13. Badger Versus Bear
Chapter 13
Badger Versus Bear
On Thursday, when her wounds were at least mostly healed, Liliana went to the woods to find Lieutenant Runningwolf. It seemed like this was how her life was going to go from now on. Fighting monsters to protect her friends, healing, then going to fight more monsters.
It was still better than her old life of boring loneliness.
Lieutenant John Runningwolf was not entirely in a category she would call “friend.” They barely knew each other. She felt protective of the badger-kin, since unwittingly, he had given Doctor Nudd a few crucial seconds of survival. That had been all it took for help to arrive, so unintentionally, he’d saved the goblin healer’s life. Also, John Runningwolf had agreed to keep Liliana out of official reports when she asked. She felt personally indebted to him for that. It was like a Fae favor.
She’d foreseen that she should not fight this enemy at the soldier’s side, or the bear-kin would escape.
Liliana chose the appropriate tree in the forest on the edge of Fort Liberty so she could wait for the young Lieutenant to arrive.
An hour or so later, the stocky man crouched under the tree, hiding from a very big bear that obviously was not a normal part of this forest. Small black bears were the only kind native to North Carolina. This bear was huge. Liliana had never seen such a big shaggy brown bear, not even the Russian bear-kin who danced in the circus when she was little.
A mere badger would be no match for such a powerful beast, and this was not a natural bear. It had human intelligence driving those muscles. On top of that, the bear-kin was a killer who tore his victims limb from limb. His big, furry man-bear arms were what Liliana had seen in her most recent vision tearing someone’s leg off.
No wonder John Runningwolf trembled, his aura sickly green with terror where he crouched behind the trunk of the tree she sat in.
Liliana dangled a bit of her silk down until it tickled his ear.
The man swatted absent-mindedly at the annoyance, catching his panting breath.
She tickled his ear again. If she dropped down next to him, his startled reaction might give away his position to the giant bear-kin.
Finally, he looked up.
Liliana held her finger to her lips for silence.
His face showed surprise at a comical level, but Liliana didn’t dare laugh. He was so flabbergasted to see her sitting in the one tree in a big forest that he chose to hide behind, he momentarily forgot his fear of the bear.
Liliana climbed down a silk line quietly, now that she knew her presence wouldn’t startle the young soldier into giving their position away.
She held up a note she’d written on her new phone so he could see. “You can defeat the bear in full badger form, but not in demi-badger form. I will help.”
He looked at her for a moment as if judging her sanity, then tapped his wrist phone. He showed her what he’d typed. “Not a chance.”
Liliana tapped the screen, running her fingers under two words. “Badger form.”
Lieutenant Runningwolf indicated a space between his two outstretched hands, about three feet long, and pointed at himself. Then pointed in the general direction of the bear and put his hands up as high as he could reach.
Liliana already knew that badgers were far smaller than bears, especially gigantic bears like that one. She rolled her eyes, just her first eyes. The others couldn’t make that expression.
She tapped the screen again, then tapped her forehead between her open fourth eyes.
The soldier looked at her fourth eyes, large and pupilless with pale, opalescent colors swirling slowly. He looked at the sky for a moment in an expression that clearly said, “Why me?” without words. Then, he started unbuttoning his shirt.
The bear seemed to sense them somehow, despite the silence of their exchange. He started snuffling his way in their direction.
John Runningwolf undressed faster. He shot Liliana a look, with tight, angry lips and glary eyes that eloquently said Liliana better be right about this, or assuming he survived, he was going to make her pay.
Liliana gave him a gesture she’d seen Pete use, thumb up, to indicate everything would all be fine.
The badger-kin’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
The grin she gave him felt frozen and forced, but she maintained the “Everything will all be fine,” hand gesture. She had seen this battle earlier with her fourth eyes. Everything would definitely not all be fine.
Lieutenant John Runningwolf didn’t look like he believed her gesture of reassurance. This was sensible, but there wasn’t a lot of choice as the bear-kin got closer. He pulled off his boots and pants, dropped to all fours and changed. His body sprouted long, bristly brown fur on the sides. His nose stretched into an upturned point as a long white stripe painted itself up his forehead. Arms became stubby legs that ended in long claws. The already short soldier shrank to a creature less than a foot tall and just as wide with round furry ears.
His badger form was actually kind of cute. Liliana might be socially inept, but she would never speak that thought aloud.
As the brown badger rushed out of concealment toward the giant bear, Liliana hoped John Runningwolf would eventually forgive her.
The badger circled the tree to get behind the big bear.
The bear’s first indication that he wasn’t alone were badger fangs sinking into his hind leg.
The bear roared. It tried to fling off the clinging irritant, but the badger’s jaws locked hard on bear meat. The massive bear stood on its hind legs and shifted.
Huge bear paws grew fingers as big around as Liliana’s wrists. The bear’s muzzle shortened and legs lengthened. Shoulders, still covered in a shaggy brown pelt, broadened as the monster’s three meters of height gained another full meter. The werebear became nearly as big as the stone giant Lilly and John Runningwolf fought together. It roared with rage and pain.
Now that the monster had hands, he reached down to grab the badger attached to his heel.
Runningwolf let go before the bear could grab him. He dodged back away from the clawed paw hands as big as his body. Long badger fangs snapped at the pursuing fingers, keeping the bearman’s hands warily at bay.
But badgers weren’t built for running speed. He didn’t even try to escape the werebear’s long strides. The demi-bear swatted at him, but the nimble badger dodged.
Lieutenant Runningwolf did the only thing he could. He dug at the ground with his claws making a slight depression and flattened his already flat body into it making himself flush with the ground.
When the bearman kicked at him, long badger claws clung to the ground, refusing to be budged. The more the bear tried to hit him, the deeper the badger’s claws dug into the ground, and the harder he hung on to roots, rocks, or just plain dirt.
The big werebear tried stomping on the badger, but by then the smaller creature’s entire body was below the grade of the rest of the ground. The bear’s foot was far larger than the badger was wide. The giant couldn’t get its big foot to do much damage.
While the bear became increasingly frustrated and enraged, pounding, clawing, and stomping on the half-buried badger, Liliana crept through the tree branches to the net of webbing she’d prepared.
The edges of the web were weighted with stones. She pulled the single line that dislodged all the stones just as the demi-bear reared up to try a double-fisted smash on the battered badger.
The net entangled the werebear’s entire upper body, including both his arms.
As the bear-kin stumbled back, Runningwolf took his chance to race out of his half burrow and bite the bear’s ankle again.
The bear-kin struggled frantically, flailing in the net, entangling his arms more thoroughly. He fell onto his butt, lifted his leg into the air, badger still attached, and slammed John Runningwolf into a tree.
Liliana winced in sympathy.
The blow knocked the badger loose, but when he got up from where he landed, his bared teeth were bloody. The badger-kin had taken a chunk of the bear with him.
The werebear’s broad muzzle stuck out through a hole in the net. He tried to bite Runningwolf where he crouched snarling and hissing.
The badger looked like it would be just a mouthful for the monster, but Runningwolf twisted his body to avoid being bear lunch. Instead, he chomped down hard with vicious badger teeth on the bear’s lip.
The giant bearman made an amazingly high-pitched sound for such a big, growly beast-kin. Yelling, he rolled onto his back. He tried to grab the badger, but the net entangled his arms.
Runningwolf stood on his chest. He shifted the grip of his teeth to bite the bear’s whole muzzle, puncturing deep into his nose.
“AHHH,” the werebear howled. His frantic struggles entangled him even more in the net until he could barely move. Blood seeped down like thick red tears as the bear made whining pain noises. “Sthtop! Pleathe! I give up!” he pleaded.
Liliana climbed down out of the tree.
Runningwolf growled, refusing to release the demi-bear’s muzzle.
The bear-kin whined like a cub. “I thwear. I won’t fight anymore. Just let go of my nothe!”
The badger released his grip on the bear’s face. Runningwolf didn’t budge, however, from his position, squat body standing with all four feet on the demi-bear’s chest. The bear lay with arms entangled, helpless while the badger snarled in his face. Eye to eye with the predator that weighed more than ten times what he did, John Runningwolf snapped his teeth.
The gigantic bear whimpered in terror beneath him as he wet himself.
Liliana wrinkled her nose. She wrapped web line around the bear’s ankles, tying some lines to her net, and anchoring it all to a couple of sturdy tree trunks.
When she was sure the bear-kin was no longer a danger, she slowly stepped backward until her back encountered a nearby tree. She watched warily the smaller, but infinitely more dangerous predator now aflame with a bonfire of fire orange anger in her third vision.
John Runningwolf turned the attention of his beady black eyes to her.
The badger-kin climbed off the body of the demi-bear, who shrank down to human form, holding his mangled face and weeping in agony.
Liliana knew her bonds would hold even on the bear-kin’s smaller, human form, so she ignored him. At the moment, he was far from the most dangerous creature in the clearing.
The squat, flat, scratched, bloody, and enraged badger stalked stiffly toward her, his snarl showing four long fangs dripping bear blood.
Liliana held out John Runningwolf’s pants. “You did win and you are not dead.”
The badger stared at her, snarling and hissing for a few more seconds. Finally, he huffed, snagged the pants with one long claw, and dragged them behind a tree still grumbling.
Lieutenant John Runningwolf in human form, barefoot and shirtless, came out from behind the tree a few moments later, snarling nearly as much as his badger form had been.
Liliana looked at the claw slashes, deep bruises, and blood smears covering his entire body. She gave a wan smile. “You did defeat the bear-kin.”
“I hate you.”
Liliana shrugged. That was understandable. “I said you could win in badger form, not that it would be easy.”
“You said you would help.” John Runningwolf put one hand against a tree trunk, then sank to the ground as if his legs would no longer hold him up.
Liliana pointed at the webbing net that held the bear-kin helpless.
John Runningwolf snarled at her again. “Is this revenge for holding you at gunpoint at the pride-king challenge?”
Liliana sat down next to him, back to the same tree, fairly certain now that the badger-kin wouldn’t attack her. If nothing else, he was too tired to be bothered. “All my friends tried to kill me at least once before we became friends.” She put a sympathetic hand on an uninjured part of his arm. “I am sorry. I knew the bear-kin would rip you apart if you fought him in demi-badger form as you intended. I couldn’t help you fight directly because my left arm is still weak from being broken when I fought Tray Bradley. The bear would have gotten away if I tried.”
The badger-kin grunted a grudging acknowledgement. “Backup is on the way. I called it in before I trailed him. I found a hunk of fur at the last crime scene so I knew the killer’s scent. Pete identified the fur as Kodiak bear. I came back alone to have a look at the scene again and caught a whiff of bear.”
Deep bear claw swipes gouged into John Runningwolf’s ribs. Despite being deep enough to show the glint of white bones, the wounds didn’t bleed. A smear of blood showed where it had bled for only a moment before stopping.
New flesh covered the bones as she watched. The ragged edges of torn skin slowly sealed together. Liliana blinked her first eyes. She tried opening the rest of her eyes to see what was happening, but none of her various forms of vision could show her microscopic machines knitting his flesh together.
Lieutenant Runningwolf looked down at the slashes. “Yeah.” After a moment, he added, “I’m stronger, too.”
“This is what Andrew Periclum intended with his nanite experiments. You are the only one who gained the advantages he was trying to invent for all Others.”
The soldier huffed a tired version of his previous growl. “He didn’t care if he killed a bunch of us, including me, in the process.”
They sat together for a long time. Only the soft weeping of the injured bear-kin broke the silence until they both heard military police making their crashing, clumsy way toward them through the underbrush.
Liliana stood to leave. “Goodbye, John Runningwolf. I’m glad you didn’t die.”
John Runningwolf looked up at her from his seat in the leaf mould. “Just John is fine.”
Liliana smiled. “My friends call me Lilly. I think I would like it if you called me Lilly.”
“Lilly.” He nodded. “Thank you, I guess. For saving my life.”
“You are welcome.”
She looked forward in time to see if his life was safe now and saw another death. “You are Alexander’s protector. When Officer West offers to guard him, say yes. If you guard him at that time, you will die, even if I save Alexander. If Officer West guards him, Officer West might die, but I might still be able to save him. Alexander will live, at least long enough for me to fight for him.”
A bright grin split his bruised and bloody face. Liliana had all her eyes open and saw the sparkle of amusement that complemented it. “I know how much you don’t care in the least about the Colonel or how he feels about you.”
Liliana felt her cheeks flush and her ears get hot. She didn’t know what to say to that, so she climbed the tree and left the area via interconnected branches.
John’s coughing laughter followed her.