by Keri Hudson
With a mighty roar, Bazz’s father gathered his strength for another burst of defensive aggression. He kicked one hard, the lupe yelping with the strike and twisting before falling to the forest floor. He rolled to send another scrambling, but it didn’t last long before he turned to lunge at Bazz’s father again. The big ursine shifter heaved one of his attackers up off the ground and threw him at another, both lupes rolling back in a bundle of limbs and jaws and wiry fur. But the lupes weren’t hurt, and they shook the effects of the blow off before getting ready to attack again.
Bazz’s father recovered and met their attack, a great swat of his left front leg digging into one lupe’s belly, pulling it out and dragging the lupe’s entrails and bowels along with his bloodied claws.
He tossed the lupe’s body off, but the others were already jumping on him from every angle. One resumed its spot on the old man’s back, biting into his neck. Bazz could almost feel those canines digging into his own neck, shoulders rising up instinctively to protect himself from an attack that wasn’t directed at him.
Yet.
One of them screamed as Bazz’s father slashed at its face, skull exposed, facial skin dropping down and exposing the teeth, blood pouring from the wound.
Bazz finally managed the strength to pull himself from his mother's grip, screaming and flailing his arms at the nearest lupe. It turned and swatted at the boy, the contact hitting him with incredible force and sending him flying back. Young Bazz collapsed in his mother’s arms and the lupe returned his attention to Bazz’s father, struggling and roaring under the drooling, toothy assault of the surviving lupes.
Bazz’s mother turned toward the river, tears pouring out of her eyes. In turning away from his struggling father, Bazz knew that her mother had accepted his fate, and her own. But the fate of her only son was more important than her own life, and she was more than ready to offer her own up on the off chance that at least the boy would survive.
With a sad gasp and a tearful, “Goodbye, my love,” Bazz’s mother clutched him tight and threw herself and Bazz into that river. At that moment, even at his tender age, young Bazz knew his father would not survive his final battle, but that was the only rational thought that could survive the rushing water, cold and strong and rolling him and his mother one over the other in a dizzying blur of smothering, briny muck.
He couldn’t breathe, flashes of daylight replaced by the dark green and blue of the river. But when they rolled up and gave Bazz a view of the surface, he could see at least one lupe chasing after them, running along the river’s edge to keep pace with them.
The water rushed them faster, numbing and smashing into rocks and boulders. His mother grunted as she held onto him, her arms around him to protect her one and only child. Even in that cold and terrible tumble, he could feel her undying love for him, her commitment to his life above her own as clear as anything he ever knew or ever would know.
The water seemed to move faster, the riverbed rising up to pound them from beneath with that parade of rocks and stones, the strikes so powerful that Bazz could feel them even through his mother’s body.
One last roll upward to the daylight, the lupes chasing along the riverbank until they stopped, yelping at them as they went over the falls.
Their heaving, soaked weight seemed suddenly weightless, hovering in midair for a startling second before gravity took its full toll. They plummeted toward the water waiting below, Bazz’s stomach rising up to press against the bottom of his lungs, driving the air from his body, preparing him for the watery grave that awaited them both. Bazz held his breath as the water came closer, racing toward him, body to be crushed along with his mother’s, to join their husband and father in heaven.
Bazz bolted up out of bed, eyes wide, heart pounding, body sheeted in cool panic sweat. He looked around to see the bedroom of his condo. Bazz got his bearings, breath slowing as his senses recovered. He was no longer the tortured child on the day of his father’s death. He was no longer the little boy carried away by frantic and frothing waters to be hurled off the face of the planet and then thrown back down hard.
I’m not dead, Bazz told himself, I washed up on the banks, I managed to survive… unlike poor Mom and Dad. Never saw either again… Lord, please let them be resting in peace. They’ve earned it.
I haven’t; not yet.
Bazz dropped himself back down onto his pillow, damp with his sweat. He knew his past would never relent, that he could never escape who and what he was, where he came from, and where he was going. It brought everything to the fore, as much as he hoped to escape it for just a few precious hours. But the terrible truth of his life came back to him with crystal clarity. It was unescapable, there would be no respite for him. The sins of the father would be the sins of the son. The only question was if Bazz would ever be the hero his father was, if his own death would be as glorious and worthy.
But it was coming and soon—there seemed little doubt about that.
CHAPTER TWO
Bazz stood on the side of a steep slope overlooking Boulder, Colorado. His senses were tingling, hairs standing up on the back of his neck. But he sniffed hard, picking up no trace of any nearby lupes, though the area’s actual wolves could be trouble enough. Still, he was well trained to sense them coming, to pick up on the subtle clacks and chatter they exchanged during a hunt. And standing there without moving, he knew it wouldn’t be much of a hunt at all, but an ambush.
Take it easy, Bazz, he told himself. Just your imagination.
But it was becoming harder and harder to accept that. It was too easy, and nothing about the coming times was going to be easy. He could sense it in the air, in the behavior of the animals in the zoo. The bears, the wolves, the crocs, every big predator went wild in his proximity. And he knew what it meant.
He had to find out what effect he had in the wild, and in his human form. He still spent a lot of time among the normalos, those everyday human beings he so wanted to be one of. But destiny had other plans for him, etched in stone since before he was born.
Bazz had to know how much danger his strictly human friends were in, whether or not the terrible inevitability of having to abandon them had finally come. Bazz looked over the Rockies, a northern harrier spiraling overhead. It was his territory, but he knew that would only bring challengers.
Lupines, Bazz told himself. They're getting ready, all over the country; I can feel it. Their aggression rings in the trees, it carries on the wind. The great war is coming, shifters of both sorts, wolves and bears, will meet in a global conflict that would determine the new masters of the planet Earth. And if it’s the lupes, the human race is doomed.
Bazz took a minute to think about his friends, the university, his students, all the aspects of the human world that were good and decent and worth preserving. It was true that the humans had gone too far in a lot of respects, that the planet was going to find some way to correct them eventually. But Bazz knew what was coming would be no mere correction. The lupes were known to keep human women as breeders; it was one of their primary motivations for encroaching on the human world. Breeding would be the key to their success as a race, if they could manage to cultivate a healthy population. But alpha predators were increasingly on the prowl, taking the shifters’ cubs whenever possible. It was all part of the same violent and potentially catastrophic spiral of war that seemed to be strong enough to sweep him up into it, along with the rest of the country, and even the entire free world.
Bazz spotted the big SUV driving up the mountain road on the next slope, black and boxy. There wasn't much about the SUV that was too out of the ordinary, but something about it captured his instinct. Bazz drove a similar vehicle, which he’d left about half a mile down the hill. Bazz stood on that slope, watching the other big car slow to a stop. The driver and front passenger doors opened and two big men stepped out, bearded and big-bellied. They looked around the area before closing the doors.
Bazz guessed, Hunters? It’s a bit late in the day…
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Two of the three men walked around to the back of the SUV and flipped it open again. The other pulled a handgun from his belt, visible to Bazz even at that distance, and stood by the car door, clearly a guard. One of the others pulled a young woman out of the back of the SUV, hands behind her back, legs pinned together. She was tape-gagged and blindfolded.
The third man took her arm and dragged her to the side of the thin mountain road, a few yards from the car. He shoved her down to her knees as the other man dragged a young man, similarly trussed up. He dragged the man, beefy and bearded, also redheaded, to kneel next to the woman.
Bazz was too far from his car, and the route too indirect, to have any hope of getting to them in time. He knew instantly that his only chance was to shift and fast. There was no time even to strip out of his clothes, as he’d normally do before assuming his ursine form. Instead, he tore right through them. His furry hide bristled with thick, dark hair, massive arms and legs tearing through his pants and shirt. His wallet and car keys fell from his pocket to his feet, already shifting into massive, black-clawed hind paws, ripping out of his boots.
The three men pulled three more young men from the back of the SUV, all bound and gagged and blindfolded, to be lined up kneeling by the side of the road. Bazz knew what the men intended to do. The only question was whether he could get to them in time.
Bazz jumped into the chase. Despite his greater size, almost a thousand pounds of bone, sinew, muscle, hide, and hair, Bazz could move with incredible speed and agility, weaving between blue and Engelmann spruce trees, one rotting branch shattering as he blasted past it. His heart was pumping strong, shifter blood pulsing in his veins. It was a rarified concoction, a fluid volatile enough to detonate, the resultant explosion powerful enough to wipe clean the surface of the earth.
Bang! The gunshot rang out over the hillside, kingfishers and hummingbirds fluttering out of the canopy above him. A deer stag turned and fled the area as Bazz barreled across the slope. His massive paws slid a bit on the thick forest floor, a carpet of rotting leaves and dead critters.
Bang! The second shot was louder as Bazz got closer, his own growled pant heavy in his lungs, his throat, his ears. The shot was followed by a dull thud, and Bazz knew it was a dead body hitting the ground.
Execution style, Bazz thought, one shot in the back of the head. Drag ‘em into the woods after and leave ‘em to the wolves. But that was all his reasoning human mind could conjure. As he bore down on them, the ursine part of himself came to the full fore, strength welling up in his arms, claws already flinching to anticipate an exquisite kill.
Bang! Bazz knew another person had just lost their life, his human empathy vibrating beneath his animal rage. Despite his human affection for the normalos, the ursine in him hated them as much as any lupe did, or even the wolves and orca and natural alpha predators all over the world.
Man was the bane of the planet, man was bringing imbalance and toxicity and death. But as Bazz charged through the firs and onto the scene, he was the one bringing death, and he was going to enjoy every minute of it.
CHAPTER THREE
Bazz burst through the junipers, leaping over the hostages both dead and alive. The gunman behind them looked up with the face of sudden terror, his camouflage hunting jacket making him all the more pathetic to Bazz, standing as he was in front of a jet-black SUV.
Bazz landed squarely on the man, smashing against the SUV, which leaned heavily to the side to absorb the blow. The assassin struggled wildly and screamed in a terrified, high-pitched wail, one hand searching for his lost handgun while the other threw useless punches at Bazz’s huge face.
Bazz bit down hard on the man’s face, biting down just hard enough to get a solid grip, blood spurting from the puncture wounds and dripping deliciously into his throat.
In the corner of Bazz’s eyes, he could see the other men standing dumbstruck, one of them already raising a gun to start firing. Bazz knew he was standing between the gunmen and the two surviving hostages, one of them the woman among the bound five.
Bazz stood up as the man raised his gun, holding his own hostage writhing in front of him. The enfeebled gunman howled and shrieked and pulled at Bazz’s jaws, without a hope in hell of freeing himself. It was as if he knew it wouldn’t matter soon enough anyway, and of course he was right.
Bang! Bang-bang-bang!
They shot at Bazz and their captive comrade both. The bullets tore through their friend, who spasmed and twitched in front of Bazz, his blood flicking on Bazz’s fur. A few bullets hit Bazz too, absorbed into his thick hide, soon to be harmlessly expelled. Bazz dropped the dead man and stepped over him to make quick work of the other two men. One kept shooting, the other turned and ran down the road.
But even the last standing gunman seemed to know the gun was useless. For some reason, he seemed to think a hunting knife would be more effective, pulling it out of a leather sheath and raising it high to bring it down into the back of Bazz’s neck. But a single swipe of his massive right arm, paw cutting up into his arm from below, pulled the man’s forearm from his elbow, splitting and tearing off with a hideous pop and tear followed by the man’s screams.
Bazz stood on all fours for just a moment, enjoying the man’s utter shock and helplessness, his amazed scream and the realization in his wide eyes that he was looking into the face of his own death. He was already dead, and he seemed to know it.
And there was another man to kill.
Bazz stepped onto the man’s chest as he prepared to jump into the chase, the stumped man’s chest collapsing beneath his weight as Bazz walked on, leaving him for dead.
The strain of the man’s fear was easy to pick up on, leading Bazz back down the road for almost a quarter of a mile before the man changed course and cut into the woods. He clearly had panicked about being out in the open, and for good reason. But the forest would offer him little respite.
Bazz weaved through the ponderosa and limber pines, getting more dense in that clutch of the slope. He knocked one over and then another, the trail becoming less distinct among the denser odors of all that rot and debris on the forest floor, the masque flower pollen in the air, humidity gathering beneath the spruce canopy above.
Bazz paused, slowly looking up to see his prey having treed himself in a desperate attempt to escape Bazz’s notice. He looked down, clinging to the trunk of the white pine, arms and even his legs wrapped around it like a baby to his mother’s leg.
Bazz started climbing, slowly taking the lowest branch, then the next. The treed assassin gasped in horror, struggling as if he was trying to climb higher but was also afraid to move. Bazz climbed higher.
“No, stop,” the treed killer said above Bazz, shaking his head, holding a hand out as if that might stop what both knew was going to happen, what both knew had to happen. “Look, I… good boy, good boy…” Bazz took another branch, then a higher one, the tree creaking and swaying a bit with Bazz’s weight. “Please… pleeeeezzzzzzze!”
Bazz climbed higher and his prey made a desperate move to out-climb him. But the man slipped and fell with a frightened yelp, arms waving, fingers reaching at nothing as the earth pulled him back. He landed with a hard thud and crack and lay with one leg bent to the side at the knee. He looked up, groaning in pain, head rolling a bit on the forest floor, clearly immobile.
Even so, Bazz positioned himself just so, looking down to see his victim looking up at him, seeming to know what was going to happen. He held up one hand and shook his head, “No, no, no-no-noooooo!” spilling out of his mouth.
Bazz dropped himself down, a thousand pounds falling from twenty feet. He landed with a sickening crunch onto his prey, the man practically bursting beneath him, jagged, broken ribs pushing up through the meat, blood leaping from his mouth, pelvis crushed under his hinds.
Bazz leapt out from the bloody wreckage of the man and back to the scene of his crime.
He trotted straight back to the car and the bodies and gore strewn out around it
. Two men were dead in pools of their own blood, three bound and facedown in the forest by the roadside, charred red holes in the backs of their heads.
The two redheaded hostages, a beefy, bearded man and a smaller young woman with long hair pulled back in a ponytail, remained on their knees, trembling with fear.
Bazz shifted back into his human form, naked, glancing around. He asked the two, “Hey, are… are you two all right?” The two hostages nodded, whimpering into their gags. Bazz decided to pull the boots and pants and jacket from the nearest man to dress himself. As he did, he explained, “So, um, I was just in the area, I’m a… a kind of naturalist, y’see? And I just happened to be in a… a state of natural grace, if you’ll allow me to put it that way, so… I’m going to be wearing one of these guys’ clothes when I take your blindfolds off. But I’m not one of them, so you have nothing to fear.”
The clothes on, Bazz picked up the fallen hunting knife, still in the man’s severed grip. He crossed around behind the hostages. “I’m going to cut you loose, no reason to be afraid.” The hostages nodded and he used the tip of the blade to cut the zip-ties from their purple, swollen wrists.
Bazz crossed around to cut their ankles free as the two rubbed their wrists and peeled the tape off their mouths. The red-bearded man had special difficulty. The young woman pulled her blindfold down to reveal a beautiful pair of sparkling, green eyes, almost glowing from her pale, freckled complexion.
She looked around, in sadness at the other hostages, in horror at the bloody mess around the SUV. “What happened?”
“That's a good question,” Bazz said, curious about the events leading up to the killings more than the killings themselves. But he understood her position, and he knew he had to feign the same. So Bazz glanced around and shrugged. “Must’ve been a bear, I guess.”
The man said, “Thanks for the help, bro. I’m Freddie Blaire, this is my sister, Phoebe.”