Chapter 1

  

The first ring of the phone brought him wide awake. Michael Biörn lifted his three hundred pounds of muscle, sinew and bone from the comfortable armchair in which he had been dozing off by the fireplace and dragged his 6’4’’ frame to the kitchen. The cabin wasn’t big enough to require more than one phone and since the jack was already in the kitchen at the time the cabin had been assigned to him, he hadn’t bothered moving it to a different room. He had never been a fan of electrical work and the kitchen was as good of a place as any for a phone.

The stars shining in the clear September night sky of Yellowstone National Park didn’t provide much light in the room, but he didn’t need much light to find the phone.

Michael lived in the middle of the park, in an isolated cabin near Canyon Village. Most park employees lived by the North entrance, but Michael sought more isolation. Seclusion was in his nature, the nature of his beast. He would have loved to just get rid of this damn phone, but the park services needed a way to get in touch with him other than knocking on his door. Since radios tended to be unreliable in mountainous regions, Michael had finally agreed to have a phone at home. He had stood his ground, however, when a few years later his boss had tried to hand him a cell phone. Today, he was one of probably three American adults who did not have one.

As he grabbed the receiver, Michael lifted his hazel eyes towards the small cuckoo clock hanging above the cabin front door. Nine o’clock, not a good sign. Nobody ever called him this late with good news.

“Hello?”

“Good evening, Michael,” answered the voice of Bill Thomason, his boss. As expected, the man sounded troubled. After the usual apologies for calling late and bothering his employee at home, Bill finally came to the point of his call. “We have a couple of hikers missing. A boy and a girl.”

“How long?” Michael enquired while his fingers attempted to tame the unruly waves of his brown hair.

“Two days. They came to backpack for Labor Day weekend, but they were supposed to head home on Monday. The mother of the girl called us. She was worried something had happened to them.”

“How old?”

“Early twenties, college kids.”

“Has the mom called the highway patrol? Maybe they crashed on their way home.”

“She called everyone under the sun. We were the last ones she thought of contacting.”

“Maybe they took a detour and are having a good time in Vegas… college kids will do that!” argued Michael, knowing all along that he would still need to get his butt out of the house and go looking for those kids.

“It’s possible, but she’s convinced otherwise. At any rate, we need to check it out,” replied Thomason.

“Fine,” conceded Michael. “Where are we going?”

“Pebble Creek campground. Meet me there in an hour.”

 

Chapter 2

The Alpha was getting worried. Jack, the wolf he had sent for the assignment, had not reported back to him for debriefing, and that couldn’t be a good omen. He flipped once more through the 153 channels available to choose from, but only to confirm there truly was nothing worth watching this late in the night.

Like all Alphas, he was a man of action, something that came with the territory. You didn’t become Alpha by being quiet or accommodating, but by fighting your way to the top of the pack. Lately, however, he had been forced to rely on others to do the heavy lifting, and this passivity was making him increasingly restless.

Maybe he could take care of the next project himself… that would relax him a little.

His phone finally chimed, indicating the arrival of a text message. He looked at the screen and felt relieved. It was from Jack:

Job done, but ran into problems.

Need to talk ASAP regarding damage control.

The Alpha thought for a second before replying:

Meet me at the arboretum in 2 hours. Be presentable!

The arboretum was within Memorial Park, and he knew from experience that this part of Houston would be practically deserted this late in the night.

 

Chapter 3

Michael Biörn saw Bill Thomason’s truck parked in the Pebble Creek trailhead parking lot and rolled to a stop next to it. With the exception of a beat-up Ford Fiesta parked on the other side of Bill’s truck, the lot was empty.

The two men came out of their trucks at the same time, each holding a backpack. Bill was in his mid-fifties and had only ten years on Michael, but his gray hair and slumped posture made him look older. His short cropped beard was barely longer than the other man’s day-old stubble, but Michael’s hair tended to grow significantly faster than average.

“Is that their car?” enquired Michael, his breath visible in the already cool September air.

“Yep! That’s the license plate listed on their backcountry permit. They were supposed to go up Pebble Creek Trail and spend the first night at campsite 3P3. Then they were to head down Slough Creek, spend the second night at 2S1 and continue down Slough Creek Trail back to civilization the next day.”

“That’s over twenty miles,” remarked Michael. “You’re planning on searching all that tonight?”

“I have a group heading up from the Slough Creek trailhead with satellite radios; they’ll let us know if they find them before we do.”

In addition to the standard issued weapon, a Sig P239, 9 mm, each ranger carried an aerosol can of bear spray holstered on his belt. Bill was also carrying a rifle on his back, which could come in handy in case their worst fear came to be realized.

There were two types of park rangers. The friendly ones, found in visitor centers, were paid to answer tourists’ questions and take them on backcountry hikes. The law-enforcement ones, on the other hand, made sure the aforementioned tourists behaved themselves while in the park, and only had to be friendly towards them if they felt like it. Both Michael and Bill belonged to the second category.

For the type of rescue mission Bill and Michael were about to undertake, a backcountry ranger would usually have been part of the group. Backcountry rangers typically knew the backwoods of Yellowstone better than their law-enforcing counterparts, but Michael was an exception to that rule. He had spent more time alone in the backcountry of Yellowstone than anyone else alive, and everyone working in the park knew it.

Hiking the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park meant being about as remote from civilization as one could possibly be while still within the lower forty-eight states. Cell phones didn’t work for the most part, and, depending on where your hike took you, you could be as far as a day’s march away from the closest road.

All backcountry campsites in Yellowstone were isolated and far enough away from the trail that they were essentially invisible to hikers not knowing their locations. Michael knew exactly where he was going, though, and Bill followed in his footsteps.

It took them a little over three hours to reach the vicinity of the primitive campsite where the young couple was supposed to have spent the first night, but Michael had known long before reaching the site that something had gone terribly wrong. He had picked up the smell of blood when they were still half a mile away. Blood and something else, a scent he had recognized only too well: grizzly bear. Of course, he hadn’t mentioned the smell to Bill; it would have raised questions Michael didn’t want to answer. Both men were advancing with headlamps on their foreheads, although only one of them truly needed it. Michael could see about as well at night as he did in the daylight, but he had to maintain appearances.

They took the side path that parted from the main trail and led to the campsite. Michael stopped as soon as the path opened onto the forest clearing where the site was located and gestured for Bill to be quiet and turn off his headlamp.

It was the night of the new moon, and only the stars illuminated the macabre scene. A couple hundred feet in front of them were the remnants of a two-person tent, which had been flattened and shredded to pieces. The barely recognizable shape of a dismembered human body was lying a few feet from the tent.

Bill would have probably walked straight to the body if Michael hadn’t held him back by the sleeve, while pointing at the dark shape crouched on the ground under the trees lining the clearing.

“You think that’s the bear?” asked Bill in the lowest voice he could manage.

But Michael didn’t have to guess; he knew. The smell was coming straight from the dark shape.

“I do,” he replied simply.

With extreme caution, Bill deposited his backpack on the ground and, using the rifle’s night scope, took aim at the dark shape. He quickly confirmed what Michael already knew.

“It’s a grizz. I’d say around four hundred pounds… looks like it’s sleeping.”

Even though he resented it more than anyone could ever imagine, Michael knew what had to be done. A bear that had killed a human could not be allowed to live. But he sure wasn’t going to be the one shooting it!

Suddenly, the wind turned and the grizzly picked up their scent. It awakened and rose. Bill fired twice in rapid succession, placing two bullets in the animal’s heart.

As they reached the hiker’s mutilated body, Michael picked up a scent he had not noticed at first. The odor had been masked by the stench emanating from the days-old corpse, but it was undeniably there. A more subtle fragrance… fear. Relying on his nose for the general direction, he started searching the thick evergreen canopy that spread all around the campground and quickly identified the origin of the odor. Perched in a nearby tree, about fifteen feet from the ground, was a white human shape. A female from what his nose could tell.

 

Chapter 4

Detective David Starks and Lieutenant Steve Harrington were digging into their breakfast burritos at the local Taco Cabana when the call came in through the radio. After swearing profusely at the bad timing, the two cops asked for a couple of doggy bags and were on their way.

When they arrived at the address given by the dispatcher, a coroner’s van was parked in the driveway and a couple of officers in uniform were making sure none of the curious neighbors ventured inside the house. In addition to the two or three Houston PD cruisers parked in front of the house, numerous Harris County Sheriff Department vehicles blocked all access to the street.

“Why is the Sheriff Department involved in this?” Harrington asked the officer guarding the front door.

“The victim was Chief Deputy Mark Sullivan, from the Harris County Sheriff Department.”

Harrington’s eyes met David Starks’ and he knew his old partner was thinking the same thing he was—another cop!

Harrington looked tired at this moment, although it was difficult to tell for certain whether fatigue or concern was more responsible for the lines on his closely shaven face. Naturally, the somewhat slumped shoulders and slightly protuberant stomach weren’t the artifacts of a man in his prime, but the lieutenant was nearing fifty, and was past his prime. Standing beside Starks didn’t help his case either. Starks, in his early thirties and weighing a hair over 200 pounds on a 6’2’’ frame, looked more like a model than a cop. Although his golden complexion, deep blue eyes and semi-short blond hair played their part, his charisma alone sufficed to explain his popularity among women.

“Let’s go have a look,” he said as he walked through the door and passed a score of police officers, sheriff deputies and coroner’s staff all busy doing something.

The scene in the living room, however, was not what they had expected. Over the past year, several high-ranking police officers had been murdered, most of them execution-style, but this one looked different.

For one thing, the amount of blood soaking the living room carpet was astonishing. How could so much blood have come from a single body? The riddle was partially answered when the detectives realized that some of the blood belonged to the dead Rottweilers whose bodies had been shredded and the pieces scattered across the room.

“Are these Sullivan’s dogs?” Starks asked one of the deputies.

“Yes. Chief always liked attack dogs.”

“It looks like these found their match,” noted Harrington more to himself than for anyone’s benefit.

Sullivan’s body was not in much better shape than his dogs’, but at least he was mostly in one piece. A large chunk of his throat had been torn away, which would make the medical examiner’s job easy when the time came to determine the cause of death. The air conditioning inside the house had done a good job preserving the bodies; the air was slightly tainted but still breathable.

“What happened?” asked Starks. “Did his dogs kill him before turning on each other?”

“It’s doubtful,” answered the deputy. “If you look at the carpet, there’s a set of tracks that can’t belong to either dog. They’re way too big.”

Harrington and Starks walked over to the bloody paw prints indicated by the deputy and had to agree with the man’s assessment.

“What in heaven’s name could have left a track this size?” asked Starks bewilderedly. “A lion?!”

“I don’t have the faintest clue,” replied his friend and colleague. “But I know someone who might.”

 

Chapter 5

Chief Deputy Sullivan’s body had been discovered at 8 a.m. by his cleaning lady. The woman had instantly called 911 and Deputy Sheriff Max Zelwager had been one of the first officers to arrive on the scene. He had immediately noticed the paw prints all over the carpet, and recognized them for what they were. The smell, too, was unmistakable.

For an instant he had clung to the hope that nobody else would notice them, but it had, of course, been wishful thinking. Tracks like those were bound to be noticed.

He had still been at the murder scene when the two city cops had arrived and had started talking about bringing an expert to identify the tracks. Zelwager had diligently memorized their names: Starks and Harrington. The Alpha would definitely be interested by what he had learned.

His patrol car was too visible and he decided to drop it off at the Sheriff’s office on Eastex freeway where his personal vehicle was parked. Once behind the wheel of his 2009 Mustang, he started heading north towards Sam Houston National Forest. The Houston pack Alpha lived in a house in the middle of the forest, which was as secluded as one was going to find around the fourth largest city in the country.

Zelwager wasn’t aware of any hit ordered against the chief deputy, but even if there had been one, he probably wouldn’t have been told. He was an omega wolf, and omegas were seldom told anything.

 

Chapter 6

Michael had been in bed less than an hour when the phone rang.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” he muttered to himself.

The rescue mission had taken most of the night. The young woman had been half dead from starvation and dehydration when Michael had found her hidden in a tree. Given the circumstances, she had been very lucky. With the exception of bruises and scratches received from branches while climbing up the tree, she was mostly unscathed. Unlike black bears, adult grizzlies couldn’t climb trees, and this fact had saved her life.

All they had learned from her before she had passed out in Michael’s arms was that the bear had attacked them in the middle of the night four days earlier. She had been hiding in the tree ever since. Without food or water, it was a miracle she had survived. Her boyfriend hadn’t been so lucky. The bear had fed on his corpse every day since the attack, and there really wasn’t much left of the kid to bury.

The chopper dispatched to retrieve the young man’s body had brought a medical team to take care of the girlfriend. Once the medics had put her on IV fluids, her condition had improved fairly quickly. Within a couple of hours she had awoken and started giving more details about their nightmarish experience.

Soggy from rain, they had made it to their campsite late on Saturday night. After setting up the tent, neither had had much appetite and they had decided to just go to bed. She knew the basic rules to follow when camping in bear country, and she had asked her boyfriend to pull their food up a high branch out of reach of bears. “Bears don’t like rain either, they won’t bother us,” had been his reply. The grizzly had proven him very wrong.

“You’d better have a really good reason for waking me up, Bill,” Michael growled as he answered the phone.

“Good morning, Michael. It’s good to hear your voice too. Had I known you’d turned into a lazy-ass son of a bitch who doesn’t get up before noon, I’d have waited for the afternoon to call you,” replied Steve Harrington on the other end of the line.

“Steve?! Is that you?”

“Who else would dare talk to you this way, old fart?”

“I guess it is you. Well, sorry for the greeting, but I had a busy night and just got to bed.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?” enquired Steve.

“Depends if you consider a twenty-year-old kid ending up in a grizzly’s stomach serious or not, I guess. Not to mention his half-starved, traumatized-for-life girlfriend,” replied Michael, using his most subtly sarcastic tone. “But enough about me. To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”

“I’m working a homicide down here in Texas, and I could use your help.”

“We’re talking about a coyote homicide and you think the local game warden isn’t qualified to apprehend the poachers?”

“No, we’re talking about a cop and his two Rottweilers torn to pieces by something that leaves tracks the size of a frying pan,” answered Steve in a stoic voice.

“I see…”

There was a pause in the discussion while Michael assessed the possible implications of his friend’s revelation. After a few seconds he resumed:

“And you think whatever left those tracks is not… natural?”

“Well, if I knew I wouldn’t be calling you. You’re the expert in unnatural things!”

“I prefer the term praeternatural, but I get your point. What do you want me to do?”

“I’d like you to come down here and give your expert opinion. I talked to my Captain about this and you’ll be reimbursed for your plane tickets and lodging expenses. You’ll still have to pay for your food though. We don’t have the FBI’s budget.”

“What kind of cheap-ass outfit do you work for?” Michael didn’t wait for an answer; he had already made up his mind to go to Houston. If those paw prints were truly as big as described, Steve would definitely need his help.

“OK. I need to make a few arrangements here, and I’ll be on my way. I’ll let you know my flight number, and you can pick me up at the airport.”

 

Chapter 7

The Alpha sat quietly as Jack told him what had taken place at the chief deputy’s house. He asked a few questions which Jack nervously answered before being dismissed. Once alone, the Alpha stared blankly across the empty room, assimilating what he had been told. What had gone wrong, if anything? What action had to be taken, if any? He was the Alpha, the undisputed leader of the pack, the general. He could not let this pass without careful review and an assessment of the potential fallout. If damage control was required he would need a plan for it.

The unnaturally large paw prints on the carpet had been noticed. An expert was being brought in who would surely identify the prints as well as the mayhem. Those two factors would indisputably lay the blame on a wolf: a very large wolf.

For the police to announce the presence of a 250-pound wolf in downtown Houston without an explanation or a logical plan for its capture, would no doubt cause embarrassment for them and a field day for the press. They were going to play this one close.

Wolves, for all practical purpose, had been eradicated from Texas in the first part of the twentieth century. In addition, wolves in excess of two hundred pounds could not be found anywhere in the world. The largest wolf on record had been shot dead in northwestern Bulgaria in 2007 and had weighed a hair under one hundred and eighty pounds. Moreover, instances of wolf attacks on humans were scarce, far apart, and none had ever occurred inside someone’s home in the presence of two attack dogs.

Jack’s misstep, if there was one, was not only placing the entire operation in jeopardy, it threatened the survival of the whole pack. On the other hand, Jack could hardly be blamed for having committed an error. Most wolves placed in his position would have reacted in the exact same way. Staying in control of one’s wolf in the heat of battle was a difficult thing to do under normal circumstances. Staying in control of one’s wolf in the heat of battle when the opponents were attack dogs was nearly impossible… especially for an omega! And Jack was an omega.

If only he had cleaned up the mess instead of leaving it behind for the cops to find and stick their noses where they didn’t belong. An involuntary morphing was not something a werewolf could reverse of his own will, however, and the Alpha knew it all too well. Time was the only remedy, and it could sometimes take days for a werewolf to morph back into its human form.

Under the circumstances Jack had done the right thing by leaving the house as soon as possible while he could still benefit from the cover of darkness. A 250-pound wolf roaming Houston residential areas in broad daylight was the sort of advertisement the pack did not need.

After pondering all the factors, the Alpha convinced himself that Jack couldn’t have done anything differently and consequently was not responsible for the mess he had created. Therefore the omega would be allowed to live. A good thing! An Alpha always despised having to kill his own wolves.

 

Chapter 8

Steve Harrington’s black Honda Accord was racing through the streets of Houston. The vehicle still had the new car smell Michel Biörn loathed so much.

“Did you just pick it up at a dealership on your way to the airport?” asked Michael, irritated.

“No, actually I’ve had it for six months. Maybe your nose is a tad too sensitive,” replied Steve scornfully.

Michael did not respond to his friend’s provocation; he just wasn’t in the mood for their typical verbal jousts. Spending most of the day in airports and planes designed for people half his size had not left him in a cheerful disposition.

“As a matter of fact, this is the first new car I’ve ever bought. I got it to celebrate my promotion.”

“Promotion?” asked Michael, suddenly interested.

“Yes, Sir! I’ll have you know that you’re riding with a Lieutenant, so it’s time to show some respect,” replied Steve in the snootiest tone he could manage.

“My mistake, Lieutenant. I just hadn’t realized one got promoted for sleeping on the job down here in Texas. Took you long enough though. You were Detective for what… forty, fifty years?”

In reality, Steve was in his mid-forties, just like Michael. The difference between the two was that Michael had been in his forties for over a thousand years.

 

Chapter 9

Danko Jovanovich, aka The Serb, was finishing a plate of Peking duck in one of the fanciest Chinese restaurants in the city. The size of his gut was a clear indicator the man had never skipped a meal in his life. A pair of chopsticks lay discarded a few inches from his plate; eating with twigs was best left to savages. The Serb considered himself civilized and therefore ate with a fork, a tool he deftly used to engulf pieces of duck large enough to choke a hippo into the gaping pit of his mouth.

Danko was a smalltime bookie working for the Russian mob; after dabbling in all type of illegal activities, he had found his vocation in the world of illegal street fighting.

Underground street fighting had always existed, but its popularity had been relatively limited in the US until the arrival of the MMA tidal wave. MMA, or Mixed Martial Arts, was a combination of various fighting styles mixing up punches, kicks, wrestling, choking, and pretty much anything one could imagine. The style had initially been created to identify the best fighters, regardless of their fighting style. For this reason, the belligerents were to fight under a very loose set of rules that had initially allowed everything save for biting and eye gouging. However, as MMA grew in popularity and started attracting more and more spectators, the barbarity had to be cleaned out of the sport. Nowadays, MMA was following a complex set of rules intended to protect the fighters and as such had become just another fighting sport. The irony of the situation was lost on the overwhelming majority of fans, but the few who realized MMA fights had lost their sole purpose in life started actively seeking the thrills of the good old days. Illegal street fighting was the answer to their prayers.

In payment for his service, The Serb was entitled to pocket ten percent of the bets’ profits, which lately amounted to a cozy sum. Danko was greedy, though, and ten percent no longer satisfied him. As a bookie, he was in the best possible position to be creative with the accounting. Of late, however, he had been exceedingly creative. Thus far, there was no indication his employers had noticed anything amiss, and he intended to keep it that way. The Russians weren’t the forgiving type.

Danko placed forty bucks on the table, got up and exited the restaurant. The establishment, like most in Houston, was located in a strip mall. The closest parking spot he had found had been a hundred yards away, and he now had to walk the distance with a belly full of duck meat. He loathed exercising in general and walking in particular.

He was halfway to his car and already sweaty from the muggy evening heat when he realized he was being followed. He turned around quickly, in the same motion grabbing the gun holstered on his belt, but a hand trapped his wrist in a vice-like grip before he had a chance to draw the weapon. The hand belonged to a burly six-foot man with emaciated features. Next to him was another man, a bit shorter, but his eyes scared the living hell out of Danko. A predatory aura emanated from both men and The Serb picked up on it immediately.

“Good evening, The Serb. How was the duck?” asked the second man.

“G-goood…” replied Danko after a few seconds. Beads of sweat were now dripping from his forehead. “Who are you? And what do you want from me?”

“Relax! We’re basically colleagues! We too work for Dimitri Ivanov,” replied the first man with an all-but-friendly smile as he pulled Danko’s gun out of the holster. “And you won’t need this where we’re going.”

The shorter one grabbed Danko under the arm, and they started walking in the direction opposite to Danko’s car.

Danko did not know these men, but they couldn’t have screamed hitmen any more if the word assassin had been tattooed on their foreheads. The Serb knew beyond any doubt that getting in a car with them equaled a death sentence.

With the exception of an elderly couple, the parking lot was empty and nobody would come to his aid if he called for it. This was not a time for procrastination; this was a time for action. In a motion surprisingly quick for a man his size, Danko rotated his upper body and punched the goon holding his arm in the throat. The hitman’s trachea emitted a sinister cracking noise. As the man reflexively brought his hands to his throat, Danko immediately reached for the small caliber he always carried in an ankle holster, but the other man was faster. Before Danko could reach the gun, he was lifted off his feet and slammed headfirst onto the ground. Then everything went dark.

 

Chapter 10

Black-lettered yellow plastic tape reading “CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS” barred access to the driveway. Steve Harrington and Michael Biörn ducked under it and walked to the front door of Chief Deputy Sullivan’s house. The lieutenant pulled out a key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

The bitter-sweet smell of blood assaulted Michael’s nostrils as soon as he stepped through the door. It only took him a few more seconds to detect another, more subtle odor still lingering in the air… wolf.

Aside from being free of cops and missing a dead body, the house looked the same as it had when Steve had first seen it a day earlier. The Rottweilers’ bodies had not yet been removed and the smell of flesh in the early stages of decomposition tainted the air. The taupe living-room carpet was soaked with the victim’s blood, which had also splattered all over the cream-colored walls.

“So, what do you think?” asked Steve, while Michael was still trying to get a feeling for what had happened.

“I think the room’s a mess,” Michael mumbled, still assimilating the surrounding mayhem.

“Way to state the obvious, thank you very much. Anything more insightful?”

“Well, for one thing, this house stinks of wolf.”

“Wolf…” repeated Steve thoughtfully. “Now that’s interesting. Is it a wolf that left these paw prints?” He pointed at the biggest set of tracks on the carpet.

“Yes, no doubt about it,” answered Michael pensively, his thoughts racing through the implications of this discovery.

“So, nothing special about them? They just belong to a common wolf?” asked Steve hopefully.

“They do belong to a wolf, but they are definitely too big for a common wolf. The smell in the air is wrong too. The beast that left these tracks would weigh anywhere between two hundred fifty and three hundred pounds.” He turned to face Steve.  “A werewolf.”

The detective’s face turned green at the announcement. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked halfheartedly.

“Unfortunately, I am very serious.”

“But I thought you were the only one left out there? The only one of your kind?”

“As far as I know, I am the only one of my kind still alive. But I am not a werewolf, Steve. You of all people know that.” Steve’s face reflected his state of mind better than any discourse would have, and Michael felt sympathy for his friend. The lieutenant was neither prepared nor equipped to deal with these sorts of things.

“But you never said anything about werewolves! When you told me that there were others out there with special talents and that the less I knew the safer I’d be, I just took your word for it. But now a werewolf has killed a cop in his home, in the middle of the city. It’s time you tell me the whole story.”

Steve’s iPhone rang before Michael had a chance to respond. The lieutenant checked the caller ID and answered, “Dave, what’s up?”

“I’m at the restaurant. I’ve been waiting for you guys fifteen minutes already. That’s what’s up,” replied David Starks on the other end of the line.

“Shit! I hadn’t realized it was so late. We’re leaving Sullivan’s house right now. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

 

Chapter 11

The drive from Sullivan’s home to the restaurant where Detective Starks awaited them only took a few minutes. Not nearly enough time for Michael to answer even a tenth of his friend’s questions.

“Here we are,” announced Steve as he parked the car just in front of the restaurant.

“I’m not planning on discussing the existence of praeternatural beings roaming the planet in a restaurant in front of your friend,” warned Michael. “So you’ll have to be patient a couple more hours before you get your answers.”

“All right. But don’t think you’re off the hook,” replied Steve. “As soon as we’re back in the car, we’ll resume our little conversation.”

They walked to the hostess and asked for David Starks’ table. The detective was sitting at a booth near the bar, and he got up to greet them.

“David Starks,” he said in a cheerful tone as he extended a hand towards Michael. “And you must be Michael Biörn, wildlife specialist and Steve’s army buddy.”

Michael caught a glimmer in the detective’s eyes that made him feel uneasy. The man’s odor was strange as well. Difficult to identify for certain—which in itself was odd enough—but Michael perceived what seemed to be a very faint mixture of adrenaline, perspiration and excitement, with maybe an even more elusive touch of fear.

“How do you do?” said Michael as he shook the other man’s hand, his face an expressionless mask.

The three men took their seats and spent the next five minutes absorbed by the menu. When the waitress came to enquire about their selection, Michael ordered the biggest steak in the house, a 24-ounce T-bone, while Steve and David ordered steaks of a more manageable size.

David was the first to break the silence following the waitress’s departure. “So, what did you think of the crime scene, Michael?”

“It’s a bloody mess, that’s what I think,” he answered cautiously.

“Michael thinks the big paw prints belong to a wolf,” interjected Steve, shooting a glance at Michael.

But Michael wasn’t paying any attention to him. Using his peripheral vision while seemingly staring at the wall, he was busy observing David.

“Wolf… that’s interesting. Not too many wolves in Texas,” replied the detective. “I wonder where they found it.”

“Who’s they?” enquired Michael.

“We suspect the mob might be behind this, but we’re not too sure on that one,” offered Steve.

“A man and his two dogs are shredded to pieces by what appears to be a wolf, and the police suspect the mob?” asked Michael incredulously. “Could someone please explain to me how you reached that conclusion?”

“We have been working a case for a couple—”

The arrival of the order stopped Steve in mid-sentence. The waitress placed the plates in front of the guests and asked if they needed anything else. The three men answered they were fine and she took her leave.

The steak, though rare, was overcooked for Michael’s taste. This was usually the case, though. In the intimacy of his cabin, the ranger never bothered cooking his meat. In public, however, eating raw steak was frowned upon, and Michael could not afford to attract too much attention.

“You like your steak bloody,” observed David.

“I’d eat it alive if I could,” replied Michael in a tone he hoped was humorous.

The answer generated a twinkle in the detective’s eyes that was not lost on Michael.

“As I was saying,” resumed Steve. “We’ve been working on a case for the past couple years, which we believe is linked to organized crime. Over the past twenty-six months, five cops have been murdered execution-style across the city. Most of them near or at their domicile.”

“What do you mean exactly by execution-style?” questioned Michael.

“One bullet in the head and two in the heart,” replied David.

“That’s rather different than siccing a wild beast on your victim, isn’t it?”

“It is. And that’s why we’re not positive about Sullivan. But he was the Harris County Sheriff Department’s Chief Deputy, and that fits our profile.”

The three men fell silent for a few minutes. Michael was making a mental summary of the situation, trying to find an explanation for the presence of a werewolf in what was suspected to be a mob-sentenced assassination.

Michael had inhaled his steak within five minutes of it being served, and his companions took advantage of the break in the discussion to finish their own.

“What were the pieces of evidence collected on the crime scene at Sullivan’s?” Michael finally asked. “I noticed the yellow tags disseminated in his living room.”

“A couple of guns were found on the crime scene. The other evidence collected was mostly pictures of foot and paw prints,” replied Steve.

“From what I saw, there was only one set of foot prints,” commented Michael.

“That’s right, Michael,” replied Steve. “And they belonged to the victim.”

“Under the circumstances, two guns would seem to be at least one too many then, wouldn’t they?”

“You noticed that too,” concluded Steve as he was getting up. He then grabbed his iPhone that was lying on the table and headed for the restroom.

A moment of uncomfortable silence ensued, which was quickly broken by David. “So I hear you and Steve go way back?”

“I guess it’s been about twenty years. I was his sergeant in the army.”

“Rangers, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Must have been tough, especially in Somalia…”

“Yes, it was. We almost didn’t make it once or twice.”

“I know… Steve told me the two of you had fought at Mogadishu…”

The battle of Mogadishu, better known as Black Hawk Down, had been a tough one for sure, but nothing in comparison to the one during which Steve had learned Michael’s secret. Their team had been sent on a recon mission behind enemy lines, but they had been ambushed by the enemy. Their entire team had been wiped out that day and Steve and Michael had been the sole survivors. In the heat of battle, outnumbered five to one, Michael hadn’t had a choice. The only chance he’d had to save at least some of his men, and possibly himself, had been to morph. In front of bewildered assailants, he had turned from man to beast and killed them all. He had received a few bullets in the process, but nothing he couldn’t recover from. Steve had witnessed his transformation and, after a long explanation between the two men, had promised Michael his secret would be safe with him.

Steve came back from the bathroom and handed his phone to David. “I grabbed the wrong one. This is yours. I went to call Marjory and found a text message from a lady named Katia who wanted to see me tonight…”

“I’m sure it’s a mistake. I don’t know anyone by that name,” replied David unconvincingly.

“I’m sure... He doesn’t look it, but David is quite the ladies’ man,” commented Steve, approvingly shaking his head.

David, apparently embarrassed by his partner’s comment, found nothing to reply.

“Well, it’s getting late anyway. I’ll drive Michael back to his hotel and we can reconvene in the morning,” said Steve before adding, “Who knows… if you’re lucky, maybe Katia’s still waiting for you.”

“She’d better be,” answered David jokingly.

 

Chapter 12

Danko Jovanovich woke up with a splitting headache. He was lying down on his back on some hard surface. It didn’t feel cold, though, so he assumed it was hardwood. His eyes were still closed, but as he was slowly coming out of his beating-induced nap, he could hear voices in the background. He must have moved involuntarily because he heard someone saying, “He’s waking up.” The statement was quickly followed by the sound of feet shuffling on the hardwood floor.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” said a man in a tone that sounded a little too honeyed to be honest. “We were starting to think you’d never wake up.”

Danko cautiously opened his eyes. Blinded by the warm electric lighting in the room, he took a few seconds to fully assess his surroundings. From where he was lying, he could already distinguish half a dozen persons standing around the room, four men and two women, but there might have been others he couldn’t see. It wasn’t looking good.

He quickly identified two of the men as his assailants, but he’d never seen the others before.

It was still pretty dark outside and it looked more like the middle of the night than the morning in spite of what the man had said.

“I am glad you could join us, Danko,” said the man who had first spoken to him.

“It didn’t look like I had a choice.”

The room was large, about twice as big as you would expect a living room to be. The floor was definitely hardwood: good quality, too, from what he could tell. Oil paintings hung on the walls, but Danko was not in a mood to pay attention to them.

“One always has a choice, Danko. For instance, you had the choice to be honest with Dimitri’s money, but you chose not to be,” replied the man in a lecturing tone. “That was not a very smart thing to do, by the way. No one ever told you that stealing from the mob was about as good an idea as petting a wild tiger?”

Danko didn’t bother replying. He knew denial was useless and preferred focusing his attention on a way to get out of this alive. His interlocutor was clearly the boss. The others’ body language left no doubt about this point. Their attitude towards him was deferential, almost as if they were afraid of the man. He wasn’t particularly tall or bulky—though definitely in good shape—but there was something imposing about him, something that made you listen when he talked. Although he probably was in his late forties, he appeared to be in his prime. His thick black hair showed no sign of thinning, and only the faintest of wrinkles were visible at the corners of his eyes. His aquiline nose was supported by a strong jaw line, and his eyes seemed to see through your body all the way down to your soul.

“Who are you?” Danko asked finally.

“Who am I? Don’t you know that curiosity kills the cat?” replied the man, smiling. “Oh well, I guess it won’t hurt to tell you… I am Peter Clemens.”

Danko had never heard the name before, but the fact that he obtained it so easily could only mean two things. One: it wasn’t the man’s real name; or two: Danko wasn’t going to live long enough to do anything with it.

“Max, help our guest to his feet,” said Clemens.

A six-foot-tall man grabbed Danko by the arm and jerked him up in the air. Danko was not a lightweight, but the man lifted him off the floor as easily as he would have a feather.

“You haven’t asked yet where you are, but I’ll tell you anyway. You are in the heart of Sam Houston Forest,” said Clemens. “Ivanov wants you dead, but he isn’t here so we don’t really have to listen to him, do we?”

Danko wasn’t sure where this was going, but if Clemens offered him a way out, he’d take it without discussion.

“I’m listening,” he replied, swallowing hard.

“My friends here could use some exercise, so why not kill two birds with one stone?” said Clemens. “If you can make it out of the forest without my men catching you, you are free to go…”

“And if I don’t?” interrupted Danko.

“Then you’ll wish you had died here and now.”

 

Chapter 13

Michael Biörn spun around in his bed for the twentieth time. Exhausted, he had turned in for the night an hour earlier, but his racing mind simply refused to go to sleep.

The ride back from the restaurant had turned into a reenactment of the Spanish inquisition, starring Steve Harrington as the inquisitor and Michael in the role of the suspected heretic.

After an hour and a half of questioning, Steve was still going strong when Michael had finally refused to answer any more questions until he got some sleep.

The questioning had not been strictly unilateral, however. Michael had also tried to learn a few things from his friend, but Steve was not very knowledgeable in the domain of the paranormal. He had never heard of any praeternatural creature aside from Michael, and Michael had been forced to explain the difference between werewolves, shape-shifters (who, for the most part, also happened to morph into wolves), vampires, and himself.

At first, Steve had thought Michael was pulling his chain when he had started talking about vampires. Funny how people were… they could see their friend turning into a wild beast with their own eyes, but still acted all skeptical when you started mentioning blood suckers… Strange! Especially considering how Hollywood had spent the better part of the past twenty years showing werewolves and vampires as mortal enemies.

In all fairness, Hollywood, for once, wasn’t too far off. Werewolves and vampires didn’t play well together. No one played well with vampires, though, so the werewolves couldn’t really be blamed for it.

Where Hollywood had gotten it mostly wrong, however, was in presenting the blood suckers and werewolves as mortal hereditary enemies. Vampires had plenty of enemies, but only one historical nemesis: the shifters. Shifter was short for shape-shifter, also known as skin-walker.

Although the shifters morphed into wolves, they differed from werewolves in many ways. For one thing, the change was always voluntary and instantaneous, and, unlike werewolves who could weigh as much as fifty percent more in their wolf form, shifters retained the same body weight when shifting. That still made for really big wolves, but not nearly as big or scary as the werewolves.

Another significant difference was that shifters were always of Native American descent and were born with their shape-shifting abilities. Werewolves, on the other hand, could be of any lineage and, with a few exceptions, were born human and subsequently turned into wolves.

What had kept Michael from sleeping had not been his friend’s questions, however, but his answers. Although Michael had felt an instinctual dislike for David Starks, whom he had met for the first time at dinner, Steve had vouched for his old partner.

“I trust him as much as I trust you,” had been his exact words. “We were partners for over eight years and I never saw a hint of dishonesty in his behavior. Marge and the kids love him!”

Michael had not pressed the issue. After all, Steve was a cop and should have noticed something if there had been anything suspicious going on with his partner. Michael had strong instincts, but he was also the most asocial being one would ever meet, and this tended to influence his judgment. He didn’t always need a good reason to dislike people. He’d once suspected his own boss, Bill Thomason, of being a witch because he’d found a couple of dead ravens in the man’s trashcan. But witches and sorcerers were rarely careless enough to leave evidence of their craft for others to find…

Since Steve was utterly clueless about magic, Michael had only brushed on the topic of witchcraft, simply mentioning witches and their more powerful colleagues, the sorcerers. It was already plenty of information for the poor lieutenant to digest in one evening.

Henceforth, Steve would be an Initiated, a human aware of the existence of praeternatural creatures… but praeternatural creatures only. Michael hadn’t mentioned a word about the supernatural beings. Warlocks, wizards, elves and mages weren’t to be trifled with.

 

Chapter 14

The moonlight had cloaked the forest in an eerie glow, which did nothing to soothe Danko’s already strained nerves.

He had been released from the house twenty minutes earlier and been told he would benefit from a fifteen-minute head start. He had started running as hard as he could, but he had rapidly been forced to slow down and adopt a pace more suited to his physique.

After following the narrow dirt road leading away from the house for about two hundred yards, he had made a ninety-degree turn and dived straight into the woods. The maneuver had been intended to throw off his pursuers and buy him a little time. After that, he had run straight ahead, on several occasions barely escaping decapitation by low-hanging branches.

A howling sound rose from the entrails of the woods, startling him. The call was quickly answered by a second howling, and a third, and a fourth. Danko had not spent much time in the forest, but he was pretty sure the presence of coyotes in a place like this was to be expected. The fact the howling sounds seemed to be getting closer was a bit more unnerving though.

Danko mentally cursed the years of sedentary lifestyle and overindulging, which had turned him into the out-of-shape blob he was today.

Out of breath, he kept running, although at a pace that most people would have considered walking. Suddenly a slightly unearthed root caught his left foot and sent him flying in mid-air.

He landed on his chest, the shock driving the air out of his lungs. He was still struggling for oxygen when he noticed the small forest trail beneath his feet. He gave himself an additional thirty seconds to recover from his fall before he started running down the trail in the hope of covering more ground, now that trees kept mostly out of his way. At least the howling sounds had stopped. It had to be good news.

 

Chapter 15

Katia’s car was parked in front of Detective David Starks’ house when he got home. David was paranoid and obtaining the key to his house was a privilege few had earned in the past. Katia Olveda was not one of them—at least, not yet.

She got out of her car and met him at the front door. She was a gorgeous brunette of about 5’5”, with curves of the type men brag about to their friends.

“Hello, lover,” she said in a southern drawl she somehow managed to make sexy.

“Good evening, gorgeous,” replied David.

“Late night. Is everything all right?” she asked, as she approached to kiss his neck.

“I think so,” he answered, still thinking about Michael Biörn. “I had a work dinner. You know how it is.”

Katia knew exactly how it was. Dating David implied a lot of concessions… but he was worth it. At least she hoped so.

**********

David Starks was lying in bed, wide awake. Katia had left his house an hour earlier, looking a bit more disheveled than when she had first gotten there. Sex with Katia was always fun. She was just kinky enough to constantly keep it interesting. Katia, however, was not on David’s mind at the moment; Michael Biörn was.

Biörn was the type of man who emanated palpable raw power. Most would have attributed this feeling to the man’s imposing physique, but David knew better. He had felt the beast trapped within the man, and it had frightened him.

A faint cracking sound from the stairwell attracted his attention. It was probably nothing else than the house shifting, but the detective had learned to be cautious. His life often depended on it.

He grabbed the Smith & Wesson he kept on his nightstand and headed for the bedroom door on tiptoes.