Her Perilous Wolf by Julie Steimle (free e books to read .txt) 📖

give people who say they are a vampire?”

The doctor was silent for just a few seconds before he replied, “Warm milk. It eases the cravings.”

Doug peeked to him. “That’s real?”

Dr. McAllister nodded. “Yeah. My sister did not get them until she was in her teens but they hit her hard.”

“How did she get it?” Doug asked.

Shrugging, Dr. McAllister answered frankly, “It was genetic for her. She’s an extremely rare case. She was adopted by my family as a baby, you see. Troy’s situation is more common.”

“How did that even happen?” Doug muttered. “Where did that blood even come from? The first case.”

Troy and Dr. McAllister exchanged looks. Troy let the doctor speak. “We’re not sure. It’s an ancient disease.”

“Do you believe in magic at all?” Troy pried.

Moaning, Doug shook his head with a chuckle. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Maybe.” Troy smirked. “But often the unexplainable was written off as magic in the ancient days. Truly advanced science could be seen as magic by primitive people. I mean, think of DNA splicing. To an aborigine, that would be magic.”

Doug shot him a side look. “Are you saying some ancient civilization did gene splicing?”

“Well…” Troy shrugged with a would-be-innocent look. “No one in our day really can recreate the ancient embalming the Egyptians did, and no one still can recreate the pyramids. So… why not? It certainly wasn’t aliens. Human beings did that.”

Doug blushed a little, more inclined to believe in aliens than magic.

Dr. McAllister snorted on the thought. He shook his head.

“But anyway,” Troy murmured. “There has to be some way to cure this thing.”

“Why not have the patient eat a lot of garlic?” Doug murmured. “Get it into the cells so that the disease cannot survive.”

“I tried that,” Trot muttered. He shook his head. “I didn’t do anything to heal the wound at all.”

“But maybe as a pre-surgery diet…” Dr. McAllister murmured, thinking on it. “It might not be a bad idea.”

Troy shot him a look. “What are you saying?”

With a shrug, the doctor replied, “You did the whole, ton-of-garlic diet when you were running from the Order of Blood, but you were not trying cures on yourself then.”

Troy slowly shook his head. “I didn’t have a decent lead then.”

The doctor nodded to himself. “Well, we do now.” He then looked to Doug. “Alright. Let’s have you figure out a way to get clearer, more detailed visuals on what is happening to the damaged cells in the wound. Troy can arrange that refrigerated room for this. I’ll think of some way to end blood flow to the wound for surgery—and Troy, you may have to contact Silvia after all for an alternative way of staunching the spread of the disease. She might know one—though honestly, her methods are not exactly my style.”

With a peek to Doug, Troy nodded. “Yeah… I know. But each of us have to swallow our pride in this case.”

“I’ll call Keith and we can set up an appointment for him once we have an idea which direction to move.” Mr. McAllister jotted down some notes on a pad, thinking. “Let’s meet up again in a week.”

Doug nodded. That sounded good.

“Ok.” Troy nodded also. He looked to Doug. “We’d go back to my place, but I think Bobo will be there now. I can take the subway back home. I’ll contact you as soon as we have a solid date.”

Doug nodded. He had driven them there.

As they left the clinic together, Troy murmured. “This is a step in the right direction. But, perhaps next time we meet, you should park away from my apartment. There’s a parking structure a block away. You can walk from there. It’s safe.”

“And why?” Doug asked.

Sighing, Troy said, “William is right. We need to be more careful. The last thing we need is for the SRA to set their eyes on you.”

*

“Shape-shifters are beings whose original forms have either been forgotten or abandoned over a favored shape or collection of shapes,” Tommy Whitefeather explained to the already exhausted Vincent Williams in that night café. The tall Navajo man grinned at him with private satisfaction as he said, “You may be in for a shock, but I am a shape-shifter.”

Vincent’s mouth dropped open. Already he had heard a boatload about curses on towns and the creation of a famous werewolf family. But this was even more over the top.

Michael Toms smirked, leaning back while folding his arms, his blue eyes shining. He still felt old—older than the twenty-something years of age that he was. Sitting across from the man was like sitting across from a decorated WWII veteran. It was intimidating.

“I am a spirit warrior,” Tommy explained once again, having his own unsettling mystery about him. “That means I am a descendant of elves at some point.”

“Elves?” Vincent could feel his head start to swim. First werewolves. Now elves. Admittedly when he had heard that man arguing with Michael about that one imported elf, he had thought it was ridiculous. His mind had been bringing up images of diminutive men in green tights who wore hats with bells on them.

 “Elf blood gives the power to change shape.” Tommy nodded firmly. “However, for spirit warriors like me and the people of my tribe, we cannot always choose the shape we take. Having human blood limits our choices. For example, I can only transform into North American animals. And I have also heard of a Chinese spirit warrior who can transform only to animals on the Chinese zodiac.”

That popped an image into Vincent’s head. The Chinese guy and all those dogs on the beach. They had said the Chinese guy, Chen, was the dogs. Was there a dog in the Chinese zodiac? He only knew things like Aquarius and Capricorn—which was a water bearer and a goat thing with a fish tail. But nodding at Tommy, he said, “When did you find out you could do this?”

Tommy shrugged. “I was born with it. It is a gift with a curse. It takes training to manage it, but I was told I had the gift when I was a young child. Not everyone in my tribe has it. But most did. That is… until a horde of demons from Europe came in and slaughtered my village.”

“The white man,” Vincent muttered, tired of hearing of that tragic part of history.

“No.” Tommy shook his head. “I mean a literal horde of demons from Europe. They were called the Unseelie Court—or at least part of them.”

Vincent paled. Hordes of demons existed?

“They had heard of our tribe and about our natural ability to fight against demonic forces the world,” Tommy explained with a grave shake of his head. “It was a surprise attack, in the night. Only my uncle and I survived.”

The café seemed silent after that. Vincent was speechless.

“My uncle went into hiding while I was taken to Gulinger Private Academy for my protection and education.” Tommy sighed. “I owe the Deacons my life. That school protected me from… well, being hunted down.”

“Why did you join the SRA?” Vincent whispered.

With a heavy nod, Tommy replied, “I think at first, revenge. I wanted to train so I could take on the Unseelie Court and destroy them for what they had done to my tribe.”

Michael looked away. It gave Vincent the impression he was missing something.

Then Tommy explained, “At the time, I had no idea how huge the Unseelie Court really was. It took a while, but I learned. It would be like one man taking on the entire country of Germany, as if I were Rambo.”

“Um…” Vincent looking at him sideways. “I thought Rambo was set in Vietnam.”

Michael laughed, elbowing Tommy in the side. “Mixed metaphor, dude.”

Chuckling, Tommy nodded. “Yeah, yeah.

“But anyway, there are all sorts of supernatural beings. One can divide them into sections, as you will.” Tommy glanced to the ceiling, sorting them in his brain to explain better. “There are the elves, for example. An elf, as I said, is shape-shifter, so there is no definite shape of an elf that I can give you—though I do believe they were originally humanoid. Their origins are frequently debated and their natures are varied. In fact, in the SRA, we usually use the term elf to mean a chaotic, yet non-malignant supernatural creature. And the best way to not have trouble with an elf is to simply not be aware for them.”

“That’s where ignorance can be bliss,” Michael interjected. “If you leave them alone, they will leave you alone.”

Vincent nodded. “But you said they were chaotic. I know there are legends about fairy folk messing with people for the fun of it. Is any of that true?”

Michael smiled at him with a nod. “Yes. But, and remember this, if you live a good life—especially abiding by the basic Christian principle of golden rule and loving your neighbor—they can’t really mess with you. There are also angelic powers in the universe. The supernatural generally cannot harm those who strive to stick close to God. And also, funnily enough, they tend to shy away from atheists as well.”

“What?” Vincent stared.

“The supernatural lingers in liminal regions,” Michael said. “If you stay in a central norm, you will be safe. It’s those folk who play on the edges who are in danger.”

“But isn’t an atheist—”

“No,” Michael cut him off. “Atheists only believe what their five senses tell them. That means they are not even able to look into the corners and edges of things, as their senses are dull. The five senses are the most limited senses in the human experience.”

Laughing with Michael, Tommy nodded with an almost smug understanding. “Indeed. They do not believe in spirit. They do not believe in the unseen. So, they cannot see what their limited scope will not allow them to see.”

“So… believing really is seeing?” Vincent asked.

Both of them nodded.

“Belief is powerful,” Michael explained, impressing it upon him.

“Having an open mind to possibilities is what makes magic possible,” Tommy elaborated. “The mind is merely an access port to the unlimited knowledge of the universe.”

That was confusing. Vincent frowned.

Chuckling, Michael tried to make it clearer. “Imagine you are your laptop computer. It is a temporal and physical thing. It has a shelf life and a limited memory. Now, the world of knowledge is larger than one laptop. However every laptop today has an internal connection to Wi-Fi—which is like our connection to the supernatural realm. You cannot see Wi-Fi, but you know it works by the connection you make with the internet. It is the same with the Spirit. We cannot see the Spirit, we can only see the manifestations of the Spirit in our lives.”

“It’s like we know the internet works by the websites we are able to access—though we are not seeing the entire thing all at once,” Tommy clarified.

“But not everything on the internet is true,” Vincent retorted, following their analogy as best as he could.

Michael grinned, nodding. “That’s right. And not everything in the supernatural realm is benevolent. There is an opposing force also. And it has its minions.”

“Like vampires,” Vincent said, growing uneasy.

Tommy laughed, shrugging, though Michael cringed.

“Yes… and no.” Michael sighed. He peeked toward the door, thinking he had heard something. “Another snag in the supernatural soup of problems is that humans are sometimes worse than demons.”

“There really are demons?” Vincent felt sick as well as nervous.

Michael and Tommy nodded frankly.

“But we’ll get to that in a bit,” Tommy said. “What Michael was explaining was that human beings who meddle with the supernatural, especially in magic, tend to go bad—”

“As magic is not God’s way,” Michael explained with an earnest nod.

“Yes.” Tommy nodded to him. “Magic is not the way of the true Spirit. God is not flashy, nor is he greedy. Magic is more about self-aggrandizement, power-seeking, and lust. So, witches, warlocks, sorcerers, and necromancers—all evil. The phrase ‘white magic’ is made up to pretend what they are doing is benevolent. Most magic skill was in fact stolen from the elves.”

“Magic is an elfish power,” Michael interjected with