Unbearable

by Cynthia St. Aubin

Hope fluttered in my chest. Rolly would pull his keys out when he got to his car. He would have to. Surely there was something I could do to snag them. A quick distraction of the kind I didn’t want to think about too long before I dove headlong into it. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that.”

  Joy brightened his eyes and pulled his thick lips into a wide, boyish grin that made me want to stab my own eye out with the dinner fork. “I was hoping you would say that! I even cleaned my car out and bought a new air freshener. Apple cinnamon. Ooh! I wonder if they have pie here. Do you like pie?”

  “Are we saving room for dessert?”

  Our server had reappeared with the drink I no longer wanted and set it down on the table at my elbow.

  I waved him off, not wanting to throw a surplus of sugar into the lake of alcohol in my belly. “None for me, thanks.”

  “Do you have pie?” Rolly asked. “The kind that comes with ice cream? Or cheese? My mom liked cheese with her pie. I’ve never really liked cheese with my pie, but I guess I can see why some people eat that.”

  The server cast me a pitying glance. “I’m afraid not. We do have eight-layer chocolate decadence cake. Or the house-made sorbet.”

  I held my breath, willing Rolly to pass, wanting to get out to his car before my liquid nerve wore off entirely.

  Rolly twisted the napkin in his thick fingers like the neck of a chicken and chewed his lower lip. Even with my dulled senses, I could see the physical symptoms of the mounting psychological pressure. The prospect of giving me a ride was making Rolly nervous.

  Good, some cynical voice in my head decided. Easier to make him believe he had lost his keys if he was flustered.

  “I think I’ll have the—”

  An ear-piercing scream stabbed through the restaurant, followed by the explosion of breaking glass, the sudden noises sweeping away all thoughts of dessert.

  “It’s a bear!”

  This feminine battle cry was enough to start an avalanche of patrons pushing in the opposite direction of the commotion. Chairs groaned as their occupants shoved back from their tables. Men grabbed their women. Women grabbed their purses. Curses were shouted and warnings grunted.

  “The back door!” the bartender bellowed, motioning toward the kitchen where aproned wait staff had bustled all evening like the mouth of a hive.

  As the crowd cleared, I saw not one bear, but three.

  I stood anchored to the spot as effectively as if my shoes had been made of concrete, the scene unfolding before me, so surreal that fear failed to drive adrenaline through veins already flooded with blood that might qualify for an octane rating.

  Rolly, for his part, dove beneath our table—hiding the chief defense strategy of a man not built for quick bursts of speed.

  “He’s eating my date!” a panicked voice shrieked.

  I looked up to a sight so grisly—pardon the pun—I had to clap my hand to my mouth to avoid discharging a wave of wine and spinach confetti onto the floor. A man, pinned to the floor, the rust-colored maw of a huge bear locked onto his hip, shaking him with enough force to turn his scream into a series of breathless yelps.

  A bear as black as night and just as broad overturned a table near the double-sided glass fireplace with one swipe of his paw, sending flatware clattering across the restaurant floor. “God damn it, Carl!” His half-human roar rattled what was left of the windows. “We talked about this. No eating people!”

  The shaggy, russet-hued bear released his prey and swiped his black lips with a flat pink tongue. “But Bob,” an equally chilling, rough-hewn voice protested, “he was eating cedar-planked salmon. You know how I love salmon.”

  “I told you to eat before we left the house,” the black bear—Bob, or so I assumed—argued.

  “You try filling up on lousy cans of sardines,” Carl moped.

  “Hera’s orders were clear,” a smaller, honey-colored bear rumbled in tones softer than the other two.

  “Tom is right,” Bob agreed.

  “My name is Tristan,” the golden bear rasped, rising on his hind legs.

  Bob matched the gesture, the two of them towering at a height that stopped the breath in my lungs. “I’m not one of your shifter fangirls, Tom. I’m not here to flatter your vanity. We’re here for the doctor.”

  Doctor.

  This word punched through my haze of alcohol-induced unreality like a stiletto. Given the trajectory of my life as of late, if talking bears busted into a restaurant in search of a doctor, that doctor was probably me.

  The last of the patrons were gone now. It was too late to run without fear of banging through broken dishes or tripping over upended chairs.

  My knees gave out beneath me, and I found myself crawling under the tablecloth, where I discovered Rolly crouched on all fours, his eyes round as Frisbees. “Bears,” he muttered. “Talking bears!”

  I knew the look of abject shock and disbelief in Rolly’s eyes all too well. It was the very reason bounty hunters like Crixus existed: to make sure errant supernaturals didn’t go gallivanting through the human world leaving chaos in their wake.

  I had been able to help him avoid a few near disasters already, but I suspected that regardless of how this night ended, Crixus would likely have some cleanup on his hands.

  I only hoped my intestines wouldn’t be part of it.

  “Scootch over,” I whispered.

  Rolly shifted his bulk to one side and huddled with his back against the wall abutting our table.

  I grabbed a discarded fork from the floor and clutched it in a two-fisted grip in front of me. If ol’ Carl developed a sudden taste for dusty academic, he’d have to enjoy his snack less one eye.

  The dissonant music of plate shards rattling announced the bears’ maddeningly slow approach. A shadow crawled across the hanging tablecloth like the boogeyman across a drive-in movie screen.

  I clapped a hand over Rolly’s mouth to stop the esophageal flapping of his slack-jawed breath just as a shiny black nose fluttered the white linen inches from my shoe.

  “Ugh,” Carl growled. “Vegan.”

  “Not this one.”

  Rolly yelped as a golden maw closed over his ankle, jerking his feet out from under him. He rolled onto his belly, making a desperate grasp for the table leg, but catching mine instead.

  “Don’t let them get me!” he begged. His shirt front pocket gapped open as he squirmed, revealing the set of keys tucked inside.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” I said, reaching toward him. With one quick move I snatched the keys from his pocket and rapped him on the knuckles with the brass.

  His grip on my calf loosened, and he was gone.

  *****

  I snatched my purse from under the chair and tried to text with sweat-slippery fingers. “Got the” was as much as I managed before another crash startled the phone from my grip.

  “Paws off the rump roast!”

  Crixus.

  I would know the demigod’s voice anywhere. Resonant, smoky, deep enough to vibrate the unnamed places inside me.

  “Chris!” I heard Rolly’s jubilant shout. A name I had given Crixus in a pinch as the gladiator’s appellation he still bore lacked the solemnity of the colleague and supposed dating expert I had described him to be. Admittedly, a stretch on my part. As far as I could tell, Crixus didn’t date so much as he fucked—frequently and without discrimination.

  I peeked out from under the table cloth just in time to see Crixus execute some kind of Greco-Roman chokehold on Tristan from behind as Rolly crab-walked backward toward the safety of the bar.

  The muscle-hugging black T-shirt Crixus had adopted as his standard uniform strained over his bicep as he locked one massive arm around the bear’s neck and tightened until the tongue lolled out of the animal’s mouth like a flag of surrender. Faded jeans covered the powerful thighs crushing into the bear’s flank.

  Tristan went down backward, paws flailing, Crixus dragging him to the ground.

  Cords stood out on Crixus’s nec
k as he used the momentum of his body to roll the thrashing bear beneath him, subduing Tristan with strength far beyond human.

  For one brief moment, the restaurant fell away, and I was the one pinned beneath the hard planes of that body, the furry expanse beneath us no more than a bear-skin rug, the roaring from a crackling fire rather than the bear’s two angry siblings. Crixus’s T-shirt had evaporated, leaving me to explore the every inch of that tanned, smooth—

  You keep thinking about fucking me, and we’re all going to die.

  Crixus’s voice echoed through my head like a thunderclap, scattering the imagined scene like so much fiery confetti on the wind.

  Reading my mind was another of his favorite tricks—one I found too easy to forget.

  His statement was an exaggeration, of course. He couldn’t die, as far as I knew.

  Me, on the other hand…

  Sorry. I was tempted to clap my hands over my ears to prevent the thoughts from escaping.

  You can be sorry later, Doctor. I’ll see to it personally.

  Heat flashed southward as I caught his glance in my direction.

  “There!” Bob growled, pointing a paw toward the table. “The doctor!”

  “Little help?” Crixus grunted.

  A silvery-white blur shot into view, rolling up and over the debris to halt in front of Carl, who had concerned himself with an upturned butter dish on the floor.

  “Aww shit,” Carl mumbled. “It’s the egg.”

  Bob’s large angular head swung in Carl’s direction, dismay darkening his features when he saw the bulbous object rocking to a halt. It was at least as big as an ostrich egg and glowing with a pearlescent hue that wouldn’t be out of place under the glass counter of a jewelry case.

  Wiry arms poked their way out of the shell on either side, legs sprouted from the egg’s rounded bottom. At the end of the scrawny stems, patent leather shoes met with Dickensian gaiters at the ankle. White-gloved little hands adjusted the red plaid waistcoat spanning the egg’s rounded circumference before tightening into fists that rotated in circles like opposing pedals on a bicycle.

  “Put up your dukes, you bloody meater, or I’ll pop you one in the sauce-box!” the egg challenged.

  Bob backed away, the pads of his paws held out before him in a gesture of surrender. “We didn’t mean any offense, Humpt—”

  “What did you call me?” The egg’s utter lack of nose gave his high-born, pinched British accent a stuffy quality. His round black eyes narrowed into slits that might have been slashes of a permanent marker.

  “Nothing,” Bob insisted. “That is, I didn’t mean to—”

  “My name is Humbilicus!” the egg shouted.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! Just don’t—”

  “You’ve had it now, you fiend! I know a thing or two about fisticuffs!” One little leg shot out with surprising speed, delivering a swift kick to Bob’s furry shin with the polished toe of his shoe.

  “Youch!” Bob yelped.

  “You’ll have more of the same if you don’t take yourselves off this instant!”

  “We can’t,” Tristan choked, still trapped in Crixus’s grip. “We need…Goldilocks.”

  “Goldilocks?” The sound of my own voice startled me, and from the looks of it, everyone left in the restaurant. I had crawled out from under my table and was standing with arms folded tight across my chest. My gaze found its way to Crixus’s face, calm and devoid of exertion despite subduing a wild animal weighing as much as a small car. “She’s a real person?”

  “Yeah she is.” Carl’s voice echoed inside the copper soup tureen he was buried in up to the ears.

  Implied in his tone were the sinuous curves of the kind Crixus chased like a train chases tracks. And if her name had any basis in reality, said curves were likely attached to the body of a leggy blonde.

  “What’s he talking about, Crixus?”

  “Nothing.” Crixus constricted Tristan’s neck as if it might stop the words coming from Bob’s mouth.

  “Your doctor friend doesn’t know what you’re up to?” Teeth like ivory daggers shone against Bob’s black lips as they peeled into an unsettling grin. “I thought you shared everything with her.” The husky rumble in the bear’s words left me wondering exactly what Crixus had been telling the supernatural world of our exploits together.

  “He most certainly does not,” I said.

  “But she’d like me to.” Crixus’s arrogant declaration should have been irritating. But damned if he didn’t cut a compelling figure while wrestling a bear.

  “You have to agree that what Zeus is doing isn’t right,” Bob interjected, speaking not to me, but the egg. “Elevating a human to demigod status. He’s breaking his own rules. You of all people know how dangerous that could be.”

  “I’ll not have any more of your jelly-jawed yammering.” The egg pointed a gloved finger the size of a matchstick up at Bob. “In fact, I think it’s high time I—”

  Crack!

  The deafening noise exploded through the restaurant. Bob’s paws flew to his snout as he erupted in a roar that shook my rib cage.

  “I’m falling!” the egg wailed. His eyes were wide with some past horror reeling along the projector of his mind. He spun in a circle, jerking as if surrounded by hot stoves at every angle. “I’m falling, I’m falling! The horses!”

  I went down on my knees beside him and laid my hands on either side of his smooth shell. “Look at me, Humbilicus. Find my eyes.”

  The little black dots slid past mine several times before our gazes snagged and held. “Good,” I said. “Now stay with me. Breathe. Know that it will pass.”

  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I would need more time to make an official diagnosis, but I had seen the look of helpless horror on the faces of clients before.

  Odd how similar it looked on the face of an egg and the face of a human.

  The egg’s shell neither rose nor fell with breath, and I didn’t have the first idea where to feel for a pulse, or if a pulse was even a reliable indicator of life for a talking egg. Instead, I focused on his eyes, watching the sheen of panic ebb by slow degrees.

  White smoke sifted into the air behind the bar, and I looked past the dark barrel of a shotgun to see Rolly’s stunned face. He blinked at the weapon clutched in his hands as if it were an appendage he had mysteriously sprouted overnight. “I don’t know what happened. One minute I was eating olives beneath the bar, and the next, there’s this gun in my hand. Who knew I was such a great shot?”

  Details filtered in as I emerged from my hyper-focused state.

  Bob rolled onto his back, his four paws pedaling the air like the legs of an upturned beetle. “Rock salt!” he howled in agony. “It smarts! Oh my God it stings so much!”

  Carl’s head popped out of the kettle. He sauntered over to his brother and swiped a cupped paw across his nose, then limped on three legs back to an abandoned table where a half-eaten wedge of chocolate decadence cake sat aging in the candlelight.

  The salt granules fell upon the rich, brown sponge like snow before disappearing into Carl’s mouth in one giant bite.

  “Mmmohh, God,” Carl groaned. “The salt really offsets the dark chocolate.”

  “My eyes!” Bob’s tortured moan sank hooks into part of my heart that couldn’t abide the sound of animal suffering. “It’s burning my eyes out!”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” I huffed, snagging a pitcher of water from servers’ station.

  Tristan’s strangled protest scarcely registered as I stomped over to Bob and upended a brief deluge onto his contorting face.

  “No!” The word drowned in a gargled protest. “Not water!”

  The fur melted away from features already beginning to shrink. His snout sinking towards his cheeks, claws pulling into his fingertips, legs straightening, tightening into lean hips. Sickening sounds of bones buckling, cartilage cracking, and muscles tearing with wet rips coaxed a raw shriek of pure agony from the body writhing amongst shards on th
e floor.

  The body of a man. A naked man. A very large naked man.

  He was like nothing I had ever seen. Not that I had seen much—all of Liam and half of Crixus forming my only basis for comparison.

  Dark hair sprinkled the broad chest heaving in search of air. Pale, smooth scars marred the skin of his arms, his neck, cut a crosshatched carpet across his high cheekbones and hard jaw. These wounds were old compared to the reddish blotches where salt had pelted the skin of his face and neck. Beneath a sloping brow, his unnatural jade-green eyes burned with a pain so raw it stole my breath.

  His hand closed over my ankle, and electricity surged up my leg to bloom like a lava lotus in my belly.

  “You will not fucking touch her!” Crixus growled from a distant universe.

  Tristan flew past me in a golden blur, shot like a giant, furry ball from an unseen cannon.

  Crixus appeared in my peripheral vision and Bob’s body was heaved from the floor and rocketed through a window.

  Carl looked up from licking the plate, shrugged, and lumbered after his brothers.

  I blinked at Crixus, who stood next to me with hands clenched in fists at his sides, his sapphire eyes glassy with rage.

  “You just threw a bear!” The wonder shining on Rolly’s face mirrored what I felt radiating from my own. He set the shotgun down on the bar and sidled up to me.

  “He’s lucky I didn’t rip his arm off and shove the wet end up his furry ass,” Crixus said.

  “What were they doing here, exactly?” I asked. “What do they want with me if it’s Goldilocks they’re after?”

  “Why, isn’t it obvious?” The egg picked up a shard of broken mirror and examined his reflection in it. Spotting a smudge of dust on his waistcoat, he brushed it off and ran a small hand over the smooth expanse of his domed forehead. “They intend to abduct you and trade you for Goldilocks.”

  “Me? Who on earth would they trade me to?”

  The egg glanced upward at Crixus. “Will you be telling her then?”

  “Telling me what?” My eyes narrowed on instinct.

  Crixus’s shoulders sagged. “Zeus and Goldilocks have a thing.”

  “An affair?” I asked. “But hasn’t he had thousands of those?”