by Marc Daniel
“I was in the backcountry with no reception. What happened?”
“Lucy was attacked at the hospital. She’s inside now.”
He found Lucy seated on his couch flanked by Daka and one of his packmates. Michael recognized the woman but couldn’t recall her name.
“Lucy, are you OK?” he asked, kneeling down next to the young woman.
She nodded slowly but didn’t say a word.
“We arrived right on time,” said Olivia. “A minute later and Lucy would be dead. What the hell is going on, Michael? First Sheila, now Lucy, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know, Olivia. These attacks seem random. There’s no common link between Sheila and Lucy.” Michael stood up and started walking in slow circles around the room. “What’s your pack doing here, Daka?”
“I called them in as reinforcements after the attack and told them to meet us at your house. We couldn’t reach you. We didn’t know what else to do. We were lucky to escape. I don’t know what that thing was, but it was praeternatural all right and quite a bit above Olivia and my pay grade.”
“I appreciate your pack’s help, Daka, but unless we’re dealing with a vampire—which seems very unlikely—you and your mates will be at a significant disadvantage. You’d better tell me exactly what happened at the hospital.”
Lucy reluctantly explained how the man had come out from behind a tree and broken the neck of the nurse who’d been pushing her wheelchair. He’d then jumped on her an instant before Olivia and Daka had shown up.
Lucy was clearly distraught, but her state of mind appeared to be better than the last time Michael had seen her. Maybe the attack had shaken her out of her catatonic state.
“Why would anyone go after Lucy? It makes no sense.”
“Unless vamps are involved,” said Daka.
“Why would they be involved in this?” asked Michael, but in the back of his mind he was considering the possibility. He still had no idea who had hired the assassins and the Western Covenant had some good reasons to come after him. He remembered the dark BMW he’d spotted recently driving by his cabin. Had vampires been hiding behind its tinted windows?
“Assuming the Western Covenant were behind this, why would they go after Lucy? They have no beef with her,” he said.
“Maybe some of Dragos’ vampires have survived. Maybe they’re the ones behind this whole thing,” offered Olivia.
At the name Lucy shuddered.
“All his vampires died with him, Olivia. So did the nature of the magic that allowed them to withstand sunlight. I was there. I saw it happen,” said Michael.
“And the man we fought at the hospital definitely wasn’t a vampire,” added Daka.
“What if he comes back and tries to finish the job? He knew where to find Lucy in the hospital. If he’s aware of my connection with you, he may already be on his way here,” said Olivia.
Michael had little doubt the man was aware of his connection with Olivia, but he kept it to himself. “We need to find her a safe place. My cabin won’t do.”
“What’s going to be safer than this? Who’s a better bodyguard than you?” asked Olivia.
“We can bring Lucy to the reservation,” said Daka.
“No. This won’t do either. If the man who tried to kill Lucy is the same man who attacked Sheila, your pack would be in grave danger and so would Lucy. I need some time to get in touch with Ez. I’d like to bring Lucy to the elves, but I need Ezekiel to convince High King Dariel.”
“You mean with Sheila?” asked Olivia.
“Same place, yes. Lucy will be safe there. No praeternatural will pass through the gates of the elvish city uninvited.”
Chapter 41
Michael was sitting in his car on a service road perpendicular to one of Yellowstone’s main arteries. He was watching a dozen bison lazily trudging over the blacktop while a line of cars, already a half mile-long, followed the ungulates in hope of passing them in the near future.
The bison clearly had other plans, however. Occupying the entire breadth of the road, they showed no sign of noticing the cars following them at a speed of five miles per hour.
This situation suited Michael just fine. He was on traffic duty today and was tired of giving tickets to visitors who couldn’t understand that driving at sixty in a park filled with two-ton animals was as dangerous to them as it was to the animals.
He hadn’t been able to reach Ez yet and was starting to wonder what the wizard was up to. If Ezekiel didn’t return his call soon, Michael would have no choice but to contact Dariel himself regarding Lucy. The High King hadn’t shown any sign of hostility towards Michael since the events that had caused his daughter’s banishment, but Michael knew better. On some level, Dariel blamed him for it.
Maybe Leka could be of assistance. Talk to the High King on Michael’s behalf.
Michael now regretted having turned down Leka when he’d offered his team’s protection. Had the elves been around, they could have kept an eye on Lucy.
At any rate, the status quo couldn’t last much longer. Daka’s pack had spent the night watching his cabin and most of them were still there now. These people had a job too and couldn’t afford to miss work for days on end.
Michael felt bad for not being there with them at the moment, but he needed to worry about his own job. Jason Parrish was starting to comment on the amount of time he’d already taken off over the past few weeks.
Although he doubted the killer would try anything in broad daylight in the middle of Yellowstone, Michael had made sure to patrol a section of the park close to his cabin. If need be, he could be there within ten minutes. And for once, he kept an eye on his cell phone too.
He’d spent most of the morning thinking about a list of possible enemies and had been surprised to find quite a few names to put on it. The human traffickers in Houston were only the latest addition to the I-hate-Michael-Biörn group. And he strongly doubted they were involved in any of this. They had reasons to go after Sheila and now reasons to go after him too, but why would they attack Lucy? What was the connection there? Absolutely none was the answer. Every other suspect on his list sounded more likely than these guys at this point, starting with Maya.
It was only a year ago that High King Dariel’s only daughter had joined forces with a warlock and a vampire to try and steal her father’s powers. But Michael had thrown a wrench in their plans by slaying the warlock—who’d also been Maya’s lover. The princess wasn’t the forgiving type and Michael had no desire to cross her path in the next thousand years.
A series of bellows drew him out of his reverie. The bison were loudly protesting the intrusion of a monster truck among their ranks. The truck hadn’t been in sight a minute earlier, but Michael could perfectly imagine the over-elevated pickup driving in the left lane, flying by the line of cars patiently following the herd. This wasn’t the first time he’d encountered this particular type of jackass.
He saw a male bison charging the side of the truck an instant before he heard the loud bang of horn on metal. The driver would have two nice dents on his back door to tell the story of his own idiocy.
Bison often reacted that way when they felt threatened, and driving a monster truck through a tightly packed herd qualified as a threat in their book. But the driver didn’t take the attack on his truck with the philosophy one would have hoped for. Instead, he purposefully went after the male, using his truck to drive him off the road and rammed into a calf in the process.
Michael had seen enough. He turned on his lights and blasted his horn to get the driver’s attention.
In response, the driver accelerated, narrowly missing the calf’s mother in the process. But Michael wasn’t in the mood for a highspeed chase. He floored his car’s accelerator and released the clutch of his patrol SUV.
A second later, the police SUV’s push bumper rammed into the pickup at a 90-degree angle, sending it straight into the ditch.
The impact was loud enough to scatter the bison on bo
th sides of the road. The injured calf had followed his mother, a sign that the truck hadn’t hurt him too much.
To Michael’s surprise, the driver got out of his vehicle right away, seemingly unaffected by the accident aside from the bleeding cut on his forehead.
“Look what you did to my truck, asshole!” he yelled, walking towards Michael who was getting out of his car.
The man was a giant. Easily as wide as Michael, he had at least three inches on the 6’4” ranger.
“You’re under arrest, sir. Stop where you are! Do not come closer!” warned Michael, palm raised towards the man. But the idiot wasn’t smart enough to recognize good advice and kept walking towards him. Michael saw the man’s hook coming from a mile away. He could have easily dodged it but decided to let the fist connect instead.
The punch was a good one, but far from good enough to hurt the ranger. Now that he had him for assaulting a federal officer, Michael was done playing nice.
He blocked the man’s next punch with his forearm, before headbutting him with just enough restraint to avoid snapping his neck like a twig.
The man collapsed to the ground and stayed there.
Michael still had no clue about the identity of his enemies or even their motivation, but thanks to the moron lying at his feet, at least he’d been able to release some of his frustration today.
He signaled to the line of stopped vehicles to go around the truck. He was about to return his attention to the unconscious idiot when the car drove by him. The vehicle slowed down, as if to tease him, and then it was gone. This was the same BMW he’d seen driving by his cabin ten days or so ago. He was certain of it.
He took a mental note of its license plate. He’d look it up as soon as he was done dealing with Mr Road-Rage. This time the chances for it to be driven by something other than a filthy bloodsucker seemed even more anorexic.
Chapter 42
A.D. 1679
Faces were grim around the fire where Michael sat cross-legged amongst Potawatomi. The night had fallen a couple hours earlier, once again bringing fear into the pits of the natives’ stomachs. For several weeks something had been attacking men and women at night. Something that drained its victims of their blood and left their exsanguinated bodies behind for their loved ones to find.
“This is another gift from the settlers,” said a man whose closest friend had been killed three nights earlier.
“We need to kill them all before they kill us,” added another. “After the werewolves, now this? How much more are we to endure? The white man’s creatures decimated an entire village only a half-day ride from here last week.”
“Michael knows this new enemy. This is why I asked him to come and talk to us. We should listen what he has to say,” said Wawetseka. Shadows cast by the fire danced on her suntanned face.
Michael’s young playmate had grown into a beautiful woman of twenty-four. Wawetseka was well-respected among her people despite her inability to shapeshift. Her tracking skills and her knowledge of medicinal plants more than made up for it. The passing of her father had brought Michael and the young woman even closer. She visited him often, and he saw her as the daughter he never had.
The few weeks following Nikan’s death had been tough on both of them. Blinded by grief and bent on revenge, Wawetseka had turned her distrust of white men into pure hatred. It had taken time, but Michael had finally been able to show her the errors of her way. In the end he’d made her see that the path of revenge was never satisfying. It was far too easy to lose yourself on its meanders and become what you’d set out to eradicate.
“The creatures are called vampires, and they aren’t doing the white man’s bidding. We must focus our efforts on the most immediate threat, the vampires. Starting a war with the white men won’t solve our problem,” said Michael.
“But the white man brought them here,” interrupted someone.
“The new settlers were probably unaware of it. Vampires saw an opportunity to extend their hunting grounds to a new continent and they took it. They probably got here hiding in some crates, among ship cargo,” replied Michael.
“How do we kill them?”
“There are only two ways to kill a vampire. First and foremost, they cannot stand direct sunlight. This is why they only attack at night. Short exposure to sunlight will blister their skin and burn it significantly, but anything longer than the time it takes a man to run one hundred paces will kill a vampire as sure as breathing under water will kill a man.”
“What’s the other way?” asked Wawetseka.
“A sharp wooden stake in the heart will paralyze them, but one then needs to cut their head off and remove their heart to truly kill them.”
“Then we must sharpen our axes and go find them,” said Wawetseka.
Chapter 43
“Dariel has decided to grant asylum to Lucy. He’s expecting her tomorrow,” said Ezekiel. He was sitting on a downed tree at the edge of the woods behind Michael’s cabin.
“You will thank Dariel for me,” replied Michael.
“You’ll thank him yourself. I need to get going soon. I still need to figure out where those Fida’I come from. Their presence on my turf isn’t good for peace.”
“So you’re not coming with us tomorrow? We could have used your assistance. I’m still not at my best and I’m afraid of what could happen to the girls or Daka’s pack if the Fida’I strike again.”
“You know full well I can’t get directly involved in praeternatural matters, Michael. This goes against the code.”
Michael also knew full well that Ez wasn’t above bending the code when the end justified the means, but he kept that thought to himself.
“And how would the Fida’I know you’re planning on moving Lucy tomorrow? How would they know where to set up an ambush?”
“If they’ve managed to ambush us in St. Lucia, setting something up a few miles from here should be no problem for them. They seem awfully well-informed.”
“Maybe you should figure out how they get their information…”
The look Michael gave the wizard conveyed thanks for stating the obvious better than the words would have.
“If only I knew who’s behind the attacks,” said Michael after a moment.
“So, you’re convinced what happened in St. Lucia and the assault on Lucy are related?”
“How could they not be? Both Olivia and Daka identified Lucy’s attacker as a powerful praeternatural. How often do praeternaturals go around attacking humans?”
“More often than one would think, I’m afraid.”
“Not within a week. We’re not dealing with bloodsuckers here. These were professional hits. You said the Fida’I were after me. It looks to me like they’re after something else. They’ve yet to touch me but have attacked Sheila and Lucy. Who are both initiates.”
“So, what’s your theory? Someone hired the Fida’I to kill all humans with some knowledge about our existence? That seems a bit farfetched. Why would you spend money on praeternatural assassins when a simple hitman would do the job just as well? Lucy and Sheila could have been killed in manufactured accidents without raising any suspicion,” said Ez.
“Or in a car bombing…”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m just wondering if I haven’t been looking at this the wrong way from the beginning.”
“From the beginning?”
“Yes. What if the threats Sheila received after publishing her articles had nothing to do with the bombing of her car? They may even have been sent by the bomber to hide his true motivations which had nothing to do with her articles.”
“Aren’t you making things more complicated than they need to be? Isn’t it more likely the bombing of her car was orchestrated by the people she pissed off in Houston and had nothing to do with the attack in St. Lucia?”
“It’s possible. But my guts tell me otherwise.”
“And your guts tell you that someone has suddenly decided t
o get rid of all initiates starting with the ones who know Michael Biörn?”
“I don’t think the fact they’re initiates had anything to do with it. The fact they’re human, probably more.”
Ez looked at him, puzzled. “You’re making less and less sense, my young friend.”
Michael always smiled when Ez referred to him as a youngster despite his nearly eleven centuries on this earth. But everything was relative and, compared to Ez, Michael was indeed a baby.
“What I mean is that they were attacked because they know me and, being human, are easy to kill.”
“So the sole reason for them being targeted was their human condition and being close to you? I hadn’t realized you and Lucy were this close in the first place.”
“We aren’t very close, but we know each other. She’s also very close to Olivia who’s very close to me.”
“I’m not convinced… What would be the motive?”
“Maybe the Fida’I are trying to hurt me by going after those close to me. Directly in the case of Sheila, or indirectly via Olivia in the case of Lucy.”
“This doesn’t sound like something the Fida’I would do. They’re trained killers. Efficient and direct. Not the type to make things unnecessarily complicated.”
“But they work for someone. If that person holds a grudge against me…”
“And who would want to hurt you, Michael? Do you have any idea?”
Michael, who’d been standing up until now, sat down beside Ezekiel. In the distance they could see a couple of wolves patrolling the perimeter around his cabin. Michael knew the packs that roamed around his living quarters and these didn’t belong to any of them. These wolves were Daka’s mates. They’d shifted to be more discreet and efficient in case their enemy showed up.
“Well, let’s see. In recent history there would be Maya, the entire Western Covenant starting with Silvia, the remnants of the Shadow Pack—which may or may not include Katia Olveda—and the witch responsible for the witch’s brew. And I’m probably forgetting a few.”