Duel Nature (21 page)

The door opened behind us; Eric and Barb came
through holding their empty plates, which I took from them. Putting
the plates in the sink I turned to see the two take up position
behind Stewart. Benally was watching me carefully, almost on the
edge of her seat. Gina was just beginning to frown.

“But in all that time I’ve
never seen, heard of or come across a situation like this!” the
Director continued, waving his hand at me and Tanya and including
the entire farm. “A natural born exorcist, raised by an ex-Marine
Raider Captain with ties to the CIA, who meets the only vampire
ever
born
to the
species and becomes an entirely new strain of supernatural. And his
home borders a Pack of young werewolves, his pet is another new
species, in this case, of were with no human genes. The final kick
in the pants is that this exorcist and his vampire mate are
godparents to the daughter of the President’s Advisor on paranormal
species. Extraordinary! How is your goddaughter? I hope she’s safer
than your grandfather.”

His tone had changed as he spoke, becoming
colder and less friendly and the final part, the bit about Toni,
was delivered in a threatening tone.

Grim slid into control as the threat to Toni
registered. My link to Tanya went full bandwidth, full combat mode.
Benally was quivering in her chair, the woman, Barb, was watching
me with one hand raised like she was going tell me to halt, Eric
was holding his forehead in one hand looking worried. Director
Stewart was watching me, and to a degree, Tanya, his face rapt with
anticipation.

“I’m blocked, Sir. Not sure how, it was
sudden,” Eric said, sweat beading on his face. Stewart just nodded
once, not turning from us. My normal self could have told him that
the reason the mind reader kid wasn’t up to speed was the bubble of
aura that Grim had plunked mentally over his head, but my normal
self wasn’t running the show at that moment.

“Stupid!” Gina hissed. “Idiotic, half-assed,
unprofessional piece of SHIT!” she yelled.

Stewart spared her a glance, looking slightly
surprised. Gina jumped up and leaned over the table on both hands,
getting right in Stewart’s space. He had no choice but to turn his
attention to her, although he was obviously loath to stop watching
us although neither Tanya or I had moved a muscle.

“Shouldn’t you refrain from sudden moves and
all, my dear?” he asked quietly.

“I told you…neither of us could possibly make
a move that they would consider sudden. But you just had to do it –
didn’t you? Just had to provoke to see what would happen. I told
you that a threat to Toni was a trigger point, so that we could
prevent just this….not so you could conduct some stupid experiment!
Is this how you do everything? Do you people mix explosives in the
bathtub? Do you stare down the barrel of a cocked and loaded gun
with your finger on the trigger to see what the bullet looks
like?”

Gina was ripping mad, something I hadn’t
really ever seen before and part of me was fascinated. That part
was still just an observer, as Grim was not done evaluating the
threat.

My grandfather suddenly spoke. “You’re
right,” he said, directing his comment at Stewart.

Gina looked at him incredulously.

“When you said you’ve never seen anything
like this before, you were right. More than you can possibly know,”
Gramps continued. “But if you think the precautions you’ve taken
here – “ he waved his hands at Adine, Eric and Barb, “ – are
remotely enough than I’ve misjudged your intelligence. You’ve got a
telepath, a were and, what a witch or psychokinetic? Hah.” He
slightly overemphasized the psycho part.

Director Stewart frowned,
looking affronted. “I think, Sir, that you’ve misjudged the quality
of the people I have with me. Eric is one of the most powerful
telepaths we’ve ever come across. Barb is a world class
tele-kinetic
, and Adine,
well she’s in a class by herself.”

My Grim side was tired of waiting. My body
shifted slightly and that was all that was needed.

Barb, who had been nervous before, even as
she appeared to be gathering some power or energy, reacted to my
movement. She raised her hand, shoved it in my direction and
released the dark cloud I could see about her head. It moved at the
speed of thought, at least her thought. It was much slower than
Grim’s. My combat persona just absorbed it into my aura, soaking it
up like a Bounty paper towel and a puddle of water. Then he pushed
back.

Barb was picked up and thrown back against
the brick wall near the wood stove, held frozen in place, her feet
suspended two feet off the ground.

Adine came off her chair, her face starting
to change shape. She managed to get her butt two inches off the
chair before she came to a sudden and complete halt. My vampire was
behind her, her arms wrapped in a rear choke hold around the
wereverine’s neck. The speed of her movement across the room sent
papers and napkins flying off the table and a sharp crack announced
the displacement of air.

Choking a were is a tricky business. The
problem is that they have the option of Changing forms. When a 120
pound woman morphs into a 230 pound wolverine the drastic change in
neck size will break the hold of almost anyone. Amost. Not Tanya’s
though.

Benally’s clothes burst at the seams and she
kicked and thrashed, but Tanya was Posted to the floor and the very
foundation of the house itself. Her arms, stronger than steel,
tightened, and despite clawing the shit out of our table, Adine
passed out in less than twenty seconds. Eric, clearly terrified out
of his mind, reached for a gun on his hip. A low growl three feet
to his right caused him to freeze. Turning his head slowly to the
right, he found 1000 pounds of pissed off grizzly standing in the
now open kitchen door. Awasos wasn’t happy about government people
with guns at this point in time, a fact that Eric, bless his soul,
picked up on real quick.

Stewart was visibly distressed at the sight
of his assistant, limp in the arms of my vampire. Adine’s partial
Change had stopped and her features flowed slowly back to
human.

“You killed her?” the Director asked, his
voice shaking.

“No Director Stewart, not yet,” Tanya
answered, her gaze turning back to me.

Stewart’s head swiveled to follow her look,
but he couldn’t meet Grim’s expression. Even Gramps wasn’t looking
at me, but Gina was, even as she dialed her cell phone.

“Roy? Where’s Toni?” she asked into the
phone. Her husband’s response was crystal clear to me even fifteen
feet away.

“She’s right here…watching TV. Why?”

“Because someone gave me a bad scare and
implied she was in danger,” she answered, glaring at Stewart as she
spoke.

“Nope, everything’s fine
here. They better hope Chris and Tanya don’t hear them suggest
that,”
he said, wryly.

“Too late,” she replied.

“Oh…Oh! Good luck with that,”

“Yeah gotta go. Love you! Tell Toni I love
her.”

“She wants to say hi.”

I could hear the phone fumble then a small
voice spoke.

“Hi Mommy, I ‘m watching
Animal Planet,”
my god daughter said.
Something inside me relaxed a bit.

“Hi baby. Is it something good?” Gina
asked.

“Wilderbeasts,”
she said. Her father spoke up.
“
Wildebeests, Toni, not Wilder-
beasts,”

“Mommy, is Mr. Chris there?”

“Ah, he is baby, but he’s busy,” Gina said,
looking my way.

Grim retreated, Barb fell off the wall, Tanya
let go of Adine, and Awasos stopped growling.

I reached my hand out for the phone. Gina
handed it to me after a quick glance around the room. Stewart was
open mouthed in disbelief.

“Hi Toni, what are those wilder beasts
doing?” I asked.

She giggled.
“Mostly running around, but a few are getting
eaten by crocodiles and lions and hyenas.”

“Can you do me a favor? Would you grab your
necklace…your bear necklace and squeeze it real hard?” I asked.

“Okay,
” she said.

“Now think of me or Tanya or Awasos,” I
directed, keeping my voice too low for Stewart to hear.

She must have done it because I immediately
had a clear image of her sitting in her house in the family room,
on the floor in front of the television, her white rat, Sebastian,
climbing on her shoulder.

Tanya nodded at me and Awasos woofed,
shuffling from foot to foot which he does when he’s about to lick
Toni’s tiny face.

Chapter 22

I said goodbye and handed the phone back to
her mother. Gina headed into the other room, still talking with her
daughter, while I looked over at Stewart and his crew.

“Okay, Mr. Stewart,” I began, intentionally
omitting his title. “What exactly did you think to accomplish by
implying a threat to my goddaughter?”

Adine came awake suddenly, jerking upright,
but calming slightly at the touch of Stewart’s hand on her arm. A
pale, sweaty Eric was helping his female team member to her
feet.

Adine looked around, then her expression set
and her shoulders hunched. Stewart was watching her carefully and
when her head fell forward in obvious self-reproach he immediately
spoke.

“Adine, dear, I have failed you,” he said,
patting her hand then covering it with his own. She looked up at
him, startled at his words.

“I have failed you and Eric and Barb,” he
continued. “I should never have put you in this position. If I had
properly listened to Mrs. Velasquez, none of this would have
happened.”

Adine started to speak, but he held up his
free hand, gesturing for silence. “You see my dear, I’ve forgotten
too much over these many years. I’ve forgotten that there are
mysteries beyond what you and I have experienced together. The
evidence was obvious, in fact, General Creek even showed me video,
but somehow I’ve become arrogant – overconfident in my own
knowledge and judgment.”

Gina came back in from the other room and
leaned up against the door frame to listen.

Stewart nodded at her, then turned back to me
and Tanya, who was standing next to me, but keeping a close eye on
Adine. The Director’s expression was a unique mixture of sadness
and chagrin.

“When I was twenty-four.
Chris, I was a very new, very wet-behind the ears recruit for a
little known intelligence group attached to the U.S. Army. They had
recruited me straight out of Harvard. You see, I was lucky enough
to graduate with two degrees. One in political science and the
other in psychology. The folks who hired me had read two papers I
had written in my senior year. The first paper detailed my own
analysis of Europe’s politics at that time and my conclusions
apparently matched those of my employers. They were impressed.
My
other
paper was
about self-suggestive psychology in relation to supposed paranormal
activity,” Stewart said, with a self-deprecating smile. “My theory
on that was that people deluded themselves into believing they were
seeing ghosts, meeting angels or performing magic. I was pretty
full of myself with that piece of work, but what I didn’t realize
was that while my bosses agreed with my political paper, they
didn’t believe my psychology paper. But my skepticism made me a
perfect investigator for supernatural phenomenon that they hoped
was real.” The Director paused, looking at Adine as he remembered
the story. Barb and Eric looked fascinated, making me think was a
story they hadn’t heard before.

“So my new bosses sent me north to Alaska to
investigate a story from the interior. A trapper had come out of
the bush with a crazy tale of a man-beast deep in the wilderness.
Off I went with a squad of infantry for protection. In Anchorage I
met my native guide, a beautiful young woman of Athabaskan
descent,” he said looking at Adine and squeezing her hand. Her look
back was the first unguarded expression I’d ever seen on her face.
Despite the apparent difference in years, they were obviously an
item.

Which begged a question.

“Chris….I don’t think you need to raise your
hand, just ask,” Stewart said with a small smile.

Slightly embarrassed, I lowered my hand.
“Sorry, force of habit. I just wanted to ask what year this all
took place?”

He smiled again, the sharp gleam returning a
bit to his eye. “1938,” he answered.

I did some quick math. Gramps was faster.
“You were born in 1914,” my grandfather stated.

“Yes, I am ninety-eight this year,” Stewart
said.

“So the LV virus in your leg has slowed your
aging,” I said, not really surprised although he looked no older
than late sixties.

Now he was visibly surprised. “You know I
have Lycanthropic Virus in my leg?”

“Yeah, I see it in your aura. It matches
Adine’s, so I’m thinking it’s the same strain, and you were both
infected at the same time,” I answered.

“You continue to astound me, young Mr.
Gordon, although you have completely ruined the telling of my
story,” he said, slightly admonishing.

“Sorry, Director, please go on,” I said.

“So, where was I? Oh yeah, headed deep into
the interior wilderness with eight soldiers, one staff sergeant,
and Adine. I won’t bore you with the details, except to say, that
it was difficult for the hardened troops, and therefore, it almost
killed me. Adine handled it the best, but then we were headed to
her home, you see. Her father was shaman for the tribe of
Athabascan Indians, or Na Dene, as they call themselves, whose
village was our destination. It was summer, so the mosquitoes and
black flies were legion, the terrain broken and rugged beyond
anything I had ever encountered. To this day, the best way in to
her village is by bush plane,” he said, pausing to take a drink of
his milk.