Duel Nature (12 page)

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, nor 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.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s one thing for me to
tweak you about other males, because I have Chosen. But you
know
how I feel about
other girls!” she said. “And you always, always play down how
attractive you are to them!”

She was pissed. Even I could figure that out.
Despite my internal link to her I still struggled with relationship
stuff.

“I think it’s stupid that the V-squared
suddenly made me stand out. I spent my whole life being ignored by
women and now, suddenly, I’m like a big target,” I tried to
explain.

“Do you know how much most men would love to
be in your position?” she asked, her voice still dangerously
quiet.

“I have never been, nor will I ever be, like
most men. Most men didn’t grow up with demon crosshairs on the
forehead of anyone who got near them. I was happy to stay
unnoticed,” I said, which wasn’t fully the truth but close to it.
Who wants to be ignored? But long ago I had made a sorta peace with
the concept of not drawing demonic attention to anyone I thought I
could like.

“This change in my appearance is artificial,
created by the virus,” I said, dismissively.

She snorted. “More artificial than fake
boobs, liposuction, makeup or even clothes that flatter the
physique? Yours are at least skin deep,” she said.

“So what’s our next step?” I asked, changing
the topic.

She frowned and wagged one finger at me,
letting me know she wasn’t fooled. Still, she went with me. “I
think, now that it’s fully dark out, that we three should keep
watch around the perimeter of the resort to see what shows up. My
inclination is that we stay inside the circle of talismans,” she
said.

I looked at her sharply.
“Really? Inside? What did this thing smell like again?” I asked,
concerned by something that made
her
want to play it safe.

“It’s tough to say. Some supernatural that I
haven’t come across yet. Maybe human at one time but now……not so
much.”
“You said it smelled wild?”

“Hmmm, probably not the right word. It
smelled bad, like rotted flesh and rotten eggs, mixed with forest
loam and pine needles,” she explained, frustrated with trying to
put words to a scent.

One of the hardest changes for me to learn to
handle was the increased ability to smell. Tanya had grown up with
it, but I was still trying to learn to sort through the vast miasma
of scents that constantly bombarded my now sensitive sniffer.
Honestly, I don’t know how dogs deal with it. One part of her
description worried me in particular.

“Wait, rotten eggs?” I asked.

“Yeah, it was definitely mixed in,” she
said.

“Rotten egg smell comes from sulfur,” I
said.

“I get it. Sulfur and brimstone, as in
demons?” she clarified.

“Yup, there’s always a nasty sulfur smell
whenever I’ve messed with demons.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see about this
time,” she said.

Chapter 14

A couple of hours later found the three of us
spread out around the resort, waiting in the dark. We ideally
should have formed a kind of triangle, each at a roughly
equidistant point from the other two, covering as much of the
circle that was formed by the little talismans as possible. But the
pond blocked a big portion of the territory. A path circled the
pond along its shoreline and the talismans on that part of the
perimeter were just off the path. So we decided to ignore the
quarter or so of the arc blocked by the pond and concentrated on
the rest of the circle.

Tanya was farthest from me
in the woods behind cabin one. Awasos was across the main road
where it met the driveway directly out from the lodge. I was out
past empty cabin five watching the woods that were closest to
cabins three, four and five. I could
feel
where Tanya was and even get a
little flavor of what she was sensing. Awasos was between us and
even though he moved ghost quiet I could tell roughly where he was.
Something like a stereo effect of my vampire’s senses coming
through our link and my own. Plus all the little animals and
insects were quiet in a ten foot radius from where he lay stretched
out in the pine needles. The little vacuum of silence radiated in
the mental map laid out in my head, lit up like a computer
grid.

Tanya was alert, her mind in predator mode.
The woods looked bright, lit by the mostly full moon, making it
look like daylight to my changed eyes. The smaller denizens of the
forest were busy gathering food; chipmunks, mice, voles and shrews,
all scurrying through the leaf litter alert for things to eat while
trying to avoid being eaten. A barred owl and her mate hunted
seventy-five yards to my right, while a small weasel stalked a deer
mouse ten yards directly in front of my sitting log.

Part of me automatically tracked the little
life and death struggles around me, while another part worked on
the odd mix of people that inhabited the resort. Garth seemed
straight forward enough, while his wife, Quinby, was a complicated
enigma. The twins were normal, bored teenage girls, if you ignored
their ability to throw magic around. Britta was quiet and deep,
those were the ones my mother said to watch out for. Her sister was
brassy and adventurous, what you saw was what you got.

Cleveland was a small minded asshole, mad at
the world and frustrated with a life that didn’t live up to his
high school years. His wife carried herself with the pained
expression of the oppressed; someone trapped in a dead end
marriage. Billy was, as far as I could tell, a good enough kid
being raised by an asshole father.

The professors were an odd
couple. Closet cryptozoologists who were open about their gay
lifestyle but nervous about their monster hunting hobby.
They
seemed
open
and nice, but something about them wasn’t quite right.

The brothers Anderson were a surprising find
and the most likely answer to the mystery of the Dogman. But Jake
being a sane rogue was a statistical anomaly, one that added to all
the other anomalies of the resort. Finding three Swedish witches
living deep in the Michigan forest with a sane werewolf rogue
surrounded by a perimeter of protective talisman while a monster
hunting gay duo looked for evidence practically begged for me to
play the lotto with all their cabin numbers or something.

The fucked up Cleveland family was the most
normal part of the whole Scooby doo adventure. Then I realized
something else; the odd tug of recognition I had experienced when I
saw the dude in the woodpile cleared itself in my mind. It was the
simple fact that his facial features reminded me of my friends
among the Mohawk people back home. No great mystery as Michigan was
home to many Native peoples.

The watchful part of my brain suddenly poked
the thoughtful part. The woods around me had gone dead quiet. Every
little animal and bird had frozen in place, too terrified to move.
Then the stench hit me, hard enough to make my eyes water. Carrion,
rotten eggs and a shitty sewer smell all rolled into one delightful
bouquet of vomit inducing proportions.

Grim roiled inside me, ready
to pop free and take charge. Tanya tells me that my purple eyes
flash dark violet when that part of me peeks out. The wind which
had been blowing gently from the northwest suddenly kicked up a
notch, bringing more of the miasma of rotting meat and crap my way.
It died back down as quickly as it had started, and I realized it
wasn’t the wind but the passage of something large moving
incredibly fast. And I
knew
without a doubt, that that something was now less
than thirty feet away, on the other side of a large maple
tree.
It
was
standing there, sensing, reading the forest around it. One of the
Boklund witchy talismans was fastened to that very tree, right
about where the thing was standing.

A scratching sounded on the
far side of the tree, just a little
etch-etch
of a sound, like a very
sharp talon lightly tearing at bark. Just about where the talisman
was tied up.
It
was
poking at the little stick figure posted sign, like a thief trying
to pick a lock.