The Wolfman (43 page)

And then froze as she beheld a scene beyond anything nightmare could produce. There, surrounded by roaring sheets of flame, two great creatures fought. They were more dreadful, more terrifying than anything she had imagined, far more powerful than the monsters
described in the books she had read. Here were her worse fears multiplied tenfold, made all the more terrifying because of the implacable reality of it.

The Werewolf slewed around on all fours and darted in low and fast, and it clamped its jaws on the Wolfman’s arm. Instantly it began thrashing back and forth, trying to use its mass to tear the arm from the socket. That would not kill its enemy, but it would leave it crippled and helpless for the killing attack.

The Wolfman howled in agony as the jaws locked on its arm and snapped bones and ruptured tissue. They toppled backward and rolled, and the Wolfman bit and slashed to try and dislodge the Werewolf. But the Werewolf held on, and a gleam of malicious triumph began to blossom in its eyes.

With a shriek of pain and anger, the Wolfman got its legs under it and rose to its feet, dragging the Werewolf with it. Nothing alive should have been able to rise up with that amount of injury and bearing such ponderous weight, but the Wolfman was drawing on energy that tapped an unbelievable reservoir of darkness. Once upright, the Wolfman began driving its enemy backward toward the fireplace. The Werewolf buried its claws in the Wolfman’s shoulders and dug its toes into the floor, and though it slowed the push it did not stop it.

The Wolfman grabbed the wounded and still bleeding shoulder of the Werewolf and gouged deep into the rapier wound with its claws. With a snarl it tore at the puncture, rending it, widening it, tearing away chunks of meat.

The Werewolf could not bear the pain and it opened its jaws and threw back its head to howl out its agony.

And in that instant the Wolfman struck!

It lunged forward and buried its powerful teeth in the
Werewolf’s throat and bit down with every ounce of fury and power it possessed. Then it picked the Werewolf up and threw it against the stone edge of the fireplace. The creature was instantly wreathed in flame, tearing a howl of pain from its damaged chest.

The Wolfman bent low into a crouch and roared at its fallen enemy. Then it grabbed the burning monster with its mighty hands and pivoted, turning with all of the power of its hips and shoulders and hurled the Werewolf away. It vanished into the smoke and crashed down out of sight.

U
NSEEN DURING THE
battle, Gwen Conliffe stood in the doorway, unable to move, unable to even blink at the horrific spectacle playing out before her.

T
HE WOLFMAN WAITED
for the death cry . . . but the moment stretched.

Then out of the smoke, blazing like the sun, the Werewolf came stalking forward. It was entirely engulfed in flame. With each step it burned a print into the tiles. Its clothing and hair turned to ash and still it came. With a titanic bellow of hatred, it threw itself through the air, and the Wolfman bared its fangs and stretched its claws out to meet this impossible attack.

And the Werewolf crashed down onto the floor a yard short.

The Wolfman took a step forward, expecting a trick.

The burning creature got shakily to its feet and came forward, tried to leap once more at its enemy, and once more fell short. Sparks flew around it as it collapsed.

The Wolfman held its ground, still wary of a trick.

The Werewolf struggled to stand but could only rise to its knees. It was being consumed by the fire. It
was
the fire. Layers of flesh ran like tallow down its body. Muscle fibers peeled away. Heat contracted its lips, making the creature’s grin more hideous and frightening.

It reached out a hand that was now no more than a tangle of burning sticks. The nails were charred and cracked, the tendons of the wrist contracted from the evaporation of all moisture, leaving the hand curled into a futile parody of its own killing claw.

The Werewolf dropped to all fours. It was diminished now, its mass boiling away in steam and hot ash. It managed one more single step forward, and then it collapsed to the floor.

D
EEP, DEEP INSIDE
the mind of the beast, almost completely submerged in red shadows and primitive instincts that existed without conscious thought, Lawrence Talbot somehow looked out through the eyes of the Wolfman. He saw the beast that had been his father. He watched as the withered limbs twitched and twisted in the flames and the Werewolf became the husk of Sir John. The process took seconds, and those were the last seconds of Sir John Talbot’s life.

When the transformation was complete, Lawrence could see the wreck of his father lying bloody and dead not fifty paces from the spot where his mother died—where his mother had been
murdered
—all those years ago. The same spot where he, himself, had perished; where the innocent boy he had been was torn out of a normal life, driven into insanity, reclusiveness, bitterness and cynicism. That spot was where the world had completely changed for Lawrence Talbot. It was there
that he had
ended . . .
and now, just removed from that sacred and yet unholy place, was where his father ended.

As he watched he could feel a dark joy boil up in his heart, but almost at once it was overwhelmed and then wholly consumed by the beast. As the Wolfman threw back its head to utter its victorious howl, Lawrence felt himself disintegrate into nothingness.

G
wen Conliffe stood twenty feet from the monsters—dead and alive—staring in horror at what had just happened. The thing that had been Sir John was gone now and she instinctively knew that it was gone for good. She looked at the creature who had been Lawrence. Was any of him still in there, or had the beast consumed him just as the flames had consumed Sir John? She raised her hand toward it, knowing the gesture was futile, and her lips were parting to call his name once more when the air behind her seemed to explode and she saw the Wolfman spin away from the burning corpse in a spray of blood.

As she spun to her left, Gwen saw Inspector Aberline come striding out of the entrance foyer, his pistol barrel smoking. He raised the weapon for another shot.

“No!” Gwen cried and she flew into him, trying to push the gun up and away, but she was a split second too late. Her attack spoiled his aim so that the bullet struck the Wolfman in the hip, knocking it back.

Instantly the monster attacked, knocking Gwen aside and driving Aberline back and down. The inspector’s gun went skittering across the floor, and a second later Aberline screamed as the Wolfman clamped its jaws around his shoulders. Blood exploded from around the monster’s muzzle.

Gwen bent and hastily snatched up the gun.

“Shoot him!” cried Aberline, and Gwen turned to see the Wolfman shaking the inspector in its mouth like a terrier with a rat.
“Shoot him!”

Gwen raised the heavy pistol in both hands, but the monster was worrying Aberline back and forth with insane speed. It was impossible to get a clear shot.

The Wolfman saw the pistol and understood what it was. He dropped Aberline to the floor and turned toward Gwen. Blood and spit dripped from its mouth to sizzle on the hot floor tiles. Aberline’s face was white with shock and twisted in agony.

“Run!” cried the inspector.

Gwen ran.

She whirled and flew toward the front door, and the creature followed, but its feet were so slick with blood that it lost a moment finding purchase. By then Gwen was out of the house and running as fast as she could. The Wolfman was torn between pursuit of one prey and a meal close to hand, and it hesitated at the doorway.

Hesitation came with a cost.

Something struck him in the back with great force and his chest blossomed with pain. The monster looked down to see the wickedly sharp blade of a Masai spear sprouting from its chest.

It spun toward the Hall. Its meal was far from dead. Wounded, bleeding, Aberline stood with a second Masai spear, ready to hurl.

The Wolfman curled its long, crooked fingers around the spearhead and yanked, pulling the shaft of the weapon through his chest. It pulled again and again and then tore it completely free and flung the weapon away against a blazing wall.

It peeled back its lips, bared its teeth and hissed at Aberline.

A cracking sound made both of them look up. The ceiling was hidden behind roiling black smoke, but pieces of flaming plaster and timber were beginning to fall. The house could not stand much longer.

Aberline used the distraction. He hurled the second spear, knowing that it would do as little good as the first, and then lunged for the wall of weapons. He snatched down a heavy claymore. The sword was four and a half feet long and weighed almost seven pounds. Even without the terrible wound in his shoulder it would be a cumbersome weapon; now it was merely something to hurl as the monster began hunting him through the smoke. He flung it and saw it rebound from the massive chest. A chest that no longer showed any trace of the spear that had passed entirely through it.

Aberline shifted away, his vision dimming from the thickening smoke and the loss of blood. His foot hit something that screeched along the tiles like metal and he glanced down to see a slender rapier with a blade that gleamed with silver purity. The weapon had a snarling wolf’s head pommel.

He bent and swept the sword off the ground as the Wolfman came closer.

The creature saw the rapier and froze, eyes fixed on the silver blade.

“Yes,” wheezed Aberline, “that’s silver, you son of a bitch. Come and get a taste.”

The Wolfman crouched, its muscles bulging for a leap; Aberline raised the point of the sword.

And then the roof of Talbot Hall collapsed inward with an earsplitting crack of dying timbers and a dragon’s roar of flames. Tons of burning rubble plunged
down through the house as if Lucifer Himself stood above the Hall and drove His fiery fist through the old house’s heart.

The shock hurled both combatants away.