Black Bear Rising: A BWWM Paranormal Romance (Black Bear Saga Book 1) (3 page)

The man spun around as they watched him. His hands sprung up to his throat. He couldn't breath, he scratched at his throat as something hot burned inside him. He tried to scream and no sound came out. His nails raked at the flesh as the burning sensation spread through his body. He fell to the ground thrashing about. His feet scratched in the leaf litter as he spasmed, everything was going dark. He could hear a noise like a river rushing over a rocky bed as he scratched at his throat drawing blood. The forest around him was beginning to darken as his lungs burnt and his body felt like it was burning up from within.

The forest split before him, bright light flooded in as he fell towards the tear. He rolled over and the forest was gone. He was laying on the ground, his torso sticking out of pile of steaming flesh. Fur and bone was embedded in the oozing pile and the man coughed and spluttered as he pulled himself out of it. Clouds of dust rose up as he coughed up lungfuls of a clear liquid. Once his lungs where empty he rolled over onto his back and sucked in some air. His lungs filled for what felt like the first time and the man hollered and shouted at the sky.
 

A circle formed around him as he got up on his knees. Each man reached out and touched the throat of the newly born man, and then kissed their finger and looked to the sky. The tall man stood up, his body streaked with blood, bits of grass sticking to his body. He stood and flexed his arms and legs and then stopped and sniffed the air. He looked over at the carcass of the deer and ran to it. His stomach rumbled as spittle ran down his chin. He glanced back at the men watching him and then got on hands and knees and buried his face in the torn apart abdomen. He bit and ripped off great mouthfuls of the raw flesh, the still warm blood pouring down his throat. Every one of his senses tingled and throbbed.
 
He ate until he was full and then turned back to the watching men, his face covered with blood and gore. The men were on their knees bowing towards him. The oldest of the group raised his head and spoke in their ancient tongue. “Shaltar you have become one with the beast. You must now lead us south so we can vanquish our enemies.” Each of the men on their knees looked towards Shaltar and they all roared in unison. Shaltar stood before them dripping with blood and feeling the life force of a savage beast pulse behind his eyes. He looked to each man, sniffing the air before them and jutting his chest out. He stepped forward and threw his head back and roared. The deep rumbling bellow of the black bear came from deep inside Shaltar as his eyes darkened and his lips pulled back in an inhuman snarl.

Lewis “Button” Crail had spent most of his life behind bars. His first arrest had been for snatching an old woman’s bag as she walked down the street. He'd grabbed the bag easily enough from the woman and started to sprint away from her when he tripped on his laces and went sprawling onto the ground. A bull of a man who ran the corner store had seen the whole thing go down and he ran out and laid some serious punches to Lewis before he got up.He was knocked out cold and the next thing he knew he was waking up and being dragged into the back of a police car.

Back then he was a thin gaunt looking sprig of a guy, his clothes always seemed to hang off his angular frame making him look more stick like. He was the butt of the joke in his small group of would be street thugs and had grabbed the woman’s bag to show the others he was capable of being a tough guy. He could hear the peals of laughter as he face planted onto the pavement. Even the cops gave him a hard time as they drove him to the station. “You’re lucky that old woman didn't beat your skinny ass back there,” said the cop with crewcut and piggy features.
 

“She could have broke you over her leg like a twig,” said the other cop with the acne scars and mean eyes.“ They both laughed at this.

The abuse continued all the way to the station with the two cops making bad jokes about how skinny and weedy he was, how he would weigh more if he was wet, and what they would do to someone so powerless in prison.

The word prison chilled Lewis to the marrow as he imagined guys twice as big as him beating the crap out of his far weaker body. He spent the following night in a cell on his own, crying silently to himself and making all kinds of promises that he would go straight and turn himself around. He ended up getting a few hours of community service because it was a first offence and his blessed mother got his former english teacher to speak as a character witness on his behalf.

His brush with the law changed Lewis. He started working out aggressively. The first few months were hell, he’d puke if he pushed himself too hard, his arms and legs were always sore and his muscle mass didn't seem to be increasing. He was working out one day on the small bit of scrub grass that backed onto his mothers bungalow and she saw how determined he was to bulk up and surprised him by paying for six months at a community gym.
 

The gym changed his life forever. Within six months of joining it he was using steroids every days and hanging out with an assortment of criminals. The guys at the gym seemed so cool to Lewis, they had a swagger and a confidence he thought he would never have himself. One of the guys in the gym, a young guy who went by the name of Jaunty introduced him to steroids and hooked him up with a couple of free months. Once Lewis started to bulk up and his stash of steroids was running low Jaunty was more than happy to keep him supplied if he would provide some muscle while Jaunty made a couple of visits to collect from the tower blocks.

Lewis barely even thought about it and those runs with Jaunty turned into bigger and better things and set him firmly on the path which eventually lead him to his current place. Lewis had been on death row for three years for the murder of a young family in a bank heist gone wrong. He had been hopped up on a cornucopia of drugs and steroids at the time. A guy named Frank Cash who Lewis had never liked was part of the job. Cash was legendary for his appetites, he had to have more booze,more pussy and more drugs than anyone who hung out with him. Everything was a dick measuring contest to him and if someone couldn't keep up with him he was deemed as weak. Frank Cash was a last minute addition to the heist after another member got busted in a vice sweep of a famous flophouse. They needed someone for crowd control and Cash had a reputation and so got the job.

Halfway through the heist Cash snapped. He was hopped up on a cocktail of drugs from days of partying before the job. “Are you fucking looking at me?” he shouted to a woman cowering on the floor and clearly looking at nothing but the marble she was pressed against. “Hey did you see that,” Cash shouted in his high pitched voice. “This bitch was looking at me,” he said pointing the shotgun in her direction.
 

The woman was shaking on the floor and moaning,”No,no no.”

“Hey Lewis I think this bitch knows me, probably an old girlfriend,” Cash said grinning.

“Eyes on the prize,” Lewis said, “we’ll be out of here in less then sixty,” he said hoping to refocus Cash’s attention.

The noise of the shotgun blast reverberated around the bank, it was if someone had opened an airlock on a space station and all the air was sucked out. The woman lay dead on the floor from a shot to the back of the head from point blank range. Lewis pivoted towards Cash raising his gun. The woman’s husband who was lying close beside her began to crawl towards her body. Cash turned the gun towards the husband. Lewis could hear his breathing and nothing else. He pulled the trigger as Cash blasted the husband in the base of the spine. Lewis's first bullet whizzed by Cash's ear and he spun on his heals to fire back at Lewis.
 

Lewis unloaded his clip in Cash's direction, a pile of bank slips exploded close by as buck shot ripped through them. Cash went down on one knee as a bullet ripped a chunk from his thigh. He fumbled his shot gun and it spun across the marble floor. Cash's mouth was open in a wide silent O as he reached for the gun tucked into his belt. The next three bullets hit him in the chest knocking him backwards in a spray of blood. One of Lewis's bullets went wide and hit a small child curled up against his already dead fathers body. The child was killed instantly by the bullet from Lewis's gun.

Panic ensued and the two other members of the gang fled and left Lewis standing in shock looking down at the body of the child he had killed. Lewis was in a stupor when the cops arrived and was knocked to the ground by a blow to the back of his head with the butt of a shotgun. His head spilt open and would later need twenty stitches. He got sentenced to death for the murder of the child and was now awaiting his day of execution.

Henry tapped on the bars and Lewis looked up at him. Today Lewis was getting transferred to another prison out of state and Henry would be travelling with him, as well as six other guards. Lewis was nervous about the move, his whole life had been the cell he was in and any change to his surroundings made him feel uneasy. “We head out in the next hour,” Henry said, “have you put all you personnel belongs into the bag?” Lewis nodded. “Ok then drop it in the hatch and I’ll make sure its in the van.” Lewis pulled the metal hatch open in the wall and dropped in the prison issued bag which held the few items he owned, a comb, some tattered postcards, and a yellowing pulp fiction novel with a gumshoe with his wide brimmed fedora on the front cover. The hatch clanged shut and Henry retrieved the bag. Lewis looked at Henry as he walked away, an uneasy feeling in his gut.

Once Lewis was loaded into the van a young guard who he didn't recognise unchained his cuffs from the broad leather belt around his waist and fed a chain from his wrists to a bolt in the floor. Lewis sat back on the thin metal bench and rubbed his wrists. He had been stooped over as he waddled across the yard in his heavy chains and it felt good to be able to sit up straight again. The chain attached to the floor gave him enough lee way that he could reach up and scratch his nose. If he stretched any further the cuffs bit painfully into his wrists. His legs were shackled to the ground and his range of motion was limited to a slight shuffle of his feet forward or back. Two guards sat in the front of the van, two on either side of Lewis and two across from him. He recognised none of the men and had never seen them on duty on death row. “Is Henry not coming?” he asked the man in front of him.

“The guard stared at him and said, “You don't need to worry about that.”

Lewis looked around at the other guards, something didn't seem right. He noticed that they weren't wearing standard prison uniforms. “Where’s my stuff?” he asked.

The guard sitting across from him slipped a can of pepper spray from a belt loop and a billy club from another loop. “Keep talking big guy and you get a face full of this,” he said aiming the pepper spray in Lewis's direction, “followed by a busted head,” he said swishing the club through the air.

Lewis bowed his head and concentrated on the textured metal floor. He had heard prison tales about guards taking dangerous prisoners to remote places, all totally off the book and then killing them. The same story had been told several times to him in different prisons over the years. He had always dismissed it as nothing more than a cautionary tale inmates told each other, another case of us versus them taken to its logical conclusion.
 

The van started up and Lewis kept his head down as they drove. A cold sweat drenched his body as he tried to work out his options. Man you have no options he thought to himself. The least I can do is go down swinging he promised himself.

The van drove on for another two hours and Lewis kept perfectly still on his bench, regressing into a place in his mind where panic and fear didn't exist as he tried to convince himself that the prison stories he had heard, were nothing but fanciful tales told by bored prisoners to try to spook others. The stench of manure filled the air and the van turned off the main road. Lewis looked up and through the thin slits that ran around the rim of the van he could make out the shape of trees as they drove. The road was pitted and bumpy and the van sped along it. Am I rushing towards my death Lewis wondered as he slowly flexed his muscles to keep them awake. If he saw a chance he was going to try to snap one of the guards necks. If this was the end he would rather be killed in a hail of bullets instead of being tortured and beaten to death by some sadists.

The vans tires made a hum as the road changed from bare earth to flat concrete. The van slowed to a stop and the guards sitting in front of Lewis got up and opened the back door. They waved in the direction of someone outside Lewis's field of view. The guard who had threatened him earlier got out of the van and was joined by the one opposite him and they stood in the open doorway. He pulled out a box and tapped out a cigarette and passed one to the other guard. A third man joined them, mid twenties with blonde hair that looked nearly white and slicked back tight across his skull. He wore dark fatigues and had a heavy rubber apron on and thick soled rubber boots. The blonde man took the offered lighter and lit his cigarette, he looked in at Lewis.

“He’s a big one,” said the blonde man inhaling deeply on the cigarette.

“Strong too,” said the first guard.

“He’ll do the job,” said the blonde man as he ground the butt of his smoke under his heal.

Lewis’s mind raced. What the hell was going on he thought to himself. What sick games were these twisted freaks going to get up to. “What the fuck is going on?” he said to the blonde man.

He got up into the truck and looked Lewis up and down and said, “We are going to put you to work.”

Lewis’s veins in his neck bulged as he strained against his chains, his eyes were rimmed red. He kicked his legs against his shackles in vain. The blonde man chuckled, a sound soft and feminine. “Don't struggle too hard,” he said approaching him, “we want you to save you strength.” Lewis didn't see the blonde man uncapping the syringe behind his back and as he saw something silver arcing through the air towards his neck his first thought was that he was going to be stabbed with a shiv to make it look like a prison fight. The needle dug into his neck and he felt a hot surge spread through his limbs. He flexed his arms against his chains and they barely moved, he looked up at the blonde man and it was like he was watching him through a waterfall. It was too much effort for him to raise his head and it slumped to his chest. The last thing that bubbled to the surface of his mind before the sedative took place was that they have given him the lethal injection, I’m finally free Lewis thought as everything turned black.