by Marc Daniel
“What kind of snakes do you have here?” asked Michael, noticing the guide’s hiking boots and gaiters.
“We have a few, but only one you need to worry about: the St. Lucia viper. That one kills you pretty fast,” he said, flashing teeth as white as snow.
Sheila stared at Michael uneasily before pointing out her light hiking pants and sneakers.
“You’ll be fine,” he told her reassuringly. “I have your back.”
“There’s also the boa constrictor, but that one’s a sweetie,” continued André as they entered the jungle through a path that looked nothing like a hiking trail.
The jungle wasn’t as dense as Michael had imagined and the group could easily move through the trees.
“There’s no trail?” asked Sheila.
“Not on this side. Trails are for tourists. Forè a reyèl se isit la.”
“The real jungle is here,” translated Michael.
“Any big cats we need to worry about?”
“No cats. Pigs… maybe,” André said, laughing.
They’d been hiking for over two hours and even Michael had to admit he wasn’t entirely sure of how to get back to the car. Sheila had been delighted with the many native birds they’d encountered and was even more pleased by the absence of snakes.
The terrain was far from flat and, standing atop one of the tallest hills in the area, the group enjoyed a spectacular view.
“See over there?” said André, pointing at what looked like fields and makeshift dwellings in the middle of the jungle.
“What is it?” asked Sheila.
“Marijuana fields.”
“Marijuana is legal in St. Lucia?”
“No. It’s not.” The guide was laughing loudly.
That’s when the attack came.
The tiger jumped out of a tree and landed atop Sheila, sinking his teeth into the base of her neck.
Reacting on instinct, Michael grabbed the cat by the head in a twisting motion that should have broken his neck but didn’t and jerked him off Sheila. The cat retreated towards André who was standing a few feet away on a ledge overseeing a good portion of the jungle.
The guide pulled a machete from a sheath hanging from his belt and brought it down on the tiger. The attack caught the cat by surprise. He spun around and pounced on the guide but overshot his jump and the two of them went tumbling down the steep slope.
Michael peeked over the ledge. The tiger was already halfway back up the slope, jumping from boulder to downed tree. He’d be on them in an instant.
Michael started morphing, but the process took much longer than it should have. He was halfway into the transformation when he caught some motion from the corner of his eye. He turned his head just in time to see a mountain lion jumping out of a nearby tree towards Sheila. But the beast never reached its prey as he was caught midair by a thick arrow.
Michael didn’t get a chance to wonder where the arrow had come from. The tiger was back and heading for the motionless journalist bleeding on the ground. Michael’s bear quickly placed himself in the tiger’s path. The cat was a freakishly large specimen, but the bear retained a good 300-pound advantage.
The tiger feinted going around the bear before jumping over him and heading straight for Sheila. But Michael had anticipated the move. He rose on his back legs and caught the cat’s flank with his two-inch claws.
The tiger’s roar of pain could have been heard on the other side of the island.
The cat fell to the ground fifteen feet from his intended victim. Although his side was smudged with the crimson liquid oozing out of his wound, he only stayed down an instant.
Before Michael could reach it, the cat was back on his feet, the laceration on its side closing fast. Not good. In his current state Michael wouldn’t be healing nearly as fast as the tiger.
The two predators eyed each other a moment, with Michael standing on all fours at Sheila’s side, an immovable rock.
Predictably, the tiger went straight for his throat: a move Michael had expected. Instead of retreating, the bear lunged at the cat, his head ducking a couple inches under his enemy’s before moving back up, his jaws locking onto the cat’s neck.
The hold wasn’t good enough, however. Clawing and wiggling his way out, the cat eventually freed himself, his superficial injuries quickly disappearing.
He was slowly circling Michael and Sheila, looking for an opening, when an arrow perforated his hindquarter.
He roared defiantly, flashing a set of canines as sharp as nails. After a last look at Michael, he pounced off the ledge and disappeared in the direction opposite that from which the arrow had come.
Michael immediately morphed back into his human form and knelt by Sheila’s side. His mind was so preoccupied by the woman’s health that he wasn’t even wondering who’d fired the arrows.
Sheila lay unconscious in a pool of her own blood. Michael pressed his hand over the puncture points the cat’s teeth had left on her neck but to no avail. Blood kept pouring between his fingers.
“Scoot over, Michael, let me try something,” said a familiar voice behind him.
He instinctively obeyed and let Leka take his place at Sheila’s side.
The elf wore a green tunic that blended perfectly with the jungle’s tones. A second elf, whom Michael had never seen before, stood at attention, bow at the ready, a few feet behind them.
Leka took a small leather pouch out of his tunic’s inner pocket and packed the holes in Sheila’s neck with its content—a green paste that looked mostly made of leaves. As he did so, he chanted what sounded like an elvish incantation in a voice barely high enough for Michael to distinguish words.
“She’s lost a lot of blood. There’s nothing more I can do. She needs medical attention.”
“Let’s move then.”
A moment later they were hiking back to the closest road, Michael carrying Sheila’s unconscious body in his arms. They were flanked on each side by one of Leka’s men. The elves’ eyes were actively searching the jungle for any sign of the tiger.
“What are you doing here?” asked Michael finally.
“Lady Leana sent us to keep an eye on you,” answered Leka.
“Why?” asked Michael, who had no idea why the elvish High Queen would want to keep an eye on him.
“Because the Ancient One asked her to.”
“Why would Ezekiel ask you to follow me around?” Michael had a hard time believing what he was hearing.
“I don’t know the details, but he was under the impression you were in danger. He thought you were likely the target of an assassination squad. Apparently, he was right.”
Michael pondered the elf’s response for a moment.
“These guys weren’t after me. They were after Sheila. The tiger only came after me because I was in the way.”
“Maybe…”
“What about our guide?” asked Michael, suddenly remembering the unfortunate André.
“He didn’t make it. We checked on him,” replied Leka, nodding in the direction of one of his men. “On the plus side, the mountain lion won’t be bothering you anymore. My arrow caught him in the heart. A lucky shot.”
Michael doubted luck had anything to do with this. Leka was an expert marksman. “That won’t stop him. He’ll be walking in no time. I should have ripped his head off before we left.”
“He won’t be recovering from that kind of injury, Michael. Trust me. My arrows aren’t exactly ordinary.” Leka pulled an arrow out of his quiver and pointed out its tip. Made of a green transparent crystal, it looked like an oversized emerald.
“I don’t even know where the nearest hospital is,” said Michael pensively.
“I suggest we take her straight to Gweven. Hospitals on the island won’t be reliable and her wounds would be difficult to explain to a doctor.”
Michael knew that the elvish healer was Sheila’s best hope, but he also knew he lived in a city hidden in the heart of the forest in Montana. “How do you suggest we do
that?”
“We have a plane waiting for us at the airport. We also have a small amount of blood onboard. We can give Sheila a transfusion as soon as we get to the plane.”
“How long will the flight be?”
“About four hours. With some blood in her, she should make it to Gweven alive.”
Leka then turned towards the elf on their left and talked to him in Elvish. An instant later, the elf had taken off, running at a pace no human could ever hope to match. Within seconds, he had disappeared.
“I asked him to go get the car. It will be waiting for us as soon as we reach the road.”
“Thank you, Leka. But I can’t take the risk to go straight to Gweven. We couldn’t reach your city in less than six or seven hours. She needs medical attention right away. Please, drop us at the nearest hospital.”
Leka simply nodded.
Chapter 27
Olivia’s mind was wandering and paying little attention to what Helen was telling the group of interns. They’d been hiking most of the day, practicing emergency response in the backcountry.
When a hiker got hurt in Yellowstone’s backcountry, help could take several hours to reach the distressed party. Even on the very rare occasion when a helicopter was dispatched, landing in the vicinity of the accident was not always an option and the chopper never came from one of the tiny nearby towns either.
“What if we stumble upon someone choking? Can we open his throat with a knife like they do on TV?” asked Raj. The question elicited a round of laughter.
“For Pete’s sake, Raj, if such a thing ever happens, leave the poor man alone,” replied Helen, semi-seriously.
“You with a knife is the last thing anyone, choking or not, wants to see,” added Alexei in a tone that brought more laughter from Kewanee and Elodie. Olivia was the only one not amused. She had too much on her mind to partake in playful banter with her fellow interns.
She was thinking of her sister Lucy, locked up in that depressing hospital. She’d visited Luce the previous evening and the experience hadn’t cheered her up. She’d promised her sister she’d check her out of that ward, and she intended to keep her promise. But Lucy hadn’t gained any weight since her last visit and still looked distressingly thin. Thankfully, thinking of her sister distracted Olivia from the vision of the dead bear in that cave.
Michael had left on his impromptu vacation without saying a word to Olivia about it. A vacation… This was totally out of character for Michael. Olivia suspected the last-minute trip was more than a playful getaway with Sheila. Something smelled fishy. Within a few days Michael had gone to Houston, returned with Sheila and left for the Caribbean: all without a word of explanation.
“What’s that over there? said Kewanee, pointing at something on the edge of a small creek.
“Looks to me like vultures,” said Raj.
“Thanks, Einstein. I meant what’s beneath the vultures.”
“Let’s go have a look,” offered Helen, leading the way.
The group reached the carcass five minutes later. The wolf hadn’t started decaying and had no smell, unlike the vultures who were screeching at the intruders from the nearby boulders where they’d retreated. It hadn’t been dead very long.
The scavengers had focused their attention on the wolf’s belly and the rest of his body was still in good enough shape to identify the cause of death: a torn throat.
“What the hell did that to him?” asked Alexei.
Helen was looking closely at the carcass. “I’m not sure.”
“I think it was killed by a bear,” said Kewanee, pointing at some scat a few feet away. The woman had apparently learned some skills growing up on her tribe’s reservation.
Helen got closer to the carcass, examining the wound on the throat. “I suppose the size of the bite is consistent with a bear attack. I wouldn’t wager my savings on it though.”
“Maybe it’s payback for the wolf that had killed the bear in that cave in Lamar Valley,” offered Raj.
“That’s grizzly scat, not black bear,” said Helen. “And I don’t think the dead black bear had a grizzly boyfriend,” she added before Raj could come up with his own suggestions.
Helen pulled something out of her backpack and knelt near the wolf. She was holding a pocketknife in one hand and a small jar in the other.
“What are you doing?” asked Olivia, intrigued.
“I’m collecting samples from the wound. Something’s not right and I’d like to have this analyzed. If we have a bear going around killing wolves, maybe this will help us to identify it.”
“With the bear killed by a mountain lion and the one killed by a wolf, that’s the third predator killed within a week,” pointed Elodie.
The two women were right, something was definitely wrong with this picture. Bears didn’t kill wolves any more than mountain lions killed bears. But here they were…
“What are you going to do with those samples?” asked Kewanee.
“I have some biologist friends. I’m going to ask them to analyze the DNA to try and fingerprint the bear responsible for this. I’m also going to check for any sign of rabies.”
Had it been an isolated incident, Olivia would have found the measure a bit extreme, but given what they’d already stumbled upon this past week, it was probably not a bad idea to do a bit of investigating.
Chapter 28
The plane landed at the Gallatin field airport and slowly taxied to a private hangar. The door opened, and Michael carried Sheila down the flight of stairs and into a car away from prying eyes.
After Sheila had spent twenty-four hours in observation, the St. Lucian doctor had deemed her stable. Although she was still in a coma, Michael had elected to sneak her out of the hospital and bring her to Gweven. Among the elves, Sheila would benefit from the best healer Michael could find and from the protection of the elvish city. Assuming someone figured out where to find her, they’d never get through the force field surrounding the city: a magic wall that wasn’t only impenetrable but also deflected light, effectively rendering everything inside the protective bubble invisible.
The doctor hadn’t ventured any prognosis as to when Sheila would wake up, but he was confident she would come out of her coma sooner rather than later. The brain trauma at the origin of her comatose state was relatively mild according to the physician.
The car drove out of the hangar, with Leka occupying the passenger seat while Michael sat with Sheila in the back.
The drive wouldn’t take much more than thirty minutes.
“Our little escape is mentioned in the St. Lucian papers,” said Leka, staring at his phone. “And they found the dead mountain lion, although they call it a cougar over there.”
That last bit didn’t surprise Michael. The term mountain lion was only used in the US. The rest of the world commonly referred to them as pumas or cougars. “They already found it? That didn’t take long. I suppose they found the dead guide too, then.”
Leka kept reading, looking for the information. “Yes, they found him. They’re still wondering what a cougar was doing in their jungle. The theory so far was that someone cut his pet loose when it got too cumbersome. Apparently, a similar thing happened with an anaconda a while back, so everyone’s happy with this explanation.”
That was good news. They’d been forced to mention the mountain lion attack to the hospital staff to justify the bite marks on Sheila’s neck. Now the locals had found their cougar and the story would end there.
The fact Sheila had disappeared from the hospital would be quickly forgotten. The legend of the cougar would be so much more interesting to pass on to tourists and future generations alike.
“Nobody seems to have noticed that the cougar was abnormally large,” said Leka, putting his phone back in his pocket.
“They don’t know what size a cougar’s supposed to be. And I don’t suspect the average St. Lucian’s heard of werecougars…”
“Had you encountered some before?”
�
��Werecougars? No. But I suspected they existed. Cougars used to roam most of the US. Their systematic extermination only started around the turn of the nineteenth century. And generally speaking, werebeings are most likely to be found nearby their animal counterparts. The weretiger did throw me off, however.”
“I’d heard rumors about them, but I had never seen one myself.”
“I’d never even thought of the possibility. But in my defense, I haven’t spent much time in Asia,” said Michael.
“Do you know why they came after you?”
Michael shook his head. The question hadn’t left his mind ever since he’d been told Sheila would be OK. “I particularly don’t understand why they went after Sheila when Ez had told you they were after me. A part of me wonders if these two were indeed those Ez had warned you about or if they were sent by some Houston pimp who got exposed in her articles.”
“How often have you seen humans hire praeternaturals to do their dirty work?”
“Not often… But I have seen it before,” replied Michael, thinking back to Dimitri Ivanov, a Russian mobster who’d used werewolves as enforcers.
“Still, that would be a weird coincidence if you each had your own team of praeternatural assassins hired to kill you.”
Michael agreed with that statement. “Ez didn’t offer any explanation as to why these guys were after me?”
“I didn’t talk to the Ancient One, Michael. I got my info second-hand. Sorry.”
The elf had nothing to be sorry about. After dropping Sheila and Michael at one of the island’s only two trauma centers, Leka and his men had discreetly guarded the hospital in case the weretiger decided to come back and finish the job.
Michael wasn’t too proud to appreciate the help. Under normal circumstances he would probably have been more than capable of handling the tiger alone, but he needed to be honest with himself. His senses and reaction time were sluggish at best, and morphing during the battle had taken him two to three times longer than it should have.
“Thank you for all your help, Leka. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been around.”