Fallen Stars (The Demon Accords) (20 page)

“What
is
his name?” I asked.

“Awasos,” Stacia replied.

“But that means
bear
in Abenaki, not wolf?  What idiot named a wolf
Bear?
”

“You did, Chris.  You rescued him at birth, you named him, and you raised him,” Stacia said with a sad smile.

“But why would I name him
Bear?”

She looked at Awasos.  “Show him.”

The big canine backed away a few steps and then just sorta shimmered.  Shimmered and expanded—a lot!  A second later, the biggest bear I’d ever seen was standing on all four legs, looking me at me with Awasos’s eyes.  Slowly, he moved forward and bumped my shoulder with a keg-sized head.  My hand reached itself to his neck and scratched without my direction.  He sighed and sat down, tilting his head to give me a better shot at what was obviously an itchy spot.

“Wow!” was all I could say.

“Chris, I think you are doing well for having been shot in the head—really well.  I can’t even really tell exactly where the bullet hit.  Understandably, you have memory loss and other … damage.  Much of that will heal, but whether you get your memories back or not is uncertain,” the doctor said.

“So what do we do?” Stacia asked.

“What
I
do is take him home!  What you do is whatever dogs do,” a voice said from the door.  The girl… the vampire girl, if I wanted to be accurate, Katrina, took two quick steps forward and handed her phone to me. I didn’t recognize the model. “Someone wants to say hi.”

I took it slowly as the rest of the room grew tense.  The vampire had just insulted not one but ten or more people that I thought were probably werewolves. She didn’t appear to care.

“Hello?” I said into the phone.  The most amazing voice answered.  It was lightly accented and smoky smooth.  “
Zayka, are you all right?”

The tones hit me like a brick.  I knew this voice, but no face or name came with it.  “I know you!” I said, which had the effect of shifting all the attention in the room from the two girls to me.  “I can’t remember your name, but I know you!”

“Yes, you know me.  My name is Tanya, Christian.  Does that help?”

I shook my head, then realized she couldn’t see it.  “I’m sorry.  I should be able to do better, but I just can’t get my mind to work!” I said, clenching a fist and slamming the arm of the chair I was in.  It shattered into a hundred pieces.  “Oh shit!”

“What happened?”
the voice asked, alarmed.  Stacia and Katrina rushed to help me with the broken pieces but bumped into each other, whirling to face off.  Coreena shoved between both of them, disgusted, and started picking pieces of wood off me.

“I broke the chair. I didn’t even hit it that hard?” I said, both to the voice on the phone and to the rest of the room.

“You are very, very strong, Zayka.  You must be careful, dear one.  Just keep calm and move slowly.  You must come home now,”
she said, her voice like a soothing salve.
“Come home to me, Christian.”

“Home?  Where?”

“New York, Zayka,”
she said.  I didn’t know what
Zayka
meant, but it had an affectionate ring to it, an intimate implication, and I found I wanted that link with the voice.  “
May I speak to the doctor, Chris?  The one I heard before?”

He reached for the phone, apparently hearing my conversation as well as I could.  “Hello, this is Dr. Peterson,” he said, confident yet puzzled.

“Dr. Peterson, I am Tatiana Demidova.  Chris is my Chosen.  Can you tell me anything about his condition?”

The doctor’s face paled a little at her name, so apparently he’d heard of her.  “As near as we can tell, a high-power rifle round grazed his neocortex.  The wound has healed completely, so it’s difficult to be sure.  He is responding normally but has lost approximately two years or so worth of memories.  His motor functions and reflexes appear good, but I can’t tell what would be normal for him, as he is neither Were nor Darkken.  I don’t know if he’ll get his memories back, but then again, I haven’t been able to complete a full exam without being interrupted,” he said the last as an obvious admonishment.  Apparently my hearing is pretty good, too, because I had no problem hearing her while they spoke.

“My apologies, Doctor.  He is more important to me than life itself.  Please do whatever it takes; the Coven’s resources are at your beck and call.  Also, if I may provide some background, as I have been researching my Chosen’s lineage.  Christian’s maternal grandfather was exposed to both V-squared and LV viruses in a Nazi war camp.  Neither virus was able to gain a foothold, but they appear to have changed his DNA and consequently Chris’s.  When Chris was exposed to my blood, the V-squared took hold in new and different ways.  Our physician, Raj Singh, is available for consultation as well.”

“Very well, Ms. Demidova. Here is your… associate,” he said, handing the phone to Katrina, who turned and walked out, ignoring the hostile stares of the surrounding people.  Dr. Peterson began to examine me again.

“Her voice was familiar to you?” he asked, holding my right arm and manipulating the digits of my hand. 

“Yeah, but I can’t picture her face.  Yet I could
feel
something as she spoke.”

“You may be feeling the mate bond.  Vampires form a very strong bond with their mates… their Chosen.  Yours happens to be with arguably the most important vampire on this continent, if I’m not mistaken,” he said.

“I couldn’t tell you, Doc, ‘cause I don’t know what any of this means, werewolves and vampires.  Wolves that change into gargantuan bears.  I know demons, that’s about it. Not this other stuff. It makes my head hurt.”

“You are trying too hard.  You need rest… and food. Healing takes energy,” he said, turning to the leader, Ned, who answered him before he could ask. 

“We will put him in a guest room, and my wife is getting him some leftovers from dinner.”

A woman came in almost as he spoke, holding a tray that sent odors directly to my nose and made my stomach growl and my saliva glands kick in to overdrive.  I smelled beef, rare and tender, as well as some type of chowder and potatoes and some type of vegetables, green beans maybe.

She smiled at me as she set it on my lap.  I nodded my thanks, but that was it, as my focus on the three filets became all consuming.  My hand shook as I struggled to cut off a piece and get it into my mouth as fast as possible.  The room was quiet for a moment as they all watched me eat, but then side conversations sprang up around the room. The intense family man and Ned, the leader, began to talk, and I focused my ears on them.  They were discussing Stacia, who was across the room talking with the EMT, Coreena.  The men spoke very softly. I was only able to hear them because I was almost in the center of the room.

“No, Kral, she’s not a purebred.  She was bitten two years ago,” Ned said.

“You are certain?  Absolutely certain?” Kral asked.  “Because I saw her Change, and it was one of the fastest I’ve ever seen.  Then after running a few hundred meters, she Changed again!  Like it was nothing!”

“Yeah, well, I saw her do a controlled paw Change too.
I
couldn’t do it as well as she could,” Ned replied.

“My Darina said she was fooled by her scent into thinking she was a born were.  That has
never
happened.  Ned, do you realize how this could help our people?  I don’t know if it’s the purity of her LV strain or something else, but a bitten were that can fool my daughter’s nose and change faster than a purebred is nothing short of fantastic!”

There were a few other conversations about the beautiful blonde girl who appeared to be my friend, but those discussions had nothing to do with her werewolf attributes and everything to do with her human, female-type attributes. Those at least made sense.  The leaders’ discussion didn’t.

I drummed my fingers of my left hand, trying to get my brain to work, but it wasn’t to be.  I couldn’t stay focused. My attention shifted too rapidly.  The taste of the beef was off, the red of that girl’s dress was wrong, the smells of food, cigars, blood (which was crusting in my hair), the growl of a deep voice, the slightly musty smell of vampires, the musky odor of werewolves, the fur of a giant bear under my fingers, it was all overwhelming.  I focused on the last one and realized I was drumming my fingers on Awasos’s head.  He didn’t seem to mind, but he was eyeing the last morsel of filet mignon on my plate.  I popped it into his mouth without a second thought.  Resting my arm on him and sharing food seemed automatic… natural.  I went with it, as nothing else about me or around me made any sense at all. 

The hostess came back, smiling as she took the tray of empty plates.  “Malcolm, show Mr. Gordon to the Pine room, please,” she said to a young man who I had seen carrying out this or that order or command all evening.  “You go rest, Chris.  The doctor said you need some quiet and darkness.”

I won’t lie.  It sounded blissful.  The constant buzzing in my brain, the cobwebs, and the constant distraction of a thousand razor-sharp sensory inputs was making my head spin.  I followed the young man upstairs, took a fast shower to wash off my own blood, and dressed in the sweats I found waiting for me on the bed.  Then I fell back into the big puffy mattress, surrounded by pine paneled walls and the scent of balsam fir needles, and let the darkness take me.

Chapter 21

I awoke slowly, from strange, disjointed dreams that I immediately forgot.  My lids were crusted with eye-boogers, and it took a while to get them fully open.  Big plush bed, pine paneled room.  For a full minute, I had no idea where I was. The window showed it was still dark outside. Then I remembered the big stone house, the party of people who could change into wolves, and a phone conversation with a voice straight from Heaven.  The floor beside the bed rustled and a wall of fur rose up.  I should have at least jumped at the sight of the big grizzly, but he felt like he was supposed to be there.

An open suitcase that hadn't been there last night was sitting on the floor.  It didn’t look familiar, but a pair of jeans on the top of the clothes stacked inside it did.  The case was a nylon duffle, vaguely military looking, the kind of bag that cops refer to as a go-bag.  As in grab and go.  I absently patted the big bear, Awasos, and made my way around his bulk to the suitcase.  The jeans, two tee shirts, and a pair of shoes were definitely mine.  Oh, and two pairs of the socks, along with a pair of gray cargo pants.  The rest, I didn’t recognize.  Clothing that not only wasn’t familiar but looked too fashionable to be mine.

I picked up a shoe to inspect its details and a knife fell out.  It was a beat-up Emerson CQC 7 folder with a tanto-style blade, and I knew it like I knew… well, like I knew my name (but apparently not much else).  Gramps had given it to me this past Christmas… no, it would be two Christmases ago, if the paper I saw was real.  It was also the best thing I had seen since I found myself standing in the forest.

There was a soft knock on the door and at my, “Come in!” it opened to reveal the pretty blonde girl, Stacia, with a big tray of food. 

“Hey, good morning.  How do you feel?” she asked.

I hurried to take the tray from her, as it was difficult to maneuver around the furry hulk on the floor who was suddenly just as interested in the food as I was.  She laughed at his earnest focus and reached onto the tray to pull the cover of a big platter off, revealing a slab of beef the size of a city phone book.  She set it on the floor while I set the suddenly lighter tray on the bed next to me.

“Somehow, I just knew the two of you would be starving,” she laughed.  I was… starving that is.  I hadn’t realized it till the smells hit me, but I was literally starving.

“Why am I so hungry?” I wondered out loud while uncovering eggs, toast, sausage, bacon, coffee, hash browns, and a really big bowl of oatmeal.

“You have a turbo-injected metabolism.”

“Why?  Why am I like this? What the hell has gone on for the last however many years?”

“You eat, I’ll explain,” she said, leaning across my legs to snag a piece of bacon. She curled her legs underneath her by my other side..  She was wearing faded jeans and a white tee shirt that set off her tan and green eyes.  Both the jeans and the shirt were form fitted, and I suddenly decided I had better focus my attention on the food and not her figure.  I think she noticed.

She finished chewing and leaned over me again for more bacon.  When she turned to look at me her lips were mere inches from my mouth.  They glistened red and ripe.  I realized I was staring and looked up at her emerald eyes.  A different kind of hunger lingered there and she suddenly leaned into me and kissed me. 

It was an incredible kiss, at least it seemed that way.  I had nothing to compare it to.  She pulled back abruptly, looking slightly flustered, maybe a little embarassed and very sexy.  I could taste her lip gloss—cherry.

She didn’t say anything for a moment, but she finally shook her head a little, as if to answer an internal question that I couldn’t hear.  “That was wrong of me Chris.  I shouldn’t have done that.  I
will not
use your memory to my advantage.”

“Are we…  have we…?” I didn’t know how to finish. 

“No, not yet.  But I have wanted to kiss you for the longest time.   You deserve to know what has happened over the last two years, so sit back, eat and I’ll explain.