Trouble Bruin Read Online Free PDF Page B

They could try to scramble up the walls of the pass, but by the time they got purchase with fingers or feet, their attackers would pull them back.
    She whipped back around to keep the first man in view. They probably looked like a soft target for bandits – one guy travelling with a bashed-up woman and a skinny kid. It probably seemed that taking whatever valuables and supplies they had would be like taking candy from a baby. Easy pickings.
    The bandits closed in.
    There was a terrifying roar, and all eyes turned to Art as he transformed into a gigantic bear. Fur rippled over his skin and his clothes tore, shreds of cloth fluttering to the floor as he turned into a towering beast. His handsome face morphed into a snarling snout, his fingers melted into monstrous paws, and he rose to his full height, bellowing his fury.
    Charlie caught Titch by the arm and pulled her back against the wall of the gully. For once, she didn’t kick up a fuss.
    The bandits snarled. The leader had spoken, but it was possible the others no longer could – they’d gone feral, or were right on the edge of it. Outside the Badlands, where the Council for Shifter Affairs monitored the shifter population, they’d be thrown into a detention center or, if they were all the way gone, put down. A silver bullet through the brain. Out here, it was the job of bounty hunters like Art to deal with them.
    The three men shifted, but without the power and grace of Art’s transformation. Their change was jerky and awkward, like bad stop-motion animation, and they howled and snarled as their bodies struggled between human and animal form. Bones cracked gruesomely as their limbs changed shape, interspersed with unpleasant gristly sounds. But within moments they were three wolves, scarred and mangy-looking but circling Art with foaming jaws and predatory intent.
    They leapt at Art in a vicious whirl of fur and fangs and claws. They snapped and barked, jaws dripping foam as they went for his throat and his belly. One of them ripped open his side, leaving his huge flank matted with dark blood. Another darted around his hind paws, biting and worrying, trying to upset his balance. If the three wolves could get him on the floor…
    The third bandit bunched and sprang, hurling itself upwards, and Art swept his massive forepaw in a broad, muscular arc, sending the wolf flying through the air. It hit the gully wall with a sharp, agonized yelp and tumbled heavily to the floor, all the air driven from its lungs in a blood-flecked grunt of pain.
    Before Charlie could stop her, Titch was running towards it, dodging nimbly around Art and the other two bandits where they were still locked in savage combat. As she reached it, the wolf whimpered and tried to drag itself away. Titch kicked it viciously in the ribcage.
    Charlie glanced around wildly for something to use as a weapon. A slender sapling had taken root in a crevice in the rock, and she wrapped both hands around it and heaved, wrenching it free. Then, wielding it like a club, she rushed towards Titch and the fallen wolf. A single blow to its skull knocked it out, and she and Titch clung together, breathing hard from anxiety and exertion.
    Unconscious, the wolf looked a sad specimen – underfed, with scraggy fur and a broken tooth in its frozen snarl. But Charlie knew that weak and starving wolves were all the more dangerous because they were desperate, and these bandits were feral, too – under the sway of their animal natures.
    Art was still struggling with their other two attackers, who were tag-teaming him – one keeping him fighting while the other withdrew to recover and lick its wounds before leaping back into the fray.
    Art was wounded, but he would win, there was no doubt about that. If Charlie slipped away now, taking Titch with her, they could easily make it to Cottonwood without a guide – it couldn’t be more than an hour’s walk away. And it wasn’t as if they’d be leaving Art to die. If he hadn’t