As long as they lived, his brothers would never forget watching Anton shift into a monster. Within seconds, his clothes tore off him in ribbons, coarse black fur exploded across every inch of him, and he expanded in height by two, almost three times. He was well over six feet larger than Maxim’s bear. Which was saying something.
He vaguely resembled a bear. But his muzzle was blunter and more cruel, his eyes a sickening yellow. He was both leaner and larger, almost as if he were mixed with a cat as well. His claws were retractable and the color of bone. And his teeth. Inches longer than a grizzly’s.
Anton shifted from man to beast with a tremendous, earth-shaking roar. It literally shook leaves from trees. Stopped the brothers in their tracks.
They shifted into their bear forms themselves and dodged the spray of automatic fire that was coming at them from the helicopter, but Anton threw his massive body straight at it.
The helicopter halted, attempted to rise in altitude the second it realized that it had an incoming hostile, but it was too late. Anton’s beast sprang up off the ground on back legs each the size of a couch. With one, arcing, terrible paw, Anton gripped the bottom runner of the helicopter and used his weight to pluck it out of the air.
The machine whined and the Navuka soldiers inside yelled as it pitched to the side, tried to right itself. But there’s no going back from a monster dragging you out of the sky.
Bullets sprayed weakly out the side and if any hit Anton, he didn’t seem to notice as he bunched his great haunches, leaned back against the fluttering weight of the helicopter and flung it with all his weight to one side. It went end over end like a toy.
The engine of the helicopter screamed before the whole thing met the ground in an earsplitting crash. It was only seconds later that the entire thing went up like a match.
The brothers felt the heat of it through their fur, stepped back from the acrid smoke of it. But Anton, much closer, didn’t even flinch. He just turned from the crash, from his brothers, and sprinted into the woods.
“Anton!” Emin screamed telepathically, and all three brothers realized at once that they couldn’t reach him this way when he was that thing. Only when he was in his bear form. They felt as if they were down by a limb as they all streaked after the beast into the woods.
His incredible size made each stride impossibly long. Even Emin, easily the fastest brother, had trouble keeping up. But flank him they did, as best as they could.
The four of them ran, barreling through the forest, the three bears in formation behind Anton. The dark beast led them, his yellow eyes rolling, murder brewing behind them. He licked his long teeth and chuffed out great, panting breaths that turned the frigid air into fog.
Anton was no longer Anton. He was nothing more than a monster made of rage and vengeance. Led by AJ’s scent on the wind and fueled by need.
The three bears that sprinted to keep up, dodging trees and digging their claws into the side of the mountain, didn’t know this creature. They didn’t see Anton inside of it.
But there was no way they were letting their brother go into battle on his own. Regardless of what kind of monster he’d just become.
***
“I really am so glad you could join us,” the one called Sergei sneered at AJ. She lolled in the chair they’d tied her to. Everything was wobbly and weak. She knew she was in a huge, airy hangar with pine trees surrounding it on almost all sides. An old, abandoned aircraft was parked in a dusty corner, but most of it was empty space. Her two captors sat in front of AJ at a strangely beautiful desk. Old antique wood. Lana sat behind while Sergei lounged on top. She was dimly aware of the 50 or so soldiers who stood along the walls, all armed with huge guns.
AJ shivered at the chill in the air. She could feel herself drifting back into a terrible, sticky sleep.
“Sergei,” Lana called in a vaguely sing-song voice. “She’s dying. If she goes before he gets here it will all be for naught.”
Sergei pouted at AJ’s slumped form. “I suppose you’re right. We’ll have to waste the antidote on her after all.”
AJ heard footsteps and then felt a warm, thin liquid being tipped into her mouth. She drank it gratefully. Waited for it to start working. It wasn’t instant. But minutes later, she was able to sit up in her chair. She realized then that she was tied across her chest, ankles, and wrists.
She had enough energy to glower at Lana and Sergei. It wasn’t the first time she’d met them. She’d seen them before in Canada, when the family had gone to rescue Glory’s mother. Actually Lana, the asshole, had given AJ a concussion.
AJ hoped to repay the favor tonight.
“Why cure me?” she choked out the words, her throat like fire.
Sergei spoke briefly into a walkie-talkie as he watched a blipping green screen on his laptop in front of him. “Because we want Anton here for the big moment.”
AJ grinned now. “Anton’s not coming, you son of a bitch.” She was glad, in a feral way, that they wouldn’t get their hands on Anton.
“Oh, really?” Lana asked, looking at the same screen as Sergei. “Because we just had a helicopter pulled out of the sky about a mile from here. Sounds like Anton Malashovik to me.”
AJ’s stomach dropped. If Anton was really coming for her, then she needed to get the hell out of here. She needed him to be nowhere near Sergei and Lana and whatever trap they had in store for him.
A little more clearheaded now, she started to tentatively test her bonds, see if any of them were loose. No. But then a realization hit AJ like stardust. Thanks to a brief little bout of morning sex, the cat’s claw was in her back pocket. Thank you, Anton!
She was able to lift her bound hands just far enough to grab the cat’s claw out of her pocket and slip it on. She started to inconspicuously tear away at the ropes at her wrists.
“Why do you even want to lure Anton here?” she asked, hoping to keep them talking and distract her from what she was doing. “I thought you were going for younger shifters now. Like you did with Linc last year.”
“That was an unsophisticated, blundering attempt by someone who didn’t understand the nuances,” Sergei spat out, as if he’d just been waiting to say that.
Lana’s face went red and then pale. AJ took note. So it had been Lana’s plan to go after Linc last summer. It hadn’t worked and she’d obviously been demoted. And now it was Sergei’s plan to use her to get Anton.
“In a way, though,” Sergei continued. “You’re right. We have no interest in Anton Malashovik the man.” He turned to her, dressed in black, his light hair perfectly gelled. “What lives inside him, however, is ours. And we want it back.”
The monster they’d forced him to shift into. “He’ll never give it to you,” AJ grimaced at them, still desperately hiding the cat’s claw, scratching away at her ropes. “He’ll never shift into that thing for you. Not even if you capture him. Anton Malashovik can walk through those doors right now and you’ll still be just as far from your goal as when he’s safe in Spokane.”
“Well,” Sergei gave a little laugh. “Of course. Until he sees you die.”
“What’s it matter if Anton sees me die?”
“Aren’t you curious,” Lana said flatly, as she leaned forward and watched the screen.
But Sergei was obviously too proud of his plan to let it go unstated. “See, Anton is what we call an emotional shifter. If you get him riled up enough, he can’t control it. He just shifts into his beast form. Or what we lovingly refer to as A3. Anton’s third form. He’s very responsive. To threats. Torture. Anything that gets him upset. We used to use this all the time when we owned him. But we’ve noticed something with our subsequent models, that if it gets a big enough emotion, one real shock, it’ll shift into its beast form and never shift back.”
It fell into place. “That’s why you’re gonna kill me in front of him.”
Lana looked up from the screen, a bored expression on her face. “And your unborn child, yes.”
“Oh, yes,” Sergei continued, shooting Lana a nasty look. He seemed determined to have the last word. “Because, on the inside, Anton is a monster. And he becomes that monster when he’s upset. And if we can upset him enough, by, say, murdering the mother of his child in front of him, then he will never go back to his human form.”
Oh lord. This was officially really bad. AJ didn’t want to die. And she really, really didn’t want her baby to die. And she really, really, really didn’t want Anton to live in hell, trapped inside a monster of Navuka’s making.
She felt the rope around her wrist give way and she did a little internal cheer. If she could just get the ropes around her chest off without them noticing, then there was a chance she could get out of here.
AJ had just started on the fresh rope when a roar from outside the hangar sounded out like a foghorn. So loud that one of the high, thin panes of glass at the ceiling came crashing to the floor.
Guards screamed from the front of the hangar and lights and beeps started going haywire on Lana’s screen.
“Oh, goody,” Lana said, her chin balanced on one hand. “Our son is home from school.”
***
Emin and Danil swatted Navuka soldiers to the side like they were rag dolls. Maxim followed behind, shredding their weapons as he went.
They’d made quick work of all 40 soldiers guarding the outside of the hangar in less than a minute. But they were still far behind Anton.
When they looked up, Anton’s monster was on his back feet, digging his claws into the steel doors of the hangar, and yanking them out like a loose tooth. He whipped the doors behind him and his brothers had to duck to avoid impact.
And then the creature was roaring again, all four feet planted. The hangar shook on its foundation.
The brothers rounded the entrance in time to see Anton racing toward Sergei and Lana. If the helicopter was any indication, these two weren’t gonna last long. But then Anton was skidding to a stop, a deep rumbling in his chest as he smashed one of his great paws onto the ground, cracking the cement underneath him.
“Don’t shoot!” Lana screamed to the guards around the walls.
AJ trembled in the arms of Sergei who held a long thin knife to her belly.
“Do you want to see your baby die tonight, Mr. Malashovik?” Sergei asked with a little cackle in his tone. “Because maybe, if I take her right here,” he pressed the knife further toward AJ, “she can live while the baby dies.”
The beast that was Anton shook with fury. His breath came out in hot pants that AJ could feel 15 feet away. She stared at the monster in front of her. Could this really be Anton? It looked nothing like his beautiful, majestic bear. No, this thing looked like something out of a horror movie.
Yet.
When Sergei tightened his grip around her neck, something like pain, fear, panic, crossed the beast’s face and for a moment, AJ saw him in there. Looking out at her. Trapped in his own fear and fury.
He looked like a child. And AJ got her first, flashing glimpse of what their child might look like. Not hair or eye color or gender. No. She just saw the sweet need of a kid who needed help. Their kid was gonna look like that sometimes.
And suddenly, AJ was one hundred percent certain that she and Anton were gonna be around to see it.
Sergei, seeming to sense her newfound defiance, tightened his grip once more.
Well, fuck this guy.
AJ had had enough. Unaware that her hands weren’t still tied, Sergei had no warning for the fingers that were suddenly jamming into his eyes. Her elbow swung back as she batted the thin knife away from her. And then she saw what kind of damage a cat’s claw could do in a pinch.
Sergei’s cheek hung in a bloody ribbon as he screamed in rage and swung out at her, but she was already running. Already sprinting toward Anton. She knew that if she could get behind the beast she’d be safe. She’d be safe.
And he was running toward her, slow motion and fierce. She’d never seen anything more reassuring and horrifying at once. His teeth were bared like the teeth of a crocodile, brutal and bloodied at the gums. His fur was rough and sparse around his awful deep-set nose. And his eyes. They were the exact shade of yellow as the mountain lion he’d chased away from her the first day they’d met.
And yet, she didn’t fear him.
AJ did a perfect slide as she ducked down. Anton leaped over top of her, planting himself in between her and Sergei.
Thank God, she thought. But then her head was snapping around at a foreign, unforgiving noise. The zapping burn of a humongous Taser. One that was shooting right into Anton’s chest.
AJ was back on her feet, sprinting around his fallen, quivering body. Sergei. He was holding a huge Taser-like weapon, shooting blue sparks directly into Anton, holding him at bay.
“You’ll kill him!” Lana shrieked, halfway between panic and joy.
AJ had just enough time to clock her in the temple with an elbow before she was on Sergei’s back, choking him and grabbing for the Taser gun.
Lana was on the ground, laughing and crying, holding the side of her head. Sergei writhed, let up on the electricity for a moment and then managed to shoot it again. Anton’s body jumped with the surge and AJ had seen enough.
So had, apparently, his brothers. Maxim let out a great roar as he barreled into 15 soldiers at once. The men, confused about whether or not they were supposed to be shooting, fumbled with their weapons.
Some pulled out miniature versions of the Taser that Sergei was using and one made the mistake of using it on Danil. The man flew 20 feet in the air before skidding out the entrance.
Emin jammed his teeth into the riot shields a group of them held, ripping them all away at once. The men screamed and scuttled backwards and it didn’t take more than a roar to have them dropping their weapons and sprinting out of the hangar.
The troops were abandoning. And Lana and Sergei knew it.
Lana laughed harder than ever, as she slowly dragged herself back up from the ground.
AJ wrestled the gun from Sergei for long enough that Anton was rising, roaring, and lumbering toward them again. He rose up over them on his back two feet and AJ scuttled backwards, wanting to be the hell away from Sergei.
Anton raised one gigantic paw and smashed it into Sergei, batting the man across the floor like a kitten with a ball of yarn. Anton ambled over to where the man lay, curled and gasping, and raised his paw again, prepared to wipe Sergei from the earth.
“Enough, A3!” Lana yelled, gasping for breath through her laughter. “Anton. Whatever it is you call yourself.” She rose and walked over to him.
AJ’s eyes were glued to the scene in front of her so she was oblivious to the bear behind her until Danil nudged her arm.
She jumped and Anton turned, tracking the movement. He dipped his head, as if to say ‘yes’ to his brother. Danil picked up AJ and tossed her onto his back, quickly lumbering across the floor of the hangar.
“No!” she shouted, scrambling to get down. “I won’t leave him. Danil. I won’t.”
Danil stopped moving, but didn’t let her go any closer.
“You want to kill us?” Lana screamed. “Well, thank God for that! But it’s not gonna change what we did to you, Anton. You’re still a freak. You’re still a monster. You still are literally injected with rage. And I did that.” She raised her chin at him, daring him to take a swipe. “So end me. I dare you.”
Anton took a step toward her and AJ held her breath. But then he was taking a step back.
“No?” Lana cackled. “You won’t? You were my best soldier, A3. And you won’t even kill? Well.” She rose and reached inside her tailored jacket, pulled out something that was sickeningly familiar to AJ.
“I won’t disappoint the president again,” Lana screamed. “I’m not going back there again.”
And then she pulled the pin on the grenade in her hand, flinging herself down on top of Sergei and laying it between their bellies, where a baby might lay, if she’d been pregnant.
Danil scooped AJ up and full on sprinted out of the hangar. So did Emin and Maxim, who thought of their children as they galloped toward the entrance.
Anton looked back, and in the first coherent thoughts his brain had had in an hour, he saw his brother taking care of AJ. He knew that she would be alright without him.
With his militarized eyesight and finely tuned senses, Anton watched the explosion tear through Lana and Sergei. It was clear energy still, just matter and force flinging through the universe. Two or three feet out, the energy caught flame and he watched the fiery edge reach out its arms for him.
If I stayed, he thought, Anton would die. But so would this beast. This horrible, murderous part of me. He saw the flame coming toward him like a lover.
And then, somewhere, in the back of the beast’s brain, he remembered his actual lover.
And there was no choice. There was never a choice.
AJ screamed in horror and fury and rage as the fireball burst through the ceiling of the hangar. The smoke was too thick, she couldn’t see. She couldn’t see.
“Anton!” she screamed, her legs giving out as his brothers surrounded her. As the rest of the soldiers fled into the forest.
“Anton,” she whispered to the ground as she covered her head and howled.