Duel Nature (11 page)

“Yeah, are you insane?” I asked, in the same
pleasant way I might ask to borrow a screwdriver.

That set him back for an instant, than anger
rushed to the surface. “What? Who the hell are you?”

“Oops, forgot to introduce myself – I’m
Chris, from cabin four. But what I’m wondering is if the two of you
are insane – ‘cause starting tomorrow night we’re going to have
three days of a full moon,” I said, pleasantly.

The cop’s face went white and he fell back a
half step, revealing his younger brother frozen behind him looking
at me in fear and confusion.

I stepped forward instantly, my action
causing the big one to step back a full step before he caught
himself.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he
demanded, working himself into a rage or at least the semblance of
one.

“Sorry to hit you over the head with it, but
sometimes that’s the best way. Your brother is a new werewolf and
tomorrow night he’ll change for the first….” I trailed off, feeling
my head cock to one side as I got a real good look at the werewolfy
one. He too was younger than I had first thought, maybe
mid-twenties. The tired, haggard look had made him appear much
older. My Sight showed me a were that was more than several months
old.

“You’ve been through the Change before! More
than once?”

He was still frozen, a panicky look on his
face, but he flinched at the word Change.

His big brother’s meaty hand descended on the
back of my neck, gripping hard, or at least trying to. Chet tells
me that touching me is like touching rubber covered steel. The
cop’s face registered the odd feeling and the fact that none of his
considerable effort was moving me in any way. I turned, his hand
falling away ineffectually.

“Stop that. Listen, you’re both about to
start a bunch of denials mixed with righteous outrage and then
you’ll swear at me and call me crazy. Let’s just skip that part and
get to the meat of the matter. This one-“ I pointed at the
werewolf, “ is going to sprout teeth, fur and claws tomorrow night.
There’s no Alpha here to guide him and control him, so history
tells us that he’ll go insane and kill as many people as he can
find. On the flip side, I would guess that this isn’t the first
change and he isn’t a gibbering idiot, so I’m really interested to
hear how this happened, why you’re not insane, and what’s the plan
for tomorrow night?”

The sheriff’s deputy opted for trying to
punch me. I let him. His fist met my head ( I turned it so it
missed my face) and came out of the contact in much worse condition
than my head, which is pretty dense (just ask Lydia).

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 him? 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?”