Duel Nature (7 page)

Tanya had her laptop out, hooking it to a
satellite phone for security. Once we were inside and eating our
very rare porterhouse steaks, she proceeded to set up for a
conference call. First she suspended a fine metal mesh netting from
the ceiling, dropping it over us like a big steel mosquito net. She
grounded it to the room’s heating and cooling unit, then turned on
the laptop. The netting acted as a Faraday cage and the attached
battery powered unit gave it a field that would prevent our
electronic signals from escaping, at least in theory. The huge
budget of the NSA, National Security Agency or ‘No Such Agency’ as
it was once called, ensured that electronic privacy was an
endangered, if not impossible, concept.

The Skype call went straight through to the
Citadel, the Coven’s buried fortress of a headquarters that lurks
under New York City. Built in tunnels, old and new, the Citadel is
so interwoven with the Big Apple’s structure, including Wall
Street, that any attack would threaten the City’s
infrastructure.

A female human’s face filled the laptop’s
screen, her manner brusque as she passed the call higher up the
food chain. I didn’t remember her name but her face was familiar,
she was one of the regular communication experts that handled our
calls.

Lydia appeared next, seated next to Tanya’s
grandmother, Elder Senka. Galina Demidova, Tanya’s mother was on
Senka’s other side. Further behind them, manning a complex computer
terminal was my friend Chet Aikens, whose technical abilities had
made him extremely valuable to the Coven.

“Quite a mess,” Senka said by way of
greeting. Her tone was deceptively droll. Anyone who didn’t know
her might bristle at her words, which would be a bad impulse to
give in to. First, disrespecting her in any way could easily be
lethal; second, if you knew her you understood her tone to be a
cover for anger at anything that threatened her family.

“What’s the damage?” Tanya asked.

“We passed a friendly tip to DHS, who took
charge of the scene. Your hasty clean up left a lot of blood behind
but it was so diluted and contaminated with lake water that it will
be useless as evidence. General Creek’s people were able to cover
up any other evidence that was left and impounded the weasels’
van,” Lydia reported. “Insurance will cover the ship’s damage as
well as payoff the passengers whose cars got beat up,” Lydia
reported.

“It was Langsford!,” I said.

“Most likely, Christian, but we need
something concrete if we are to accuse him,” Senka said, dark brown
eyes glittering.

“We’ve got ears out,” Galina said, “Someone
will eventually talk about it and we’ll know who was behind it. In
the meanwhile, you’re both okay?”

“We are fine Mother. There were only six of
them. It was hardly a workout,” Tanya said, matter-of-fact.

“Don’t get cocky, Tanya. Six is twice the
size of the normal kill team that weasels hire out,” Senka
admonished.

Tanya glanced at me, then turned back to the
laptop. “I did not mean to imply condescension, Grandmother, but it
was not at all difficult,” she said. “When we are linked in combat
it is as if we fight with the same mind, but two bodies.”

“How do you achieve this level of bonding?”
Senka asked, a slight incline of her torso indicating extreme
interest.

“It just happens…automatically,” Tanya said
with an exquisite shrug.

“It ramps up as the danger level increases,”
I threw in. Senka gave me a little wave that obviously indicated I
should expand my comment.

“When we first smelled weasel, the bond
instantly jumped to a higher level, but not quite full on. Then we
saw them, they ran, and we were just suddenly operating as one unit
in two different bodies.”

A small nod was Senka’s only reaction as she
leaned back. I was learning to read her miniscule body language and
I could tell she was fascinated. Above and beyond her protective
instincts for one of her line, her interest in the two of us knew
no bounds. She had always considered her granddaughter to be a
vital part of the future of the Darkkin race, but I added a whole
other dimension to the puzzle.

Lydia watched Senka to be sure she was done
for the moment, then spoke. “We’re sending a couple of Guardian
teams to back track your trail and see what they can shake out. But
we want you to continue with your next assignment which will move
you further away from Chicago,” the tiny vampire said. “You’re
going north into the Upper Peninsula.”

Chapter 8

Michigan’s Upper Pennisula or U.P. as the
locals call it has well over 16,000 miles of heavily forested
terrain. At one time it was one of the largest copper mining
regions in the world, but that died out with the end of the 1800’s.
Logging is now the major industry although tourism has gained a
foothold in the beautiful wilderness.

We had been driving for hours along Route 94,
through what seemed at times to be uninhabited forest. Our mission
was to follow up on a series of eyewitness reports that had popped
up on the internet and caught the attention of the Coven’s powerful
computers. I hadn’t believed my ears when Lydia had told us we were
to track down the elusive Dogman of Michigan. I thought back to
that conversation in the motel room, draped under metal mesh.

“Ah, what?” I had asked, stunned at her words
which had taken a few seconds to penetrate. Then I continued on.
“You want us to chase down a folktale?” I asked.

“Most folktales and folklore
have some germ of truth somewhere in them,” Galina answered.
“Michigan’s vast wilderness is highly popular with the werewolf
crowd and a few sightings of the real deal over the years have
resulted in
some
of
the Dogman stories. We know the source of most of those, but what
has our attention this time is a new set of very credible accounts,
complete with video, that showed up on a cryptozoological
website.”

“Don’t the local Packs take care of this kind
of thing?” Tanya asked.

“Normally, yes, but in this case the reports
come from the western part of the U.P., specifically a resort in
the Hiawatha National forest. That region is off limits to all the
Packs and they won’t or can’t investigate. In fact, the local
council of Alphas requested help from the Coven, not realizing we
were already interested,” Lydia answered.

“Why is it off limits?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” Senka replied with a
sardonic grin. “Absolutely none of our were contacts will discuss
it.”

“Oooh, a mystery,” Tanya said in sudden
understanding.

Even those of us on the other side of the
curtain of mystery that covers the supernatural world don’t have
all the answers. In my case, I don’t have many answers at all, I’m
still learning the ropes of this strange reality that exists
alongside the normal human experience.

Information is power and the Coven excels at
collecting and managing information, so anything that could have
this big an impact on the werewolf packs of Michigan demanded
investigation.

“So what’s different about the Hiawatha
forest?” I asked.

“That’s the billion dollar question,” Senka
said. “The weres have their own legends and history. We’ve picked
up hints from time to time of some individuals who have lived as
weres for much greater spans of time than the rest of the
species.”

“You mean there are
Elder
werewolves?” I
asked. Generally, barring death by violence, weres could live to be
200- 300 years old, but unlike vampires, they did, eventually, die
of old age.

“Possibly something like that,” she replied.
“Maybe even approaching the age of an Elder vampire. It’s an area
that I have interest in, so I keep some of my Guardians out looking
for details.”

I glanced at Lydia who was frozen solid, no
expression on her pixie-like face. Lydia dated mostly weres, which
I had always believed to be her personal choice. Now I wondered if
this cross species romancing was at the direction of Senka.

“The U.P. has a history of
werewolf sightings that date back to early interactions with French
fur trappers and the local natives
. Loup
Garou
and that sort of thing,” Galina
supplied.

Lydia spoke, “Although the Algonquian tribes
that lived in that region didn’t seem to have any folktales of
werewolves. They did, however, have their own monsters.”

***

My thoughts returned to the here and now as I
drove up Route 94, heading northwest toward the town of Munising,
which sits on the southern shore of Lake Superior. Despite the odd
nature of our mission and the large number of unknowns, not to
mention the recent assassination attempt, I was relaxed. The sun
was just coming up, both Tanya and Awasos were sleeping and the
wooded terrain I was driving through was so much like my home in
upstate New York that I had to keep remembering I was in Michigan.
The hardwood forest was sprouting the new green leaves of May, the
maple and beech leaves unfurling and beginning to cover the
recently bare limbs of their trees. Mixed in among the leafing
trees were white and red pines, cedars and tamaracks, and
occasionally I caught the scent of balsam on the breeze blowing
through my partially opened window.

I usually drive to music, but the forest
seemed to demand silent appreciation, so I kept the stereo off,
pondering what mystery could keep werewolves from a pristine forest
like this one.

We were heading to a resort lodge
twenty-three miles south of Munising oddly named Copper Top Cabins.
Two eyewitness accounts of the famous Dogman had popped up from
separate people who stayed at or near the resort within the last
month. The sightings were detailed on a website and blog dedicated
to mysteries of Michigan. No newspaper articles or police reports
existed to corroborate the reports but the three nights of the full
moon had fallen during the time the sightings were purported to
occur.

Details from one report to the other closely
matched each other and accurately described true werewolf features.
In both cases, the witnesses saw a giant wolf-like creature, not a
wolf-man hybrid. Most werewolves could, with time, learn to stop
their transformation in the beast-man(woman) state, but the more
common form was very similar to a timber wolf, although about two
or three times larger.

Both described dark brown coloration, jaws
and musculature that seemed excessive even for a giant wolf and an
extremely rapid rate of movement. No one had been attacked which
lent even more support to the werewolf theory as killing and eating
humans is severely frowned on by the werewolf society.

The one set of witnesses that stayed at the
resort had reported the sighting to the cabins owners, getting
almost no reaction in the process. The other witness had been
camping nearby and rushed back to his vehicle for safety. On his
way out of the forest he stopped at the Copper Top to warn the
inhabitants and reported being met with disbelief and ridicule. I
was interested to meet the folks who ran the place.

Lydia had set up a reservation for one of the
five cabins, three of which were already full. The resort also had
a main lodge with eight rooms for rent. Each cabin had a small
efficiency kitchen, so I bought lots of groceries when we got to
Munising, then gassed up the Tahoe before heading south on the
National Forest Development Road number 13. We pulled into the
resort just before noon, Awasos and I getting out of the SUV,
letting Tanya stay semi-comatose in the back seat.

A squat two-story wood and timber lodge stood
at the end of the dirt and gravel driveway, with two of the five
cabins visible just back and to the left of it. A dirt road circled
out from the better graveled, main driveway, heading past each of
the cabins and on behind the lodge where I presumed the rest of the
cabins were hidden.

“Holy shit!” a voice proclaimed from behind
me. Both Awasos and I whipped around to find a very tall,
middle-aged blond man staring at us from the center of a mound of
firewood, splitting ax clutched in his big hands like a weapon. He
stared at Awasos in a mixture of undisguised fear and interest.

“Oh, don't worry!” I said, “He won't hurt
anyone. He's just big is all.”

The Viking-looking guy glanced at me once
before turning his gaze back to Awasos who immediately came over
and sat by my legs, letting his big tongue loll out of his mouth
like all friendly dogs do.

“Big? My feet are big! That, my friend, is
huge!” he said, his voice deep to match his size.

“I'm Chris Gordon. My wife and I have a
reservation for one of your cabins. This is Awasos,” I said.

“Welcome Chris Gordon and Awasos. I'm Garth
Boklund. My wife, Quinby and I run this place or like to think we
do. Actually, it runs us.” he said as he approached his voice. Up
close I judged him at six-three or six-four, probably 230 or more
in weight. His big mitt swallowed mine and squeezed.

A lot of big men will have gentle handshakes,
like they have less to prove. Garth's wasn't gentle. He squeezed
hard, or at least what I would have considered hard several years
ago. I squeezed back, a bit.

His face went white and his eyes widened,
then after a second or two he caved, quickly clapping his other
hand over mine in a non-verbal surrender.

“Well Chris Gordon, you've got a hell of a
grip! Not to mention an oversized dog with wolf in his bloodline if
I don't miss my guess. Say, where's your wife?” he asked, trying to
see into the Tahoe's super tinted windows.

“
She's sleeping in the back.
She was up all night driving. I’ll just get us checked in then I'll
wake her over at the cabin.”

The door behind the driver’s opened on the
SUV and Tanya appeared, one hand covering a yawn. That hand hid her
fangs from view which was good, but from the look on Garth’s face I
don’t think it would have mattered if they were in full view.