Chapter 11 #3
“Don’t shoot!” Simon ordered. “They’ll mob us if you do.
” And in a shifter mob, everybody got hurt.
Angry bears swiped at anything that moved and Alyssa, as the only plain human, wouldn’t stand a chance.
Especially since there was no way the three of them—four if he counted the wounded bear—could manage the ten…
no eleven shifters in the room. Which meant they had one chance.
One horrible, irrational, stupid chance.
But it was the only hope he had of keeping Alyssa alive.
He shoved down his jeans.
Alyssa gasped. “What are you doing?”
“I challenge you, Nanook. It’s clear you’re crazy.” He glanced at the others. “How can you follow someone that irrational?”
He knew the answer to that. Intimidation and brute force worked wonders. Especially since Nanook had that whole psychic blast thing. Fortunately, the bastard had burned that skill out on Vic. He hoped.
Nanook’s mouth curled into a cold smile. “And when you’re dead, I’ll enjoy your woman.”
Alyssa’s voice rang out. “Fat chance, bastard.”
Simon pulled off his shirt. “Vic, get her out of here.”
“We’re not leaving you,” Vic said. His speech was getting clearer.
“I can’t win,” he growled as he tossed the last bit of clothing aside. “He’s a fucking grolar.”
“What?”
A grolar was a grizzly–polar bear mix. That meant that shifted, the bastard had at least a 150 pounds on Simon.
But it didn’t matter. It was too late. A naked Nanook gestured to his people.
Four of them moved to block the exit, which meant that now no one was going anywhere. Not until the battle was done.
One last thing to do before shifting. He turned and looked at Alyssa. It was stupid, illogical, and there was no time. He should be focused on Nanook, but he needed to see her face one last time.
God, she looked so beautiful. It was the fierceness he admired the most. Her eyes were wide with fear, but her stand was solid and her pistol remained steady in her hand. She was not a woman who lost her head. And definitely not a woman who ran.
“Simon,” she began.
“Save your bullets for the ones on you. I’ll do the rest.” It was a wild claim. He had no chance here. He’d never been a smart fighter, just a full-out wild one. And raw strength never won out against intelligence. Not in a fight to the death.
He wanted to say more. He wanted a moment to memorize her face, to smell her scent. Something. But there was no time. Without warning, his grizzly surged to the fore. Survival instinct, probably, because Nanook attacked without sound.
Simon dove to the side, shifting midleap. His mind stepped aside and the animal came to the fore. His claws slipped on the hard concrete. This was not fighting in the woods as he was used to. This was the urban jungle and he had no weapon or protection in this open concrete space.
Nevertheless, he spun and faced a bear fully a third larger than him. Nanook had light golden brown fur and dark narrow eyes, plus sharp claws in paws that looked broader than a human head. And his jaw opened wide to expose teeth that could easily crush a man’s spine. Or even a grizzly’s.
Simon roared and he reared up. Fortunately, he wasn’t stupid enough to attack. Not at his lesser weight.
The whole goal of a bear attack was to grab hold and get access to the neck. The back of the neck, the jaw, anything that a bear’s mouth could crush. Failing that, a good bite that holds could toss a lesser weighted opponent to the side. Maybe expose throat or belly to a well-placed claw.
Nanook went for a brute-force attack. He reared up and pushed forward. Simon had no choice but to meet and grapple.
There was no way to win this, he thought over and over, even as he struggled for a solution.
He lost ground in the grappling, as would always happen with an opponent so much larger.
Nanook twisted him around and his teeth dug in.
Simon adjusted, rolling with the move and using his more flexible body to escape, but it was a losing battle.
He’d landed no blows on Nanook and though the bigger bear seemed winded, he showed no signs of stopping.
He felt the rage build inside his grizzly. A dark, feral possession that started to black out his thinking mind. This was the core of his animal, but it would not save him. Though vicious, the grizzly alone could not prevail.
Which left him with a single choice. He could merge his human mind with the animal.
Not a distancing, with one in the forefront and the other completely detached, but a complete joining where man and animal survived as one.
He never did that because his priorities got screwed up.
His human rationality changed in bad ways.
Like the time as a teen when he’d nearly killed his best friend.
Since then, he simply flipped back and forth, like difference faces of the same coin. Grizzly. Human. Never both at once.
But it was his only hope.
So he did it. And he prayed his friends and his sanity survived.