Chapter 49
"Try something? What could you possibly do?" Nick, Heather's father, asked Hotch.
"I'd like to speak with her," Hotch told him.
"You'd never be quick enough. I've tried," the mom admitted weakly.
Hotch looked at Jimmy, though, and Jimmy nodded. "He'd be quick enough and he wouldn't hurt her. I swear, Mandy."
She took a deep breath and then shrugged. "Go ahead. It's not like you could make it any worse. I haven't seen any of this generation have it this bad."
Suddenly the hedgehog changed into a cat and the scream that erupted from its throat caused them all to flinch, and Mack buried her face in Reid's shoulder wishing she had stayed up with Morgan and JJ.
After several more minutes, the girl was lying in the bed again and Hotch was to her instantly and he grabbed her shoulders and sat her up as she screamed.
As soon as Nick saw Hotch move, he knew what Hotch was and he turned to his brother-in-law with rage growing on his face. "You brought a va. . ."
"Nick!" his wife yelled as she grabbed his arm and turned him so he could see what was happening.
Hotch had grabbed the girl's face. "Open your eyes, Heather!" he ordered loud enough to be heard over her screams. As she took a breath, her eyes opened a slit and she looked around the room. "Look at me, Heather!" he commanded as he moved even closer to her face. Once her eyes locked with his, he smiled. "The pain is receding," he started calmly and the tension in her body started to ease. "It is going away. Take a deep breath." She did. "Let it out and the pain will stop."
She exhaled and then went almost completely limp, but Hotch held her. "Now take another deep breath and let it out." She did, and Hotch smiled even more as he stared at her. "Better?"
She nodded and then latched her arms around his neck. "Thank you!" she cried as she melted into his embrace and let her tears flow.
He wrapped her arms around her and held her as long as she wanted him to. "You're welcome."
After a few moments, she sniffed and pushed away from him. "You saved me, Akua."
Hotch gave her a small smile and then looked her mother who was also crying. "I think she needs a drink."
The woman scrambled to the table across the room and filled a tall glass.
"Is it over? Did you stop the change? Will that hurt her?" Nick wanted to know. He was torn between elation at seeing his daughter out of pain, worry that it was just a reprieve that wouldn't last long, or that the vampire had completely screwed up the changing process.
Hotch looked at Jimmy and then shrugged. "I don't know, honestly," he uttered and then started to second guess what he'd had done.
Amanda took her daughter the water and held it out to her. "Drink, Baby. You may not get another chance."
The girl's eyes filled with fear at the thought of the pain coming back and she looked at Hotch. "But you stopped it."
"How did he stop it, though?" Nick asked.
"Pain is caused by signals being sent from the brain. Hotch effectively made her brain relax, if you would," Reid explained. "Just like the pain caused by withdrawals from addiction. Even some medications can calm down the neuro transmitters that. . ."
"Yeah, I think we got it, Kid," Rossi assured him.
Hotch looked at the girl again and could see how exhausted she really was, and he turned to the parents. "I could make her sleep through the rest of it if it really isn't over."
Nick frowned and then looked at Jimmy. "That's my little girl he's talking about putting to sleep."
Jimmy step closer and put his hand on Heather's shoulder. "And he has already helped her tremendously."
"Let Heather make that decision," Amanda said as she grabbed her daughter's hand and gave her a squeeze.
The girl smiled at her mother and then looked back to Hotch. "If you can let me sleep through the rest of the change, then sha, I am more down with that than last month's top forty."
Hotch's eyes narrowed and then he looked at the girl's mother.
She chuckled. "That was a 'yes, please'."
"Oh," Hotch offered as his cheeks heated a little. "Sorry. I'm not completely up to date on teenaged girl lingo," he admitted with a grin.
"But Joey is a very lucky girl to have you as her makuakane," Heather insisted and then finished the water in the glass.
Hotch again looked at Jimmy. "Makuakane?"
Jimmy smiled. "Father."
"Oh, and how would she know about Joey?"
Jimmy looked to his niece and she shrugged, but he smiled. "The change must be nearing the end. She has picked up on some of your thoughts when you both touched."
Hotch took a deep breath and then locked eyes with Heather again. "You are going to relax and then go to sleep, and you are going to sleep until the change is over, and when you wake up, you will feel much better," he told her calmly as her eyes started to droop.
She took another deep breath and then her eyes closed completely as Hotch gently laid her back down and then stood up.
Her father quickly sat down in Hotch's spot and covered her up as he stroked her hair. Her mother kissed her cheek, got up from the other side, went around the bed, and then wrapped her arms around Hotch. "Thank you. That was paining me almost as much as it was paining her."
When she pulled away, Hotch gave her a nod. "You're welcome. I don't think I could handle seeing one of my kids going through something like that."
She frowned. "How do you have kids?"
Hotch swallowed and opened his mouth to answer, but Rossi moved up beside him with a grin. "He has two wonderful boys and a beautiful little girl, and he is an amazing father." He didn't think it wise to let them know just how short of a time Hotch had been a vampire, and whether they thought the kids were Hotch's biologically or not wasn't his problem.
Hotch's cheeks heated a little with the praise and Amanda nodded as she smiled. "I bet."
Nick stood up and stuck his hand out to Hotch. "I am sorry for what I was thinking once I. . ."
Hotch took his hand as he shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I would be leery about strangers coming around my children, too."
"And now we better go. You all can look after her while we go and try to figure out who is committing these murders," Rossi offered with a grin.
"Yes. Let's get back upstairs and we can discuss this further," Jimmy offered and they all nodded and followed the man back to the stairs.
As they followed the older men, Mack tugged on Reid's sleeve and leaned in close to him. "What does 'akua' mean?"
Reid smiled. "She thinks Hotch is a god," Reid explained as he and Mack shared a grin and then looked at Hotch's back.
Hotch obviously heard them because he huffed.
"Well, think about it, Hotch, no one in her family could help her and you stopped the pain. To her you are a god," Reid went on.
Hotch snorted. "And yet if she hadn't been in so much pain and found out what I was she would have been scared." He stopped on the stair and turned to his youngest team members with a look. "Just like you two in the beginning."
Mack took a deep breath. "And you know we are sorry about that, Hotch. I guess everyone has these preconceived notions in their heads and we just need to see past them in order to really see the man inside."
Hotch smirked and started to turn but Mack grabbed his arm. "And you are an amazing man, Hotch, and no matter what, you always will be."
Reid quickly nodded his agreement, and Hotch sighed but gave them a small grin. "Thank you."
Once they were back outside, Jimmy looked at Hotch as he motioned to a few of the other shifters still hanging around the front of the house. "We could help in the search." When Hotch opened his mouth to argue, Jimmy went on. "You can hear a shifter but the rest of your team cannot. You could split your team up and one of us could go with them and let them know when a shifter is around."
Rossi looked at Hotch with a grin. "I like it."
"We can't have civilians helping us on our case, Rossi, and you know it. If something happened, if. . ." Hotch tried to reason.
"But we could split up," Mack put in.
"And people wouldn't even know we were there if we play it right," a middle aged shifter offered as he joined the group. When JJ and Morgan looked at him with confusion in their eyes he smiled and shifted into a mouse and crawled toward Mack who bent to pick it up with a smile and held it close to her chest.
"Oh, hell no!" Morgan exclaimed. "I'm not having some mouse or something in my pocket!"
"I could keep watch for you from the sky," a young woman offered and then shifted into a bird and flew up to a branch above them.
"And then she could shit on you to let you know," Rossi joked but his look told Morgan to cool it; they were surrounded by shifters after all.
The bird lifted off and the woman landed lightly. "I would never do such a thing!" she exclaimed with wide eyes as she looked at Rossi and most of them laughed.
Hotch hissed, though, and held up his hand and they all fell silent. He looked to his left. "What's over that way?" he quickly asked Jimmy, and the team tensed with the look on his face.
"My house, why?" Jimmy asked as his gaze followed Hotch's.
"Because I just heard a scream and I think it was a woman," Hotch told him and the worry in his tone was evident.
Jimmy's face showed his fear. "No!" he hollered and then took off running. "Helen!" he screamed and then shifted into a cheetah and darted down the pathway, and the rest of the shifters changed into various animals and scrambled to join him; even the mouse that was still in Mack's hand jumped and shifted into a Greyhound and darted down the path.
Rossi shoved Hotch after them. "Go! We'll catch up!"
Hotch nodded once and was gone, and the rest of the team took off running in the same direction.
Being quicker than the eye, Hotch was the first one to reach the house and the kicked-in front door made his stomach tighten, but the sounds coming from within the home made rage boil up inside him. As he crossed the threshold, he took a deep breath to calm himself down and focused his hearing to determine exactly where the voices were coming from.
He found who he surmised was Jimmy's wife first. She was in the kitchen, on the floor, a metal spike-like thing sticking out of her stomach, and two men leaning down over her as she screamed. "Don't worry, it'll be over soon," the man on the right said as he wielded a knife in front of her face.
Neither man got to say or do anything else, though, as Hotch grabbed them both by the scruff of their shirts and threw them across the room as the woman's eyes went wide and her scream choked off in her throat as she took in the stranger before her.
Hotch held up his hands. "It's alright! I won't hurt you. I'm with Jimmy!"
She wasn't sure she believed him or not, but when she heard a cry from further in the house she looked at Hotch. "My children!" she pleaded as she pointed to the doorway off to the left and Hotch was gone. The sounds of fighting and cries she heard after that made her cry even more, but Jimmy ran to her side.
"Oh my God! Helen, I'm so sorry!" he cried as he knelt down next to her and several of his family ran in to join him.
"The kids! A vampire. . ." she started.
Jimmy stood up with a nod. "I know him," he assured her and then ran down the hall.
As Hotch held a man up against the wall getting ready to cuff him, a woman screamed and ran towards him. He turned just in time to receive a spike to his chest instead of his back and the look of satisfaction on the woman's face pissed him off even more. He had yet to allow himself to change, but as he looked down at the spike sticking out of him and then back to the woman, his eyes flashed to yellow and his smile showed his fangs. "Metal doesn't quite do it," he told her.
"Vampire!" she screamed and bolted out of the room.
He huffed, pulled the spike out, and turned back to the man who was cowering in the corner opposite a boy who was scared into silence but looked unharmed. Hotch had heard the shifters show up, and heard them as they caught the woman in the hall, so he went to the man he started with. He snatched him to his feet and looked him in the eyes. "Sleep," is all he said, and the man went limp in his arms.
Jimmy ran into the room while hollering for his children and then froze when he saw Hotch cuffing the unconscious man. He took a calming breath and then turned to the corner and the boy immediately ran to his side. "Are you alright?" he asked him and then three more boys shifted into their human forms and joined their father.
Hotch's face showed his surprise, and Jimmy laughed. "Shapeshifter children are very adept at hiding."
Hotch chuckled. "I see that."
XXX
When the team finally got to the house, they split up to take the back and front with guns held ready. They weren't sure what was going on, but they were preparing themselves for the worst.
When Morgan and JJ rounded a hedge of bushes on their way to the back door, they both flinched when a young man yelled and attacked.
"What the hell, Man?" Morgan yelled as he wiped his eyes. The man had attacked them with a squirt gun, right in the face.
The man's face showed his confusion. "But. . . I heard Hilary say. . ."
He didn't get to finish his statement as Morgan ripped the plastic toy from the man's hands and grabbed his shoulder to turn him around. "You just assaulted two federal agents, you dumbass," he told him as JJ kept the man covered with her gun. Morgan started to search him and then tisked when he found a pistol in the man's waistline. "Ut-oh, and I bet it's not even registered," he mused as he handed it to JJ.
After he cuffed the man, he pulled the man's wallet from his back pocket and then snorted. "Alex Srebek? Really?" he asked with raised brows as he looked over the Minnesota driver's license. "Or is it Donald Thrump?" he asked as he found another license but that one was from Colorado.
"Wow. That's sad," JJ put in with a smirk as Morgan handed her the IDs. "Zero points for originality."
Before the man could offer a rebuttal, Morgan shook his head as he pulled several credit cards out, all with different names on them and handed them to JJ. "I guess we can also get you for identity theft and credit card fraud."
"If you two really are feds, we are on the same side," the man insisted.
"In your dreams," Morgan asserted as he pulled another leather wallet out of the man's other back pocket and flipped it open to find a sheriff's badge. "Impersonating a police officer. . ." he added and then huffed as he bent to search him even further.
"And the charges keep racking up," JJ put in as Morgan found even more weapons on the man.
