Hector
He made his way through the storage shed, but two things became immediately clear to him.
One, that the shed was empty, devoid of anyone else, and two, that Rachel had never gotten very far inside the shed. Her scent ended at the doorway. Only Stinkboy’s scent remained.
“Follow my trail!” he yelled after Gray, hoping the other shifter would hear him as he tried to rouse some backup.
Then he found where the two scents intertwined, and raced off into the town, following it down main streets and side streets. Almost immediately the trail turned due west, skirting the downtown “core” itself in favor of heading toward the rougher industrial neighborhoods to the west. It wasn’t a place Hector had spent much time, though he’d tried to explore every section of the town at one point or another, so that he was always at least somewhat familiar with where he might end up.
“Where are you going?” he muttered to himself as he raced down the streets, his head lifted to the air like some sort of madman, inhaling deeply through his nose as he attempted to gain ground. While it could have been his imagination, he could have sworn that their scent was getting stronger, filling his nostrils more thoroughly with every breath as he gained ground.
I’m coming Rachel, just hold on.
Hector was angry. He was angry at himself for not trying to search out the mystery human beforehand, and he was mad at himself for not digging deeper into the coincidences that surrounded the fire in the embassy. But most of all, he was furious that he’d dragged Rachel into the middle of whatever was going on, putting her life, and the life of her baby, in mortal danger.
They were close now, he could tell. Hector slowed, not wanting to charge into a situation he wasn’t ready for. Hopefully Gray and anyone else he could round up would be close behind him, following even swifter through the streets as they came to help. When they arrived Hector intended to storm whatever building Rachel was in and kill anyone who got in his way. Nobody threatened his mate.
Nobody.
“That one,” he said softly, pinpointing the warehouse where she’d been taken. He crept forward. The scent seemed to point straight to a side door near one of the loading bays. The window itself was covered in boards, the thick wooden planks nailed into the thin metal frame of the door. There were no windows, nowhere that he could look inside to see what awaited him. It would be like charging in blind. Gray crouched down as he tried furiously to come up with a plan, any plan, something that would allow him to act instead of simply sitting still and awaiting reinforcements.
His mind was drawn back to earlier, and what he’d done then. Smiling to himself, he crept forward, eager to put his ear to the door. This way he might be able to hear voices, and at least ascertain how many were in there. If it was just the one shifter then Hector knew he would stand a better than 50 percent shot of putting them down. He was no lightweight even in the shifter world, and his combat training skills had won him several awards, despite the beating he’d taken earlier that evening.
Whoever was in there had messed with the wrong bear, and it was about time they learned their lesson.
Hector ran hunched over along the little walkway that led to the door. It was sandwiched between the rolling bay doors, a steep slope on either side of it leading down into the sunken pits where the trucks would back into. The door was just twenty feet away.
Fifteen.
Ten.
CLANG!
Hector froze as the metal grate beneath him let out a noise that shattered the silence of the night. Birds shrieked as they took to the sky somewhere nearby, and an owl hooted from a tree across the parking lot. The noise died away and Hector swore to himself.
“So much for the element of surprise.”
“Hector?!”
He froze as the terrified voice emerged from within the warehouse. Rachel. He would recognize that voice anywhere. She was in there, and she was in trouble.
He stood up, bunched the fingers of his right hand into a fist, and drove them right through the planks. Wood shattered under his blow. Hector wasted no time. He withdrew his arm, got a grip on the door itself, and with a casual heave ripped it right from the frame. He chucked it into the parking lot with enough force to send it screeching across the asphalt, showering the area under it with sparks.
“Little pig, little pig. Let me in, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll rip your head off,” he growled as he stepped forward into the darkness. “Come on out. Daddy’s home.”
His eyes adjusted to the darkness, immediately focusing on the feminine figure slumped in the center of the room with what appeared to be a chain around her neck. He growled angrily and stepped forward to go to her rescue.
There was a whistle from his left and Hector threw up his arm to block the blow. It was an instinctive move, one drilled into him by years’ and years’ worth of training. His brain hadn’t yet caught up to his body before it started to move. But it did catch up before the blow landed. There was enough time for one single thought.
This is going to hurt.
The four by four slammed into his already-weakened arm. Both arm and wood shattered from the blow. Hector fell back in agony, but not before he remembered to kick out with his right foot as he planted his left. The boot flashed out into the darkness and caught the figure charging forward right in the sternum. Something cracked and his assailant flew backward.
Clutching his left arm to his chest, Hector reached down, grabbed the remnant of the square wooden pole he’d been hit with, and advanced on his foe. His only option now was to keep him off balance, to never let up the attack. If he were to do that the other shifter would recover and then he would be in trouble.
There was an angry hiss from ahead of him and then a huge figure exploded from around a pile of pitch black that was likely metal or something. Hector didn’t have time to analyze it as he ducked and wove a defensive pattern against the furious onslaught of blows, fighting for his life.
Not just my life. Rachel’s as well.
He ducked and dodged all the blows. One thing became immediately clear to him as he discerned a pattern within the attacks. Whoever his attacker was, they’d been trained at the same school as he was. That meant someone from Cadia, and a bear shifter at that. A Green Bearet. Someone trained to fight like a warrior, part of the military arm of the bear shifters.
That narrowed his suspect pool down a lot. It also gave Hector an edge. He knew how his opponent was likely to strike, when, where, and how hard. His brain began to anticipate the strikes, and he waited until he saw the opening he wanted. It wasn’t much, not enough to deliver a lethal blow, or even get close to his attacker’s body.
But then again, that wasn’t what Hector was trying to do. He was far more interested in evening the fight, and he did just that when he leaned to the side to avoid a blow and swung the remnants of the post at his enemy’s wrist. He’d not gone on the attack at all yet, and the sudden change in tactic surprised his mysterious enemy.
The post hit the wrist bone square on and his enemy howled in pain, stumbling backward as he mimicked Hector, holding his injured limb close to his chest.
“You’re mine now,” he growled into the darkness, and advanced. His shifter vision let him see a lot, but the darkness was so thick in the shadows of the warehouse that he couldn’t make out much about his foe. They hadn’t spoken yet either, which was probably smart for them, avoiding identifying themselves by speaking.
He ducked aside from one desperate punch and delivered a swift kick to his opponent. The other shifter tried to move aside, but he was too slow. Hector connected solidly and his foe flew back through the air, crashing into all sorts of metal. Peals of noise filled the cavernous open space as he bounced several times.
Hector wasted no time, spinning and heading back toward the door. “Rachel!” he called as he ran over. “Rachel.”
“Hector!” she shouted. “Is that you?”
“It’s me. I’m here,” he reassured her as he approached. He got to his knees at her side. “Are you okay?” Using his free hand he stroked her face gently.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice strained a little. “It’s just these chains.”
Hector looked at the chain around her neck. He’d normally just break it, but with his one hand useless to him, that was out of the question.
“Can you get me out?” she asked as he stood up, following one of the ends.
Hector didn’t have time to reply. Behind him came a roar that shook the walls, sending dust cascading down from the walls, ceiling, and everywhere as the entire warehouse trembled in its foundations. Metal shrieked and something very large moved far back in the darkness. He summoned his strength, and yanked hard on one end of the chain. Something snapped, but he couldn’t see what it was.
His attention was focused behind him, where a very large and very angry bear shifter had just unleashed his animal. Hector reached inside of himself, looking deep into his brain to where the icy ball of power that was his bear lay. He knew a lot of shifters saw their animals as figures representative of the animal, a bear residing within his mind.
It had never worked like that for Hector. Instead he’d always sensed a cold well of power waiting to be tapped. Whenever he drew upon it, his animal would respond. Like now. The change came over him like it always did, in a wave. It burst out from within him, changing his entire body. Bones lengthened and thickened, joints reversed, and his face even reshaped itself, jutting forth with a huge muzzle filled with flashing white teeth, red-rimmed eyes, and fur everywhere. Russet-brown fur covered every inch of his body. He slammed down onto the concrete, three of four limbs hitting hard.
There was barely time to get his bearings before his unknown attacker charged. They went down in a heap, rolling over and over across the open floor before they hit something hard enough to stop their momentum. Hector was bleeding from dozens of wounds, but so was his enemy. They separated briefly before the two huge beasts collided once again. The building around them shook under the impact. The two animals, oversized versions of their wild cousins, repeated the dance over and over again, nearly four tons of power slamming into each other.
Hector knew he couldn’t keep this up. His broken left foreleg was proving to be a huge hindrance, and it wouldn’t be much longer before the other bear got the better of him. He had to find a way to either win, or shift things back to human form. Looking around desperately for a solution, his eyes settled on one part of the warehouse. If he could just get there, he might have a chance.
With a sudden surge of energy he shrugged his foe off, raked the huge claws of his right paw against his face, and then spun, taking off across the warehouse floor. Hector didn’t care much about dodging; he simply plowed straight through most of the obstacles in his way. Several were too big for that and he was forced to go around them, but not much.
Reaching the area of warehouse he’d chosen, Hector shunted the power of his beast aside, returning abruptly to human form as he ducked in among the various pillars of steel that supported the huge structure above him. He wasn’t sure what the thing was, but the pillars were easily a foot wide, and spaced perhaps five feet apart. There was simply no room for a bear to operate without risking dislodging too many of the pillars and being crushed.
“Come and get me,” he taunted as the other bear slid to a halt, obviously realizing what Hector had in mind. Seconds later his foe’s human form returned, a silhouette against the semi-darkness of the warehouse.
Footsteps echoed on concrete, and the other shifter advanced to meet him.
Hector smiled in anticipation. It was time to end this.