M-16 rounds peppered Sigurd’s polar bear body in an orgy of hailstorm violence, ripping through fur, flesh and muscle. With a roar he launched himself out of the cloud of debris, straight at Maksim, reaching him in two bounds and smashing him over with a vicious swipe of his paw. His opponent’s body flew back and crashed through two widescreen monitors, destroying them in a shower of sparks and smoke, and the Ukrainian slumped over, knocked unconscious.
Sigurd staggered back, reeling from the severity of his injuries. His white coat was spattered now with glistening red, and his vision began to blur as pain shot through his limbs. He roared and howled through the noxious smoke pouring out of the destroyed computer monitors, stumbling backwards on weakening limbs.
No mercy would be shown here though; through the wall of blue smoke a huge shape charged: a grizzly bear. Sigurd rallied from his injuries to meet the beast, and the two behemoths met in a wall-shaking crash in the centre of the room, each lunging with dragon-like jaws and slashing with raking claws. They struggled in a deadly duel of force, smashing furniture into splinters and hurling each other against walls that cracked and shuddered from the momentum of their bodies. Sigurd was badly injured from the smattering of assault rifle bullets and the resulting blood loss, but he, like many of the ancient beastwalkers, had over the centuries developed powers beyond mere shapeshifting, powers that verged on the superhuman in their intensity – and one of Sigurd’s powers, a skill he had been honing for almost a thousand years, was that of brutal, elephantine strength.
A red aura shimmered around the edges of his paws, and with a resounding roar he swiped his right paw in a heavy cross that sent the grizzly stumbling back in shock. The smashing force would have torn the head off of any man’s shoulders, and even for the grizzly bear, with his four-inch-thick skull, the blow felt as if it had been struck by an ogre wielding a sledgehammer.
Sigurd wasted no time in pressing his advantage now that his opponent was stunned and on his back foot; he blazed forward in a multi-hit mauling offensive, hammering his foe with blow after supercharged blow, and it was all that the grizzly could do to remain upright under this rain of devastating attacks. Then, with a lunge of his massive polar bear jaws, which were also tinged with the glowing red aura of power, Sigurd sank his teeth into the grizzly’s shoulder, biting down with titanic force. With a flick of his neck and shoulders, he hurled the huge bear across the room, and the creature’s enormous body crashed into a wooden cabinet, which exploded in a rapidly expanding cloud of dust, shattered plywood and raining papers. The grizzly lay there, rumbling a low growl of pain, and Sigurd shifted into his human form.
He stood panting and bleeding, searching the room for the prize.
Parvati, however, was not there; the elevator had already whisked her and Jun away, up to the roof, from whence could be heard the deep pulsing throb of the helicopter as it began to ascend. Sigurd ran over to the elevator and hammered the button to call it down, but it had already been disabled. Now, over and above the heady adrenalin drenching the inside of every vein and artery in his body with its liquid power, a new sensation started snaking its thorny tendrils through every cubic inch of his body: rage.
He locked his eyes into those of the grizzly, burning his wrath across the gulf of space between them and pushing it directly into his foe’s brain. The grizzly also transformed into human form, and there, amidst the settling debris of the destroyed cabinet, lay Lightning Bird.
‘You’re too late, Sigurd. She’s gone,’ he gasped, his voice weak and reedy.
‘Then you will tell me where she is going, Indian,’ Sigurd growled in response.
‘You will never find Parvati. Never. She’ll be moved her far from here, far beyond your reach.’
A white-hot anger blazed in Sigurd’s pale eyes.
‘I will make you tell me, I guarantee that, you worthless maggot. You can do it now, and I’ll give you a quick death … or you can do it after most of your insides have been spread across this room like a living rug as I slowly eat you alive.’
Lightning Bird glowered at him, and a stony defiance steeled his gaze.
‘I do not fear you, slaver,’ he muttered. ‘You … Huntsmen, Alliance, you’re all the same. Vile, self-serving brutes and cowards, all of you. And you, you’re even worse than them. A traitor to your own kind, an assistant to those who are bent on destroying everything green and good that is left in this world. Tell me, traitor, is whatever power, whatever money they offered you going to be worth it when it all ends? When everything alive finally dies, when they’ve poisoned the water and the air so much that not even weeds or bacteria can survive? What then will you do with all your money and power? You filth … you disgust me.’ Lightning Bird spat a slick of blood and saliva onto the carpet and snarled before he continued. ‘Go on then, kill me. Get it over with. You won’t get a single word out of me.’
‘You think you know what drives me, Indian, but trust me, you don’t. You see, the Huntsmen don’t even know I’m here. I need to take Parvati alive, because I need what is hidden in her brain. You don’t know what my true goals are, and neither do those fucking Huntsmen.’
Lightning Bird stared in sudden confusion at Sigurd.
‘To
