Panthera Spelaea

I felt the ship turn and the engines rev up as we turned away from the Israeli coastline. “What’s going on?”

“If Art busts out of his office, do you want him spotted by the coastal patrol?” Zach shook his head. “This happens every few years when something sets him off, and his bear takes control. It’s a good thing it happened in his office. My people have locked it down, and it’s a reinforced structure that even a Cave Bear can’t beat his way out of.” He looked back at the door as it shuddered from a heavy impact. “We think.”

The two of us listened as Art’s prehistoric bear destroyed his office. The reinforced doors and bulletproof glass windows held up, keeping the crew safe, but he wasn’t calming down. Ten minutes later, we were well away from other boats, and it was time to act. “How long is he like this?”

“The last time he got in a rage was two years ago, and we had to take him down with tranquilizer guns. That’s pretty dangerous for the shooters, as the drugs don’t work instantly,” Zach replied. He was getting nervous. “The office will be a total loss, but I’m worried he’ll get out and hurt someone if he doesn’t calm down soon.”

“Zach, can you figure out a way to let him out safely?”

“The door locks are electromagnetic, controlled from the security center. If Art hasn’t damaged them, we can remotely open the doors.”

I nodded. “Get up out of the way and tell them to open the doors when I signal you. I’ve got an idea on how to snap his bear out of this rage.”

“Are you sure? He could rip your throat out with one swipe of his paw!”

“Rage will cloud his actions, and I’m immortal too. I’ll be fine,” I told him.

He didn’t look convinced. “Your funeral.” Zach moved off, talking on a walkie-talkie as he headed for the ladder going up to the bridge. While he moved, I took off my shoes, shirt, and pants, stacking them neatly under the structure of the helicopter landing pad. If I had to switch, I wouldn’t ruin my clothes. Wearing only my boxer shorts, I gave the thumbs-up to Zach. A moment later, I heard a loud click and the doors to Art’s office began to open.

The Cave Bear burst out into the morning light, standing to his full ten-foot height and roaring in outrage. He stopped when he spotted me, dropping back to all fours. Now that he had a focus for his rage, he charged.

I stood in place, waiting for the seventeen-hundred-pound mass of muscle and claws to reach me. Art didn’t slow down as he jumped onto the landing pad and lunged for my throat with his jaws open. I was ready, expecting him to focus on my neck, and dropped onto my back under him. As his body tried to react, I planted both feet on his chest and used my Lion strength to push up. Art’s momentum now worked against him as he flew over the railing and into the Mediterranean sea.

I scrambled back to my feet and yelled, “MAN OVERBOARD!” The water shocked the Bear out of his rage, and I pointed down the port side as Art’s human form frantically swam clear of the yacht.

“MAN OVERBOARD, MAN OVERBOARD, PORT SIDE. MAN YOUR STATIONS,” the ship’s PA system called out as the yacht heeled over to starboard. The turn moved the stern away from the swimmer, and I felt the screws stop turning to prevent him from getting pulled under and chopped into pieces.

I kept pointing at Art’s floating head as the yacht continued its turn. The well-trained crew used binoculars to track him as they mustered, except those deck crew members busy launching the tender and jet-skis. The Captain skillfully stopped the Elements upwind of Art a minute after the first jetski reached him and pulled him on board. “MEDICAL TEAM TO THE SWIM PLATFORM,” the PA announced.

I could see why. The barnacles on the port side had chewed up Art’s skin, and he was bleeding from his left arm and side. The jetski pulled up to the stern, and crew members helped their boss aboard. Doc Margaret covered the worst of the wounds with a sterile pad and walked him inside.

The Captain secured from Man Overboard stations, directing all station leads to complete the muster and conduct a critique. I heard this from the radio on the hip of one of the four bow lookouts that had run to their helicopter pad station. “You should get that looked at,” one of the stewards said as she took my shirt and held it over my bleeding right shoulder. Art’s claws hadn’t missed me completely. “It looks deep.”

“I’ll be fine, Nikita,” I said. I hadn’t met her before, but her name was on her crew uniform.

“I’ll escort you to Medical just in case,” she replied. One of her coworkers wrapped the shirt tightly over the wound as she kept hand pressure on it. Another crew member ran up with a towel, wiping the blood from my arm and then getting what had dripped onto the deck. I hadn’t even noticed the wound in the adrenaline of the attack, but now the pain was there.

“I’ll be healed in a few hours,” I protested as she led me off.

“But you’re dripping blood on my deck right now,” she argued. She kept the pressure on as we went down to Medical. I could hear Art protesting that he was fine before we got to the door. “Maybe we should wait for him to leave.”

“I think the swim calmed him down a bit.” I knocked, then announced that I was coming in for treatment. Doc told us to enter. “You all right, Art?”

“I’m fine,” he said as we walked into the treatment room. He was sitting on the edge of the table as Doc worked on the scrapes on his arm. “I’m fucking IMMORTAL, and Doc here insists on cleaning out and disinfecting the cuts.”

“I’m done now, you big baby,” Doc Margaret said as she took off her gloves and turned around. “What happened to you?”

“He clawed my shoulder on the way out,” I said.

“Get out of here, Boss. That wound looks serious.” Art apologized for losing control as he left, patting my good shoulder.

A minute later, Doc had the examining table ready with me on it. She cut away the shirt, and blood started spurting out again. She worked quickly, sewing the small artery back together to stop the bleeding. She injected Lidocaine into the area before giving me a dozen internal and three dozen external stitches on the two parallel gashes. After a final cleaning, she wrapped the shoulder with gauze. When done, she put my arm in a sling and adjusted the straps. “Wear this sling until after lunch, and then I’ll take the stitches out,” she instructed me as I sat up.

“Why even bother? I’ll heal anyway in a few hours.”

She pointed her finger at my face. “Just because you can survive an infection doesn’t mean you have to GET one, John. It’s a standard medical practice, and you’ll heal faster now. Now, get out of my clinic and stop wrestling bears!”

“Yes, Ma’am.” I looked at the bloody rag in the garbage. “My shirt?”

“You can go without until that shoulder heals. I don’t want you moving it around at all. Those claws nearly reached the bone.”

I went out the door to find Nikita waiting for me. “You don’t have to wait on me. I know my way around,” I said.

“I wanted to talk to you, and this is as good a time as any,” she said as we walked towards the ladder leading to the upper decks. “I’d like to work for you and your mates.”

I stopped, turning towards her. “Why?”

“I’m qualified to be a nanny, but on this boat, there isn’t a call for that. I’m stuck as a junior stew for years, and I don’t like the yacht life,” she confessed. “I want to work for you, and I want to go to school in America. With a student visa, I can help your mates while I work on my degree in education. I’m a hard worker, good with babies, and you’ll need a household staff that knows about your kind.”

“Will Art let you leave?”

“He won’t stand in the way. After what he did today, I think he owes you.”

Damn. It didn’t take long for the morning conversation to spread through the ship’s crew. I pulled out my phone and took Nikita’s photo, then texted my number to her phone. “Send me your resume, and I’ll bring it up with my mates. If they agree, I’ll talk to Art about transferring you to my household.”

“Thank you,” she said as we reached my cabin. I went inside, sitting down on the chair and closing my eyes. I woke an hour later, the pain in my shoulder nearly gone, but my back was sore. I’d slept wrong, or I was suffering the effects of leg-pressing a ton of angry bear over my head. I hadn’t packed extra clothes, so I called Housekeeping and asked if they could send a shirt and swim trunks in my size to my room.

Five minutes later, I was submerged to my chest in the hot tub, letting my eyes close as the jets eased my back muscles. I was a little shocked when I sensed Art approaching. He tossed his robe into one of the deck chairs and settled his hairy body down into the large tub. “How are you doing, Art?”

“More embarrassed than anything,” he replied. “I’ve healed up now, but I trashed my office completely. Thank you for snapping me out of it.”

“Zach says that happens every few years. Is it going to happen to me?”

“I think it already did when your lion went wild in the Moscow park,” he replied. “It’s one of the reasons we have to be careful of our surroundings and those around us.”

“I guess,” I said. “What happens now?”

“Your news changes everything,” Art replied. “Why didn’t Edward just tell me that Alexandra was his mate?”

“Your reaction to the news is one reason,” I replied. “The other is that Edward was afraid your hatred of Abrahmov would extend to his daughter, and that would put the two of you at war. He is keeping Alexandra safe while I negotiate the peace.”

“I could never harm a mate, John. Mates are sacred to our kind, and as you said, they are worth laying down your life for. I miss Elizabeth every single day, and I pray to find a mate again every night. Edward never mated until now, so he’s just discovering how strong that bond is.”

I let out a breath. “So Alexandra is safe from you?”

“Of course. I’ll protect her as if she was my own child.” He splashed some of the water in his face. “I had a lot of time to think about my behavior today, and I wasn’t pleased with it. I wanted to bring the Switchers together under my leadership, yet all I did was unite you in fear of me. All of you going into hiding was a bitter pill to swallow.”

I nodded. “We are happy to work with you but will never work FOR you,” I said. “When I realized how you’d set up the steel stocks to force us to vote your way, I wasn’t happy. I knew if I voted against your wishes with them, you’d ruin me too.”

Art waved his hand. “It was never you that I wanted to destroy. I was planning to buy your shares after the criminal investigations could tie her to Mikhail’s abuses. Destroying Mikhail’s legacy was my vengeance, not yours. Now I can’t even do that! The Gods do have a sense of humor.” He let out a laugh. “My God, imagine me finding out Alexandra was MY mate! The daughter of my arch-enemy!”

I smirked at the thought. “You wish. Alexandra’s got business smarts and is hot as Houston blacktop,” I replied. “You’d get over it pretty fast.”

“Soon, I hope. My children and their children are getting older, and without a mate, I’ll eventually lose my loyal help.”

“What about her company?”

“We make money, of course,” Art said. “Edward brings his shares back with Alexandra’s. You can sell off your shares to them when the estate clears probate. If she’s as good as you say, the company will bounce back by then. I can use my influence to get the investigations closed and fix the supply problems I caused, and we’ll all get rich.”

“Dad says I should diversify, that having my wealth in a single company is a bad idea.”

“You should listen to him, John. I did a lot of research on your family after you came to my attention, and I liked what I saw. When you trust me again, I have some ideas on ways our families can help each other.”

“I’d like that, but I have to trust you first. You did offer to sell my carcass off, you know.”

Art rolled his eyes. “Mikhail knew about our kind, and I needed to know how desperate he was. I made an offer he could never accept, and we both knew it. There was no way I would have let Mikhail gain immortality. He was never leaving that island alive, even if it meant you all died.”

“You’d kill my mates?”

“You would want Svetlana and Anna enslaved by the bond to that monster?”

“No,” I finally said. A steward told us that lunch would be in twenty minutes, and I’d had enough of the hot tub by now. I stood up and exited the tub. “Do I need to be dressed? Doc told me I couldn’t put a shirt on until after lunch.”

“Get him a robe,” Art directed the steward. “Can’t piss off the Doc.” The girl returned with a plush robe and helped me put it on with one arm. “I need to meet with Edward and Alexandra in person,” Art told me. “Bury the hatchet once and for all.”

“I’ll set it up, but it will be on their territory or mine,” I told him.

“Just tell me where and when.”

I sat down to dinner, thankful that my mission was over and I didn’t need to kill him.