Close Enemies

by Marc Daniel

  “What about the vampires? How did you get them to do your dirty work?”

  “Money’s everything, Michael. And I had tons of it. Enough to pay an army of private investigators and find out all your little secrets. You really shouldn’t have pissed off the Western Covenant. All I had to do was drop your name and mention you’d be vulnerable for Silvia to show up with her little army. She seems almost as vindictive as I am. She was most helpful, really. She even knew where to ambush you. Apparently she’d been there before…”

  Michael remembered that Silvia had been on Dragos’ trail a year earlier. Through her investigation she’d learned the general location of the elvish city. Not precisely enough to actually find it, but she knew a good portion of the path leading to it…

  “But why did you want to involve the Western Covenant in this?” he asked.

  “I wanted to boost the odds in my favor after the Fida’I’s first failures. I wasn’t ready to kill you just yet, but everyone else in your party should have died that day. And they would have if it weren’t for the elves sticking their noses where they didn’t belong.”

  “Why didn’t you want to kill me just yet?”

  “Because Sheila was still alive and inaccessible, of course. Killing her under your nose would have been the pinnacle of my vengeance. But then something even more beautiful came along and we managed to turn your own daughter against you and make you kill her. When you told me, I almost cried with joy.”

  “Why did you bring Kewanee here in the first place?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” asked Katia condescendingly. “To kill her in front of you as well. But we needed to wait for her to reveal herself to you first, which she never did. She never told you she was your daughter, did she?”

  “Correct.”

  “How did you know I had anything to do with Kewanee’s presence in the park?”

  “Because your chameleon impersonated her mother on her deathbed. I talked to the woman’s doctor. He never diagnosed her with cancer. I suspect she was perfectly healthy until the chameleon killed her to take her place.”

  “And you’d be right,” said Katia, almost laughing.

  “The chameleon was also the one who told Kewanee I was her father and suggested she came to see me in Yellowstone and introduced herself.”

  Katia was no longer laughing. “And who told you that?”

  “I mostly figured it out on my own, but Kewanee confirmed it.”

  “Kewanee confirmed it?” Katia seemed to struggle with the meaning of the words. “When?”

  “I’m afraid I’m really going to disappoint you now, Katia. Kewanee is alive and well. Of course she’s not my daughter. Your investigator had reasonable reasons to suspect that she was because I had a fling with her mother some twenty years ago. You didn’t need further evidence, the truth mattered little to you as long as you made me believe she was my daughter. But you made a big mistake, Katia. Your investigator had no way to know, but you should have known it was impossible. Kewanee simply couldn’t be my daughter… she’s a skinwalker, like her mother.”

  “So?” Frustration and incomprehension were clearly visible on the woman’s face.

  “You clearly haven’t been around very long. Otherwise you would know that the offspring of a werebeing and a skinwalker never results in a skinwalker. It simply doesn’t. The kid almost always turns out human. Once in a blue moon it could lead to a werebeing, but never a skinwalker. Which is why Kewanee couldn’t be my daughter. That’s what gave you away in the end. Since she definitely wasn’t my daughter, the DNA evidence stating otherwise had to be fake.”

  “But you forget that I saw the dead bear. You’re not fooling me. Kewanee’s dead.”

  “You saw a lightly wounded bear playing dead. That’s all you saw. I found the microphone you’d hidden under my kitchen table a few days ago while retrieving something from the floor. Everything that was said in the past few days inside my house was meant for your benefit only. That goes for the fight I had with Sheila this evening, too. We needed to draw the tigers out of hiding and force them to act. I suspected you wouldn’t be able to resist going after the vulnerable Sheila.”

  “How did she get away this time?” asked Katia, nervously eyeing his mug. She was getting anxious, as if waiting for something to happen.

  “Olivia and Daka were hiding in the trunk of her car, but that was just for backup. She had a gun loaded with the wolfsbane extract I stole from your stash this morning.” He pointed at the floor in the corner of the room. “By the way, I replaced both the witch’s brew and the wolfsbane with saline. One can never be too cautious these days. It was great timing, too. I suspect the dart Alexei shot me with would have been a lot more potent, had it not been filled with saline.”

  Beads of sweat were now visible above Katia’s mouth.

  “I also found your disposable cell phone stash behind the loose baseboard, by the way,” he said. He adopted a concerned voice before adding, “You look worried. Is everything OK?”

  Katia’s eyes went to his mug again.

  “You’re wondering why the wolfsbane you put in my tea hasn’t kicked in yet, aren’t you? There’s a simple explanation. I swapped our mugs when you went to get some honey in the kitchen. But the fact you still look perfectly healthy suggests you used the stash of saline to lace the tea. Bummer… the irony would have been beautiful.”

  Katia suddenly got up.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” said Michael.

  “Change of plan, Michael. Since you refuse to be poisoned, I’ll have to go with something more violent. Raj…” she called out.

  The bedroom’s door opened, and Raj appeared, followed by another man Michael didn’t recognize. Michael was bigger than them, but his nose indicated the other man wasn’t a mere human. He smelled like a cat, but a different one. Why hadn’t he noticed the scent as soon as he walked into the house? Something wasn’t right. It stunk of magic.

  “Howdy, Michael,” said Raj. The Indian intern didn’t smell like anything, but the witch’s brew would have masked his scent no matter what.

  “I hear you killed my buddy Alexei. That really pisses me off, you know. Siberian tigers are supposed to be tough… but Bengal tigers are tougher,” he said, morphing into his cat.

  Chapter 101

  The leader of the Fida’I was sitting on a bench in Mammoth’s residential area, Helen Fletcher’s house a stone’s throw away. Despite the very substantial payment Katia Olveda had made to secure the services of his organization, the high fae was growing impatient with this particular contract and wanted to conclude it as soon as possible. His men had disappointed him with their series of failures.

  He understood better than most the impact chance could have on the most carefully crafted plan and he had to admit that luck had been on Biörn’s side, but he also blamed Katia Olveda for some of the mishaps. Her insistence on being part of the operation and the unnecessary complexity of her scheme had tipped the balance in Biörn’s favor. Fida’I were trained killers, not actors. Had they all gone after the bear at once, he’d be long dead. But Olveda wanted to make him suffer, kill his friends first, poke the bear but not kill it. What a stupid idea it had been.

  Once again he tried to call the number of his two operatives and once again the calls went to their respective voicemails. This didn’t bode well. The fact Biörn had shown up at Olveda’s tonight while his Siberian tiger was supposed to kidnap him at his house was most concerning for his operative.

  No matter what, this assignment would end tonight. He’d flown in from Paris a couple days earlier and had brought his best man as reinforcement. Between him and the Bengal tiger, Biörn didn’t stand a chance. All the fae needed to do was relax and shield whatever happened inside the house from the neighbors. Mammoth was, after all, the most densely populated part of Yellowstone.

  There was another reason the high fae had decided to get involved personally. Whoever it was he’d picked up in the club that night, it
hadn’t been Biörn’s girlfriend. The lookalike had used powerful magic to extract information out of him… It had to have been a wizard; a second-grade witch wouldn’t have fooled him so easily. A wizard who had no business sticking his nose in his affairs. She had clearly been working with Biörn, and he hoped she’d show her nose sooner or later. He had a lesson to teach her. One she wouldn’t forget soon. Faes weren’t known for their forgiving side.

  Chapter 102

  Michael was standing erect on his back paws between the armchair and the coffee table. In front of him, Katia had transformed into a beautiful black wolf of about 150 pounds. On the small side, for certain, but Michael knew not to turn his back on the vengeful female.

  Still, the two cats on his right concerned him a lot more. The Bengal tiger was easily 500 pounds, and the lion was simply gigantic.

  Michael had known he was in trouble the second he’d seen the mane appear around the man’s head. He wished he’d taken some wolfsbane darts with him, but he’d been too cocky. He’d underestimated his enemies. With the two tigers dispatched, he’d expected to catch Katia off-guard and, more importantly, alone.

  On second thought, he’d overlooked an important detail: Kewanee’s bear had never been part of the Fida’I commando. This meant one of the five killers had still been out there. And now he’d found him: Raj. But where was the lion coming from?

  The immediate answer was from above as the lion had pounced and was coming down on the bear after scraping the ten-foot ceiling with his back. Michael received him with a powerful swat that sent the cat’s head to the right, but he was too heavy for the body to follow and it struck the bear in the face. Before crashing down, Michael had the reflex to kick the coffee table towards the wolf and although he didn’t see the result, the yelp of pain he heard as his head hit the hardwood floor was satisfaction enough.

  The bear was back on four paws in an instant, but so was the lion. Michael wondered about the tiger a half second too late as Raj sank his teeth into his side.

  The bear roared in anger as much as in pain and swatted at the beast, but he couldn’t reach without turning his back on the lion and Katia who’d already recovered from her encounter with the coffee table. The wound the tiger was inflicting wouldn’t be lethal anytime soon, but it was plenty painful, and the loss of blood would eventually weaken Michael.

  His train of thought was interrupted by the lion making a run for his neck. He received it with the equivalent of an uppercut. The punch would have been strong enough to snap a normal cat’s neck but only managed to piss the lion off.

  The lion was back on him in an instant, but this time Michael let him approach and at the last minute he headbutted the beast before sinking his teeth in the cat’s neck. At least, that’s what he had planned to do. The mane was so thick he couldn’t get a good hold on the neck.

  The tiger had let go of Michael’s side and was now tearing at his throat. A millennium is a long time to live. I had a good run, thought Michael as he tried and failed to shake the tiger loose.

  Chapter 103

  “What’s all the ruckus coming out of that place?” asked the old man, pointing his walking stick towards Helen’s house.

  The fae looked at him with surprise. How could this old geezer hear anything through the veil he’d placed around the house? It took him a second to connect the dots. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the bitch I took home that evening.”

  “Atta boy! For a high fae, you’re not very bright,” answered Ezekiel with a smirk. His walking stick had changed into his wizard staff and was pointing towards the fae.

  “You have no business getting involved in praeternatural matters, Wizard. You do know there are consequences to such infractions, don’t you?”

  “If that ain’t the pot calling the kettle black!” chuckled Ezekiel. “Aren’t you a Supernatural yourself? The difference is that I’m sticking my nose in your business while you truly are meddling in things our laws forbid.”

  “I guess it’s a matter of perspective,” said the fae, discreetly weaving a spell.

  But Ezekiel wasn’t fooled by the treacherous fae. He blocked the attack with his open hand and threw it back to its point of origin, the shockwave sending the fae to the ground.

  Whoever this wizard was, he was proving a worthy adversary. It had been a long time since the fae had enjoyed a decent challenge. The outcome of the fight remained predictable, but he’d have to work for it.

  He knew precisely what to do against this type of opponent. He understood the wizard’s way, the righteous way: their greatest weakness, in his opinion, and one he’d exploit to his advantage.

  Fae were unable to tell a straight lie. As a result, he’d become expert in the art of deception. Half-truths and lies by omission were his bread and butter, tools he relied on to trick others into deals that were less than advantageous to them, but that wasn’t the extent of his repertoire.

  The fae invoked an invisible shield behind him and projected a reproduction of himself that perfectly overlapped with his real body. He then stepped behind the protective shield while his hologram remained on the floor, staring at the wizard in disbelief.

  The wizard stood in front of the hologram, seemingly assessing his helpless victim, probably deciding how to finish him off. The fact he was staring at an empty shell would never cross his mind. This was deceitful magic; the type of magic wizards wouldn’t stoop to… Fools!

  Invisible behind his shield, he cast a powerful spell that hit Ezekiel straight in the chest and projected him against the wall of a general store deserted at this late hour. Ezekiel lay there motionless, head propped up against the wall at an awkward angle. Blood was slowly flowing out of his mouth. His broken staff was a good twenty feet away.

  Chapter 104

  With the tiger clamped on his throat and the lion on his back attacking his neck muscles, Michael knew his time had come. Katia’s wolf gnawing at his hindquarter barely registered as an afterthought.

  He heard the cracking sound characteristic of broken vertebrae and was surprised to find himself still alive.

  He’d just realized that the wolf was no longer chewing on his thigh when the tiger suddenly released the hold on his throat with a roar equal parts pain and anger. What was going on?

  From the corner of his eye, Michael saw a human form straddling the tiger who was thrashing to free himself of the unwelcome guest who appeared to be strangling him with some type of rope.

  Weakened by the exertion of the fight and the few pints of blood he’d lost, Michael struggled to lift his bear off the ground; the weight of the lion on his back wasn’t helping in the slightest.

  He finally managed to get back on his paws and, using the couch for leverage, erected himself on his back legs. The lion’s claws were still deeply sunk into Michael’s back, his fangs getting dangerously close to the bear’s spine.

  Michael took a few steps, looking for the most painful landing spot. Deciding the wrought-iron frame of the shattered coffee table would do nicely, he let himself fall back-first onto the twisted metal, crushing the lion under their combined weights. The cat made no sound but did let go of Michael’s neck as the two beasts struggled to get back to their feet.

  No blood was visible on the lion, but he could tell by the way he moved that his back had been injured. Now was the time to finish him off. Michael pounced on the lion who’d made the mistake to venture into a corner. With nowhere to go, the cat braced himself for the impact, sinking his fangs into the first thing he could find: the bear’s left shoulder.

  Red-hot pain once again shot through Michael’s nerves. In a fit of rage, the bear drove his right paw inside the lion’s unprotected guts. The muscular flesh offered little resistance to his razor-sharp claws. The lion roared in pain as Michael drove his entire forearm inside the cat’s chest cavity, tearing through lung tissues before finally reaching the heart.

  The lion collapsed to the ground, but Michael still needed to finish him off.

 
; “Allow me,” said a woman’s voice behind Michael. He turned around to find the vampire he’d seen walking in broad daylight that evening in West Yellowstone. Behind her, Raj’s beheaded body lay in a puddle of his own blood. This was a side effect of the witch’s brew. Under normal circumstances, werebeings didn’t reverse to their human form in death.

  Michael’s eyes drifted to the object in the vampire’s hand. A wire saw of the type found in survival kits and camping departments. This was how she’d decapitated the beast.

  As the vampire started sawing through the lion’s neck, Michael morphed back into his human form. Self-conscious of his nakedness in front of the vampire, he walked to the bathroom and came back with a towel wrapped around his waist.

  That’s when he noticed Lucy in a corner of the room. She was staring at him through her long black hair as she crouched beside Katia Olveda’s lifeless body. The woman’s head was still attached to her neck, but her beautiful features looked grotesque facing the direction of her back. It took a moment for Michael to understand what had happened.

  Lucy had snapped the wolf’s neck, but Katia had been too infused with the witch’s brew to heal herself from the mortal blow. She’d effectively died of a broken neck and had reverted to her human form in this awkward configuration.

  The vampire elder got back to her feet, holding the lion’s head. Clearly this one had not consumed the witch’s brew.

  “Do you want a souvenir?” she asked with a smirk.

  Michael looked at her silently for a long time. “What are you doing here?” he said eventually.

  “I owed you one, Michael. Now we’re even.”

  Chapter 105

  The fae approached Ezekiel as the wizard feebly attempted to prop himself up against the wall on which he’d landed.