Worshiped By The Bear Kings - Complete (28 page)

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

They were waiting for it now. Jasmine
didn’t want to believe it but they were waiting. In a swift and powerful
motion, the Mage would quickly end their lives. And then he would be free to
raise Grizzly into becoming the monster his father was. All the Mage needed was
for them to die.

Instead, he
turned away from them. Nursing the baby gently.

Jasmine’s
confusion echoed alongside her pain.

The Mage’s
hand raised upward and an object drifted out of a nearby window. Jasmine saw
that it was a baby’s crib, which the Mage then placed Grizzly in. As far as she
could tell, he was fast asleep.

The Mage turned
back to them.

“I’ve seen
this already,” he said. “What happens here. I kill you now, and then I have the
dragon king, Zane Hunter after me. Zane has powerful friends too. He consults
with them. Armies are formed. I change locations but I can’t hide forever. So
don’t despair. I don’t hold all the cards today.”

“What the
hell are you talking about?” Brad snapped at him.

“I watched
you return to the island. I wanted to see what you would do. If you would
accept the baby was mine and move on. Unfortunately you didn’t. So I … well I
had some help along the way, and I consulted with the seven masters before Zane
even had a chance to. A deal was struck…”

He walked
towards them.

“What deal?”
Brad asked.

“There is to
be a trial by combat. If you win, the baby is yours. You will be free to leave.
And … if you lose, then I keep the baby. And I take Jasmine to be my slave as
well.”

Jasmine
shuddered angrily. “I will be nothing to you. You are
hideous
.”

“Not so
hideous as the chores and cleaning your worthlessness with be forced to labor
in for centuries to come,” the Mage retorted.

Brad tilted
his axe towards the Mage. “So you wish to fight me now then?”

“No,” the
Mage replied.

“Then when?”

The Mage
laughed. “Are you so eager to die? I would merely snap my fingers and your
bones would break in an instant.”

“Shut the
fuck up,” Jasmine swore at him.

Brad touched
her shoulder for comfort.

“Very well,”
the Mage said quickly. “I shall gloat after the victory. And bear in mind it
shall be an honest victory. The masters have made sure of it. They would never
pit me against Thunder Brad as that would be unfair to him. Instead, I have his
equal fighting in my stead.”

“And who
would that be?” Brad demanded.

As he said
this, two shadows appeared through the courtyard behind them.

They stared
on as a tall man in iron clad armor, waving a broadsword in the air, lumbered
towards them.

“No,” Jasmine
whispered.

“It can’t
be,” Brad said.

The warrior
stopped. He planted his sword into the ground.

A robed woman
stepped around from behind him. “When you’re ready,” she called out.

The Mage
motioned to Jasmine. “Stand back.”

“Is that…?”
Brad mumbled. “Is that…?”

Silence fell.

Jasmine
watched as Brad stared down the warrior on the opposite end of the courtyard.

Everyone knew
who it was. But no one wanted to say it.

“Kill him,
Spike!” Lynette screamed.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

Spike ripped his sword from the
ground with ferocious strength and charged across the courtyard with it.
Thunder Brad gripped his battle axe tightly and walked slowly forward to meet
his cousin.

“What are you
do –?” Brad managed to get out before Spike’s blade swung wildly through the
air above him.

Brad dropped
to the ground and rolled around behind his fierce opponent. He then sat up and
backed away while Spike turned around again.

“Come on!”
Brad shouted. “It’s me here!”

Spike’s sword
came down through the air whilst Brad was forced to block it with his axe.

The sharp
friction against the metals caused a sound so painful, Jasmine had to cover her
ears.

Brad kicked
at Spike’s knees, causing them to buckle.

Brad then got
up properly and backed away further. His eyes searched for another means of
disabling his opponent.

Spike’s boots
stormed towards him quickly.

“Why can’t we
talk about this?” Brad pleaded. “Say something!”

Jasmine
couldn’t see if Spike’s face had altered its expression or not. She moved round
the side of the courtyard, restlessly.

Then her eyes
met with the crib.

She looked
over her shoulder to see if the Mage was looking, only to turn back to where
she was headed to find him standing in front of her.

“Please…” the
Mage muttered.

Jasmine
lowered her eyes and moved round in the opposite direction.

Brad and
Spike were engaged in full combat now, their weapons each trading blows.

“Spike,” she
said trying to get his attention. “You don’t have to do this!”

A shadow
crept up the wall beside her.

Lynette
pulled back the hood of her robe and grinned at her.

“If you think
Brad needs a hand, then why don’t you give him one?” she said, smiling.

“Did you do
this to him?” Jasmine demanded.

“Did I do
what to whom?” Lynette replied sarcastically.

“Spike – you
put a spell on him…”

Lynette
grinned. “My spell was
always
over him.”

Jasmine had
to fight to hold back her anger. “Why?” she demanded. “Why are you helping this
sicko?”

“You’ve got
it wrong,” Lynette whispered, leaning into her. “He’s helping me.”

She then
elbowed Jasmine swiftly in the gut.

Jasmine slid
down the wall, clutching her stomach in pain.

She looked up
to Lynette, her eyes blinded with fury.

“Oh,” Lynette
purred. “What are you going to do? Give me a little slap?”

She looked
away with a chuckle, and Jasmine’s fist closed into a ball. “No one fucks with
my family.”

Jasmine stood
up and swung her fist into Lynette’s face, as hard as she could.

Lynette
jolted back with a start and then her eyes drooped and her body sagged against
the wall. She collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

“Ow!” Jasmine
cried, nursing her fist. “Ow, ow, ow!”

She stepped
out into the courtyard, where Brad and Spike were still fighting each other.

Bits of
broken armor lay scattered around the yard, along with patches of blood.

Jasmine
looked at each of them, with a sense of forlorn hopefulness. They couldn’t keep
fighting this way. They needed to realize who they were.

“Brad!” she
cried. “Spike! Someone stop!”

Brad’s axe
smashed through Spike’s sword, shattering it. Spike backed away, still holding
what was left of it in his fist, looking confused.

“It’s over,”
Brad declared. “You heard Jasmine. You heard her, Spike.”

Spike looked
up at Jasmine, bewildered.

“It’s me,”
she said. “I’m the one for you. I’m the one who loves you.”

Spike stared
at her solemnly. “Jasmine…?”

“Yes,” she
smiled gleefully.

Then she saw
Spike’s eyes go cold.

White cold.

Full of evil
and rage.

“What?”
Jasmine said, almost breaking down. “What are you –”

Then she felt
it. The dust off the ground splashing into the back of her ankles.

A giant cat
had just pounced on her.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

Jasmine’s mouth broke out in a state
of inconceivable agony. She looked to Spike and saw he had now morphed into his
bear and wasn’t even paying her any attention at all.

“What are you
doing?” Brad cried, backing away from him. “Don’t make me fight you like this!”

Spike’s bear
roared angrily and charged towards him.

Jasmine’s
body collapsed to the ground as Lynette’s lioness held her in her grasp. The
claws were still pierced in her skin, and she could feel the cat’s hot breath
on her neck.

She’s gonna
kill me.

I’m gonna
die.

Lynette
however seemed to be focused on the battle between Thunder and Spike.

Brad’s axe
hit the ground. He shifted into his bear and then leapt through the air
swinging his claws towards his cousin, blood and screams flying everywhere.

Jasmine
couldn’t tell who was going to win. On the ground beside her, she saw a dark
pool of blood along the ground by her. It was her blood. She gritted her teeth
together. Closed her eyes.

It couldn’t
end here.

Not for them.

Not for the
journey they’d been through.

It wasn’t
fair. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t true.

Jasmine
didn’t pretend to know anything about God or the creators of the universe, but
even so, she still believed in a higher power that had been guiding her through
her life. She had survived Quraal. Escaped from his brother Gaspar.

She had given
birth to the most precious creature who had ever lived.

But now was
she to die here? At the hands of this twisted and misled creature above her?

No.

That couldn’t
be it.

Jasmine
opened her eyes again.

All at once
she heard the ground shaking as the bears’ battle with one another was verging
in on their path. In panic, Lynette leapt to safety leaving Jasmine all alone.

She had time
enough to sit up.

And then she
was in it. Inside the battle.

Inside their
fur.

Inside their
bears…

“It’s me,”
she whispered tearfully between them. “Don’t forget me…”

And then the
arms stopped swinging. The claws stopped thrashing.

Their eyes
returned to normal. Each of the bears looked down at their woman between them,
and Jasmine could see their love return.

They sat
quietly together in their comfy ball, nursing their wounds, and each other.

Lynette’s
lioness gave an abrupt, screeching roar.

The Mage
stepped out from behind her and went quickly to the crib. He grabbed hold of
baby Grizzly and held him up in his arms.

“If you
refuse to fight each other,” the Mage declared, “then I will have no choice but
to keep him, and kill you all…”

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

But that’s not what happened. Because
there was someone the Mage had been forgetting about. Someone who had been with
them the whole time. Someone who had heard everything and knew what had to be
done.

As the Mage
readied himself to cast a spell of destruction upon Jasmine and her bear kings,
the tiny bundle in his arms started to move. The Mage peeled back the cloth to
see what the problem was, and then Grizzly burst out from his fingertips, in
his baby black dragon.

The Mage
stared up at the dragon flying over him, mystified. Then Grizzly opened his
mouth and breathed a stream of fire. It did not strike the Mage, but ran a
perfect circle around him.

“Quraal,” the
Mage gasped. “My baby, Quraal. What are you doing? Don’t you know who your
Daddy is?”

Grizzly bowed
his tiny dragon head, and then fluttered over to Jasmine and her bears. He
continued to hover in the air above them.

“What is the
meaning off this?” the Mage cried angrily. “Get back here at once!”

He put his
foot into the fire, and then screamed an ungodly scream.

Lynette’s
lioness looked from the Mage to the bear kings. Then she bowed her head and
fled to the courtyard to escape.

Thunder Brad
and Spike set Jasmine on the ground below them.

They then
began moving slowly towards the Mage.

“Stand back,”
the Mage cried. “I’ll use my magic.”

He said some
words under his breath and made a motion with his hand to direct the spell.

Jasmine saw
the energy hit the air above the flames, and then bounce back at him.

The Mage fell
over his own two feet and lay in a collapsed pile, exhausted.

Grizzly
floated down from the air above Jasmine and then landed her arms. He shifted
back into his human form and smiled at her cheekily.

“Oh my God…”
she gasped. Then she pressed him against her shoulder, kissing his forehead
over and over.

“Get away
from me,” the Mage seethed as the bears closed in. “You … you’re worthless …
you’re nothing…”

Thunder Brad
let go a thunderous roar and then both he and Spike jumped over the fire
unharmed to land on the Mage and tear him to shreds.