SHADOW PACK (Michael Biörn Book 1)

by Marc Daniel

  “David Starks,” he said in a cheerful tone as he extended a hand towards Michael. “And you must be Michael Biörn, wildlife specialist and Steve’s army buddy.”

  Michael caught a glimmer in the detective’s eyes that made him feel uneasy. The man’s odor was strange as well. Difficult to identify for certain—which in itself was odd enough—but Michael perceived what seemed to be a very faint mixture of adrenaline, perspiration and excitement, with maybe an even more elusive touch of fear.

  “How do you do?” said Michael as he shook the other man’s hand, his face an expressionless mask.

  The three men took their seats and spent the next five minutes absorbed by the menu. When the waitress came to enquire about their selection, Michael ordered the biggest steak in the house, a 24-ounce T-bone, while Steve and David ordered steaks of a more manageable size.

  David was the first to break the silence following the waitress’s departure. “So, what did you think of the crime scene, Michael?”

  “It’s a bloody mess, that’s what I think,” he answered cautiously.

  “Michael thinks the big paw prints belong to a wolf,” interjected Steve, shooting a glance at Michael.

  But Michael wasn’t paying any attention to him. Using his peripheral vision while seemingly staring at the wall, he was busy observing David.

  “Wolf… that’s interesting. Not too many wolves in Texas,” replied the detective. “I wonder where they found it.”

  “Who’s they?” enquired Michael.

  “We suspect the mob might be behind this, but we’re not too sure on that one,” offered Steve.

  “A man and his two dogs are shredded to pieces by what appears to be a wolf, and the police suspect the mob?” asked Michael incredulously. “Could someone please explain to me how you reached that conclusion?”

  “We have been working a case for a couple—”

  The arrival of the food stopped Steve in mid-sentence. The steak, though rare, was overcooked for Michael’s taste, but it was usually the case. In the intimacy of his cabin, the ranger never bothered cooking his meat. In public, however, eating raw steak was frowned upon, and Michael could not afford to attract too much attention.

  “You like your steak bloody,” observed David.

  “I’d eat it alive if I could,” replied Michael in a tone he hoped was humorous.

  The answer generated a twinkle in the detective’s eyes that was not lost on Michael.

  “As I was saying,” resumed Steve. “We’ve been working on a case for the past couple years, which we believe is linked to organized crime. Over the past twenty-six months, five cops have been murdered execution-style across the city. Most of them near or at their domicile.”

  “What do you mean exactly by execution-style?” questioned Michael.

  “One bullet in the head and two in the heart,” replied David.

  “That’s rather different than siccing a wild beast on your victim, isn’t it?”

  “It is. And that’s why we’re not positive about Sullivan. But he was the Harris County Sheriff Department’s Chief Deputy, and that fits our profile.”

  The three men fell silent for a few minutes. Michael was making a mental summary of the situation, trying to find an explanation for the presence of a werewolf in what was suspected to be a mob-sentenced assassination.

  Michael had inhaled his steak within five minutes of it being served, and his companions took advantage of the break in the discussion to finish their own.

  “What were the pieces of evidence collected on the crime scene at Sullivan’s?” Michael finally asked. “I noticed the yellow tags disseminated in his living room.”

  “A couple of guns were found on the crime scene. The other evidence collected was mostly pictures of foot and paw prints,” replied Steve.

  “From what I saw, there was only one set of foot prints,” commented Michael.

  “That’s right, Michael,” replied Steve. “And they belonged to the victim.”

  “Under the circumstances, two guns would seem to be at least one too many then, wouldn’t they?”

  “You noticed that too,” concluded Steve as he was getting up. He then grabbed his iPhone that was lying on the table and headed for the restroom.

  A moment of uncomfortable silence ensued, which was quickly broken by David. “So I hear you and Steve go way back?”

  “I guess it’s been about twenty years. I was his sergeant in the army.”

  “Rangers, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Must have been tough, especially in Somalia…”

  “Yes, it was. We almost didn’t make it once or twice.”

  “I know… Steve told me the two of you had fought at Mogadishu…”

  The battle of Mogadishu, better known as Black Hawk Down, had been a tough one for sure, but nothing in comparison to the one during which Steve had learned Michael’s secret. Their team had been sent on a recon mission behind enemy lines, but they had been ambushed by the enemy. Their entire team had been wiped out that day and Steve and Michael had been the sole survivors. In the heat of battle, outnumbered five to one, Michael hadn’t had a choice. The only chance he’d had to save at least some of his men, and possibly himself, had been to morph. In front of bewildered assailants, he had turned from man to beast and killed them all. He had received a few bullets in the process, but nothing he couldn’t recover from. Steve had witnessed his transformation and, after a long explanation between the two men, had promised Michael his secret would be safe with him.

  Steve came back from the bathroom and handed his phone to David. “I grabbed the wrong one. This is yours. I went to call Marjory and found a text message from a lady named Katia who wanted to see me tonight…”

  “I’m sure it’s a mistake. I don’t know anyone by that name,” replied David unconvincingly.

  “I’m sure... He doesn’t look it, but David is quite the ladies’ man,” commented Steve, approvingly shaking his head.

  David, apparently embarrassed by his partner’s comment, found nothing to reply.

  “Well, it’s getting late anyway. I’ll drive Michael back to his hotel and we can reconvene in the morning,” said Steve before adding, “Who knows… if you’re lucky, maybe Katia’s still waiting for you.”

  “She’d better be,” answered David jokingly.

  Chapter 11

  Danko Jovanovich woke up with a splitting headache. He was lying down on his back on some hard surface. It didn’t feel cold, though, so he assumed it was hardwood. His eyes were still closed, but as he was slowly coming out of his beating-induced nap, he could hear voices in the background. He must have moved involuntarily because he heard someone saying, “He’s waking up.” The statement was quickly followed by the sound of feet shuffling on the hardwood floor.

  “Good morning, sleepy head,” said a man in a tone that sounded a little too honeyed to be honest. “We were starting to think you’d never wake up.”

  Danko cautiously opened his eyes. Blinded by the warm electric lighting in the room, he took a few seconds to fully assess his surroundings. From where he was lying, he could already distinguish half a dozen persons standing around the room, four men and two women, but there might have been others he couldn’t see. It wasn’t looking good.

  He quickly identified two of the men as his assailants, but he’d never seen the others before.

  It was still pretty dark outside and it looked more like the middle of the night than the morning in spite of what the man had said.

  “I am glad you could join us, Danko,” said the man who had first spoken to him.

  “It didn’t look like I had a choice.”

  The room was large, about twice as big as you would expect a living room to be. The floor was definitely hardwood: good quality, too, from what he could tell. Oil paintings hung on the walls, but Danko was not in a mood to pay attention to them.

  “One always has a choice, Danko. For instance, you had the choice to be
honest with Dimitri’s money, but you chose not to be,” replied the man in a lecturing tone. “That was not a very smart thing to do, by the way. No one ever told you that stealing from the mob was about as good an idea as petting a wild tiger?”

  Danko didn’t bother replying. He knew denial was useless and preferred focusing his attention on a way to get out of this alive. His interlocutor was clearly the boss. The others’ body language left no doubt about this point. Their attitude towards him was deferential, almost as if they were afraid of the man. He wasn’t particularly tall or bulky—though definitely in good shape—but there was something imposing about him, something that made you listen when he talked. Although he probably was in his late forties, he appeared to be in his prime. His thick black hair showed no sign of thinning, and only the faintest of wrinkles were visible at the corners of his eyes. His aquiline nose was supported by a strong jaw line, and his eyes seemed to see through your body all the way down to your soul.

  “Who are you?” Danko asked finally.

  “Who am I? Don’t you know that curiosity kills the cat?” replied the man, smiling. “Oh well, I guess it won’t hurt to tell you… I am Peter Clemens.”

  Danko had never heard the name before, but the fact that he obtained it so easily could only mean two things. One: it wasn’t the man’s real name; or two: Danko wasn’t going to live long enough to do anything with it.

  “Max, help our guest to his feet,” said Clemens.

  A six-foot-tall man grabbed Danko by the arm and jerked him up in the air. Danko was not a lightweight, but the man lifted him off the floor as easily as he would have a feather.

  “You haven’t asked yet where you are, but I’ll tell you anyway. You are in the heart of Sam Houston Forest,” said Clemens. “Ivanov wants you dead, but he isn’t here so we don’t really have to listen to him, do we?”

  Danko wasn’t sure where this was going, but if Clemens offered him a way out, he’d take it without discussion.

  “I’m listening,” he replied, swallowing hard.

  “My friends here could use some exercise, so why not kill two birds with one stone?” said Clemens. “If you can make it out of the forest without my men catching you, you are free to go…”

  “And if I don’t?” interrupted Danko.

  “Then you’ll wish you had died here and now.”

  Chapter 12

  Michael Biörn spun around in his bed for the twentieth time. Exhausted, he had turned in for the night an hour earlier, but his racing mind simply refused to go to sleep.

  The ride back from the restaurant had turned into a reenactment of the Spanish inquisition, starring Steve Harrington as the inquisitor and Michael in the role of the suspected heretic.

  After an hour and a half of questioning, Steve was still going strong when Michael had finally refused to answer any more questions until he got some sleep.

  The questioning had not been strictly unilateral, however. Michael had also tried to learn a few things from his friend, but Steve was not very knowledgeable in the domain of the paranormal. He had never heard of any praeternatural creature aside from Michael, and Michael had been forced to explain the difference between werewolves, shape-shifters (who, for the most part, also happened to morph into wolves), vampires, and himself.

  At first, Steve had thought Michael was pulling his chain when he had started talking about vampires. Funny how people were… they could see their friend turning into a wild beast with their own eyes, but still acted all skeptical when you started mentioning blood suckers… Strange! Especially considering how Hollywood had spent the better part of the past twenty years showing werewolves and vampires as mortal enemies.

  In all fairness, Hollywood, for once, wasn’t too far off. Werewolves and vampires didn’t play well together. No one played well with vampires, though, so the werewolves couldn’t really be blamed for it.

  Where Hollywood had gotten it mostly wrong, however, was in presenting the blood suckers and werewolves as mortal hereditary enemies. Vampires had plenty of enemies, but only one historical nemesis: the shifters. Shifter was short for shape-shifter, also known as skin-walker.

  Although the shifters morphed into wolves, they differed from werewolves in many ways. For one thing, the change was always voluntary and instantaneous, and, unlike werewolves who could weigh as much as fifty percent more in their wolf form, shifters retained the same body weight when shifting. That still made for really big wolves, but not nearly as big or scary as the werewolves.

  Another significant difference was that shifters were always of Native American descent and were born with their shape-shifting abilities. Werewolves, on the other hand, could be of any lineage and, with a few exceptions, were born human and subsequently turned into wolves.

  What had kept Michael from sleeping had not been his friend’s questions, however, but his answers. Although Michael had felt an instinctual dislike for David Starks, whom he had met for the first time at dinner, Steve had vouched for his old partner.

  “I trust him as much as I trust you,” had been his exact words. “We were partners for over eight years and I never saw a hint of dishonesty in his behavior. Marge and the kids love him!”

  Michael had not pressed the issue. After all, Steve was a cop and should have noticed something if there had been anything suspicious going on with his partner. Michael had strong instincts, but he was also the most asocial being one would ever meet, and this tended to influence his judgment. He didn’t always need a good reason to dislike people. He’d once suspected his own boss, Bill Thomason, of being a witch because he’d found a couple of dead ravens in the man’s trashcan. But witches and sorcerers were rarely careless enough to leave evidence of their craft for others to find…

  Since Steve was utterly clueless about magic, Michael had only brushed on the topic of witchcraft, simply mentioning witches and their more powerful colleagues, the sorcerers. It was already plenty of information for the poor lieutenant to digest in one evening.

  Henceforth, Steve would be an Initiated, a human aware of the existence of praeternatural creatures… but praeternatural creatures only. Michael hadn’t mentioned a word about the supernatural beings. Warlocks, wizards, elves and mages weren’t to be trifled with.

  Chapter 13

  The moonlight had cloaked the forest in an eerie glow, which did nothing to soothe Danko’s already strained nerves.

  He had been released from the house twenty minutes earlier and been told he would benefit from a fifteen-minute head start. He had started running as hard as he could, but he had rapidly been forced to slow down and adopt a pace more suited to his physique.

  After following the narrow dirt road leading away from the house for about two hundred yards, he had made a ninety-degree turn and dived straight into the woods. The maneuver had been intended to throw off his pursuers and buy him a little time. After that, he had run straight ahead, on several occasions barely escaping decapitation by low-hanging branches.

  A howling sound rose from the entrails of the woods, startling him. The call was quickly answered by a second howling, and a third, and a fourth. Danko had not spent much time in the forest, but he was pretty sure the presence of coyotes in a place like this was to be expected. The fact the howling sounds seemed to be getting closer was a bit more unnerving though.

  Danko mentally cursed the years of sedentary lifestyle and overindulging, which had turned him into the out-of-shape blob he was today.

  Out of breath, he kept running, although at a pace that most people would have considered walking. Suddenly a slightly unearthed root caught his left foot and sent him flying in mid-air.

  He landed on his chest, the shock driving the air out of his lungs. He was still struggling for oxygen when he noticed the small forest trail beneath his feet. He gave himself an additional thirty seconds to recover from his fall before he started running down the trail in the hope of covering more ground, now that trees kept mostly out of his way. At least the howling s
ounds had stopped. It had to be good news.

  Chapter 14

  Katia’s car was parked in front of Detective David Starks’ house when he got home. David was paranoid and obtaining the key to his house was a privilege few had earned in the past. Katia Olveda was not one of them—at least, not yet.

  She got out of her car and met him at the front door. She was a gorgeous brunette of about 5’5”, with curves of the type men brag about to their friends.

  “Hello, lover,” she said in a southern drawl she somehow managed to make sexy.

  “Good evening, gorgeous,” replied David.

  “Late night. Is everything all right?” she asked, as she approached to kiss his neck.

  “I think so,” he answered, still thinking about Michael Biörn. “I had a work dinner. You know how it is.”

  Katia knew exactly how it was. Dating David implied a lot of concessions… but he was worth it. At least she hoped so.

  **********

  David Starks was lying in bed, wide awake. Katia had left his house an hour earlier, looking a bit more disheveled than when she had first gotten there. Sex with Katia was always fun. She was just kinky enough to constantly keep it interesting. Katia, however, was not on David’s mind at the moment; Michael Biörn was.

  Biörn was the type of man who emanated palpable raw power. Most would have attributed this feeling to the man’s imposing physique, but David knew better. He had felt the beast trapped within the man, and it had frightened him.

  A faint cracking sound from the stairwell attracted his attention. It was probably nothing else than the house shifting, but the detective had learned to be cautious. His life often depended on it.

  He grabbed the Smith & Wesson he kept on his nightstand and headed for the bedroom door on tiptoes.

  Chapter 15

  Danko knew he was being watched; he could feel it in his soul. The small hair that had risen on the back of his neck a few seconds earlier had just reinforced his certitude. Somewhere behind him, eyes were boring a hole in the back of his head.