The Alpha Men's Secret Club 5(25)
“Nothing a little anesthetic didn’t take care of. It’s not as if the FBI is paying me for my tissue harvest, like some unscrupulous black market doctors I know from a third world country. I’m unfortunately and still woefully unemployed.”
More laughter. No one could tell if he was serious or not. The atmosphere in the room was very tense.
The spokesman came to the podium.
“That’s all we have for today, I’m afraid. Professor O’Brien is unfortunately not feeling well – ”
Rust held up a hand. “But I haven’t finished.”
God help us, Alyssa thought.
“Let him finish!” shouted Rita Cunningham.
Everyone in the room echoed this.
“Let him finish!”
“If you haven’t tortured him, then you have nothing to hide.”
“We practice freedom of speech.”
“What do you have to hide?”
Alyssa groaned amid the cacophony. This was a mistake.
“Mr. Moriarty is right,” Rust said to both the spokesman and the gathered throng. “That’s your name, isn’t it? Moriarty? It says so on your nametag. You don’t happen to be a shifter in hiding, do you? Because one such shifter – and that is my suspicion – poisoned my mother and father and girlfriend. Right here on the FBI premises under surveillance.”
The room grew suddenly quiet.
“Yes, it’s true,” Rust said. “The poisoning occurred yesterday, when you were all making your flight arrangements to come to the bright state of New Mexico. My parents are dead, and my girlfriend’s life is in limbo.”
Audible gasps all round. Stirrings of unrest.
“It’s a poison called wolfsbane, known only to shifters. It’s deadly. When ingested, it causes a purple tongue upon death. You can imagine what a field day our shifter ancestors had with it. In fact, during a Gathering in the fifteenth century, a rival wolf clan poisoned the well of another wolf clan. The bodies were piled in stacks, and when they were burned, they emitted a sickly sweet smell . . . like flowers.”
Everyone was hanging on to his every word now.
“Yes, as you have probably guessed, there’s a whole world of us out there. Lions and tigers and bears. Wolves and cheetahs and panthers. Every order of mammal, in fact. If there are lizards, I haven’t heard of them, though they might be hiding out in the Mojave Desert.”
Nervous laughter.
Rust paused, his eyes glinting, and took in the room.
“And here we are all the while, living and breathing among you. We are your neighbors, your college professors, the woman who sits across from you at a PTA meeting, the doctor who tends to your asthmatic son at the ER. We have been living among you for centuries. And nothing has changed, really. We still live among you. We are you.
“Some of us are philanthropists. Some of us are murderers. Some of us are both philanthropists and murderers.”
He stopped and took stock again of his audience. You could hear a penny drop.
He’s going to reveal them, Alyssa knew. Reveal them publicly.
Rust said, “There’s a Council that governs us. A secret society. It comprises of shifters from around the world. It has its roots in England, but it’s practically virtual now.” He grinned. “We shifters keep up with the times.
“This shifter council is responsible for ordering the death strikes on my parents, Moira and Connor O’Brien, myself and my pregnant girlfriend, Kate Penney.”
Alyssa noted that he called them all by name so that the audience would identify them as real people.
“They poisoned us through our food. The wolfsbane was meant to kill all of us shifters and those who are carrying shifter babies. They succeeded . . . except for me, by some quirk of fate. Now Kate Penney, the mother of my child, lies in a coma. I had to make a very difficult decision to abort the baby – ”
His voice cracked, and Alyssa could see that this was not an act
“ – to save her life. Or at least, to buy her time until I could do something about the poison in her veins. Even now, her life hangs in balance. When I walk out of this room, I’m not sure whether or not she will live or die. There’s no certainty in our lives right now.”
He paused.
“That’s why the Shifter Council members must pay. I’m going to name the names of the suspected murderers here, and it’s up to the FBI . . . or CIA . . . or whatever government agency you decide you want this to fall under . . . to decide how justice should be carried out.”
He looked straight at Alyssa.
“The first name in the Council is Aaron Mitchell. He is a CEO, entrepreneur, philanthropist . . . and the first suspect in my murder list.”