Duel Nature (18 page)

We walked toward the bridge, Awasos shifting
to wolf form, all the expended bullets that had been in his larger
bear form falling out on the ground as he lost mass.

Chapter 19

Crossing the bridge on foot wasn’t tough. The
Canadian Border guards had stopped entry and the bridge was full of
idling vehicles, many of the drivers standing outside their rides
trying to get a look at the chaos behind us.

We moved through the vehicles as casually as
we could. People asked questions and we got our share of attention.
More than our share, especially from men staring at my girl. Having
a giant wolf trotting beside us didn’t help with the blending in.
We answered the questions as generally as possible while asking
about the hold up ahead. Tanya got lots of answers and more than a
few offers for a ride.

The gist of the information was that the
Canadians were locked down, having been contacted by their U.S.
counterparts about possible terrorists. While we walked, we could
see the activity pick up ahead of us. Two patrol boats left the
docks and pulled out onto the river with searchlights lit up and
roving. We could hear a helicopter approaching from the north and
as soon as we saw its blinking lights in the night sky, we knew it
was time to get off the bridge.

The International Bridge has suspension
towers anchored to the banks of the river that flows underneath it.
We slipped over the side and climbed down, moving at a speed that
would be hard to see by any watching law enforcement. I thought
about carrying Awasos, but he changed form, becoming something
closer to a black bear than a grizzly, his new shape easily
handling the climb.

A Canadian police cruiser was parked near the
bottom with two alert patrolmen running their high powered
flashlights over the tower and its base. After jumping the last
fifty feet and landing behind them, it wasn’t hard to put them in
rear neck chokes and when they passed out, we cuffed them, left
them in at the bottom of the tower and borrowed their car.

We simply drove away from the border, our
official vehicle giving us a free visa to enter the country.
Leaving the cruiser at a Tim Hortons donut shop, we continued
walking while Tanya called a local number on the cell phone she had
‘borrowed’ from one of the cops. Awasos and I were occupied with
the very important task of eating two dozen donuts. Ideally it
would be a dozen for each of us, but we both knew that someone
large and furry would end up with a bit more than his share.

Twenty minutes later, a cable television van
picked us up and took us to a Coven safe house where we were
offered clean clothes and more food (blood in Tanya’s case) while
the next step was laid out.

The vampire who seemed to be in charge was a
tall black woman named Bettina. Her expression was guarded as she
provided for our needs then helped plan our next steps.

“We have a makeup specialist on hand to
change your appearances. We’ll send you across the border
separately, mixed in with other groups,” she explained.

“What about ID?” I asked.

“You’ll have valid Canadian
passports. We’re mixing you into a busload of older tourists
heading into New York State.”

“What about Awasos?” I asked, patting my
furry pal where he lay pressed up against my feet.

“He’ll have to stay put for now. He’s too big
and wolf-like to not be noticed.”

“Why don’t we just swim the Saint Lawrence
river?” I asked, curious.

Bettina sighed, glanced at Tanya with a ‘is
he for real?’ look and then answered.

“Because Chris, the
US/Canadian border just became the most heavily observed point on
earth. We know of at least two satellites and seven drones being
assigned to watch this section and that’s a conservative estimate.
The 10
^th
Mountain Division at Fort Drum in Watertown has been brought
out to patrol the US side and the Mounties have tripled their
presence in Ottawa, Cornwall and Montreal.”

I looked down at my bear-wolf and still
thought it could be done. His brown eyes flashed lava red for a
moment as he grinned back at me. Good luck holding him here, I
thought to myself.

Tanya snorted, watching the byplay between
man and were beast, then turned to Bettina.

“When do we get started?”

Downstairs, we heard the door open and voices
murmur greetings. Bettina cocked her head listening then grinned.
“Right now!”

It took two hours to get each of us fully
made up, which according to Rick the human makeup expert and his
assistant, Lisa, was fast.

Custom prosthetics, commissioned by Lydia
months ago and shipped to various safe houses and dental gauze
packed into our cheeks changed our face structure while contact
lenses altered our very noticeable eyes. I watched my beautiful
vampire age before my eyes in a manner that would never actually
happen, even if she lived for millennia. Her hair was now a bluish
grey and her perfect white skin had become yellowed, wrinkled and
spotted with age blemishes. Prosthetic teeth that were crooked and
stained covered her natural ones. Her unnatural ability to mimic
others changed her whole persona to someone elderly who had entered
her twilight years hobbled with arthritis along with the aches and
pains of a lifetime.

She would have fooled anyone. Looking at her
it was only my mental link to her that told me she was still there
under all those layers of flowered cloth and sweaters.

My own reflection was hard to reconcile. I
was balding and bent, wrinkled and weathered, wearing a smelly
sweater and baggy trousers two sizes too big. Rick had used
athletic tape to fasten a wooden ruler behind my left knee, which
forced me to walk with a stiff legged limp. He had duct taped the
skin on my back so that if I tried to straighten up it pulled
sharply. The overall effect was a hunched over, limping walk that I
couldn’t forget to maintain. Then after petting a whining Awasos
goodbye, we boarded a tour bus with passports in hand. I studied
mine, learning that I was Peter Duluth, from Ottawa, I would be
eighty-one in August and I had last crossed the border a month and
a half ago. Bettina had assured us that our passports were real and
that the new photos that were taken and affixed in place would be
uploaded to the Canadian computers before we got our seatbelts on.
The Coven was as firmly entrenched in the Canadian government as it
was everywhere else.

The rest happened rather quickly. We pulled
up to the heavily manned border, then stopped while US Border
officers boarded the bus. I woke the old guy next to me who had
been asleep when I got on and we both produced our passports on
demand, which were scanned with a reader. Apparently, Bettina was
as good as her word, because the Duluth passport passed inspection
with ease.

Six rows behind me I could feel Tanya
suddenly tense up and I glanced forward to see what had alarmed
her. A female agent with a hundred pounds of Doberman had climbed
up and was moving down the aisle, letting her dog sniff everyone on
the bus. Vampires definitely smell different to dogs, so I was
suddenly just as nervous as she was. The dog came along side me
then stopped, pausing to snuffle my hands. The handler watched
suspiciously, and when the dog started to push its nose into my lap
I thought the game was up. Then I noticed the wagging tail and the
doggy grin as my new friend demanded attention and I realized it
was my God given gift that had caught the Dobie’s interest. I never
met a dog that didn’t like me, that wasn’t in fact almost crazy
about me. This one was no different and despite repeated commands,
the Doberman continued to come back to me. She would get two rows
down the aisle and the happy brute would suddenly swing around and
fly back to me. Her annoyed handler finally gave up and yanked her
back to the front and off the bus without completing her sweep. A
quick glance at my elderly Tanya showed her relief in the gleam of
her contact browned eye. Then the door closed, the bus driver
shifted into gear and we headed into the U.S.

The doors reopened at the Akwasasne Casino in
Massena. We hobbled into the main casino with the rest of the group
but continued right out the back and into the parking lot behind
the building. A late model, silver Honda Accord answered the key
fob that Tanya produced from her granny purse and we were off.

***

Thirty-five minutes later we pulled open the
doors to the Canton-Potsdam hospital and hobbled our elderly selves
in. We had decided to leave the disguises on and it proved to be
the right decision as there were multiple dark suited men loitering
around the hospital and one parked right outside the door to Gramps
room.

No immediate plan came to mind so we
collapsed ourselves into a couple of chairs in the hospital
cafeteria to think about it. The solution to our problem found us
drinking coffee.

“Wow, life on the road hasn’t treated you
well!” a familiar voice said behind me.

The tall black haired man and his pretty,
athletic girlfriend were looking at us with bemused grins.

Brett Malleck and his mate, Kelly pulled up
chairs and greeted us like we were old friends of the family, which
we were.

“We got ten feet in the door and both smelled
your scents everywhere. That’s a nice look for you Chris and the
scent of mothballs and Ben-Gay ointment really suits you,” the tall
Alpha said with a grin. “But you, Tanya, are going to be breaking
hearts in the senior center with that look!”

“Asshole!” I said, laughing despite my
worries about Gramps.

“So what’s the drill?” Kelly asked.

“We haven’t gotten near him yet,” I said with
a shrug.

“Come in with us. You’re old friends of Alex
Gordon’s and you’re visiting at the same time as his concerned
neighbors. The DHS agents all know who we are, thanks to your good
friend General Creek, and he’s been getting lots of visitors.”

“How is he?” I asked, unable to contain my
fear.

“He’s really good. The doctors are a little
baffled. He may have had a slight heart attack, but they’re not
finding any real damage.”

I exchanged glances with Tanya.

“We have reason to believe that he was given
a drug that made it look like he had a heart attack,” Tanya
said.

“Why?” Brett asked.

We spent the next few minutes explaining the
last twenty- six or so hours and our run in with A.I.R.

“So why don’t you just contact Gina or the
General?” Brett asked.

“Because they don’t know if they can trust
them!” Kelly guessed.

“Not to mention we sorta damaged federal
property and killed six people who were wearing the uniforms of
federal agents,” I said. “I think Creek frowns on that kind of
thing.”

“Our goal is to make sure that Chris’s
grandfather is okay, then we’ll think about talking to Gina…maybe,”
Tanya said.

The two young Alphas looked at each other
than nodded at us. “Okay, old man, let’s go see the old man,” Brett
said to me.

Chapter 20

Seeing my undefeatable grandfather propped up
in a state of the art hospital bed with I.V. tubes and heart rate
monitors attached was a stranger sight than seeing a pack of
werewolves Change under a full moon.

My entire life, as long as I can remember,
Alex Gordon had been the epitome of health. The single most solid
part of my life was looking vulnerable and, well, kind of old.

Sure, I knew that Gramps was in his
seventies, which wasn’t young, but just a few months ago I had
watched him crawl under a tractor to change the oil, dropping down
and squirming like a thirty or forty-year old might. Now he was
sitting in bed, scraping the last of his applesauce from a little
disposable cup, his shaky right hand sprouting an I.V. tube.

He nodded at Brett and smiled warmly at Kelly
then glanced our way with curiosity on his face.

“You look better than Len led me to believe
you would be,” I said in my normal voice. His eyes narrowed for a
split second, then recognition smoothed out his brow.

“Actually, I look a whole lot better than you
do!” he said with a grin. Then he pushed my hand aside to take
Tanya’s. “But you, my dear, would be the hit of the coffee
club!”

Tanya gave him a sudden hug, moving much
faster than a lady her supposed age could manage. Slightly faster
than a bantam-weight boxer could manage, in fact.

He looked over her shoulder at me with wide
eyes that were suspiciously moist, then laughed, patting her back
with affection.

“The rumors of my demise are greatly
exaggerated,” he said.

“You must be okay, if you’re quoting Twain,”
I said.

“Honestly, I feel fine. The doctors can’t
find anything wrong with me, and in fact, they aren’t even sure I
had an attack,” he said.

“We think you were attacked,” I said.

He looked at me in confusion for a second or
two, then a light dawned in his eyes.

“Drugs?” he asked.

“So we think,” said Tanya, who moved to the
other side of his bed and was inspecting his lunch. She sniffed his
glass of red juice and met my eyes. “Cranberry,” she said,
something brewing in her mind. Gramps glanced back my way.
“Explain,” he demanded.

So I did, which kept him occupied while Tanya
ghosted around the room. Gramps watched her poking in drawers of
supplies, but never saw her snatch a disposable lancet. Never saw
the drop of blood from her index finger go into his juice, which
she made sure he drank as she fussed around his bed. Gramps doesn’t
know her well enough to realize she is not a bed fusser.

I finished my narrative as he finished his
juice and he was already visibly healthier. He was also only the
second person to ever receive the gift of Tanya’s blood. Vampire
blood, if given to a human, has amazing health benefits. The older
and stronger the donor vamp is, the more powerful the effect is.
Cancer, Aids, Alzheimer’s, heck, even old age itself could all be
cured by vampire blood. Tanya’s is the absolute purest on the
planet, a result of never having been human, but instead born into
the vampire world.