A werebear and a gryphon. One powerful, black-furred beast against a monster who was three deadly creatures in one. That was what Suzanne Sutton found herself watching while chained to the brick pillar in the chalet. At the nightmare of the morphed Justin squaring off with a monster even more mythical and terrifying than he was, she found her voice ripping from her throat: “No, Justin! Run! RUN!”
The gryphon that was Mariah Porter shrieked at Justin again, fluttering her wings, demanding satisfaction. Justin did not run. He stood his ground and reared up on his hind legs, showing his claws. And Suzanne, chained and helpless, wept, “Justin, no… No…”
Justin and Mariah charged for each other. The battle began.
The bear, jaws agape, went right for the gryphon’s eagle throat, ready to bite through feathers and sink his fangs into flesh. The gryphon feinted back and away, slashing the air with her dragon talons and raking them along one side of the bear’s snout, drawing blood. Justin, pained and shocked, fell back and dropped back to all-fours, roaring furiously. The gryphon charged forward with claws at the ready.
Justin reared up onto two legs again, but Mariah lashed out with her tail, catching him at his hind paws and sweeping him off his feet. He crashed to one side with a terrifying thud that made Suzanne flinch where she sat. And then Mariah was upon him. She came forward and down with her dragon claws and eagle beak, ready to rend and tear at Justin’s fallen bear body.
Justin brought up his forelimbs to block Mariah. He swiped them cruelly down each of her dragon limbs, cutting through the scales and leaving trails of blood. Mariah shrieked, feinted back, and again brought her tail into play. Using it as both a whip and a bludgeon, she flailed it against Justin’s body with cruel blows that snapped and echoed in the air of the Chalet living room, making the tearful Suzanne wince and flinch every time the tail connected.
Grunting, Justin rolled away and scrambled back to his feet, then returned to standing on two legs, towering over her. But with this, he gave Mariah a dreadful opening, and she charged again, this time sinking her dragon claws through the fur of his chest and into the flesh beneath. Justin bellowed as if to bring down the roof and went crashing onto his back, with Mariah right on top of him, gouging at his chest and snapping at his neck.
Mariah had him pinned on the floor, bringing her beak perilously close to his throat. She shrilled and snapped at him, and Justin snapped his bear jaws back at her, wanting to bite her eagle head clean off. They strained on the floor that way until Justin brought up his hind limbs to gouge at Mariah’s legs, tearing the fabric of her jumpsuit and drawing more trails of blood. The air was now filled with her shrieks mixed with her roars, and Justin flung the two of them into a deadly roll from side to side, Mariah’s tail pounding with heart-sinking impacts on the wooden floor.
They rolled about, straining and clawing away against each other, until Mariah at last seized upon another opening, and a terrible one. For a critical instant, Justin’s throat was vulnerable, and her eagle neck brought her head and beak down hard at it. The beak found itself an awful grasp on Justin’s throat and clamped on, its sharpness digging through the fur into the yielding flesh beneath it and holding on. Justin’s roars of fury became an awful choking, strangling sound, and blood began to pour from his neck. His vision started to blur, his consciousness fading into pain that at any second might become total blackness…
…and at that instant, the shocking, explosive peal of a gunshot came thundering in from outside. The total surprise of it made Mariah loosen the grip of her beak on Justin’s throat just enough that Justin had a small chance to recover. With a hard and desperate shove, he pushed Mariah up and away, sending her tumbling and rolling across the floor.
Justin dragged himself up onto all fours and crouched that way, shaking, bleeding, using all his strength to keep himself aware, to stop himself from wavering and blacking out. He watched Mariah scramble back to her feet, wings spread, ready to fly up and then drop down onto him and finish him off.
Another sound of gunfire cut into the room, and more shots, and more. Mariah, Justin, and Suzanne all looked at the window. Outside all was darkness, stars, and the silhouette of the mountainside. Mariah faced Justin again with a shrieking hiss, conveying in words what she knew. You lied! You brought others! My people and the ones you brought are shooting at each other out there! She beat her wings, expressing her mounting fury. Justin bellowed back.
As if in answer to the wordless exchange of rage between the two creatures, shapes came swooping and darting past the window; large and fluttering shapes with wings and tails. In the second after they passed came sounds of more gunfire, and of crashing and shrieking, growling and roaring. A battle was going on outside in the dark to match the one inside the Chalet.
Hissing and shrieking more loudly than before, a sound to curdle Suzanne’s blood, Mariah hurled herself back at Justin at the same instant as he stood on two legs yet again. She crashed onto him and they both went thundering back to the floor. Suzanne strained futilely against her bonds, watching the two of them return to rolling and thrashing and flailing.
If she could get free, she thought, she would risk diving to the fireplace, picking up a poker, and going to help Justin. It might get her torn to pieces, but she would die defending him. If that were to be the end of her, she could accept it—but she was nowhere near as strong as the chains holding her. Suzanne’s heart sank with the unspeakable fear that at any moment Justin would stop moving from the onslaught of Mariah’s beak and claws—and then she would face the wrath of the gryphon.
That was when the sound of a horrible cracking and a thunderous slamming came from the entrance downstairs. A second later, a shirtless, fur-covered figure in half-wolf form came bounding into view—carrying a gun.
Suzanne’s tear-filled eyes widened. “Mack!” she cried.
Mariah pulled herself off Justin and stepped back and away, the better to give herself the chance to have at Justin’s bodyguard. She spread her wings, opened wide her beak, and made ready with her talons. Mack aimed his revolver. One of them was about to go down, and they would see whether a gryphon could lunge faster than a bullet could be fired.
Justin scrambled back to his feet and, without a thought, charged full-bore at Mariah, connecting with her side just as Mack’s gunshot exploded. The bullet sliced through the air, piercing the membrane of Mariah’s wing. Mariah and Justin hit the floor and broke off from each other, picking themselves up. Now Mariah had two foes to contend with. As she squared off with Justin yet again, Mack stood his ground, keeping her in his gunsight.
Shrieking, Mariah slashed her tail forward, striking hard against Justin’s ribs and sending him flying off to one side. He crashed against a wall and lay there, dazed, leaving Mariah to face Mack. She leaped from the floor, ignoring the puncture in her wing, and took advantage of the high ceiling and open space to swoop upward and then dive down at Mack. The werewolf reacted fast, squeezing off another shot.
This one grazed Mariah’s shoulder and went through the other wing, and then Mariah came down upon him. They struck the floor together, but Mariah came down on top, and when Mack lifted his gun to fire again, this time Mariah’s tail slashed the pistol from his man-wolf hand and sent it careening across the room and into the hearth where no fire was lit.
Disarmed and vulnerable, Mack could now only bring up his hand-paws and grab the gryphon by her scaly wrists to stop her slashing him with her dragon talons. At the same time, her beak came snapping down at him, threatening to bite open his throat. They struggled that way for horrifying seconds until another figure appeared from down below. A male weredragon in two-legged form leaped into the Chalet living room and pulled the gryphon from the struggling werewolf beneath her.
The dragon man grappled with the gryphon, and Mack at once caught his second wind and scurried to his feet to help his companion wrestle with Mariah and try to bring her under control. She beat her wings, slashed her tail, and shrieked at them in full rage.
Still chained, still immobile, Suzanne watched everything happening across the room with mounting terror. Please, both of you—stop her! she mouthed, tears streaking her face. That was when she felt a presence near her, large and powerful. She looked up and to one side—into the ursine face of Justin.
He morphed back to his naked human self and pulled at the chains, but it was useless. Still, he said, “I’ve got you. Hang on.” He went to the fireplace, past where Mack and the security dragon grappled with Mariah, and grabbed an axe from among the fire irons. Quickly, he returned to Suzanne and told her, “Look away!” Suzanne did as he said, flinching, and heard the sharp blade of the axe connect with the chains around the pillar. It struck once, twice…and then, on the third strike, Suzanne found she had full freedom of movement of her arms.
She held up her hands and saw that she was still in the manacles with lengths of chain still attached to them. But she was free. She faced Justin and a look passed between them of wanting nothing more than to lunge into each other’s arms. But instead Justin turned from Suzanne back to the struggle across the room. They both looked and found that Mack and the dragon man had Mariah pinned, thrashing, to the floor.
Justin released himself back to his bear body and lumbered quickly over to where Mack and the other two had the gryphon pinned. Roaring out his wrath, Justin reached them and took a single massive paw, which he pressed to Mariah’s chest, adding his strength to hold her down. His long and furious roar told her, It’s over. We’ve got you now.
Mariah refused to yield. In a gesture of rage, defiance, and contempt all at once, she brought up her tail like a swiftly striking snake, too fast for the eye to follow—and wrapped it hard and tight around Justin’s neck.
Justin struggled and choked in the reptilian grip in which he was now caught. Mack moved at once to Justin’s side, pulling with all his strength against the tightening coils of the gryphon’s constricting tail. The dragon man continued trying to pin Mariah down, only to meet the slashing of her claws against his scales. Mariah hissed up at Justin, making her grip tighter, tighter, feeling him start to stagger, while Mack’s wolf nails dug futilely against her coiling scales. Mack feared it would not be long before Justin blacked out.
Across the room, Suzanne was paralyzed watching Justin fighting a losing battle to extricate himself from Mariah’s grasp—until she remembered…
Mack’s gun was in the fireplace.
Without another thought, Suzanne dashed for the hearth and was grateful that Mariah had seen no reason to light a fire for her comfort. There at the bottom of the fireplace lay the pistol that Mariah had swatted from the werewolf’s hand. She crouched, reached in, grabbed it, spun round and stood back up—and holding the firearm with both hands, she pointed it to where the three metamorphs were struggling.
“Mack! Get out of the way!” Suzanne cried.
Startled, Mack, still clawing and prying at Mariah’s tail, turned his head in Suzanne’s direction and whined at what he saw. He stepped back from Justin and moved towards Suzanne, arms outstretched. In a deep and rasping man-wolf voice, he called, “Suzanne, don’t!”
Mariah sent the dragon man toppling away with a shove and pulled herself up to a crouch, her tail still around the grunting Justin, who was starting to sink to the floor. She fixed her eagle eyes on Suzanne—and the revolver that the human female had pointed at her.
Everything happened in one second. Mariah released Justin, letting him crumple into a gasping heap of black fur. She beat her wings and lunged, shrieking, right at Suzanne. Mack prepared to lunge and tackle Suzanne, bringing her down out of harm’s way. And Suzanne squeezed off a shot. The explosion felt like a hammer hitting her arms. The recoil threw her back a staggering step.
Mariah, in mid-leap, spilled onto the floor with a ghastly thud and a dreadful fluttering of wings. Suzanne’s breath froze at what she had done. Please, she thought in mid-sob, let it be over. Please…
With a jerking, lurching motion, Mariah pulled herself up from the floor and stared down Suzanne again—this time with a bloody hole in her chest. Suzanne wanted to scream, but there was no chance. Mariah took another menacing step in her direction.
Her adrenaline pumping, her face clenched from terror, Suzanne raised the gun again the instant Mariah moved. She fired another shot. Another hole, oozing blood, erupted in Mariah’s stomach, and she lurched backward. Uttering a sound that was both a hiss of evil wrath and a wheeze, Mariah came forward one more time.
Again, Suzanne squeezed the trigger, her ears now filled with the thunder of her gunshots. Shock and fear had so consumed Suzanne that she felt weaker and the shot went wilder, connecting with Mariah’s shoulder and tearing clean through it and her wing. This one knocked Mariah off her feet. She struck the floor, making a hard thud. This time she did not rise.
Suzanne fell to her knees, unable to see anything now but the gun she was holding. Feeling the metal in her grasp, her ears and mind ringing with what she had just done, almost in a spasm, she reflexively pried open her fingers and let the pistol clatter to the floor. She looked up from the gun to Justin, who was dragging himself up, gasping hard, morphing back to human and feeling at his throat. He saw Mack, morphed back to human and shirtless, reach Suzanne’s side and take her by the shoulders to steady her. Heedless of his own nakedness, Justin clambered forward the short distance between himself and Suzanne, stepping over the motionless form of Mariah, herself returning to human and lying in her own blood.
Mack gave way to Justin, letting him take over. He went to Mariah, feeling at her neck and wrist for a pulse, while the other security man, himself shifted back to a shirtless human male, joined Mack and pulled out his phone for an emergency call. Up the stairs came two other shirtless shifter men, who had secured Mariah’s paid accomplices outside.
Dizzy and mute with shock, Suzanne went limp in Justin’s arms, resting her head on his shoulder. Justin held Suzanne against his muscled and haired chest, stroking her hair. “It’s all over now,” he whispered to her. “No one’s going to hurt you any more. It’s over, baby. It’s over…”
Suzanne heard Justin’s words but could not respond. At some point she would have questions for him, and she would not let him get away without answering. She would want to know if he’d known all along that this woman from his past who hated him so much was out there. She would want to know when he found out, and why he had not told her. To all these things she would demand answers. For now, she couldn’t speak. She could do nothing but sit in his arms and make herself believe it was over, and that she would never have to see this woman, this creature, ever again.