by Keri Hudson
Brandon put one clip on one of Bazz’s nipples, a hard sting piercing through his chest. Bazz lurched, biting back on his fury and his pain.
“'Course, it needs two separate connection points for the current to flow.” He looked down at Bazz’s crotch with a devilish little smile.
“No!”
Brandon huffed out a little chuckle. “Like I said, this isn’t that.” He closed the other clip onto Bazz’s right earlobe. “Not that this will feel much better.”
“No!” Phoebe screamed from the monitor. Bazz looked over to see her on the monitor, her eyes fixed on her own screen, then up in the general direction of the hidden camera. “Don’t do it!”
“Sorry, honey,” Brandon said. He turned to the generator and turned the dial. A hot blast of electricity shot through Bazz’s body, muscles tense and straining. He held firm, bones rattled, brain getting hot as the electricity streamed through him.
The electricity suddenly ceased, Bazz’s muscles remaining clenched, his spine arched and his body pushing up off the gurney.
From the monitor, Phoebe asked, “Why are you doing this?”
“Gotta know how much punishment he can take in his human form.”
Bazz knew he had other reasons, not the least of which was the sheer joy he was getting from the illusion of power the torture conferred upon him. He hit the dial again, the electricity flooding his tissues once more, filling every cell, vision going dark, ears a dull hum. His body quivered with the blast, every instinct in him wanting to shift into his stronger form to end that agony once and for all.
But this time Bazz’s stronger self was his human self. He knew they wanted him shifting on camera, but he knew Phoebe’s life was only seconds away from a terrible end, and he had to resist. He had to remain human, just another normalo, and endure the suffering they’d endured for centuries, and all at once.
“Please,” Phoebe begged, “stop, you’re killing him!”
Brandon asked her, “What do you know about it? What can you tell me?”
“She doesn’t know anything,” Bazz said.
“Shut up, professor. I’m in charge here.” He cranked the dial and an even stronger wave of electricity streamed through him, muscles tightening up again, body lurching up off the gurney, straining against the straps. His heart seemed to stop beating, lungs unable to function, but his blood seemed to boil, veins threatening to rupture.
“Stop it!” Phoebe’s voice screamed from the miniature speakers in the monitor. “You can do whatever you want to me, but leave him alone!”
Brandon turned the dial down, Bazz’s body bouncing and contracting from the electricity.
“She really likes you,” Brandon said. “Imagine a girl willing to go through all this for you. It’s... it’s really something, don’t you think?” He leaned a little closer, Brandon’s voice the only thing his rational mind could focus on in that incredible, unfathomable agony. “But you wouldn’t want me to have to do that, would you? She might not fare as well as you, poor little thing.”
Another hard zap of electricity poured into Bazz’s body, jaw and fists clenched, knees buckling, hips thrusting, chest expanding and contracting and threatening to explode and implode at the same time.
His senses left him, only Phoebe’s screaming voice in those little speakers remaining until even that was blitzed out by that white-hot energy, finally cooking Bazz alive. His brain crackled and blacked out, no more sounds getting through and no more breath. Bazz’s consciousness abandoned him, perhaps for the last time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bazz told himself he was dreaming again. He was no longer the child of his dreams, no longer helpless in his late mother’s arms. But then, just as before, he could only look up at the half dozen big lupes as they piled onto his father. The alpha ursine and the master of his own territory, they’d strayed from his home turf, and the lupes weren’t about to let that opportunity go to waste.
Bazz had already shifted, and he strained to push himself from his mother’s arms. But his late mother held him tight, for dear life. But no matter how hard his father fought, it was pointless. He flipped one lupe over his shoulder and threw him into the trunk of a nearby boxelder.
It seemed so real, as if more than a dream; but it couldn’t be. It’s just a dream.
But it felt so real, too real—like it was not a dream at all, but a premonition.
Bazz finally managed to push himself free and launched himself at the lupes.
“Bazz,” she called, “no, don’t!”
He charged hard and fast and leapt, digging his jaws into one of the lupes. But the lupe turned and bit down hard into the back of Bazz’s neck. With a snap of his head, he threw the young ursine shifter cub back and into his mother’s arms.
Just like the last time, Bazz told himself through that fog of dream, just like every time.
But this time was different. Bazz leapt in and went on fighting. He felt incredible new strength pulsing through his young body, making him more aggressive and eager to take his place next to his father, in battle and in death.
Bazz threw himself into the fight, scratching and biting at any part of any lupe he could find. He was knocked back hard, a lupe swiping those hard claws into his young shoulder. The pain shot through him, but the vital energy was too strong and Bazz fought on with even more aggression.
Bazz jumped onto one lupe’s back and bit into the muscular neck. He clamped down tight and shook hard, growling and pulling and wanting with every fiber to kill that lupe and the other surviving four; he wanted to and he had to. He owed it to his mother, his father. It had been years since he’d lost them both to his own youth and weakness, and he wasn’t about to let that happen again.
Bazz looked back at his mother, human and cowering at the foot of a tree near the Colorado River, rushing by just a few feet below the ridge where she was sitting. But it wasn’t his mother, it was Phoebe, sitting cowering by that tree. And instead of being alone, watching her child fight alongside her husband, she sat with another shifter cub in her arms.
Bazz turned to see his father fighting the lupes, but the old alpha ursine shifter was gone and the lupes were attacking Bazz instead.
There was no dead body lying at Bazz’s feet, and as he looked up at his own adult physique, he realized that he’d finally taken his father’s place. He was the alpha, he was the one standing against the lupes.
But they piled on Bazz, heavy on his back, teeth biting in. Bazz threw the lupe with a sharp spin of his body, dislodging it from his back. But another jumped on to replace it, and a third was biting into Bazz’s right leg, slowly working those canines deeper and closer to the bone. Nerves crackled beneath the skin, blood poured out over his foot. Bazz tried to shake them off, but it was no use. Jaws bit into him from every angle, another lupe digging at his belly with his terrible hind claws, each swipe bringing him moments closer to being disemboweled.
Bazz looked over at Phoebe and their cub just as she looked at him one last time. He could see the sad resolve in her face, so much like the last time he’d seem his own mother’s face, the moment she did the very same thing years before.
“Goodbye, my love.”
Phoebe flung herself and their cub over the edge and into that rushing water. They vanished in that rolling churn, but Bazz knew that at least his son would survive, the circle of life would be complete, and that he’d see his beloved Phoebe again soon, in the land where there was no more war, no more coming shifter apocalypse, no more pain, and no more death.
Heaven.
But until then, Bazz had to get through a living hell of his own. Pain shot through his body as he scrambled to repel the attacking lupes. They kept coming, as if they were multiplying and would go on doing so. He could kill one or three or all of them, but they’d keep coming until they’d picked his bones clean.
Bazz woke with a start, looking around the strange white room. His brain was aching, pounding, dry as a hunk of coal in his skull. His arms
and legs were weak, straps securing him to that gurney.
A dream, he told himself, but… it’s changing after all this time. And Bazz knew why—or rather, because of whom. It was Phoebe, and Bazz knew it. She was his soulmate, the one destined to raise his cubs just as his mother had been his father’s soulmate. But they’d met a terrible fate, and Bazz could only imagine that his own brain was telling him what he simply could not accept. That the cycle would go on, the past would always be the future, and that Bazz and Phoebe’s fate may already have been sealed.
***
Bazz woke up to see the room around him, the only shred of his former world a familiar female voice, small and metallic in his ear as he struggled to regain consciousness.
“It’s true,” Phoebe said to Vinnie, “he… I just met him, tell you the truth.”
“That’s bullshit,” Vinnie said.
“No, it’s true! He dragged me to his cabin, you probably saw that on YouTube. Of course I’m going to play up to the guy. But the truth is… I never really liked him all that much to begin with. I was just… playing into his fantasy. He doesn’t have much social life, as you can imagine.”
Vinnie nodded. “Yeah, that checks out.” Bazz knew that she was lying to him, a ruse to win his trust, a trick that would be her best offense. Bazz was impressed and intrigued, watching with increasing focus as his senses and strength returned. “But it don’t matter to me,” Vinnie went on. “You’re just not into the guy, what’s that mean to me?”
“Well, um, it means, y’know…”
“What, that you wanna get with me? You want me to get with you’s?”
Bazz focused on the monitor, eyes strong enough to make out Phoebe on the cot, setting a clever hand on Vinnie’s shoulder. “Look, truth is, I’m not just… not so into the guy. He terrifies me! He’s a fucking monster! I’ve seen it up close.”
Vinnie waved her off. “We got things here, take care of it.”
“No, you don’t, you couldn’t possibly!”
“Look, ain’t nothin’ indestructible. Believe me, it gets outta line, we got it.”
Phoebe shook her head, pulling herself closer to Vinnie. “You don’t understand! He’s going to get loose and kill everybody, even you! Then he’s going to take me back!” She pulled him even closer. “Please, don’t let him take me, don’t! Please, Vinnie, I’m begging you!”
“Awright, awright, but... whaddya want? I’m guardin’ ya’s already.”
“That’s not enough! You have to get me out of here!”
“No way, sweetie.”
She grabbed his tracksuit jacket and pulled herself closer to him. “Please! That thing is going to come for me, I… I have to get out of here!”
He shook his head, already falling for her ploy. “How? There are guards, people, I can’t just walk you out.”
“You have to!”
“What about Malone?”
“That monster in the examination room is going to kill Malone, you can forget about him. It’s going to kill everybody here, you too if it can! Our only choice is to get out of here, don’t you see that? Never mind Malone, never mind anyone! You have to worry about you... you and me.”
Vinnie seemed genuinely convinced, pressing his empty hand against his forehead, his gun hand idle on his lap. “Just tell anyone who asks that Brandon wants to see you, we’ll walk right by ‘em.”
“Right,” Phoebe said, nodding to encourage him. “And who’s gonna challenge you? F’geddaboudit!”
“Yeah, that’s true, but… I dunno.”
“C’mon, Vinnie,” Phoebe pouted. “Don’t you want me? I know you do! I see the way you look at me.”
"I... well, yeah, but…"
“You don’t think I… I want it too, that I want you too?”
“Nah, fuck off—”
“Why not? You’re a real man, at least, and… I... I’ve never admitted this to anyone before, but... I mean, I’m just a normal girl, right, nothing too fancy for me, but… deep down, I guess…”
“What’re you’s tryin’ to say?”
“When you grabbed me,” Phoebe said, raising her fingers to her lips, “in the cabin, put your hand over my mouth. So… so strong and powerful… and… and when you were threatening me earlier… it... it made me feel a way I... I haven’t felt in a long time.”
Vinnie looked her over. “Yeah?”
Phoebe nodded, Bazz enraptured by her strategic genius, shining through the little monitor, through those little speakers.
“Yeah,” she said, breathless. He moved in on her, but she held her hand out and he complied, seeming to be completely under her spell. “But you’ve got to get me out of here, Vinnie! Please!” She added a bit of whine to her voice and clung to him, pulling herself even closer. “Please, baby... save me, baby!”
Vinnie looked around and nodded. “Awright, awright.” He took her hand with his free hand and led her to the door. She opened it and Vinnie looked around the hallway before heading her out of the camera’s view.
As soon as he heard the door close, Bazz shifted to his massive ursine form. His body split the straps, his powerful arms and legs easily pulling loose as he flipped himself sideways off the gurney and onto the floor.
He knew he could storm the place in his ursine form, virtually beyond their reach. But as soon as the clamor got out, Phoebe and her hopeful conspirator would be exposed, probably shot on the way out.
So Bazz shifted back into his human form and approached a metal cabinet with green surgical scrubs, including a face mask and cap and even the paper booties. He pulled the paper clothes on and turned for the door. He had to get to Phoebe before that hood got her off the premises, or got them both killed trying.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bazz walked down a long hallway, small offices lined up on each side, perpendicular hallways intersecting. Some doors were closed, but Bazz didn’t even bother to look into them. He had to once again hand it to Phoebe, whose genius got her out of the room she was locked up in and told him he wouldn’t have to waste his time looking into any of the other small rooms. Those two were on the move, and heading toward an exit. Bazz walked casually but with purpose, making certain not to glance around too much, not to reveal himself as half lost in a concrete maze with no exit signs.
Two men walked toward him, two of the mafia goons in tracksuits he’d seen when they kidnapped him and Phoebe from his cabin.
“Whaddya think, Vinnie’s just gonna ghost us? No way, man! We been widdim from da groun’ floor!”
“That’s why! Makes more sense to clear the decks, once all this is done, I mean.”
Bazz stopped and turned, a drinking fountain a ready place to hide his face. But as the men approached, they paused, Bazz not sure why.
“How ‘bout that girl?”
“Wicked fuckable.”
“Wicked. You think Vinnie’s been there?”
They lingered, Bazz knowing he couldn’t keep drinking that water all day. He stopped drinking, knowing the risk but unable to avoid it.
“You heard what the big man said, ain’t nobody’s supposed to raise their hands.”
“Still, Vinnie, he got no scruples, that guy. That’s why we gotta watch each other’s backs, Mikey, ‘at’s all I’m sayin’.” After a moment, one said, “Hey, doc.” Bazz straightened up, unsure of what to do next. The men were seconds away from exposing him, and he was seconds away from murdering them. “That ‘cher personal water fountain?”
“Oooohhhhh,” the other said as Bazz nodded and slipped the mask back over his face to walk away. He managed a clean getaway, but Bazz knew he’d been lucky and that his luck wasn’t likely to hold out.
Bazz spotted Phoebe’s short red hair at the end of the hallway, walking with Vinnie Grasso. They were making their way quickly down a hall perpendicular to the one Bazz was in, and they walked by without seeming to have noticed him. Bazz didn’t want to walk too fast, but he couldn’t afford to lose sight of Phoebe and blow that lucky break.
>
“Hey, doc! Doc!” Bazz had to stop and turn to see the two men he’d left behind him walking quickly up to him. “Doc, gimme a minute.” Without saying a word, Bazz nodded and waited. The goon Mikey turned around and pointed at a small bump on the back of his neck. “Whaddya think, doc? S’not cancer, is it?”
Bazz looked nervously down the hall, where he belonged but couldn’t get to. He knew the love of his life and the man who had her at gunpoint were getting further away by the second.
“No, looks all right.”
“Really? I dunno, I had it a long time.”
“Come back tomorrow, I’ll do a biopsy.”
“Biopsy,” Mikey said to his friend, “see what I’m talkin’ bout? I knew it, man.”
“Oof marone,” the other said as Bazz walked briskly down the hall toward the place he’d last seen Phoebe and Vinnie.
Bazz got to the other hallway and turned to see Vinnie standing with Phoebe, talking with two more of his greaseball minions. Bazz was already walking toward the four of them, Vinnie’s back to Bazz. But Phoebe was standing facing Vinnie and the other men, and she seemed to catch a glimpse of Bazz as he approached. He kept an even stride, careful not to draw attention to himself. He knew he could swiftly shift and then tear the men apart, but he’d likely draw too much attention. Three men at once would leave a trace leading directly to them, and bring down heat they wouldn’t be able to endure.
And Phoebe kept cool too, once again revealing how impressive and formidable she was. Bazz had to keep walking, until he walked right past them. He’d never been closer to his target, but he had no choice but to keep walking, getting further away with every step.
As Bazz passed, Vinnie was saying to his underlings, “Mum’s da word on ‘dis. You see da big man, turn de udduh way, right?”
“What about you, Vin?”
“Don’t you worry ‘bout me.” Bazz heard their conversation end, and by the weight of the footsteps behind him, Bazz knew things had turned around, with Vinnie and Phoebe now behind him. But they were walking in the same direction, and when a corner came, Bazz had to choose one direction or the other. Bazz knew he couldn’t turn and attack Vinnie head on or he’d be risking Phoebe’s safety. He had to come in from behind to ensure the man was disarmed quickly.