Blood Work (36 page)

Erin echoed my
thoughts. “This is not good.”

“It could be
better. What’s she doing?”

She studied
the phone screen. “Circling. At least I think so. Over there.” She
pointed and I turned down the closest street.

It took us to
a little cul-de-sac at the end of a street of older houses. The
very end of the street was a park with a playground surrounded by
tall trees and trimmed hedges. Erin looked out over the park, then
back at the phone, nodding.

“This is it.
She’s just circling fairly wide. What would that mean?”

I sucked air
in between my teeth. “Don’t know. She’s never done that before.
Stay here. I’m going to check this out.”

Should have
known better than to waste the breath. Erin just got out and joined
me at the front of the car. Still, I wasn’t going to leave it at
that.

“Really, Erin,
this is going to get pretty hairy. You should stay in the car.”

“Really,
Hawkins, you should stop being a chauvinistic pig. I might just
clock you if you don’t.”

I swallowed a
laugh. “Touché.” Cougar in both hands, I eased along the path to
the playground at the middle of the park. And then, just because
I’m that sort of thick-headed guy, I added, “Stay behind me.”

She stepped up
to my side, mirrored my slow stalk. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

The trees
closed in on us as we advanced. The moonlight filtered through,
limning shapes in pale grey, sliding across the wind-touched
foliage like quicksilver.

Cold
electricity rippled over me, stopped me dead in my tracks. It hit
Erin at the same time, her breath lodging in her throat. I could
safely say that, because that’s where mine was as well. There was
no accompanying flood of flavour in my mouth, so I could assume it
wasn’t Big Red, even though the weight of the presence was
equivalent to his.

The
were-creature was here.

Erin quivered
close beside me, jumped a little when nails tapped on cement behind
us. A snarl born of pure hunger and malevolence washed over our
backs, prickling the hairs on my neck.

A rush of hot,
fetid air hit my neck. The night resonated with the snap of teeth
so close to my head it rang in my ears. Beside me, Erin whimpered,
eliciting another snarl from the beast. It shifted, nails clicking.
This time, Erin lost it. She made a little noise as if trying to
breathe both in and out at the same time. Then she ran.

Running equals
prey. I’m sure Erin knew this, in the part of her brain currently
taking refuge behind the big, screaming primitive part. I had a
split second to decide my own action. No choice really.

I matched Erin
pace for pace. So did the werewolf. What was a flat out run for us
was a casual lope for the beast. It didn’t let us run far. Just as
we emerged from the trees, I felt it tense, a tightening of the air
around us. I grabbed Erin’s arm and dropped a split second before
the beast pounced. We hit the ground, which was a sandy base for
the playground. I got a mouthful of sand and a woman on my back.
The sand exploded out of my mouth on a tidal wave of all the air in
my body.

Erin rolled
off me with a strangled grunt. Side by side, we clambered to our
feet, guns at the ready. I looked around. Found the beast on the
far side of the playground, a seesaw away from ripping our throats
out.

At the house,
I’d been too concerned with forcing the creature off Erin to take
in too much of its particulars. I couldn’t help but take it all in
now.

Tony Rollins
had said the dog was a ridgeback, wolfhound cross. Both breeds were
visibly apparent in this beast. It was tall and lean, shaggy with a
great ridge of stiff hair standing up along its shoulders and down
its spine. But it was also part wolf. The long, pointed muzzle of
the wolfhound was shortened and broadened, stained with the blood
of its one time master. The shoulders were wide with bulky muscle,
the hind quarters narrow. Oh, and the eyes shone a baleful shade of
blood red. Before the full change, the dog must have been scary
enough, but it was pure monster now.

The werewolf
lowered its head and growled at us, top lip peeling back from its
teeth. My heart positively clawed at my throat, trying to get out
of my chest, at the sight of those red streaked, yellowed daggers
it had instead of fangs.

Where the hell
was Mercy?

A gust of wind
rocked the swings to our right. The wolf glanced at them. I took
the chance to raise my gun. Erin did the same. But before we could
do any more than that, the creature’s attention was back on us. It
took a slow, menacing step forward, sweeping us with its blood red
gaze. Another step and Erin and I opened fire.

We both had
silver tipped slugs this time. Each and every shot that hit it did
real damage. Flames erupted about its head and shoulders, smoking
in the clear night. It yelped and jumped, but kept coming forward.
It sailed over the seesaw as if it didn’t believe in gravity. Great
plumes of sand arced up in its wake as its giant paws dug through
the soft ground to hurl its big body forward. It was, in a word,
sublime.

It was like
watching those nature documentaries where a lion springs out of the
long grass and just simply flows over the terrain after its prey.
If it touched the ground, you barely registered it with your feeble
human eyeballs and brain. Muscles bunched and released with
exquisite precision, creating a motion that was both fluid and
solid, a real weight bearing down on some helpless animal.

Except that
this time, we were the helpless animals.

Erin dove to
the left. I took the right. The werewolf flashed through the space
we’d just occupied faster than eyes could comprehend. Thankfully,
the soft, mobile ground wasn’t its friend. It hit the sand and
skidded, coming right to the edge of the playground and tumbling
onto the hard packed soil and grass before the trees. I used the
time to scramble up onto the monkey-bars. Erin, I noticed from the
corner of my eye, dived head first up the enclosed slide coming off
the climbing castle. She scrambled frantically and her head emerged
from the top like a meerkat checking for trouble.

Balanced on
the top of the monkey-bars, I tracked the wolf. It sprang to its
feet and spun to face us again. For a moment, it looked between us,
then decided. It came for me.

Hooking a foot
around a rung, I let loose a wild yell and emptied the rest of my
magazine into the charging beast. It howled and simply rammed the
end of the structure with a massive shoulder. The whole frame shook
and I wobbled dangerously. The empty mag I’d just ejected flew from
my hand and disappeared into the night. Grabbing another one from a
pocket, I nearly lost it too as the wolf backed up and charged
again. This time, there was a tortured, metallic scream and the
monkey-bars tipped alarmingly to one side. My foot came free of its
desperate perch and I rolled over the side.

The wolf
bounded almost playfully to the spot where I would have landed, had
I not caught hold of the bars and swung myself in under them.

Of course, it
was a
child’s
playground. The monkey-bars weren’t made to
suspend a fully grown man of the tall persuasion, especially when
they were already broken and listing terribly. My feet hit the
ground but I hauled them up ASAP and the wolf’s teeth grazed my
arse.

Erin shot at
it and a brief fire blazed on its back. It ducked and turned away
from me, facing her. She crouched at the top of the climbing
castle, resting her gun against a crenellation to keep it
steady.

The
monkey-bars were steel piping. The climbing castle was not. It was
a stacked together structure of hard plastic pieces. Withstanding
the beating an eight year old could deal out was about as tough as
the climbing castle manufacturers had in mind. About eighty kilos
of enraged, supernaturally strong dog pulverised the thing.

Thankfully,
the logical thinking part of Erin’s brain had struggled part way
back into control and she dived for the enclosed slide a moment
before the whole structure came crashing down. The slide rolled
away from the carnage, taking her with it. She clattered about
inside it, swearing and cursing.

The wolf
followed it, shoving its head in one end. Erin nearly flew out the
other, but she stayed just inside, for the wolf was too big to get
more than its head and neck in. Those powerful shoulders were just
too wide. Its snapping and snarling echoed, as did the shots Erin
fed into it down the tunnel. The wolf backed out and into a barrage
from my gun.

One of my
shots took out a hamstring and the leg just collapsed under it.
Growling, it hauled itself up on three legs and spun, clumsily, to
face me.

I’d lost track
of the number of hits it had taken, here and back at the house. It
had only three working legs. Large patches of its skin sizzled
under the touch of silver. And still the fucker kept on coming.

I clambered
back on top of the seriously tilting monkey-bars, lined up the shot
and muttered, “Come on, you sonuvabitch,” in my best Sheriff
Brody.

The wolf
launched itself right at me. I put a bullet down its gullet and, I
guess because it didn’t have a pressurised gas tank in its mouth,
nothing much happened beyond it driving right into the monkey-bars
and sending us both flying A over T.

It had to
happen eventually. The amount of times this thing had sent me
tumbling, I was bound to lose my gun. I heard a distant crack as it
hit a tree or something and then I was on the ground, breathless
once more and wishing I hadn’t been so careful on the morphine dose
this time. White flashed before my eyes and I waited for it to turn
red, but it didn’t and I knew I had to move. No berserk rage was
going to get me out of this one.

I rolled and
whipped around, looking for the beast. It was back on the grass
beyond the edge of the playground. It stood on its three working
legs, shaking its head groggily. Something long protruded from its
side, one of the cross beams from the monkey-bars. Yes. It had
taken a serious blow. Nice.

But even as I
congratulated the laws of physics and chance, the beast reached
around with its head and bit down on the metal piping. With a
vicious shake, it pulled the bar free and tossed it aside.

Holy crap.
They built these werewolf-dogs tough.

Then it turned
toward me once more, red eyes blazing.

Desperate, I
scrambled through my pockets and came up with the nightstick and
SAS knife. Shit. I loved them when going hand to hand with a
vampire, but I hadn’t intended on getting that close with this
monster. Still, it was the best I had left.

I climbed to
my feet, knife and stick at the ready.

“Bring it,” I
snarled.

And the wolf
brought it.

All thoughts of the sublime fled as
the beast barrelled toward me. About all that consumed my thoughts
was how hard I was going to die. Very faintly I could hear Erin
yelling at me to get down, but I felt shooting it had been proven
inadequate. If I dropped so she had a clean line of sight, I would
be on the ground and the wolf would just keep coming. Standing, I
had some chance.

Minuscule, but
a chance all the same.

And standing,
I presented myself as a better distraction.

The wolf’s
front feet touched down a scant meter from me. One more bound would
bring it to me. In the second between its rear feet hitting the
ground and its front paws reaching out for me, the beast was swept
to the side by a vampire at full speed.

I didn’t wait
around to see what happened next. There were absolutely no qualms
about turning tail and running. This fight had the potential to
cause some major damage, and I really didn’t want to get caught out
in the open. I raced for the slide. At the last moment, I felt the
great big ball of furious supernatural barny coming at me. Erin
screamed and I threw myself down into a skid. Scrambling backwards
down the slide, Erin made room for me, and I slid right in. Just in
time too.

The plastic
tunnel jerked. Erin nearly tumbled out the far end. I grabbed her
hand, hauled her back in. We rolled over and over, finally coming
to a stop on the edge of the playground. The battle between vampire
and werewolf tore off in another direction.

We lay there
for a moment, our combined panting drowning out all other sound.
Almost. The high speed whirring of the fight was like an angle
grinder going crazy on a saw edge.

“You okay?” I
asked Erin.

She lifted her
head to stare at me as if I’d just asked her to a ménage trios.

“Yeah, stupid
question.” I squirmed up beside her and peered out the end of the
slide.

On the far
side of the playground, under the ruined monkey-bars, the wolf
crouched. A blur of moonlight coalesced into Mercy. She grabbed its
ridge of fur, dragged it around and slammed it into the remaining
unbroken support of the monkey-bars. While the beast floundered,
Mercy strolled almost languidly to the broken bar that had impaled
the beast. She picked it up, hefted it a few times, then whirled
back to the wolf and laid into it with the steel bar.

“Oh my God.”
Erin was one long breath of stunned disbelief. “This isn’t real. It
can’t be real.”

I didn’t
bother contradicting her. She knew it was real. Her brain just had
to catch up to her heart. Sometimes, that took a while. I hoped
Erin had that time.

The wolf
managed to pull itself away from Mercy’s attack. Its injured leg
hampered it, but still the bastard thing moved like a race horse on
’roids. It sprinted for the trees and disappeared into their deep,
deep shadows. Mercy got a firmer grip on her steel bar, rolled her
shoulders, and then took off after it.