Chapter 5

Damien roared and clashed with the wildcat, rolling on the ground before jumping ahead to keep it down. The cat was fast, though, leaping back before he could catch him. This was a face of fury, its glowing sickly eyes fixed on him.

Both opponents faced off for a second, Zoe a few yards back, her mouth hanging open, unable to process what she was seeing.

Damien growled again. An inhuman growl, he had his back to her, his muscles against his shirt seemed to grow, as if he was flexing them real hard.

“Stay back!” he gruffed, she tried to pull her leg away from the weeds, but their grip didn’t budge at all.

The cat used its hind legs and jumped at him, claws several inches long, and Damien jumped forward to meet it, the sound of his bones shattering as they clashed.

In a flash, his clothes filled and ripped apart. Fur covered every part of his body, his own hands turned to paws, hitting and pushing the wildcat back. The cat roared and was met with a hit to its head, tearing it’s skin. It fell back and tried to turn and flee, but it was too late. The Grizzly bear now standing in front of Zoe was above it, its paws bringing destruction. There was no blood coming out of the body. Just a black, sticky fluid.

The bear held down the remains and pushed them to the mud, a low snarl filling the air, heat emanating from it. Suddenly the mangled corpse started releasing a plume of smoke.

Little by little the remains were consumed by an invisible fire, the creature melting, vaporizing.

When nothing remained, the bear turned to her.

***

Zoe couldn’t move. Her hand was covered in blood, just like her right leg, black thorns fixed on her skin.

She could now see the huge Grizzly bear in all its glory. The magnificence of its light brown fur, it’s big, bumpy back, it’s deep blue eyes fixed on her. It stepped towards her with heavy, confident steps. She knew this animal had never known fear, its muscles able to destroy just about anything and anyone she could think of. Just now, one of its enemies was obliterated like it was nothing.

The bear came closer and she whimpered a soft plea, “help”, she said, she almost couldn’t hear herself.

The bear stopped.

It didn’t seem angry, gazing at her in silence. The bear sat down, uttering a small soft growl, placing its head on the ground. Her mind started to come back, it was unraveling a minute ago and now some thoughts came to her.

She looked around and found ripped clothes near the remains of the cat. She looked at the bear and found those blue eyes looking sternly back at her. The bear raised its head a little and lowered it, then stepped forward slowly, carefully.

“Damien?” she said.

The bear didn’t react to her words. It looked at her leg, caught in the thorns, snarled and approached her.

It reached the weeds and grumbled at her, she thought it was going after her but it started biting the plant, careful not to hurt her. The shrub started to tear, hot against its breath, then she saw it again: just like with the wildcat, it seemed to be burning, rapidly turning into vapor.

The grip on her leg loosened. She looked down, the whole bush was dead, and the bear... Damien, sat looking at her.

“Please don’t hurt me”, she said, the bear’s gaze was fixed on her.

She tried moving her leg but a million different needles did their damage, sending jolts of burning pain in an instant. She screamed in pain, unable to move.

Zoe looked up in tears, the huge grizzly made a guttural sound, puffed and then its fur started to go back into its skin, the claws retracting into its paws, its muzzle slowly turning back into its skull.

The bear was gone in a second, now there was only Damien. Naked, his toned muscles pushing against his skin, his big pecs and huge back, his toned legs, covered in sweat.

He got up in front of her. She couldn’t help but notice the thick, hard cock on him. She had slept with some guys before, but this was something else. That thing promised and threatened a damn good fucking, but she couldn’t allow herself to think of that. She looked up and Damien was looking at her straight in the eye.

She blushed, maybe it was the adrenaline coming down, what she just saw, that transformation, had been incredible, but all she could think was how to stop her thighs from getting so wet.

“Are you okay?” he said in that deep voice of his.

She hesitated, “y-yes...”, then pulled her unwounded leg back and looked at him.

He turned around and found his ripped clothes.

“I’m sorry for this”, he said wrapping his shirt around his waist, his cock still plenty visible against that fabric anyway.

“Can you walk?” he asked

“I, I don’t think so...”

Damien took two steps and lifted her in his arms as if she weighted nothing, he looked around, sniffing a few times.

“I can’t let you leave until we examine your wounds”

“But... I should... shouldn’t we—?”

“No, we have medicine and antibiotics in case you need them here, doctors won’t be able to cure the Rot if you have it”

“The rot? What—?”

“Don’t worry”, he said in not quite a convincing manner, starting to walk uphill, “you’ll be fine”.

***

The Rot is here, Damien thought. He would have to check again for new traces of it, see if the Shadowlands had made any other punctures in the forest and seal them. Once the punctures were dealt with, the shadow creatures would lose their connection to their homeland and die soon.

But he had to warn everyone else. Zoe was weak, she lost some blood, and the adrenaline rush drained her, she was feeling dizzy soon after they started towards the cabins, and fell asleep in his arms.

She actually held a shadow cat at bay, a freakin’ shadow wildcat. Most of the time, the shadow creatures dealt with humans easy and silently. She used all her available tools, and herself and... Well, if he wasn’t near there to help it would’ve ended in tragedy, but still...

Mate. Strong. His Grizzly said. He didn’t debate that. She was strong. He looked at her leg and the stings turned to black dots in her skin. Hang on, he thought, we’re almost there.

***

Franklin was the first to see them through the comms tower window. Damien was carrying someone —a girl— to the base. She seemed hurt, she had blood on her at least. He stood up and ran to them.

“Enzo! Enzo we need you here!” Damien yelled.

Enzo’s head peeked from the Lab, when he saw them his eyes grew wide.

“What the hell happened?” he said. Franklin was near them, but there wasn’t much he could do.

“We got attacked, Lab clean?” Damien said.

“We? Who’s the girl?” Franklin said.

Damien looked at him square in the eye, furious. He was in no mood for explanations.

“Franklin, bring Mav here,” Damien said, holding back, “We have an emergency meeting right after we make sure Zoe is safe, Raiden back yet?”

“Not yet”, Franklin said, shaking his head, “what about you Damien, are you okay?”

They were entering the Lab now.

“Get Maverick, man, I’ll deal with this”, Enzo said.

The Lab was a place for Enzo’s chemistry equipment, herbs and plants. He wasn’t really a chemist, if Damien was honest to himself, Enzo was more of an alchemist: he knew some basic medicine, but he was mostly combining this element and that element with weird ingredients, conjuring some old shifter powers so the beer was more potent, for example.

When it was brought by the men in black it was supposed to be a meds station. Shifters never have a need for them, so all of them were intact. It had a small single bed, gauze, alcohol and other human stuff. Enzo mostly used it to cure wounded animals, he liked doing that kind of stuff, and although Zoe was not a wild animal, he seemed to know what he was doing.

Damien put her in the small bed, she was still half asleep, the wounds black, some of them still pouring blood. He kneeled besides Zoe and took her hand, placing his other one on her forehead, caressing her hair.

“You’re going to be okay”, he whispered, “I won’t let anything bad happen to you”

Enzo brought cleaning supplies and started treating her wounds.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Shadow thornbush, she got stuck in it”.

Enzo stopped and looked at him, his eyes a mess of confusion.

“I dealt with it, and the damned shadow cat that came in”, said Damien, holding back anger.

“You can go now, I’ll deal with this.”

“I’m staying with her. I’m positive that was the end of it, my bear didn’t smell any other puncture, we’re fine for now.”

Enzo was the group’s healer, each of his movements was determined, exact. He cleaned the blood and took care of the stings putting some kind of greenish, semi-transparent balm on her leg —it smelled like a sweet summer flower— bandaged her leg and hands, and slowly looked up at Damien.

“Should I...?”

“Do it, we got to be sure”

Enzo pressed his hands on Zoe´s wounded leg and hands, softly growling, his eyes turned black, black fur crawling out of his skin. Suddenly, Zoe’s eyes opened, not fully aware of what was going on, she just looked around and Damien met her eyes.

“What, what’s happening?”

Damien got close to her ear, “He’s helping you, you’ll feel better now.”

Enzo stood up, his face an ugly mixture of bear and man, he seemed to be struggling with something inside him, tripped on one of the fixed steel desks in the Lab, held himself against the wall and jumped outside, where he finally let out a growl and shifted. He was a big black bear, a beautiful wild animal, looking inside. Zoe and Damien watched him.

“Go, I’ll fill you in later”, Damien said, and the bear got up on two legs, roared and then went off running, its footsteps a heavy thud in the forest.

Zoe’s hand was pressing hard on Damien’s, as if holding on for her life. He looked at it, he’d never felt anything so soft, so delicate. She realized what she was doing and loosened her grip. Damien almost wished for her to hold on to him forever.

“What happened?” she said.

“You were stung by a thornbush”, he said. “I don’t know how I missed it in the first place, it’s my fault. I should have known something was wrong, my instincts flared but I couldn’t see why. I’ll be more careful now.”

Zoe looked at him, then moved her hands and leg.

“I feel much better now”, she said, “The pain is almost completely gone.”

“You still need to rest, you’ll be fine soon, I promise.”

He stood up beside her, releasing her hand. After a moment of silence, she spoke.

“I didn’t know this was shifter territory, I wouldn’t have trespassed if I knew it was.”

“It’s not your fault, it’s not trespassing if there are no signs, right?” he told her smiling. “Besides, you’re under my protection now, it’s not like the government’s gonna say anything about the incident”.

“What’s a thornbush?”

“Well... it’s like a poisonous plant, the first one to come through a puncture.”

Her eyes widened, not fully understanding.

He continued. “You might think we shifters only do ranger, trail blazing and firefighter work in the forests... most of the time you’re right, but we’re also looking for intrusions from a place we call ‘The Shadowlands’, which is like a dark mirror image of our world.”

“We call those intrusions ‘punctures’, the dark energy coming from the Shadowlands spreads through them, like a cancer that feeds on life. Thornbush is the first thing that comes through it, a sort of natural defense system”.

“If the puncture stays open, the dark energy, the Rot, starts affecting everything around it. That’s why we have to seal each intrusion —each puncture— we can’t let it grow. Bear Shifters are the only ones able to stop it, due to our attunement with nature”.

“So you’re saying a cancer plant stung me and I’m going to die?” she said in a trembling voice.

I’m never good at explaining. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, I promise, Enzo made sure of that”.

“I should go.” She said.

“You can’t”.

She looked at him, angry.

“So I’m your prisoner now? That’s why you can tell me all this? Let me tell you buddy, there’s just no way you can stop me, you’ll have to—”

Damien laughed hard, interrupting her monologue.

“I can tell you’re feeling better, all right!” he said, “don’t worry sweetpie, you only have to stay here until the wounds in your arms and leg heal, then you can be on your way. Unless you want to risk it...”

Zoe was embarrassed, she was already thinking of ways to make a diversion and escape. But she didn’t want to risk it —whatever that meant. She felt kind of silly now.

“How long is that going to take?”

“You’re gonna have to put up with us for a few days, then you’ll be on your way, deal?”

She had to comply, she had no other options.

“Deal”, she finally said, and shook his hand as if this was just business.