Duel Nature Read online

  Duel Nature

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Duel Nature

  A Novel of the Demon Accords

  By John Conroe

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2012 John Conroe

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Books by John Conroe

  The Demon Accord Series:

  God Touched

  Demon Driven

  Brutal Asset

  Duel Nature

  Black Frost

  Chapter 1

  The drops of rain had fallen thousands of feet, gathering speed and size before they smashed into the ground. Some, the very biggest, were smashing into the back of my head. Those particular drops were also, I’m pretty sure, the coldest.

  The freezing spring downpour had been sheeting past us for twenty minutes, the only real activity around us during our stakeout. Only slightly interesting, but very annoying.

  “Stop that! You’re being a wussy about this. You don’t even get cold anymore,” my partner said.

  I hadn’t said a word, but the slim, black-haired and black- clad figure kneeling next to me could still read my inner whining like I had shouted it out loud.

  “I don’t like sitting in the rain. Never have,” I replied, glancing sideways at Tanya. That was a mistake because my eyes found her beautiful features infinitely more interesting than the rainy night.

  She sighed and glanced back at me, electric blue eyes glowing in the dark. “Focus, Chris. The rogue may be here soon and we don’t want to miss him,” she said, pointing one slim muscled arm down the side of the building to the bar entrance twenty-three floors below.

  That was the other weird thing about our stakeout. We were kneeling on the side of an apartment building, using Darkkin energy techniques to Cling to the side, little pitons of quantum energy holding us in place. It was definitely weird, even if it was more comfortable than standing on the roof and leaning over the edge.

  Two years ago I hadn’t been aware that vampires and werewolves (not to mention other weres) existed. I had known all about demons though, as those were something of a specialty of mine. You might even say I had been tapped by God to handle Hell’s children. But then I met Tanya (if by meeting you mean driving away a demon and then feeding her most of my blood supply) and my life had changed. I had changed, drastically. When she gave me a small amount of her unique and potent blood, it had fit my DNA like a glove to a hand. I gained vampire-like abilities and a werewolf’s metabolism. And a life mate.

  “There he is!” she whispered, as if the rogue was gonna hear her voice 230 plus feet above him in the middle of a thunderstorm. But that attention to detail was part of what made her an apex predator.

  I looked below and spotted the man she was talking about. From above all I could see was dark reddish hair and a green army jacket. But my ability to identify vampires and weres on sight was telling me he was the one we had been waiting for – a new vampire, maybe two weeks old. He was also the one that was most likely responsible for a two week spate of recent murders.

  “Okay. I’ll go round him up. See you out back,” I replied, standing up on the side of the building. Or maybe standing out is a better term. I don’t know – this whole climbing walls like Spiderman is still pretty new. Tanya has done it her whole life, but I’ve only been at it a couple of years now.

  I released my Cling, my body immediately pulled down by gravity, free falling down the side of the building. Wind tugged at my clothing as the ground rushed up faster and faster. Forty feet above the ground, I Pulled my feet back to the wall, running as soon as my feet touched the bricks. Then I gradually slowed to a walk and finally, stepped smoothly off the side of the building onto level ground. Bizarre -- but really, really cool.

  Puddles splashed around my boots, darkening my jeans with wet splotches. I had actually stayed pretty dry during our watch. My long waxed Aussie drover-style duster had kept most of the rain from my clothes; just the drops that had hit my head and neck had gotten past its protection. My normal body temperature of 103 degrees had shrugged off the cold.

  I still didn’t like sitting in the rain…too many hours spent on deer watch in freezing Adirondack weather while I was growing up; waiting to shoot deer that I really hadn’t wanted to kill, but that my grandfather insisted we needed for the freezer.

  No one noticed my sudden appearance, mostly because no one was stupid enough to stand in the rain outside the sports bar housed in the ground floor of the apartment building. A glance up showed an empty building side. Inside was dry and noisy. It was one of those casual neighborhood places that are great for hanging out and watching a Monday night football game or just meeting friends after work. It seemed pretty busy for a Wednesday night, a mix of mostly young people, and slightly more guys than girls. The thirty foot bar was fully occupied and about two-thirds of the tables had occupants, sipping drinks, laughing and watching the ten or twelve flatscreens mounted around the place.

  I scanned the room as I approached the bar, shaking the rain off the drover coat. Two sweeps of the place and I had found my guy, standing back in a dark corner, holding a beer and watching the rest of the pub’s customers with predatory eyes.

  A direct approach would either lead to a very short, very graphic fight (with blood-spattered walls and equally blood-spattered customers) or him bolting from the pub too early, so instead I decided to hang at the bar. Four big ceiling fans were swirling the warm air around the room and very shortly my scent would reach him. Then his attention would lock on to me. That was pretty much a given, as my AB positive blood mixed with whatever pheromones the V-squared virus had fostered inside me was pretty much an irresistible combination for hungry vampires. Like Taco Bell for teenage boys.

  Unfortunately, the same virus that had left me smelling good to vampires had made me look good to humans, so I was starting to attract attention on my way to the beer tap bristling bar. Two of the young waitresses watched me as I wove between t
ables and several of the seated customers, not all of them female, tried to catch my eye.

  Ignoring the glances in my direction, I found a gap between stools and waited for the bartender’s attention, using the moment to keep track of my quarry. He had been watching two couples playing a half-hearted game of pool, but I just about felt the moment his gaze shifted to me.

  “What can I get you?” the brunette bartender asked. Meeting her eyes, which widened at the sight of my violet irises, I tried to keep my peripheral vision on the rogue.

  “Smithwick’s if you have it.” Might as well enjoy the role I was playing.

  “Sure,” she said, taking a second to pull her gaze away from my strange peepers, then grabbing a pint glass from the rack behind her.

  The rogue had shifted position slightly, his stance oriented in my direction now. Perfect.

  “Nice coat,” the bartender said with a smirk as she slid the frothy beer my way.

  “Gift from a friend. She meant it as a joke, but I ended up liking it. It really works well on a night like this,” I replied.

  That was actually true. When Tanya and I had been selected to work as Coven Rovers I had made a stupid comment in front of Lydia, Tanya’s best friend and de facto sister. It was one of those mental lapses that hit many people from time to time and me painfully often. I think I said something about heading west to be a ‘cattle rover’ and the spikey haired little vampire had burst out laughing. She finally caught her breath and said, “It’s ‘cattle drover’, not rover. Dumbass!” No matter how deferentially other vampires and weres treat me, I can always count on Lydia to bring me back to solid ground.

  A week later the coat had shown up in our quarters, wrapped in brown paper with a cow bell on the outside. However, when I tried it on it had fit perfectly and Tanya had liked the look, so I kept it.

  “Gift from your girlfriend?” the bartender asked, ignoring the guy three places down who was holding his empty glass in her direction.

  “Girlfriend’s sister,” I said, wondering why that was important.

  She nodded once, gave me a smile and then after a pause, went to fill the man’s glass. I drank a third of the pint in one swallow, followed it with another third and then finished the glass, making a production of smacking my lips.

  “That tasted like another!” I said to the bartender’s surprised expression.

  “Whoa! Someone’s thirsty tonight!” she said, giving me a bemused smile. She refilled the glass and then took the twenty dollar bill I left on the bar. I polished off half of the second beer while she was getting my change, earning myself a cautionary look from her and smirks from the trio of nerdy guys sitting next to me.

  “Easy there cowboy, you don’t have to rush. We’re not running out of Smithwick’s anytime soon,” the bartender said, her reappraisal of me starting to come up negative.

  “First beer of the night?” one of the geeks asked. They had been discussing hadron colliders or something when I arrived.

  “Well, first beer here, anyway!” I said with a laugh. The rogue was completely locked onto me and I knew he could hear my words even from across the noisy room. I polished off the second beer, then asked the science types where the men’s room was. They pointed in the direction of the rogue’s corner and I headed over, adding a slight weave to my walk.

  Behind me I could hear the bartender talking to one of the waitresses. “- first interesting guy in a month and he drinks like a frat boy!” she said.

  “I don’t care. If he’s tipsy maybe he’ll forget about that girlfriend he mentioned,” the waitress giggled.

  I wasn’t really tipsy. My metabolism eats alcohol way too fast for me to even catch a buzz, and it would be a frosty frozen day in Hell before I’d ever forget Tanya.

  Pushing into the men’s room, I moved to a urinal and pretended to take a piss, waiting for the rogue to follow me in.

  Right on schedule I heard the door open and a miasma of odor flowed over me. Unwashed body odor mixed with dried, decaying blood. I think I threw up in my mouth a little.

  Spinning around, I faced the young vampire up close for the first time. About six feet or so, thin with a whole slew of freckles to go with his red hair. Howdy Dowdy Dracula, in person. Sunglasses covered his eyes, which would be the red that all new vampires have for a time. Comes from all the blood vessels in the eyes that the V-squared breaks during the Turn.

  He missed the fact that I hadn’t had to zip up or fix my clothes, his attention on my throat.

  “Dude, you absolutely reek!”

  He frowned, surprised, but quickly shook it off and pulled back his lips in a fang filled snarl.

  I took two steps forward and palm smacked his forehead.

  “Stop that!”

  He hadn’t been able to react to my speed, a fact that clearly puzzled him. He tried for the intimidating growling fang face thing again. I smacked him again – harder. Bouncing off the wall, his dark glasses knocked askew, he looked truly shaken.

  Young vamps are one and a half to two times faster than humans. As they age, vampires get stronger and faster. As they learn to harness whatever Dark energy or quantum particles allow them to manipulate Newton’s physics, old vamps get scary fast.

  My Tanya was born into the species, the only vampire of her kind. At only twenty-four she was as fast as the Elders who ran the Covens. I, even new to the virus as I am, am much faster than most vampires. I’m not really a vampire, but some odd hybrid, as unique as Tanya, in my own way. I’m usually nowhere near as fast as Tanya, but I was much quicker than Howdy. The only time that I am as fast as my vampire princess is when Grim comes out to play.

  So carrot head was justifiably shocked when I knocked him on his ass. Prey wasn’t supposed to do that.

  There had been three murders that fit a vampire attack profile in the last two weeks. Coven computers had picked up the news article on the first attack, flagging it for a set of eyes to review. The second attack had come just two days later and the analyst had assigned it a high priority. Lydia contacted us as we were the closest Rover team to Chicago. We had been finishing an audit in Cincinnati (actually, Tanya had been finishing it, I’m not that patient with numbers and ledgers) and even though we only had three months on the job we got the case. The third murder had occurred the night before we arrived. That made finding the murder scene easy…the police tape was still up. Studying the back alley had resulted in one of my psychic visions, the kind I draw out on paper like a movie director’s story board. The pictures had given us enough detail to build a good likeness of the rogue. Asking around had resulted in a name – Len Corbett, whose friends hadn’t seen him in his usual haunts by daylight, but he had been seen at night. An unguided newly made vampire was just a sack of impulses, the prime one being hunger. Without a mentor he would stay in the area he was most familiar with. He would also draw attention to the supernatural world of vampires and other things that bump in the night, because he would kill his prey in the most graphic of manners.

  We had picked this bar as one of his more likely spots to visit. Sure enough he had shown up right on cue. The rest of his story would play out very quickly.

  “You’re a mess! You’ve been killing people all over the place, you have no idea how to keep a low profile and you stink! Bad vampire!” I told him. The shock on his face deepened.

  “So, we’re – “ I pointed back and forth between us, “gonna go find your maker and see if you can be salvaged, got it?”

  His expression turned to panic at the word ‘maker’ and he leapt to his feet, glanced at the door, then me, then jumped through the three foot by two foot window slightly above us.

  I sighed as broken glass fell to the bathroom floor, then followed him; my jump being a whole lot more graceful than his.

  Chapter 2

  Lenny boy had only made it ten feet from the broken window at the back of the building. He was frozen in place, staring at the giant canine form that sat on its haunches another six feet in front of
him. At least 250 pounds of wolf watched Len’s every move.

  I moved up slowly, so as not to spook him, trying to ignore the pouring rain. The fact that he wasn’t trying to outrun the giant wolf in front of him was a real sign of intelligence. Maybe, just maybe, he could be saved.

  “His name is Awasos, and he will catch you if you run,” I said. Part of me hoped he would run. I’m not fond of murderers.

  Awasos looked my way and I could swear his left eye winked at me.

  He does shit like that all the time. Winks, canine grins, even somehow opens the locked car door and lets himself out when no one is around. He even does it in his other form, the bigger one. Not your average canine. Or ursine.

  Ghost quiet, Tanya drifted up next to my furry pal, catching the young vampire’s attention. She locked eyes with him and the tension of the moment evaporated. She has that effect on young vampires. Some part of them recognizes what she is, the purest of vampires, the only vampire ever born to the species. Recognizing a higher level vampire is a survival instinct in young ones. Failure to submit to an older vampire pretty much guarantees that a new born vamp won’t get to be an old vamp.