Badler.
The cannibal never looked healthier. He’d shed his shirt, revealing muscles that would have awed Samson.
Dez heard a squeal, turned in time to see something that knocked his breath out. Despite his many wounds, Keaton had sprung at Lefebvre. The psychic’s weapon proved no match for the hulking beast. The minotaur seized Lefebvre by the throat and hoisted him into the air. Iris and Michael had been forced to cease their firing for fear of hitting Lefebvre’s flailing body. They needn’t have worried.
Leering, the minotaur brought Lefebvre’s horrorstruck face close to his, reveled in Lefebvre’s terror for a long moment, then bit into his face, the upper incisors shearing the man’s forehead, the lower mandibles crunching under the nose. Lefebvre shrieked, then went silent as the gnarled teeth took a grapefruit-sized bite out of his head.
“Fuck me,” Dez heard Michael Summers moan, and then Michael and Iris were firing again.
A shot rang out from behind Dez, and with a turn he saw Bernadette, the faithful stooge, firing at Iris and Michael, who were forced to take cover in opposite directions.
Chaney howled – whether in pain or rage, Dez couldn’t tell – but the werewolf’s struggle with the witch was the last thing on Dez’s mind.
Badler was reaching for Dez. Keaton was stalking after Iris.
Dez cast wildly about for something with which to defend himself, but the only thing in his immediate area was a shard of broken chair. He grasped it.
“Come on, little sweetheart,” Badler said, and Dez pumped the wooden dagger at the cannibal’s neck. Quicker than Dez could believe, Badler shot up an arm, their forearms clashed, and the wood fragment was deflected harmlessly away.
Badler seized him by the neck, wrenched him forward. He grinned a fiendish grin, their noses almost touching. “You’re gonna taste good, sweetheart.”
Dez jerked a knee up and caught Badler in the groin. Badler grunted, but not nearly as loudly as Dez had expected. What the hell? he thought. Does feeding on human flesh make your genitals tougher too?
Badler cocked a fist at waist level, slammed it into Dez’s gut. Dez had time to tense his abdominal muscles, but it scarcely mattered. Badler’s fist was like a mechanical wood splitter, the hard knuckles punishing Dez’s entrails. Dez sagged against Badler’s shoulder.
“That day we stole your whore,” Badler muttered, “I whupped your sorry ass.” A punch in the gut. Dez grunted. “Easiest goddamned fight I’ve ever had.” Badler punched Dez in the gut again, his fist like a cudgel. Dez grunted and sagged against Badler’s shoulder. “That whore of yours…I bet she regretted taking up with you when she saw you lying there in the dirt.”
In desperation, Dez bit down on Badler’s flesh. Cannibal or not, Badler screeched in pain, shoved Dez backward to detach him. Dez landed on his ass, realized something was in his mouth, and it wasn’t until he’d spat out the pinkish, bloody object that he realized he’d ripped off a gobbet of Badler’s shoulder. The cannibal clapped a hand over his oozing wound and snarled at Dez.
Dez scrambled over and retrieved the wooden shard.
Under the balcony shadows he spotted Iris hurrying from table to table, attempting to keep something between her and Keaton. The bar had thinned of patrons, many of the bystanders having taken advantage of the unguarded doors to make their escape.
Badler charged Dez. Dez feinted with the shard. Badler hesitated for a fraction of a second, but it was enough for Dez to slash at Badler’s midsection. A gash opened between rows of Badler’s chiseled abs, but the injury was shallow. Fleetingly, Dez thought of the Coliseum, of gladiators forced to battle to the death while the crowd cheered lustily. And here were Dez and Badler both shirtless, both sweaty and bloody and knowing one would die and one would live.
Badler seemed to sense this because he was nodding now, his head lowered grimly, his smile deranged.
Badler charged at him. Dez raised the shard as if to strike him in the face. Badler leapt, hands outstretched for the wooden spike, but Dez dropped, tore down at Badler’s exposed belly. For all his strength and agility, Badler was a shitty hand-to-hand fighter. It was hubris, no doubt, the cannibal believing he’d never need to improve his combat skills because his brute strength would keep him safe.
The wicked shard of wood dug a trough through Badler’s abdominal muscles, and though Dez suspected none of Badler’s major organs had been perforated, he’d certainly wounded the cannibal badly.
Hot scarlet drizzled over Dez’s face as Badler’s momentum carried him into a table. Glasses shattered and spangled the floor, and though he knew he’d cut his bare feet badly, Dez surged forward, stabbing down at Badler. The wooden shard sank into Badler’s lower back. Five or six inches of wood speared Badler’s skin, and the muscular man arched his back, uttered a keening shriek, his face upraised to the ceiling. Without thinking, Dez grabbed a broken glass by the handle, whipped it at Badler’s exposed throat, grinned in triumph as the skin unzipped and released a torrent of blood. Dez cringed as glass fragments harrowed his bare feet, but he knew this was it; if he was ever to kill Badler, it had to be now, while the cannibal was weakest. Dez clutched the jagged beer glass, thrust it into Badler’s already savaged throat, and this time the blood spray was uncontrollable, the haze coating Dez and momentarily blinding him. He dropped the glass, staggered away, and wiped ineffectually at his eyes.
Another gunshot. Iris? More shouting voices. Where, Dez wondered dizzily, were Hernandez and Keaton’s other cronies? For that matter, where was Keaton? Had he claimed Iris already, or was she still fending him off, playing a lethal game of tag through the tables?
Dez glanced and saw the witch closing in on Chaney. But now the werewolf appeared enraged as well as anguished.
Someone grabbed Dez, and instinctively, he shoved against his attacker.
“Chill the hell out!” the person yelled, and with a twitch of recognition, Dez realized it was Michael Summers.
“Here,” Michael said, cramming something into Dez’s hands. A rag. In moments he’d wiped his eyes with it, not minding that the fabric smelled like the inside of a dead man’s colon.
“Iris?” Dez demanded.
“Getting to her,” Michael said.
Dez seized Michael’s arm. “You don’t know if she’s alive?”
Michael glared at him. “I’ve been trying not to die.” Michael’s eyes flicked down. “You mind letting the fuck go of me?”
Dez did.
They set off across the main seating area, which had degenerated into a warzone. Chaney had seized the witch with his elongated jaws and was shaking the woman like she was an oversized chew toy. Dez couldn’t tell whether she was alive or dead, but judging from the boneless way she flopped, he suspected the latter.
They’d almost reached the shadowed regions beneath the balcony when someone darted at them. Dez spun, saw Crosby, his eyes maniacally wide, the blackjack raised high. Michael swept Dez out of the way with one arm, brought his gun up with the other, and shot Crosby in the middle of the chest. Crosby pitched forward and curled into a writhing ball.
Michael cried out, toppled, and his gun went skittering away. Dez whirled and saw Wyzinski with a familiar object in his hands. He’d found Gattis’s makeshift mace, had evidently bludgeoned Michael with it.
Dez went for Michael’s gun, but in an instant knew he’d erred. The distance was too great.
Wyzinski had witnessed the deaths of Crosby, of Gattis, of Erica the Telekinetic Asshole. He was bent on revenge.
Dez continued toward the gun, but winced at a shrill yelp from behind him. He grabbed the gun, rose, and aimed it at Wyzinski, but discovered him trapped beneath Chaney, the werewolf’s claws a scrabbling blur in Wyzinski’s torso. Scraps of shirt and gristle hurtled about, a blood fountain gushing over the werewolf’s face as the beast plunged its maw into the ruin of Wyzinski’s chest.
&
nbsp; Dez grabbed Michael and lifted him to sitting. “You still with me?”
Michael groaned, nodded.
“Come on,” Dez muttered, hauling Michael to his feet.
As Michael emerged from his fog, Dez wondered why Michael hadn’t used his pyrokinetic abilities on Wyzinski. Maybe, he mused, the effort needed to conjure fire was so great he could only do it infrequently.
Something wet smacked against Dez’s bare calf muscle, and when he looked down he saw it was Wyzinski’s heart. Dez glanced at the werewolf, and for a moment Chaney stared up at him, his face satanic, his bloody lips writhing over grossly elongated teeth.
Dez’s heart thumped. He had no idea how much of Chaney remained in the beast. Judging from the mad gleam in the werewolf’s eyes, Chaney was completely gone. Not a trace of humanity shone in that fiendish face, not the merest hint of recognition. Dez suspected the werewolf would feel no compunction at killing him.
“We should go,” Dez said to Michael.
“Uh-huh,” Michael replied.
They hustled toward the area under the balcony. They weaved between tables, but though Dez glimpsed numerous bystanders who’d taken refuge here, there was no sign at all of Iris or the minotaur.
But the minotaur was the largest creature Dez had ever seen. So where the hell was it?
A loud thump sounded above Dez. Another.
He knew where the minotaur was.
It had chased Iris into the balcony.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Fire and Horns
Dez bolted for the staircase. Even as he mounted the first step and began to take two at a time, he heard the sounds of a scuffle up there, knew on a bone-deep level that Iris was still alive.
Dez and Michael reached the balcony and beheld a wild scene. More than a dozen patrons were cornered up there, another score of them rooting on Keaton as he tracked Iris slowly through the tables. Men and women pelted alongside Iris, scurrying like mice from the massive minotaur.
And as Dez drew nearer, he realized that Keaton’s change had advanced even further. Where before his dark hide had been smooth, there were now bones poking through the coarse hair, some of them blunt and knobby, others as sharp as fillet knives. One jaundiced excrescence protruding from the minotaur’s shoulder reminded Dez of a pumpkin stem, curved and ridged and tapered to a point. The weapon in Dez’s hand felt like a cap gun. The minotaur’s hide was too thick, the armor of bone and sinew impenetrable.
Iris and the other patrons in her vicinity had been herded to the far corner. Their only chance of escape was the window behind them, but a fall from that height – more than twenty-five feet, Dez estimated – could prove deadly.
The minotaur reached down, grasped a table edge, and flung it like a Frisbee. Its heavy base skidded over another tabletop and plowed into a pair of shrieking onlookers.
If Keaton noticed their deaths, he didn’t show it.
Iris flicked a look at Dez, and he saw the terror in her eyes. He realized he’d been harboring the causeless belief that she possessed some otherworldly power, but now, with her life in jeopardy, she appeared as feeble as he was. It made his need to help her even greater. But how? No ordinary weapon could penetrate the minotaur’s bone-studded hide. Hand-to-hand combat meant a swift death. If only he had—
Dez caught his breath, turned to look at Michael.
But Michael was already concentrating, his hand out, fingers splayed, face pinched in concentration. He was sweating with the effort, and Dez wondered to what extent it leeched Michael’s strength to conjure fire with his mind.
The minotaur went ramrod straight. The beast swiveled its head and scowled at Michael. Even as Dez recoiled at the venom on that face, he marked the changes in it. New horns had sprouted from its chin and cheeks. The teeth were a chaotic snarl. Goosebumps misted up Dez’s arms, even as he took aim with Michael’s gun at the creature’s right eye.
It was an impossible shot. He had to get closer.
Iris fired upon the creature. Her aim was true enough to bloody the bridge of the minotaur’s snout.
The creature roared.
Stunningly, several patrons near Iris took the opportunity to rush the minotaur. With a twinge of recognition, he saw at the head of the throng the man and woman he believed to be a couple. The man with the neck tattoo ran apace with his female companion, both of them wielding weapons, his a long kitchen knife, hers a length of chain maybe four feet long.
Dez charged the creature too.
The woman got there first, and in the moments before the minotaur swung at her, Dez was reminded of sports moms in the old world, the kind who wore their children’s team colors and sipped Starbucks on lawn chairs.
The minotaur clubbed her so hard the side of her neck split open. The backhanded swat lifted her off her feet and propelled her over the balcony railing. The man with the neck tattoo cried out in sorrow and plunged the knife into the beast’s stomach. The beast tore down with a fist, the blow so violent that the man’s neck seemed to disappear as he was pounded downward like a driven nail.
Goddammit, Dez thought. These two, this man and this woman, died defending someone they probably barely knew, were snuffed out senselessly by a beast who treated life like it was worthless.
At this, another, more incisive thought occurred to Dez. Or an image, rather.
The back bedroom of the Keatons’ home. The boy in the baseball uniform….
A growl sounding deep in his throat, Dez fired at the minotaur, the shot a good one, right in the side of the creature’s mouth, but even as the beast bellowed in outrage, Dez could see how little it had done. The minotaur stomped toward him, eating the distance with alarming rapidity, and just as Dez took aim, just as the creature reached striking range and raised a great, clawed hand, the minotaur’s head burst into flames. Wreathed in orange and blue, the massive horns whipsawing from side to side, the beast stumbled toward Iris, baying in pain.
“No!” someone shouted, and Dez had time to turn and see Michael enshadowed by a hulking figure.
Hernandez tackled Michael Summers. Both men crashed to the floor, and with a glance, Dez saw the flames encircling Keaton’s head diminish.
For a moment, Dez debated what to do – help Michael with Hernandez, or attempt to finish off Keaton. But the sight of Hernandez seizing the back of Michael’s head and bashing it on the floor decided him. Michael had saved Dez’s life not once, but twice. Another blow like that and Michael would be as dead as Joe Kidd.
Dez took aim. “Hernandez!” he shouted.
Hernandez turned, his expression morphing into surprise.
Dez fired, the slug pulping the center of the man’s face. Vaguely, Dez was aware of the minotaur barreling past him, moving toward the bar.
Hernandez toppled forward, his ursine body burying Michael Summers. Dez rushed over, his chewed-up feet shooting daggers of pain, and with Iris’s help, he rolled Hernandez’s corpse off Michael.
Iris knelt and shook Michael by the shoulder. “You still with us?”
Michael didn’t answer, but he was still breathing.
A chorus of gasps brought Dez’s head around. He saw the minotaur charging along the railing, and in the next moment the beast vaulted sideways, splintering the railing, the massive body arcing down and landing awkwardly on a table below. The whole thing collapsed, the minotaur scrambling through the rubble, and though the corona of fire still glimmered atop the minotaur’s neck, Dez could see the flames had nearly gone out. A bystander in a purple coat froze as Keaton barreled forward, and rather than stopping or sidestepping the frozen figure, Keaton merely whipped his great head at the man. A jagged horn pierced the purple coat and flung the man like a flicked booger twenty feet from where he’d started.
Dez heard a gunshot and a roar and swiveled his head in time to see the werewolf disemboweling a man who’d apparently been
foolish enough to attack Chaney from behind. Blood darkened the fur of Chaney’s lower back, but he’d easily bested his attacker, whose shredded guts oozed like wine-drenched cutlets.
A voice rose above the cacophony. It was Wainwright, who’d gone to the sink behind the bar and filled up a gallon bucket. “Over here, boss!” Wainwright was shouting. “Over here!”
Keaton tracked the voice, moved in a desperate gallop toward the bar. Iris sprang to her feet, fired down at the minotaur, and though a scrap of hair twirled off its brawny shoulder, the minotaur scarcely seemed to register the wound.
Keaton reached the bar. Wainwright immediately doused Keaton’s head with water, then dutifully refilled the bucket and repeated the action.
Dez moved up next to Iris, asked, “Should we go?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Go where?”
“The truck,” he answered. “If we get out now, we can—”
“What about Michael?”
Dez glanced at Michael’s prone body, his resolve faltering. “We can carry him.”
She grasped Dez by the front of the shirt.
“It ends here, one way or the other,” she said. “Keaton won’t stop hunting us. Our only chance is to kill him now, while the Hound is on the loose.”
Dez listened and realized that, yes, he did hear the sounds of ripping and tearing, and again the question came to him: Was Chaney aware of what he was doing? The minotaur possessed a semblance of control, but Chaney appeared to destroy indiscriminately.
He killed Wyzinski before Wyzinski killed you.
That doesn’t prove—
But it suggests, doesn’t it? Suggests Chaney is still in there somewhere. A werewolf doesn’t know much beyond spilling blood, but it knows enough to recognize an enemy. At least, this werewolf does.
Dez took a steadying breath, looked into Iris’s fierce green eyes. “How do we kill Keaton?”
She shrugged. “Fire seems to work.”
He glanced at Michael. “He’ll be out for a while.”
The Raven Page 22