two

The guys waste no time in taking a sip.

“Alright, while they’re recovering, why don’t you show us that footage?” I ask her.

Her frown becomes deep, making her look closer to her actual age. As a bear shifter, she ages a lot slower than humans, so although she looks about forty, she is actually closer to two hundred and has seen all kinds of shit in her life.

“It ain’t pretty,” she tells me as she presses some buttons on her laptop and then nods her head toward the large TV screen, “there you go. It was captured by one of my barmaids. She called in sick today. I can’t say I blame her.” She hands me a whiskey of my own, “You’re going to need this.”

“Alright. Thanks,” I reply, as she passes it to me. A thread of unease goes through me at the way she’s acting, it takes a lot to make Niamh uneasy.

The video starts, as most of these do, with a shaky camera before it steadies out. When the picture finally becomes clear, I really wish it hadn’t.

Chapter Twenty-One

Neith

There is someone leaning over the top of a body on the floor and feeding. It’s not feeding like any supernatural that I know of. It’s at the neck, which would suggest a vamp, but unlike the human stories, vamps don’t tear out throats, and they don’t leave any trace of their presence behind. If they feed on a human, which they are supposed to get very clear and definite permission for, they can also wipe the human’s memories or even replace them with memories of a good one-night stand.

“Oh, that’s not right,” Ransom grimaces.

The creature sits up, and we get a good view. Its face is red with blood as it digs into the stomach with its clawed hands and starts to eat.

I push my disgust out of my mind and move closer to the screen.

“Looks like a vamp?” I say, my words coming out as a question because I am really unsure.

“It does,” Reed says, “but it’s not behaving like any vamp that I have known.”

“Just wait,” Niamh says.

We do as she has asked as we carry on watching. My eyebrows rise with surprise as the creature on the screen suddenly seems to contort, unwillingly. It doubles in size, its mouth stretching into a snout but its eyes still that of the vampire. Huge, pointed ears replace the human looking ones, and it starts to sprout fur, but the fur doesn’t cover it completely. The transition looks painful, and he’s not shifting into a wolf. This is a creature that shouldn’t exist.

“Shit, the hybrids have made it over here,” Raiden curses.

“Hybrid?” Niamh says, frowning heavily.

I nod, “Yeah, someone is trying to create hybrids, but they never last very long, and they are really fucked up. They die shortly after we are made aware of them, or they get killed by us for being out of control.”

“It’s against the natural order,” she says. “If hybrids were supposed to exist, then they would.”

“Exactly,” Griff says in agreement.

“Fortunately, it’s a case that we are already working on,” Evander tells her.

All of the guys seem to be back to normal now, with color back in their cheeks.

“Good,” she replies, “this is way out of my comfort zone, and people are starting to get a bit twitchy.”

I frown as I remember what she said on the phone, “Did you say that several people have gone missing?”

She nods, “Two actually, the one being,” she pauses and changes what she was going to say, “the one on the floor is the second guy that went missing, and the other one is the first one.” She glances at me, “I wouldn’t normally call you for missing people, but then I saw this video and well . . .”

She trails off, and I nod, “You did the right thing; we’ll take care of it.”

“So do we assume that the one on the floor was taken by whoever is creating these hybrids as well then?” Doc says.

“It would stand to reason,” Reed replies, “How long was he missing before this footage was shot?”

Niamh thinks about it for a moment, “He was missing for a few days. That other one has been missing for a week, and that is the first sighting of him.”

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