Blackjack Bears

by Amelia Jade

  “The movies,” he echoed.

  That was where they were going, instead of looking for his brothers? Pierce opened his mouth to raise it in protest. To tell her that he was going out to look for his brothers, that he had a few ideas on where to look, but that he would have to do it on his own.

  That’ll never work. She’ll never let you go alone. Besides, you have no idea how long you’ll be able to stand it out there. Just because you’re getting better at it doesn’t mean you can move about freely yet.

  Which meant that until he could, he was stuck following along after Mila like a lame duckling. There were worse people to be with, of course, but he wanted to be looking for his family as well as doing things with her.

  “Yes, the movies,” she said.

  “I’m taking you?”

  She shrugged. “It’s a phrase. You will be my escort.”

  He eyed her. “That sounds suspiciously like a date.”

  Mila rolled her eyes and stepped close enough to push him back toward where his clothes were stashed in a suitcase she’d provided him.

  “Change, now,” she ordered.

  Knowing a lost battle when he saw one, Pierce shrugged out of his clothes and reached for the ones he’d been told to wear.

  “You’re not even going to wait for me to go back upstairs?” Mila asked.

  He glanced over his shoulder to see her facing away from him, as if embarrassed.

  “I’m wearing underwear,” he sighed. Besides, it’s not like it’s not anything you haven’t already seen.

  But Pierce was much too smart to say that last sentence out loud. Not if he wanted to ever see Mila in her underwear again. She’d been very careful not to bring up that night, or anything to do with it. He couldn’t yet figure out why. The sense of attraction between the two of them burned so bright it was nearly visible. He could feel her arousal at times, let alone scent it if he tried.

  But what he couldn’t figure out was her absolute reluctance to talk about it. Pierce knew that shifters had a much more liberal attitude toward sex than a lot of humans did. But they’d already fooled around once. It would be so much easier if they just brought it out into the open and discussed it, as opposed to tiptoeing around, pretending that they hadn’t rocked each other’s worlds.

  He stopped cold as he dressed, another thought slithering through his mind.

  What if he hadn’t been able to please her? What if the arousal he could sense was simply because of the idea of him, of his looks, and the reason she hadn’t acted was because in reality she didn’t enjoy him?

  The thought hit him in the gut like a steel bar. Was he not good enough for Mila? She’d seemed to enjoy herself, but then again, it could mostly have been an act, he supposed.

  “Ready yet?” she asked, interrupting his depressing line of thoughts.

  “Umm, just about,” he replied, doing up the last few buttons on the shirt.

  Mila turned, eyeing him up and down. “Yep, that’ll do. Let’s go.”

  Still confused as to everything in his life situation at that point, Pierce did the only thing he could think of. He followed Mila’s orders and took her to the movies.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Pierce

  The theater was dark and enclosed, which made it much easier for him to relax. They shared an armrest, her hand resting comfortably upon his, which made it easy for him to stay calm.

  Pierce spent the previews trying to puzzle through why his bear wasn’t more up in arms about the fact that he hadn’t gone searching for Maximus, Kassian and the others. In any normal situation, he should have been casting aside his personal love life and doing whatever it took to find them. Tear the city down with his bare hands if need be, Pierce didn’t care.

  Yet, try as he might to conjure such anger, such driving need, it never came. His bear just sat there, insisting he stay with Mila.

  Mila, the enigmatic woman who, without knowing him at all, had brought him into her life, and her house. Who had been slowly falling for him, even as he longed after her in every way possible. Mila who had some sort of mysterious job that she wasn’t willing to tell him about. Mila, who also didn’t seem concerned about his missing brothers.

  Maybe that was it, that was why his bear wanted him to stick with her. Maybe—

  The entire theater shook as the speakers came to life. Bass thundered through the seats, shaking him in place as guns began to fire and explosions went off. Pierce sat still, his eyes focused on the screen in front of him. His hands began to tighten around the armrests as the staccato of gunshots assaulted his ears.

  Muscles on his spine tightened, forcing him to sit upright. His head darted this way and that, searching for the source of the sounds.

  Another blast filled the theater. His bear was awake now, and it didn’t like it. Even with his connection to Mila, he was having a hard time concentrating. His lungs moved up and down with short, rapid breaths as he began to panic.

  “Mila,” he gritted out through a clenched jaw.

  She didn’t seem to notice, too absorbed in the movie.

  Thunder and lightning filled the screen and the speakers.

  “Mila!” he said louder this time.

  She noticed and looked over at him.

  “Pierce? Pierce what’s wrong?” she frantically pushed her hand on top of his, trying to increase the connection.

  It wasn’t working.

  His bear was losing control. Pierce’s head snapped to the side as it cracked one of the walls of its mental prison as it flung itself against it.

  “Forest.” He could only get the singular word out.

  “What?”

  “Forest. Where?” he gasped, his head jerking to the other side as he fought desperately to contain his animal.

  He couldn’t let it go. Not in here. His mind was still strong; he could hold on for a bit. But he was tiring rapidly, and unless he shifted, he’d be unable to soothe his bear, which could be very, very bad.

  Mila thought frantically. “Out the front doors, straight ahead to the street, hang a right, and just keep running. No idea of forest, but it goes over the highway and right into farmers’ fields.”

  Pierce was up and out of his seat before she’d even finished speaking. The theater doors were closed, but he simply lowered his shoulder and plowed right through them, almost taking out a family of latecomers.

  Too focused on his mind and the efforts of his bear to escape, Pierce didn’t even notice them. He slammed through the nearest exit, hoping the outside alone might help.

  The instant the door opened alarms began to clang and wail, and his bear redoubled its efforts to get out.

  Good job. You picked the only exit guaranteed to make things worse. An emergency-only one.

  Unable to truly appreciate the humor of the situation as he was engaged in a fight very likely for his life, Pierce slapped his hands to his head, as if their grip might help him out. Uncaring at last, he sprinted through the parking lot, letting his shifter enhanced muscles carry him at a speed no human could match.

  Right then it didn’t matter if anyone saw him. If Pierce didn’t get over that highway and out of sight in a field somewhere, he, and very likely anyone around him, were going to be in a bad, bad way.

  Following Mila’s instructions he turned right at the road and just started running. Cars whizzed by, honking and slamming on their brakes as they sought to avoid the wild man hurtling down the road in the dark. It didn’t help he was wearing a dark shirt either. They couldn’t see him until the last second.

  The highway thankfully wasn’t far, and less than a minute of his speedy pace he was halfway over the bridge. Before him he saw farmers’ fields on the right. Swinging his gaze across the road, Pierce felt his heart soar with hope.

  Trees. Lots and lots of trees. A true forest. It wasn’t large—he could see the edge of it—and also a lamp-lit path that seemed to thread its way through it. But they were tr
ees nonetheless.

  Once he made it there, he’d be able to calm his bear. To release it under its conditions, if absolutely necessary. But a forest like that might just prove calming enough that he could reassert control. As he got closer to it, Pierce felt more confident of that being the case.

  I’m going to win this fight, dammit.

  He reached the bottom of the hill from the bridge, and, instead of waiting for cars to stop, he bent his legs and jumped.

  The enormous strength imbued to him as a shifter hurled him high up into the air, in a leap that was supposed to take him diagonally across the intersection and then straight into the forest.

  A huge horn blared as he began to descend, and Pierce turned his head just in time to see an oncoming big rig, a split second before he bounced off the roof of it, flipping end over end crazily until he finally came to a halt by slamming into a lamppost. The metal bowed around his form before he slid to the ground with a groan.

  Rage blossomed within Pierce, a wave of fiery hatred that blasted aside his last remaining tethers on his bear.

  “Motherfucker!” he roared, extricating himself from the now-curved length of steel.

  Unable to control himself, he reached up, wrapped his hands around the pole, and hauled it down. Metal shrieked and protested, but his strength was too great. Weakened by his body, the pole gave way finally and came crashing to the ground.

  Pierce bellowed his anger and triumph at the offending hunk of metal. His voice was inhuman already, as his bear began to push through. Using some of his last remaining control, he turned his body until it was pointed at the forest, and then gave it a mental shove.

  Legs flailed and he was ungainly propelled forward. Shaking his head, he tried to reassert control. It was a battle he was losing until he moved under cover of the first of the trees. Almost immediately the embrace of mother nature reached out and stroked him, calming his irate bear just enough for Pierce to jump back into the driver’s seat.

  He moved himself deeper and deeper into the little wood. It was perhaps half to three-quarters of a mile square, plenty deep enough to get lost within.

  As the press of humanity and its buildings and noise was replaced by the gentle, fresh scents of wood, dried leaves, and earthen dirt, Pierce slowed his run. He collapsed to the ground, his lungs heaving. Although he could still run farther and faster than a human, the sprint he’d just done to get to the little forest, followed by getting hit by a freaking tractor trailer, was more than enough to leave even one like him winded.

  “Easy there,” he said out loud now, soft, soothing tones directed at himself, helping to calm his bear.

  The beast brooded within him, still sullenly testing the walls, but Pierce was back in control now. They were in his element.

  “Be good, and we’ll go exploring,” he promised.

  He almost said “and we’ll go for a walk,” but the comparison to a werewolf, or a dog, would have been too much for his bear just then. So Pierce wisely avoided using those words.

  Seemingly placated, his bear relaxed even more. Confident now that he could maintain control, Pierce let his bear free of its cage. It rushed out, infusing his body and allowing the change to happen, even as he kept it carefully harnessed, just in case he needed to reverse things.

  He twitched slightly as thick, coarse fur the color of fresh-cut wood sprouted all over his body, absorbing his clothing into its thickness. For a split second he looked like some sort of hairy beast man out of legend. But the change was still continuing as his body bulked and grew. Limbs took on proportions bigger than any human could boast. The extra weight became uncomfortable, and Pierce fell from an upright position to rest on all fours.

  Another part of the shift was his limbs lengthening until they were of the same size, and altering his hip and arm joints so that it was comfortable to move around on all fours. Muscle and size kept piling on as he doubled, then redoubled in size.

  Now came the worst part. He flinched slightly while cringing internally as his spine cracked, the bones repositioning themselves so he could look forward instead of down. That was bad, but his face began to push forward, elongating into a muzzle. The stretching feeling was the worst, and it made Pierce want to retch every time as he tried to ignore the queasy sensation.

  But then it was over, and six-inch-long claws pawed at the dirt as his bear snuffled around happily, relieved to be in its natural form at last.

  See, told you we’d go explore.

  A feeling of relief, followed by the idea that it had been too long entered his mind. His bear couldn’t communicate in sentences or even words, but it could get simple thoughts and emotions across fairly easily. After a decade of learning to work with each other, Pierce could understand it fairly well now.

  “Hello?”

  He froze. The voice wasn’t Mila.

  After the change he’d begun to wander through the forest, simply enjoying the beauty of it as he and his bear worked to calm each other. Now it seemed he’d wandered too close to the path.

  A quick look around him showed that he’d actually wandered between two different parts of the path. Lamplight filtered through and cast a pale glow upon him. Anyone looking through the forest to the other section of the path couldn’t help but see him.

  Such as the man on the far side of middle age who was looking nervously right where Pierce was located.

  “Hello? Show yourself. Be warned, I am carrying, and if I feel threatened I will not hesitate to use deadly force according to the law,” the man called.

  Shit. Shit shit shit.

  The bullet itself wasn’t likely to do any damage to him, unless the old fool happened to be packing some serious heat. His shifter fur and skin could absorb a tremendous amount of force, including that from bullets, acting basically as body armor.

  Armor-piercing bullets, tranquilizer darts, and heavy caliber bullets though would hurt just as bad. He doubted that the man had either of the first two loaded. The second though, well, Pierce had no idea what the laws were on slugthrowers in Longhorne.

  He tried to back away quietly, and slowly.

  “I said show yourself!” the man shouted, his voice warbling nervously.

  Pierce froze again, unsure of what to do. He couldn’t speak. How did he communicate that he came in peace?

  He did the next best thing he could think of. He lay down, pressing himself as close to the ground as possible.

  It almost worked. The man seemed to relax, and though he didn’t drop his hand from his far side, where Pierce assumed he had his gun holstered, the situation seemed to defuse slightly.

  Then a thick branch finally cracked under Pierce’s weight from where he’d settled upon it. The sound raced out through the forest like a gunshot.

  Which is exactly what the man must have thought it was. He pulled the gun, his hand blurring with practiced ease as he aimed it steadily at Pierce and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet slammed into his left flank. Pierce roared angrily.

  The man fired again, but the sound of Pierce’s bear must have scared him. Pierce charged out of the forest, and ran into another person.

  No, a pair of people he corrected as the man jumped in front of the woman in a vain effort to protect them. The woman screamed.

  Behind him the old man must have heard that.

  “Get away from her!” he yelled, and footsteps came pounding back down the path toward him.

  Pierce didn’t know what to do.

  Another bullet whined past him on the opposite side from the couple who were steadily backing away.

  Without thinking, Pierce reached out with a massive paw and flicked a tree branch the size of a club at the man. It sailed through the air lazily, and the man dodged. But that gave the couple time to turn and flee.

  Seeing that they were no longer in danger, the gun-toting fool steadied and took aim.

  Pierce had to make a choice, and he had to make it quickly
.

  The man leveled out and adopted a firing stance.

  He made his decision, and acted upon it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mila

  She stared after Pierce as he bolted.

  Her first thought was how dumb she was, bringing him to the movies like that. How could she seriously have thought that that was a good idea? True, it was supposed to be a lighthearted comedy. Mila had hoped that the laughter and fun vibe of the movie would result in him enjoying the evening.

  What she hadn’t counted on was the brutal trailer for a new war movie epic that would come on first. Clearly the noise and flashing camera action had been too much for him.

  Stupid. That’s what it was. Plain old stupid. You should have known better.

  Yes, she should have.

  The second thought that she had was that he was gone. Light briefly flooded the theater as he almost blew the doors off the hinges in his haste to leave. Mila finally uncoiled from her seat, snatching up her jacket as she took off in pursuit of Pierce.

  “Pierce!” she hollered, but he wasn’t hearing her.

  She’d barely cleared the aisle when the alarm began to clang. Almost immediately people were jumping up from their seats, headed for the exit. More than a few of them must have been unnerved by Pierce’s departure, she realized, and were already on edge.

  “Out of the way!” she ordered in her best command voice, not slowing down as she approached the first group in her way. “I’m not slowing down!”

  People jumped out of her way as she barreled through. The noise alerted others, and they cleared a path for her to the exit, thankfully.

  Mila emerged into the lobby to see a number of people streaming for the exits, though most were casting glances around.

  “Which way did he go?” she shouted. “The huge guy, where did he go?”

  A few people pointed at the door to her left. Mila blew through it just in time to see Pierce accelerate across the parking lot with unbelievable speed. There was no way she was going to catch him that way.

  Mila cursed and darted to her left, angling in toward the car. Fumbling with the keys in her pocket, she hit the remote start, managing to fire that up and then hit the unlock button just before she reached the vehicle. The door flew open and she punched the ignition to full life, before throwing it into reverse.