The Changeling Princess (20 page)

CHAPTER 36

I was on the road at six o’clock in the morning. I wasn’t in a hurry and I expected to be in New Orleans the following day to start my search. It really felt strange to be traveling without Wade.

I stopped at a Kentucky Fried Chicken place for dinner. It brought a smile to my face when I recalled how excited Wade was when he tasted their chicken for the first time. I also remembered the takeout bucket of chicken. It was the first time I
’d ever had fried chicken for breakfast.

I pulled into New Orleans at eleven o
’clock the next morning. My first avenue of research was the local newspapers. I needed to know if there had been any suspicious deaths in the area. I was especially interested in a body that had been drained of its blood.

This was a good time to change my appearance to look older. I figured a woman in her mid-twenties wouldn
’t draw as much attention as a teenager. This was especially true if I had to canvas the city and ask a lot of questions.

I spent the first two weeks looking through newspaper archives checking reports of unexplained deaths. I came up with a big fat zero, so I mixed with the locals and began asking questions. I discovered there were people in New Orleans who believed in voodoo.
“These people are really strange,” a man told me in private. I tried not to laugh. Nothing was strange to me after what I’d been through.

I altered my appearance and attended a couple of voodoo rituals. I thought the rituals were strange, but I didn
’t find anything sinister. They were true believers and they took their voodoo religion very seriously. I managed to slip in a couple of questions about Vampires and draining blood from live humans. That line of questioning was a dead end because no one had heard of anything like that happening in New Orleans.

That led me to two possible conclusions:
First, Ackula was not in the New Orleans area; and second, she was one of the new creatures that had just escaped and she hadn’t preyed on anyone yet.

*
* *

I moved on to Baton Rouge and started the entire process again. I came up blank, but I still had several major cities to cover. The thing that worried me was that Ackula might not be living in a large city or she could be moving from city to city and it would be virtually impossible for me find her. The only thing I had going for me was that a body drained of blood was not a common occurrence. If Ackula was in Louisiana, she
’d eventually attack someone and I’d have a chance to track her down.

The humidity in Louisiana was much worse than Charlotte. I
t would take a little getting used to, but I made the adjustment rather easily. I was sure it had something to do my Ivarr powers.

I flew home every three or four days to see my parents and the kitties. I usually spent the night and flew back to Louisiana the following morning. Being an Ivarr had some great fringe benefits.

My dad came up with a great idea one evening. “Why don’t you hire some reliable people to read the newspapers for you? 1f they come across anything unusual, they can call here and leave a message.”

“
That’s a great idea, Dad, but I’ll need some more money.”

“
We still have the money from your trip to Las Vegas. If that runs out, I seem to remember that you’re a pretty good roulette player.”

“
You don’t think that’s being dishonest, Dad?”

My mother spoke up.
“Not if it’s for a good cause. What is nobler than ridding the world of vicious Demons?”

“
I guess I can’t argue with that reasoning.”

“
Are you getting discouraged?” my father asked. “It’s been almost a year and you have nothing to show for it.”

“
A little bit, but I’m not giving up.”

“
Think of it as a learning experience,” said my mother. “You’re nineteen years old and you’re learning something new every day.”

*
* *

I returned to Louisiana and began hiring people to keep me informed about the local news. I was especially interested in someone who had connections with the police department. It would be a big advantage if I could get the information before it was printed in the newspaper. To satisfy their curiosity, I pretended I was a wannabe author and I was working on my first murder mystery. They probably thought I was some rich young girl who wanted to be famous.

* * *

The next creature on the list was Albazar, a flesh-eating Werewolf that was supposed to be living in Michigan. I got out a map of Michigan and a
sked myself a simple question
. If I were a Werewolf, where would I live?

The Manistee and the Hiawatha National Forests looked like a good place to start. A Werewolf is basically a human with the characteristics of a wolf. Wolves like the woods, so it stood to reason that a Werewolf would live in or close to the woods.

I arrived in Michigan on June of 1963. I started my research by checking the newspapers in the towns in or near the Manistee National Forest. There were a lot of small towns in the area with Muskegon and Ludington being the largest. I was interested in any type of death where the victim appeared to have been torn apart by a wild animal. Maybe I’d seen too many Werewolf movies. All I found in my first three weeks of research was the story of a man being mauled by a bear.

Finding these Demons was going to be a lot more difficult than I initially thought. They might have a small IQ by human standards, but they weren
’t stupid. Anyone who has studied the behavior of wild animals will tell you they are extremely cunning.

My mother answered the phone when I called home to check up on my news sources in Louisiana.
“You’re in luck, Jan. I received a call from one of your sources in New Orleans. A young man was killed last night and his blood had been drained. The body is in the New Orleans morgue.”

I was excited because I had my first real lead. If the young man had been killed by Ackula, I was positive I
’d be able to pick up her scent.

*
* *

I morphed into the Changeling Princess and flew to New Orleans as a Mist. I arrived at eight o
’clock in the evening and floated into the morgue. The body of the young man I was looking for was lying on an open slab. He was easy to spot because he’d had his throat ripped out. It really made me angry that someone had taken the life of someone so young. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Ackula.

I morphed back into the Changeling Princess and leaned over the young man
’s body. I breathed deeply and filled my lungs with Ackula’s unique scent. I now had a way of tracking the Vampire no matter where she went. I made myself invisible and left the morgue to begin my search.

Ackula
’s scent led me out of town and into the swamp. I flew another ten miles before I came to a small cabin surrounded by cypress trees. The ground was covered with moss and there was swamp water everywhere. The area reminded me of those spooky movies I used to watch when I was a kid.

I morphed into a Mist and drifted under the front door. I saw a beautiful young woman sitting in front of her dressing table brushing her hair. The smell of death told me that I had finally caught up with Ackula.

Ackula picked up my scent and jumped up from her chair. She was running her eyes over the room, searching for the intruder. When I made myself visible, Ackula muttered some kind of mumbo-jumbo and the air around me began crackling like fire. When I became engulfed in flames, I decided this was Ackula’s attempt to turn me into a human torch. I put out the flames by becoming a human top, spinning so fast that I suffocated the flames.

Ackula exposed her long protruding fangs and razor sharp fingernails. Her eyes were blazing with rage and she screamed like a banshee as she lunged at me.

I reached out and backhanded her across the mouth. Her head snapped sideways stopping her in her tracks. I used my power of telekinesis and sent her flying across the room, smashing her body against the wall. She was up on one knee, snarling like a wild animal as she wiped blood from her mouth. She rose to her feet and lunged at me again.

I grabbed Ackula around the throat and lifted her off her feet. Her arms and legs were dangling in the air as I threw her against the cabin wall again. She laid on the floor, taking deep breaths as she tried to regain her senses.

“
How is this possible?” she screamed. “I’ve only been in this world for a year and no one knows I’m here.”

This told me that Ackula was one of the Demons that escaped last summer.
“You should have done a better job of covering your trail, Ackula.”

“
You know my name, Bitch? That isn’t possible unless you’re an Ivarr.”

I watched as Ackula transformed into her true form. She was no longer the beautiful woman I
’d first encountered. She was partially bald, her face was covered with warts, and her skin looked as if it had been transplanted from dead bodies. She was the epitome of what humans describe as ugly.

Ackula knew she couldn
’t fight me, so she morphed into smoke and quickly disappeared through a crack in the cabin wall. I morphed into a Mist and went into the swamp after her.

Ackula was pretty fast. She whipped around the cypress trees like a snake and changed directions so fast it took all my concentration to keep up with her. When she shot straight up into the air, I morphed into the Changeling Princess and captured her with my force field. She morphed back to her human form and shouted obscenities at me as we settled to the ground. I wound the force field tightly around her like a spider spinning her web. When I was finished, Ackula looked like she was frozen in a block of transparent plastic. Her evil face reflected the fear she was experiencing when she took her last breath.

I had one more thing I wanted to add. I was wearing Wade’s ring, so I smashed my fist into the force field. I stood back and looked at the “W” I’d planted right between Ackula’s eyes. “That’s for Wade,” I said. I held onto Ackula and morphed into a Mist.

I flew up into the air and headed for the Mariana Trench, located in the western Pacific Ocean to the east of the Mariana Islands. When I got there, I morphed back into the Changeling Princess. I held my breath and headed towards the bottom of the ocean. It was pitch black so I set my energy beam on low and used it like a floodlight. I tried to be careful so I didn
’t run into any of the ocean’s creatures.

There were signs of what looked like plant life scattered around the ocean floor. I didn
’t want to disturb any living thing, so I found a rocky area and placed Ackula on the rocks sitting in an upright position
. Cheer up, Ackula
, I said to myself.
You’re only going to be here for five thousand years.

I suddenly become aware that my strength wasn
’t at full power. I assumed it was due to the water pressure at such an extreme depth. In the future I was going to have to be very careful when I entered the ocean. I made a mental note to increase my height when I traveled to the oceans depths.

I tripled my height before
I swam back to the surface and headed for home. I had captured my first creature from the parallel universe and I was feeling pretty good about it. I couldn’t wait to see the look on Grandma Pauline’s face when I gave her a detailed report to update her records.

CHAPTER 37

I returned to Michigan to continue my search for Albazar. I drove up to Upper Michigan to check out the area around the Hiawatha National Forest. The scenery was beautiful with a lot of really small towns sprinkled across the state. The only large city in the area was Sault Ste. Marie, located on the Canadian side of the border.

Fall is a beautiful time of the year in Upper Michigan. The leaves are a variety of beautiful colors and the wooded areas look like they were painted with one of Mother Nature
’s magical paintbrushes. It was also the time of the year when the first cold weather settles in. A harsh winter was going to be a new experience for me. The only blizzards I’d ever seen were on television.

*
* *

I got through the winter, but the cold weather in Upper Michigan was best suited for snow bunnies. I told myself I
’d never complain again when there was no snow in Charlotte for Christmas.

I was really disappointed that I wasn
’t making any headway toward finding Albazar. I’d been to every newspaper in Upper Michigan and I’d interviewed hundreds of people. I simply couldn’t understand how anything as vicious as a Werewolf could remain hidden.

*
* *

It was the third week in June, 1964. It was a pleasant day
. I was taking a stroll through the downtown section of Big Rapids, Michigan when I came upon a poster on a lamppost displaying the photo of a 13-year old boy who had been missing since July 29, 1963. The poster caught my eye because I’d seen a similar poster displaying a missing girl from Shelby, Michigan since July 29, 1962. I found it really odd that both children had gone missing on July 29th. I did some digging and discovered there had been a full Moon on July 29th. That really got my curiosity up. Could there be a link between the missing children and the Werewolf? I had to investigate further.

I went through several newspaper archives looking for missing children. I compiled a list of youngsters who had gone missing during the last week of July, dating all the way back to 1928. I was intrigued by the fact that all of the missing children lived within an hour
’s drive of Manistee National Park. Was the Werewolf really this clever? 1 intended to find out.

I spread my map out on the motel table and stuck a pin in each of the towns that had reported a missing child. As I stood back and viewed the map, I realized the pins formed a crude outline of a pentagram. The pentagram stretched from the city of Cadillac, down to Grand Rapids and from Ludington all the way across to Mount Pleasant. Now I was positive I was onto something.

I continued studying the map. There were blank areas so that told me these were the most likely towns to report the next abduction. The longer I looked at the map, the more convinced I became that the next abduction was going to take place in the Ludington area. When I looked at the small town of Scottville, my senses screamed out at me. I was positive that Scottville was where the next abduction was going to take place. It was the third week in July, so I had a week to prepare if I was going to catch the Werewolf.

*
* *

Scottville is a quaint little farming town with a population of just over 1200. I familiarized myself with Scottville and its small downtown area. If this was the town where the Werewolf was going to prey on the next child, I
’d use myself as bait and I’d make sure I wasn’t hard to find.

I morphed into a thirteen year-old girl who was thirty pounds overweight. I wanted to look as delicious as possible to a hungry Werewolf. I was vulnerable in my new human form and I felt like a walking lamb chop. I had assumed the powers and skills of my new body, which in this case amounted to zero. If I felt threatened, I
’d have to morph back to the Changeling Princess as soon as possible.

I started out by taking short strolls in the downtown area just before dark. After the Sun went down, I
’d leave the downtown area and head into the neighborhoods. There were streetlights, but there were areas that weren’t that well lighted.

On the first night of the full moon, I had just walked into a darkened area when I sensed a presence in the shadows. Apparently my extraordinary senses were still working because I knew the Werewolf was close by. I detected the strong odor of chloroform when the shadowy figure came rushing towards me. I held my breath as I was grabbed from behind and a chloroform-soaked cloth was placed over my face. I pretended to faint and went limp in the attacker
’s arms.

I was quickly carried to a pickup truck parked close by. I pretended to be under the influence of the chloroform because I wanted to see where my attacker was taking me. Hopefully, we were headed to the Werewolf
’s lair.

I sneaked a quick peek at my abductor. He had long hair, a long beard, and he looked to be in his early sixties. He was wearing bib overalls that were common amongst farm worker. I was sure he was Albazar because he carried the undeniable stench of evil.

We were on the road for fifteen minutes before Albazar parked his truck near the edge of the woods. I was pulled out of the truck and tossed over his shoulders before we headed into the woods. When we were out of the woods and out of sight, he placed meon the ground and gave me another whiff of the chloroform. I was surprised I could hold my breath for so long. I figured I’d retained more powers than I’d realized.

I couldn
’t resist peeking at Albazar when he transformed into a Werewolf. His body hair grew longer and longer until it eventually covered every inch of his body. His body rippled with huge muscles as he grew to a height of seven feet tall. His eyes were a deep red and his huge hands had sharp, pointed fingernails two inches long. I thought he’d have a long jaw like a wolf, but I was mistaken. His head was shaped like a man with the exception of long, protruding fangs. Albazar was one mean-looking Werewolf.

Albazar tossed me over his shoulder again and ran into the woods. He ran about fifteen miles before he stopped and placed me on the ground. Albazar scratched around on the ground and eventually found a large metal ring. He pulled upward on the ring that was attached to a huge door set flush into the ground. I realized I was going to be taken to an underground cellar where Albazar hide from humans. This was the Werewolf
’s Lair.

I was tossed on the floor of the cellar and Albazar lit a torch. I watched as he walked around the cellar and lit several torches on the walls. The first thing I noticed was a lot of ancient artifacts. There were bows and arrows, several Indian tomahawks, and a lot of children
’s clothing made from buckskin.

I realized Albazar had been in this area for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. I recalled reading an old Indian legend that described an evil wolf spirit that preyed on children. I had no doubt the evil spirit was Albazar.

The last torch Albazar lit revealed a gruesome sight. In the far corner of the cellar was a large barbecue spit, like the kind used to roast pigs. The thought of all those innocent children being roasted alive made my blood boil. I knew I’d have to have to control my temper to keep from tearing Albazar apart with my bare hands.

Albazar walked up to me and spoke for the first time. His voice was extremely deep, but his English was perfect.
“I haven’t tasted human flesh for a whole year. You are going to be a tasty meal, my succulent little butterball.”

I went along with the act, so I did what any young girl would do in this situation: I screamed.

Albazar laughed. “I love it when children scream. It makes the skin quiver and brings the juices to the surface. When I have you tied to the roaster, the fire is set very low so you can scream for hours.” Albazar ran his huge hand over my face. “You are going to be the tastiest meal I’ve had in years.”

I couldn
’t take it any longer. I should have morphed to the Changeling Princess, but I wanted to teach Albazar a lesson. I morphed into a nine-foot tall Werewolf, two feet taller than Albazar and a hundred pounds heavier. I was built for battle as I pounded my chest and let out a ferocious growl.

“
You…you’re a Changeling!” Albazar screamed.

“
That’s right, Albazar and you’re going to have to go hungry today.”

Albazar cried out with a blood-curdling wolf howl and lunged at me. I grabbed him by his arm and threw him across the room. Before he could pick himself up, I pounced on top of him and began tearing chunks of flesh from his body. Albazar screamed in pain as I pinned him to the floor, scraping my long fingernails over his hairy body and burying my long teeth into his thick neck. I pul
led Albazar to his feet and lifted him over my head. When I slammed him to the ground, I heard the sound of bones breaking. Albazar lay on the floor, whimpering like a beaten dog. 

I took a deep breath. I knew I was out of line by
punishing Albazar, but the thought of his unspeakable deeds down through the centuries had pushed my temper to the breaking point.

I morphed into the Changeling Princess and employed telekinesis to stand Albazar on his feet. I began spinning a force field around him, just as I
’d done with Ackula. When I was finished, I added the final touch by smashing my fist into the force field. Albazar now had a great big “W” between his eyes.

I carried Albazar out of his lair and placed him on the forest floor. I grabbed a dead branch and brushed the entire area around the trapdoor. In time, the trapdoor would become a part of the forest floor and no one would ever know it was there. The best part was the fact that no more children would be kidnapped by Albazar ever again. The legend of the evil wolf spirit would hopefully die.

I flew Albazar to the Mariana Trench and deposited him alongside Ackula. I thought they made a great looking couple.