by John Conroe
“Chris? How are you doing?” the blonde asked. I had to think about that for a moment, but then it was clear… Chris was my name. Christian, actually. Christian Anthony Gordon. It popped into my head and I felt suddenly a bit better.
“What do you mean he got shot? I was in the kitchen when the yelling started,” the teen asked.
“That guy shot him in the head. He dropped for a second, then he was gone so fast I couldn’t follow the motion. I saw blood spray and his head is bloody, but I don’t see a wound, so it must have healed already,” the blonde said. “Two more shots, but they missed. He was too fast.”
She had pointed behind me when she said that guy, so I turned and looked.
A man dressed in camouflage was pinned to a thick pine tree by an AR-10 style sniper rifle that had been shoved through his chest and deep into the tree. Dead with glistening red blood that must have erupted from his mouth and all down his front, his head lolling forward.
I stumbled backward but was stopped by the mass of fur and muscle that was now pressed up against me, so I just sat down in the pine needles.
“Who are you people? What are you?” I asked, or at least tried to, but the words didn’t come out that way. It came out “Woo art woa? Wah art plep?”
I tried again, this time getting it more or less right.
“You don’t know us, Chris? Any of us?” Blondie asked. I shook my head.
“What about him?” she asked, pointing at the wolf by side. He seemed sorta familiar but I couldn’t put a name to him. I shrugged, confused and frustrated. “You are a… wolf? A werewolf?” I asked, feeling idiotic but having no other answer. They both just looked perplexed and worried.
Other people were arriving, men mostly, including a giant who had to be close to seven feet tall.
The teen girl turned and motioned them to stop approaching, while the blonde kept looking at me as she approached slowly, her face open and concerned.
“My name is Stacia. Do you remember me?” she asked, glancing up at my forehead.
I shook my head. I’m sure I would have remembered her. After all, how many gorgeous women were in my life? Try none!
“How about Katrina? Do you remember her?” she asked.
I looked the teen girl over. She was pretty with brown hair and eyes and extremely pale skin. She was different, not normal. I just knew it, but wasn’t sure how. I glanced back at the dead guy pinned to the tree. He was the same pale white as her. She must have followed my gaze because she was suddenly next to me, her movement pushing air across my face, and then she was just as abruptly standing in front of the dead guy, studying him.
“He’s Darkken! Shit!” she said vehemently.
“Yeah, well this isn’t unexpected, is it?” the blonde, Stacia, asked, now holding my head with both hands and tilting it up to look at my brow. I pulled back a bit, because while I don’t have anything against beautiful girls holding my head in particular, it had never happened before and I couldn’t think of a good reason for it now. Although I really couldn’t think well at all. My cobwebs were still thick and gooey.
“What the hell happened?” a male voice asked in a command tone. An intense man strode into our edge of the forest, the giant guy right behind him.
“Chris took a sniper round to the head. Then I think he killed the sniper pretty much on instinct, but he seems to have memory issues,” Blondie, er, Stacia said.
A compact, muscular Asian girl came running up with an EMT bag slung over her shoulder. Taking in the scene in a glance, she beelined straight for me.
“Head wound?” she asked.
“Yeah, you could say. He took a bullet in the side of his head, but it’s already healed,” Stacia said.
The EMT girl didn’t respond, just pursed her lips as she manipulated my head much as the other had.
“A lot of blood, but I think you’re right. Damn, that’s really fast healing!” she said.
“You keep saying I got shot, but how come I’m still alive?” I asked, noticing another intense-looking man arriving along with a younger version of himself and two females, one younger, one older. A family.
“Chris, what’s the last thing you remember?” the EMT asked.
“I do… I don’t really know,” I said, trying and failing to get my thoughts in order.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Chris… Christian Anthony Gordon,” I answered, absurdly proud of knowing that fact.
“Do you know where you are?” I just shook my head at that one.
“Where do you live?” she persisted.
It took a moment for the answer to pop up.
“Potsdam. Potsdam, New York.”
“Oh no!” the blonde girl, Stacia, said, eyes wide.
The other girl, the pale teen, looked really shocked.
“Chris, you live in New York City. Remember?” she demanded.
I shook my head, realizing I was missing stuff, important stuff, but unable to get ahold of it.
“I… I don’t think so. I’m going to the NY Police Academy—then I’ll live in the city. I remember commencement…my grandfather was there. But you weren’t, either of you.”
They both looked pale now, but the Asian girl just looked annoyed.
“For the love of God, can you two cut him a break? He just took major trauma to the head.” She shook her head. “ – as if a bullet were only trauma! He’s literally had part of his brain scrambled, and he’s not only coherent but he was able to kill his own sniper! Of course he has memory issues—it’s been all of five minutes!” She didn’t raise her voice, but her tone was sharp as a razor and it had the same effect on the two girls as if she had slapped them.
“By all rights, you should be notifying his next of kin that he’s dead, but look at him! Healed, at least on the outside, and functional. Unbelievable!”
“I’ve seen our kind survive gunshots to the head as well as her kind,” the family guy said, with a nod at the pale girl, “ but they all had major memory loss and brain damage. It took years to recover both physically and mentally. I have to agree with your medic here—he’s doing uncannily well.”
He had an exotic accent, European or something.
“Next of kin? Oh shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! I’ve got to call Tanya,” the teen girl said suddenly, looking truly scared. Then she firmed up as she came to some conclusion. Her head came up and she turned and looked around at the others, who were standing in a semi-circle. “Where’s John?” she asked, but must have spotted him because she blurred straight across the arc to a bookish, thin pale guy and yanked him over to the body on the tree. It was like he was being pulled by a tractor. “Do you know him?” she asked.
The John guy recovered himself from the near whiplash her pull had generated and paused to look from me to the dead sniper. He, too, tilted the head back to get a look at the face and when he did, I saw two pointy teeth poking out of the dead guy’s lips. Pointy, like, you know, a vampire.
“I don’t know him. He’s not a local. Must have come from out of state,” John said with a grimace.
“I need details! Facts! Listen, John, very carefully. I’m about to call Tatiana Demidova and tell her that a Darkken sniper just shot her Chosen… in your region. How do you think she will react to that? Hmm?” she said intensely. “What do you think that means for the Coven?”
The blonde, whose name I had been told a moment or two ago, turned and listened as pale girl talked. Stacia! Her name was Stacia and pale girl was Katrina! I felt better for remembering, but I was scared… I had just heard both names earlier and I had trouble remembering them twenty seconds later. An odd memory surfaced. Me with Gramps, visiting a friend of his who had Alzheimer’s. I shuddered.
“Are you cold?” the medic asked. I shook my head. “Just trying to get my brain to work,” I said, just barely above a whisper. I might as well have yelled it, as everyone snapped around to look at me.
“Don’t force it. Just relax. You’ve been wounded, and it
’ll take time to fully heal,” she said in soothing tones. Katrina, who was just behind the medic, tilted her head to one side. “Did you recognize that name Chris? Tatiana? Does it ring any bells?”
Stacia flashed a dark, angry look at Katrina but said nothing. I shook my head. “Who is she, and what is a Chosen?” I asked.
Katrina just pursed her lips, smiled, and shook her head. “Let’s not worry about it right now. ‘Kay?” Then she turned to the group. “I still need details.”
“The rifle is a Remington R-25, probably in .308,” I said, trying to add what I could.
“You remember guns?” Katrina asked.
I thought about that. The information had just been there, popping up without effort, while stuff like where I was, who these people were, and what had happened were all fog and darkness. I nodded.
“What’s this one?” the giant asked, holding up a pistol that looked tiny in his humongous hand.
“Glock 21,” I said instantly, noting the size of the bore could be nothing less than .45.
“So he remembers who he is, his hometown, detail about weapons, but nothing from his recent past?” Stacia asked, an odd light in her eyes. Katrina was eyeing her with murder on her face, now clutching a smart phone, like she was getting ready to make a call.
“Let’s get him in the house and get this area cleaned up. Jep, collect as much evidence and information as you can and get rid of the body. Malcolm, get a push broom and shovel and clean up the broken glass from the driveway where the flash bang went off,” the intense man next to Jep ordered. A young man from the onlookers peeled off and headed to the big, four-car garage near the house. Jep waved one tree-limb-thick arm and an SUV pulled up across the grass.
“Don’t even think of it, bitch!” Katrina suddenly said to Stacia, who whirled in anger to face her. “I know what you’re thinking! Don’t even try to worm your way in with lies and omissions!”
“Fuck off, leech!” Stacia said, furious. Everyone in the area turned to look at the suddenly tense confrontation. There was a certain breathlessness to the group as they watched the two females square off, the kind of hopeful expectation that preceeds a schoolyard showdown and fills a MMA fight to max capacity.
“Do not presume to have the slightest inkling of what I think or how I live!” the green-eyed blonde girl hissed.
“Oh, I’ve known a thousand opportunists just like you over the last hundred years! I know exactly how your kind thinks!” Katrina replied.
“Then you should stop living in the gutter and learn about other people instead of, you know, crack whores and junkies!”
Katrina drew breath to reply, but her phone buzzed in her hand and her face blanched when she looked at the display. “Hey, T. I was just gonna call you,” she said, spinning away and stalking off into the dark as she answered it.
The EMT, who introduced herself as Coreena, steered me toward the SUV, and Stacia came around to grab the vehicle’s door. I slid into the leather interior and was soon headed to the house, sandwiched between the two females, while outside Stacia’s side, the big wolf ran alongside. Behind us, I could see the teen girl talking rapidly on her phone. Ahead the house rushed closer, but my brain was no clearer, my thoughts no more ordered. What the Hell was going on?
Chapter 20
The house was partially full of well-dressed men and women who all had the same general smell as the two females who led me into its interior—canine. We crossed the front bluestone steps, and I saw glistening blood on the side of the main doorframe about head height… my head height, but was hustled past it and on into a side library room. One of the dark-suited men came forward at a command from the leader, whose name was Ned. “Chris, this is Dr. Peterson. He’s one of mine and well versed in dealing with medical issues for sups.”
“Hello, Dr. Peterson,” I said, shaking his hand. “What’s a sup?” I asked Ned. He exchanged uncertain glances with the doctor, Stacia, and Coreena.
“A sup is a supernatural, Chris—a werewolf like me or a vampire like Katrina,” Stacia said, sitting next to me and holding my hand.
“Oh,” I said, thinking about that. “I feel like I should be having more trouble with this whole werewolf-vampire thing.” I was thinking about the girl next to me, who had been a wolf recently, and Katrina, who moved much faster than any human could.
“That may be because you’ve been dealing with it for a couple of years now,” she replied.
“Years? Years? What’s today's date? And why would a doctor who knows about Dracula and the wolfman need to look at me?” I asked.
She patted my hand and leaned in just a bit. “Because, you, Chris, are supernatural, too. Maybe more so than any of us.” Then she picked a newpaper off the coffee table in front of me and pointed to the date. It couldn’t be right… it had to be a gag paper, you know, the kind you can get from a joke shop or website for pranks. The headline was about the federal budget, and the man in the accompanying photo had been running for president. According to the caption, he was the president.
I tried to wrap my head around all the stuff I was reading, but my eyes kept going blurry. Dr. Peterson leaned over me, checking my head while having a medical-sounding conversation with Coreena. He flashed a little light in each eye and asked me questions about who, what, where I was.
“Who’s your closest family?”
“My grandfather.”
“Where’d you go to college?”
“SUNY Albany,” I answered.
“Who is that?” he asked pointing to Stacia.
“A girl named Stacia.”
“How about him?” he said pointing down.
“A big, friendly wolf?” I answered. The BFW woofed at me and bumped my leg with his big head. He made it obvious that I was supposed to know him. And somehow, I knew he also wanted me to call him by name.
“What is his name?” I asked.
“Awasos,” Stacia replied.
“But that means bear in Abenaki, not wolf? What idiot named a wolf Bear?”
“You did, Chris. You rescued him at birth, you named him, and you raised him,” Stacia said with a sad smile.
“But why would I name him Bear?”
She looked at Awasos. “Show him.”
The big canine backed away a few steps and then just sorta shimmered. Shimmered and expanded—a lot! A second later, the biggest bear I’d ever seen was standing on all four legs, looking me at me with Awasos’s eyes. Slowly, he moved forward and bumped my shoulder with a keg-sized head. My hand reached itself to his neck and scratched without my direction. He sighed and sat down, tilting his head to give me a better shot at what was obviously an itchy spot.
“Wow!” was all I could say.
“Chris, I think you are doing well for having been shot in the head—really well. I can’t even really tell exactly where the bullet hit. Understandably, you have memory loss and other … damage. Much of that will heal, but whether you get your memories back or not is uncertain,” the doctor said.
“So what do we do?” Stacia asked.
“What I do is take him home! What you do is whatever dogs do,” a voice said from the door. The girl… the vampire girl, if I wanted to be accurate, Katrina, took two quick steps forward and handed her phone to me. I didn’t recognize the model. “Someone wants to say hi.”
I took it slowly as the rest of the room grew tense. The vampire had just insulted not one but ten or more people that I thought were probably werewolves. She didn’t appear to care.
“Hello?” I said into the phone. The most amazing voice answered. It was lightly accented and smoky smooth. “Zayka, are you all right?”
The tones hit me like a brick. I knew this voice, but no face or name came with it. “I know you!” I said, which had the effect of shifting all the attention in the room from the two girls to me. “I can’t remember your name, but I know you!”
“Yes, you know me. My name is Tanya, Christian. Does that help?”
I shook my head, then r
ealized she couldn’t see it. “I’m sorry. I should be able to do better, but I just can’t get my mind to work!” I said, clenching a fist and slamming the arm of the chair I was in. It shattered into a hundred pieces. “Oh shit!”
“What happened?” the voice asked, alarmed. Stacia and Katrina rushed to help me with the broken pieces but bumped into each other, whirling to face off. Coreena shoved between both of them, disgusted, and started picking pieces of wood off me.
“I broke the chair. I didn’t even hit it that hard?” I said, both to the voice on the phone and to the rest of the room.
“You are very, very strong, Zayka. You must be careful, dear one. Just keep calm and move slowly. You must come home now,” she said, her voice like a soothing salve. “Come home to me, Christian.”