by Marc Daniel
“Are these Sullivan’s dogs?” Starks asked one of the deputies.
“Yes. Chief always liked attack dogs.”
“It looks like these found their match,” noted Harrington more to himself than for anyone’s benefit.
Sullivan’s body was not in much better shape than his dogs’, but at least he was mostly in one piece. A large chunk of his throat had been torn away, which would make the medical examiner’s job easy when the time came to determine the cause of death. The air conditioning inside the house had done a good job preserving the bodies; the air was slightly tainted but still breathable.
“What happened?” asked Starks. “Did his dogs kill him before turning on each other?”
“It’s doubtful,” answered the deputy. “If you look at the carpet, there’s a set of tracks that can’t belong to either dog. They’re way too big.”
Harrington and Starks walked over to the bloody paw prints indicated by the deputy and had to agree with the man’s assessment.
“What in heaven’s name could have left a track this size?” asked Starks bewilderedly. “A lion?!”
“I don’t have the faintest clue,” replied his friend and colleague. “But I know someone who might.”
Chapter 5
Michael had been in bed less than an hour when the phone rang.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” he muttered to himself.
The rescue mission had taken most of the night. The young woman had been half dead from starvation and dehydration when Michael had found her hidden in a tree. Given the circumstances, she had been very lucky. With the exception of bruises and scratches received from branches while climbing up the tree, she was mostly unscathed. Unlike black bears, adult grizzlies couldn’t climb trees, and this fact had saved her life.
All they had learned from her before she had passed out in Michael’s arms was that the bear had attacked them in the middle of the night four days earlier. She had been hiding in the tree ever since. Without food or water, it was a miracle she had survived. Her boyfriend hadn’t been so lucky. The bear had fed on his corpse every day since the attack, and there really wasn’t much left of the kid to bury.
The chopper dispatched to retrieve the young man’s body had brought a medical team to take care of the girlfriend. Once the medics had put her on IV fluids, her condition had improved fairly quickly. Within a couple of hours she had awoken and started giving more details about their nightmarish experience.
Soggy from rain, they had made it to their campsite late on Saturday night. After setting up the tent, neither had had much appetite and they had decided to just go to bed. She knew the basic rules to follow when camping in bear country, and she had asked her boyfriend to pull their food up a high branch out of reach of bears. “Bears don’t like rain either, they won’t bother us,” had been his reply. The grizzly had proven him very wrong.
“You’d better have a really good reason for waking me up, Bill,” Michael growled as he answered the phone.
“Good morning, Michael. It’s good to hear your voice too. Had I known you’d turned into a lazy-ass son of a bitch who doesn’t get up before noon, I’d have waited for the afternoon to call you,” replied Steve Harrington on the other end of the line.
“Steve?! Is that you?”
“Who else would dare talk to you this way, old fart?”
“I guess it is you. Well, sorry for the greeting, but I had a busy night and just got to bed.”
“Nothing serious, I hope?” enquired Steve.
“Depends if you consider a twenty-year-old kid ending up in a grizzly’s stomach serious or not, I guess. Not to mention his half-starved, traumatized-for-life girlfriend,” replied Michael, using his most subtly sarcastic tone. “But enough about me. To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”
“I’m working a homicide down here in Texas, and I could use your help.”
“We’re talking about a coyote homicide and you think the local game warden isn’t qualified to apprehend the poachers?”
“No, we’re talking about a cop and his two Rottweilers torn to pieces by something that leaves tracks the size of a frying pan,” answered Steve in a stoic voice.
“I see…”
There was a pause in the discussion while Michael assessed the possible implications of his friend’s revelation. After a few seconds he resumed:
“And you think whatever left those tracks is not… natural?”
“Well, if I knew I wouldn’t be calling you. You’re the expert in unnatural things!”
“I prefer the term praeternatural, but I get your point. What do you want me to do?”
“I’d like you to come down here and give your expert opinion. I talked to my Captain about this and you’ll be reimbursed for your plane tickets and lodging expenses. You’ll still have to pay for your food though. We don’t have the FBI’s budget.”
“What kind of cheap-ass outfit do you work for?” Michael didn’t wait for an answer; he had already made up his mind to go to Houston. If those paw prints were truly as big as described, Steve would definitely need his help.
“OK. I need to make a few arrangements here, and I’ll be on my way. I’ll let you know my flight number, and you can pick me up at the airport.”
Chapter 6
The Alpha sat quietly as Jack told him what had taken place at the chief deputy’s house. He asked a few questions which Jack nervously answered before being dismissed. Once alone, the Alpha stared blankly across the empty room, assimilating what he had been told. What had gone wrong, if anything? What action had to be taken, if any? He was the Alpha, the undisputed leader of the pack, the general. He could not let this pass without careful review and an assessment of the potential fallout. If damage control was required he would need a plan for it.
The unnaturally large paw prints on the carpet had been noticed. An expert was being brought in who would surely identify the prints as well as the mayhem. Those two factors would indisputably lay the blame on a wolf: a very large wolf.
For the police to announce the presence of a 250-pound wolf in downtown Houston without an explanation or a logical plan for its capture, would no doubt cause embarrassment for them and a field day for the press. They were going to play this one close.
Wolves, for all practical purpose, had been eradicated from Texas in the first part of the twentieth century. In addition, wolves in excess of two hundred pounds could not be found anywhere in the world. The largest wolf on record had been shot dead in northwestern Bulgaria in 2007 and had weighed a hair under one hundred and eighty pounds. Moreover, instances of wolf attacks on humans were scarce, far apart, and none had ever occurred inside someone’s home in the presence of two attack dogs.
Jack’s misstep, if there was one, was not only placing the entire operation in jeopardy, it threatened the survival of the whole pack. On the other hand, Jack could hardly be blamed for having committed an error. Most wolves placed in his position would have reacted in the exact same way. Staying in control of one’s wolf in the heat of battle was a difficult thing to do under normal circumstances. Staying in control of one’s wolf in the heat of battle when the opponents were attack dogs was nearly impossible… especially for an omega! And Jack was an omega.
If only he had cleaned up the mess instead of leaving it behind for the cops to find and stick their noses where they didn’t belong. An involuntary morphing was not something a werewolf could reverse of his own will, however, and the Alpha knew it all too well. Time was the only remedy, and it could sometimes take days for a werewolf to morph back into its human form.
Under the circumstances Jack had done the right thing by leaving the house as soon as possible while he could still benefit from the cover of darkness. A 250-pound wolf roaming Houston residential areas in broad daylight was the sort of advertisement the pack did not need.
After pondering all the factors, the Alpha convinced himself that Jack couldn’t have done anything differently and consequently was
not responsible for the mess he had created. Therefore the omega would be allowed to live. A good thing! An Alpha always despised having to kill his own wolves.
Chapter 7
Steve Harrington’s black Honda Accord was racing through the streets of Houston. The vehicle still had the new car smell Michel Biörn loathed so much.
“Did you just pick it up at a dealership on your way to the airport?” asked Michael, irritated.
“No, actually I’ve had it for six months. Maybe your nose is a tad too sensitive,” replied Steve scornfully.
Michael did not respond to his friend’s provocation; he just wasn’t in the mood for their typical verbal jousts. Spending most of the day in airports and planes designed for people half his size had not left him in a cheerful disposition.
“As a matter of fact, this is the first new car I’ve ever bought. I got it to celebrate my promotion.”
“Promotion?” asked Michael, suddenly interested.
“Yes, Sir! I’ll have you know that you’re riding with a Lieutenant, so it’s time to show some respect,” replied Steve in the snootiest tone he could manage.
“My mistake, Lieutenant. I just hadn’t realized one got promoted for sleeping on the job down here in Texas. Took you long enough though. You were Detective for what… forty, fifty years?”
In reality, Steve was in his mid-forties, just like Michael. The difference between the two was that Michael had been in his forties for over a thousand years.
Chapter 8
Danko Jovanovich, aka The Serb, was finishing a plate of Peking duck in one of the fanciest Chinese restaurants in the city. The size of his gut was a clear indicator the man had never skipped a meal in his life. A pair of chopsticks lay discarded a few inches from his plate; eating with twigs was best left to savages. The Serb considered himself civilized and therefore ate with a fork, a tool he deftly used to engulf pieces of duck large enough to choke a hippo into the gaping pit of his mouth.
Danko was a smalltime bookie working for the Russian mob; after dabbling in all type of illegal activities, he had found his vocation in the world of illegal street fighting.
Underground street fighting had always existed, but its popularity had been relatively limited in the US until the arrival of the MMA tidal wave. MMA, or Mixed Martial Arts, was a combination of various fighting styles mixing up punches, kicks, wrestling, choking, and pretty much anything one could imagine. The style had initially been created to identify the best fighters, regardless of their fighting style. For this reason, the belligerents were to fight under a very loose set of rules that had initially allowed everything save for biting and eye gouging. However, as MMA grew in popularity and started attracting more and more spectators, the barbarity had to be cleaned out of the sport. Nowadays, MMA was following a complex set of rules intended to protect the fighters and as such had become just another fighting sport. The irony of the situation was lost on the overwhelming majority of fans, but the few who realized MMA fights had lost their sole purpose in life started actively seeking the thrills of the good old days. Illegal street fighting was the answer to their prayers.
In payment for his service, The Serb was entitled to pocket ten percent of the bets’ profits, which lately amounted to a cozy sum. Danko was greedy, though, and ten percent no longer satisfied him. As a bookie, he was in the best possible position to be creative with the accounting. Of late, however, he had been exceedingly creative. Thus far, there was no indication his employers had noticed anything amiss, and he intended to keep it that way. The Russians weren’t the forgiving type.
Danko placed forty bucks on the table, got up and exited the restaurant. The establishment, like most in Houston, was located in a strip mall. The closest parking spot he had found had been a hundred yards away, and he now had to walk the distance with a belly full of duck meat. He loathed exercising in general and walking in particular.
He was halfway to his car and already sweaty from the muggy evening heat when he realized he was being followed. He turned around quickly, in the same motion grabbing the gun holstered on his belt, but a hand trapped his wrist in a vice-like grip before he had a chance to draw the weapon. The hand belonged to a burly six-foot man with emaciated features. Next to him was another man, a bit shorter, but his eyes scared the living hell out of Danko. A predatory aura emanated from both men and The Serb picked up on it immediately.
“Good evening, The Serb. How was the duck?” asked the second man.
“G-goood…” replied Danko after a few seconds. Beads of sweat were now dripping from his forehead. “Who are you? And what do you want from me?”
“Relax! We’re basically colleagues! We too work for Dimitri Ivanov,” replied the first man with an all-but-friendly smile as he pulled Danko’s gun out of the holster. “And you won’t need this where we’re going.”
The shorter one grabbed Danko under the arm, and they started walking in the direction opposite to Danko’s car.
Danko did not know these men, but they couldn’t have screamed hitmen any more if the word assassin had been tattooed on their foreheads. The Serb knew beyond any doubt that getting in a car with them equaled a death sentence.
With the exception of an elderly couple, the parking lot was empty and nobody would come to his aid if he called for it. This was not a time for procrastination; this was a time for action. In a motion surprisingly quick for a man his size, Danko rotated his upper body and punched the goon holding his arm in the throat. The hitman’s trachea emitted a sinister cracking noise. As the man reflexively brought his hands to his throat, Danko immediately reached for the small caliber he always carried in an ankle holster, but the other man was faster. Before Danko could reach the gun, he was lifted off his feet and slammed headfirst onto the ground. Then everything went dark.
Chapter 9
Black-lettered yellow plastic tape reading “CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS” barred access to the driveway. Steve Harrington and Michael Biörn ducked under it and walked to the front door of Chief Deputy Sullivan’s house. The lieutenant pulled out a key from his pocket and unlocked the door.
The bitter-sweet smell of blood assaulted Michael’s nostrils as soon as he stepped through the door. It only took him a few more seconds to detect another, more subtle odor still lingering in the air… wolf.
Aside from being free of cops and missing a dead body, the house looked the same as it had when Steve had first seen it a day earlier. The Rottweilers’ bodies had not yet been removed and the smell of flesh in the early stages of decomposition tainted the air. The taupe living-room carpet was soaked with the victim’s blood, which had also splattered all over the cream-colored walls.
“So, what do you think?” asked Steve, while Michael was still trying to get a feeling for what had happened.
“I think the room’s a mess,” Michael mumbled, still assimilating the surrounding mayhem.
“Way to state the obvious, thank you very much. Anything more insightful?”
“Well, for one thing, this house stinks of wolf.”
“Wolf…” repeated Steve thoughtfully. “Now that’s interesting. Is it a wolf that left these paw prints?” He pointed at the biggest set of tracks on the carpet.
“Yes, no doubt about it,” answered Michael pensively, his thoughts racing through the implications of this discovery.
“So, nothing special about them? They just belong to a common wolf?” asked Steve hopefully.
“They do belong to a wolf, but they are definitely too big for a common wolf. The smell in the air is wrong too. The beast that left these tracks would weigh anywhere between two hundred fifty and three hundred pounds.” He turned to face Steve. “A werewolf.”
The detective’s face turned green at the announcement. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked halfheartedly.
“Unfortunately, I am very serious.”
“But I thought you were the only one left out there? The only one of your kind?”
“As far as I know, I am the o
nly one of my kind still alive. But I am not a werewolf, Steve. You of all people know that.” Steve’s face reflected his state of mind better than any discourse would have, and Michael felt sympathy for his friend. The lieutenant was neither prepared nor equipped to deal with these sorts of things.
“But you never said anything about werewolves! When you told me that there were others out there with special talents and that the less I knew the safer I’d be, I just took your word for it. But now a werewolf has killed a cop in his home, in the middle of the city. It’s time you tell me the whole story.”
Steve’s iPhone rang before Michael had a chance to respond. The lieutenant checked the caller ID and answered, “Dave, what’s up?”
“I’m at the restaurant. I’ve been waiting for you guys fifteen minutes already. That’s what’s up,” replied David Starks on the other end of the line.
“Shit! I hadn’t realized it was so late. We’re leaving Sullivan’s house right now. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Chapter 10
The drive from Sullivan’s home to the restaurant where Detective Starks awaited them only took a few minutes. Not nearly enough time for Michael to answer even a tenth of his friend’s questions.
“Here we are,” announced Steve as he parked the car just in front of the restaurant.
“I’m not planning on discussing the existence of praeternatural beings roaming the planet in front of your friend,” warned Michael. “So you’ll have to be patient a couple more hours before you get your answers.”
“All right. But don’t think you’re off the hook,” replied Steve. “As soon as we’re back in the car, we’ll resume our little conversation.”
They walked to the hostess and asked for David Starks’ table. The detective was sitting at a booth near the bar, and he got up to greet them.