Two Bears are Better Than One(29)

“He’s going to kill them,” Jill said, open mouthed and panicking so badly that she couldn’t even panic right. She was just frozen in terror, watching the butchery. “There’s nothing they can do against him. Did the surgery or whatever, did it make him insane?”

“That’s one of the side effects,” Draven said. “I got an early version of the treatment back... twenty years now. All they gave me was a shot of some... some serum.” He took a moment to breathe. King took a shot to the chest so hard he flew backwards, slamming full against a tree trunk before collapsing to the dirt. “But now, that’s,” he trailed off, watching as the monster bear threw his head back, his skin so tight over the strange veins running up and down his chest that it looked like it was about to split.

“That’s how it is,” he finished, running his tongue around his lips. “Water?”

Without taking her eyes off the ensuing wreckage, Jill handed her canteen over to him.

It was a surreal kind of dance. Rogue and King going back and forth with the metal-toothed mutant bear. Behind them a helicopter hovered, inches off the ground, with some man in aviator sunglasses screeching words no one could understand – except for the mutant bear – and then there was Jill, sitting there, handing a canteen to a man she thought three days ago was out to kill her, or to kill the bears.

He pushed himself to his feet as the scuffle continued. The actual brutality came in short bursts – a shot here, a claw to the side there – but the tension never released. At any second, one of them could jump, and even as outmatched as Rogue and King were, they were still clever, strong as all hell, and had been together their entire lives.

Something to be said for knowing your partner. Or partners, I guess. King fell to another horrible looking claw swipe, tumbling to the dirt. But this time, when Madix dove on top – looking like he was about to do some real damage, Rogue jumped on his back, half-human claws ripping and tearing.

“Can’t you do something?” Jill hissed at Draven, who was fully to his feet, but shaky. “You’re some kind of super soldier too, huh? Can’t you help them?”

“I wish I could,” he said. As he did, he slumped to a knee, wheezing and holding his neck.

“That silver, that knife, it... it poisons us. Takes a while to get right again.”

The big bear threw Rogue off his back, screeching and growling, and flung him to the ground. Rogue let out a pitiful half-yelp, half-groan in the instant before his hand shot back up in the air, trembled, and fell to the ground.

This is bad.

For the first time since this began, neither of the alphas were getting up. King was coughing, probably with a few broken ribs which probably felt really good. Rogue wasn’t even moving, though his feet were starting to scratch at the dirt.

“Kill!” the pilot screamed.

Somehow, that was the first word Jill had heard, the first one that came at exactly the right moment when the blades were whooshing just right.

Rage shot through her. For them to go through so much, to come so far, and then to have it all end like this? Her hands were trembling as she charged the monster, completely oblivious to how stupid it was. If two giant bears couldn’t manage, what was a six foot human going to do?

But in that instant, it didn’t matter. She couldn’t sit back and watch her mates get mauled and murdered by an experiment gone wrong. It wasn’t even Madix’s fault, she thought, in those moments of clarity that come right before some horrifying, terrible climax. It was GlasCorp who took him, fiddled with nature, played God, and ended up with a monstrosity.

She pushed off the ground, howling a shriek that would have really scared the shit out of her cat, but was barely audible above the helicopter blades, and the screaming pilot, and the enraged chest thumping that Madix was enjoying.

Jill landed on him. His muscles, impossibly hard, and the blood pumping through his veins so close to the surface sickened her. Every inch of her body seemed to retch at once, as her fingernails dug into his shoulders. She opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and sank her teeth right into the bear’s massive neck.

“Jill!” she heard King shout. “No!” Rogue added, both of them struggling to their feet.

The world whipped this way and that. Air rushed around her, adrenaline pounding in Jill’s temples. Her blood boiled, the stench of the monster’s sweat filling her nostrils and somehow making her more angry, like he was emanating some kind of pheromone that made her want to kill.

Or, maybe, she just really wanted to kill this thing, save those cubs, and get back to California where she belonged, with the bears she belonged there with.

To her surprise, the big beast pitched around a little slower after a moment, whipping his arms around, slapping at himself trying to dislodge her. King and Rogue watched as their former clan-mate helplessly waved his arms like a tyrannosaurus trying to get rid of a hamster biting his neck.

The two of them exchanged a glance for a split second, which Jill only caught because she lifted her head to bite somewhere else. The taste was awful, the stench of the monster wretched and foul and sour in her nose, but the thought that maybe what she was doing was actually helping? That went a long way to keep Jill from letting go.

From out of nowhere, two locomotives blasted straight into Madix’s chest, and even though he didn’t fall, Rogue and King were apparently well enough to do it again. The second blow had him teetering, and on the third, the monster howled, he shrieked, and Jill let go with just enough time to get out from under his falling body before he smashed her into the ground.

“Now!” she heard Draven shout. “You got a gun, use it!”

Jill stared in disbelief for a moment at what they’d just done. She heard Draven shouting, but her head was a jumble of panic and adrenaline. She was so dizzy, so disoriented from the wild airplane spinning she’d just done, that it was all she could do to stand.

She took one halting step, then another. Just when she thought she’d managed to catch her balance, it turned out that last step? One too close.

Madix’s insane, bloodshot, yellowed-out eyes flared open right before he sat up and planted a fist right in the center of Jill’s chest.

The air rushed out of her in a torrent, and came back with a wheeze that felt black at first, and then like fire burning inside her. She didn’t know what she hit, or even if she’d hit anything, but whatever happened, she was not okay.

She felt herself sucking a breath that seemed like it never came. She fought, tugging the air into her lungs, blowing it all out and then trying again.

Rushing into her, bringing every nerve to life, the air she sucked in came with a slight aroma of coppery blood, and the dirt in which she was laying. Jill heard noises behind her, tried to make sense of them, but honestly in the pain she was in? Breathing was enough of a trick, forget about advanced rational thought.

She heard Rogue call out – or maybe it was a cry of pain. She didn’t know, couldn’t tell. But then King made a noise, and someone else – Draven? Must’ve been.

A roar that chilled her to the core came next. The force of the sound was like drinking a pot of real strong coffee after drinking eight beers too many. She sucked a breath, in surprise. Pain shot through every nerve in her body. Jill turned to see the mutant beast pick up the old man at his feet and hurl him, effortlessly, into the side of the chopper.

The old bear hit with a thud, so hard that the huge metal bird waivered in the sky.

“No!” Jill cried out, pushing herself backward, blinded by pain but unwilling to give up.

She kept on moving backwards. She heard a footstep, then another.

Madix, she realized as a shock of cold shot through her. He’s...

She scrabbled at the ground, trying to get a handhold, trying to get up.

Rogue called her name, King screamed for her.

And then she wrapped her hand around a rubber grip. She felt cold steel rivets.

Her fingers closed instinctively around the pistol she’d forgotten was in the belt holster Jacques gave her. When she hit the tree, the holster must’ve come loose, but the gun stayed right where it was supposed to stay. She opened her eyes, but in the darkness, this far away from everything where she’d been thrown? It was hard to see her own hand, let alone anything else.

Another footstep. They were coming slower than before, and unevenly. He’d been hurt, or at least dazed, or something.

But the sound was enough.

She rolled onto her back pointed somewhere in the direction of the noise, and shot. The six rounds exploded, flame licking out in the darkness like six bursts of thunder.

The last one rang out, muffled by the density of the forest around her. She felt her breath, hot in her chest, painful and aching. She heard her own blood pumping in her temples, and then she smelled it.

That same singed fur and cooked meat smell that she’d first been introduced to when she blasted that werewolf? Yeah, that.

A second later, another thud. This one though, was no footstep.

She felt arms around her, four of them. She heard hobbling, and her hand and shoulder throbbed from where she’d been pushed back into the dirt. But right then? It was all a blur, a confused, painful, horrible, wonderful blur.

There were what seemed like a thousand voices around her, all of them talking to her, two pairs of hands holding her.