Briar on Bruins' Peak (Bruins' Peak Bears Book 7)

by Erin D. Andrews

  “You’re crazy. The little ones need extra care. Besides, just like with animals, when shifters don’t have their mothers, they die. Problem solved.”

  “Whoa, hey. What’s that?”

  “Oh no.” The two ran over to my unconscious redhead and knelt down. One of them pressed the small button in his ear and asked for help. He looked around and saw my eyes in the darkness.

  “Oh no. No, no, no…” He meekly tapped his friend’s shoulder and swallowed. “You see that?”

  “What? What are you…?” He turned and saw me, and then his knees turned to water. He kneeled on the ground and covered his face. “Please,” he whimpered, “please don’t kill us.”

  I flicked my tail and focused on them with my best, most terrifying stare. Slowly, I prowled out just enough to let the light illuminate me a bit more. My tail snaked back and forth, and the two of them watched it just like I wanted them to.

  I saw one of them start to go for his taser, and I leapt. Using the wall near me, I propelled myself through the air and landed on the first. I grabbed his taser away with my mouth, while he screamed and turned his head to one side, his high-pitched yells bouncing off the walls.

  “Please don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!”

  His voice was going insane all over the walls and hurt my sensitive ears terribly, so I zapped the side of his neck with his own taser, and he went limp. I looked at his friend, and he reached out for his own taser. I shook my head, and he just gently set it down and then kept his hands in the air. I nodded slowly to let him know that, yes that was what I wanted.

  “Larissa,” a voice said behind me. I turned to see a group of shifters, some in animal form and some in their human shape, standing behind me. Wolf Tina was at the head of it and giving me her fang-filled grin. “Get their passes so we can get out.”

  I walked up to the first, unconscious guard and slipped his pass out of his pocket with my teeth. No rings for these underlings. I wondered briefly what could have come to pass with the first two jailers I took on. They must have been released, possibly executed. This would be the fate of these two as well. I waited to feel bad about them, but the emotion never came. The pass slid out of his breast pocket, and I turned to give it to a human-form shifter. Clarice walked up and took it from me. “Good fossa,” she said sarcastically and winked at me. The comment made me a little weary on the inside. I was actually nervous for her to find out I was no longer male.

  Clarice took over the lead, and we left our captors on the floor as we headed up the spiral, metal stairs. I started to call out to stop everyone for a moment, to warn them what would be waiting for us, but no one seemed too concerned. Clarice just opened the door and stepped through.

  At the top, the hallway was quiet. This threw me as the memory of my last run was full of busy workers bustling around the hallway, talking into their communicators and avoiding one another. Where had they all gone?

  The group turned to look at me. I took a deep breath and tried to clear my head.

  “Okay. Let me think.” I looked up the hallway with my fossa eyes and zeroed in on a slightly open door. “There. That door can’t close. Tina, get down there and see who’s behind that door. Two other wolves go with her. Then…” I looked around the group, and my eyes landed on Black Feather and two of his airborne friends – a male hawk and a female redtail. “My fliers. I need you to go out a window and take stock of the situation. Try to vary your flight as much as you can. Be careful.”

  They nodded and walked away, the hawk and the redtail shifting as Black Feather went to push the window open, then joined them in the flight outside.

  Tina’s growl from down the hall reached me. “What did you find?”

  “Humans,” she called back. “What do we do with them?”

  I looked around the group. “All predators, shift now. We’re taking the humans hostage, to keep us safe. They can get us into whichever room Bachmann is hiding in.” A few more animals took form nearby; a panther, a bear, a mongoose. Together, we joined Tina and found a group of government workers packed together in some sort of storage space. I looked at the walls and saw several extra devices hanging, some clipboards stacked, and some pieces of paper. I had no idea what a group of people would need with so many extra things.

  “You’re coming with us,” I informed them. “We won’t harm you as long as you do what we say. Understand?”

  Before they could answer, several of the humans sniffled a bit as tears rolled down their faces. One man close to me suddenly reeked of urine, and when I turned my head I could see that he had wet his pants. “No one will attack you. You have my word. We want to be taken to Bachmann. Now.”

  “Okay,” he whispered. He stood and led the group out one by one. I took the lead, and my fellow predators surrounded them, keeping them penned up in their space so that they couldn’t disappear. As a unit, we moved down the hallway quietly, all of us on high alert for different reasons. I knew the president’s personal guard would descend on us as soon as they could, I just wasn’t sure which direction they would come from.

  We turned a corner and met with a fork in the hallway. “Which way?” I asked the man with the wet pants. He paused, and his eyes darted back and forth. I knew right away that he was desperately trying to find a way out of the situation. I put a paw on his foot. “Don’t lie to me,” I reminded him. “If I find out you’ve tricked me, I’ll devour you in three bites.” He looked into my big, black fossa eyes and shakily nodded ‘yes.’ He would comply. “Tell me now.”

  “Left,” he said, still shaking. “The president’s office is that direction.” I noticed a few of the other humans let out a sigh as he said it – a sound of disappointment. He was telling the truth.

  “Thank you.” I angled to the correct hallway. “Let’s go.”

  As we walked down the hallway, we started to encounter new humans. I managed to get most of them away from us with a snarl and a flash of my long incisor teeth. They threw up their hands and ran away as fast as they could. Others froze. Soon, an alarm was sounded, and an automated voice boomed through the air.

  “WARNING! WARNING! THE PALACE HAS BEEN COMPROMISED. PLEASE EVACUATE THROUGH THE NEAREST EXIT. WARNING! WARNING!” The voice repeated itself over and over. I looked over at Tina, who looked just as uncomfortable as I was.

  “We have to move faster.”

  She nodded and pushed the human in front of her with her muzzle, and we got the group moving at a faster pace. Then I saw them – the men in black uniforms with the guns.

  The president didn’t keep a lot of security around. Usually, he didn’t need it. The population was so highly controlled and so paralyzed with fear that state-level problems were almost non-existent. But, Bachmann was still Bachmann, so he had a highly-specialized squad of fighters that trained in some kind of ancient practice called Swat. They moved like machines, emotionless and expressionless, and each one had ways of silently communicating with all the others. Even their guns were highly specialized and designed to shoot with just the tiniest sound so that even as they attacked they could advance unseen and unexpected. Everyone was afraid of the Special Forces, and, at that moment, I understood why.

  They came out, and immediately I doubted my own vision. Their covered faces made them seem less real and therefore less threatening, so I didn’t react right away. A bullet whizzed by my head and got Clarice in the leg. I quickly pulled down the man closest to me and raised my paw up to show that I was ready to strike. “Put your weapons down or these humans will be mauled and killed.”

  They didn’t listen. They simply took a synchronized step together and continued shooting. The whole group scattered, and I rushed the nearest shooter. ‘His bullets are the bugs I ate in the desert,’ I told myself as I dodged and rolled under the flying bits of metal. ‘I know their flight; I just have to be aware of what direction his hand is pointing in.’ He aimed low, and I jumped high, right into his face, and sank my teeth into his
skull.

  I had never killed someone before. Sure, the redhead may have died, but that was by accident. That first man was intentional, a kill I meant to complete and wanted to see through to the end. His skull snapped and cracked inside my mouth, and the blood poured out. I bit all the way through to his soft, jelly-like brain as his body fell to the floor. By the time I lifted my head, all kinds of chaos was taking place around me.

  The other shifters had followed my lead, some to their deaths and others to victory. Those of us who made it killed the shooters who had been aiming at us and quickly shifted into our human forms to shoot the guns ourselves.

  I aimed my gun with straight, bare arms and squeezed the trigger, but the gun just gave an impotent click in my hands. The man I aimed at smiled and lifted his gun to kill me, and I saw it; he had a special ring that activated his gun. I looked down and saw the ring I should have thought to check for on a dead, limp hand. For a moment, I started to lean down, then I heard the shot and went still.

  My eyes squeezed shut, and I stayed halfway down and halfway hunched. It took me a moment before I realized that I wasn’t dead. Once I did, I tentatively opened my eyes and went low on the ground. From my crouched position, I saw a naked Tina in front of me with a gun in her hand and a ring on her finger.

  “You’re okay,” she told me. “Grab his ring, and the gun will work. I think these open doors as well.”

  “Thank God, you are so intelligent.” I pulled the little piece of jewelry from his thumb and put it on my own. I held the gun pointed down at the ground. I couldn’t shift if I wanted to use the weapon, but it would serve a purpose. I looked around the space and saw that we had taken out all the members of the Special Forces, but they had killed some of ours as well. Clarice was dead on the ground, as was a female boar and a panther. We still had a decent number, but it was a blow nonetheless.

  Our captives were all gone. I imagine they scattered at the first opportunity, and I worried that one of them had gone to help the president.

  “Let’s go! Bachmann must be close!” Tina and I led the group, our guns out and pointed at the ground, ready to lift and shoot at any moment. We walked quickly and then broke into a run. A big door loomed in front of us, and we got ready to burst through it, but suddenly we were blocked.

  Several older shifters appeared in front of us and crossed their arms, standing their ground with wide-set legs. We slowed down and faced them.

  “Get out of our way.”

  An older, male mole moved forward and scratched his human chin with an extremely long claw extending from his finger. “Why would we do that?”

  “Because,” I said, “President Bachmann is dying today, and you’re in my way. I won’t spare you.”

  “You know,” he said, “that I am personally sworn to defend and protect the president, even if it means laying down my own life.”

  “Why would you?” Tina challenged him. “He’s done nothing, but make us his scapegoats, starve us, and imprison us.

  He shrugged. “What would all of you do to the humans if you were in charge? Kill them? Imprison them?”

  “No,” I said, moving forward and towering over the mole. I stood so that our noses were nearly touching. “The humans forgot about us. I would simply return the favor. We live how we want; they live how they want.”

  “Sure about that?”

  I nodded, and a smile broke out across as his face. “No more killing? I have your word?”

  “You do.”

  “Alright, then. Let’s go tell Bachmann he’s been dethroned.”

  Behind him, the doors were opened to reveal a big, ornate office with a huge chair covered in animal skins. The space was empty. We all paused in the doorway for a moment, then gradually trickled in one by one. I noticed another set of doors across the room, and I asked our new friends about them.

  “We don’t know where anything goes,” the mole explained. “Our movements within the palace are highly restricted. We can only come, work, and leave. I imagine these doors just go to other parts of the building.”

  We opened everything and found passageway after passageway. Tina noticed a dent in the floor and moved the floor covering to reveal a secret door below our feet. I lifted it to find a kind of tube that a grown man could easily slide down were he to need a way out of the room. I sighed at the sight of it, and Tina patted my shoulder.

  “Bachmann’s a smart man. And he’s been in power for a long time. Those at the top are always planning for a possible revolt. He probably had this put in place his first day on the job.”

  I stared down the black hole and felt a breeze drift up and brush my cheek. I could have jumped down and slid after him, but it would have been a big risk. I had no idea where it would take me, but I knew right away that it was a mistake.

  “Hey,” a voice called out, “check this out!” I turned to see Black Feather pulling the curtains down from the window and wrapping them around himself…well, almost. He had stripped off his usual clothes and laid the curtains on top of his naked body. A few of the female fliers were gathered around him and whooping their encouragement. A bear ambled through the room and went up to a statue of Bachmann, turned, and used the nose of it to scratch his back. He scratched so hard that the whole thing just toppled over, and the white, shiny sculpture hit the ground and shattered.

  “Yeah!”

  “Well done! Down with Bachmann!”

  Soon, the whole room was chanting the words together in a steady rhythm. “Down with Bachmann! Down with Bachmann!” During the melee, Tina and I made eye contact, and she gave me a tentative smile. Like me, she was naked, covered in blood and brandishing a gun. She looked terrifying until she moved forward to join the group and pumped her right, unarmed hand in the air. “Yeah! No more Bachmanns!”

  A motion caught my eye, and I turned quickly to see who it was. Without even thinking about it, I pointed my gun at the intruders. I nearly pulled the trigger, but the greeting of the older woman stopped me.

  “Hello, daughter.” My mother raised one hand and put the second on Harper Bachmann’s shoulder. Harper, the first daughter, stepped forward a little and looked around.

  “Could someone please tell me what’s going on?”

  Chapter Ten

  A New Home

  For the first few days, we were all on high-alert. Tina led a quickly formed crew of guards to keep an eye out for any former workers or angry humans looking to take the palace back. They saw a few people along the perimeter of the property, but a warning shot sent them away. Strangely, the crazy myths that Bachmann and his team had created about us all those years were the perfect defense. No one remembered that we had no history of attacking humans or that it wasn’t true that we enjoyed the taste of human marrow. Everyone was sure that we were dangerous and stayed far away.

  Alex, the man who had given me the air, tried to make it into the palace, but I had to turn him away.

  “I’m sorry,” I explained, my hand on his chest, “I cannot let in anyone who is not a shifter. Maybe after some time has passed, but at the moment,” I took my hand away and hardened my heart, “I must be very careful.”

  “Is everyone inside alright?”

  I nodded. “The palace is packed full of food, lots of clothing, medical supplies. We can live here a long time without any problem. Thank you for your concern.”

  “We’re not all your enemies,” he said simply. I nodded, and then we studied each other’s faces for a moment. We had nothing more to say, so he turned to go.

  Harper moved into the main office with Tina, Black Feather, my mother, and me. We all overlooked her human status because we needed her. We knew if she was there with us, unseen and non-communicative, the rumors would fly. We could maintain our stronghold on the palace without any fear because no one wanted to risk Princess Bachmann. We were thrilled to have her. She knew all the palace’s secrets, showed us how to access the basement and work the music in the ballroom.
She also got us all hooked up on the communication system which Tina hacked into so that we could all quickly spread news to one another as we drifted further and further into the different wings of the palace.

  One night, I was settling down into my little nest of sheets on the floor when I looked up to see Harper with an armful of broken pieces of wood.

  “In the mood for a fire?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  She walked over to the fireplace and threw the scraps in, lit a match and gently brought it down to the bottom of the pile, then got on her knees to blow into the flame and help it grow. I joined her and watched as the flames licked the wood pieces, then began to gobble them up. “What are we burning?” I asked.

  “The frame of my father’s portrait.”

  I bumped into her with my shoulder. “You don’t mind?”

  She scoffed. “He wasn’t a parent. He was a jailer. And worse, a liar. He raised me to be frightened of a world that held no dangers for me. It was only when I was away from him that I felt like I could really be myself.” She turned to me and regarded me seriously. “Do you ever feel like no one sees you? Like the world keeps turning without any idea that you’re on it?”

  I stared at the fire and realized that was exactly how I had felt. It was easy to leave my family when I did because I never felt like a member of that particular group. My parents were wonderful; I loved them, but I never wanted their life. My head nodded slowly, and I turned to face Harper.

  “It is surprising to hear that we have this problem in common. I never knew the president’s only child could fade into the background.”

  “Oh,” she insisted, “believe me, it happens. Hey,” she said, glancing at the door, “what is your relationship like with your mom?”

  “It is difficult,” I said, leaning against her as we sat on the floor. “I love her, but she denied me many things when I was growing up. I feel like she had many opportunities to help me and chose to let me fall on my face.”