by John Conroe
The speed and smoothness of his change was still shocking to me. I’ve seen many weres change from human to animal or beast-man form and it is never an easy process. For young or new weres it’s downright painful. But Awasos moves between wolf and bear with liquid ease. Never mind that losing 750 pounds of mass flies in the face of everything I learned in high school physics. Chet, my brainy buddy back at the Citadel, has no problem with it, but is still intensely curious about the mass balance. When I asked him about Conservation of Mass once he just shook his head. “Dude, that’s in a closed system. Awasos lives in a very open system,’ he said, gesturing at the world around us. “Plus, quantum physics seem to indicate that even a system we think is closed, really isn’t.”
“So where does his extra mass go or come from?” I’d asked.
He shrugged before replying. “Maybe some mountain in Peru is suddenly short a boulder or two, maybe it comes from inside the earth itself, or maybe it’s the elusive Dark Matter from the cosmos around us. I haven’t gathered enough information to form a hypothesis yet.”
That shortage of data wasn’t for lack of trying though. Chet was continually using some new piece of high-tech gear to gather information from my furry friend. I had worried that Awasos might get annoyed by Chet’s science projects, but just as he loved Lydia, he loved Chet as well, often hanging with the lanky and definitely geeky tech specialist. Chet also helped me track Awasos’s growth which had been nothing short of incredible. Only nine months old, he was already larger than ninety-five percent of all wolves and the same size as a Kodiak bear four times his age. Of course, it’s hard to predict the growth pattern from a creature whose mother was an exceptionally large Kodiak and whose father was a mythical Norse god-wolf.
We drove east by northeast, getting occasionally good views of the breaking dawn. Just outside Milwaukee we pulled into an industrial park, following the street signs and the GPS till we found a non-descript building that could have housed a manufacturing company, a small warehouse or a cluster of corporate offices. A human employee, male, middle-aged, met us at the front of the building and directed me to drive around to the array of overhead doors that lined one side of the building. He raised the closest door and we drove into a vast space that held ten vehicles in its center. Shelving units, dimly visible in the back, were laden with supplies of unknown type and origin.
The attendant, who was about five foot, eight with a balding head, compact build and the beginnings of a paunch, pointed at an empty parking slot between a dark blue, new model Camaro and a large white Tahoe. As I got out of the Suburban, he handed me the keys to the Tahoe and held out his hand for my keys, all without saying a word.
“Morning,” I said, trying to catch his eye, but he just nodded and looked down. Tanya got out and stretched lithely, causing the reticent caretaker to about burst an eyeball. His eyes got even wider when I opened the back and a giant wolf form jumped lightly to the ground. He still never said a word, just took down a tablet computer and started checking in the Suburban like this was Avis or something.
It took less than five minutes to transfer our stuff and then we were rolling back out into the new day, all without ever saying a word to the facility’s caretaker.
“Is that normal?” I asked Tanya.
“Hmm?” she replied, sleepy.
“That facility or warehouse…does the Coven keep many places like that?” I clarified.
“Yes, hundreds, at least in this country, thousands all over the world,” she answered.
“Are they always manned by a creepy silent guy?” I asked.
“They all have a well paid staff that keeps the vehicles maintained and the supplies current. Such people are specifically selected to be…how should we say it? Lacking curiosity?” she said, opening one gorgeous blue eye to meet my gaze in the rearview mirror. “They’re manned twenty-four, seven, three-sixty-five. He would have received a fax or email, sometimes a phone call informing him of our arrival and needs.”
“And if we needed weapons?” I asked.
She closed her eye and snorted. Of course there would be pre-stockpiled weapons, silly me!
“He probably has a military background,” I commented.
“We recruit retiring military logistic and supply personnel. They’re really well paid for a job that’s easier than the one they held in the military. Each facility has enough personnel that no one is overworked.”
“What about shrinkage?” I asked, referring to theft.
“Everything is computer inventoried with regular audits. The people we hire have to have squeaky clean backgrounds, not a hint of trouble. Occasionally, one of the audits will include a mindreader type.”
“Have there ever been any problems?” I asked.
“Of course. People are people,” she replied.
“What happened?” I asked.
“The problems went away,” she said, sleepily.
I sometimes forget that the love of my life is a vampire, a pure predator. She’s not really a cruel sort, but she has killer instinct by the gallon, it’s part and parcel of who she is. She doesn’t like vampires to kill humans with wanton disregard, but when the situation merits it, she is not squeamish.
Time to change the subject.
“Do you ever get tired of older vampires not taking us seriously?” I asked, thinking of how much trouble could have been avoided if Langsford hadn’t been so blinded by Tanya’s age.
“You have no idea!” she replied, her voice no longer sounding tired. “What none of them realize is that I was in my mother’s womb, unchanging for over two hundred years. Every experience and situation Galina went through, I was there too.”
“You absorbed those experiences?” I asked, completely taken off-guard.
“Yes….when I encounter a new situation, I almost always have some sense or feeling of how to deal with it…like I’ve done it before. Not really a full memory, more like the ghost of a memory,” she said.
“I never knew that!” I said, glancing at her in the rearview. Both blue eyes looked back at me.
“I don’t think I’ve ever thought much about it. It has just always been there.”
We both fell silent, each thinking our own thoughts.
Chapter 5
The ferry that crosses Lake Michigan is a modern high-speed vessel that traverses the width of Great Lake up to four times daily, with each trip taking about two and a half hours. Because its operations fall under the supervision of the US Coast Guard, security is pretty tight. Passengers travelling on foot from Milwaukee to Muskegon pass through an airport type screening, while vehicles like our Tahoe get their own thorough inspection.
“Any firearms or dangerous substances in the vehicle Sir?” the security guard asked as we both stood, along with his black lab bomb-sniffing dog, outside the SUV.
“No but I have a beast,” I said with a grin as I opened the back tailgate, revealing Awasos in wolf form.
“Holy shit! What the hell is that? A pony?” he asked, scrambling back as the big wolf jumped down. The black lab whined and cringed when Awasos sniffed him, but relaxed slightly when the much bigger animal ignored him to come meet the guard.
“Well, we’re not entirely sure. He may have some pony in his bloodline for all we know. He’s pretty much a mutt. Aren’t you buddy?” I responded before continuing. “We notified the office when we made our reservations that we had a canine. He’ll ride in the Tahoe, of course.”
“Yes, well dogs and Dire wolves aren’t allowed on deck so that’s where he’ll have to stay. How much does he weigh?”
“A bit over two hundred,” I said, deciding that fifty pounds here or there wasn’t a big deal. Another guard came over, whistling in awe as he sized up Awasos.
The first guard had relaxed a bit as he took in the calm attitude of the giant canine who was leaning his bulk against me and wagging his tail. Awasos does a great ‘doggy’ impersonation when the situation warrants it. Plus I think he honestly likes most people
.
“Can I pet him?” the first guard asked, the second one interested in my response.
“Sure, he loves it,” I answered, moving to open Tanya’s door. She opened her eyes sleepily then took my hand as I ‘helped’ her out. It would honestly have been ideal if she could have stayed in the car with Awasos and slept, but the Coast Guard rules forbade it, so she and I would move to the passenger cabin for the duration.
The guards caught an eyeful of my lifemate and promptly forgot Awasos, the car, the other passengers and their jobs. I held her hand while forking over both our drivers’ licenses, playing the role of dutiful husband. Honestly, I probably would have held her hand anyway, my possessive side coming out in the face of their wide-eyed admiration for her appearance.
The second guard studied the ID’s – well Tanya’s ID anyway, while the first just stared.
Slim and curvy in expensive jeans and a designer tee, Tatiana looked like a movie star or fashion model, capturing the attention of pretty much everyone within eyesight.
The guards forgot about me completely as I stood with Awasos. Crouching down next to his massive shoulder I pointed at a rack of life vests tucked in an overhead compartment on the vehicle deck. “If something happens with the boat, get a couple of those around you, got it?” I told him. A tongue like a handkerchief licked my face. It looked like something any dog would do, but I knew he understood me. Awasos is so much more intelligent than any animal I had met or heard of including, in my estimation, chimps, dolphins, and more than half the human race. He understood complex instructions and directions and was able to convey his own thoughts through body language and vocal expression. He often seemed to know what I needed him to do before I did. He jumped back into the SUV just as an officer of the boat spotted him and came over with a concerned look on his face. Before he could express his opinion on the matter of having a giant wolf onboard, his attention was captured by Tanya who immediately charmed him into distraction.
Legend has it that vampires can twist humans to their own desires. The folklore usually involves mind powers that cloud the victims mind like a Jedi using the Force. While there did exist a small number of vampires with the ability to mentally force behavior changes, they were very rare. One named Desiderio Reyes had majorly impacted my life before Tanya killed him.
But every vampire I had ever met had an innate form of charm and a personal attractiveness that usually worked almost as well as Obi-wan Kenobi. And if a run of the mill vampire had a strong dose, then Tanya’s personal allotment was off the charts.
Both security guards and the ship’s officer had completely forgotten any concerns or basic screening procedures when faced with my vampire’s dazzling smile. All three had a slightly stunned look on their faces as I finished closing up the Tahoe and moving to Tanya’s side.
“Thank you so much gentlemen! I feel so much better now about the trip. You must think me awfully silly for being worried?” she said to the three stricken men.
“Oh, no ma’am. Not at all. Lake Michigan is a big body of water, but this is the finest ferry on it and we’ll get you across safe and sound, don’t you worry!” the ship’s officer was saying.
“There, dear, feel better?” I asked my role playing partner.
The three men looked at me in annoyance for interrupting their chance to win her attention. I’ve seen the same effect with men and beautiful women time and again. It was just magnified to ridiculous proportions in this case.
Tanya executed a smooth disengagement, thanking them all profusely as I guided her up the passageway to the ship’s main cabin. Neither of us had been fully screened for weapons, which was a good thing in Tanya’s case as she had several blades on her. I didn’t bother with weapons this time as my ability to modify my strange purple aura into edges, spikes and particle beams seemed more than sufficient.
We found seats against one bulkhead in the first class section of the ship and Tanya promptly curled into the plush chair with my sweatshirt as a pillow and fell asleep. Passengers milled about, finding and settling into their personal spaces. Businessmen, families with kids, retirees and tourists all swirled about the main cabin. Below us, on the auto deck, the last vehicles were being loaded. Heads swiveled to look out the rear windows at the last car to come aboard as something interesting captured their attention. A pair of young corporate types in suits were sipping Starbucks coffee and watching the drama, whatever it was. I focused my ears on them, blocking the other conflicting sounds of the compartment out, one by one, till I could hear their conversation.
“What happened?” one asked the other who had apparently seen more.
“That van, the dark one at the end? The dudes inside were giving the security guys a hard time about checking over their van. Hey look at that – the bomb dog really doesn’t like them!” the other businessman said, voice rising slightly in excitement. Outside I could hear the black lab’s bark and his handler’s sharp command.
Bomb dogs don’t bark when they find something. Instead, they usually are trained to sit or turn in a circle or otherwise show an olfactory hit. Barking was very unusual in such a highly trained animal.
“Those guys look pretty shifty to me,” the first corporate ladder-climber responded. “They probably have drugs or something they don’t want found.”
“You might be right, look how jittery they all are,” his friend responded.
Something about the word jittery caught my attention, but then the loudspeakers announced departure and the passengers all swarmed to their seats.
The crew cast off and the ferry pulled carefully away from the dock, powerful engines revving as the pilot maneuvered us out into open water. It was the ship’s first run of the day and the crew was mostly cheerful as they handled the business of transporting over forty cars, trucks, motorcycles and a couple hundred passengers from one state to the next.
The ship’s café was open for business and I headed up to continue the never ending battle against my own metabolism. My doctor, who is a specialist in vampire and were physiology, thinks that I could potentially survive on boot leather if I had too. My digestive system has become so efficient and aggressive that it virtually rips anything organic into potential nutrients. Thankfully, this morning’s menu was more like egg, bacon, and cheese sandwiches (six), danishes(five) , two cartons of milk and a sixteen ounce bottle of orange juice. It beat the hell out of chowing down on my Timberlands.
My bag of goodies in hand I settled next to my sleeping vampire, ignoring the stares of people who were either appalled at my caloric intake or fascinated by my violet eyes and supermodel-looking girlfriend.
Halfway through my fourth breakfast sandwich, a crew member came in through the outside door from the coach class passenger area, a cool breeze following him. The lake moistened air washed over my face and I paused in mid-bite. Mixed in with the diesel fumes, the fishy smell of Lake Michigan and the metallic smell of dozens of cars, was an odor that caught my immediate attention. Just a whiff, but unmistakable in its rank, musky signature. Almost skunk-like, but different. Weasel!
Chapter 6
I hate weasels! Actually, I only hate wereweasels, the regular wild kind don’t bother me. But the six foot, mongoose-quick, were-kind evoked an immediate response in me. Grim was suddenly in control, the sandwich in my hand now a potential weapon. Tanya woke instantly, probably from both the smell and my own response.
Wereweasels are the go-to assassins of the supernatural world. They live to kill and are incredibly good at it. Lacking the muscle mass of the wolves, bears, and big cats, they made up for it in speed and insatiable blood lust. A single weasel assassin had once killed a vampire in a bar, then killed everyone else in the place, just for fun. Were weasels on board the ferry couldn’t be a coincidence. Last time I met a weasel it killed me…or came pretty damned close anyway.
My vampire and I looked at each other, our interpersonal link clicking into a higher level, just a hair shy of the eerie yet seductive level of
oneness that happens to us in combat. We both moved to the back of the room, standing and leaving our seats fast enough that most of the people around us missed it.
Looking out the rear windows we could just see the last row of cars on the auto-deck below. An older-model grey panel van was parked second from the right, looking like a child-molester special, lacking only a ‘free candy’ sign on the side.
“Excuse me? Did you see who was in that grey van?” I asked the two corporate types. They turned, slightly startled to find me suddenly in their part of the lounge, then straightened as they caught sight of my companion.
“Actually we were just talking about them. Five or six guys in really awful track suits got out. They had some argument with the security guys, but must have passed inspection,” the shorter of the two said, his eyes flickering between Tanya and I, mostly straying to her.
“I, personally, wouldn’t have let them onboard,” the tall one said, giving Tanya a practiced smile.