Duel Nature

by John Conroe

  “You’re much more of a mental opponent than I had envisioned. I thought Gordon here was the mouthy one?” he said, frowning at me.

  “Oh, he is, Agent Gentis, by far. Except when he’s really, really angry. It seems to me that everyone would have figured out by now that pushing him and making him angry ends up with him another level stronger and the pushers….well….dead!”

  I had tried mono blading my wrists to cut the cuffs but the blades wouldn’t form. Of course, it was only steel with a DU coating so the whole time I had been sitting there, I’d been stretching the steel, pressing with constant, very slow pressure. Now, I just pulled my left wrist free, grabbed the metal seat back behind me and crushed the chair.

  It shouldn’t have been possible, there wasn’t any natural way to get any leverage to pull down, but vampire energy methods make the impossible possible. I Posted to the floor through the soles of my feet, then Pulled both with my legs and with energy, dropping into a squat. My left hand shot up and grabbed the barrel of the rifle, pulling it down toward Gentis while I crouched low as the steel chair was crushed flat like a soda can. My right hand grabbed my guard’s leg and pulled it from under him.

  The gauss rifle made a high pitched whine then a super loud crack as the depleted uranium round left the barrel at six or seven times the speed of sound, blasted through the air just above Gentis’s head and blew through the building behind it as if the bricks didn’t exist.

  My grip crushed the barrel then let go, which was good, because the next shot blew the gun all apart, taking a sizeable portion of the guard’s right hand and forearm with it.

  While I was playing with new toys, Tanya had been busy. She went up instead of down, jumping into a back flip, circling her bound hands under her tucked feet even as she came down behind her very surprised guard. His shock was cut short by her bound wrists which went under his chin, against his throat, then broke his neck and back as he performed an impossible back bend at her insistence.

  My crushed chair wasn’t very much use to me anymore so I threw it like a Frisbee at one of the guards in the back of the room. Then I raced it to see which of us got to the guards first. I’ll call it a tie, though if I’m honest, the chair might have won by a centimeter. It took the blonde guard, Blade, off her feet and part way through the wall. I sent Katana along beside her with a straight arm to his sternum, which collapsed before it met the wall. A glance to my left found the other two guards dead, one draped through the now broken mirror glass into the empty observation room. My girlfriend was standing between them with blood on both bound hands.

  Gentis was crouched behind his desk, shocked, his hand covering the ear on the side of his that the gauss round had passed. Probably a busted eardrum from having a hypersonic projectile pass next to it.

  “Wow, Gentis, these new guns are cool!” Grim said using my voice, while I ripped Tanya’s cuffs apart.

  Picking up a Gauss rifle, I examined it. Blocky and overly heavy, it was packed with batteries, transformers, and the barrel was ringed with coils. Like a railgun, it used magnetic fields to accelerate a projectile much faster than chemical propellants could, pushing the kinetic energy of each round to explosive levels. The thing had to weigh thirty pounds making it unsuitable for most troops but these had been much stronger than normal humans. Still, even at thirty pounds it was a technological achievement. I was most likely holding the future of combat weapon craft in my hands.

  Tanya blurred across the room, scooped Gentis up by his neck and slammed him down on the desk top. Her face was frozen and cold –beautiful but cold.

  “What are those soldiers?” she asked, her voiced pitched for compliance.

  A wet stain appeared on Gentis’s crotch as he answered in a shrill and shaky voice.

  “Human soldiers, treated with an enhancement drug.”

  “And where does this drug come from?”

  “Vampires. The idea came from the Hance drug that hit the streets a few years back. But this is just a mélange of proteins and enzymes, purified from vampire blood.”

  “How do you get it?” she asked, her voice scary even to me and I was on her side.

  “W…wee..we’ve captured a few vampires over the y-years,” he replied.

  She studied him for a second, then bit, faster than thought. His legs kicked for a moment before he passed out. She drank for a second or two, then stopped, wiping her mouth with the back of one hand. She glanced at me and grimaced.

  “He pissed me off,” she said, looking just slightly chagrined at her own actions.

  “How was it?” I asked in my own voice.

  “Sour,” was her answer.

  ***

  Leaving the customs station wasn’t as easy as escaping Gentis. Mostly because we both agreed we should avoid hurting any real law enforcement types or any civilians.

  Our first order of business was freeing Awasos, but when we left the customs building we found the Kubota tractor that had blocked the rear of the car was flipped on its side and the back of the SUV was ripped open. The other pieces of equipment showed damage; metal operator cages shredded, engine cowlings smashed, and in the case of the giant front-end loader, one of the massive tires was destroyed.

  An enraged roar told us where our were bear was, about eighty yards away, between the bridge to Canada and the customs building. We raced at vampire speed but just as we arrived two Border Patrol agents opened fire on ‘Sos with M4 rifles on full auto.

  My bear cowered in the face of the gunfire and I flipped out. Completely. One massive aura burst left my body and every loaded firearm in a two hundred yard radius exploded. Holstered, held in hands or left in vehicles, it didn’t matter. The cartridges all simultaneously fired, blasting out the bottom of grips, bursting metal magazines, jamming actions and barrels. In that one instant it was over. Except for the panicked screams of the travelers and the cries of pain and shock from the agents, the action was done. The crunch of fenders and bumpers smacking each other was loud and clear as panicked travelers sought to get over the bridge and away from the violence at the border station.

  Awasos was already healing from the bullet wounds as we led him away from the chaos my little trick had caused.

  “That’s a new one,” Tanya commented.

  “Yeah, I didn’t know that was a possibility. Grim came up with it,” I said.

  “Your Grim side has a real genius for mayhem,” she said with admiration, which oddly made me slightly jealous, which was stupid. Grim is me and I am Grim. As I thought this, Tanya grabbed my hand and smiled. “Two sides to the same coin,” she said.

  We walked toward the bridge, Awasos shifting to wolf form, all the expended bullets that had been in his larger bear form falling out on the ground as he lost mass.

  Chapter 19

  Crossing the bridge on foot wasn’t tough. The Canadian Border guards had stopped entry and the bridge was full of idling vehicles, many of the drivers standing outside their rides trying to get a look at the chaos behind us.

  We moved through the vehicles as casually as we could. People asked questions and we got our share of attention. More than our share, especially from men staring at my girl. Having a giant wolf trotting beside us didn’t help with the blending in. We answered the questions as generally as possible while asking about the hold up ahead. Tanya got lots of answers and more than a few offers for a ride.

  The gist of the information was that the Canadians were locked down, having been contacted by their U.S. counterparts about possible terrorists. While we walked, we could see the activity pick up ahead of us. Two patrol boats left the docks and pulled out onto the river with searchlights lit up and roving. We could hear a helicopter approaching from the north and as soon as we saw its blinking lights in the night sky, we knew it was time to get off the bridge.

  The International Bridge has suspension towers anchored to the banks of the river that flows underneath it. We slipped over the side and climbed down, moving at a speed that would be hard to
see by any watching law enforcement. I thought about carrying Awasos, but he changed form, becoming something closer to a black bear than a grizzly, his new shape easily handling the climb.

  A Canadian police cruiser was parked near the bottom with two alert patrolmen running their high powered flashlights over the tower and its base. After jumping the last fifty feet and landing behind them, it wasn’t hard to put them in rear neck chokes and when they passed out, we cuffed them, left them in at the bottom of the tower and borrowed their car.

  We simply drove away from the border, our official vehicle giving us a free visa to enter the country. Leaving the cruiser at a Tim Hortons donut shop, we continued walking while Tanya called a local number on the cell phone she had ‘borrowed’ from one of the cops. Awasos and I were occupied with the very important task of eating two dozen donuts. Ideally it would be a dozen for each of us, but we both knew that someone large and furry would end up with a bit more than his share.

  Twenty minutes later, a cable television van picked us up and took us to a Coven safe house where we were offered clean clothes and more food (blood in Tanya’s case) while the next step was laid out.

  The vampire who seemed to be in charge was a tall black woman named Bettina. Her expression was guarded as she provided for our needs then helped plan our next steps.

  “We have a makeup specialist on hand to change your appearances. We’ll send you across the border separately, mixed in with other groups,” she explained.

  “What about ID?” I asked.

  “You’ll have valid Canadian passports. We’re mixing you into a busload of older tourists heading into New York State.”

  “What about Awasos?” I asked, patting my furry pal where he lay pressed up against my feet.

  “He’ll have to stay put for now. He’s too big and wolf-like to not be noticed.”

  “Why don’t we just swim the Saint Lawrence river?” I asked, curious.

  Bettina sighed, glanced at Tanya with a ‘is he for real?’ look and then answered.

  “Because Chris, the US/Canadian border just became the most heavily observed point on earth. We know of at least two satellites and seven drones being assigned to watch this section and that’s a conservative estimate. The 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum in Watertown has been brought out to patrol the US side and the Mounties have tripled their presence in Ottawa, Cornwall and Montreal.”

  I looked down at my bear-wolf and still thought it could be done. His brown eyes flashed lava red for a moment as he grinned back at me. Good luck holding him here, I thought to myself.

  Tanya snorted, watching the byplay between man and were beast, then turned to Bettina.

  “When do we get started?”

  Downstairs, we heard the door open and voices murmur greetings. Bettina cocked her head listening then grinned. “Right now!”

  It took two hours to get each of us fully made up, which according to Rick the human makeup expert and his assistant, Lisa, was fast.

  Custom prosthetics, commissioned by Lydia months ago and shipped to various safe houses and dental gauze packed into our cheeks changed our face structure while contact lenses altered our very noticeable eyes. I watched my beautiful vampire age before my eyes in a manner that would never actually happen, even if she lived for millennia. Her hair was now a bluish grey and her perfect white skin had become yellowed, wrinkled and spotted with age blemishes. Prosthetic teeth that were crooked and stained covered her natural ones. Her unnatural ability to mimic others changed her whole persona to someone elderly who had entered her twilight years hobbled with arthritis along with the aches and pains of a lifetime.

  She would have fooled anyone. Looking at her it was only my mental link to her that told me she was still there under all those layers of flowered cloth and sweaters.

  My own reflection was hard to reconcile. I was balding and bent, wrinkled and weathered, wearing a smelly sweater and baggy trousers two sizes too big. Rick had used athletic tape to fasten a wooden ruler behind my left knee, which forced me to walk with a stiff legged limp. He had duct taped the skin on my back so that if I tried to straighten up it pulled sharply. The overall effect was a hunched over, limping walk that I couldn’t forget to maintain. Then after petting a whining Awasos goodbye, we boarded a tour bus with passports in hand. I studied mine, learning that I was Peter Duluth, from Ottawa, I would be eighty-one in August and I had last crossed the border a month and a half ago. Bettina had assured us that our passports were real and that the new photos that were taken and affixed in place would be uploaded to the Canadian computers before we got our seatbelts on. The Coven was as firmly entrenched in the Canadian government as it was everywhere else.

  The rest happened rather quickly. We pulled up to the heavily manned border, then stopped while US Border officers boarded the bus. I woke the old guy next to me who had been asleep when I got on and we both produced our passports on demand, which were scanned with a reader. Apparently, Bettina was as good as her word, because the Duluth passport passed inspection with ease.

  Six rows behind me I could feel Tanya suddenly tense up and I glanced forward to see what had alarmed her. A female agent with a hundred pounds of Doberman had climbed up and was moving down the aisle, letting her dog sniff everyone on the bus. Vampires definitely smell different to dogs, so I was suddenly just as nervous as she was. The dog came along side me then stopped, pausing to snuffle my hands. The handler watched suspiciously, and when the dog started to push its nose into my lap I thought the game was up. Then I noticed the wagging tail and the doggy grin as my new friend demanded attention and I realized it was my God given gift that had caught the Dobie’s interest. I never met a dog that didn’t like me, that wasn’t in fact almost crazy about me. This one was no different and despite repeated commands, the Doberman continued to come back to me. She would get two rows down the aisle and the happy brute would suddenly swing around and fly back to me. Her annoyed handler finally gave up and yanked her back to the front and off the bus without completing her sweep. A quick glance at my elderly Tanya showed her relief in the gleam of her contact browned eye. Then the door closed, the bus driver shifted into gear and we headed into the U.S.

  The doors reopened at the Akwasasne Casino in Massena. We hobbled into the main casino with the rest of the group but continued right out the back and into the parking lot behind the building. A late model, silver Honda Accord answered the key fob that Tanya produced from her granny purse and we were off.

  ***

  Thirty-five minutes later we pulled open the doors to the Canton-Potsdam hospital and hobbled our elderly selves in. We had decided to leave the disguises on and it proved to be the right decision as there were multiple dark suited men loitering around the hospital and one parked right outside the door to Gramps room.

  No immediate plan came to mind so we collapsed ourselves into a couple of chairs in the hospital cafeteria to think about it. The solution to our problem found us drinking coffee.

  “Wow, life on the road hasn’t treated you well!” a familiar voice said behind me.

  The tall black haired man and his pretty, athletic girlfriend were looking at us with bemused grins.

  Brett Malleck and his mate, Kelly pulled up chairs and greeted us like we were old friends of the family, which we were.

  “We got ten feet in the door and both smelled your scents everywhere. That’s a nice look for you Chris and the scent of mothballs and Ben-Gay ointment really suits you,” the tall Alpha said with a grin. “But you, Tanya, are going to be breaking hearts in the senior center with that look!”

  “Asshole!” I said, laughing despite my worries about Gramps.

  “So what’s the drill?” Kelly asked.

  “We haven’t gotten near him yet,” I said with a shrug.

  “Come in with us. You’re old friends of Alex Gordon’s and you’re visiting at the same time as his concerned neighbors. The DHS agents all know who we are, thanks to your good friend General Creek, and he�
��s been getting lots of visitors.”

  “How is he?” I asked, unable to contain my fear.

  “He’s really good. The doctors are a little baffled. He may have had a slight heart attack, but they’re not finding any real damage.”

  I exchanged glances with Tanya.

  “We have reason to believe that he was given a drug that made it look like he had a heart attack,” Tanya said.

  “Why?” Brett asked.

  We spent the next few minutes explaining the last twenty- six or so hours and our run in with A.I.R.

  “So why don’t you just contact Gina or the General?” Brett asked.

  “Because they don’t know if they can trust them!” Kelly guessed.

  “Not to mention we sorta damaged federal property and killed six people who were wearing the uniforms of federal agents,” I said. “I think Creek frowns on that kind of thing.”