Chapter 50
Rossi, Mack, and Reid looked around with wide eyes as they got to the kitchen. Several of the shifters were in the process of tying up the two men Hotch had first attacked and when Mack saw the wounded woman, she took out her phone. "Has anyone called for an ambulance?"
"No!" the young woman who had offered to keep watch for Morgan yelled as she stood up. When the agents looked at her with confusion, she sighed. "We can't use human medicine," she explained.
"That makes sense. Sorry," Reid offered as he and Rossi went to the hurt woman.
"Is there anything we can do?" Rossi asked her.
"You could pull the spike out," the older man next to the woman suggested as he looked at Rossi. "It's silver. We can't touch it."
Rossi nodded his understanding. "I can do that, but I don't want to hurt you even more," he told the woman as he knelt down next to her.
"It's hurting me just by being in me. Please pull it out," she begged as pain fueled tears ran down her cheeks.
He nodded again as he bit his lip and placed a steady hand on the cold metal and his other hand on her shoulder. He locked eyes with her and she nodded, so he yanked it out and she screamed.
Once it was clear of her, though, she sank back against the cabinets behind her and inhaled deeply. "Thank you," she breathed.
Rossi gave her a smile. "You're welcome."
"Helen!" Jimmy yelled as he and his boys came into the room. Rossi got up and moved so the family could get to her, and when Jimmy saw what Rossi had done, he turned to him. "Thank you!"
Rossi gave him a smile and a nod and then turned his attention to Hotch who walked in behind the family. When Rossi's eyes took in the damage to Hotch's shirt, he knew what had happened and went to him. "Are you alright?" he demanded to know as he inspected the hole with his fingers and was relieved to find Hotch mostly healed under it.
Hotch smiled. "I'm better than my shirt."
Rossi smirked. "It's a good thing, too."
They all turned when JJ opened the back door and Morgan pulled a ranting and raving man in. Morgan shook his head as he looked at the rest of the team. "This idiot attacked us with this!" he told them as he held out the squirt gun.
Jimmy snorted. "It's probably holy water. That doesn't work on shifters, but it does on a lot of nonhumans," he offered as his eyes trailed to Hotch.
Hotch swallowed and instinctively took a step back.
Rossi shook his head. "Give it to me!" he demanded as he grabbed the plastic toy, dropped it on the tiled floor, and then smashed it with his heel. "Now no one has to worry about it."
Hotch gave him a nod of thanks and then turned to Helen. "Are you going to be alright?"
Jimmy nodded as he and another man helped her up. "We don't heal as fast as you do, but she'll be fine in a couple of days." He looked at the man helping his wife and his oldest son. "Take her to the bedroom. She needs to rest."
Once she and the kids were out of the room, Jimmy turned to the other shifters as he pointed to the hunters. "There's another one in Ryan's room. Get him and then take them all out back."
They all nodded and moved to follow his orders as even more shifters showed up, but Hotch frowned. Before he could speak, Rossi grabbed his arm. "Aaron. . ." he whispered. Hotch's eyes cut to him and he grimaced. "Remember, we are severally outnumbered here."
Hotch looked at his team and mentally winced because he could tell they were all thinking the same thing he was: They're going to kill them. So he huffed, pulled out of Rossi's hand, and followed the shifters. The team quickly scrambled to catch up with him, and Rossi felt even more uneasy when they found the yard filled up with shifters and several of them were in the form of predatory animals like huge tigers and bears. Even the old man from the main house was there, and Rossi took a deep breath as his hand wrapped around the silver spike he had pulled out of Helen that was now in his pocket.
"Exactly what are you going to do to them?" Hotch asked loudly.
They all quieted as Jamison Schewel turned to him. "They are only going to receive what they deserve."
Hotch licked his lips and looked at Jimmy. "But they can be arrested. You are a cop and you know there are several charges that will keep them locked up for a very long time!"
Jimmy shook his head as he moved closer to Hotch. "That wouldn't work."
"Why not?" Hotch hollered. "If they try to tell anyone what you all are, no one would believe them and they'd be labeled as mentally unstable. That could work out in your favor!"
Jamison Schewel winced at Hotch's yelling and shook his head. "I may be older than most of you put together, but I am not deaf!"
Hotch's eyes showed his confusion. "What?!"
Jimmy put his hand on his grandfather's shoulder. "He's yelling because he can't hear, not because he thinks you can't."
"But bloodsuckers have enhanced hearing."
Jimmy nodded. "So much so that he can hear our hearts and when there are a lot of us around we get rather loud, apparently," he explained.
Hotch's stare came out in full force as he turned to Rossi. "What are they saying?!"
Jamison huffed but moved to grab Hotch's elbow and moved him away from the rest of the group. Jimmy and Rossi, though, jumped to go with them. Once they were far enough away, Jamison fixed Hotch with a serious look. "They don't deserve to live!" he insisted. "They aren't just a group of regular hunters, they are twisted and mean," he went on. When it was obvious that Hotch and Rossi didn't understand he sighed. "They impaled Helen in the stomach instead of her heart, not because they didn't know what they were doing but because they wanted to torture her! How do people like that deserve to live?"
Hotch mentally winced because he had caught the man waving a silver knife in front of her face.
"They don't care that we are peaceful, that we haven't killed any humans. All they care about is killing nonhumans!"
Hotch took a deep breath as he looked at the elder. "I don't mean any disrespect to you or your family, but I can't allow you all to do this."
Jamison stood up tall, which still left him about a foot shorter than Hotch, but looked Hotch in the eyes. "I really don't think you have a say in that."
Rossi mentally winced. If the shifters wanted to, they could take out the whole team because he knew Hotch would never be able to stop that many of them.
Hotch huffed, though. "I think I have earned the right to have a say in this."
Jimmy nodded his agreement and his eyes pleaded with his grandfather's. "Tutu, he saved Helen and the boys. They would have been dead and the hunters would have been long gone by the time we even knew there was a problem. If it wasn't for him hearing Helen's scream. . ."
"You know they cannot be arrested James!" the old man argued.
"I know that, Tutu, but maybe the agent has another way, maybe. . ." the younger shapeshifter reasoned as he pleaded with the patriarch.
"Why can't they be arrested?" Rossi wanted to know.
Jimmy grimaced. "Because the law states that they get one phone call, and every damn one of them would use that to call in one of their buddies. The islands would be crawling with hunters within a day." He took a deep breath and then looked to Hotch. "Not only do they know about us, but they know about you. They would find out who you are and they will hunt you down." When Hotch opened his mouth to argue, Jimmy stepped even closer to him. "And they thought the rest of your team were also vampires, and even if they find out they are not, they would still consider them guilty just for standing behind you."
Rossi ran a hand down his goatee. "As much as I hate to admit it, Aaron, they're right." And as much as he hated to think about people being killed, his utmost concern was protecting Hotch.
"And they would go after this family you supposedly have," Jamison put in with confidence.
Hotch rubbed the back of his neck as he turned to watch the yard. The shifters had surrounded the hunters and he could tell they were ready to tear the humans apart. He took a deep breath and turned back to the men. "You claim you are peaceful, that you haven't killed any humans in several generations, and yet you want your whole family to kill these people? You really want to teach your great-grandchildren that kind of a lesson? How can you preach peace and yet want to kill?"
Jamison shook his head. "We do what we must to protect our own!"
"But you don't have to," Hotch insisted.
"We do. We have to stop them."
"Then let me do it."
The old man frowned. "And how would you do that?"
"I can compel them. I can make them forget what they have found here."
Rossi smiled. He knew Hotch would find a way out of the situation.
The old man huffed, though. "That would solve the problem for today. They would still be here and it would only be a matter of time before they find us again."
Hotch licked his lips and looked at Rossi, but he only shrugged. After a deep breath, Hotch tried again. "I could make them think that the whole thing was a wild goose case, that there was nothing to find."
All three of the men looked at him with skeptic eyes and Hotch stood up tall and squared his shoulders. "I can do it."
Suddenly Jimmy Schewel's phone vibrated, and as he was taking it out, Hotch's did, too. Jimmy winced as he read the message. "They've found another body."
"See! While we have been arguing here, the real killer has struck again!" Jamison said with disgust. "Let us handle them and you go do the job you were sent here to do!"
Rossi could tell Hotch was about ready to lose his cool, so he put a hand on his arm and locked eyes with the older man. "Let Hotch try. He can do what he needs to do with these idiots, and then we will go. . ."
"Please, Tutu," Jimmy begged. "I want the boys to live life peacefully, not be caught up in the old ways."
"I can send my team on ahead. I don't need their help to do this," Hotch put in, but the sound that escaped Rossi told him he wasn't leaving him alone.
Jamison took a slow, deep breath and then looked over his family for a few moments and then finally looked back to Hotch. "Alright, Agent Hotchner, we will try it your way, but we will hold the hunters for you until you go and do whatever you need to do with the new killing. That is actually more important that these 'opala. You can do what you are going to do with them later, maybe tonight when it's dark."
Hotch frowned as he looked at him, and he raised his brows at him. "You may have an enhanced sense of hearing but we have an enhanced sense of smell, and I can smell you baking. You need to get out of the sun, do you not?"
Hotch wilted a little and when Rossi looked at him and his hands shoved into his pockets, he smacked him on the arm. "Damn it, Aaron! I cannot believe. . ."
"I'm fine," Hotch tried.
Rossi huffed and pulled on his arm and when he saw that his hands looked like they belonged to a body that had been left to bake in the desert for days, he shook his head. "You better be glad we are in the presence of others because if we weren't, I would so kick your ass." If his hands were charred and blistered, he could imagine the rest of his skin under his thin shirt was at least bright red if not blistering, too.
When Jimmy coughed back a laugh and Jamison gave Rossi a smile of approval, Hotch ducked his head sheepishly. "I said I'm fine."
Rossi huffed, though, as he shook his head.
Hotch tried to ignore him and focused on the Schewel family leader. "And you can promise me that they will not be harmed?"
"On my family's name," he assured him with a nod.
"Then we'll be back," Hotch told him and called for his team.
