by Marc Daniel
“What’s the plant’s name and what’s that molecule you’re isolating if it’s not narcotic?” asked Ivanov in a slightly less threatening voice.
“The plant is called wolfsbane. I tried to look up the extract’s effect and all I can tell is that if used as such, it would be a deadly poison. The man must have someone else modifying the substance after he gets it from me, but I don’t know what for. It doesn’t look anything like any drug I’ve ever made, and I’ve made a lot in my days…”
“How do you deliver, if your customer doesn’t pick up the merchandise?”
“Some black guy, the mean-looking type… He drops off the plants
and comes back to pick up the finished goods,” replied Victor in a slightly more assured voice.
“What’s the delivery boy’s name?”
“He’s never told me, and for the longest time I didn’t know,” started Victor, relieved he finally knew the answer to one of Ivanov’s questions. “But one day he answered his phone in my lab and said: ‘Thompkins’. I also heard the guy over the phone calling him Axel. So I know he’s called Axel Thompkins… Do you recognize the name?”
Ivanov didn’t recognize the name, but his second did.
“It’s one of Clemens’ men, boss,” offered Igor Petrovich.
The revelation confirmed the boss’s suspicions. Clemens was setting up shop in town and this was going directly against the agreement he had with Ivanov’s organization. Something had to be done about it.
“We’re through here.” Ivanov picked up the jacket he had laid on the back of an empty chair.
“What do you want to do with this one?” asked Petrovich, a thumb pointed in the direction of the unfortunate Victor Grey.
“Surprise me…” answered Ivanov as he walked towards the exit.
Chapter 111
The werebear was panting and exhausted. Michael knew the battle was lost, but he would go down swinging, taking as many of his enemies with him to the grave as was superhumanly possible. It wouldn’t be long now, Clemens had given the signal and in a second they would all be on him.
He could see them closing in, only fifteen feet away now, ten feet, five feet, three… As the wolves were now pouncing on him in a perfectly choreographed macabre ballet, Michael felt a surge of magical energy growing all around him. Had the pack brought a witch with them on top of it all? wondered Michael for a split second before the wolves collided into an invisible but very real barrier, which seemed to surround him. But the beasts looked as surprised as he was by the unexpected obstacle. After trying to force their way through the invisible force field a short while longer, without success, the wolves started probing for weaknesses in the energy field. They tried jumping over the barrier and coming down on Michael straight from the top, but they kept bouncing back.
Michael was thankful for the much-needed break, but he couldn’t help wondering who was responsible for this clearly magical salvation. He had asked Ez to stay out of the fight, but maybe the old wizard had only pretended to agree to his request… This was going to open a whole new world of issues in itself if the wizard was involved, but for now he was simply grateful for the help.
He could see Sheila standing motionless at the edge of the clearing, a wolf in his human form guarding her. She suddenly started wobbling before finally collapsing to the ground, unconscious. Michael’s heart sank. He wanted to run to her, save her from these monsters, but he was exhausted and the pack was still standing between them. Giving up was not in his nature, however. No matter how tired he felt, no matter how old he was—and he was very old—he simply wasn’t ready to die yet. Not now that Sheila needed him the most.
This thought unlocked in him a source of energy he had not yet tapped into. A forgotten but powerful source that had lain sleeping in his core for untold decades. With this new power unleashed, his strength came rushing back to him, engulfing him like a tsunami. He was now ready for the battle of his life.
Chapter 112
Seeing his wolves bouncing back off thin air unable to reach their helpless prey, Clemens immediately knew a magician of some sort was protecting Biörn. He just didn’t know who or where the pest was. The location of the spoilsport depended greatly on his power. A witch would have to be close, but a wizard or warlock could have been casting his spell from twenty miles away… Hoping Michael’s unwelcome helper was not a wizard, Clemens sent a dozen of his wolves on a recon mission around the clearing’s perimeter.
Bill Thomason had made sure his scent would be imperceptible by the wolves as well as by Michael, but invisibility spells were unfortunately above his pay grade, so if one of Michael’s enemy were to catch sight of him, the situation would switch from bad to worse in a hurry. As he focused all his strength and concentration on maintaining the energy barrier between Michael and the wolves, he did not even realize that simply climbing a tree would have significantly improved his chances of remaining undetected.
When the witch heard the loud snarls behind him, it was already too late. The wolves killed Thomason before he had a chance to turn around.
Chapter 113
Calling Brenda Pennington’s apartment clean and tidy would have been an understatement. Magazines lay in a perfect pile on the living room’s coffee table, each niche of the large decorative shelf lining the wall hosted a single bibelot placed at its exact center, and it would have required a magnifying glass to find a single speck of dust on any given piece of furniture.
Detective Lewis had already placed the woman in the OCD category. Not a bad category for the purpose of their visit. People with OCD were so detail-oriented that they were usually reliable sources of information.
The two detectives were sitting next to each other on the sofa, while Brenda Pennington, sitting straight as an arrow on the edge of her armchair on the other side of the coffee table, looked nervous despite the fact her visitors had clearly stated the objective of their visit. Her pale complexion was flushed with pink and her blue eyes kept flying from Salazar to Lewis as if trying to assess which one of them was the most worrisome. She wore small, frameless spectacles which made her already plain features look even more devoid of personality. Her dark hair, pulled into a tight braid, only emphasized the boniness of her neck.
Salazar had found the woman’s address in Jack Moore’s apartment, along with a picture of her in the company of the now deceased assassin. The two had been romantically involved at some point, but according to the woman, they had broken up over two years ago.
“Why do you think Jack still kept a picture of you in his apartment after two years?” asked Salazar in his friendliest voice.
“I don’t know,” answered the woman. “Jack had a hard time letting things go, I guess…”
“Did you break up with him?” asked Lewis.
“Yes.”
“Was there a particular reason?”
The question made the woman uneasy. She kept silent for an instant before finally answering in a hesitant voice, “He changed…”
“Could you elaborate?” asked Salazar gently.
Brenda Pennington looked at him with distress in her eyes. She had learned about Jack’s death from the news days before the detectives had knocked on her door, but talking about him still seemed to make her sad. Salazar suspected the woman was not over her ex-lover and it made the question of her breaking up with him all the more interesting.
“It’s difficult to explain…” She swallowed hard. “You see… when we first started dating, Jack was the kindest man I had ever met. He was always surprising me with gifts and attentions, always placing my desires above his…”
Now tears were slowly trickling down the woman’s cheeks, and she got up to go fetch a box of tissues from the bathroom.
“Sorry about that,” she said, settling back down into her seat.
“No problem at all,” answered the two cops simultaneously while flashing her their most sympathetic smiles.
“You were saying Jack used to be very sweet to
you…” encouraged Lewis.
“Yes,” answered the woman. “We had been dating for over a year when things started changing. He started becoming more distant. Initially, I thought I had done something wrong, but that wasn’t it. I tried to talk to him, but he would always deny anything was wrong. I suggested we’d go to counseling and that’s when he started becoming angry. I had never seen him lose his temper before, and it scared me to the core.”
“Did he hit you?” asked Salazar.
“No, at least not that day, but from that moment our relationship dramatically changed. I was afraid of him. He started growing increasingly violent as time went by. He would punch holes in the walls, kick the furniture around, and if I was in the way, he’d hit me. That’s when I moved out and broke up with him.”
“How did he take it?” asked Lewis.
“Very badly initially, but after a week or so of almost constant harassment, he simply gave up,” replied Brenda pensively.
“Do you have any idea why?”
“Not really…”
“But you have suspicions?” queried Salazar.
The woman looked at him intently as she was sorting her thoughts in her head.
“I think maybe someone told him to stop…”
“Do you know who that someone was?”
“No. At least not really… Before he started changing, Jack had met some guy at his job. They hung out a few times and Jack really seemed to like the guy. When he started becoming violent, he stopped talking about his new friend, but I was always convinced they were still seeing each other. I think that friend was responsible for the change in Jack’s behavior. I brought it up once, but Jack almost destroyed the apartment in response, and I never dared mentioning it again.”
Chapter 114
The wolves had given up trying to penetrate the protective bubble enclosing their enemy and were now pacing relentlessly outside the inaccessible hemisphere, testing its resistance from time to time.
The magical energy Michael had been sensing for the last few minutes vanished, and he knew immediately the shield had disappeared. The wolves were significantly younger than Michael and although praeternatural in nature, they were not as finely tuned to the magical world as he was. As a result, they did not immediately realize the force field had disappeared.
Taking advantage of the wolves’ inexperience, Michael crashed into the biggest one he could find in his immediate vicinity before any of them had a chance to react. The wolf emitted a startled bark as Michael pierced his heart with the razor-sharp claws of his right paw, before snapping the spine of another opponent in his powerful jaws.
Their surprise passed and the wolves quickly reorganized their offense, but Michael had fully recovered by now and was offering a solid and often lethal defense. Under their Alpha’s guidance, the pack returned to the harassment strategy that had successfully worn the bear out a few minutes earlier, and Michael realized that unless he did something different this time, the same outcome would result.
The wolves were becoming increasingly bolder in their attacks, and Clemens was now taking full part in the assault. Michael had felt the Alpha’s teeth penetrating his flesh on two occasions, and he knew the man was both experienced and vicious, a true Alpha. After fifteen minutes of relentless pestering, Michael started feeling tired again, but this time he had several werewolves’ bloodied bodies to show for his effort. Unfortunately, the number of wolves’ bodies littering the clearing was nothing in comparison to that of those still standing, and Michael was starting to lose hope when he finally sensed their energizing presence. A jolt of adrenaline sent his heart racing with anticipation and excitation at what was to come. Reinforcements had arrived.
Chapter 115
Lucy Harrington had gone back to college shortly after her parents’ funeral. Now, a month later, she was back in Houston, looking for her sister. She had been unable to reach Olivia by phone, email, or on her Facebook page for the past four days. Since the two sisters typically called each other on a daily basis, Olivia’s silence was starting to seriously worry Lucy.
The cab dropped her at her parents’ house where she knew her sister was staying, but she found the place deserted. A putrid smell assaulted her nostrils as soon as she passed the door, and her mind directly jumped to the worst possible scenario. After investigation however, she identified the smell as coming from the kitchen’s trashcan whose bag had clearly not been changed in some time.
Lucy replaced the bag, and opened the windows to get rid of the nauseating atmosphere before going up the stairs and reluctantly checking every room on the second floor, keeping her parents’ bedroom for last. The room had not yet been repainted or the carpet replaced, and Lucy started crying hysterically at the sight of the blood-stained walls and carpet.
After thirty minutes in the house, Lucy was fairly convinced her sister had not been there in a few days, but she still had no lead on where Olivia might be. She felt sick to her stomach at the prospect of losing the last member of her family and left the house, deliberately inhaling and exhaling several times before walking towards the neighbors’ house. Someone had to know where Olivia was.
Chapter 116
One by one, they started slowly trickling out of the forest—Michael’s reinforcements. They had taken their time, but they were here now, answering the call for help Michael had sent after first sensing Sheila’s presence in the woods.
The wolves were too focused on the werebear to immediately notice the newcomers, but when a 600-pound grizzly bear charged towards one of them, they were forced to.
Around two dozen bears had answered Michael’s calling. They were grizzlies for the most part, the breed with which Michael had the most affinity, but a few black bears had shown up as well. Michael immediately felt bad for the black bears, as they would be no match for werewolves, but he had no way to send them back. Caught in the magical spell of their praeternatural brother, the bears would fight to the death to protect him.
The arrival of the bears’ army completely rebalanced the conflict and totally caught the wolves by surprise. In spite of his many years of existence, Peter Clemens had had no idea a praeternatural being could call upon regular animals. Surrounded by an unexpected wave of enemies, the werewolves could only pay limited attention to Michael, who now only had to fight a few of them at a time. As Michael had predicted, the black bears were being quickly dispatched by the wolves, and the slain bodies of three of them were already painting the clearings’ immaculate snow-carpet a crimson red. The grizzlies, on the other hand, were much more fearsome enemies for the wolves. They were, on average, bigger than the werewolves, and just as mean. What the grizzlies lacked in viciousness they made up in power, and in a one on one battle they were more than a match for Clemens’ wolves. Of course the werewolves were praeternatural creatures, and short of beheading them, they were a hell of a lot harder to kill than purely natural bears, but the bears were infused with Michael’s instincts, and they knew how to exploit the wolves’ weaknesses. They didn’t necessarily need to kill the werewolves to knock them down and out of the fight. Of course, the wolves would eventually recover from any serious injuries, but it would take them some time.
Peter Clemens and his wife Isabella were among the dozen wolves still harassing Michael, but in spite of their number, they were unable to get the better of their enemy. At one point, they had all pounced on Michael simultaneously, trying to smother him under their numbers, but the bears had immediately abandoned their respective opponents to rush to Michael’s rescue, and it had only taken a few seconds for the situation to get back to the original standoff.
After almost an hour of fighting, the bears’ stamina started paying off. The animals, just like Michael, were acclimated to the park’s thin air, to the cold, and to the snow. The foot of snow on the ground was still a nuisance to the bears, but their longer limbs were a definite advantage over those of the wolves who were significantly more hindered by the white powdery substance.
The black bears had all been dead for some time, but there were now more slain and dying werewolves on the ground than dead grizzlies. Peter Clemens assessed the situation with a quick scan of the battlefield, realizing to his horror that his wolves were now outnumbered by the bears.
Reluctantly, the Alpha conceded his defeat and howled the retreat signal. An instant later, the wolves had fled the battlefield.
Chapter 117
Michael was gently holding an unconscious half frozen Sheila between his gigantic paws. After stripping the clothes off the catatonic journalist, he had changed back into his bear form in order to bury her naked body inside his thick fur coat. Clothing posed a barrier to heat transfer and, in cases of severe hypothermia, a naked body warmed up significantly faster than a clothed one.
Long minutes went by before the young woman started becoming responsive, and almost an hour had passed when she finally regained consciousness. Startled at first to find herself waking up wrapped in some warm and furry cocoon, she quickly came to her senses after recognizing Ezekiel as the funny-looking old man gazing down on her. If the wizard was here, the breathing blanket wrapped around her could only be Michael.
Ezekiel had walked out of the woods as soon as the pack had fled and had watched Michael finish off the wounded werewolves. If his bear form had been able to shed tears, Michael would have wept over the carcasses of the thirteen bears that had fallen defending his life… but he couldn’t. Ezekiel had quickly started erasing all traces of the battle from the clearing, and by the time he was done, the place had recovered its virginal beauty.