Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (11 page)

A rustling sound caught his immediate attention but seconds later it quieted. He passed it off as a squirrel, or a rabbit, or a teleporting Bigfoot. Turning the knob on his radio, he scanned the airwaves until the dulcet tones of the BBC’s news hour jingle met his ears. Something was going on in Jordan, stocks in Hong Kong were down, but those in Beijing and Japan were up. There was some kind of controversy about a new energy production method that had to do with burning corn husks.

It all just washed over Orion’s head as he watched the sky. A meteor streaked from east to west, through the belt of his namesake constellation. For all the shit his father had pulled, at least he got a good name for his pain. Although Orion always kind of suspected his mother had named him, since as far back as he could remember, all his dad called him was college boy, dipshit, or stupid.

He didn’t need any of that anymore.

It felt good to be free, to be on his own.

Even if he had to keep watching his back to make sure he didn’t take a couple slugs, it was worth the sleepless nights and the paranoia.

“But Clea,” he said, rolling her name around his tongue like a deep drink of ice cold beer on a hot Jamesburg afternoon. “I’ve got to keep her safe from him. I can’t let them find out about her.”

Dangling his leg along the limb where he was sitting, he slowly moved it back and forth, the bark scratching his calf, tugging gently at the hair. He knew something had to be done, but not
what
, exactly. He couldn’t take on the entire gang, not unless he...

Wait a minute. All I’d have to do is take them by surprise. There was a reason I was the chief enforcer, even if I wouldn’t kill, they still relied on me. I’m the biggest, I’m the best... and if I can get the jump on them, I can cut off the hydra’s head before the rest can react
.

But cut one off, and more will sprout.

He grunted as the jangly BBC intro music played again, this time heralding the beginning of Asian financial market discussion hour. That meant it was two in the morning. Orion could generally get within a few minutes of telling time by the sun, but, he
did
have every single thing that played on BBC radio memorized by jingle, so as long as he had a radio, he could tell the time.

“Or I could get a damn watch,” he said, chuckling.

A snap caught his attention again. This one thicker, heavier sounding, than the one before. This was no squirrel.

Gingerly, he pushed himself up on his hands and got his feet underneath him, balancing carefully in the crotch of a massive, comfortable sleeping tree. The muscles in Orion’s arms flexed tight and then released as he listened for another sound.

There it was. He turned his head left and stared into the darkness.

Snap!
Closer this time, the sound was definitely a footstep, and definitely from a big person or a big animal. Or a big... foot.

Seconds later, another halting stutter-step sounded through the forest. It was twenty, maybe twenty-five feet from where he was sitting, but whatever animal it was, Orion was downwind. He sniffed the air silently, and then squinted in confusion. It smelled like... something dead? Not the sickening, horrible odor of decay, but just a very faint, musty, earthen aroma.

It wasn’t a nice odor, but then again it wasn’t especially
bad
either. There was an odd aspect to the smell. He wrinkled his nose, sniffing the air again as the top of a head emerged from the undergrowth.

A pair of pigtails bobbed on either side of a very large, and very... lumpy? head. Orion craned his neck, not really sure what he was looking at, or even sure if he was actually awake.

Another sniff, and he recognized the mystery aroma.
Lilac?
Orion shook his head. Jamesburg was weird, sure, but this was...

“Huhn...?” the visitor groaned. She shuffled out into the open.

Orion’s eyes shot
wide
open. The pigtails were just about the most normal thing on the creature he beheld. The face was slightly green under the silver moonlight, the arms massive, powerfully muscled and obviously strong, but also slightly different lengths.

She took one step, tromping on a branch that had to be at least two inches around, and snapped it right in two. Orion just watched, dumbfounded, as the creature groaned again, bent down and picked up one half of the broken stick, and then stuck it straight in her mouth.

A line of impossibly straight, square teeth opened as a long tendril of drool ran down the thing’s open lips all the way to the ground where it collected on the leaves at her feet. She opened up, inserted the stick and
took a bite
.

“What in the fuck?” Orion accidentally whispered under his breath.
Did that thing just...

And then she took another. The thing groaned like she’d just got a mouthful of perfectly cooked steak. “Go...od,” it said, very slowly. With the third bite, she finished her snack, crunched and crunched, and then swallowed the wood.

Orion closed his eyes tight, massaged his forehead with his palm, and then opened them again, expecting that he’d been hallucinating. Unfortunately? No, the thing was still there, although then he noticed there were a couple leaves in the corner of her mouth. Had this thing just been wandering around, eating whatever she came across?

A slow turn to the left, then the giant pried some fungus-covered bark off a fir, and stuck that in her mouth, too. Orion just kept shaking his head, watching her shuffle around and graze. He’d never been one for watching train wrecks, or rubbernecking at accidents on the road, but for some reason, he could not stop himself from just staring at this impossibly strange creature going on about her day.

She bent to get the other half of the stick – apparently her favorite of the completely inedible treats she’d eaten – but something caught her attention. She turned her head very quickly in Orion’s direction. He noticed that her eyes, just like her massive arms, they were slightly uneven, but all things considered, that wasn’t the strangest thing about this lady.

“Hell...er?” she asked. “Boo...ba...ba?”

It was almost like she was learning to speak and trying out sounds. He’d never had kids of his own, but Orion had been around babies a time or two, and had watched them do the same thing.

For a moment, Orion considered responding, but something kept him from taking that particular leap just yet. He didn’t want to threaten or frighten this thing, and certainly didn’t want her attacking him, because even with Orion’s size, she was about as big.

She took another halting, shuffled step toward the tree where he was, and her dress caught his attention. It looked like it was made out of an old Hawaiian shirt, or a few of them, because of the mismatched patterns.

Mismatched eyes and constantly-parted lips aside, she wasn’t
ugly
exactly, but was definitely... well, unique is a good word.

“Tree...man? Ba-ba-ba-da-haha.”

Orion took a long, slow, deep breath and considered his options. On the one hand, she knew he was there already, but on the other one, she was eating wood. That seemed like a pretty big red flag.

“Tree...man! Ba-ra-ah-ah!”

With speed and agility he had absolutely not expected out of his new friend, Orion watched her dash toward the tree trunk and slam into it with a lowered shoulder. To his surprise, the huge trunk not only shuddered, but the branch he was perched upon trembled.

She flattened her hands on the bark and dug in her feet. The dress rode up her enormous thighs as she flexed and pushed, making the entire thing creak. Options, Orion thought, were running out quick.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay!” He called down. “No need to knock this thing over.”

He hopped to the ground and backed quickly away. “Who are you?” he asked, being as cautious as possible. “Do you have a name?”

The creature flipped her pigtails and made a kissing gesture toward him. “Sa...ra? Boo-bar!”

Orion put his hands up, defensively, as the very excited creature walked toward him. He retreated, one step at a time, until his back hit a tree. The small of his back rested against the smooth spot where his new friend had ripped off the bark and taken a taste.

“Now hold on,” Orion said. “Sara? Is that what you said?”

“Sa...ra! Sa...ra...ra-ra-ra!” She started giggling, which coming out of
that
mouth was more disconcerting than giggles normally are. But she was getting close, too, and that was maybe more frightening than her laugh.

“Okay, all right,” Orion said, laughing nervously and trying to duck out of the way.

An iron grip caught one of his shoulders, and another grasped his wrist. That was just about the last thing in the universe he expected. He struggled, wrenching his hand one way and then the other, but nothing he did made Sara so much as budge. It was like she was made out of steel, just unmoving, unbending, and drooling all over the ground.

“What’s that?” he asked, looking past her shoulder, trying for a trick. The giant head turned slowly, looking toward where he pointed, but her hands held fast.

“Not... fun...ny! Sa-ra-ba-ba-ba-la!”

Things were getting
desperate
. Orion tried to shove her backwards, but there was no give. Not even the slightest bend in her arms or her knees. “Okay, Sara,” Orion said, straining as hard as he could. “What... what do you want?”

“Boy...friend!” she said. “You...pretty? Tree-man. Boyfriend-bo-yo-yo-yo!”

I doubt I can explain to her that I already found the one and only for me, somehow I don’t think I’d get very far.

She started pushing back. Slowly, with his feet dug into the ground, Orion found himself moving backwards. He shot a glance at the ground. “Sara!” he said. “Look! A snack!”

“Huhn?” she grunted, looking in the direction he indicated, but still pushing. “Oooh...”

“Yeah? Looks pretty good, huh?” He paused to strain again, this time forcing her backward just a little. That juicy, delicious stick had done the trick. Sort of. “I can get it for you so you don’t have to bend down, I can...”

The tendril of drool running from Sara’s mouth to the ground grew a little heavier in flow. “But... want you!” she announced, stiffening again.

“You can have me! But let’s share this stick, huh?” Orion said. “How about it? Looks good, huh?”

Her hand began to release, but only just. As soon as he was able to twist his arm though, Orion used the tiny amount of leverage he could muster to wrench one of his arms free, although the twisting hurt like absolute hell.

He stooped over, grabbed the stick and hurled it into the forest. Instantly, his new girlfriend spun on her heel and dashed right after it, blasting through a small tree, knocking another to the ground, and then she vanished into the darkness.

Orion stared after her in a mixture of relief, disbelief and undeniable morbid curiosity.

“Did you see a... well did you see something come this way through here, son?” A rickety, raspy-voiced old man followed by a very large bodyguard, appeared from out of nowhere.

Apparently, Orion had been so dumbfounded he lost his normal wherewithal. He turned toward the voice and found it attached to a very long beard, which was in turn attached to a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, the pattern of which matched Sara’s makeshift dress.

“I... uh...” Orion stared, dead-on, straight at the giant behind the bearded man. “Another one? What is...?”

“Oh jeez’um, son. It ain’t as exciting as all that, just zombies, out for a moonlight stroll. I think I crossed their wires though, she’s supposed to be for him, and... well, I’m sorry but was she tryin’ to get in your pants?”

A shock went through Orion. “My pants?” he asked. “No, I mean, she was just,” he trailed off, eyes still trained on Atlas, who smiled very wide, and drooled a great deal. “Actually maybe so.”

“That’s
it
!” the old man said triumphantly. “Finally, I know for good’n sure what I did. All’s it’ll take to fix is a little electricity and a piece of metal in the right part of the brain. Little bit of juice in the noggin’ and both of them will... you’re staring, son.”

“I’m just,” Orion said. “I’ve seen a lot of shit in my time, but this is...”

“Aw, hell,” the old man said, slapping Orion on the back, obviously taking what he said as some kind of compliment. “Ain’t nothing special. But I better get after her, make sure as best I can she don’t find any other boyfriends like you. She sure is a looker though, huh?”

“I... yeah,” Orion said, wrinkling his forehead and nodding to try and somehow fathom what was going on. “You... good luck with that.”

“Jenga Cranston, by the way,” the old man said, grabbing Orion’s limply-dangling hand and surprising him with a shake. “Thanks for the help.”

“Yeah,” Orion said, in a hollow, empty voice as the jingly beard and the other drooling zombie tromped off into the forest, disappearing the same way Sara had. “Jamesburg,” he said, shaking his head. “Teleporting Bigfoots don’t have shit on Jamesburg.”

––––––––

“S
on of a
bitch
,” I swore, jumping out of bed and realizing that my phone had been buzzing the alarm for so long that it was almost drained.

At least I had actually slept last night instead of just sitting awake until dawn. Small victories can sometimes be pretty satisfying.

I rolled over, grabbed my phone and did the three math problems it asked of me to turn the alarm off. That one feature – the wake-up puzzle – is, I’m pretty sure, one of the highest forms of evolution. It’s funny how awake you really do have to be in order to multiply fifteen by twenty-six. I’ve always been the kinda lynx that will roll out of bed, grab the phone out of the back of the closet where I hid it so that I wouldn’t get up and turn it off, and then promptly do exactly that.

With this thing? No way.

Screwing it up twice before I finally remembered what three times six was, finally getting my tweeting birds and thunderstorm sounds alarm to shut up was the second major moral victory for me in one morning. Not a bad record.