Cherishing Destiny (A Dangerous Destiny) (13 page)

He was a big man, but had gone a little soft around the
middle, and his long, greasy hair was receding.  Aurora could tell even in the wind
that he smelled heavily of cigarettes, the kind of ashtray smell a man gets
from chain smoking all day long. 

As if on cue, the man reached into his shirt pocket with
his left hand- the right was still on his rifle-- and fished out a smoke.  He
stuck the unlit stick in the corner of his mouth and fished out a silver
colored Zippo.  He frowned, at a loss as to how he was going to light the butt
with only one hand, in the gusty conditions.  He made a frustrated grunting
noise and dropped the lighter back in his pocket, but left the cigarette
dangling from the corner of his mouth. 

He squinted at the three in front of him and noticed for
the first time that, of the two riderless horses, only one was packed like a
mule and the other just had an empty saddle.  “Somebody else around here?” he
asked, removing the smoke from his mouth and gesturing with it toward the empty
saddle.  He was holding the cigarette between his index and middle fingers as
if it was lit. 

I sure as hell hope so, Alex was thinking, but his face
gave away nothing, and he didn’t bother to answer. It was all Sara could do,
not to look around for Ryan when Greasy Hair started asking questions. 

The other men kept checking behind themselves, nervously,
but turned back to the group when their self-appointed leader started talking
again.

“Not gonna talk, is that it? Well wherever your missing friend
is, he better show himself soon, or I might just decide to put a bullet in that
pretty, lady blood sucker before he gets back.”

Aurora glared at Greasy Hair.   She wanted to extend her
fangs and rip the smirk off the guy’s face.  She was used to getting a lot more
respect from the humans she mingled with and this guy, with his crude attitude,
was pushing her buttons. 

He just laughed and brought his rifle up, one handed, to
point casually at her. “Did you know,” he went on as if he was lecturing a
classroom, “that silver bullets work pretty well on Werewolves
and
Vamps?” 

Alex looked at the gun pointing at his wife, and his anger was
instant.  What Greasy Hair just said was true, but it had always been an
extremely
well kept secret, and here was some red-neck asshole, that didn’t look like he
passed the third grade, spouting out that particular Vampire secret like he
read it in a how-to-kill a Vampire handbook. Silver could be terribly painful
and incapacitating but didn’t truly kill the immortal Vampires.

A single silver bullet might not be enough to put down,
Aurora, but it would hurt her badly.  And there were four of these silver
toting dirt bags to deal with.  The others had raised their weapons when the leader
did, and two of those were pointed at Alex and one at Sara.

The other telling thing that Greasy Hair had said was the
bit about killing
Weres
.  Most humans didn’t even believe that
Weres
existed.  So if, this guy was talking about these things, casually, out in the
open, then it was likely he was part of one of the terrorist groups that
spouted Vampire hate and had recently begun to commit acts of violence against
Vampires, or more frequently Vampire owned property.  They talked openly about
Weres
as well, but few people believed in
Weres
and so they were doing little
except hurting their own credibility.  Alex hadn’t thought that any of these
groups were active in the area, but these guys were armed with silver bullets,
and that meant custom made. So, somebody around here had an issue with Vampires
or
Weres
.

“That’s right, leach. We kill all the nasty monsters that come
around here. Just go look at the woods over there.  Got us a couple of Werewolves
last night and didn’t even need to use the silver.  We just slit their throats
while they were sitting at their campfire.”

If that was true, Alex thought, these guys must be faster
than they appeared, and he would have to time his move perfectly.  

Greasy hair looked smugly at Alex as if daring him to try
something.  He shoved the cigarette back in his mouth and fished the lighter
out again with his left hand.  He seemed to have forgotten already that he had
no way to light the damn thing with only one free hand and the wind blowing
like crazy.  But, like a true addict he just couldn’t wait.  He saw that the
other three had the group covered, so he tucked his rifle under his arm,
looping his elbow underneath to keep it from falling.  In this way, he freed
his second hand and started flicking the wheel on the Zippo, sheltering it from
the wind so that he could get his smoke lit. 

Alex felt like this was his best chance to make a move
before these terrorists took a shot at Aurora. When the flame finally caught on
the Zippo, Alex moved like lightning, dropping off the horse and closing the
gap on the thirty feet or so between them. Two of the three men were alert
enough to react by jerking the triggers of the rifles. Alex had just enough
time to hear a
pffftt
from both guns and register the fact that they
hadn’t fired, when a gigantic black beast leapt up from the side of the men. They
were lined up perfectly for the creature to leap from the back of one horse to
the next as if skipping across stepping stones in a stream. 

The creature was ripping and tearing as he went.  His growl
was fearsome and Alex glimpsed the look of shock and horror on the faces of the
men just before all four fell from their saddles, one after another, with less
than a second between.  He reached Greasy Hair just as the giant wolf landed in
a crouch on the far side of the four horses.   Alex looked down at Greasy Hair
lying on the ground with his throat ripped open and spurting hot blood onto the
road.  His eyes were wide, staring at Alex, and his mouth was working, but no
sound came out.  He died within seconds, but Alex wished it had taken longer.  He
snarled, baring his fangs at the corpse.

Alex looked back at the women and saw Sara, in shock,
staring at the giant beast that came around to sniff at Greasy Hair’s dead
body.   He lifted his leg, like he was marking his territory and pissed on the
dead man. Then the beast arched his back and began to roll upwards, unfolding
himself into an erect position.  The thick black fur disappeared into bronze skin
until only a spiky mass of black hair remained on the head of a naked man.  The
man turned to face Sara and Aurora.  Aurora was smiling broadly as if proud of
him.  Sara’s mouth was hanging open until she finally closed it with a snap.

“Ryan?” She couldn’t think of anything to say.

The young
Were
, unashamed of his nakedness, went to
her and put a hand on her knee.  He looked up into her shocked face and asked,
“Will you forgive me?”

Seventeen

Ryan crouched over the weapons he had laid out in a row on
the ground.   He had relieved the dead men of four rifles, all basic hunting
rifles, but with custom .270 caliber, silver tipped ammunition.   He also found
two hand guns and a sawed off shot gun that was rolled up in Greasy Hair’s bedroll.
The two handguns were also loaded with silver ammunition.  He was dressed
again.

After trying to explain things to Sara and having her
reject his attempts to hold her, he understood that it was going to be a while
before she was going to speak to him.  He left her in the arms of Aurora and went
to retrieve his discarded clothing.  When he returned, Sara was crying quietly
on Aurora’s shoulder, and Aurora was whispering soft things, he couldn’t hear,
into her hair. 

Sara had been furious with him, sliding from her horse and
pounding her small fists against his hard, bare chest. 

“How could you?!! You bastard!!! All the time you let me think
you were dead, and you were just protecting your little secret! You could have
told me!” she sobbed out that last part. 

He tried to take her in his arms and comfort her as he was
always prone to do with little Sara, but she shoved him away, giving him a look
of pure pain that broke his heart. Suddenly, Aurora was there guiding Sara to
the side of the road near the campsite, holding her and speaking low in a
reassuring voice.

He felt a small surge of anger at Aurora just then as he
stalked away to find his pants. After all, she was the one that wanted him to
come clean with Sara in the first place.  She had assured him that Sara would
not think him a monster.  Now, Sara wouldn’t even look at him.  He knew that it
wasn’t really Aurora’s fault, but he was frustrated and the worst of it was
that Sara was seeking comfort in Aurora’s arms. Aurora was a Vampire, every bit
as much or more of a monster than he would ever be! he thought as he yanked on
his jeans. 

Now, as he crouched in front of the guns, twirling a silver
rifle shell between his thumb and forefinger, he looked over at Aurora just a
little resentfully.  Aurora raised her head as if she had felt him staring, and
she returned his steady gaze across the distance with an unreadable
expression.  Just then, Alex, who had been unsaddling the horses belonging to
the four men, approached and squatted near to Ryan, picking up one of the
handguns and turning it in his hand. 

Alex had been uncomfortable with the emotional scene that
played out between the young brother and sister when Ryan revealed his nature. 
He wasn’t even sure he liked his wife’s involvement in the tense aftermath, but
Aurora was her own very headstrong person and he didn’t interfere.  Instead,
Alex got busy dealing with the situation at hand. 

While Ryan was brooding and getting dressed, Alex dragged
the bodies of the four men to the woods were the
Weres
still hung on the
trees.  He tossed the bodies well into the woods where they would not be
visible at all from the road.  After a moment, he also took down the bodies of
the two
Weres
and tossed them into the trees, as well.  He didn’t feel
there was enough time to bury them, they had lost close to half an hour already
in stopping at the campsite. 

When he returned to the road, Ryan was back, and he asked him
to help check the horses and packs for any supplies. Ryan collected all the
weapons together and moved them to the grass.  The casual, experienced way that
he methodically checked and unloaded all of them, made Alex a little nervous. 
They
were loaded with silver and Ryan was not the biggest Vampire fan.
 He tried
to put the thought aside as he knew that they were going to have to offer each
other, at least, a measure of trust if they were going to continue to stick
together as a group.  Besides, he thought, the guns hadn’t fired when Greasy
Hair’s cohorts had tried to shoot him. 

Alex put the handgun back on the ground and picked up a bullet. 
“Why do you think the guns didn’t go off before?” he asked Ryan, who was still
turning the rifle shell in his fingers and thinking. 

“I’m not sure, but I have been getting an idea that none of
the powder in any ammunition is worth a crap anymore.  I don’t know what the
crazy scientific reason is because the powder looks fine, but has no energy. 
It won’t ignite.  Before I found you at your place, I checked one of my caches
to retrieve a rifle.  I tried to use it to take a rabbit for supper the night
before I found you, and it didn’t fire either.  I had to strip down and catch
the damn thing myself.”  

Alex just rolled his eyes at Ryan’s last remark. 
Does
this guy ever take anything seriously?

Ryan didn’t look as if he was joking around though, and he
said, “When I was walking to the estate, I heard a couple of people talking
about the same kind of thing.  I was hiding so I couldn’t question them about
it at the time.  So, I’m thinking it’s not a coincidence, but that no one’s powder
is any good, maybe not explosives either if they won’t ignite.  I’m not sure
about that, though, maybe plastics would still work…”

 Alex picked up one of the hand guns and inserted the
magazine, charged it and fired at a distant tree. The gun made the same fizzle noise
as the rifles, and it failed to eject the cartridge which had undoubtedly not
fired.

“If that thing had worked,” Ryan said. “You might just have
announced us to all of these guys’ buddies.”

Alex ignored him and unloaded the pistol, returning it to
the pile.  “Do you think that this might have been something you could have
shared with us before we left the barn?” he sounded exasperated.

“I wasn’t sure about anything,” Ryan defended.

“Whatever…Let’s get moving,” Alex countered shaking his
head and standing.  “I say we throw those in the lake when we get there,” he
said indicating the guns. 

Alex debated on taking the extra four horses, but in the
end decided it would be too hard to care for them all.  He kept only one and
loaded it with the guns and a few things they were able to scavenge from the
men’s supplies.  The men were travelling very light, and Alex was concerned
that it might mean that they had a base of operation, and maybe some of those
friends Ryan mentioned, somewhere in the area.  He unbridled the other three
horses and slapped them sending them on their way. 

Sara had stopped crying, but looked miserable and was not
speaking to anyone as she waited, on the mare she had named Flower, for them to
get on their way again.