WATCH HER DIE (Shifter Series Book 2)

CHAPTER TWENTY: THE SON OF AN ENEMY

William’s eyes twisted with fury as he gazed at the boy whose features were covered with a veil of innocence. He dashed across the room to pounce on the helpless kid. Raised his open hand and swung it hard at his face, but Derik deftly came between them.

Derik reached up and caught his fist with his hand, holding it in his own viselike grip. William was taken aback by this.

“Sir, please, you have to listen,” he pleaded, releasing his grip and pushing the boy back—away from his reach. “As much as I wanted to lay my hands on this kid, I just couldn’t. This boy is our key to defeating T-Murek and finding your daughter.”

Jeffrey said nothing; he just stared blankly at his feet, looking more innocent than ever before.

William had to choke back his rage. Instinctively, he knew to keep calm. “You better know what you are doing,” he snarled, returning to the couch.

Derik turned to Jeffrey and nodded—a silent signal to proceed with what he had to say.

Jeffrey took the hint. “My name is Jeffrey, and as the agent has rightly said, I am a member of Beocraft… and T-Murek’s son.”

He shifted his gaze to William. He saw that he was still shaking with barely restrained rage, but didn’t let that intimidate him. “I never asked to become one of them, but they chose me. They came to me and made me an offer to join them.”

“You could have easily denied their offer,” Alex said, interrupting him.

“I could have…” Jeffrey turned to Alex and smiled. “… but then, I would be dead. The rules are simple. You get asked, you refuse, and you die. For a few years now, I’ve been seeking ways to bring down this whole organisation; that’s the only way I can regain my freedom back. I’ve come to realise that Beocraft cannot be defeated easily because it was created by dark magic half a millennium ago when the first shifters walked the earth. If I’m to do this, I’ll need all the help I can get.”

William’s eyes held a fierce gleam as he watched the boy continue. “In order to defeat them, you have to go back to the beginning to understand what the organisation is about. Beocraft was created to sustain alliances between shifters with a strong political background. Their goal originally was to influence the society and immediate environment where they inhabit and bring about growth and harmony. But this goal gradually changed over the years when the mask was introduced. The mask is said to have been forged from dark magic which allows the wearer the ability to shift shape.”

“I thought shifters naturally transform into half animal without the need to use anything to aid in their transformation,” Alex interrupted.

“The mask allows us to shift into anything we want, both human and animal alike—something an ordinary shifter is incapable of,” Jeffrey enunciated.

“T-Murek seems like the only member who doesn’t wear a mask. Could it be that the face he is wearing is not his real face?” Derik thought aloud, interrupting.

“You cannot imagine how justified you are in making such a statement.” Jeffrey turned to him. “T-Murek is not the man you think he is. You’ve been fighting the wrong shifter all along. ‘T-Murek’ is not even his real name; it’s a code name we use each time we gather. The Murek name is but a suffix we attach to a unique letter of the English alphabet, and that’s how our code name is formed.”

“To help you all understand—” He took the mask from Derik and said, “This mask has the letter ‘M’ marked on it. The suffix, Murek, is then attached to this letter to form my code name, M-Murek.”

It finally made sense.

“Can you help us find your father?” Alex asked, sounding polite.

“I’ve never set eyes on my father. He hides his real identity behind a mask. Heck, I don’t even know his real name,” Jeffrey said. “Everyone at Beocraft is careful not to disclose their identity to anyone, not even to a close relative. And there’s a reason for that.”

William was growing impatient with all the questions that were being thrown at Jeffrey—none relating to his daughter. He picked up the picture Alex had shown him earlier and slammed it on the table before Jeffrey. “The masked man in this photograph took my daughter about an hour ago. Tell me where I can find him,” he snarled.

“C-Murek.” The name escaped Jeffrey’s lips like a rush of cold air. He seemed terrified by the man in the photograph.

Jeffrey turned to him. “The man that’d kidnapped your daughter is impossible to find. No one knows who he is, or what he looks like. C-Murek never takes his mask off. But there is something that might help you find him. A map.”

The room was silent.

“A map?” Alex chimed in.

“Yes. A map.” Jeffery took in a long, quivering breath before continuing. “This map can be found in the—”

Blood splattered across the room and smeared on the walls—and on everyone else in that room.

“Bloody hell!” William bawled as he took in sight of the blood which spread all over his T-shirt. He was momentarily confused by what was happening. A deep feeling of revulsion grew within him as he turned to stare at the flesh and bile that’d scattered all around the room.

A thud sounded after Jeffrey’s lifeless body collapsed on the cold floor. His head had been blown off. Everyone in the room stared in horror at Jeffrey as he lay on the floor beneath his pool of blood. Blood and whitish fluid trickled from his neck.

Something hanging from the ceiling caught the corners of Derik’s eyes and he glanced up. He became terrified at the sight of a cloaked skeleton-like creature clinging to the ceiling.

The creature wore a dark hooded garment that had many tears on it, making its dress resemble a rag. It used its arms and feet to hold on to the ceiling. Its arms were bony and lacking moisture.

The creature was holding a rifle pointing down at the spot where Jeffrey had stood. It turned to look at Derik, and their eyes locked. Its face was hideous and reddened, which made Derik wonder if it was wearing a mask—or was that its original face?

Derik felt a cold shiver racing down his spine as he turned to stare into its lifeless hollow eyes. “Holy s**t!” he exclaimed, realising himself and quickly reaching for his gun. He started shooting towards the ceiling at the creature.

Securing its gun in its back, the creature ran swiftly across the ceiling as the bullets whizzed past. It dropped to the window and turned to look back at them. Derik shot its arm. It yelped and jumped off the window. The creature scattered in the air into three blackbirds and flew away.

William watched from the window as the three black crows flew away. “What the hell is that thing?” he questioned with knitted eyebrows—couldn’t take his eyes off the birds.

“I don’t know, sir. But whatever that thing was, it’s definitely a part of Beocraft.” Derik looked over Jeffrey’s body, blood was gushing from his neck. “That creature shot him to keep him from spitting out what he knew about C-Murek.”

“There goes our one shot at finding the man who kidnapped your daughter.” Alex heaved disappointedly, looking at the body.

Suddenly, Jeffrey’s body expanded and slowly transformed into the body of someone else. No sooner, his body morphed into an entirely different person. It was no longer the body of a teenager, but now an adult. William blinked in surprise as he watched the body transform.

“That wasn’t even his real body. He’d shape shifted before coming to talk to us.” Alex’s expression was positively awestruck. He bent to identify the body, but the head had been blown off, making it difficult to get a positive ID. “I wonder what else we didn’t notice. I doubt if Jeffrey was even his real name.”

William turned to Derik. “Get someone down here to clean this up, and take the body to the forensic lab for analysis. We need to run a DNA test on the body.”