by A. E. Grace
On his limbs, his hands widened to paws, and from his palms blew out enormous black pads. The same happened for his feet. Out of the rest of the biological goo grew a bear’s body, pink, muscle fibers as yet unsheathed by skin.
Then his skin began to wrap around him, starting with his paws but moving up his body until it entirely covered him, a layer of dark scar-tissue that lightened until billions of strands of fur burst out of his pores.
And then he was his bear. All in all, it had taken roughly a minute, but she knew from seeing him the time he shifted before that the shift could be performed in mere seconds.
“That was kind of gross,” she told him, and his bear huffed a playful growl at her. She laughed, extended her arms, and he came to her.
The height of the bear, and sheer size of it, was still impressive. She looked into the bear’s eyes, asking for permission to touch it, and the bear nodded its small head, and it almost… almost looked comical.
She began to thread her fingers through his fur, marveling once again at how soft and lush it was. It seemed as if it was conditioned. Liam’s bear pushed his face into her hand, a gesture of affection, and she responded by wrapping her arms around his neck and holding him close to her.
It was… it was simply incredible, being this close to a bear. Though she knew she was in no danger, her heart still raced, and adrenaline still flowed through her veins. Her body’s natural instinct was kicking into overdrive. It was telling her to run… or to fight.
It was certainly not telling her to stroke, to caress, to hold, or to hug, or to smell.
And his bear smelled intoxicating. She couldn’t place it, but she imagined it was a little like how she used to bury her nose into her cat’s fur back home. She just couldn’t get enough of it, and she inhaled deep breaths with her face in his bear’s neck.
Oddly enough, she found that his bear’s scent was manly, even though he was no longer a man.
“I kind of like it when you’re like this,” she said, grinning at him. “Because you can’t talk back.”
His bear let out a burst of sound, a playful protestation.
“It’s my natural inclination,” she said, “To want to treat you like you’re cute… like you’re a pet or something. But I know you’re not. It’s so weird. I want to stroke you, scratch you, rub you, to pull your cute little ears… that must be so weird for you.”
The bear did not respond in any way that she could parse, but she knew what she was saying was true.
“You have a beautiful bear, Liam.” She pressed her palms against his hard muscle, felt the bear’s lean body beneath the puffy fur. “It’s so amazing.”
She retreated from him, then, scooted back up the bed and crawled under the covers. She heard him shift but did not watch. She felt him come to bed, but did not roll over.
When he held her, she held onto his arm, and she was glad that he didn’t ask her what was wrong, that he simply was there, with her, holding her in his arms.
Because what was wrong was something she couldn’t quite express, yet.
But one thing was for certain: She felt sad she could not shift.
She felt like she was missing out.
*
“What was that?”
Liam’s eyes darted to the window, before flicking back to Terry. “What?” They had both woken in the middle of the night, and instead of going back to sleep, decided to indulge in a midnight snack and drink. Now it was nearly three in the morning, and he was starting to feel the pull of sleep.
“I saw something big on our balcony.” Terry had put her glass of white wine down, and was now holding onto her elbows.
“Really?” He glanced at the door, but saw only his reflection in the glass. “You sure?”
“Some shifter you are,” she said. “I’m sure. I saw it…” Terry’s voice wavered, and he put a hand on hers. The television was on, but they couldn’t understand a word of it.
And then he saw it, a shadow too large to remain unworried, perched on the railing. He saw it through his own reflection in the glass, and on the bed beside him, Terry was also staring.
“There,” she said, pointing at the dark mass. It hopped away in a blur. “It’s gone. It was huge!”
“Wait in there,” Liam hissed, waving his hand down toward the ground.
“Why? I’ll just wait here.”
But Liam’s instincts had kicked up a storm of caution and worry in his mind. “No, no, go into the bathroom.”
He watched as Terry tiptoed into the bathroom reluctantly before he returned his attention to the balcony. He knew he’d seen something, but he couldn’t be sure what. They were on the fifth floor, so it couldn’t have been a bird or a cat. Besides, it had been far too big, and the way it had hitched and stopped to look at him had been far too deliberate.
He opened the glass door to the balcony, an old and rusty metal thing with a single pane. The door let out a metallic moan as he slid it open, and he grimaced, wishing that he wasn’t making so much sound. Stepping out onto the balcony, he closed the door behind him, leaning against it. The smell of a wolf flooded his nostrils.
“Come out,” he said quietly, keeping his voice low, so that Terry couldn’t hear him. A quick glance over his shoulder, back through the glass pane into the room, told him that she was standing in the doorframe of the bathroom and watching through the same glass pane.
He waited for a few moments, but heard nothing. He tiptoed toward the railing, leaned over quickly, and saw the empty alley below, washing lines strung between the guest house he was in and the one opposite. Multicolored clothes pegs swung back and forth on the lines in the light early morning breeze.
He turned around, leaned with his back over the railing so that he could look up. As he peered into the darkness, he saw two bright yellow spots flash. “I see you,” he said, pulling his head back in, anticipating an attack.
Moments later he heard a voice from the balcony of the floor above. “Somebody got careless.”
“Marcus.” It was as if a wealth of memories had been dredged up from the bottom of a lake he had scratched off the map. Anger, rage, fury, and fear throbbed in his veins, and thumped in his chest.
“Long time, Liam.”
“Never long enough,” Liam said, venom in his voice. “What are you doing here?” He gripped the handrail of the balcony, and his knuckles were white.
“You know exactly what I’m doing here,” Marcus said, clucking his tongue. The noise irritated Liam, filled him with a deep longing to hurt Marcus again, but only this time he would break him.
“And, like I said, you got careless,” the hunter continued. “You think I haven’t been following you this entire time? You think I didn’t see you on your little… date? Who is she, anyway? Think she’d like to meet a wolf?”
Liam backed up against the glass sliding door. Keep talking, he thought to himself. Keep talking, wolf.
“Liam, you knew this day would come. You let yourself get close to someone? You know what I have to do now.”
“I’ll put you down before you can,” Liam growled. “Even if you’re one of our kind.”
“Our kind?” Marcus laughed without any mirth. “We are not the same. I know you talked to my father. I know you know what I am!”
“A victim,” Liam said. He removed the only clothing he was wearing, his boxer-briefs.
“Don’t patronize me!” Marcus spat from above him.
“I get it now,” Liam said. “You never wanted to be a shifter. It was forced upon you. But you made a mistake when you smeared that with blood.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” Marcus said. “It was my wrath. Now tell me, who is this girl of yours?”
Liam had moved right to the edge of the balcony on the right side of the wolf. He was certain that the hunter was standing on the left side of the roof above him.
“Is it your new mate?”
“Her? She’s nothing but a temporary distraction,” he said, imbuing his voice with as m
uch disinterest as he could. But it was a lie, and the wolf would never believe it.
Marcus laughed. “Such a distraction, and yet you shifted for her?” He clucked his tongue. “Oh yes, I didn’t see you that night, but I smelled you. Your bear mixed with a human female… curious that you would reveal yourself for a mere distraction, don’t you think?”
A second of silence passed by before Liam heard a growl he was once very familiar with. The loud snap of a bone told him Marcus was starting to shift. He fell down into a squat, his muscles obeying him without wavering, without trembling complaint.
He had to lead Marcus away. They had to get out of the city, or at least as far away from other people as possible. He saw a snout poke over the edge of the balcony above him, snarling, white razor-sharp canines bared, and angry yellow eyes behind them. The blade-faced wolf, huge, hopped down onto his level, landing on the railing first before skipping to the tiled floor, all agility and grace that disguised what Liam knew to be a brutal and terrifying strength.
The wolf paced left and right what little it could. The balcony was narrow. Liam shifted, quickly. The rapid shift always hurt, but he couldn’t take his time. Mid-shift, rising out of his puddle of biological soup, he charged at the wolf as his barely-formed bear, raked it with a heavy clawed paw, before jumping over it onto the handrail and kicking off, a leap to the adjacent building’s rooftop. His shift completed in the air, fur threading out through every pour, and strength imbuing every fiber of muscle.
The wolf yelped at the strike, but took the bait, and for that, Liam was glad. Furious, Marcus’ wolf turned, shot over the gaps between the buildings, drooling saliva and snarling with hatred.
Liam’s bear bounded across the roof-top, leading the canine savage away from Terry. He leapt to the next roof, and again the next, before looking back.
The wolf was on the chase, nimble and quicker than he, and so Liam pushed harder, his paws thundering on the concrete below him. It was late enough that there would be few witnesses, but he was sure he was waking people up.
There was no time to get out of the city completely. There was too much ground to cover. The next best thing was the lake. There would be nobody there.
That is where he would take his first life, and it weighed heavy on his heart that it had to be another shifter.
*
Terry saw Liam shift in midair as he jumped off the balcony. She got up and ran to the balcony, watching as the wolf jumped off, too.
She heaved a sigh, relieved to see the two animals bounding across the roofs of the low-rises in their area. As fast as she could, she squeezed into jeans, put on her shoes, donned a light hoodie, and took the steps to the ground floor two at a time, bouncing off the walls of the landings and using her palms to protect her.
Once out on the street, she turned her gaze upward, looking for the narrow view of the sky between two buildings to be momentarily broken by gigantic, monstrous shadows. Running across the empty street, she followed dull thudding noises, hoping that she was going in the right direction.
She saw a bear jump from one building to another in the distance, and she changed direction, and sprinted after it, wishing she wasn’t just wearing flimsy, cheap flats. They slapped against the ground as she chased after the two shapeshifters.
It was only a guess but she was fairly certain she knew where they were headed. Liam was leading the wolf to the lake. There would be nobody there. She hoped.
Panting, the humidity clinging close, she willed herself to keep going. Her chest burned and her legs hurt. She cut through a narrow backstreet that she knew would exit her right at the road opposite the lake. She beat them there, and a look over her shoulder told her that they weren’t far behind her.
She climbed gingerly over a small chain fence, before racing down the bank of a lake, coming to a stop by a tree, gasping for air. She hid behind it, waiting for any sign of the two beasts. She didn’t have to wait long. She saw the two huge and dark figures run across the road, briefly visible in the cone of yellow light cast down by the nearest streetlamp. Liam was in what she could only describe as a full bound, and the wolf was sprinting low to the ground behind him.
“Liam!” Terry cried. The wolf was gaining, and it jumped onto his back. The bear roared in what Terry knew was pain as the wolf’s claws found flesh beneath the fur. The air rumbled with the sound of the bear’s cry, but still Liam kept going with the wolf on his back.
“Bring him to me!” Terry shouted, and she looked around, frantic, desperate. She picked up a dry branch that had died and broken off the tree beside her. It would have to do. She held it up, ready to swing it, and she shouted to Liam again. “Bring him to me!”
But the bear did not turn toward her, and she hissed, annoyed, and cut across their curved path in a straight line. Threading through thin trees, she placed herself in their path, and held the branch up high. She could see the wolf had clamped down on the back of his neck with its jaws, and she knew that she had only one shot at this to get him off. Liam was snapping backward with his short snout, and had not seen that he was running straight at her. She pulled the branch back, and as they passed she swung.
The impact rumbled in her joints, shook her shoulders, and launched her backward onto the ground. The dry branch cracked and shattered across the wolf’s head, and the hunter fell off the back of Liam, yelping as it rubbed at its eyes with its paws. The dry dust would stay him, but only temporarily. Terry turned, clambered to her feet, and raced up the bank of the lake.
Hearing a low growl, she looked behind her, and saw that the wolf was in pursuit. She felt a thump of fear in her chest, and all the sounds of the night drained away. She could only hear the gravelly growling as it closed in on her.
“Liam!” she screamed. She couldn’t run anymore, completely out of breath, and she rounded a tree, moving left and then right, always keeping the trunk in between her and the wolf. “Liam!”
A great bellow erupted in the darkness, and it shook the very air. She looked to her left, saw the hulking figure of a bear charge out of the shadows. With her back to the trunk, she glanced around the other side, heard a yelp so high-pitched it made her hairs stand on end, and saw Liam had bitten into the side of the wolf, and was dragging the beast across the ground away from the lake.
Liam let go of the wolf, and Terry could see dark blood spurting from the wolf’s wound. Missing from the wolf’s side was a huge chunk of flesh. The wolf was whining, legs pawing pathetically at the ground.
“Liam, are you okay?” Terry called out, leaning against the tree trunk. She watched as he shifted back into the shape of a man, naked, his hard body glistening with sweat.
“Stay there,” he ordered.
She swallowed and nodded.
*
Liam glared down at Marcus. He had just shifted back into his man, and wanted more than ever to strangle the wolfen beast. The giant wolf whimpered as blood shot out of the bite wound, hitting bushes meters away. He’d bitten down hard, had felt his teeth grate against the wolf’s rib cage before puncturing the tough intercostal muscle. He got to his knees, panting, sucking in air from the exertion, and wiped the blood from around his mouth with the back of his arm.
“I told you I’d break you,” he shouted, angry still. The fight had dredged up old memories, and he was struggling to control the rage he felt for his hunter.
“Liam!” He snapped his eyes up and looked at Terry, still behind the tree.
“Stay there!” he ordered.
“Don’t hurt him anymore.”
Liam looked down at the wolf, and shook his head. The snarling and high-pitched protests of the broken beast were difficult to listen to. He got to his knees, pushed one against Marcus’ neck, immobilizing the wolf’s head, and he spread the fur around the chunk of flesh that was missing. It was a hole the size of a tennis ball, and it was filled with blood, exposed yellow fat tissue, and white threads that he knew were nerves. Marcus would be in considerable pain.
&nbs
p; “I told you I’d fucking break you,” Liam hissed. “This is going to hurt.” He reached into the wound, explored with his fingers, and the wolf howled in pain. He pressed his knee harder against the wolf’s neck, turning its outcries to strangled gasps.
“Where are you,” Liam whispered to himself. He didn’t know where it would be, but he knew he’d know it when he found it. “Ah,” he breathed. He’d found a torn artery, the source of the spraying blood. It was large, rubbery, and slippery. He pinched it shut, stemming the flow of blood, and yanked it, stretching it out from under the blood pooling in the gaping wound.
“I could kill you now,” he growled, and he put his other hand around the wolf’s neck and squeezed. “I told you not to do this, Marcus.”
The wolf snarled at him, tried to snap at him, and Liam let go of the artery and hit the wolf hard in the snout. He hit it again and again. The wolf yelped and whinnied.
“Liam, no!” Terry screamed. He could hear her running toward him, but he didn’t stop hitting the wolf until he had broken one of its teeth off, the longest canine. The skin on his knuckles was shredded. Replacing his knee on the wolf’s neck, he picked up the dagger-like enamel, an inch long, and he focused his attention back on the wound.
“I told you to stay there,” he said. He was angry that Terry hadn’t listened. “So fucking get back there.”
“I’m not going to let you torture him,” Terry yelled. “Look what you did to his face.” She was standing on the other side of him, trying to look into his eyes.
“Go back,” Liam said. “He’s dangerous.” His eyes shot up to Terry’s. “You told me you’d listen to me. So listen to me. Go back, get closer to the lake.”
“Why?”
“Get closer to the lake!” Liam barked, shocking her. She jumped, startled, and took a step backward, holding her elbows in front of her. He hated that he had to do that, but he sensed the fight might not yet be over.
He refocused on the wound. He didn’t want to take a life tonight. Was it Terry’s protestations? He couldn’t know. The artery had receded again into the flesh, and so he had to dig his fingers inside and find it. He took his knee a little off Marcus’ neck, and the wolf’s howl of agony split the night.