by Marc Daniel
Michael quickly lifted his hands in peace. As he did so, the rock dissimulated in his right hand went flying towards one of the bodyguards, catching him square in the chest. The impact broke his solar plexus and drew the air out of his lungs. His friend barely had time to lift up his gun before Michael tore it out of his hand and clubbed him on the head with it. The man fell to the ground, blood slowly pouring from the side of his head.
His companion was holding his chest, trying to catch some air and staring at Michael with bewilderment. Michael punched him straight in the face and the man’s head went crashing into the brick wall. He collapsed noiselessly to the ground and Michael picked up his gun. He probably wouldn’t need it, but it couldn’t hurt to be prepared, although so far he’d been disappointed with the amount of resistance the human traffickers had offered. The reason these cowards targeted vulnerable women was obvious; werebear were clearly out of their league.
The door was locked but a gentle push on the handle sufficed to break the frame, albeit not as quietly as he’d hoped.
The door opened onto a vast vestibule where a wide stairway led to the upper floors. Well-lit corridors were on each side of the staircase. A man alerted by the commotion emerged from the corridor on the left, gun in hand, but he received Michael’s weapon straight in the forehead. The neck gave in on impact and the man collapsed to the ground with a dull thump while the gun itself met the tiled floor with considerably more noise. Why couldn’t these people use rugs?
Michael hid behind the staircase for a couple of minutes, waiting for someone else to show up, but nobody came.
A quick check of the first floor revealed that it was empty. If the wannabe-kidnapper aging in the Sequoia’s trunk were to be trusted, only one bodyguard remained in the house.
Not knowing how long he’d be inside, Michael dragged the bodies of the two doormen inside the house. He didn’t want a night owl to drive by and alert the cops.
He then started ascending the stairs as quietly as possible, but each step creaked loudly under his weight. Sticking to the steps’ edges helped a bit, but the ascension remained far from discreet.
The second floor was as empty as the first one had been and within minutes Michael was back torturing the staircase one step at a time on his way to the third and last story.
He eventually made it to the landing and was only half surprised to see the flash from a muzzle lighting up the night at the same instant the searing heat of a bullet pierced his left bicep. He reflexively jumped to the side in a futile attempt to avoid further bullets, but the man was literally shooting at a bear in a hallway and Michael was hit twice more before he closed the distance and sent the shooter flying through the master bedroom’s door.
Light came up inside the room where the man had landed, shortly followed by the screams of two women.
An instant later Michael was in the room. Having been shot three times already, he’d pulled a baluster out of the staircase and was holding it in one hand, the other extremity of the improvised weapon resting on his shoulder like a baseball bat.
He found the boss sitting in bed pointing a big caliber at Michael’s chest. The man looked to be in his mid-fifties while the women on either side of him couldn’t be a day over twenty-five. They’d stopped screaming and were now staring at Michael. They appeared frozen with fear. One held the bed’s semitransparent white sheet over her naked body while the other attempted to cover her ample fake breasts with arms too skinny for the task.
“Who are you?” asked the boss in a strong Chinese accent. He didn’t look particularly scared. Having a gun trained on an enemy holding a stick and standing twenty feet away tended to give one some confidence.
“My name is irrelevant,” answered Michael, as the baluster flew out of his hand and described a couple of aerial rotations before making contact with the man.
Reacting on instinct, the boss had squeezed the trigger a fraction of a second prior to being clubbed in the head by the flying object, but Michael had dived to the ground the second the baluster had left his hand and the bullet missed him by several feet.
He was back on his feet a second later and on top of the boss in a flash. The women had once again found their voices and were screaming at the top of their lungs. They’d wake up the whole neighborhood at that rate.
“Shut up or I’ll have to kill both of you,” he said, holding the man’s gun.
The women believed his bluff and fell silent, their lips still quivering.
The boss had seen better days but was still conscious. His unfocused eyes appeared to be looking at Michael’s blood-stained shirt.
“It’s just a scratch, don’t worry about me,” said Michael, secretly thankful the wounds had stopped bleeding. He’d taken a bullet in the leg and one in the arm, and the third one had grazed his side. He’d been lucky. With his current healing rate, a bullet to a major organ could have been a serious problem.
He grabbed the man by the hair and sat him straight up against the headboard.
“Who are you?” asked the boss for the second time.
“Sheila Wang sent me,” he whispered in his ear. Whispering was a necessary precaution, since Michael didn’t want to kill the women but he couldn’t leave dangerous witnesses behind, either. He immediately saw recognition in the man’s eyes at the mention of the name. Recognition and anger.
“Little bitch shouldn’t put nose in my busin—”
Michael’s backhand slap interrupted the man in mid-sentence.
“Use that word again and I’ll snap your neck like a twig.”
Hatred was clearly visible in the man’s eyes, but he remained silent.
Sick of whispering, Michael sent the two women to the adjacent bathroom and closed the door.
“Why did you bomb her car?” he asked the man.
Hatred gave way to incomprehension on the man’s face: a slightly bewildered look that Michael took for authentic. “I don’t know what you talk about.”
“You don’t recall? It was only two days ago. One of your men placed a bomb meant to go off upon ignition in her car. Fortunately, Sheila never started the car.”
“You got wrong, man. I never order bomb.”
“And I suppose you haven’t sent two assassins to her house tonight, either?”
The boss remained silent, but the defiance in his eyes waned slightly.
“If you’re not going to talk, you’re no use to me,” said Michael, wrapping a hand around the man’s throat and squeezing just enough to cut his air supply. The man punched Michael a few times, but the blows lacked power and Michael didn’t budge.
The boss passed out within a few seconds and Michael brought him back with an expert combination of shaking and slapping. “Ready to talk? Because I can do this all day,” he said, once again wrapping his hand around the man’s throat. That got the man talking.
“I sent guys tonight. But no killing her. Only bring her here.”
“I see. You only wanted to bring her here… To congratulate her on her journalistic skills, no doubt?”
“She talk about me in paper. Talk about my business.”
“You mean your sex-trafficking business, right?”
The man didn’t answer.
“When did she talk about you in her article?”
“Today.”
This confirmed Michael’s suspicion. The man hadn’t been mentioned in Sheila’s first article, which had focused on the Latino players. Michael knew that the type of exotic massage parlor the bastard was operating had only been exposed in today’s article. The man was therefore unlikely to be behind the car bomb.
“What were you planning on doing with Sheila?”
The man remained silent, but his smoldering eyes told Michael all he needed to know. He struck the man in the throat, crushing his larynx.
As the boss grabbed his throat, gasping for air he would never taste again, Michael ordered the women to get dressed and stay put. He then collected their cell phones and left the room.
He came back an instant later carrying the gas can he’d left on the first floor and proceeded to pour the flammable liquid on the landing’s hard wood. He then walked back to the bedroom, pouring generous amounts of gasoline along the way, and emptied the can on the boss’s bed. The man had finally finished twitching and his lifeless body had slumped to the side.
The fire would erase all trace of the blood Michael had lost from his wounds. The last thing he needed was his DNA in a police databank.
The women started begging for their lives as soon as they saw what Michael was up to.
“I have no intention of harming you,” he said, rummaging through their purses and pulling out their driver’s licenses. “You are free to go on the condition that you never talk to anyone about what happened here tonight. You never saw me. If you disobey these orders, I will come and find you,” he added, making a show of reading their names and addresses off their licenses. He paused, letting his words sink in. He would never harm the women, no matter what, but they didn’t need to know that. “Do we understand each other?”
The women nodded vehemently, their faces reflecting all the terror he inspired in them.
“Call the cops or anyone else in the next fifteen minutes and I’ll come for you. Now you’d better run. This place is about to get uncomfortably hot.”
Chapter 20
The vampire walked into the isolated ranch house that had once been Dragos’ farm. Or so she’d been told; she herself had never set foot in the region prior to this visit.
The house looked nothing like a real farm. This was simply the name vampires gave to their food pantries: the location where they stored live humans for blood-manufacturing purposes. Following her nose, she quickly found herself in the house’s basement where the delicate aroma of human blood still lingered in the air.
The information had been accurate; this isolated mansion had indeed hosted a blood-harvesting facility, and a large one too. Based on the size of the basement and the distinct hemoglobin aroma, she estimated the blood banks had been in excess of fifty.
To a vampire’s palate, the blood from each human possessed a unique bouquet, just like wines. And just like wines, some were better than others. But unlike wine, none were truly terrible. The worst human blood still tasted divine to her expert tongue. And here in this sprawling basement, far from curious eyes and ears, Dragos had clearly collected some fine vintages.
She felt her mouth watering at the idea of tasting some of these for herself. But this wouldn’t happen, unfortunately. The blood banks were long gone. And so was Dragos…
She still had a hard time imagining he was dead. Dragos had been a bit of a legend among vampires. He’d been Dracula’s maker. And Dracula remained to this day the most famous vampire in human history, even if the puny mortals no longer believed in him nowadays.
She hadn’t seen Dragos in a long time, but the idea of never seeing him again bothered her somehow. This was one of the reasons she was here in Montana. One of the reasons, but not the only one. A name had been mentioned in association with the downfall of the legendary elder. A name she’d instantly recognized: Michael Biörn.
Chapter 21
After the botched kidnapping, Michael had convinced Sheila she’d be safer with him in Yellowstone. They’d returned to the park the previous night after spending most of their day trapped in a layover at Denver’s airport.
He hadn’t found out who was the coward behind Sheila’s attempted assassinations, but Houston had lost a number of brothels, and a couple of crime syndicates had been effectively decapitated during his investigations. The city was all the better for it and so were the poor women he’d freed from those hell holes.
He was now back at work while Sheila awaited him in the safety of his cabin.
“That’s the cave,” said Kewanee, pointing at a dark spot located at the foot of a rock formation fifty feet away.
Raj confirmed Kewanee’s statement and Michael motioned for them to stay where they were as he approached the dark entrance.
The two interns had led the way through the woods, but Michael had known they’d finally reached their destination long before the youngsters had gotten their bearings. Even his impaired nose couldn’t miss the putrid smell of rotting flesh filling the air.
His sense of smell had seemed to improve while in Houston, but he’d woken up this morning feeling as if it had regressed. What the hell was going on with his body?
Michael entered the cave and quickly found what he was looking for. The dead sow was lying a few feet inside the left chamber. Scavengers hadn’t found her yet—a small miracle in Yellowstone’s ecosystem.
Despite the stench, she hadn’t been dead very long. Two or three days at most. The two starving cubs he found hiding at the end of the tunnel confirmed his assessment. They were severely dehydrated but alive.
He examined the wounds on the sow and didn’t like what he discovered. The bear had been killed by a single wolf. This much was evident from the paw print left on the cave’s dusty floor. The bite marks all over the bear’s body also testified to a massive jaw.
The wolf had definitely been on the large side, but such a specimen could be found in the park. What made Michael uneasy was the fact the wolf had been alone. No matter how big a lone wolf was or how desperate it might get, it would never attack a grown bear.
There was of course the possibility the wolf had gone after the cubs and had been caught by surprise by the returning mother. But that didn’t explain how it had managed to kill a 300-pound bear. Especially a sow defending her cubs.
A properly working nose would have confirmed his suspicion right away, but even without a scent to validate his theory the evidence was overwhelming. The bear had been killed by a werewolf.
The realization brought a bad taste to his mouth… as if he didn’t have enough things to worry about as it was. This was the last thing he needed. What was a werewolf doing killing innocent bears in the middle of Yellowstone? This wooded area was at least a half mile from the closest trail. The werewolf hadn’t stumbled here by chance. He’d come here with a purpose in mind.
It was hard not to think about the Shadow Pack in this current situation. A few werewolves had escaped and fled Houston, never to be seen again. What if the pack had reformed elsewhere and had decided to come after him? It had been over two years, but werewolves weren’t particularly forgiving, and Michael had been almost singlehandedly responsible for the pack’s demise.
The cubs didn’t flee when he slowly approached them. They might have been too weak to run, but it was more likely they sensed Michael’s inner bear.
He picked them up one after the other and walked out of the cave.
“Cutie pies! Where did you find them? They weren’t there when we were here earlier,” said Kewanee.
Her voice wasn’t particularly joyous. Was it anger Michael saw in her eyes? “They were hiding.”
“So what d’you think of the bear?” asked Raj.
“I think it’s dead,” was Michael’s only comment.
*****
Michael had just gotten back to his cabin and had barely had a chance to step out of his truck when Olivia’s car turned onto his dirt driveway.
He noticed something was off with his protégée the minute she came out of her car. The worried look on her face was impossible to miss.
“Evening,” said Michael.
“Good evening. I need to talk to you.”
“Alright. Would you like to come in?”
“No. I’d rather stay here,” she said, walking onto the porch.
Michael took a seat on one of the wooden chairs located on either side of the cabin’s door while Olivia remained standing. Her back rested against one of the pillars supporting the porch’s roof.
“Daka and I were searching the area where you’d spotted the poacher when we stumbled upon a cave.”
“You’re going to talk to me about the dead bear, aren’t you?”
Olivia
looked confused. “How do you know?”
“Kewanee and the Indian kid found the carcass and reported it to Helen who sent them to me. They took me to the place this afternoon. Did you know there were two cubs in there with her?”
Olivia nodded. Of course, she knew.
“I just dropped them off at the Grizzly and Wolf discovery center in West Yellowstone. They won’t be able to keep them since they’re black bears, but they’ll take care of them for the time being. Hopefully until they can find a zoo interested in taking them.”
“And now, what’s next?” asked Olivia, tears swelling in her eyes at the thought of the two cubs.
“I don’t know, Olivia. I’m not in a mood for talking about it tonight. Go home. Tomorrow will be a better day.”
Olivia was heading back to her car when Michael saw a BMW driving by at a slow pace on the main road. The car passed in front of his cabin without slowing down, but the vehicle’s tinted windows raised his blood pressure a notch. The last time he’d seen such a car, it’d been filled with vampires.
This particular vehicle could also very well be driven by a nice father of three showing the park to his family, but given the type of week Michael was having, his money was on vampires.
What the hell was going on?
Chapter 22
Sheila was on the phone when Michael entered his cabin. She was sitting at the kitchen table, her laptop open in front of her. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen her more than five feet from the darn computer.
Michael didn’t own a computer and had been carrying a cell phone for less than three years. And since he constantly forgot to plug in the stupid thing, most of his calls went to a voicemail which he seldom checked. Olivia referred to him as being technologically impaired; that was putting it mildly.
“I still can’t believe you did this!” he heard Sheila repeating for the third time in thirty seconds. Whoever was on the phone had clearly done something unbelievable.
“OK. Michael’s here, I’ve got to go and tell him the good news. Thanks again, Steph, you really shouldn’t have— Of course, I’ll tell you all about it— OK. Bye.”