Ridge blinked, “What’s gotten into you?”
*****
Blue and the wolven clipped the bikers at the top of the road before they got to the Mistress. They rounded the entrances in front of Jo, snarling, teeth bared and ready to strike.
“Got your band of dog meat, too,” observed Orion, the runt mimicking him.
The biker leader threw his bat at Jo. She rushed the biker and Blue intercepted the bat, spitting it onto the ground. She howled at the other wolven and they jumped the bikers. Tearing at their chaps and jackets as they got back onto their bikes.
Blue ground her teeth into the biker leader’s hand.
The more he tried to shake her, the harder she chewed.
He hauled out a gun and Jo changed back into a human. The fur on her body retracting as she saw the gun pointing at Blue. “Don’t hurt her.”
“Oh, we ain’t gonna do anything to her. Yet. It’s you we want. You, and your bear-loving friends,” Orion spat. “Call off your hounds.”
“Stand behind me,” she looked at the wolven and Ridge watched with Griff through the window. Ridge started for the door when Griff blocked him.
“We have to do something. She and the wolves are in trouble.”
Griff held his arm in front of him, “Trust her, little brother. Cause I do,” he promised.
Orion held Blue, as the runt tossed him his own bandana. He released the hammer on the weapon. Then he tied Blues paws to the handlebars at the front of the chassis.
The runt looked at Jo.
“You try to follow, the dog dies. Bring a posse, she dies. Meet us behind the mill an hour before moonrise. Bring anyone with you and she dies.” He hopped on his bike and the gang rode south.
Jo looked at the wolven. “This isn’t your fight anymore. I’ll find a way to help you return to your human selves if that’s what you want. But if you don’t transform by the New Year’s Full moon, you may be trapped in your animal form, never fully human, forever.”
She saw the wolves look at each other, hearing their every word.
Each of them shook his or her head, slowly.
She tried not to smile. “I’ll say one thing, for you wolves that were first human, you’ve got serious balls. I’m going to bring Blue back, on my own. You continue to protect the townspeople. The keys you gave in the town meetings only represent the seal of your covenant. As long as the humans guard them, you’ll be safe. And wolven, Thank you.”
The wolves raced to the town as she reentered the large villa and climbed the steps to the second floor. Locking herself in along with the pain of not being able to save Blue.
*****
Joanna sat on the edge of the king size bed in a guest room, lost.
She should have done more to protect the wolven and Griffin.
She should have found another way to deal with McAvoy.
The sheriff had learned she was the same as she was now for the past two centuries. It was a gift of being a shifter—she was eternal. However, being so, meant she was destined to be alone.
The officer had turned into a were-shifter, and she and the wolven had tried to keep the town safe from him. Jo tried to coax the law enforcer to see her side of things. When he lunged at her, enraged. Then she knew he was lost.
The sheriff hadn’t survived the transformation to were-shifter, though she had seen the mark on his palm. A hexagram was the sign, fating him to eat the souls of the innocent, animal, creature and mankind in order to survive.
Chapter Fifteen
Jo had agreed to use her bear gifts to give any that asked her a hedge of protection. She’d learned early on, after becoming a bear between moon phases, that she could “mark” any being if she scratched them. It became a supernatural mark and an aura that fused with the species’ blood. Rejuvenating any being it came into contact with each new moon.
It was the only way she could keep the wolven from changing into werewolves.
If she hadn’t marked them, they would never be able to assume their human form again. And it should be ‘a choice’.
Blue had been able to maintain her animal form and her human one. She gave Jo hope that she hadn’t been given her gifts to protect Smugglers’ Cove in vain.
She had to assume the person of a woman in control. As the “Mistress”. Shrouded in mystery as Joanna Lee, when she was no more than a woman who had been mauled by a bear and later by a wolf, and who somehow had survived.
Back then, she hadn’t discovered what the townsfolk whispered, and that there were others like herself. She’d always heard the town was named after the squatters who snuck gold out from under the original claimers’ stakes. Before she’d learned orphans like her were smuggled into the West, to keep the settlements tidy, when she was still only a little girl.
She’d never wanted to be what she had become. It had been thrust upon her—and later she’d made a bargain with the evilest being of all to try and protect those who believed to be werewolves and wolven. She couldn’t save those who were blood-born by the were-shifters. However, she would with her new bearen and any like Blue for as long as she could.
Jo deeply regretted taunting the sheriff, but his kind still deserved what happened to them. She remembered all too well how she had been attacked on the shore of Smugglers’ Cove so many moons ago. He was a were-shifter just like McAvoy. And he had set a bear shifter then a werewolf on her. Jo had believed all bear shifters were good. Luckily, she hadn’t encountered another who was as evil. She’d never been so terrified of a creature as she was back then. Until she had transformed herself for the first time.
She got up to answer the knock at the door.
*****
Griff paced the hall outside Jo’s room, mulling over what had just happened. When Ridge came at him, questions blazing.
“You knew about all this? You did. When. And you didn’t trust me enough to tell me?”
“It wasn’t like I could bring it up. ‘Hey, I just discovered I’m some kind of bear. Do you think I would keep something so important from you?”
“Yeah,” Ridge said. “Cause you want her.”
“Like you,” Griff countered.
Ridge frowned, “I should kick your ass.” Ridge’s anger subsided and he stood beside Griff, both of them still naked.
“You finished?”
Ridge nodded.
“Good. We’re gonna get through this and help Jo, too, right.”
Ridge shook his head, already knowing his answer. “Ass.”
“Yes, always.”
*****
Blue changed into her human form at Jo’s request. She didn’t give a damn how horrifically the were-shifters hurt her. She believed Jo would help if she could. Staying in human form might give Blue time enough to stall the thugs from shifting and harming the townspeople. Still, knowing she had been able to keep her beloved ones safe was something.
“We’re gonna have us a doggie train here, ain’t we pretty girl,” the runt of the biker gang grinned. He got closer to Blue and she kneed him in the groin.
“My name, is Felicia,” she growled, watching him double over, as the rest of the bikers stripped off their clothes, male and female. When she saw the hexagrams on their hands, she feared for her life.
“It’s gonna be the full moonrise at high tide,” said Runt. “And we’re going to use you good before we feast on your soul,” he grinned as the gang chanted to the moon.
*****
Gus ran into the street when he heard the wolves begin to howl. “Damn, fool new moon,” he said, looking at the sky. Then he went back into the saloon to grab his ‘Baby’.
“When are we going get the town together and hunt those wolves?” Brad said.
“We ain’t killing no wolves,” said Gus “How many times do I have to drum it into that piss-danged cranium that they’re the ones who protect us?”
Gus came from the back storage room loading his favorite sawed off shotgun.
“Then, what about those bears?”
�
�Those beasts ain’t the ones that have been mauling a quarter of the townsfolk,” said Gus. “And the ones that have, they’ve got bigger problems than us or the wolves. If I’m not back by moonrise, get my other ‘baby’ and come shootin’.”
“Why can’t I come with you now?” Brad slunk behind the bar when the saloon owner frowned.
“Because someone’s got to run the bar. Make sure anybody who calls gets the message to stay indoors. I have it on good authority the wolves are on watch,” Gus noticed a single wolf glancing at the bar as it raced north.
Brad saw him cock the gun and shove a box of lead bullets and silver bullets in each pocket of his winter vest.
“Lead?’ Brad said.
“When your back is against the wall, ‘you don’t poke the bear’. How else are you gonna clip something that’s supernatural and can sap your soul like a werewolf-incubus?” the Santa-like man said. “Unless you can stake it or melt it with Holy Water, you pump it with lead. Quit gaping like a fish outta water and get back to work.”
Brad busied himself with wiping down the bar as Gus followed the wolf up to the old mill.
Chapter Sixteen
“Look what we have here. A bear witch and her bitch, and this time, they’re clothed,” Orion smiled.
Jo stood at the edge of the old mill behind the water wheel with Griff at her side. “I’ll agree to anything you want. Just let Blue go.”
“I believe we said to come alone,” the biker gritted. “What part of that didn’t you get? Guess bears really are as cuddly and naive as they look.”
*****
Ridge circled back around the water wheel at the Marsden’s place. Assessing the number of bikers and any defensive weakness he, his brother, and Jo could exploit. He spotted the runt.
He’d told Griff the smallest biker was the gang’s Achilles’ heel. The piss-sorry biker talked too much and it could be a line to helping them rescue this ‘Blue’.
Ridge vowed to help Griff get through whatever he was infected with—but they knew it wasn’t any kind of viral strain—it was something indefinable, and otherworldly.
They had to do the next best thing: pool what they knew about Blue’s captors and distract them long enough so they could get her. He had Orion and the ‘squirt’ in his sight. Which meant Jo and his brother were just out of view. He could get to Blue—except he still didn’t see her.
“Haven’t you heard? Our two families go back for generations,” Orion bragged.
“Your daddy and mine made a covenant with the old farts that settled here around the Gold Rush,” said Orion. “We agreed to let them pan gold in exchange for not tearing them to pieces.”
“Is that why you need to hide behind a gun?” Griff said.
“Do you think your family ran the mill next door because they wanted to? Man, the gold panners and miners back then were cursed. Like we were when the settlers decimated the Indians that helped them build these parts.”
“’Fever’ got ‘em,” snickered grunt.”
“Scarlet fever, but the Typhoid spread through the surrounding areas like wildfire. And my great papa and yours made a deal with a medicine man. He worked his magic and our families survived,” he told Griff and Ridge.”
“But the old Indian had a grudge,” runt sniggered.
Orion slapped him. “Quiet.” He looked at Griff.
“Your family had an actual claim to this land and the gold in it. You never gave it a thought that everything around here was cursed. The medicine man invoked the spirits. They were specters that roamed California like ghosts but with an animal totem. Eagles, coyotes, and bears,” Orion frowned at Jo then stood toe to toe with Griff. “And which one do you think the old shaman cursed you with?”
Griff growled, ready to transform and wipe the smirk off Orion’s and the runt’s faces.
“Which are you?” Orion frowned when he saw Ridge join Jo and his brother.
“We could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you,” Orion grinned. “But seeing as you’ve come here to fetch your little dog, well show you, and then we’ll kill you.”
Ridge watched the bikers bring out a young woman from woods. Her arms bruised like the marks on her throat. Ridge knew she was the one Jo called “Blue”.
A rush of memories struck him like a wall of ice.
He was back in his fiancé’s car hanging above the freezing ice water and the car was about to plunge into the icy depths. It had been his fault because he had wanted to marry right after she’d said she’d marry him. The car flipped and he’d thought he’d lost her forever.
Ridge’s world crawled to a stop as he looked at his fiancé. Felicia, being held captive by a wolf-hating biker gang.
Chapter Seventeen
Ridge pressed through the biker gang running up to Felicia.
“How,” he said, seeing her shake her head, refusing to speak. He tried to touch her and a pair of bikers held his hands. “Why did you let me believe you had drowned?”
Felicia told Ridge she hadn’t and told him she had been found by the town sheriff. Only he wasn’t what he seemed. “He was one of them,” she spat at the bikers.
“Shut your pie hole, mutt,” a third biker slapped Felicia with the back of his hand, and Ridge saw her blood drip to the ground.
Grrrrrrrrrrrowwwwwwwwwwl.
Ridge looked up at the moon as began to shake. Its silvery glow covered him as Ridge felt his back begin to grow, grow and grow.
His bear nature had taken hold, the blood-born life force inside of him, making him human and a bear-shifter.
Orion and the bikers watched Ridge grow three times his human size. Fingers turned into claws; his skin to dark gray fur. His telepathic senses amplified as he knew where each member of the gang was, as well as his brother and Jo.
“Everything’s is going to be all right,” he thought to them, his mind crystal clear. Ridge deftly compartmentalized the pain from his past, releasing an inner force he never knew he had.
*****
Ridge and his brother had been through perdition in their individual and personal lives—and back. They’d survived becoming bear shifters and their gift was a power he’d never thought possible. All of his anger and his regrets came to the surface and he used them to fuel his strength as he turned to the bikers.
He hefted one high, then smashed the biker against the ground. Tearing the stomachs of two more bikers with his bear claws. He swiped their entrails and used his giant paws to rip out the rest of the gang’s hearts. Chewing their aortas, his bear instincts telling him to feast on the enemy’s hearts. As Jo watched, knowing Ridge was releasing the creatures’ spirit totems. Freeing them and severing any trace of their ancient curse so no human or animal could be harmed again.
Ridge growled at the moon as biker’s blood and sinew matted his furry body.
Jo looked at Griff. “I never wanted you to have to see me this way, or to go through something like this,” she promised.
“We’ve been linked to a past none of us could have known in our wildest imagination,” Griff replied.
Jo nodded, silently. However, she knew their bear existence would never be over—because Griffin and Ridge had become bear shifters.
Her bear instincts told her most of the were-shifters in town had been killed. She had believed she was supposed to destroy them. They had been a blight across the coast for generations—and now they soon may be no more than a legend.
Jo’s senses heightened and she scanned their surroundings, “It’s Blue. We have to get to her now.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ridge stood on his haunches, towering over 18-feet tall. He paused, bathed in were-shifter blood when he quieted.
He faced the last of the were-shifters, Orion, and the runt, who had crouched close the earth, their palms outstretched as the moon shone on the hexagram on their hands.
Each of their palms glowed with an eerie light. The rays of the moon began to flicker and moonbeams circled each man and they began to
change. Their arms and hands shriveled and the legs curved backward. Orion’s chest caved and his flesh sank into his skeleton as his insides convulsed. His tongue and organs flipped inside-out, his ears dissolved, and his hands turned into talons.
The runt and Orion mutated into a wolfish, mummified beasts.
“You should have reached your bear form before the full moonrise. We have come into our full power,” Orion hissed as his skeletal body floated in and out of sight. “We are ‘Were-shifters’, and you will die.”
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