An American Weredeer in Michigan

by C. T. Phipps

  “You were distracted,” Lucien said. “Always entertaining, though.”

  I made a hissing gesture and made the sign of the cross at his attire. Sadly, I couldn’t make a symbol of the circle or other ward against evil. “What is that evil you are wearing?”

  “Clothing appropriate for the outdoors?” Lucien said.

  “It’s abominable!” I said, exaggerating. “It’s like Alex wearing something other than his suit.”

  “Hello, Lucien,” Alex said, waving from the background. “I’m glad you got my text.”

  “It’s my town,” Lucien said, a smug grin on his face. “I have a duty to protect it from evil gods. Also, you promised to knock me into next week.”

  I didn’t like his smile or what it implied. “No fighting between you two. Especially not over me.”

  “There’s plenty of other things I’d like to punch him for and vice versa,” Lucien said, not missing a beat. “Though, honestly, you are a girl worth fighting for.”

  “I will beat the hell out of whomever throws the first punch,” I said, pointing between you. “Everybody got that?”

  “Promise?” Lucien asked, smiling.

  “Ugh.” I rolled my eyes then looked at Gerald. “Wait, how the hell are you up and about? The sun is up.”

  “Insufficiently analyzed science,” Gerald said, looking comfortable.

  “Magic,” Lucien said, shrugging. “I’m sharing my power with him to protect him against the sun. Alex taught me how.”

  “Great,” Larry muttered. “Now you’re arming the bad guys, Alex.”

  “Do you want me to return your hammer to Magni?” Alex asked.

  “No!” Larry said, grabbing the hammer protectively. “We’ve already set a date for the wedding.”

  Gerald looked away from the sun and toward Robyn. “I also came here for other reasons.”

  “To apologize for replacing me with a random high-school girl?” Robyn asked.

  “She wasn’t random,” Gerald said.

  “She also wasn’t the first,” I said, sticking my snout where it didn’t belong. “Gerald was with Emma’s sister last year.”

  “That wasn’t by choice,” Gerald said, his voice low and growly. It was a stark contrast to his usual melodic tone. “She forced me to love her.”

  I grimaced, remembering that. I’d conveniently forgotten that fact due to my desire to think of Gerald as a perverted old vampire preying on my friend’s sister. The fact that Victoria had been possessed during the ordeal made me forget that he’d been a victim in all of this. The way Emma was looking at me also said she didn’t think I was being cool.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, struggling to apologize to the vampire. “You were a victim too.”

  Emma barked in approval.

  “What was that?” I asked. “Timmy fell down a well?”

  Emma rolled her eyes. It was adorable even on a giant man-eating wolf.

  “Well, between us, I think we can deal with just about anything the Dryad can throw at us,” Lucien said, looking around. “Which is good because we really need to tear this place down and build a mall.”

  Everyone looked at him unhappily.

  “Yeah.” Lucien took a deep breath. “I know my real estate scheme is D.O.A.”

  Something clicked in my head and I couldn’t help but think about the fact the griffon might have been attacking Alice O’Henry rather than me. Indeed, coupled with Lucien being attacked by Anne O’Henry, I wondered if I’d never been the target at all. It was possible this was all just an attempt to protect the forest from being destroyed. If so, they’d chosen a damn medieval way of going about it.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I said, sort of.

  Gerald put his fist over his chest. “I may not be Sparrow’s biological father, but if there’s some sort of evil ancient fairy trying to kill him, then I’m going to do my best to protect him.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I may have misrepresented some things,” Lucien said, shrugging.

  I looked back at Robyn.

  Robyn didn’t look at Gerald. “Thanks, but we’re never getting back together.”

  “I’m just worried about you,” Gerald said. “I mean, I’m out in the sun for you. That’s like locking myself in a nuclear reactor, radiation suit or not.”

  Robyn didn’t respond for a second. “Thanks, I mean that.”

  “So where is the portal to the Grove?” Lucien said, not paying attention to the lovers’ quarrel around me.

  I looked back at Alex who was waving the dowsing rod around. “It’s around here…yes, that way. Got it.”

  Alex started marching towards the east and everyone followed without hesitation except for me. It was the kind of leadership that didn’t require a display and annoyed me. I wanted to be able to get everyone to follow me.

  They have been. For two hours, Raguel said.

  I’m pitying myself. Hush.

  Yes, pity the poor girl with two handsome suitors who love her as well as a small army behind her.

  If I had three dragons, I’d burn you right now.

  Sadly you only have one.

  “Trouble in paradise?” Lucien said, coming up behind me.

  “Funny,” I said. “You know he wants to beat you up?”

  “No, he wants to fight me,” Lucien corrected. “There’s a difference. Alex has got a few wires crossed in his brain that means he never really knows anyone until he has a sparring match with them. It’s how he’s going to find out whether or not I did this to screw him over.”

  “First, that’s from the Matrix sequels we both agreed don’t exist. Second, that’s not for him to judge.”

  “It is,” Lucien said, shrugging. “I knew you liked Alex and Alex liked you. I just wanted you more so I decided to move in.”

  I elbowed him in the gut.

  “Oomph,” Lucien said, almost falling over.

  Everyone turned around to look at us.

  “Sorry, reflex!” I said, lying. Well, not entirely. It was me reflexively elbowing him in the gut because I was so pissed off.

  Lucien just laughed then stood up. “What?”

  “That’s a shitty thing to do to your brother and me,” I said. “There are lines and rules not to cross.”

  “I’ve never been good about following rules,” Lucien said, looking down. “Besides, as much as I love my brother, he’s lost any right to tell me what to do.”

  I had the feeling I’d wandered into a complicated brotherly dynamic. “What do you mean?”

  “When I first moved into Alex and Diane’s home, it was a house divided. He’d just gotten out of the asylum and mastered his powers. They hated each other and stayed on opposite sides of the mansion—”

  “Alex is rich?” I asked.

  “Not anymore,” Lucien said, frowning. “As soon as his family trust hit, he gave it all away to charity.”

  That was stupid of him. Admirable, but stupid. “So you were his mother’s replacement goldfish?”

  “Yeah, for her dead child or Alex, I dunno,” Lucien said. “Despite being the same age, Alex was always the more mature. He taught me everything he’d learned about the martial arts and we decided to become hunters together when he got back from studying magic with Kim Su. He promised he’d help me find my family’s killers and I promised I had his back.”

  “Was he there when you took down the Darkwater PMC?” I asked, imagining Alex going John Wick on everyone. I knew some of this story because Alex had told me but I didn’t have Lucien’s perspective.

  “No. He abandoned me not long before,” Lucien said, staring forward. “He decided after we’d torn a big hole in the worst of the Vampire Nation to just up and leave. To become an FBI agent. We’d done an immense amount of good but he decided to go work for the government. It was insulting. Worse, it was a betrayal.”

  “So you became a crime lord to get back at him for joining the FBI?” I asked, seeing if I was understanding him correctly.


  Lucien frowned and didn’t meet my gaze, staring forward. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “And I’m just a way to get back at him too?” I hesitated to ask.

  “No,” Lucien said, quickly. “Not even close.”

  “But it was a bonus.”

  Lucien didn’t respond immediately. “Jane—”

  “Bastard,” I said, walking away from him.

  I walked past everyone to take up position beside Alex. “Just because you’re right doesn’t mean I don’t warrant a hell of an apology.”

  “I shall do it with flowers and jewelry,” Alex said, stopping.

  “Good,” I said, pausing. “Wait, are we there?”

  “No,” Alex said, frowning. “But they’re here.”

  I grimaced. “I hate when people are referred to as a ‘they.’ It’s never good. Quite a bit different from ‘George is here’ or the guys.’“

  “Jane, this is serious.”

  “You should see me when I’m goofing off.”

  Emma put a paw on the top of her snout. “Oy vey.”

  Looking where Alex was pointing the dowsing rod and saw a large grassy clearing in a circle of large trees that included a single one that had been uprooted as if by a storm. It was about half the size of a football field and radiated more magic than any other part of the forest I’d yet encountered. But it wasn’t that which disturbed me. It was the fact that I felt other presences coming our way. Many presences.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The Seven,” Alex said, sucking in his breath and cursing to himself. “I suspected he’d hired them from the pieces on his chess board. They had the impressions of them.”

  “Should I be nervous about people who are referred to as a number rather than a name?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Alex said, clutching his staff tightly. “They’re a kill squad of seven supernaturals who specialize in extremely hard-to-kill targets. They’re coming for Robyn.”

  “We’re not going to let them have her, right?”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  I pulled out the Merlin Gun and hoped it was going to be enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It wasn’t seven people who came out of the trees, though, but nine. The first of them were David and Judith, the same two jackasses from the Lumberjack Inn in their same impractical outfits. However, the presence of Judith was different and stronger now. Indeed, it glowed with a kind of overwhelming power that caused me to feel sick to my stomach. I recognized it was the raw, unholy energy of John Jones without any attempt to hide its true power. The bastard had possessed his own daughter.

  “Oh no,” Alex said, staring at her. “Jones, you monster.”

  “Is she still inside?” I asked, not wishing that sort of fate on anyone. Brat or not.

  “I don’t know,” Alex said.

  “You can’t hold back,” I said, not sure if I was asking him to kill a kid if it meant saving his life.

  Oh wait, yeah I was.

  “Don’t ask me that, Jane,” Alex said, swallowing the air in his throat. “I killed Samantha. I’m not going to kill another child.”

  Samantha had been Alex’s sister. The one he’d killed trying to save her from their father.

  “She’s not your sister,” I said, grabbing his arm. “I saw you die.”

  “Some things are worse than death,” Alex whispered. “After we all die eventually. Living with that is a worse curse.”

  I wanted to scream at him, curse him for his stupidity, but my attention was drawn to the rest of the bad guys coming through the trees. They had strong presences, too, almost as powerful as Jones’s.

  The first of them was a hideously deformed vampire who looked like Count Orlock with a black tattered monk’s robe and a smell of death that carried with the wind. I didn’t know much about vampires but I knew the really old ones looked less like people and more like demons once they started reaching their thousandth year. Vampires that old, known as Ancient Ones, were supposedly unkillable by any other than another Ancient One.

  Not quite true, Raguel said. That is the Visigoth. His name is lost to time and even he doesn’t remember it. He kills as a mercenary because the lust for battle is all that quickens his dried, powdered blood.

  Behind them came a pair of beautiful Asian woman who it took me a second to realize were identical—not twins, but actually identical. They wore business suits with one wearing two holsters and the second carrying a staff over her shoulder. There was something about them that put me off on an instinctual animal level.

  Aoki and Aya. They are names for things that have never been human. They are a single demon inhabiting two colonies of spiders inhabiting the skins of humans they wove from many victims.

  I blinked. “Okay, that’s going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life.”

  Only if you see them at work.

  The sixth figure to exit moved with an enormous thumping that made me wonder how I hadn’t heard it earlier. It was a nine-foot-tall stone statue of a long-haired, bare-chested man with a jawbone built into its hand.

  Samson, Raguel said, his voice pitying. It is a being like me. A blessed spirit put into an artificial body that it might fight for justice. Visigoth murdered its rabbi master and twisted its glyphs. It will not fight well, but it doesn’t have to.

  “How the hell did they move that thing around?” I asked, staring at the golem. “I think you’d notice something like that!”

  Emma glared at me. “Shh!”

  The Visigoth controls space as part of his magic. He keeps Samson in his pocket when he doesn’t need it.

  Okay, that was both horrifying and cool.

  The remaining three of the Seven were a petite blonde in a purple hoodie, a bare-chested Asian man in black sweatpants with a black dragon tattoo on his chest, and a guy who looked like a Hell’s Angel biker had eaten a truck driver then taken a mountain of steroids. He also had a straight-up medieval flail hanging over one shoulder, which could best be described as like nunchucks but end was huge with spikes.

  Kate Madison, the fire elemental. She is a serial killer and arsonist. Visigoth bred her from psychics he captured and forced to mate until he sired her himself. Karl Chang is a distant cousin of Lucien’s and Dragon Clan royalty.

  Any chance he’ll be friendly? I mentally asked Raguel.

  No. He considers Lucien a half-breed insult to the family since his mother was a cougar shifter.

  I’ll keep the cougar jokes to myself, I said. Also, we need to work on the racism among shapechangers.

  Humans are proficient at creating nonsensical categories to demean each other.

  “Agreed,” I muttered. “Who is the last guy?”

  Steve Caldwell, the lone wolf. He is a werewolf who has devoured many others of his kind to gain their power.

  Another servant of the Wendigo spirit. Great. “Real bunch of winners Jones has gathered. You know, I was joking when I compared him to a supervillain but this is some straight up Masters of Evil deershit. What’s next? Inviting us all to a fighting tournament?”

  “I was thinking more Sharks vs. Jets,” Emma said, her cute voice contrasting to her giant wolf appearance. “You know, the two of us rumbling.”

  I looked over at her. “Real-life gangs don’t dance, Emma.”

  “Some of them do,” Alex said, keeping his eyes on the group as it gathered around the fallen tree. “Those are the ones you have to watch out for.”

  Judith, or John Jones in her body, stepped in front of the group and spoke up to us. Her voice was a strange amalgamation of the Ultralogy leader’s and his daughter’s. “You’ve been an incredibly annoying presence in the past few hours. Give us Robyn and live another day.”

  Robyn stepped in front of the group and flipped him the bird. “Hey, body-stealing nutjob, I quit your stupid religion!”

  “You were never welcome in it,” Jones said, sneering, which had less effect whe
n it was coming from an adolescent. “The entire purpose of your life was to serve as a host for the Dryad. It is the only meaning your otherwise wasted life of excess and stupid decisions will have.”

  “I’m glad my dad killed you!” Robyn said, revealing she wasn’t as confident of her earlier statement as I’d thought.

  Wow, I was easily fooled.

  Jones smiled. “He’ll be made to pay for his treachery. Many times we met when you joined my religion, him begging for me to take care of you and agreeing to anything so I didn’t destroy you. Somewhere, somehow, he found a spine as well as the ability to work dark magic. You are going to cooperate with me, though.”

  “Why the hell would she do that?” I asked, putting my hand in front of Robyn before she jumped down to strangle a little girl. That would solve a lot of my problems, admittedly, but leave her exposed to the Seven.

  “Because if she doesn’t then I’ll come right back here with another host for my goddess,” Jones said, gesturing to the woods. “Your little boy, Sparrow, was left with your parents. I sent my people to acquire him for the faith.”

  “Bastard!” Robyn screamed.

  The trees around us started to uproot themselves.

  “Your child is fine, Robyn,” Alex said, staring down at Jones and lifting up the white chess piece he’d pocketed from his board. “As soon as Jane identified her father as involved, I texted Lucien to make sure the boy was all right. He’s somewhere safe along with your mother. David even gave me a warning of how to get past your spies watching the roads.”

  Alex tossed the chess piece down in front of Jones.

  Jones spun around and stared at his son/brother/whatever. “Traitor!”

  David narrowed his eyes. “You killed my sister.”

  “Not yet,” Jones said, lifting his small hand into the air and calling forth a bolt of lightning that struck his son in the chest, sending him spiraling to the ground.

  I didn’t know if David Jones was alive or dead, but I had to admire the guy for standing up to his father. Too bad it had taken the possession of his little sister to do it. I just wish Alex and Lucien had left me in the loop.

  “Not cool,” I said, to him.

  “Never make arrangements like that without telling me,” Robyn said, growling as a glowing aura surrounded her.