SHADOW PACK (Michael Biörn Book 1)

by Marc Daniel

  “Have Vadim take care of the problem,” said Ivanov in a commanding tone. “Tell him to get it done today. I want to see her name in tomorrow’s paper as well, but this time in the obituary section.”

  Chapter 77

  To most Houstonians, fall constituted the best season to be outside. After five or six months of a stifling heat called summer, mid-October, with its average high typically in the low eighties, brought much anticipated relief to wildlife and people alike.

  With a cloudless sky, a temperature of seventy-six degrees and a humidity of only 64%, the day was as perfect as they got, and David Starks had taken this opportunity to go for a run on the beach. He had been jogging along the water for over an hour when he found himself staring at his beachfront property, back where he had started.

  The house was built on piers and stood fifteen feet off the ground. The back patio was furnished with a two-seater porch swing, a couple of reclining deckchairs and a wooden patio table and chairs set.

  David’s eyes were drawn to the silhouette sunbathing on one of the deckchairs. He spent a few minutes contemplating Katia Olveda’s flawless curves from a distance before heading for the stairway that led from the beach to the patio. The sound of his footsteps had been muffled by the sand and he decided to climb the staircase as quietly as possible in an attempt to surprise his lover. He landed on the patio deck without a noise and slowly tiptoed his way to Katia’s chair. She was wearing a yellow bikini that covered very little of her eloquent figure. Her eyes were closed and her chest heaved up and down in slow motion, but as David bent over her with the intention of kissing her lips she said, “You’re out of coffee darling. Will you be a sweet and go fetch me some?”

  **********

  The closest coffee shop was only two blocks away, and David decided to walk there in order to stretch his legs after the eight-mile jog.

  He was walking back holding a tray with Katia’s cappuccino and his own caramel macchiato when he passed in front of a newspaper box which caught his attention. In the box window, the front page of the Saturday edition of the Houston Post featured an article by Sheila Wang. After reading the article’s title, David knew he had to buy the paper.

  He placed the required change inside the box slot, opened the door, and grabbed a copy. He had read the entire piece by the time he made it back to the house.

  Chapter 78

  It was 2.47 a.m., and with the exception of a stray cat on its nightly stroll, the street was entirely deserted when the black SUV rolled to a stop in an alley adjacent to Sheila Wang’s house.

  Two men climbed out of the car and started walking in silence towards her house. When they reached the street corner, Vadim turned towards his accomplice and said in a hushed voice, “Stay here and stand watch. I have my phone on vibrate, call me if you see anything unusual.”

  The house’s front door was in a recess and invisible from most of the street. Vadim drew a glasscutter equipped with a suction cup from one of his jacket’s inside pockets and proceeded to cut a circular piece of glass from the viewing window in the door. He then delicately tapped on the scored glass, which yielded readily but remained attached to the suction cup. Vadim passed his hand through the opening in the window and quickly unlatched the door. An instant later, he was inside the house, gun in hand.

  His weapon was equipped with a silencer, but he did not intend to use it. His instructions were to make her death look like an accident; Vadim knew how important pleasing Ivanov was to his own wellbeing.

  Gas explosions were always a popular choice in his line of work for obvious reasons. For one thing, the mark had little chances to survive the mayhem created by the blazing inferno. As an added bonus, the blast generally erased all clues the assassin could have accidentally left behind. Since Vadim was not a very imaginative man, he had decided the accidental gas leak was the way to go.

  As he walked cautiously towards the gas fireplace, he heard a muffled sound on his left. He immediately spun his gun towards the noise, but the other man was already on him, effortlessly driving his knife through Vadim’s left temple, killing him instantly.

  Jack had been about to enter Sheila’s bedroom when he had heard the man’s glasscutter scoring the window. He had quickly retreated to a dark corner of the living room, waiting for the situation to develop. He hadn’t known the man, but he had immediately noticed the gun in his hand and had decided to treat him as a threat. In retrospect, maybe this had been a mistake. The fellow’s behavior had not been that of an honest man, and if he had been sent to kill the woman, Jack could have avoided getting his hands dirty by letting the other man do the work… It was too late now anyway! He needed to get back to his mission and get the hell out of this place. He had the uneasy feeling the Alpha was going to be unhappy with him once again.

  A muffled vibration interrupted his line of thoughts. After investigation, he found out the noise came from the dead man’s front pocket; his phone was vibrating. Jack ignored the ringing phone and walked into Sheila’s bedroom.

  He was a wolf and wolves knew how to be silent when they had to, so she was still deeply asleep when he reached her bed, knife firmly clasped in his right hand.

  Chapter 79

  After a long drive through the dimly lit streets of Houston, Michael returned to his hotel shortly after two in the morning. The drive had been an attempt at finding sleep, but after driving around town for a couple hours, he still wasn’t feeling any sleepier. His mind was too busy thinking things over for him to get any rest. If only he had been making headway in his investigation, he would at least be restless for good reasons, but his investigation was going nowhere.

  Michael had not heard from David Starks in a few days, and he was taking this silence as a sign the detective’s enquiries were not progressing any faster than his own. He still didn’t know for a fact who was behind Steve’s murder, and, to further complicate matters, he now had Olivia and Sheila to worry about. If these two did not learn to keep their noses out of Clemens and Ivanov’s business, they wouldn’t live to be very old.

  Michael was an old bear, both literally and metaphorically, and he did not typically worry too much about the wellbeing of strangers, but he was strangely fond of these two women he barely knew. He could easily find an excuse regarding Olivia. She was the daughter of his freshly murdered old army buddy, and he had good reasons to care about her. He had more difficulties rationalizing his feelings towards the journalist, however…

  It was getting really late, and if he didn’t get some sleep fast he’d be tired and unproductive all the next day, so he did what he almost never did and turned on the television. To him, watching television was as unappealing as a trip to the dentist and twice as painful. He had read somewhere that doing something boring helped a restless mind find sleep, and watching TV was the most mind-numbing thing he could imagine.

  If daytime television was unattractive in the first place, nighttime TV was its uglier sister. After flipping through the thirty-six channels offered in the room three times in four minutes, Michael started watching a cooking show… that is, until the chef decided to add ketchup to the sauce he was preparing. Michael, who had lived in France during the birth of modern cuisine and still owned an original copy of Le Cuisinier François, the founding text of modern French cuisine, refused to stand for this type of behavior. He flipped through another twenty programs in a thirty-second span before landing on the rerun of the local news. He would have kept flipping through the channels if a name had not caught his attention. The anchorwoman was talking about Sheila Wang.

  Chapter 80

  Sheila looked peaceful lying asleep in her bed. She was sleeping on her side, facing the bedroom door. A lock of her raven hair, resting on her cheek, vibrated gently in time with her soft breathing.

  Jack felt slightly turned on at the sight of his defenseless pray resting, unaware of her imminent fate. Although it wasn’t part of his orders, for an instant he wondered if he shouldn’t have a bit of fun before
completing his task.

  Bent over the journalist’s bed, his mouth displayed an ugly grin when his nostrils started flaring. For half a second, he wondered if he wasn’t imagining the odor before deciding it was definitely real. He was not familiar with the scent, but he knew exactly what it was; he had been warned. Without a sound, but not painlessly, Jack morphed into his beast form.

  Pressed by time, the wolf hadn’t had a chance to strip out of his clothes before morphing, and it was a werewolf wearing a ripped-off shirt and saggy blue jeans that jumped at Michael’s throat as soon as he entered the bedroom. Michael, who had sensed the enemy’s presence before entering the room, had anticipated the attack. He received the wolf with a punch to the muzzle, which sent the beast flying across the room. Jack fell short of hitting the opposite wall and somehow managed to land on his feet.

  The commotion had woken up Sheila who was now sitting up in her bed screaming, for her human eyes only picked up glimpses of shadows moving around the dark room.

  Michael was struggling to maintain control over his inner beast, fighting his instinctive urge to transform. Over the past ten centuries, he had learned to master the process and was now able to morph in a few seconds, but it would still offer a window of opportunity to his opponent, a chance Michael was not willing to take. The presence of a distressed Sheila made his internal struggle more difficult than it should have been. He had to fight harder than ever to maintain his anger in check instead of letting it spill over him.

  The wolf was on the other side of the bed, his mouth opened in a growl displaying sharp, inch-long fangs. Jack knew he was outmatched and would not be able to defeat the bear one on one, but that did not necessarily mean he could not accomplish his mission. His main target was sitting defenseless on the bed, a mere six feet away from him—a distance he could close in a single pounce. It would take only a second to tear her throat apart and let her bleed to death.

  The stench of her fear was overwhelming and appealed to his most basic instincts. Wolves had fast reflexes, faster than bears; if he were lucky he might even be able to fulfill his mission and escape before the bear could catch him… At any rate, Jack could not stomach the idea of disappointing the Alpha one more time. His decision was made: failure was not an option.

  The werewolf pounced on the bed and in a second his jaws were closing on what should have been Sheila’s throat but was nothing but air. Michael, guessing the wolf’s intention, had grabbed the woman’s hand and jerked her out of harm’s way. In an instant, he was on the wolf. Grabbing the beast by the head in one hand and by the neck in the other, he beheaded it in a single powerful tug.

  Sheila was still screaming hysterically when Michael flipped on the light switch to cast a painfully bright light on the morbid scene, but to his amazement, the scene was not at all what he had expected. Instead of a dead werewolf, the beheaded corpse of a dead man was lying on the bed. Werewolves never turned back into their human forms after their death under normal circumstances, and this had definitely been a werewolf. Michael had caught his scent while crossing the living room—an odd fact in itself since he should have smelled the beast as soon as he had stepped inside the house. Even stranger, in death the man had not only regained his human form, he had also totally lost his wolf scent, a scent Michael had recognized from the crime scene at Chief Deputy Sullivan’s.

  Michael stared at the corpse for an instant, puzzled, before kneeling beside Sheila. It took what seemed to him an eternity but was, in reality, only mere seconds for Sheila to finally recognize him and stop screaming.

  “Are you OK?” he asked, but she did not answer. Taking her silence as a yes, he walked to the Chinese broadsword hanging on the wall above the bed, detached it from its anchor and started hacking at the wolf neck before dropping the sword on the bed. The beheading would be a lot easier to explain if it looked like a sword had been used in the process.

  Sheila was staring at him still in shock, not comprehending the purpose of his action and wondering, not for the first time, if she was dealing with a dangerous psychopath, when she heard running footsteps approaching.

  Accustomed to the procedure by now, Michael lifted his hands high in the air before the cops even entered the room. Sheila’s screams had not gone unnoticed by the usually quiet neighborhood, who had called in the cavalry.

  Chapter 81

  Sitting in a recliner, the Alpha was watching the morning news on TV. He was in a foul mood. Jack had failed him for the last time during the night, and the pack leader felt sick to his stomach at the idea that one of his wolves was gone for good, murdered by a thing which should have been extinct for hundreds of years.

  He had received the call around 3 a.m. and had been unable to go back to sleep. He had spent a couple of restless hours tossing around on his bed before finally getting up. After a long walk, he had returned to the comfort of the living room where he had turned on the TV to find out how much the media already knew.

  He had sent Jack after Sheila Wang in the hope of silencing the most dangerous journalist out there—the one who knew the most about what was going on, which, although very little, was already far too much for his comfort. Now Jack was dead, the bitch was still alive, and the media circus was going to jump on the story like ants on an abandoned picnic basket. The irony of the situation was not lost on him.

  After flipping one more time through the various local and national news networks without hearing the night’s events mentioned once, he was about to turn off the television and go fetch the morning papers when a headline caught his attention: Chief Deputy Sullivan’s replacement announced. He immediately increased the volume and listened attentively to the anchorwoman announcing the nomination of Paul Garber at the post of chief deputy of the Harris County sheriff’s department.

  The Alpha grabbed the remote control and sent it flying towards the wall above the TV. Missing the screen by mere inches, the remote exploded in pieces on impact, leaving a very noticeable scar on the drywall. He then got up and with his bare fist punched another crater next to the one left by the remote.

  The Alpha took a deep breath, pulled his fist out of the beat-up wall, walked to his cell phone, and hit speed dial number four.

  “Hello,” answered Major James Fanning after only two rings.

  “What happened?” asked the Alpha angrily. “Who the fuck is this Paul Garber?”

  “He was brought in from the Fort Bend sheriff’s department. He was a major there,” answered Fanning in a tentative voice.

  “You were to get the job, James, not this Garber bastard! What happened?” asked the Alpha, still boiling.

  “Politics happened, what do you think?” replied Fanning defensively. “It’s not as if anyone asked for my permission before giving the post to another guy…”

  “How long have you known?”

  “I heard last night. I was going to call you this morning. You just beat me to it,” replied Fanning in an ill-assured voice.

  “We’ll talk about this later,” added the Alpha, before hanging up.

  Chapter 82

  Andrei was standing in the middle of Ivanov’s home office, looking as sheepish as a six-year-old caught stealing candy from the pantry. Across the desk, a red-faced Ivanov was fuming. His bodyguard, Stanislas, stood at the door wearing his usual poker face. Igor Petrovich, Ivanov’s second, was sitting in a comfortable-looking armchair at the right of Andrei and was currently directing the questioning.

  “Humor me one more time, Andrei, if you will. How come you didn’t go and help Vadim when you saw Biörn walking into the house?” asked Petrovich in a disgusted tone.

  “I called his cell to warn him, but he didn’t pick up, or get out of there…” replied the henchman uneasily.

  “Maybe you waited a bit too long before calling…”

  Andrei was fidgeting nervously with his hands, wishing he were anywhere but here. He was going to answer that he had called as soon as he had seen Biörn come out of his car when one of the dispo
sable cell phones on Ivanov’s desk started ringing. The mobster checked the caller ID before answering.

  “Did you learn more about our problem?” asked Ivanov impatiently.

  No one else in the room could hear the man on the other end of the line, but he must have answered in the affirmative for Ivanov started listening intently to what he had to say, occasionally answering with a monosyllable.

  “I see,” said Ivanov after a few minutes. “Thank you for calling and don’t hesitate to call back if anything else comes up.”

  He replaced the phone on the desk. One could tell by the throbbing vein on his forehead that the call had not appeased him in any way. Petrovich was staring inquisitively at his boss while Andrei looked like he was trying to blend in with the carpet. They all stood there in silence for a while before Ivanov finally spoke. “Vadim did not react to Andrei’s warning call because he was already dead by the time Biörn walked into the house.”

  “Do you mean to say that the bitch killed him?” asked Petrovich dubiously.

  “No. According to one of my cops on payroll, another man was in the house. That’s who killed Vadim.”

  “Was he a cop? Was he there to protect Wang?” asked Petrovich, trying to understand.

  “No. He was apparently there to kill the journalist, and I have good reasons to believe he was one of Clemens’ men,” answered the boss, trying to keep his rage in check.