Between a Bear and a Hard Place(65)

Her jaw dropped, though there was no one to see it, but she pressed on. “And the network, which sounds like a proper noun, that is—”

“The neural network that brings our orders and gives us the numbers to broadcast which control the other, lesser soldiers.”

Claire scoffed a laugh. “Why didn’t you tell me all this up front?”

“I was trying to be gentle.”

“Gentle about what? All you told me was that you were conscious, you wanted to free your friends, you wanted to free our friends and that Stone wasn’t actually Stone. What could possibly... oh,” she said, her voice low with disbelief as the fighting outside escalated further.

“Shit.”

She dropped the phone to the ground for the second time in as many minutes. That time though, she was in a straight run. “Fury!” she screamed at the top of her lungs to a bear who was somewhere she couldn’t see. “It isn’t him! It isn’t—”

“Stone?” the creature, who was a ghastly pale purple color, hissed. His back was turned, and in the early dawn light Claire could see each sinew under his muscle move with every breath the monstrosity took. The breath it drew was ragged, syrupy and rough. He had one arm raised in the air, though she couldn’t see what he held until he let out a ghoulish laugh.

Suddenly, Fury hit the ground, tossed carelessly over the creature’s head. “That was easier than I thought it... would... be.”

He started to stomp off into the woods, but then froze like a statue, sniffing the air. “That’s... you? I didn’t know about two of you.”

Back in the cabin, she heard that staticky, robotic voice screaming something. She couldn’t hear what, but it didn’t matter. There wasn’t any time for listening to anything. The only thing there was time for, was to fight.

Just seeing her mate lying on the ground, broken and bloody, was enough to put a shot of pure, unadulterated hatefire straight into Claire’s brain. She threw back her head, let the increasingly familiar sensation of muscles tightening and bones bending course through her. Still that voice was squawking on her phone, but she didn’t care. She might not really know how to fight, she may not be anywhere near as strong as this beast, but she was sure as shit going to give it her best shot.

He didn’t bother with finesse.

Grabbing a fallen tree branch off the ground, the beast took a single-handed swing at Claire. The move caught her completely off guard. A split second later, the branch splintered, cracking in half across her chest. Claire let out another roar, flinging her aching body forward as hard as she could. She crashed full-force into the monster’s stomach and flailed a wild paw at his face. She caught him, but just barely.

As the creature spun from the impact, he brought the half of the branch he was still holding down across Claire’s back. She flattened on the ground, barely managing to get back to her feet before he grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground.

He squeezed. Closing his fist tight, the monster stared straight into Claire’s eyes. His were watery, yellowed and oozing some kind of puss. One of them, she noticed, was slightly lower than the other, but then again, that might’ve just been the way he was holding her.

Or it might’ve been the lack of oxygen.

Also, she noticed that the humming, static voice coming through her phone had silenced, though in its place was a different sort of whirring sound.

The creature seemed upset, and not in a “raging monster” sort of way, rather in a “slightly confused” sort of way.

His pupils were vibrating just a little, Claire noticed, and then she felt his hand. The tremble was slight, like he’d drunk too much coffee.

But it was growing nearer every second. The whirring sound, which first she thought was in her head, soon became very audible. The creature crushing her throat kept looking from side to side, obviously as confused as she was.

The breath in her lungs ached and burned, needing to be let out and replaced. When she tried, all she could manage was a bare, painful croak. In his panic, the creature seemed to be squeezing tighter and tighter.

Black stars opened in her vision, splotches of unseeing that fizzled inside her head. Blood pounded in her temples, but all she could think of was Fury. He was just lying there, helpless.

“Hunh?” the creature grunted, his knees buckling under some unseen stress.

Something protruded from its chest where the moment before there had been only raw muscle and awful sinew. He looked down, surprised at whatever it was, and squeezed Claire’s throat like a vice one final time before he coughed, and fell.

Her feet hit the ground the second after the corpse thumped down, and then she saw them – those glassy, soulless, unblinking black eyes. The giant twitched as the black-clad, faceless being stepped over him.