Page 14 of Bad Blood Bear

“Somebody call the cops.”

“Bobby is a fucking cop, you idiot. Bobby!”

“Nah, we can take her.”

Lissa stopped chewing. The people were a threat. She backed up, still holding the meat, and then they attacked.

She dropped the meat and fought like the wild thing she was. Teeth and claws, and now her teeth were right and her claws were right and they tore into skin as more and more of them wrestled her down.

There it was, hot blood, fresh from a living creature, and her demon roared in angry pleasure. And then there was a man with something in his hand that sparked and glowed, and when it touched her, her whole body seized, and her demon cried out in despair as darkness overtook them.

Tank’s bear lumbered through the night-filled woods. He was Changing every night now, and he always started out heading in the other direction. Any other direction.

And yet he always ended up here, far too close to town and people, where a huge grizzly bear had no business being.

Across the street from Lissa’s squat. Night after night he paced the edge of the woods, with just enough sense left not to leave cover and go nosing around the building.

Or clawing his way inside.

Tonight was going to be no different…until he caught her scent nearby, on this side of the road.

He huffed worriedly, his ears going up.

Lissa shouldn’t be in the woods at night.

Lissa needed to be protected.

He followed her trail, snuffing at trees and leaves. She was wandering this way and that, following scent trails that meandered and crisscrossed.

Hunting? But why?

Humans didn’t hunt at night.

Tank’s bear was growing agitated. Something was wrong. Her smell was wrong, her behavior was wrong.

Bad things were on the wind.

Then he smelled the people and the cooking food, heard the first screams as she burst out of the woods. He broke into a run, crashing through the trees, and then slid to a stop at the edge of the forest, his claws biting into the soft dirt.

A house. A party. And danger. Lissa was running at the people, grabbing meat off the grill, snarling and stuffing it in her mouth with ravaging hunger.

The people closed in. He had to help her. He tried to Change, but Bear had ahold of his body. The people were on Lissa now, she was fighting and he had to help her. Bear was straining and snarling but Tank had to hold him back, he couldn’t let people see them.

They’d hurt him, hurt him and Lissa both, cutting and shocking and making them do bad things. He couldn’t let them do it but he couldn’t let them hurt Lissa, and he stood frozen at the edge of the woods, all four legs trembling, and then the man with the stun gun shocked Lissa and Tank felt the shock go through his own body, like it had so many times before.

Memories overtook him, blood and pain and lightning, and his body seized and suddenly he was human again, naked and vulnerable in the shadows at the edge of the trees. He had to make the memories stop, stop stop stop, and he wrapped his arms tight around his bent knees and rocked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

A long time later it was quiet, and there was no one left in the backyard.

Lissa was gone.

He didn’t save her. He didn’t save Angie.

He couldn’t even save himself.