by Marc Daniel
“I still think we should get rid of her,” replied Thompkins. “She’s just too big a liability.”
Clemens got out of his seat and walked straight to Axel Thompkins who stood to meet the Alpha.
“If you think you can take me, Axel… go for it! And then you can lead the pack. But until that day, we will do as I say,” said Clemens, an inch away from Thompkins’ face.
Thompkins sat back into his chair in silence looking sheepish.
“So what’s the plan?” asked Rachel.
“We wait.”
Chapter 139
After making sure no one was in sight, Michael quickly slipped into the backyard of the house and skillfully punched a hole through the back door’s window. Unlatching the deadbolt took him only a second, and then he was inside.
It had only been a week since the Chemist had been found floating in the Port of Houston, but one wouldn’t have guessed it by looking at his living room. In addition to the usual disarray of takeout cartons and crumbs littering the floor and every single piece of furniture, a fetid odor assaulted the nostrils of anyone brave enough to pass the home’s threshold.
Michael quickly identified the smell of decomposition that simply came from the less than fresh garbage bag in the kitchen and tried to block it out in order to focus on more subtle aromas.
He had come to this house more out of despair than conviction, or even hope. He had run out of places to look for Olivia and was now fishing for leads from the file Sheila had obtained from a source at Houston PD—an exact copy of Lewis’ and Salazar’s dossier.
The only reason the Chemist was part of the dossier in the first place had been his past affiliation with organized crime. Organized crime in Houston nowadays was synonymous with Ivanov—at least until very recently—and his organization had been the prime suspect for the cops’ assassinations. All in all, the chances that following the Chemist’s trail would lead Michael to Olivia were more than thin, but it wasn’t as if he had many better things to try.
Attempting to tail Clemens in order to find out where the pack was hiding these days would have been more logical, but this wasn’t a job Michael could tackle on his own. Any wolf would have smelled him coming from a mile away, and this was too likely to jeopardize Olivia’s life, assuming the young woman were still alive. Michael did not want Sheila to do the tailing either. The journalist was less likely to be detected by the wolves, but they knew her scent all too well, and Clemens would no doubt love to work out some of his pain and frustration on poor Sheila if she ever fell under his claws.
Fortunately, David Starks had agreed to take on the job and was to report to Michael any useful piece of information he could gather. Beside the fact Clemens had officially moved into Wilson’s suburban home, however, nothing useful had yet percolated to Michael’s ears.
Michael walked through the house, carefully avoiding the empty pizza boxes and soda cans, but identified no hint of Olivia’s scent anywhere in the building. As he reached the laundry room, however, a curious smell tickled his nostrils: a smell he couldn’t quite place, which in itself was highly suspicious given his near perfect olfactory memory, and the colossal library of odors he had accumulated in a millennium of existence.
The smell appeared to come from the garage, whose access door was in the back of the laundry room. Michael opened the door and stepped into something he had definitely not been expecting: a spotless laboratory. The two-car garage had been expertly converted into a lab. The ground was covered with a white epoxy resin and the garage doors were invisible behind white walls. Rows of benches, covered in scientific glassware, lined every wall. In one corner an exhaust hood designed to absorb toxic chemical fumes had been installed. Its exhaust, apparently rigged into the house’s air handling system, was venting to the roof.
Michael was still trying to identify the unusual odor, but something was off about it, as if it had been altered somehow. It was a fragrance that should not have existed by itself, as if someone had isolated it from a more complex broth. He was getting closer now, he knew it. What was the broth this particular fragrance came from? From which complex mixture had this odor been extracted? And then it came to him: wolfsbane! This could not be good. Wolfsbane was one of the very few things that could actually harm a praeternatural creature. As a plant, wolfsbane was highly irritating to praeternaturals’ skin; if ingested in a large enough quantity it led to death after a long and excruciating agony. What in heaven’s name was the Chemist doing with wolfsbane in the first place? And what was the molecule he had been isolating from it? Even more importantly, who had been commissioning his work?
As his brain was working through the potential implications of his discovery, Michael caught a whiff of another familiar scent, a wolf scent. Not just any wolf either... this one definitely belonged to Clemens’ pack. Michael did not know Axel Thompkins by name, but he knew he had been the wolf in charge of keeping an eye on Sheila during the battle in Yellowstone. Against all expectations, coming here had been a good idea after all.
Chapter 140
Michael had just squeezed back into his car when his cell phone rang. Though he still despised the concept of people being able to bother him anywhere he went, he had started to grow accustomed to the object over the past month. Overall, the few people who had his number did not abuse the privilege and simply called him when there was something important to say. Even Sheila did not use his cell number for girlfriend-boyfriend frivolities. She knew Michael better than that.
“Hello?”
“I have the names you asked for the other day,” answered David’s voice.
“Wait a second, I need to find something to write on.” Michael started looking for a scrap of paper somewhere in the car, but found none. He tried searching his pockets, but stuck as he was in the undersized habitat of the vehicle, his range of motion was seriously limited.
“What’s going on there? Where are you?” enquired David, who could hear the rummaging over the phone.
“I’m in my stupid rental and I can’t find anything to write on,” replied Michael in a frustrated tone that did not go unnoticed by the detective.
“How about I text you the information?” asked David, trying to help.
“You do what?”
“I text the names to you, Michael. You have heard of texting, right?”
“Of course I’ve heard of it. What do you take me for?” retorted Michael. “I’ve just never done it before.”
“I just sent them to you,” said David, adding in a falsely embarrassed voice, “And I’m sorry I was the one to take your texting virginity.”
Michael did not bother gratifying the detective with an answer.
**********
“I got the names,” said Sheila, pen in hand and phone still stuck to her ear. After a few seconds of frustration, Michael had given up on trying to forward David’s text to her and had just verbally given her the list.
“Matt Wilkinson, Brad Shatwell, and Elaine Blent,” she read back to him. “And now I suppose we can add Mark Sullivan and Steve Harrington to the list.”
“Probably, but it remains to be seen,” replied Michael. “Could you please try and find out everything you can about these people?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Chapter 141
Sitting in a wooden rocking chair, the witch was looking up at the Alpha through the tangles of her stringy tousled hair, her calculating eyes trying to assess how much cash she could pull out of him.
“What you are asking me to do is very different from our usual business transactions,” she articulated in a low husky voice.
The Alpha did not take the bait and simply kept staring at her from the corner of the room where he was standing five feet away.
“It requires more skill… yes! Quite a few more skill… And it is dangerous, very dangerous. This Biörn is not someone to trifle with; his type is perilous,” she continued in the same falsely reflective voice.
“Will you do i
t?” asked the Alpha, not trying to hide his growing irritation.
She slowly raised herself from her chair. “I would have to do it from a distance. And the further you are from the target when you cast the spell, the more taxing it is on your strength and energy. Especially with a death spell! It would leave me drained and vulnerable to my enemies for days…”
“How much?” interrupted the Alpha, weary of her rambling.
She had been gradually closing the gap between them and now she was only a foot away from him, standing directly under his nose. She lifted her head and her eyes locked into his as she answered in a raspy voice, “Five hundred!” At the exact same instant a fire blazed into existence in the hearth on the opposite side of the room.
One had to admit, the old hag had a gift for theatrics.
“Two hundred!” replied the Alpha, in a subtly threatening voice aimed at discouraging any counter-offer, but it failed to impress the witch who retorted, “Four hundred.”
The Alpha seemed to meditate her reply for an instant before saying, “Three hundred, and it has to be done by noon tomorrow.”
The witch’s lips twitched into a humorless smile. “You have a deal. But I will need the three hundred thousand in cash before I get to work.”
“You’ll have the money this afternoon,” answered the Alpha as he exited the room.
Chapter 142
“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Peter Clemens in a worried tone as he paced the living room of Karl Wilson’s four-thousand-square-foot cottage. Wilson was a corporate attorney, and although his pockets were not quite as deep as Clemens’, he wasn’t hurting in the finance department.
“I feel like we are missing something… like we’re being played. Do you know what I mean?” continued Clemens.
“I’m not sure I do,” said Karl thoughtfully. “I know everything went to hell for the pack ever since Biörn came into the picture, but I don’t see how he’s been playing us.”
Clemens stopped pacing for an instant and went to stand in front of the bay windows facing the golf course. Only a handful of players were visible on the greens: pretty typical for a Wednesday afternoon.
“I am not even sure Biörn has anything to do with any of this,” he replied finally.
“He decimated half of the pack!” answered Wilson, bewildered at the Alpha’s comment.
“That’s not what I meant,” answered Clemens in a weary voice. “Of course he is the enemy and needs to die. It’s a given point, not worth debating. I’m just saying we might have been overlooking other less obvious threats.”
“Like Ivanov?” ventured Wilson.
“Yes… like Ivanov.”
The thought of this insignificant human turd being responsible for the death of his beloved Isabella still made Peter want to retch. He had always known Ivanov was dangerous, but he had never considered him a real threat. Men like Ivanov were perilous to the human population, not to the likes of Peter… or so he had thought. How wrong he had been… and Isabella had paid for his oversight with her life.
“Ivanov will never be an issue again, Peter. We’ve made sure of that. I understand what you’re going through, I really do. Your losses were my losses. Isabella was like a sister to me, you know that. But you cannot let pain cloud your judgment.”
Clemens was tired, so very tired. He would never have let another wolf see him vulnerable, doubting himself, but Karl Wilson was not just any wolf. He was not simply the pack Beta, he was also Clemens’ best friend and had been for twenty years. “I suppose you could be right. Maybe I’m imagining things that aren’t really there.” He stood silently staring at the deserted golf course for a good five minutes before going straight for the front door.
“I have an errand to run. I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said as he left the house.
Chapter 143
True to his word, the Alpha had brought the money—a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills. The witch had first protested his staying to witness her work, on the pretext of needing absolute concentration which was impossible to achieve with spectators, but he had made it extremely clear he was not parting with the money unless he knew for a fact she had accomplished her part of the bargain. Faced with a three-hundred-thousand-dollar conundrum, the witch had conceded to his staying as long as he made himself invisible.
She had then drawn the thick curtains in front of the windows in the alcove she used as her laboratory, effectively plunging the room into total darkness, before lighting what seemed like a hundred different candles. The majority of the candles were placed around a small wooden altar in the center of the room.
She approached the altar and fished into her pocket for a small Ziploc bag. Inside were three human hairs, which she placed in a silver platter at the center of the altar.
“You are sure these belong to Biörn?” she asked in her croaky voice.
“I’m positive,” answered the Alpha, who had picked up the hairs from a shirt he had found in Michael’s bedroom.
Using the tip of a sharp dagger, the witch pricked her own arm, letting a few drops of blood fall onto the hairs. Her skin looked a lot younger than the Alpha would have expected, and he started wondering how old the woman truly was.
She then grabbed a flask containing a foul-smelling liquid and added two drops to the platter, pronouncing incantations in gibberish that the Alpha did not bother trying to understand. A few other ingredients, including a raven feather, were added individually to the nauseating brew, which the witch stirred with one of her two-inch-long fingernails before announcing, “And now, for the final touch…” She pulled a small vial containing wolfsbane extract from a pocket hidden in the folds of her robe. She poured the entire vial into the platter, chanting in a voice almost inaudible. The brew immediately started seething and, as a white smoke rose from it, her chanting became progressively louder and louder. Finally, it reached such a level that the Alpha was sure one could hear it from the street.
The witch kept chanting at the top of her lungs, rocking back and forth in front of the smoking mixture, her eyes shut in concentration. From where he was standing, the Alpha could only see her profile, but he was pretty sure there were tears escaping from her shut eyelids. Suddenly, as if it had a will of its own, the smoke emanating from the alchemic broth started shaping itself into something resembling a visage. Sensing something wasn’t right, the witch opened her eyes to find Ezekiel’s face staring her down.
No words were exchanged, but by the time the wizard’s face had disappeared, the brew was no longer simmering and Michael’s hair had vanished.
The witch looked exhausted and scared out of her wits. Slouching into a chair, she whispered, “Take your money back. I cannot help you with this.”
“Why? What just happened here?” the Alpha replied angrily.
“He is under the protection of the second circle. I am no match against such wizards.”
Chapter 144
There was a time where investigative reporters gleaned all their information on the ground by talking to informants, blackmailing corrupt government officials, and spending hours on stakeouts, but this time had passed. Nowadays, Sheila was finding a good half of her material comfortably sitting in front of her computer in the safety of her home—although the safety of her home had been somewhat lacking of late. If only details about Michael’s past could be obtained this easily, but the internet was rather lacking when it came to events a millennium old… And she still hadn’t worked up the courage to ask Michael about his deceased wife.
She had spent most of her day working on Michael’s request, trying to find out as much information as she could on the assassinated cops. All in all, the cops who had fallen under the bullets of what had clearly been professional assassins seemed to have had little in common with each other.
The first victim, Brad Shatwell, who had been gunned down in front of his house in February 2008, had been a family man. Two of his kids had been in college at the time of his death and the
third one was a junior in high school. His wife, from what Sheila could gather, had quit her job at the birth of their first child and had been a housewife ever since. Shatwell had apparently enjoyed playing golf on weekends, was fond of cats and wasn’t a big fan of religion. Sheila was basing this last piece on the fact the man’s funeral service had taken place in a funeral home in the absence of a priest, imam, rabbi, or preacher of any denomination.
Elaine Blent had been the second victim. The woman had been found in January 2009, lying in a pool of her own blood on a sidewalk in her neighborhood. She had been jogging at the time the killer had caught up with her and, just like the others, had been shot twice in the head. Elaine Blent had been a workaholic, and had never found time to marry or start a family. She had been an evangelist, and was very active in her church where she served as a deacon. She was also pro-animal rights and anti-gay marriage.
Matt Wilkinson, the third victim, had been shot nine months later in the middle of traffic on his way back home from the main police station in downtown Houston. A motorcycle had stopped next to his car at a red light. The instant the light had turned green, the motorcycle driver had shot him twice in the head before disappearing in traffic. Wilkinson had been divorced and a known womanizer. He was estranged from his two teenage kids, who didn’t seem to approve of their father’s numerous relationships with females. He had also been an avid hunter and a vocal member of the National Rifle Association. He was supposedly Baptist but did not appear to go to church very often if at all.
After hours of staring at her computer screen, Sheila’s eyes were starting to hurt when she heard the front door opening and Michael’s familiar gait on the hardwood floor. She turned around to find him behind her, looking dreary—the way he had been looking for days now.
Sheila was worried about him and was hoping they would soon find Olivia safe and sound, both for the young woman’s sake and for Michael’s.