Insane.
He planned to remain hidden unless it was absolutely necessary to join in the chaos, but there was no way he could turn away from the show.
* * *
There was definitely a hernia in Lou’s future.
His legs were now extended all the way. The cage wasn’t quite ready to topple over the edge, but it was getting close.
* * *
George kicked Michele for what felt like the hundredth time since she transformed. His muscles were so sore that the agony almost threatened to overpower his flesh wounds.
Michele struck the cage door again, and her weight started the point of no return. The cage did a sharp downward tilt and then slid off the edge of the van, crashing to the ground corner-first with a teeth-rattling clatter. George bashed against Michele, nearly knocking the wind out of him but hopefully hurting her just as bad.
The floor of the cage slammed down, stirring up a cloud of dirt.
Michele dove at him. Nope, the impact of the fall definitely hadn’t hurt her as much as it did him.
She pinned him down. George was having difficulty focusing his vision. A trio of she-wolf faces loomed above him.
Then she slid away as Lou grabbed her leg.
“I’ve got her!” Lou announced.
George scooted to the back of the cage. “What good does that do me? Are you gonna hold her forever?”
Lou pulled until her leg was entirely out of the cage, and then grabbed the back of her shirt, holding her tight.
“Get some silver!” George shouted.
“We don’t have any!”
“What do you mean, we don’t have any?”
“Prescott and Angie took it all!”
“Why’d they do that?”
“They didn’t think they’d get killed!”
“Well, do something!”
Lou glanced to the side. George thought he might be looking for an item that might prove to be useful in this situation, but realized he was wrong as Ivan’s werewolf form knocked Lou away from the cage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Lou’s Decision
Lou lost his grip on Michele, who instantly pounced back upon George. Lou fell to the ground and raised his gun, but Ivan was already back in the swamp.
What was that all about?
He doesn’t know what kind of weapons we have, Lou realized. He has to play it safe.
At this point, Lou didn’t give half a crap about capturing the werewolf. Let Bateman and Dewey seek them out to the ends of the earth. If Lou had the opportunity to stuff a grenade down Ivan’s throat, he’d take it without hesitation.
He did not, however, want to spend the rest of his life in prison, and they’d made a lot of noise. Somebody had to be coming to investigate.
Lou reached his hand into the cage, nearly got bit, and quickly withdrew it. “Throw her over here,” he told George. “I’ll shoot her!”
Lou watched carefully for Ivan as George struggled some more with the she-wolf. After a few violent moments, he managed to push her to the edge of the cage.
“Hold her still!”
“I can’t hold her still!”
Lou shot her in the head. Some blood sprayed on George.
Michele howled and bled. But she didn’t flop over and die.
George scooted away as she came at him again. He kicked repeatedly, desperately trying to keep her on her own side of the cage.
Now what?
Leave George to fend for himself?
No. Absolutely not.
He wasn’t going to leave George here to be torn apart by Michele, although if they ended up in police custody, Lou thought he’d be more than justified in trying to cut a deal and let his partner take most of the fall. He wasn’t entirely certain what crimes they’d be charged with, beyond the obvious investigation into their criminal past, but being responsible for a werewolf who killed about a dozen people had to be a pretty serious offense.
Hell, even if he did kill Michele, it wasn’t as if Lou could simply load the cage onto the other van and drive away. George would be a nice little present for the cops. Or, much worse, Ivan.
He had to get George out of that cage, no matter what. Even if it meant putting his life at risk.
Concentrate. Get through this. If you pass out now, it’ll be a really humiliating and unsatisfying end to this whole thing. Think of how good a warm shower is going to feel tonight. Oh, yeah.
He went back to the other van, hesitated for a moment as he tried to figure out if he really wanted to do this, then opened up the box of dynamite. It had about ten sticks inside. He probably only needed one, but he took the whole box.
There were no lighters inside the box, which made sense for safety precautions, but a quick search of a shelf of random supplies turned up a butane lighter with a long shaft, just like the one he had for his grill at home.
George screamed.
Lou grabbed a couple more grenades and tossed them into the box, just in case Ivan came back, and then returned to the cage.
“Did she bite you?” Lou asked, taking out a stick of dynamite. It already had a short fuse attached. Perfect.
“Not hard! Hurry!”
“I’ve got this, George. Don’t worry.” Okay, if he put the dynamite right next to the cage door, George would be caught in the blast. That was no good. Three feet away, maybe? He was far from a demolition expert.
“What the hell are you doing?” George demanded.
“I’m getting you out of there!”
“Not with goddamn dynamite, you’re not!”
“It’s the only way!”
“No, no, no, no! There are millions of other ways!” George had his hands around Michele’s neck again, and his arms quivered as he tried to keep her fangs away from him.
Lou lit the fuse. “Stay at the back of the cage!”
“No! No, Lou! Fuck this!”
“Hands over your ears!” Lou grabbed the box and ran. He caught a glimpse of movement from the swamp. Ivan?
Michele snarled.
Lou grabbed a grenade out of the box, and then let the entire box drop to the ground. He pulled the pin and hurled it in what he hoped was Ivan’s direction.
The grenade went off first.
Then the dynamite went off in a nearly eardrum-bursting explosion. The entire cage lifted several inches off the ground, and toppled onto its side. Lou’s ears rang as he watched the smoke clear.
The cage door hung slightly ajar.
Victory! Lou hurried over to the cage. George lay on what was now the bottom of the cage, clearly stunned but also clearly still alive.
Michele’s legs had taken the worst of the blast. There wasn’t much left of one of them.
Lou kicked the cage door all the way open. “C’mon, George!”
George pushed Michele off of him and then scrambled out of the cage. “What the hell was that?”
“I saved your life!”
“You could have killed me!”
“So could she!”
“Don’t do things like that!”
“You’re out of the cage, aren’t you?”
“My legs are all burnt up!”
“They’re not that bad. They’re singed.”
“Look what she did to me! I look as bad as you do!”
“That’s why I tried to get you out!”
“Why didn’t you just pick the lock?”
“It didn’t work!”
“Why didn’t you just get the keys from Ivan?”
“How the hell was I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know!”
“Stop yelling at me!”
“I have to yell! I’m deaf now!”
“Just thank me, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you!”
They both looked down at Michele. She was back to human form, bleeding badly.
Lou crouched down next to the cage. “Aw, shit, I’m so sorry, Michele.”
She gave him a weak smile, revealing red
teeth. “How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad,” said George.
“I don’t think I’ll die though,” she said. She turned her head and coughed up some blood. When she looked back at them, her eyes glistened. “Don’t leave me like this.”
“We won’t. I promise.”
“I mean...don’t leave me like this. Put me out of my misery. I don’t want to be this way. I don’t want to hurt people.”
George nodded. He felt absolutely terrible, but if he were in her situation, he’d feel the exact same way. “Lou, are you sure there aren’t any silver-tipped arrows left?”
“I didn’t tear the whole van apart, but I didn’t see any. George, I don’t want to be cold-hearted or anything, but we really need to get out of here.”
“Use the dynamite,” Michele said.
“What?”
“It’ll hurt less than silver, I think.”
Lou took another stick of dynamite out of the box. “Are you sure this is what you want? Maybe we can get you help.”
“There’s no help for me. I’m sorry, George. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
George almost looked like his eyes were tearing up. “I’m sorry, too. I thought I was helping you by rescuing you from those dogs. Bad call, huh?”
“Yeah.” Suddenly Michele cried out in pain. The hairs on her arm began to sway as they did before the first transformation. “Oh, God...”
Lou lit the fuse and dropped the stick of dynamite into the cage.
Michele picked it up and hugged it to her chest.
The thugs walked away from the cage.
The explosion sounded even louder than the first one.
They looked back. There was nothing left of Michele but some burnt pieces, scattered around the area.
“Shit,” said George.
“At least she didn’t suffer.”
“What do you mean? She suffered a lot.”
“Not from the dynamite, though.”
“Well, that’s lovely. If you count only that last second when she got blown to bits, she died a peaceful death. Wonderful. I guess coming into our lives was the best thing that ever happened to that young girl.”
“I just won’t say anything else.” Lou took another stick of dynamite out of the box while watching carefully for any sign of Ivan.
“Hey, Ivan!” George shouted. “Did you see that? Sorry you didn’t get to make yourself a girlfriend! She was a good choice!” George walked over to the white van and opened the passenger side door.
“Is he still around?” Lou asked. It seemed unlikely that Ivan would stay in the area having witnessed what happened to the other werewolf, but anything was possible with that cocky bastard.
George picked up the tracking device. “Yeah. He’s still close.” George pointed at the swamp in the same direction where Lou had thrown the grenade. “Do it.”
Lou lit the fuse and tossed the dynamite.
The explosion sent up a cloud of smoke and burning leaves. Lou felt too sick over what they’d done to Michele to enjoy the sensation of hurling explosives.
“Did we get him?”
“No,” said George. “Crap. He’s on the move.”
“Should we go after him?”
George stared at the tracking device for a moment. “No, he’s running. I don’t blame him. We won’t be able to catch him on foot. Let’s get in the van. When he comes out of the swamp, we’ll be ready.”
They got in the van, with George driving. Lou figured that this was around the time when several police cars would come into view, red and blue lights flashing, with a few dozen officers pointing rifles at them, but the path remained empty.
“Once again, we could just let him go,” said Lou.
“Are you kidding me? With a van full of great stuff? That furry son of a bitch is dead.”
Lou sighed. “All right.”
“You’re with me, right?”
Lou thought about that for a moment. “You know what? I actually think I am. I will be really, really relieved when he’s dead.”
“Me too.”
“So...Mexico or Canada when we flee from our former lives?”
“People are polite in Canada.”
“But it’s cold there.”
“I don’t speak much Spanish.”
“But again, it’s cold.”
“So what?” George asked. “You’ve spent the entire day complaining that it’s too hot.”
“And it is. I don’t like Florida heat or Canadian cold.”
“Which is worse?”
“I’m not sure. Florida heat, I guess.”
“Well, Mexico heat is worse than Florida heat, so I guess that settles it. Time to relearn how to say ‘about.’“
“About,” said Lou, pronouncing it a-boot. “I can’t believe Michele is dead.”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“What if her pieces are still alive?”
“What?”
“I’m just saying.”
“You jackass. Why the hell would you say something like that? I mean, even if you thought it, why would you say it? Her pieces are not still alive, got it?”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I’m just freaked out by it all.”
“So am I, but that doesn’t mean I’m sharing ‘living hell’ scenarios. She’s dead. If we blow Ivan into a billion pieces, he’ll be dead, too. Did you see any of those pieces moving?”
“No, they were...they were pretty much just lying there, burning.”
“Right. Stop coming up with macabre shit like that.”
“Sorry.”
George looked over at the tracking device. “He’s still running. We put a nice scare into him. Let’s appreciate that instead of dwelling on horrific stuff.”
“When we catch up to him, I’m using all of the remaining dynamite.”
“That’s the spirit!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Distress
Ivan ran through the swamp, so enraged that he thought his head might explode like the dynamite.
He didn’t mind losing Michele. She was only intended to be a temporary plaything, and he probably shouldn’t have bitten her in the first place. No big deal. It was like having a child--a responsibility he didn’t want.
Losing George hurt worse. He’d really been looking forward to making the thug weep. Ivan had probably exercised bad judgment in staying around as long as he did. As soon as he saw that they had grenades, he should have gotten out of there. He was a fast healer, but not immortal, and even if there was no jagged silver involved he wouldn’t survive having his head blown off.
Still, that wasn’t the reason for his misery.
They were tracking him. George had been holding some kind of device that could follow his movements. It had to be a chip or something, like what people used for their beloved pets. That’s how those fuckers with the net and crossbow found him.
Ivan was almost in tears.
He’d stopped for about a minute to check his ears, even though he would’ve noticed a chip in there long before now. The way he healed up, they could have stuck it in him at Bateman’s place while he was unconscious and he never would have known.
Where was it?
This was awful. This was the worst possible thing. Sure, he was a werewolf, but he still had to sleep. What was he going to do, find some kind of impenetrable bunker to hide out in? Even if the chip only had a limited range, that didn’t do him any good unless he was able to jump on a plane. He couldn’t help but feel that he was going to have difficulty using air travel for the foreseeable future.
Damn them!
He could turn back, try to kill George and Lou, and steal their tracker, but that couldn’t be the only device. Ivan wasn’t good with technology and didn’t know how these things worked, but they probably even had a fucking website where they could track him.
He stopped running. He had to think. He couldn’t just let them hunt him down. Better to get blown up than to be Dewey’s little
experiment, but he wanted to avoid both of those possibilities.
Where would they stick the chip?
If he were tagging a werewolf, where would he put it?
He changed back into his human form and searched his arms for scars. All of this blood wasn’t helping. A tiny incision wouldn’t leave any trace, but if they got overzealous, there might be a mark.
He had lots of marks, but they were all from today, as far as he could tell. He feverishly rubbed his arms, trying to get off as much of the dried blood as he could.
He could feel himself losing it. This wasn’t good.
If they beat him, it wasn’t going to be because of some chip. No way.
He stripped off what little remained of his pants and stood there, naked, searching his body for any scars he couldn’t identify. There had to be one. Just a faint trace.
Still too much blood.
Fine. This was the Florida Everglades. There was water all over the place. He ran for less than a minute before he found a pool of water. It looked stagnant and thousands of mosquitoes seemed to be swarming around it, but it would do.
He lay on his back in the water, splashing around, washing off the blood. He didn’t care about the bugs. Let them take his blood. They could have as much as they wanted.
Losing it...
Ivan sat up. He inspected his stomach, his legs, his feet. Nothing.
It wasn’t fair.
Where would they put it? Where the hell would they put it?
For all he knew, there was a big crooked scar across his back. He twisted himself around, trying to glimpse his reflection in the water, but the water wasn’t still enough and he couldn’t see anything.
Chill the hell out. You’re going from “losing it” to “batshit crazy.”
So they had a chip in him. So what? He’d massacred a whole bunch of people in the Cotton Mouse Tavern who’d known exactly where he was, and it sure didn’t save their lives. George and Lou had been following him, and they hadn’t fared very well. Neither had the reinforcements.
Following Ivan Spinner with a tracing device meant that you got your arms, legs, and head torn off and thrown into the air like confetti. That’s what your precious chip did for you.
Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set Page 76