Duel Nature

by John Conroe

  The younger one moved at me with a speed much faster than a normal human’s. I was impressed, not at his quickness, but that he appeared rational. Brushing aside his hands, I grabbed his throat and held him up off the floor against the wall to my right.

  “Let me explain something. I specialize in werewolves and other things that go bump in the night. But my bumping is a whole lot harder than theirs. So, you can both settle down and talk about this or I can just solve the whole problem right now,” I said, giving the wolf a shake.

  Oddly, the werewolf stopped fighting first, his older brother looking frantically at the cased shotguns on the little table in the kitchen.

  “Deputy, if you start the whole gun thing you’re really not gonna be happy with the outcome,” I warned him.

  “Who are you?” was the whispered question from the wolf. He had to whisper because my grip was closing off some of his airway.

  “Oops, sorry about that,” I said, setting him down and taking my hand away.

  “My name is Chris Gordon and I’ve been involved in this kinda business for a while now – the whole supernatural world of werewolves and vampires and stuff,” I said.

  “Vampire?” was the younger one’s response. The cop was shaking out his bruised hand.

  “Yeah, you’re not the only kind of monster out there,” I said. “But tell me how you came to be in this condition?”

  They exchanged glances, then looked back at me. With a sigh the younger one spoke, holding out his hand. “I’m Jake Anderson and this is my brother Steve.”

  I shook his hand, but Steve didn’t appear ready for that level of civility.

  “Three months ago, I was out at a bar in our hometown of Grayling. There was a bit of drama-“ Steve snorted at that but Jake kept talking, “and I left the bar. I was too drunk to drive and too angry to wait for a ride so I started walking. Grayling isn’t very big and everyone knows me, so my chances of catching a ride home would have been pretty good,” he said.

  “Would have?” I asked.

  His face became haunted as he remembered it and Steve shuffled his feet unhappily at his brother’s expression.

  “Yeah, would have, ‘cause I didn’t make it that far. About fifty yards from the bar I started to hear something in the woods beside me. I seriously thought about going back, which was, as it turned out, a pretty good instinct. One I ignored. I pictured myself slouching back in after my dramatic exit and couldn’t do it. So I kept walking in the moonlight and kept hearing the sounds. I moved to the other side of the road but after a minute I heard the sounds again only this time they were on the new side of the road, which really freaked me out. I started moving faster, thinking that running might be a good idea, but then something hit me from behind and that was it.”

  “That was it?” I asked, looking back and forth between the brothers.

  “Yeah, that’s all I remember, because next thing I knew I was waking up in the brush. I crawled back up to the road and Steve found me.”

  “I was on duty that night and the girl he was messing around with got away from her boyfriend long enough to call me. I found him two hundred or so yards from the bar, lying on the shoulder of the road. Wasn’t till I got him home that I noticed the blood. He had a bite wound on his left shoulder, but it was already scabbed over. Next morning it was gone,” Steve said, the most he had spoken so far.

  I turned to Steve fully. “Any unexplained deaths or disappearances in the county around that night?”

  He frowned in thought. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Any bikers strange to the area passing through?” I asked.

  “No,” he said shaking his head. Then a light went off in his eyes. “There was stranger that came through, a foreign guy, English or something. Wealthy, nice clothes and expensive cameras. Said he was a photographer traveling the USA. Stopped in Grayling to explore the Huron National forest.”

  “Okay, “ I said, thinking it through. “What happened the first full moon after the bite?”

  They looked at each other, then Jake looked down at the table. His brother turned back my way.

  “He turned into a big ass wolf,” he said. Silence reigned for a moment or two then Steve went on. “I was on day shifts that month. Jake felt ill, acted a little drunk sorta, though I don’t think he had anything to drink. He went to bed early. I was watching TV in the living room,” he paused and must have read my next question on my face. “We live together, in the house we grew up in. Our parents died in a car crash about ten years back. Jake was still in school and I was his guardian. Anyway, I’m watching a movie or something, when I hear noises from his room. I ignored them for a minute or two, but they got louder…bumps, bangs and something I think might be growls. So I opened his door and peeked in. The room is pretty much trashed, or at least the bed was, and there’s this monster wolf sitting in the middle of it growling at me. Nothing happens for a second or two, then it hits me! The wolf thingy has Jake’s eyes. I blurt out his name, he blinks at me then turns and jumps out the window. Rips the whole fucking frame right out!”

  “How many died?” I asked, steeling myself for a high number.

  They look at each other, then Jake answers. “How many what? Deer? Two. Cows? Just one,” he says sadly.

  “No – people?” I clarify.

  “What? None!” Jake blurts, shocked.

  I’m suspicious, but Steve confirms it. “He didn’t hurt any people, mister. Just a cow at the Cooper farm and he thinks he remembers a couple of deer. The cow got blamed on a black bear. The month after that we came here for the full moon and let him run it out in the forest.”

  I stared at the brothers for a full minute, not saying a word. A person who is bitten by a werewolf and survives, has about a thirty percent chance of contracting the Lycanthrope virus, or LV. The next full moon will result in a Change – the drastic, horribly painful complete rearrangement of their anatomy from human to giant wolf (or whatever the base were animal is).

  The pain is ridiculous as is the drastic overlay of lupine instinct and super senses. If guided by an Alpha wolf, the individual survives with their personality and sanity intact. Without an Alpha, the odds are that they’ll go insane from the combination of pain, completely alien body and the intense instinct to hunt and kill. But if what the brothers was telling me was true (which would be easy to verify by looking at records or newspapers from a month ago) than Jake was one of a tiny minority that survived the first transition unaided and retained his human control.

  “Were you a fighter in school Jake?” I asked.

  “What? No!” he replied, confused by my change of topic.

  “He was too popular in school to have any problems. Star receiver for the football team, popular with the girls and everyone knew he was my kid brother,” Steve said, the protective look on his face explaining much.

  I explained what I knew about people who underwent the change unaided; how most became rogues that had to be killed, but that a very, very few sometimes survived largely intact. I say largely because becoming a were was traumatic and had to leave some marks on a psyche.

  The fact that Jake was popular and neither an aggressive sort nor someone who was bullied by others may have been a huge factor. Throw in an extremely strong bond with his older brother and the fact that said brother was the first human he encountered post-Change and it could have been the right set of circumstances for him to get through it.

  “So last month you came here, right? Let me guess, someone here at the resort saw you?” I asked.

  “I guess. I don’t remember much about being a wolf…just bits and pieces,” Jake said.

  His brother was nodding, still watching me warily. “He changed in the woods, then I think he ran for a while. After that he either followed my scent back or just knew the way because he was scratching at the door just before dawn. I let him in quick, but some of the guests were up and around,” Steve said.

  “He scratched at the door to come in? And you let hi
m? What did he do, curl up on the floor?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Yeah, pretty much. Why?” Steve asked.

  “Because it’s incredibly dangerous to be anywhere near a new werewolf. It can take years for most bitten weres to develop control. But two months into the whole lifestyle and your brother is like a sheep dog!”

  “He wasn’t like any dog. He was edgy and had a look in his eyes. But I just talked to him like I always do, fed him a steak and tried to act normal. I sat in the chair over there –“ he pointed at a beat up arm chair, “and he finally just circled around and laid down. Then he Changed back,” Steve said, shuddering as he remembered it.

  “You called me a bitten were? Are there born ones?” Jake asked suddenly.

  So I spent the next two hours filling them in on the facts of supernatural life. I explained about both bitten and natural weres, about the different species of weres, their rules of behavior and the penalties for breaking those rules. Steve learned about how to act around Jake when he was in wolf form, although he had done pretty well already. How not to make eye contact, or get angry with him or make threats. Eating immediately after the Change (meat for the wolf and any high calorie – high protein food for the human) would ease the pain of transition no matter the direction of the Change.

  “I’ll make an introduction to the local Pack closest to you in Michigan,” I said, taking a big bite of the ham sandwich Jake had whipped up. Steve wasn’t eating, just sipping a Sam Adams and watching us devour our massive Dagwood sandwiches.

  “You eat like he does. But you’re not a werewolf?” Steve said suddenly.

  “I do and I’m not,” I said around a mouthful.

  “What are you?” Jake asked.

  “No one knows. Sorta a hybrid.”

  “Hybrid what?” Steve asked.

  “I have some were characteristics, but most of my attributes are closer to vampire,” I said.

  “So they’re real too,” Steve said, making it a statement.

  “Most definitely,” I answered.

  “We didn’t invite you in, but you came in anyway,” Jake said, pointing with his sandwich in emphasis.

  I laughed. “That’s bullshit. Vampires aren’t kept out by a home’s threshold, which by the way, this cabin doesn’t have. Demons are the ones that can’t enter a home unless one of the inhabitants consciously or unconsciously invites them. A home is where families live and bond. Human relationships – good ones that is – create barriers around a home over time. We call that threshold. Your house that you grew up it would have a very strong threshold. But it doesn’t affect vampires,” I explained.

  “Do you drink blood as well as eat food?” Jake asked.

  “Nope, just food…by the truck load.”

  “How did you become….whatever you are?” Jake asked.

  “That’s a very long story for another time. But let me ask a question. What’s up with the girl –Britta?”

  Jake looked startled while his brother grimaced.

  “My little brother has always been popular with the ladies. He’s something of a player. Britta took a liking to him when we were here last month,” Steve explained.

  “Isn’t she a touch young for you?” I asked.

  “She’s eighteen, and yes that’s too young for him,” Steve answered. Jake looked chagrined.

  “She doesn’t look or act eighteen, so I just sorta automatically flirt with her,” he said. “But she’s a really solid, mature girl.”

  “Odd, but Erika seems more your type,” I noted, thinking of the more forward of the twins.

  “I know, right? But the thing is we don’t really have any use for each other. It’s odd, because they’re virtually identical in looks, but I don’t feel any attraction for Erika and she doesn’t seem to for me either,” he said, wondering at the last part. Apparently he wasn’t used to being ignored by anything female.

  “Well, you might want to keep your intentions fully honorable, because all three – mother, and both daughters, are witches,” I said.

  Both men looked at me for a moment or two, obviously confused, till my meaning dawned on Jake’s face. “Wait, you mean like real witches? Cauldron and eye of newt type witches?”

  “Yeah, the kind that cast spells that really work,” I said, awaiting their disbelief.

  “I got the impression that they were the nature worship, tea brewing, religion kinda witches, you know like Wiccans,” Jake said.

  “I hear ya, but these are the real deal. They worship nature, many witches do, but these three are much more than just that, so you might want to watch your step,” I warned. “Look I gotta get back to my wife, but I want to go with you tomorrow night and keep an eye on you when you change.”

  Jake started to shake his head and his brother looked at me like I was an idiot.

  “Now it’s my turn to ask you if you’re insane,” Steve said.

  “Nah, I’ve been around hundreds of werewolves,” I said, not mentioning that many of those were now dead. “I can make sure you don’t hurt anyone, keep you centered. Plus I won’t be alone, my companions will help too.”

  “Your companions?” Steve asked

  “My wife and….dog,” I said with a shrug, not yet ready to explain a werebear-wolf.

  They both just stared at me for a while.

  “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and take a guess. They’re both weird like you,” Steve said.

  “In their own ways,” I said, heading for the door.

  Chapter 13

  Night had fully fallen when Tanya and her giant furry companion came back from their recon.

  “The woods around here are….interesting,” she said when she came up for air from the side of my neck.

  I took a second or two to answer, the heady swirl of intense feeling I get when she feeds on me making thought difficult. “How so?”

  “Your blondes have left little talismans all around the perimeter of the resort. Little creations of sticks, stones, fur and feathers. Kinda like the crap in Blair Witch,” she answered, licking her lips, her blue eyes temporarily silver.

  “They’re positioned at all four cardinal points plus more in between. They all face outward like posted signs.”

  Her comment about posted signs made me think of the desert home of a Navajo witch I knew. His property was guarded by a twisted little horror show of creepy animal skull fetishes. The thought gave me the shudders – what can I say – I really don’t like witches.

  Tanya picked up on my emotion, shaking her head. “They’re kind of creepy but not like those skull things you told me about. But that’s just the beginning. Outside the circle of stick figures, I could smell traces of something….”

  She trailed off, thinking, so after a moment I prompted her. “Something?”

  Her attention snapped back to me. “Odd. Something odd that smells of decay and wild and also, a little bit, human.”

  “Did ‘Sos smell it?” I asked.

  “Definitely! Better than I did, and he didn’t like it at all. Kept sneezing and shaking his head – got all wary and alert,” she said, absently stroking the side of my face and neck with one graceful hand. That was very distracting, so I captured the hand in question and held it still while I struggled to get back on topic. She grinned at the effect she was having on me. Little vampire minx.

  I filled her in on the brothers in the cabin next door and their wolf situation.

  “A bitten were that successfully Changed on his own without losing his marbles? That’s exceedingly rare! I have to meet this lady’s man!” she declared.

  A small growl escaped me at the way she said it, making her grin all over again.

  “You, my zayka, are too easy to play,” she said. I growled again and pounced on her, knocking her back onto the queen sized bed.

  Quite some time later we got back to the topic.

  “So we got three witches living here who have placed some kind of witchy no trespassing signs that didn’t affect you, me or Awasos, n
or did it bother werewolf boy. And something you can’t identify is roaming the woods and it makes ‘Sos’s hair stand up,” I said in summation.

  “And one of the teen witches has a crush on sexy wolf boy,” Tanya added.

  “How do you know he’s sexy?” I asked.

  “You said he was a player type and Britta is all hot and bothered by him so it just makes sense,” she said with a shrug. “Besides, the other sister is all hot and bothered by you!”

  “Nah, she’s just a bored kid stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do,” I said, dismissing her observation. Tanya went quiet and my link went a few degrees chillier.