Rise Of The Hunters - Chapter 76

Willow opened her eyes, and blinked them a few times. It was obvious from her scowl, that her head was hurting her. Sitting up, she looked around in surprise, unable to find the proper words to describe what she saw.

“You idiot! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” screamed Lisa. She was tied to a chair on the other side of the room.

Rick was tightening the last ropes on the guards who were lined up in their own chairs beside her. He didn’t even glance in her direction as he moved over to Willow.

“Are you okay?” he asked her gently, kneeling to check on her.

She touched his face, lightly, where bruises had started to show. “My head is pounding in time to my heart, but I can’t tell if it’s from the gas, or your manliness.”

He smirked at her, and her heart started beating to a different rhythm.

“You two need your own room,” ġrȯȧnėd Hayden, sitting up and rubbing his face drunkenly.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said, smiling widely at Rick.

He chuckled.

“You brats are going to pay for this!” Lisa screamed again. But as they continued to ignore her, she started laughing. That got their attention. None of the guards were awake to witness her descent into madness.

“You really have no idea. I thought as the son of one of the leaders, he would have told you something. Surely you can’t be totally clueless!”

Rick frowned in obvious confusion. “What are you babbling about?”

“It’s obvious, she’s gone mad and is going to spout some nonsense to try and convince you to let her go.” Hayden ġrȯȧnėd as he leaned back against a cabinet.

“I just thought you were an imbecile, and that was why your dad sent you to stay in the library all the time. I had no idea he was trying to keep things from you. Too bad he’s dead and you’ll never know the truth about your mom.”

Her grin stretched across her face so far, Willow wondered if her face would split in half.

Rick surged to his feet so smoothly, it caught everyone by surprise. Moving so fast, he was a blur, he slammed his fist into the wall behind her. She stopped grinning as sweat broke out on her face.

“It’s already starting. It wasn’t supposed to work that fast, but they did say it was different for each person…” She whispered to herself, her voice dying out as he put his face in hers.

“You are going to stop with this insane game and tell me what you mean. I want to know everything, so that when you die, there’s no more secrets lost.”

Willow and Hayden couldn’t see his face, but his voice had turned deeper, more gravely, and they both sat up straighter, concern written all over their faces.

Lisa looked into his eyes, and saw her end. She swallowed and nodded.

“We agreed to keep the secret as long as possible, passing it down from parent to child when we stepped down from the council our child would take our place. That way the information would never be lost.

“There have been rules that we had to follow, like only one parent was allowed, there always had to be two boys and two girls between us, and we were only allowed to have one child.”

“But that’s not right. None of you had girls. What were you supposed to do, kill the child and try again if it wasn’t the right sėx?” Hayden argued.

“We were all told at the same time,” her eyes were no longer seeing them, but a room from her youth.

“My father told me his secrets and told me in five years he would be dead, so I had to prepare to take his place. When I met with Mary, she had just been told the same by her mother. But the secrets we were told were different. Each leader had different secrets, to make sure that each one could not be replaced.”

“But how was Xun able to join the council and you guys were kicked off?” asked Willow.

“We got together with Jerome and Max. We were all very close, having been raised together. Before the secrets were told to us, we thought we had our futures planned out. We were going to marry them, Mary and I with Jerome and Max. But then we found out that wasn’t allowed. It enraged us. We made a pact to change things. Well, some of them. We didn’t get a choice in all of them.”

“What are you talking about?” They were all very confused, but Lisa was gone, lost in the past. They had to sit back and listen.

“The compound was formed on top of a laboratory. It was the main lab that came up with most of the viruses against the vampires. That’s where this place came from. But over the years, some of the virus’ didn’t work out, and there were side effects we couldn’t control. It was our job to keep them contained. Secret. But we couldn’t.”

“Oh, crap! I have a bad feeling about this!” mȯȧnėd Hayden.

“We have a direct link to the vampire elders. Whenever our population got too large, we were to contact them and kick out the ‘troublemakers’.”

“Is it just me, or are her sentences not making that much sense?” Willow looked at Rick, and he shrugged in confusion.

“We didn’t want to kill our kids, so we would keep whichever firstborn we had. The issue with no spouse was easy for Mary, but I hated to see them kill my husband. I had loved him. Jerome and Max killed their own wives as soon as the babies were born. It was the way it was supposed to be. They might learn the truth and the secrets were too important.”

Rick sat down heavily. He looked too stunned to respond to her words.

“A virus was released with the intent to keep people from transforming into werewolves if captured by the vampires, but it didn’t work right. So, they tried several different ways to make it work out. This last one, I found it here, while checking on the rats. They can be tamed, if you have enough food. But the notes left with it, stated that it was unstable. Mary decided we would release it and send it as a ticking time bomb with this last group of humans to the vampires.

“We’re doomed. We can’t return to the compound without infecting everyone else. Jerome didn’t tell you his secret, like he was supposed to. It was time for him to be killed, but the secret is lost now.”

They looked at each other. Horror filled their faces as they realized she was completely nuts. Could they believe anything she had just told them?