Hunting Party (Bear Lodge Shifters Book 1)

by Kyrii Rayne

  The beast staggered back, pawing at his bleeding face as he regenerated flesh and bone.

  Why? Why fight for meat? Why fight for humans? The thing's confusion was as terrifying as its rage. You will die on my claws! Why fight?

  Jake caught the down swinging paw this time, teeth clicking together from the impact, and pinned it while driving his other claw into Graypaw's throat. Graypaw gagged and spat blood. You're attacking my mate! I won't let you hurt her! I love her! It all boiled down to that, plain and simple. Now that he was with Anna he would fight for her, and die for her if he had to, to protect her and the new lives they could make together. It was all so beautifully simple... and it was probably about to get him killed.

  The bear paused again, and its brow knit, almost like a human's. The confusion in its mind-voice intensified. What is love?

  Jake stared at his bizarre half-brother in growing shock. But then a paw lashed out and this time, it dug deep into his chest and sent him flying.

  His consciousness stuttered as he slammed against the wall, and he looked down at his gouged chest and gagged, flailing. He would heal... but until he did, he couldn't move. And Graypaw was going straight for Mark.

  Mark and Darrin both fired, but Graypaw learned fast, and swung its head as it lunged back and forth up the stairs, taking bullets in its chest and jaw and losing an ear again, but continuing its charge while Jake wheezed and waited for his body to repair itself.

  “Craaaap!” Darrin threw his empty rifle aside and changed, his bear form almost cub-sized next to Graypaw... but still he charged in, bellowing as he leaped up and latched onto Graypaw's head, knocking its lunge toward Mark off course in the process. Graypaw slammed into the wall by the landing door at full speed, grunting with the impact. Darrin had swung onto his back and was now biting and clawing at him, barely able to get through his thick hide but still distracting him enough for Mark to get out of striking range. Jake dragged himself forward, chest still knitting, and put himself between Mark and the fighting bears, groaning a little. Darrin was getting knocked around a lot, and as Mark watched a light seemed to go on in his eyes.

  “Hey Little Bear! Jump free!” Mark was aiming a flare gun. Darrin leapt free of Graypaw's neck, and Mark fired.

  Graypaw shocked them all by ducking at the last second. But the hybrid didn't understand about ricochets, for a moment later the flare bounced off the stairwell and struck it in the back. It roared in surprised pain and tumbled partway down the stairs, fur smoking. It burns!

  I told you to leave us alone! Now do it before you get hurt worse! He didn't know why he felt compelled to warn the creature off or try to reason with it. Maybe it was because they might be related. Maybe it was because it seemed to be as brainwashed and confused as it was vicious. Maybe he just didn't know what else to do when faced with a horror that was basically kin.

  Jake staggered as he prepared to dive down the stairs after the creature anyway. He had lost more blood to that chest wound than he had thought, and now he had to heal it.

  “I'm not doing so good,” he admitted to Darrin, who immediately shifted back to human and spoke up while bruises healed on his face.

  “Okay, Jake needs a chance to heal. Let's get inside the doors and block them. They're fire-rated steel, they should keep Graypaw out for a few minutes.”

  They ran inside — well, Jake more fell inside, but he caught himself at the last moment — and shoved the doors closed behind them as Graypaw roared from the bottom of the stairwell. Anna ran over to him, and he changed back, wheezing around the claw mark in his chest. “I'll heal,” he reassured her, but it was taking so damned long. “I'll heal—”

  Graypaw slammed into the doors and nearly knocked them off their hinges.

  “Oh crap. Okay, uh — hide!” Darrin ducked down behind one of the remaining desks while Jake headed for Anna to coax her behind another. Mark joined them.

  “Jake, it's going to get in,” Anna said softly. “I think we can trick it into falling off the tower.”

  “How?”

  She pulled out her flare gun and handed it to him.

  “Mark has a few flares left and now so do you. That thing will go for the first person it sees. When it goes for me, you shoot it in the eyes.”

  Mark nodded, mildly impressed, but Jake felt a sliver of ice go into his chest.

  “What — wait, you can't use yourself as bait—!”

  But she was already slipping away, going to stand in front of the wall-sized window directly across from the landing doors.

  Jake strangled a yell of horror and stared out at her pleadingly, but she just looked back at him and lifted her chin. Her face was pale but resolved.

  “Don't miss,” she told him.

  I won't. I can't. Not this time. He held the flare gun and waited to take aim.

  A second later the doors exploded inward and Graypaw charged into the room. He stood on his hind legs, head brushing the ceiling, and sniffed the air, before orienting on the softly rounded figure standing directly across from it. It landed on all four paws and bellowed at her.

  “Come and get me!” she screamed back at it.

  Graypaw charged.

  Jake screamed, the wound sending jags of pain through his chest, and heard Mark screaming next to him as they both fired.

  He would never know which one of their flares struck the wall behind Graypaw, and which struck home right in his grizzled, blood-matted face. He only knew when the creature groaned with rage and agony, blinded, and kept charging, driven into a berserk frenzy.

  Anna threw herself aside as the beast charged at the spot where she had stood — and then crashed through the glass just beyond. Graypaw's bellows drew out and repeated, in frustrated confusion, as it fell all the way off the tower and into the clearing below. It landed with a sickening thud, and shouts of shock and horror drifted up from the hunters.

  Jake staggered out to join Anna, bundling her into his arms.

  “Don't ever do anything like that again!” he half-scolded, his voice shaking. But she just hugged him.

  “I want to protect you too,” she explained simply, and he kissed her before turning to look down through the broken glass.

  Graypaw was already stirring as the other hunters ran to surround it. They started to argue, one of them hurling accusations at his father. But then the great beast lifted its head, and they scattered back — all but one. His father, standing placidly, as if expecting fully that the huge beast would be docile with him.

  Graypaw staggered to its feet and shook bits of glass out of its hide. It groaned softly. Father...

  “Yes, my son. It is I. You have taken quite a fall. Can you walk?”

  “Anthony, get the hell away from that thing! It's violent!”

  “He will not attack me,” his father replied mildly, turning back to address the nervously milling hunters. Behind him, Graypaw stood up on his haunches.

  “Anthony—”

  Father... it hurts. Why does it hurt inside?

  Jake's grip tightened protectively around Anna as he saw his ‘brother’ raise the paw that had nearly torn his heart out that night and drive it hard into his father's chest. Anthony Matson flew across the clearing and slammed into the side of the cage hard enough to rock it on its wheels.

  The other hunters screamed and aimed their rifles at it, firing as they backed away. Graypaw bellowed at them and turned to charge their direction.

  Suddenly bears burst from the woods. A dozen... two dozen... grizzlies, browns, blacks, young, old, one so ancient it limped along arthritically. They surrounded the hunters, standing up on their haunches and facing them, while the men threw down their weapons and raised their hands. Two of them went for Anthony's fallen form, and the rest surrounded Graypaw, who bellowed at them angrily but held off on lashing out.

  That is quite enough. The mind-voice came from the old, hobbling bear which brought up the rear. The crowd parted for her as Graypaw snuffled the air curiously.

  “
Who is that?” Mark asked as he came to stand with them.

  “That's Helga.” Darrin popped his shoulder back into its socket as he joined them next to Mark. “But I don't know what they're doing with Graypaw.”

  The old bear hobbled up to the great gray beast, who slowly settled back to all four paws. Then she blurred and shifted, and an old Norse-looking woman leaning on a staff stood in the bear's place. She wore a pale, shaggy robe of bearskin, and many beads around her neck, and her braids mixed pale blonde with gray.

  “Oh wow.” Anna stared. “Is she some kind of shaman or something?”

  “If the bear shifters have any real magic at all, she knows all of it,” Darrin replied simply and quietly.

  Mark's eyes narrowed skeptically, but he said nothing.

  Who are you?

  I am Helga. Your father is my great grand-nephew. All of these are my descendants, except for the humans in the tower. Why do you make war here?

  The creature seemed to calm under the influence of that placid mind-voice. Father told me to kill. But now my head goes two ways. Everything is questions. It hurts.

  The two bear shifters with Anthony changed to human form and carried him out gingerly. His chest was soaked with blood, and he was completely limp. Jake couldn't tell whether he had bled out or not, but they had not covered his face yet. Jake felt a deep, twisting pain in his heart, deeper than Graypaw's talons, and shook his head. He couldn't afford to care anymore. But it still hurt.

  Well, I am going to be the one taking care of you now, and I tell you not to kill. We are going away now, you and I, and you are going to mind your manners with me.

  If I don't kill, what do I eat?

  I make very good pie.

  ...Oh. What's pie? The creature seemed to be falling under some kind of spell, growing more and more docile as the woman stood before it. Finally, she hobbled over and put her free hand on the creature's side, and it snuffled her.

  “How in the Hell is she even doing that?” Mark breathed in amazement. “That must be some serious... I don't even know what.”

  “Magic. It has to be.” Anna stood transfixed, arms around Jake's waist. Jake knew she couldn't hear the mind-voices any more than Mark, but she could see the effect, as the creature that had terrorized them slowly calmed until it was almost... almost... harmless-seeming.

  No more cages then? There were always cages before. The beast turned to follow her as she headed back down the fire road, taking her time, just hobbling along as the sun broke over the trees.

  No, no more cages, as long as you behave yourself.

  The crowd of bears led the captive hunters off well behind Graypaw, who lumbered along with Helga, attended to by the rest of her entourage. They left behind their bloody battlefield, a few dropped weapons, and the truck and Range Rover.

  “Hey, well, at least we can get back to the lodge easy now,” Darrin commented, sighing and cracking his neck.

  “Yeah. I'm gonna need a minute after that.” Mark rubbed his face. “That was some seriously next-level weirdness.”

  “Yeah. But it wasn't bad weird.”

  Anna still had a note of wonder in her voice that Jake was very happy to hear.

  “Maybe.”

  Mark's voice was grudging, but Anna smiled for some reason anyway.

  Chapter 13 -

  Helga's Promise

  Two hours later, cleaned, changed into fresh clothes and with full stomachs, the four of them joined Helga in her rooms at the Lodge. Jake had hardly left Anna's side, and she found that she liked it. It didn't really matter if what he felt for her had started in some instinctive hormonal, or mystical, or whatever kind of attraction. Why did any two people end up attracted to each other anyway? The point was, he loved her now, and she loved him.

  She had made that call to her Mom telling her yes, she was fine, she had gone on a long hike and seen some bears. Jake’d had to stifle laughter at her deadpan expression. But inside she had just been very, very happy to be alive to make that phone call.

  Helga's rooms were broken up into a long hall-shaped guesting room dominated by a trestle table and a gigantic fireplace. Some of the bear shifters lounged around near the fire as the four of them came in, a few in bear form and a few in human. Most were older, and all looked at them curiously as they entered.

  Helga stood at the head of the table. “Come, sit by me. We have much to discuss.” She gestured, and then sat down and pulled in the tall-backed wooden chair. “I am Helga Thorsdottr, head of the Lodge and of its members' lineage. I was away from the Lodge due to health issues, for which I greatly apologize. Had I been able to be here...” she smiled sadly.

  Jake nodded, and so did Darrin. Anna watched her curiously, but it was Mark who spoke up first. “What happened to the bad guys?”

  Helga sighed, and nodded. “I can understand your interest, Mr...?”

  “Sanger. US Army Specialist Mark Sanger. And I want to know what happens to the people who wanted to hunt myself and Anna here down. They're responsible for four deaths. Six if you count the two that attacked us.”

  “I do. You were defending yourselves, quite clearly.” Helga's voice was calm, and Mark settled back in mild surprise. She went on. “The Hunters have been expelled from the Lodge and will face public censure in our community for their activities. The bear shifter known as Graypaw is in my custody and will live under my tutelage and strict supervision until such time that he is mentally stable enough that he might find some kind of place in our community.”

  “Now wait a second,” Mark protested. “That monster killed and partially ate four people.”

  “I just spent over an hour interviewing the 'monster' in question. He has been kept in a cage and fed human flesh, and continuously brainwashed, for the two years of his life.”

  Jake blinked. “Two years — Graypaw is two?”

  Helga breathed deeply and looked out the window.

  “As a bear, he is a full adult. As an intelligent being, he has a two-year-old's level of experience, one that has been heavily limited to captivity, obligate man-eating and Anthony Matson's 'training'.”

  “No wonder he's nuts,” Darrin muttered, looking sick.

  Anna sat there letting horror and pity wash over her. That creature, Graypaw, it never had any kind of chance but to be its father's monster.

  “I... almost feel sorry for it.”

  “Graypaw has a long way to go before he will be ready to mingle with humanity in any way. I will keep him at the Lodge now that my health is better, and see to his rehabilitation.”

  “And the people he killed?” Mark's tone was sharp.

  “Their blood is on the hands of the man who turned him into a killing machine,” Helga said firmly. “He is no more responsible than if he was a pack of attack dogs Matson loosed on you.”

  Mark sat back, digesting this, then frowned, nodding. He seemed discontented with Helga's answers, worrying Anna, but he also seemed less vehement than before, and more thoughtful.

  “What about my father?” Jake asked quietly. Anna reached over and patted his knee under the table, and he reached down and squeezed her hand.

  “Anthony Matson's healing abilities do not seem able to fully compensate for his injuries. We do not know quite yet, but he is not expected to pull through even with the healer's help.” She lifted her chin, eyes full of sympathy but face set in serious lines. “Jacob, custodianship of the property falls to you when he becomes incapacitated, which he has proven to be.”

  Jacob nodded grimly. “What do you need from me?”

  “A decision. I can ban the hunting activities from the Lodge, but without your support the anti-humans can continue to do as they please here.”

  Anna watched Jacob, and so did the others. He nodded, then coughed and raised his voice so that the others could hear it.

  “Anti-human activities and events such as this hunt are banned from the premises in perpetuity. I'm writing it into my damned will for my descendants to follow. That's it
.”

  He looked around, and the others nodded, all seeming to approve.

  Helga reached over and touched Jake's shoulder.

  “There's going to be a lot of reorganizing with your father gone. You may need to spend some time here.”

  “I can take a hiatus from school. But...” He looked over at Anna questioningly. She smiled gently. She knew he didn't want to be apart from her, and she didn't feel troubled about that any more. They had survived something terrible together, and had gotten through it by trusting each other. It mattered.

  She nodded. “I'll stick with you.”

  A smile broke across Jake's face like the sun coming up.

  Helga's eyes twinkled.

  “Well, that's lovely. I had hoped Jacob would introduce me to his mate someday. Hello, dear. This must all be very strange to you.”

  “It is, but um... I'm adapting.”

  She glanced at Mark uncertainly, though. He still didn't seem convinced. Mark folded his arms.

  “Do you have any guarantees that these human-hating werebears you cut loose from the Lodge won't just start killing humans on their own?”

  Helga frowned thoughtfully.

  “Ultimately? No. I do not. I will not lie to you. If they have become as disturbed as Anthony, they may turn to serial murder on their own. But we do police our own, and they will not get away with it for very long.” She peered at him gently. “Is that satisfactory to you?”

  “No. Far as I'm concerned those bastards should be in a cage right now.”

  “Sadly, the use of cages seems to have exacerbated our problems.” Helga looked at him quietly. “I can't promise you that some of us aren't going to behave like monsters. You have no such guarantee from humanity either, I might point out, and neither do we.”

  “That's true.” Mark watched her measuringly. “So what happens to me now?”