Simply Bears: A Ten Book Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance Collection

by Simply Shifters

  He hadn't even finished the sentence before his face began melting like wax into clumps and bulges and angles, and his arms and legs stretched out into ribbons. His clothes melted away too, fusing into his flesh, disappearing as every color that had made up the person of Chris McCann bled together and mixed into a singular, oily black, the same color that his prissy shoes had been.

  A Shift stood before them. Its arms coiled and bent like it had no bones and its neck stretched out across the room and its face whipped close to Nicki, eyes black like the rest of it, long pale gray tongue oozing out and licking her across her cheek. "Mmm," it hissed in a warbling mockery of Chris McCann's voice. "You taste good."

  Max was moving. She could see him from the corner of her eye charging at the Shift even as she was trying to get away from it. He caught it around its neck and the two of them went down on the floor of the office in a tangled mess of human limbs and inhuman darkness. It was a nightmare made real, even worse than what she had gone through in her apartment. She had to help Max. Somehow. She had to do something to save Max from this thing. She had to—

  "Run!" Max called to her. "Nicki, Run!"

  Then the Shift stretched out thin and wide like a black tarp and wrapped around Max's body from his feet to his face, and he was gone.

  Nicki panicked. She couldn't be seeing any of this, yet here it was. Max, wrapped up into a living cocoon, suffocating, dying. She'd struggled all day long with whether to believe she was going insane or not, and now she had to witness this.

  It was real. All of it. She had to deal with it. Turning on her heel she bolted through the door and ran. Just like Max had told her to. At a dead sprint she raced back down the hallway to the stairs, through the door and down landing after landing, two and three steps at a time, listening to the Shift's hideous laughter following her the whole way.

  What was she going to do? Max was upstairs being murdered by something that she couldn't hope to describe or explain to anyone else. If she tried to get help, they'd lock her up in an insane asylum and she'd never get out.

  Escape was her only option now. She had to get out and get away. She lost track of what floor she was on when she ran into a soft wall of something that her brain finally realized was a man. His wide baby face was beaten up and one eye was swollen shut and blood had stained his polo shirt.

  "Larry!" she exclaimed. She had to take the chance that he would believe her. For Max's sake. "Oh, thank God, Larry! You have to help me. Back up in Mister Donovan's office. He's getting killed!"

  Larry turned narrowed eyes up the steps, then back to Nicki. “You mean your friend from your apartment? The one who beat me down like this?"

  He pointed to his eye and she couldn't help but wince. "I'm sorry about that, Larry. It wasn't my idea. He thought he was doing you a favor and we needed to steal your ID badge and…and…" Nothing she said made it sound any better. "I'm sorry, Larry, I really am, but there isn't time for this!"

  He reached out to take her arm. His hand gripped her, tight, and then tighter, until she cried out in pain. "Ow! Larry, you're hurting me."

  She looked into his eyes and he winked at her. The bruises, the cuts, the blood, all of it began to erase as though it had never been there. In a handful of seconds, his face was normal again.

  "I should have slaughtered Maximillian when I was at your place." He hissed in a voice that sounded like he was eating tinfoil. "Should have killed you both. Wasn't the plan. Had to let you get here. Had to let McCann have his fun."

  "Oh damn." She had time to whisper before he threw her up the stairs. She got her feet under her at the top of the flight and stumbled and fell over onto her side on the landing. Pain shot up the arm she landed on.

  "You bitch." It screeched at her in that same reedy voice. It was rolling, climbing, sliding up the stairs after her, one at a time, slowly, in no hurry. "You let him take you! You steaming slut! I could smell him all over you!"

  "Why is everyone so hung up on who I sleep with?" She muttered, bending her elbow to test her arm. Not broken. Good.

  His body twisted and melted and turned into the gooey black ick of a Shift, all misshapen and terrible. Larry was a Shift. She felt a little laugh escape her lips and she had to tell herself to keep it together. Larry was a Shift just like McCann was a Shift.

  Was every white boy she knew a shapeshifter, for the love of God?

  Getting back on her feet, ignoring the sharp jab of pain in her ribs, she grabbed hold of the landing door, twisting the knob furiously, knowing that running was her only chance once again. She could not face this thing that was coming for her. The memory of being held down on her apartment floor by the mass of them this morning and helpless to keep herself from being penetrated and abused by them flashed through her mind. She was terrified.

  Even as she was opening the door, the Shift wrapped an arm around her waist, twice, looping over his own body and hauling her roughly back down the stairs to where it stood. No door here. No escape, only her and the Shift.

  "Maybe I will take you anyway," Not-Larry said into her ear, his face a mass of oozing black clay and sharp pointed teeth that weren't all in its mouth. "Sure. I was going to screw you tonight anyway, on our little date. Donovan wanted me to watch you close…he just never said how close."

  Something snapped in the back of Nicki's mind. She recognized the feeling. The same thing had happened to her this morning in her apartment when she had reacted without thinking and put two of these Shift things down. It had taken four of them to stop her.

  Later, she wouldn't be able to say exactly how she did it. She could follow the moves in her mind's eye, see herself brace both feet against the wall, using the Shift's own body as a lever. Suddenly she was running up the wall and performing a somersault in the air that landed her above where the thing stood, three steps higher, and then with a twisting spin she had unraveled his arm from her and she was free.

  Not-Larry gaped at her, his eyes sagging and drooping. "How…?"

  From her higher position she struck out with her left foot in a roundhouse kick that beat the Shift’s head sideways to bounce off the wall, staggering it.

  "I wish I knew." She said in answer to his half-formed question.

  Jumping up as high as she could—higher than should have been possible, nine feet at least—she angled herself to come back down right where its stomach probably was in the tangled mass of gyrating flesh. Her feet sank into it, through it, tearing whatever a Shift used for flesh while sickly green jelly sprayed everywhere, soaking her pants and splattering her shirt.

  Blood, she realized. The Shift's blood.

  "Ew!" She stepped out of it as quickly as she could but it was too late to save her pants or her gag reflex. Climbing back up to the landing at the second floor on her hands and knees Nicki vomited into a corner. It was the same color as the Shift's blood. That made her throw up all over again.

  When she could get a hold of herself and her insides were only quivering instead of threatening to push whatever was left out with the rest of it, she got up on shaking legs and turned to see the black mass of what used to be Larry the security guard, lying in an unidentified, green-soaked heap.

  Its head lay on one of the steps below her with the neck coiling away from it. The long gray tongue played out, at least a foot of it, moist and thick. Was there anything about a Shift that wasn't disgusting?

  A quiver of movement was her only warning. The Shift lurched, pushed, crawled up at her, a hand thrust forward to grab at her with long claws. She screamed, but her body reacted on its own again and she was bringing up her hands to block the attack in an X and then she was grabbing its arm by the wrist and using that as a swing to throw herself back down on it again.

  This time, she aimed her feet at its head. The result was less than pretty.

  Chapter 6

  The door on the landing slammed open, its top hinge breaking off as Max rammed his way through. He was alive. Nicki could have cried to see him alive. He was tor
n and bleeding across his chest. His left arm hung limp. As she stared up at him from where she sat, stunned and dazed on the stairs by what had just happened with Larry, she saw a cut along Max's cheek seal up and heal over. He staggered back against the wall, breathing heavily, shaking worse than she was.

  Their eyes locked.

  "What happened?" He asked.

  "Larry. Shift. Drove my shoe through his eyeball then through the back of his skull. Enough said."

  Looking down at the dead Shift, melting away into a gooey liquid that rolled and oozed down the steps, Max nodded. "Wow. That's…wow."

  "How did I do that, Max?" She asked him. "How could I do that? I'm just me. I ain't Superwoman."

  He took her by the hand and helped her to stand up. "You're special. More special than I realized."

  "Care to explain that one?"

  "Not now. Not here. We have to go."

  "Wait." She said. "You were in Donovan's office. With a Shift. McCann, he was a Shift too. What happened? Where are the files?"

  He shook his head. "I didn't get them and I don't have time to explain anything else. We have to go."

  "But—"

  "Now!"

  Something in his voice told her not to argue with him. They made their way quickly down the stairs, past the liquefied remains of what used to be Larry the security guard, and to the ground floor level where the door to the outside world waited for them. There was nothing to stop them. No Shifts, no guards, no alarms.

  "Wait." She said, even as he tried to pull her along after him. "Wait! We can't go out on the street looking like this. I look like an octopus barfed all over me and you've got blood soaking through your shirt. We wouldn't make it two blocks without someone stopping us or calling the police. Even in this city."

  Max looked up at the ceiling above them, obviously nervous about something. Was the Shift still up there? "Did you kill McCann?" He didn't answer her. "Max, what about McCann?"

  He shook his head. "Come on. If we can't leave the building the regular way, then we'll have to do it my way."

  She knew what he meant and she figured he was right. There was no other way to get out of here. By the look on his face, out of here was exactly where they needed to be. The cuts on his chest had almost closed up, she noticed, as he stood with his one arm up, hand stretched out, fingers curled slightly. His fingertips turned to claws, the nails growing longer and pointed and curved. It startled her, to see a part of him change shape like that. Not like a Shift did, but like Arcan had. Like a werebear would. Max was an Ursallin, she reminded herself. Just because she'd never seen him change into a bear didn't make it less true.

  Oblivious to the swirl of emotions that were pouring through Nicki, Max slashed at the air with hard emphasis, and his claws tore open the fabric of reality. A bright, vertical line appeared and then twisted on its axis to form a circular opening of pure light. The gateway from this world to his.

  "Let's go," he said to her. He held out his hand, now back in its human shape, and smiled a reassuring smile at her. "Everything's going to be all right."

  The blur of black, inky mass slammed into Max and shoved him down hard to the concrete floor, parts of it thrusting out to tangle around Nicki in constricting bands. Green goo poured out from several gaping holes in its skin.

  "THE PORTAL IS OPEN!" the warped voice of Chris McCann screeched. "AFTER YOU DIE I WILL INVADE YOUR WORLD AND KILL YOU ALL!"

  She felt the bands of the Shift's twisting body constrict around her and squeeze the breath from her lungs. She tore at it with her hands but every time she got a piece of it away it flowed back together like saltwater taffy. Near her, the bulk of the Shift's body slammed down on Max again and again, not giving him time to move or defend himself. It spread out across the room and filled more space than should have been physically possible for something that had been walking around in human shape.

  They were trapped. And most likely, they were dead.

  The head of the Shift, the thing that was McCann, reared over her, leering with bulbous eyes the color of coal. His long, gray tongue slithered out between jagged teeth to lick her cheek like it had upstairs. She was repulsed by the sickeningly hot, wet feel of it against her skin. It kept coming out, and out, until it slipped down the neckline of her shirt and in between her breasts.

  "Stay away from me!" She tried to scream, almost out of breath. "I'll tear you…apart just like I did…your damned friend!"

  The tongue recoiled with the speed of a racing snake to shove its way down her throat. She gagged as the Shift laughed at her. Parts of it were ripping at her clothing to lay her body naked. It melted over her breasts and she felt them being lifted up and massaged in the thing's embrace.

  Her eyes popped as the pressure around her midsection increased. She was running out of time. It was going to kill her. The tongue retracted again, sliding out of her throat, and she sucked in a hard breath that tasted like slime and sewage. It lifted her body up and stretched her out flat with a hard jerk and slammed her down on the floor.

  "You're mine." It hissed.

  Her clothes were shredded by millions of little hooked fingers and then the Shift was all over her skin, her feet, her legs, her ass, her belly. The cleft between her legs.

  "No!" she shouted, only to have her mouth filled with the black goo of its body. It pressed into her and pulled out, in again and Nicki knew it was using her body and she was powerless to stop it. At the same time it penetrated her between her legs so hard that she went numb below her waist. She was being victimized. It was going to torture her before it killed her. There was nothing she could do.

  Unless…

  Just the thought of it made her sick to her stomach but she couldn't see any other option. She bit down, as hard as she could, on the round and thick part that was thrusting into her mouth. She bit as hard as she could and she felt her teeth bite through its flesh and tasted the sickly sweet heat of its blood.

  The Shift screeched and reared back from her and its hold loosened. She spit and gagged and forced out a large chunk of it and if she lived to be a hundred, she figured she would never be able to get that taste out of her mouth. She tried not to think about what she had just bit off.

  A part of the Shift reared back and then slammed across her face, hard enough to make her vision dim and her ears ring. For a moment she didn't even know her own name. She felt the thing pull out from inside of her, and it made her insides recoil. It was above her now, collecting into a massive wave of oily black monstrosity. It became jagged and deadly and aimed itself at her.

  Nicki had nothing left. No energy reserve to fight with. Through the center of its body a large, white beast erupted, tearing, rending, and shredding the Shift apart with claws longer than Nicki's hands and teeth that snapped at everything around them. Her fogged brain recognized the shape of a bear. Large, muscled, covered in hair that was whiter than snow.

  This was Max, his bear, coming to save her.

  The Shift screamed at an earsplitting level and tried to fight back with appendages that it created out of itself but the bear ripped at everything that came close. Green ick flew everywhere. Nicki watched the werebear's jaws snap shut around the Shift's neck, and cut it in two.

  The Shift went perfectly still, tightening around her one last time, and then turned to a thick liquid and spilled to the floor around them.

  She began to pass out. She could feel herself sliding away. The fight had probably only lasted five minutes at most, but it had seemed to go on forever and her strength was completely gone, body and mind. In her last few seconds of consciousness, a white bear hovered over her, reaching down for her with its strong arms, its white fur tainted green and black, its eyes gentle.

  Max held her close and she knew she was safe. He would protect her. He would keep anything bad from happening to her. She knew it was all right to let herself go, to rest, as long as he was with her. Even as he carried her through the rip that bridged their two worlds, she knew she was safe
.

  As safe as she could be in a world turned crazy.....

  Chapter 7

  The sky was a hazy shade of purple as the sun set over the tops of the trees down at the bottom of the rise. Everything here was beautiful. In the three days that Nikki Bryant had spent in this incredible place, she hadn't seen a single ugly thing. It had been the most peaceful time of her life.

  So why was it that she couldn't wait to get back to her own world?

  She shifted her ass a few inches on the grassy outcropping where she sat, watching the sun sink lower in a million shades of red and yellow. It all sounded like a crazy science fiction story when she thought about it. Here she was, just an ordinary girl from Manhattan, sitting in an alien world. Well, not really an alien world. An alternate world. A parallel world sitting just to the left of her own or above it or below it or somewhere in her sock drawer. Nikki didn't understand it. She didn't think she ever would.