Page 24 of Bears Behaving Badly
David smiled when he saw the downstairs setup: on the wall beside the door, about four feet up, there was a bright-yellow plastic button five inches across that could be slapped with a palm or paw, or nudged with a nose. He was willing to bet there was one on the other side, too.
Time to find out. He undressed and, mindful of colleague-guest status, folded his clothes and set them neatly aside in the guest room closest to the sliding door. Hit the button. Took a breath.
The actual physical change was the best, most terrible part. His muscles shifted and tore, his bones cracked and remade themselves, fur sprouted, teeth lengthened while his jaw reshaped itself, fingernails morphed into four-inch-long claws. His frame lengthened to seven feet. When his knees and elbows and wrists and ankles all snapped backward, forcing him to all fours, he was five feet at the shoulder. His senses sharpened with no adjustment period; for these few seconds, scents overwhelmed him and the sounds of his transformation were deafening. His mass increased to 1,200 pounds, his hind feet lengthened to fourteen inches.Ursus actos californicus, the California grizzly bear, with its russet fur, blond tips, and characteristic hump, has been extinct since 1922 because they couldn’t adapt to Stables encroaching on their territory.
But David Auberon wasn’t a Stable grizzly bear, locked into the same shape from birth to death. So that was all right.
It was the delicious agony of pulling off a scab every time. He could feel his mind receding into quasi-sentience as his senses adjusted to being ten, thirty, a hundred times stronger, as everything gotbiggerandbrighterandmore, as his bipedal concerns
(rent, unrequited crush, oil change, Skittles)
faded, to be replaced by other, simpler worries
(new territory, potential intruders, potential mate, protect cub, Skittles).
He heard the door slide shut behind him and promptly forgot about it and the house and Caro Daniels and the kit becausewoodsandforestandwaterandprey. In five seconds, he reached the woods, forty yards away, where everything smelled like sunshine and moss and food.
And better than food, Her scent was everywhere. These wereHerwoods, and he was in them, and he’d like to be Hers, too, but it wouldn’t happen, She needed no mate and it was better that they were
(safe)
snug in Her den and that was enough
(except it wasn’t)
(am I sad?)
and now he could pick up the lesser scent, the
(scarface fighter)
jackal and it made him want to fight and then he remembered the jackal was in Her den so no-no-no fighting.
He prowled and swam and ate a trout
(all wriggling and shiny and tastes like summer)
and when the sun was down and he had satisfied himself they were
(safe)
alone he remembered his other self
(two legs no fur too small can’t smell but can think and talk-talk-talk)
and loped back to Her and there was the door-that-moved and there She was, looking down at him from the way-up part of Her den and showing Her teeth but not to fight. Alone by choice, like him.
“Damn, David. You aregorgeous.”
No, not to fight. And that was good; he didn’t want to fight Her, he’d rather hunt for Her.
And that’s something his other self could do, too.
Chapter 10
“Nooooooo.”
“I assure you, yes.”
