The Bear's Arranged Mate: A Bear Shifter Romance Novel (14 page)

She nodded and sat down under a green tree that had fully burst forth and let the cool shade bathe over her, smelling sweetly of chlorophyll. The sounds of London filled her ears, and for the first time she realized it wasn’t all chaotic. There was a kind of rhythm and pattern to it: the sound of young children laughing and squealing down the cobblestones along the Thames; and the sweet French accents of young women conversing among themselves while they walked back to their apartments through the ancient arcades of old London.

She opened her eyes again and smiled, and for a moment she completely forgot about the reason they’d come. It seemed impossible on such a beautiful day for such a threat to exist.

Then she heard something, a rustling, and when she turned there was an envelope on the bench beside her. She looked up quickly and saw a dark figure in a black petticoat disappear around the buttress of the old church. She stood up frantically, her senses suddenly pricked and cautious.

She looked back down at the envelope. It was manila, crisp and new, and there were only two words on it, written in a cursive French with a dark black felt pen.
Faites attention.
Be careful. She sat back down and picked it up, holding it in her hands like she would some curious artifact. There was no mistake, it had been meant for her. There was no one else in the plaza, and certainly no one else sitting down at a bench. Her curiosity got the better of her and she carefully slit it open with the end of one sharp pointed finger.

The envelope was lighter than expected. She poured out the contents into her lap, and looked them over. There were two pieces of ID, and they looked like some sort of security clearance. What alarmed her was that they somehow had both of their pictures on it. There was a company name she didn’t recognize either, Apollo Inc. It sounded fishy. She looked through the rest of the contents and found a map, which seemed to point to some sort of facility just north of central London.

She frowned and suddenly Connor was beside her, two coffees in his hand.

“Hey, I got…” he stopped when he saw the envelope, “what’s that?”

“Good question,” she said, holding up the security badges, “someone just dropped this off. These were inside.”

He sat down and looked at the one with his face on it. “So I’m Iago Francois? That’s a mouthful,” he said with an equally perturbed frown. “No idea who it was?”

“No, but there’s a map, and this looks like a telephone number or access code,” she said, holding up another small piece of paper with some numbers written on it.

Connor leaned back and rubbed his scalp, his eyes trying to adjust to the subtle play of shadows and sunlight through the branches of the tree above them. “What do you think? Some sort of anonymous benefactor, or a certifiably naïve trap?”

She looked at the badges again. “We know that Dr. Golding was operating out of a facility to the north of London. This fits the criteria. But I think we should treat it as a trap, all the same.”

“You know best,” he said, taking a sip. The coffee was strong, dark, and burned  his throat.

CHAPTER 11

When they returned to the hotel, it was already dinnertime, but neither of them felt particularly hungry. They knew it was because, for better or worse, whatever joy they had experienced during the day was just a preamble. It was a way of distracting themselves from what they knew they would have to do next.

Sarah unfolded all the information they had on Dr. Ernest Golding and Apollo Inc., and tried to brush through it one more time, hoping to make sense of something she might have missed. Connor changed his shirt and took another look at the map.

“You ready?” he asked. He had on his leather jacket again, and she had slipped on a black jacket. Together they looked like an odd-matched pair from a bike gang, but it was a smart outfit for both of them. Flexible enough to run in if they needed to, but conspicuous enough to fit in with London’s trendy styles.

“Ready for what exactly?” she replied, “This feels a bit too much like a 007 movie. We don’t know the first thing about infiltrating a base.”

“For now, let’s just do some reconnaissance,” he said, “Oh, and this
is
London, so please put on some shoes.”

She looked down and realized she was barefoot again. It had become such a habit back on the Estate that she had forgotten to put her boots back on. After so many months out in the wild, her feet had developed heavy calluses. She blushed and scrambled under the bed for her boots.

“Have you tried that number on the paper?”

“I did, it’s got enough digits for a phone number, but when I dial it, there’s no reply. Deactivated number,” Connor shrugged.

She reluctantly agreed and they made their way downstairs. The receptionist behind the desk gave them a surreptitious wink, one that Sarah found lecherous and a bit creepy, but kept it to herself. They took a taxi toward Brentwood and the driver tried to make small talk in an accent that both Connor and Sarah had a hard time understanding, like a mix between a Cockney slang and Irish.

Sarah pulled the paper map from her bag and gave the taxi driver instructions. Unlike North American cities that had a certain north-south orientation and square blocks, it seemed that the European idea of city-planning was haphazard. In no time, she had lost track of where they were.

It was all a blur of city lights, buildings, and streets, and half a dozen times, she worried that they had circled back on themselves, but the taxi driver confidently burrowed forth, navigating old roads like they were the back of his hand. In the back seat, Sarah found Connor’s hand in the dark and squeezed it.

Finally, they arrived at the coordinates on the map and Connor had the driver let them off a block away. It was an industrial part of the city. Big warehouses and empty lots littered the landscape. There was something almost apocalyptic about the place, and Sarah had to hold her mouth, as they got out, to keep from recoiling at the smell of so much detritus. Rust seemed to eat its way into her mouth, and she coughed.

“Careful, we’re supposed to be stealthy, remember?” Connor warned.

It took them a few minutes to reach the perimeter of a bigger fenced-off area with a number of cubicle portables behind razor wire. If Dr. Golding
was
involved in some sort of illegal genetic experimentation using the Bear genome, then it stood to reason they were looking for the most secure place in the vicinity.
Bingo
, she thought to herself as Connor kneeled down and pulled a pair of small wire-cutters from his backpack.

“Really going full-out with the spy stuff, huh?” she said bemusedly.

“If Marcus was here, he’d scold us both. Keep a look out.”

Although she had never done anything like this, Sarah was proud of how transferable her skills were for breaking into places. During her childhood, she had been trained by master martial artists and survivalists, the goal being to turn her into a worthy enough heiress to the Greyback Estate. Granted, most of her training had taken place outdoors. She’d have preferred the cover of trees and forest to the concrete right-angle wilderness of a metropolitan city, but it was all the same.

Stealth was the art of moving unseen in plain sight. Even now as she tested the air, she had to admire how both her and Connor’s bodies acted on a kind of memory-impulse. Reflexively blending into the shadows, limiting unnecessary movement. She shivered again as a cold gust of wind levied off the ocean miles to the east.

Ever since seeing the picture of the wolf-like creature on the holographic display back at the assembly room in the Estate, Sarah had been secretly worrying over their first encounter with one. She’d done some preliminary research, but it looked like for the most part the creatures had been confined to research facilities. However, there were two unverifiable reports the day before they’d arrived of
something
roaming in the north-eastern parts of London, on the outskirts, and another report on the other side of the city about the slaughter of several live-stock.

The police reports were sealed and confidential, but a few pictures had made the headlines. It looked like something big had torn the animals apart, and even through the grainy pictures, she could make out claw marks. They were too big to account for any kind of terrestrial mammal in the London area. Through easy deduction, that meant that either Dr. Golding had lost track of some of his specimens, or he was giving them a beta-test in the field.

Either way, it was only a matter of time before a person got in the way, and she already knew how that would end.

“Done?” She hissed to him, scanning left and right. There was no sign of any guards or security. Not even a camera or CCTV, which seemed quite out of sorts for London.

“Almost,” Connor replied, and there was a definitive snip as he cleared the last piece of wire and removed a small semi-circular chunk of the fence.

As they sneaked in, the scent suddenly changed and they both looked at each other. It wasn’t a man-made smell; it was organic. Something that seemed to catch at both their memories like a burr that wouldn’t let go, and yet they couldn’t put their fingers on it. Whatever it was, it was alive.

“That portable,” Sarah said, crouching low and indicating a giant metal shack with a light on inside. All the machinery had gone quiet for the night, and all they could hear was their own breathing and the small scramble of rocks and pebbles misfiring underfoot.

Carefully, Connor boosted her up and she peeked through the window. There was one person inside, bald and with a slight paunch and gold-rimmed glasses. He was bent over a computer screen and it looked like he was frustrated. He kept stabbing at the keyboard in front of him.
One of Golding’s friends, no doubt
, she thought and indicated for Connor to let her down.

“Let’s try the other one,” she said.

“What are we even looking for?”

She had been formulating a plan in her head for a while. Assuming the badges that had been mysteriously dropped off
were
from someone trying to help them, it stood to reason that it might give them access to the facility. On the other hand, if it was a trap, it was a good idea, like Connor had said, to do some reconnaissance.

“Anything that can verify our suspicions,” she hissed back, “tomorrow we’ll give those badges a try and see if we can get inside this place legitimately. In the meantime…”

“You know if they catch us, it’s just going to be
more
difficult to get in tomorrow,” he sighed.

“Hush! You’ll jinx us,” she said and excitedly ran to the next portable.

She was enjoying this too much, and he was worried. Even though she was wiser than him in many ways, there was still something childish in her behavior. If he didn’t keep it in order, it could get both of them in serious trouble.

The next portable was unlocked and they both slunk in. She turned on a small flashlight and booted up the laptop. A slew of files immediately popped up and Connor turned back to the door.

“Shit,” he murmured.

“What is it?” Sarah said over her shoulder. She was hard at work transferring every file she could find onto a small USB stick around her neck.

“I can’t tell, wrong angle. But it looks like our cover was blown. There’s some movement near the fence. They might have found our little sabotage. Do you have what you need?”

“Almost,” she said, and with a final click powered down the laptop and stuffed the USB back under her leather jacket between her breasts, and zipped it up to her collar.

“Good, I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here.”

As they exited the portable, there was a cry from the far side of the facility, and they saw a wavering flashlight stumbling through the darkness.
Shit
, she repeated. She had expected to have more time, but they’d managed to find the fence and the hole. Their route of escape was  cut off.

“Well, what now, dear?”

“We can’t let them see our faces,” she said, and plastered herself against the portable. In the shadows they were practically invisible, but she could already make out a muted voice chatting something nervously into a walkie-talkie.

“That’s the call for backup,” Connor repeated. He seemed more nervous than usual, and was sweating. “Make a run for it?”

“Too risky,” she said and bit her lip. “I have an idea but you’re not going to like it.”

From somewhere inside the facility there was a loud, creaking sound. The guard on duty heard a voice reply over his walkie-talkie and nodded. Behind her, Connor pulled down his coat and slipped out of his clothes until he was standing nude. He looked almost comical, shivering and pale, and he had a very disgruntled look on his face.

“This part of the mission we leave
out
of the report,” he said and bent over forward.

Just as he began his transformation, Sarah detected the scent again – it was coming from deeper inside the facility, and she couldn’t localize it. It had a musk to it, like the kind that inhabited the coat of an old pelt, or a shaggy shock of hair. It was animal;  rough, wild, and rugged. She swallowed and looked back at Connor.

His face extended, lengthening at the nose and sprouting thick brown fur. His long snout moved up and down as if he were stretching his jaw, and his shoulders grew. A large hump sprouted until his head was nearly a foot and a half below it, testament to his form as a Bear. He had always been lean when in Form, but over the years he’d spent at the Greyback Estate with Sarah, his form had changed somewhat. He was no longer the lanky creature full of athleticism. In many ways, he had grown larger, as if filling out, and even now, she held back a gasp at his size.

He was larger than she could ever be. Yet, his eyes were still Connor, and he took a step forward, his huge paw softening on the gravel, and nudged her hip with his wet black nose. His ears twitched when he caught the scent too.

“I know,” she murmured, “it’s one of them.”

She stuffed Connor’s shed clothes into her own backpack and he raised himself up a bit, as she wriggled under him, gripping her legs around his huge girth and sinking her fingers into his fur. It wasn’t a particularly graceful plan, but it might work. He had the strength to plow through the fence, and the stamina of a Bear would get them far enough away before they could lay in pursuit. In theory.

As long as she was able to hold on.

She closed her eyes, and Connor seemed to sense his fur and tried to raise himself up further. She sunk into his fur, and let the warm smell of him cover her. She could hear Connor shifting his giant skull left and right, waiting for the right opportunity to burst into action. She held her breath.

When he took off, she almost slipped and struggled harder to hold on. The muscles in her arms felt like they were going to snap, but she grit her teeth and tried her best to remain under him. Occasionally her feet would slip, bouncing off the gravel, and she’d try to grapple for purchase again.

Then she saw one of them through a gap in Connor’s legs.

The guard had called for backup, and the backup just happened to be what Dr. Golding kept in his basement, like some warped and twisted Frankenstein’s monster. It was canine in form, and only slightly smaller than Connor. But there was something inhumanely vicious about it, and she could only think one word.
Werewolf
.

Its long snout was bared and glistening fangs protruded hungrily. Two of them were bent low, sniffing the ground, and their necks snapped alert when they saw the Bear making for a getaway. A pause, hardly a heartbeat, and they broke into a Doberman stride, their long sleek legs pumping harder. Their eyes were another matter.

She had seen the sort of bloodlust that could overtake a Bear, if they let themselves become too much of one or the other. But she had never seen a creature so entirely possessed by rage as these two. Their eyes were bloodshot and bulged, as if they were trying to force them out of their own skulls, and a loud hoarse growling chatter issued between both of them.

They’re communicating
, she realized. If they had been human once, they were so far separated from their origins that nothing could save them.

“Run,” she almost gasped into Connor’s collar.

He was almost at the gate when one of the wolves leaped toward him, and she could see it all as if it were in slow motion. The monster’s jaws opened and came down hard on Connor, who barked loudly in pain but refused to slow down. Claws like surgical tools raked into his shoulder, trying to paralyze his movement, but still Connor fought through the pain and the weight of his body carried him toward the small hole in the fence.