by John Conroe
“But not you?” Quinby asked.
“Not us,” Tanya agreed.
“What about him?” Erika asked suddenly, pointing at me. “He’s not a vampire!”
“No, he is not,” my vampire agreed, looking at me with a smile. “He is much more special than that!”
It was my turn to snort. “Yeah, like short bus special according to Lydia,”
Tanya laughed, catching the Boklunds off guard.
“My Christian doesn’t take himself too seriously, but be assured that everyone else should.”
“We have another problem,” Tom said from his spot on the ground. “Grizzly bear, huge one,” he said, pointing at a track.
Everyone crowded around a perfect dinner plate sized track from Awasos right hind foot.
“Don’t worry about that. That’s not a problem,” I said trying to avoid what was sure to come next.
“How can a giant grizzly suddenly popping up in a forest that hasn’t held grizzlies for hundreds of years not be a problem?” Garth asked, darkly suspicious.
They all looked at me expectantly. I glanced at Tanya who arched one eyebrow while our personal link fed me her feelings.
“Fine, because they’re witches but I don’t like it,” I replied to her unspoken thoughts.
“Sos, go ahead and show them buddy,” I said to the giant wolf by my side. He met my gaze then swiveled his head to face them, his form shimmering and expanding. I held my spot, although I was suddenly crowded by a furry half ton of bear.
“Holy fuck!” Erika exclaimed, falling back a step.
For a split second, no one else made a sound, then Quinby spoke. “Erika! Watch your language!”
“No, she’s right,” Garth said. “Although I would phrase it ‘what the fuck’?”
Quinby shot him a look but otherwise said nothing.
“He is a were-bear-wolf,” Tanya said, sliding her arm around the giant neck that was level with her shoulders.
“Awasos is ‘bear’ in Abenaki,” Tom said, a shocked look on his face.
“He is quite unique,” I said. “Now, how many of these Cheenos are there?”
“I don’t know for certain. Two or three I believe,” Quinby said.
“Three!” Erika chimed in. Her mother gave her a look. “What? I’ve seen three different sets of tracks,” the blonde girl said defensively.
“What do their tracks look like?” I asked. Only a small section of ground near where I had met the Cheeno was soft enough for tracks and it was filled with prime grizzly footprints.
“There are some this way,” Erika replied, shining her flashlight into the woods toward the next talisman location. There seemed to be about fifty or so of the little stick figures in the perimeter around the resort. Together they formed what Quinby had termed a Ward, which seemed to be like a witchy force field or something. Britta pulled a newly made talisman from her jacket pocket and used it to replace the shredded one. The three witches held hands and sang a song in what I guessed to be Swedish (my only reference for that language was the Swedish Chef on the Muppets Show). Then Erika led the way through the woods although I sent Awasos out to provide a security screen in case the Cheenos were still around. A look from Tanya and we silently agreed for me to move up on point while she fell back with Britta, who was trailing the group.
We traveled several hundred yards through the woods, following an arc around the property till we came to another of the little wooden men tied to a big white pine. The base of the tree was soft and tracked up with extra-long, super skinny footprints. Like very thin Bigfoot tracks tipped with claw marks.
“How do the legends say these things form?” I asked Tom.
“Men or women whose hearts harden against others are usually at the base of the stories that I know. They kill and, at some point, eat the flesh of man. Their hearts freeze solid and they become Cheenos,” he said. “Usually they have retreated into the wilderness for many years before they are transformed.”
Garth spoke up. “The Wendigo legends have been generally thought to be warnings of the dangers of cannibalism. They all take place in the northern lands where long winters have sometimes resulted in severe food shortages and ultimately, cannibalism,” he said.
I must have looked at him funny, because Quinby explained. “My husband minored in Folklore in college.”
Certainly, starvation or cabin fever, or both, could result in the right conditions to invite demonic possession. The physical changes, the speed and invulnerability to harm were all much greater than anything I had seen before. This might be a different breed of demons than I was familiar with or a different kind of possession because of the cannibalism.
“Tomorrow is the first full moon,” Tanya said, looking up at the silvery orb in the night sky.
“Jake will turn and these things will hunt him,” I said, understanding her thought train.
“How did you survive your encounter,” Quinby asked.
“I told you. We fought, he didn’t like the direction things were going in and left,” I said.
“I am familiar with Jake’s kind, somewhat. They are helpless against these things,” she said.
“Well, many demons can hide themselves from humans or supernaturals. Also, these things are really fast and there is at least three of them.”
“So how did you see them?” she continued.
I shrugged, but my vampire answered the question for me. “Christian was born to fight demons. He was selected by God to do so,” she said.
All four Boklunds gaped at her. “Selected by God?” Garth asked, his tone derisive.
“Your women are all witches, you live in a forest haunted by demons, and you know about werewolves and vampires. Yet you have difficulty thinking that God might choose a warrior?” Tanya replied, turning unerringly toward the distant resort with liquid grace. She floated through the woods, leading the way back without waiting for a response.
Garth, Quinby and the twins exchanged glances, looked at me curiously, then started to follow without a word. Tom and I took up the rear of the silent column. You could just about hear the gears of thought grinding among them as we returned to the resort.
Chapter 15
Satisfied, we escorted the Boklunds back to the resort, then the three of us attempted to trail the Cheeno I had wounded. We lost the trail at the edge of a boggy swamp, the tracks and trail utterly absorbed by pools of stagnant water and mud. The swamp was big enough that attempting to circle it for more tracks would take most of a day, even moving at vampire speeds.
Momentarily stumped, we headed back to cabin four.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked my vampire as I made a gi-normous omelet to split with ‘Sos, who was back in wolf form. The moon had begun its descent and my bed was calling me. It had been a really long day and night.
“Keep wolf-boy from running off into the woods and yet not killing anyone else, while hunting down and killing the Cheenos, all without anyone noticing,” she said straight faced.
“Sounds like a piece of cake,” I said around a big bite of omelet. She frowned at me, a little furrow forming between her perfect brows.
“You didn’t fill that thing with onions did you? You know I don’t like that much onion,” she said.
I held my right thumb and forefinger a half inch apart. “This much onion I swear and only ‘cause ‘Sos insists on onions in his omelet,” I replied. Awasos lifted his head from his own platter and growled at me.
“Leave him out of this,” Tanya said, moving across the tiny room in a liquid blur till she was half a foot away. She sniffed my face.
“Hmm, I guess it’s not that much onion,” she said, smiling suddenly and kissing me quickly.
Tanya doesn’t eat solid food – no vampire does, but she says she can taste what I’ve been eating when she drinks my blood. Since I’m the only one she drinks directly from (except emergencies like in the middle of combat or something) the only variety she gets is by changes in my diet.
So I fed, she fed and, of course, Awasos kept right on feeding straight through. Then I caught a couple hours of sleep, waking at dawn to take over so Tanya could sleep when the sun came up.
Ten AM found me and the big bad wolf circling the property looking for trails and sign. I wanted to understand which approaches the Cheenos favored, which paths they traveled the most. Awasos had already scouted the day before with Tanya, so once he understood what I was looking for he led me straight to it. Of course, all that took was for me to explain it out loud – once. I swear he’s smarter than two thirds of the humans I know.
What we found was that the Cheenos always came from the swamp, although they had about five well-travelled trails approaching the resort from multiple directions.
I pulled up a map of the swamp on my smartphone and discovered it was much bigger than I had thought. After a moment I turned to Awasos.
“Go back and guard Tanya while she sleeps. I’m gonna travel through the trees and see if I can get a read on these things.”
He didn’t care much for that idea. Frankly, neither did I.
Three hours later and I had confirmed that it was a big frigging swamp. Jumping from tree to tree, wading through muck when necessary, I had covered big swaths of it. Still didn’t really touch the place. The terrain had been carved by glaciers in the last Ice Age, that much I recalled from my Google of Hiawatha Forest some days ago. It had left this part with lots of ponds and swamps dotted with raised land that managed to provide some dry areas. One of those hummocks had sported a rotting husk of a cabin, but it was long deserted. I had managed to hit the scent of the Cheenos a couple of times but it always petered out before I could get more than a whiff.
Sodden and filthy, I returned to little cabin four and cleaned up, then fed myself and the bottomless pit named Awasos.
About four in the afternoon, Tanya popped up, snacked on me and got ready for the night. First we checked on Jake and Steve, who had stayed at the resort all day. Then we met with the Boklunds to plan.
The women had reinforced the perimeter wards throughout the day, doubling the number of little Blair Witch memorials that circled the property. Their idea for the night was to raise a circle of Power that would keep Jake on the property. If the Cheenos showed up and we wanted to get ourselves killed by them, well that was our problem. We agreed, although I had misgivings about trying to contain a werewolf in a witches circle.
Next we all trooped to cabin three and explained the plan to the werewolf lad and his brother. Both were pretty skeptical about both the circle holding Jake and the whole Cheeno thing.
“So you’re good with werewolves, you believe in vampires, but the witch and Wendigo part are too much?” I asked in disbelief of their disbelief.
“It just seems too much,” Jake said with a shrug.
Quinby raised one eyebrow at the brothers, then fingered one of her necklaces.
“Oh boy, here we go!” Garth said, backing up to give his wife room.
Quinby smiled at the brothers and nothing appeared to happen as her right hand rubbed a small wooden bead formed like a bird. Then suddenly every object on the table, the counter tops and the unmade beds lifted straight up into the air, all hovering at eye level. Running shoes, dirty cookware, a box of donuts, shotgun shells, a camo hat, the toaster, numerous cans of Budweiser in various stages of consumption, and a pair of chili pepper emblazoned boxers all floated around us. Jake and Steve looked around the tiny cabin, eyes wide and nodded. “Okay, this might work” was Steve’s input. Jake was a bit shaken looking and I could see him glancing at Britta occasionally. I’m pretty sure he was rerunning every conversation he’d had with her, reviewing every promise or endearment.
The twins sat in the worn armchairs that flanked the south facing picture window, Erika grinning and bouncing her crossed leg while she snapped her gum and Britta looking out the window, a sad and resolved look on her face.
“Okay, so we’re onboard with this now?” I asked the brothers. They nodded and Quinby released her charm, the objects all dropping to the floor, table or countertop below. Except the box of donuts which found its way into my hands. I snagged two of the powdered sugar-covered jelly-filled beauties then spotted a huge liquid brown eye staring at me from the screen door. Sighing I a snagged two more for my furry buddy and together we scarfed them down.
“Where do you want to put the circle?” Tanya asked Quinby, then sighed as she glanced my way. She made a face cleaning motion at me, looking mildly exasperated. Still beautiful, but exasperated.
“Out beyond cabin five. There’s a big clear spot where we sometimes set up a volleyball court,” the blonde witch replied, looking at me and my wolf-bear curiously. “I used to play volleyball in college you know,” she added, apropos of nothing.
“Really?” I asked in my best surprised voice, almost loud enough to cover Tanya’s snort…almost.
Chapter 16
Dusk crept across the resort, turning the bright spring day to a dark foreboding night. The forest loomed around the resort, making it an island in an ocean of blackness. The lodge was lit up, the big sodium light over the woodpile humming to itself while every cabin had a bonfire burning.
Tom had built a fire at each cabin, supposedly at the Boklunds request on the false pretense of giving each guest a campfire atmosphere. The additional light was not enough to alleviate the gloom that had fallen over the Copper Top Cabin resorts, but it did reflect nicely from the metal roofs that gave the resort its name.
I was in the woods just outside the clearing at cabin five where Jake stood unhappily inside a fifteen foot circle of salt. Britta and Steve stood near the empty cabin watching the half-naked werewolf and waiting for the moon to come up.
Tanya and Awasos were on watch about a hundred yards to either side of me. Our theory was that the Cheenos would be drawn to Jake, if they were, in fact, attracted to supernatural creatures. Having the three of us clustered around the young werewolf concentrated the supernatural bait so to speak.
Britta and Steve would head into cabin five which was outfitted with a whole slew of stick man fetishes. In addition, Steve clutched his Remington 1100 shotgun in his hands. While I doubted he could even hit a superfast Cheeno, the mixture of salt and steel shot in the shells might have some effect at close range. Maybe, maybe not.
The rest of the Boklunds were back at the lodge, which like cabin five, was liberally festooned with stickmen. In fact, all the cabins sported Blair Witch mementos as an attempt to keep the Cheenos away. Quinby thought the demons would come at the resort from the woods closest to cabin five, but would be held by her Wards. My own experience with the things didn’t give me as much confidence in her perimeter. The Cheenos had avoided the witches till Jake had shown up a month earlier. Now I figured they might find a way to get through. Although it made me wonder that the demons were drawn to weres and vampires but avoided witches. Odd that.
The silver moon had not yet made her appearance and the dusky gloom was quiet save for the sounds of crickets around me and frogs chorusing down by the pond.
Tanya was calm and thinking quiet thoughts, Awasos was watching silently and my lack of sleep was making me drowsy. All told, I’d only had a few hours of sleep since leaving Chicago and now I was starting to nod off. After a few attempts to push myself to a higher level of awareness, I sensed Tanya’s amusement at my condition. “Go ahead, it’s early and we’re watching,” she whispered at me a football field away. I heard it like she was next to me and I immediately took her words to heart. It was too early for demons. Still hearing her silken tones in my head, I nodded off.
***
It was th
e tree falling that woke me. A slow, low vibration that started in the ground then moved up in the canopy of the forest to the wide limbed top of an old maple. One moment I’m dreaming of an all-you-can-eat buffet at a steakhouse, the next I’m staring at a giant mass of leaves slamming through the roof of green overhead. It fell directly into one of Quinby’s talisman trees, ripping the smaller tree out of the ground and shoving it over at an angle, then hitting the ground with an earth shaking whump.
Almost immediately two other trees fell a little further down the circle of the Wards, taking out another pair of magical fence posts. Broken limbs and clusters of ripped leaves continued to fall after the thick trunks had settled to the forest floor.
“That can’t be good,” Britta muttered behind me.