Accidental Acquisition (Kindred)

Oh my God, Jillian thought, staring up at him. He’s…he looks like some kind of bear! A greenish grey Grizzly bear or something!

Which was pretty much true. Except, the bear-thing that Kalis had become didn’t drop to all fours like a regular Grizzly would. It seemed to be completely bipedal—firmly planted on two feet as it slashed at the surprised Trollox with its paws, tipped in long, sharp, curving talons.

Wait, paws plural? How is that possible? I saw his hand chopped off!

But of course, the fact that the big Kindred now had two hands again—or rather paws—instead of one, wasn’t nearly the strangest thing she was witnessing. Nor was it the most terrifying.

Kalis, as a person was extremely calm and even tempered—at least as far as she had seen during their short acquaintance. But Kalis as a giant green Grizzly bear was anything but calm. In fact, he seemed to be completely losing his shit.

She watched as Ripper swung his cleaver halfheartedly and then began backing away. Just like bullies everywhere, the Trollox was also a coward. Now that he was fighting a monster bigger than him, instead of a Kindred with only one hand, he wanted nothing to do with the altercation he had started.

But Kalis’s beast wasn’t going to let him get away so easily.

The monstrous creature—which must have stood twelve or thirteen feet high—charged forward, roaring so loudly it made Jillian’s eardrums bulge. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears, but the three-headed Trollox still had hold of her, so she couldn’t.

The ground seemed to tremble as the beast ran at Ripper. A stall across from her had stacks of heavy gourds piled on top of each other—they all fell down and splattered greenish-purple guts and pink seeds across the ground. Another stall owner made a grab for a delicate glass vase filled with some kind of bright blue liquor. But when he caught a look at the savage snarl on the beast’s face, he went pale and backed away, heedless as the vase toppled over, shattering and spilling its contents everywhere.

Jillian watched in awe and shock as the beast reached out with one huge paw and batted Ripper’s red-eyed head right off his shoulders. It was a seemingly casual move—the beast didn’t appear to put much effort into it. But a moment later, the head went rolling in the dust, its red eyes still opening and closing in apparent astonishment.

“Our head! Our second-best head!” Ripper’s yellow-eyed head howled. Beside it, the stump of the red-eyed head was pumping black, tarry goo which seemed to be the Trollox version of blood.

Kalis’s beast made no answer—probably because it couldn’t talk with that mouthful of steak knives, Jillian thought numbly. It simply charged forward again and caught the fleeing Trollox as Ripper tried to run. Lifting the struggling male in both paws, it leaned over, spread its jaws, and bit the yellow-eyed head off as neatly as a man might bite the end off a carrot.

It didn’t eat the head, though, Jillian saw, (because she couldn’t look away, even though she desperately wanted to.) Instead it spit out the yellow-eyed head and dropped the still-twitching carcass of the Trollox to the dirty ground where it lay there, leaking black tar onto the dusty road.

Then it turned towards Jillian.

22

Oh my God, I’m going to die. This is how I die, Jillian thought numbly as the enormous greenish-gray Grizzly bear rushed towards her. It was snarling as it came, its long white teeth streaked black with Trollox blood, its eyes blood-red with fury. The sight woke an old memory in her mind—a trauma she had long sought to bury came rushing to the surface.

It’s going to kill me—it’s going to rip my head off! Or maybe my arms and legs. I’m going to end up like cousin Lucy—or I’ll be dead.

She wanted desperately to run but she was frozen to the spot—as was the three-headed Trollox behind her. Jillian thought faintly of how huge and menacing she’d thought the Trolloxes were when she’d first encountered one. Anyone would feel that way about a ten-foot tall being who looked like an ogre from a fairytale. But the beast Kalis had turned into made the Trollox still holding her looked small and weak by comparison.

But not as small and weak as me, she thought, feeling sick with fright as images from her childhood rushed at her like a speeding train. Images she’d tried desperately hard to bury. I’m definitely the easiest prey in this situation. That thing could eat me in two bites—one if it’s especially hungry.

Of course, it had spit out the Trollox head, but maybe that was because Trollox meat tasted nasty. She was probably much more to its liking—tender and juicy, considering her overly generous curves. The enormous Grizzly would eat her like a strip of bacon and lick its lips for more. It would rip off her face, like poor Lucy…