Wolf Hunt (19 page)

He yelped and lifted his head. The searing
pain gave him an extra burst of adrenaline, and he wriggled his way
out of Ivan's grip, just in time for Ivan to give him another pair
of matching cheek slashes.

Now the son of a bitch was just trying to
humiliate him.

Lou punched him in the face--a solid uppercut
that connected with Ivan's jaw. His teeth snapped shut on his
tongue. The werewolf howled.

Ivan swiped at Lou's chest,
a ferocious swing that was obviously
not
meant to humiliate Lou but rather
disembowel him. It missed. Not by much. The second swipe missed by
even less.

A thick rope of bloody drool dangled from
Ivan's lower jaw. He snarled, then attacked.

Lou screamed. It wasn't something he would've
ever expected to do. He shouted a lot, but he'd never screamed in
his life.

He bashed into the grill again as Ivan struck
him. Rational thought disappeared. Lou thrashed wildly, trying to
use his own fingers as claws to lash out at Ivan's eyes. He slid to
the floor, screaming some more as Ivan slashed at his arms and legs
and chest.

He hit Ivan, several times, but the pain kept
coming. He punched and clawed and kicked in blind panic, thinking
that this might be the end because suddenly time seemed to be
creeping along as if in a weird dream and he could see a few
droplets of his own blood flying into the air in slow motion,
almost a beautiful thing, yet his life wasn't flashing before his
eyes, and wasn't that supposed to happen when you were moments away
from death?

Time sped up with a jolt.

Ivan howled and clutched at his eye. Lou had
gotten the son of a bitch. Incredible.

Lou scooted away, forcing himself not
to completely lose it over the sight of so much of his own blood.
Ivan removed his hand from his eye. Instead of the gooey orb
dripping jelly that Lou hoped for, his eye was just dark red. Not
punctured. Not a fight-ending injury by any stretch of the
imagination.

Lou got up, elated that he wasn't hurt badly
enough to simply lie bleeding to death on the kitchen floor, and
rushed for the food preparation counter. He saw a flash of metal. A
meat cleaver.

He grabbed the meat cleaver and slammed it
into Ivan's chest. The blade sunk in deep. He wrenched it out and
slammed it in again. Got him in the heart.

A wave of pain shot through his arm as he
pulled the blade out again. Holding the handle of the meat cleaver
with both hands and swinging it like a baseball bat, Lou smacked
the blade across Ivan's throat, trying to chop his fucking head
right off.

Ivan threw his head back and
howled as a geyser of blood spewed forth. The cut was so deep that
he shouldn't even be
able
to howl, not with severed vocal chords.

Lou swung again but missed as Ivan pushed
past him and raced for the swinging door. Lou flung the meat
cleaver at him. It sailed through the air, rotating end over end,
and hit Ivan in the back--unfortunately, handle-first. The kitchen
implement dropped to the floor as Ivan threw open the door, now
ripping it completely off its hinges, and rushed back into the main
part of the bar.

Lou heard a cry of "Shit!" that obviously
came from George.

He glanced down at himself
and wished he hadn't. Ivan had gotten him
good
in a couple of places, and there
were several other small gouges that would have, at another time,
ruined his entire day. But he'd worry about that later.

He ran out into the main tavern area
just as George tossed the silver ring-lined blanket over Ivan.
George struggled to get the blanket completely over him, but could
only get it over his head, and as Ivan violently thrashed, even
that bit of progress looked extremely temporary.

"Lou, get over here, you lazy fuck!" George
shouted.

Moving as quickly as he could, which wasn't
all that fast anymore, Lou ran over to help his partner. George now
had Ivan in a bear hug from behind and clutched the blanket tightly
in his fists, and though he wasn't coming close to holding Ivan in
place, he did seem to be successfully steering the werewolf in an
awkward stumble toward the exit.

The blanket was already soaked red.

Lou reached them just as the werewolf changed
direction, claws slashing through the air as he struggled to get
free. Lou stuck out his foot. Ivan lost his balance and fell to the
floor, with George landing on top of him.

He'd actually tripped a werewolf. Holy shit.
Something new to add to his resume.

"He's getting loose!" George shouted. "Don't
let him get away!"

Lou kicked Ivan in the head, as hard as he
possibly could.

"Do it again! Do it again!"

Lou did it again. He wasn't sure if it was
the slit throat or the silver rings or both, but Ivan did seem to
be legitimately weakened. A few stomps on his head and they might
be able to drag him back out to the van and--

"Get away from it!"

Two cops stood at the broken window, guns
raised. Young guys, one black, one white, and both quite visibly
horrified by the grisly and absurd scene in front of them.
Mutilated corpses, two blood-covered thugs, and a thrashing
werewolf with a blanket over its head.

"Everything's okay!" George insisted.

"Get away from it!" the white cop
repeated.

Are the cops seriously
trying to save Ivan?
Lou wondered,
incredulous. Then he realized that, no, they were trying to save
him and George from the homicidal beast.

"We can't do that! But you could help us hold
him down!"

The cops exchanged an uncertain glance. Lou
didn't blame them. He sure as hell wouldn't come through that
window if he were them.

"Get away!" said the black cop. "We'll shoot
it!"

"Bullets don't hurt it!"

"Of course bullets hurt it!"

Lou vigorously shook his head. "No, they
don't!"

Ivan pushed himself up and almost got out
from underneath George, but they managed to keep him on the floor.
The blanket was dripping. George punched him in the back of the
head. "Shouldn't he be out of goddamn blood by now?"

The cops remained at the window. The white
one put a walkie-talkie to his mouth. "Dispatch, where the hell is
that backup?"

Lou felt the werewolf
slipping away.
Oh, crap, we're losing
him...we're losing him...

"Get over here and help us!" Lou
shouted to the cops. At this point, getting arrested was a minor
concern. If the cops dragged Ivan away, Lou and George might be
able to take advantage of the distraction to get away and live out
the rest of their years as hermits.

The cops, apparently not being complete
idiots, remained where they were.

Ivan shook his head from side to side,
shaking off most of the blanket. Lou felt himself start to panic.
They definitely weren't going to be able to hold him. "Throw me
some handcuffs!" Did cops use handcuffs anymore, or was it just
those plastic things?

George angrily reached into his
pocket, pulled out his keys, and slammed one deep into the back of
Ivan's neck. "Stop moving, damn it!"

Ivan stood up part of the way. George
remained clamped onto his back for about a second, as if going for
a piggyback ride, and then Ivan bucked him off. Lou grabbed for him
again and got the werewolf's arm, but it popped out of his
grasp.

The cops opened fire as the werewolf,
George's keys still dangling from the back of his neck, rushed at
them. Ivan flinched with each shot but didn't fall. He broke more
glass as he went through the window and pushed through the cops,
swiping with both hands simultaneously. Both cops went down,
screaming.

They really should have believed Lou about
the whole bullets thing.

Instead of finishing them off, though, Ivan
left their fallen bodies and ran away.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Bloodbath Aftermath

Michele was having difficulty reconciling her
previous beliefs about tornado chasers with her current plan not to
run away.

Tornado chasers were idiots.
Why would you ever go
toward
the storm? Why would you stand outside in a
hurricane doing a weather report? Why would you take pictures in a
war zone while mortar shells exploded all around you? She'd spent
many hours vocally criticizing this kind of stupidity while she
watched the news on television, even if nobody else was around to
hear. Stay out of the shark tank if you don't want to disappear in
a cloud of blood. Don't wrestle the alligator and be surprised when
you lose a hand.

So when George and Lou set her free, she
should have just run as far away from this whole mess as she could.
Let her role in this little drama come to an anticlimactic
conclusion. Find a hospital, get better bandages for her shoulder,
finish off a bottle of wine to celebrate her survival, finish off a
second bottle of wine to celebrate the fact that she wasn't
pregnant, and happily pass out.

Instead, she stood at the edge of the parking
lot and watched George and Lou walk into the bar.

Was Ivan already inside? Probably not. He had
to suspect that George and Lou might burst in there with a dozen
cops, so he'd want them to get settled first, give himself a chance
to scope things out.

A few minutes later, her theory was proven
correct (or Ivan was just running late) as she hid behind a pickup
truck and watched him pull into the parking lot. Where had he
gotten a car? She prayed there wasn't a fresh corpse in the
trunk.

Ivan drove around the building a couple of
times, slowly, then parked at the closest space to the front
entrance.

She crept a little closer to the building as
Ivan walked inside.

This was still her story,
her cash cow, and she needed to know how it all turned out.
"
Oh, yeah, I was
terrified
," she'd tell the person who was
hired to ghostwrite her book. "
I'd never
been so scared in my life. Every bit of common sense I had, every
piece of knowledge I'd acquired in my entire life was screaming at
me to get out of there, but I just couldn't
."

The ghostwriter would nod as
if she understood completely. Her expression would say
You were so very brave
without having to speak the words, which would be
ass-kissing.
"
And
is that when you called the police
?"

"
Yes. I mean, there was a dangerous werewolf in the building,
so I had to let the authorities know. I couldn't let more innocent
people get hurt.
"

"
And
you'd have a better story if the cops actually caught him or shot
him down, right?"

"You said that, not me."

"Do you want to say it in the book?"

"No. That sounds kind of bad."

Michele didn't have her cell phone or any
change, but there was a pay phone next to the entrance, and she was
pretty sure you didn't need the fifty cents to make an emergency
call. She hurried over to the phone, picked up the receiver, and
cursed. The entire mouthpiece was gone, exposing a few broken
wires.

She placed it to her ear anyway. They'd still
trace a 911 call even if nobody said anything.

No dial tone.

Okay, this was a pretty big problem.

Now what? She certainly wasn't going
to go inside the Cotton Mouse Tavern and ask if she could use their
phone.

A large, burly man walked out of the
bar, looking annoyed and angry, as if he'd just had a heated
argument. "Sir?" she said, gently touching his arm.

His eyes lit up, but then he frowned as he
noticed her bandaged-up shoulder and bloody clothes. "Yes?"

"Can I borrow your cell phone? It's an
emergency."

"What kind of emergency?"

"I need to call the police. A man just went
in there with a gun and I think he's going to start shooting."

"Is this a scam?"

"No, I swear."

"I can't give you my phone."

"Then could you call the police for
me?"

"Sure, sure." He took out a cell phone and
punched in three digits. "You say a guy with a gun?"

"Yes."

"Should we be standing here?"

"Probably not."

They began to quickly walk away from
the building. The man touched a button on his phone, and the
speaker came on. "911, what is your emergency?" The man kept the
phone in his hand, but held it toward Michele so she could
talk.

"Hi," she said. "I think there's going to be
some trouble..."

* * *

Ivan didn't look back at the cops after he
savaged them. They were both probably still alive, but they'd be
needing some serious skin grafts. Fuckers. He hoped they spent the
rest of their lives being shunned as disfigured freaks.

The pain was almost unbearable. Yeah,
he was a fast healer, but he'd been shot, sliced, punched, stabbed,
and kicked. Bullets didn't just pop out of his body when he
healed--he had to dig them out, and that was not a pleasant
process. He didn't mind getting mangled every once in a while, but
Jesus Christ, this was insane.

He reached back and tugged the car
keys out of his neck. Slit throat, stabbed neck--he was lucky he
hadn't been decapitated. When he'd fully recovered he'd hunt George
and Lou down and make them die ever so slowly, but for now, he just
needed to get away. Revenge could wait. A dish best served cold and
all that shit.