The Bear Shifter’s Game

by Martha Woods

  Jamie growled, giving a thought to just throwing himself into a fight and seeing how many of him he could get, but he knew that he couldn’t do it. Even with his life on the line, even with Rachel’s, he was scared of what would be waiting for him on the other side of that choice, if he’d be thrown right back into a life of fighting and death again, or if it would just be better for it to end right here.

  “I don’t suppose I could convince any of you to just… give this up already, can I?”

  They shook their heads, very clearly annoyed that he would even ask, prompting him to sigh and shake his head. “Guess not, excuse me for thinking that you might actually be human.”

  “We’re not human,” Galen said, “We’re something more than that, something much more than that, that’s something that you never really recognized.”

  “No, not more than that. Something less. What were we even doing for decades out there, fighting over scraps of land that never really belonged to us anyway, our ancestors sat there while the people who had originally taken care of it were slaughtered, and what did we do with it? The land was dying when I left, I shudder to think what you idiots managed to do with it in the time since I’ve been gone, but Orson burning your homes down was probably the best thing to happen to it. At least now it might have a chance to grow again, without having to repair our damage too.”

  “You talk a lot, don’t you?” The leader said, walking up and kneeling in front of him, their eyes level with each other, “You don’t know anything about what we were doing out there.”

  “I know more than you do, you just wanted to kill each other, all of us did, I got out when I saw that it was never going to go any other way. Just a group of idiots trying to kill another group of idiots, I ruined my entire life for that for so long, and for what? So those two groups could throw a hissy fit and try to kill me anyway?”

  He could feel that presence again, so on the edge of his awareness that he wasn’t certain that it was actually there, but it was a comforting one nonetheless. It felt like an angel on his shoulder, though he had no idea if it was actually here to help him or damn him.

  “We’re not going to enjoy this,” The wolf said, sweeping his arm out at the rest of the group, wolf and bear nodding in agreement, “We tried to, but we’re not going to. We all know that there’s no honor in this, not like there would be from killing someone like Orson, The most we can hope for is that we’ll at least be able to do our jobs quickly and cleanly like we promised we would. For what you’ve been through, the things you’ve had to do and things that have been done for you, I’m truly sorry. I want you to know that.”

  “Empty words,” Jamie said, closing his eyes and squeezing Rachel’s hand, feeling her presence next to him like a comforting breeze, “Just get it over with already.”

  The Wolf nodded, gesturing for Galen to step forward to deliver the blow, Jamie’s old enemy standing in front of him and not even bothering to hide his smirk. “Looks like this is it buddy,” He said, “Any last words?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Kind of cliché, but I’ll take it.” Galen raised his hand, fingers turning to claws as he readied himself to deliver the final strike. “Goodbye.”

  A second passed, and then another, before Rachel felt a drop of blood hit the back of her neck. She wanted to scream out in horror, to throw herself away and not look at what they’d done to Jamie, but then something strange happened.

  Jamie squeezed her hand, and then he gasped.

  Looking up, she could see that he was fine, completely unharmed, but the blood that was dripping onto their faces belonged to neither of them. Galen was clutching the stump of his forearm, face twisted in horror and agony, jaw clenched so tightly that he couldn’t even scream out, just make a low humming in his throat that was turning into a shriek in the bottom of his chest. Another spray of blood hit their faces, and that was what they needed to throw themselves backwards out of reach, just as the screaming started in earnest.

  Galen collapsed to the ground, rolling around in the mud and howling up into the sky, tears streaming down his face as the mud turned red with his blood. His companions all started running forwards, all of them on guard, before one collapsed to the ground without a sound, another flinging sideways separated from his legs, leaving one of the last by the tree line to turn around in circles looking for wherever the danger was coming from before he was dragged into the darkness, a scream cutting itself off with a gurgle.

  The Wolf snarled, baring his teeth and sprinting towards them, determined to at least accomplish the mission that he’d been sent here to take care of in the first place as his body shifted fully into his wolf form, leaping into the air and preparing to bring every pound of his massive weight crashing down onto them. Jamie threw his hand out on impulse, clipping the wolf in the side and sending it flying towards him rather than Rachel, his leg shooting out to the side and shoving her away from them both just as the wolf crashed down. It set upon him in a furious flurry of teeth and claw, biting and swiping at whatever it could get at on its journey towards his throat, Jamie only having the leverage to throw short punches into its sides and throat.

  “Get off him!” Rachel screamed, scrambling to her feet and grabbing a nearby stick, rushing over amidst Jamie’s shouted warnings to stay back and smashing the wolf over the back of the head, hammering away even as it shrugged off every blow and continued its assault on Jamie. When she clipped the end of the stick along its eye however it took notice of her, snarling viciously at her and swiping with its claws across her stomach, coming just shy of slicing her open completely and sending her crashing back with bloodied skin and torn clothing. The sight set something off in Jamie, his eyes turning black and teeth turning sharp, rising and wrapping his arms around the wolf’s stomach, lifting it up effortlessly and slamming it down into the ground so viciously the ground quaked beneath her feet.

  The two of them rolled along the ground, almost crushing a still crying Galen who barely rolled away in time, teeth and claws slashing into skin and tearing muscle apart only to go unnoticed. Jamie could only see red, his body shifting little by little until his shirt was bulging and fur was starting to sprout around his shoulders, his hands scarlet with blood and his chest a mess of cuts and gashes.

  “Run!” He screamed at Rachel, who could only sit still as his voice reverberated with something deep and almost evil sounding, hitting her so deeply that her bones vibrated. She couldn’t do anything except watch as he slashed and bit at the wolf, so much bigger than any wolf she’d ever seen in her life but seeming so much smaller than him at that moment. Though she could see where he could transform, and indeed he was in the mid stage, what stuck with her and would likely stick with her through the rest of her life was that he was seeming to tear it apart with only his hands and his mouth, still looking very much like the human that she had cared for and indeed come to love.

  The sight of that face covered in blood and his eyes pitch black was something that wasn’t going to be easy to forget anytime soon.

  “I told you I was done!” Jamie growled, “I didn’t want to do this anymore! I didn’t want to be this person anymore!”

  The wolf bit into his shoulder, tearing open the muscle with a fountain of blood as Jamie hung his head back and screamed up at the sky, pummeling his fist into the side of its head until it finally was forced to let go of him, retreating away from him and keeping its eye on him all the while. Jamie circled it, shirt in tatters on the ground behind him and his chest torn to hell, hands held at his sides with claws dripping with blood. There was a snarl in his every breath, a warning that if it came for him first it would be the last move that it ever made, and for the first time that night it looked like someone actually understood the danger that he posed. At some point Jamie had dug his finger into the wolf’s eye, leaving it only one with which to survey the situation that it found itself in, and that one eye couldn’t see anything good.

  All it saw waiting for it was obl
ivion if it pressed on with the fight, but what else could it possibly do? It had a mission to complete, and the target was right in front of it. Death or no, the mission had to be completed.

  “Don’t do it…” Jamie said, enough of him still in control to know that he didn’t want to do what was coming next, but he knew that it was coming. Only one more move and he would be forced to do something that he hadn’t done in years, that he’d had nightmares of ever since, and he didn’t want to have that on his conscience again. Not because he didn’t think that he could do it, he knew better than that now, but because he knew just how easy it would be to kill again, to drop right back into who he’d been when he’d decided to run away. There were many things that he wanted to be, that he wanted to put his effort into becoming, and the monster that he’d been was not one of them. “Please…”

  Taking no note of his feelings on the matter, the wolf reared back on its hind legs and leapt forward, mouth open in a vicious snarl and trails of blood-filled spit spraying from its maw. Jamie dropped low, gritting his teeth and he closed his hand into a fist, preparing to send it flying through the wolf’s heart when that flash of movement registered with him again, the wolf suddenly flying to the side and bending the wrong way around a tree trunk, picked up by its hindlegs before it could even hit the ground and tossed thirty feet across the clearing like it was nothing, landing in a broken and panting heap in the shallow water of the swamp.

  Though he had a decent feeling about who it was, Jamie still held his hands at the ready, prepared to fight whoever it was if need be before his vision cleared and his savior stepped out of the low mist. Eyes blood red, long, unkempt hair, and a mad look on its face that could only mean a millennium of crazed wisdom, it was definitely the vampire that he’d failed to win over with his impromptu negotiation.

  Though why it was here in the first place was a mystery, and one that he was all too eager to figure out.

  “Why are you here?” He asked, barely able to stand as the toll of his injuries finally made itself known to him, “I thought you didn’t care…”

  “Intruders,” The vampire said, pointing at the bodies of the shifters, “More will come for you. More will come after you. You’re only good one.”

  “Really?” Jamie asked, falling onto his back and breathing hard, Rachel rushing to his side, “What if I’m just as bad as them?”

  “You’re not,” He said, “They stink of blood, not you. You reek of innocent. Of good.”

  At first Rachel didn’t recognize the sound that was coming out of Jamie, and by the look on his face neither did the vampire, before they saw the trembling in his chest and realized it was laughter. A rattling, wheezing laugh that she’d never heard out of him before, perfect for the tears that were falling down from his eyes and cutting a clean trail through the blood covering his face. “Innocent? Good?” He laughed, wiping at his eyes, “I didn’t expect to hear that anytime soon.”

  “I don’t know what you were like when you were a kid,” Rachel said, taking his hand and squeezing it with all she had, “But I know what you’re like now. And trust me, you are nothing like they are. You’re a good man, and I wouldn’t lie to you about that, if you weren’t good I wouldn’t even be here to begin with.”

  “Maybe you’re just as crazy as I am then,” Jamie said, letting his head fall back into the muddy ground and sighing up at the sky, “Alright, I guess that I can believe you for now. I’ll just have to make sure that I don’t slip any further than I already have.”

  “You didn’t, I was watching Jamie. You could have killed him, could have killed all of them, but you didn’t, and that means something.” Leaning down, brushing the blood away from his mouth with her thumb, she placed a kiss upon his lips and sighed into his mouth, wiping the blood away from his cheeks little by little until she could see the skin underneath. “What do you say we go home?”

  “Not yet,” He sighed, squeezing her hand one last time and rising to his feet, accepting the hand that was offered to him from his unlikely ally, “We’ve still got to sort out what we’re going to do from now on. Like he said, there’ll be more coming for me.”

  He marched forward, missing a step here and there but recovering himself soon enough, not needing anymore support as he walked over to Galen, lowering himself down until he could stare right into his eyes. “You’re going to leave, and tell them that they’re never going to set one foot in this state ever again, do you hear me?”

  “Why do you think they’d listen?” He grunted, pushing himself up onto his knees with the one hand he had left, “You cut off my arm, and you kill the rest of them, and you expect them to just let that go?”

  “Not dead,” The vampire said, dragging each of the fallen shifters over and dropping them next to him. One without legs, the other with his throat ripped open, the wolf with his back broken and cracked, but all still very much alive. “Worse things than death.”

  “See?” Jamie said, standing up, “They’re all alive, and you can all go home. Just make sure that you all stay there this time.”

  “And why am I going to do that? You’re still not giving me a good answer.”

  “Because I had to convince him not to kill all of you, even though it would be one of the easiest things in the world. And knowing you like I do, you don’t want to die, no matter what tough guy act you put on in front of me. I want you to know that I see right through you, and without the threat of an entire group behind you, without the threat of killing an entire party of innocent people just to spite me, you’re nothing.”

  Galen grunted, looked to be considering some half-hearted rebuttal when he decided it was better to keep his mouth shut, to bow his head and take the dismissal on the chest like he should have from the beginning. Though it brought him no joy to say, Jamie had to admit that he felt some level of relief at the words finally coming out, like a final cap to the events of the night, like things were really, well and truly over.

  “All of you are getting out of town tonight, in whatever car, bus or truck you came in on, and you’re going to deliver the message to everyone no more than three days from now. You’ve still got one arm and both your legs, so you can drive just fine.”

  “And what are you going to do?” Galen asked, “Now that you’re not going to have this threat hanging over your head, what are you going to do with it, huh?”

  “I’m going to go back to living my life, like I always said I was going to, before you came in and decided that you were going to ruin it.”

  “Well, we’ll see how long that lasts, won’t we?”

  “Yeah, we will. Goodbye Galen, remember to tell them what I told you.”

  Galen laughed, this time in genuine amusement than out of bitterness, “Oh trust me, you send me back looking like this and then I tell them that you’re disappointed in them? They’re going to shit, it’ll be wonderful.”

  Walking away from the group, giving a nod to the vampire that said ‘Do whatever you need to from now on’, he picked up Rachel with an arm around her waist and started walking them back to the dorms, hoping that no one came across them between here and there, otherwise there was going to be a lot of explaining to do, likely to the police. And being honest with himself, Jamie had absolutely no energy left to spend on lies tonight, he just wanted to get back home and sleep.

  And that was where he ended up, after a quick go under the shower and a towel placed down over the covers, falling asleep and not waking until halfway through the next day, with Rachel right at his side.

  Chapter 9

  “Ok, be honest with me, how long have you two been together?” Josh asked, sipping at his iced coffee and scratching the shaved side of his head, “Because you two are seriously acting the exact same as you were when I first met you, it’s got to have been a while right?”

  “I guess it might have been, but we just didn’t realize it?” Jamie suggested, glancing over at Rachel, “Right? Or is that too corny?”

  “A bit too mid two thous
and’s romcom, but I think it’s cute at least.” She smiled, pressing a kiss to his cheek before going back to writing her essay. “Probably should have realized it earlier, that would’ve been nice, would have avoided a lot of confusion that way.”

  “Tell me about it,” Josh said, “I felt bad about those rumors, then I didn’t, then I did again, eventually I was just think come on, make up your minds!”

  “Well, sorry that my dating life is confusing for you personally,” Jamie laughed, picking up his pencil and scribbling in his notes, “Don’t you have a game to be preparing for?”

  “Ehh, not until this afternoon, until then I’m free as a bird! We could go and throw the ball around if you wanted, you know, if you get tired of nerding it out on the front lawn of the dorms.”

  “We need to study, and it’s a nice day out today!” Rachel chuckled, “I promise, we’ll go play sometime soon, but right now we actually need to do this.”

  Josh heaved an over dramatic sigh, keeping his smile on his face all the way, “Fine, I gotta go see Jessica anyway, see if she’s ready to cheer on at the big game and all that. Don’t let me keep you two from your weird library makeouts or anything!”

  “You won’t!” Rachel called after him, laughing at his shrug before he opened the front doors, “He’s a lot nicer than I thought he’d be when we first met, I guess I just had a bad experience with the footballs teams back in highschool.”

  “I heard that they’re supposed to be dicks, but I guess it’s just a sport that they’re playing, I’ve known way bigger dicks than someone who just plays football.”

  “I know, I met them and they tried to kill us remember? It was a pretty big deal, I’m surprised you forgot about it.”

  Jamie smiled, going back to writing in his notes as he thought over what she’d said, and wondering how things were going back in the forest. It had been a week since he’d sent their attackers packing, and so far there had been no word from any of them. It wouldn’t be surprising if they decided to come back in larger numbers, but he at least had the reassurance that he had backup for certain this time. And he wasn’t quite certain, but he was pretty sure that his ally wasn’t the only vampire in the state, but he knew that if that was the case then none of them would take kindly to a group of shifters tramping around in their territory.