Burn Bright (Alpha & Omega #5)(81)

The Kodiak, the grizzly’s bigger, stronger brother, outweighed Charles five to one, and it was very nearly as quick as he was. But it wasn’t the first bear Charles had fought, not even the first Kodiak. He preferred to leave them alone if he could—even a werewolf had its limits, and a Kodiak was very close to them. But there were times, like now, when the fight could not be avoided.

Charles was more maneuverable and—Brother Wolf was certain after the first few minutes of battle—more experienced at utilizing the abilities of Brother Wolf’s form than the skinwalker was used to using the bear’s form.

Even so, the bear made the skinwalker much more formidable and less clumsy than he’d been as a wolf. This bear form was something he’d fought in before.

When dealing with a predator larger than he, Charles liked to use the hit-and-run method of fighting. It was less effective against the bear than he liked—the bear had a thick, tough hide covered by thick, tough fur and a layer of fat beneath that. Although Charles was able to get a lot of surface cuts in, they weren’t deep enough to be anything more than annoying. But engaging the bear fully was likely to end up with Charles flattened under the bear’s greater strength. The trick to fighting bears was to tire them out.

The single hit the bear had gotten in had cracked three ribs. Charles, remembering just in time that he could draw upon the pack’s strength for healing, managed to stay maneuverable, though he didn’t heal them entirely.

Even with pack magic, the bones were likely to remain fragile for a day or two, and a little pain would remind him of that. Additionally, he didn’t want to use up all that he could draw from the pack. It had taken a lot of power to free Wellesley, and although there were some real heavy hitters in his pack, he didn’t have the experience to know what the limits were.

He learned something about the skinwalker in the opening bit of hit-and-run, too. Most of the time, Charles was fighting the bear’s intelligence and not the skinwalker’s. Most of the time, the bear fought like a bear. Which was smart on the part of the skinwalker because that bear knew how to fight.

But if he was fighting a bear, there were some things Charles could do.

He got in a second deep bite on the bear’s flank, right on top of a previous wound—and this time his fangs dug into meat. It was also a place the bear couldn’t reach him, so he held on until the bear’s flesh began to give under his fangs.

He waited until the bear started to move, just before the meat would have given way and dumped Charles on the ground. Then, digging in with all four clawed feet, Charles scrambled right over the top of the beast.

He took the opportunity to attempt to dig into the bear’s spine, just behind the ribs, where there was the least flesh protecting it. His teeth closed on bone, but when the bear rolled, he let the grip go.

Charles ran and turned to face the bear from a distance of about twenty feet. It wasn’t a safe distance—he didn’t want a safe distance. His only intention was to fight as long as possible, to give Anna time to warn everyone.

He’d done more damage than he’d thought. A chunk of bear hide the size of a hand towel had been pulled to the side, flapping like a loose horse blanket. Blood scented the air and dripped onto the ground. But when the bear moved, it was clear that, gruesome as it was, it was only a flesh wound, impressive but minor, and it wasn’t bleeding enough to weaken him.

But it hurt.

The great bear reared up and roared, its upright form nearly ten feet tall. Any creature more intelligent than a bear would have been too smart to do that with the steep slope of the mountain behind it. Charles took a running leap and hit the bear in the face with his body, sending the bear tumbling backward down the side of the mountain. The beast’s teeth opened a gash in Charles’s shoulder, but it hadn’t been expecting the move, so it was slow. It wasn’t able to get a good hold, and Charles fell free.

Charles tumbled a few paces but was back on his feet and harrying the bear as it rolled the fifty yards or so of very steep, rocky ground all the way to the bottom. When it rolled to a stop, before it could get its feet under it, Charles landed on its back and went for the spine, now showing whitely in its bed of flesh.

He closed his jaws on bone and shook as hard as he could. Beneath him, the bear tried first to get to its feet—and then just to roll over. But it had fallen awkwardly, and Charles was able to keep it from finding the leverage to do much more than wiggle. It gave a hard lurch … and the spine separated with a pop and a grisly crunch.

The bear’s rear quarters fell limp, and Charles bounded away from the still-dangerous front end. The bear’s blue human eyes regarded him balefully as it roared and snapped its teeth together.

Charles growled, showing the skinwalker his own fangs. He stayed back as his opponent thrashed and struggled—apparently paying no attention to anything other than reaching Charles. Charles gradually became aware of aching muscles, stiffness in his left shoulder, and the persistent ache of his ribs.

Eventually, the blood loss, made worse by the bear’s refusal to be still, won out. The giant beast gave one last heave and collapsed on the torn-up ground. It breathed four times, then the air whooshed out with a sigh, and the blue eyes glazed over.

Charles waited. He did not remember a time that his grandfather had been wrong about something. Charles was not a holy man, and so he should not have killed the skinwalker. But unarguably, the skinwalker in the bear’s form lay dead. Charles’s ears could not pick up the sound of his enemy’s heart beating. He waited until his nose told him that death had begun its work, the body had started to decompose, before he decided that his grandfather had been mistaken. Werewolves were not native to this continent, perhaps that was why his grandfather had not mentioned werewolves as a way to kill skinwalkers.