The gun had two chambers, like a revolver, mounted above the barrel. The grip was tiny to Gregory's massive hands. "I shaved the grip down so you could hold it."
"Why thank you." Tset lifted the gun. It was much too heavy, and the grip was still massive.
"I've only got a few cartridges left, so make careful use of it."
Tset nodded and spun the cylinders. The clicking was more a clocking. Thinking, 'Dirty Harry, eat your heart out.'
Tset turned to leave and Gregory touched his shoulder. "A werewolf responds to two places." He touched his heart and his forehead, between the eyes.
"You can also blow off a limb, but their necks are not a good target - too shaggy and defended. Though these bullets are made to punch through their bones."
He handed Tset the bullets, they were five inches long and an inch thick.
"And a cement mixer."
"The things aren't that tough." Gregory was being mildly assuring.
"What? The bullets the wolves or the mixers?"
"The wolves."
"Oh thank God." Tset heaved a sigh.
Tset turned to leave but Gregory put another fingertip on his shoulder. "What?" Tset was exasperated.
Gregory indicated his own face, looking questioning.
"Shook a fucking can of Coke too much, alright? Get the fuck out of my way." Tset pushed past and out.
The ride to Haliburton was a long and worrying one - Tset wondered how much damage had been done.
When he got there, it was almost ten PM. The road was strewn with rubble and destroyed vehicles in front, however, through the drive was relatively clear, though it did show signs of a heavy defense being pushed back by agonizing inches.
Tset dismounted to the sounds of gunfire and ran into the lobby.
Inside Elkin was leading a team of other suits as they exchanged fire with two werewolves hunkered into the elevator shaft.
The werewolves were firing back. Each had a large cannon and were lobbing flak. The air literally buzzed with the criss-cross of shrapnel. The only thing that saved the soon-doomed assassins was the fortifications built into the lobby if such a thing as this were to happen. Tset, himself, was ducked behind a sundered stone column.
Tset snapped a photo of the two werewolves with their ammo belts and their steel-wine-barrels-with-rifle-stocks-on and sent it to Gregory with a succinct message:
WITF?
Gregory texted back:
Demonic shotguns.
I wasn't expecting that.
Tset growled, yelling at his phone, "Well fuck you fancy pants! Easier 'an shit to say for you sitting in your fucked off living room sipping Earl Gray while I get perforated like a seagull over godamned Normandy!"
The firing lulled. Tset checked to make sure no one had heard him, but they were exchanging mags. A coincidental silence.
He jumped over his cover and fired a round from his massive derringer. The shot took a beast in the eye and threw it back into the elevator shaft. The recoil sent Tset's hand, numb, behind his head and attracted the attention of every living creature present.
Elkin caught his eye, Tset nodded. Then pointed up.
Again, as if on cue, the building shook from an explosion several floors up, a flaming elevator car smashed the werewolf in the shaft and unnerved his brother. The humans all stumbled slightly.
Tset noticed the brother was looking at him now, he ducked back behind his cover.
The fighting built back up to a titanic roar and the large space began to heat up. Tset counted to three...
"Time to jaaaam." He carried 'jam' like he was singing '50s scat and bolted, blindly ignoring silver machine gun fire and flak criss crossing at him from either line.
Papillion cut a hunk out of the werewolf and Tset jumped off of it and proceeded to fly up the elevator shaft, jumping from small girder to small girder as he went.
"I'm fucking Marioooo!" He sang as the beast below came around to vault itself up and destroy him.
It wasn't as quick, what with losing a gallon of blood in its ill-managed maneuvers to catch its fleeing prey.
Tset made it to the 23rd floor. Everything was gone and blasted. The windows no longer existed and there was a definite draft blowing past him and down the shaft. Tset was in shock. Too late?
He heard a bark, a whimper and some snarling. Several werewolves were conversing ahead.
Tset hid behind a stripped pillar.
Tset had a revelation in observing the pillar's surface: this place had never been constructed. The side of the pillar he was behind was simply raw cement - no damage, only some whitewash and little burn marks where the flames from the bombing had licked. The only damage was from a bomb set to take out one of the walls - the hole created from whence the wolf voices emanated, and this same bomb had blasted out the windows and scorched everything else.
There never had been a Haliburton office on this floor.
How had Tset and the werewolves both gotten the floor wrong?
'Bullshit!'
Then the werewolves emerged from their hole - they walked carefully across the cemented floor and snapped their teeth at each other occasionally - nervous irritation.
A howl came from the elevator shaft and the leader of the small pack stuck his slavering head over the edge to howl back - an immense amount of saliva dropped down through.
The return howl made the creature cock its head. It turned and waved a massive arm at its companions to follow and then hopped over the lip. The two others went with it.
Tset ran to the edge and looked down. Past a bleeding and shaky wolf - coming upwards toward him still - he could see two werewolves digging flaming debris out of the bottom of the elevator well while one held off the assassins.
One of the diggers howled - he'd torn and thrown a gargantuan metal door and a new space had opened up.
Tset imagined he could make out the familiar plush carpet on the threshold. His breath caught and he almost froze.
He jumped - 'No time for safety.'
Papillion slashed the ascending werewolf in half and when Tset landed on hard-packed rubble, shattering a hip, he was able to roll in time not to be crushed beneath a pile of guts and two halves of a luckless, man-eating beast.
Now Tset was in the office he knew. It was in the basement. The windows were, and had always been, three-dimensional graphical representations of the outside city. The images flickered.
"Disney, skip Pixar, man." He pushed himself up, gentle with his hip.
He scanned while he tested his weight on it.
The hip was fine and there was no sign of the wolves.
Tset drew and reloaded his derringer. Crossing his gun wrist over his sword hand he proceeded, carefully, to the office of the Men.
He kicked the door down, inside was one Man, strewn over the large desk. He looked up and gasped. "Tset!"
Tset lowered his weapons, "What the fuck is going on here?" Then he felt something heavy strike his jaw, knocking him off balance and jarring his vision.
He put a hand to his cheek and turned around. There was the other Man, with a crowbar covered with a smattering of Tset's face, the Man looked astonished. Tset hurled him through a glass cubicle nearby and turned back to the other Man, racing forward to pick him up and dust him off.
"Tset, never mind me, get him!"
"Tell me what's going on!" A snarl.
"They're shutting down Haliburton, I can't tell you why, but I know how, and you have to get him! We're all dead if you don't!"
Him was spoken as a name.
Tset looked out of the door, there was broken glass, but no Man.
"Shit, come with me, explain."
"No time!"
Tset glowered.
"Alright, you'll need my card anyway! But move!"
Tset lifted him and they ran together down another hallway Tset had never traversed.
On the way, the Man explained. "The other bastard, Johnston's his name, two-timed and double crossed me. He said ord
ers is orders-"
"Explain better and faster."
"He beat me senseless, took my master key, brought in werewolves, and now the bastards are going to steal our entire data base!"
"But I thought it was tamper proof."
"Tamper proof doesn't include the owners of the computer wanting access! Does it?"
Tset was about to say, 'No, I guess not.' But instead slammed the Man in the chest with his elbow.
The Man spent a brief second wondering what he'd done when the wall behind where he'd been and Tset's arm were nearly obliterated by familiar flak.
Tset didn't pause to even regard his mangled arm while his left hand ripped the derringer into being and fired, eradicating a large fern with the flare.
The werewolf dropped its cannon and stumbled to the ground - a hole drilled through it big enough to fit a fist.
"Give me your card." Tset held out his right, blood-soaked hand. His left was too numb to use.
"I-I-I-"
"-will get shot to death and trust Tset enough not to want to fuck his own self over."
The Man looked at him, and then passed over his card. "You may not even need it, now." He was wheezing.
Tset stuffed it into the back pocket of his jeans. "I'll stick it there on my way back, just hide for now." 'There' was the fern's remains.
Tset retrieved the massive rifle. It was ridiculous and almost as long as Tset. He had a hard time handling it, but wanted to give the werewolves a taste of their own medicine regardless.
He looked behind him, the man was frightened by the image - Tset's ridiculous appearance had faded through sweat matting his hair into a messy style while exertion and cement dust had evened his skin tone.
His eyebrows were normally hidden behind his glasses, anyway.
Then he hefted the shotgun, throwing a bandolier with four giant cartridges over his shoulder.
He ran, then, following the smell of Johnston's cologne.
After several twists and turns Tset saw ahead an open doorway - metal, toothed - with computer banks on the far wall.
Tset raced forward, incorrectly throwing caution to the wind and the flak that dug trails across his back stung.
He rolled, came up in a crouch and pulled his table-spoon-sized trigger.
Tset went deaf and his target went everywhere. The concussion of the muzzle shattered nearby monitors.
Tset pulled the breach open and slotted in another gigantic cartridge. He snapped it shut. "Ack-ack, anyone?"
He ran to the door - only one wolf to go, and a Man.
In the room was the wolf and Johnston. Johnston was putting a briefcase on a chain around the wolf's neck. An empty hard drive slot was apparent in the wall between them.
He looked at Tset. "Too late, my irascibly crude little bug."
Tset looked down at his only option, hefted it, and fired. Johnston was annihilated but the supernatural wolf tore along the far wall and knocked Tset down in its charge to escape.
Tset careened after it as it smashed through walls and glass partitions to get back to the outside.
He passed a destroyed fern and flicked the extra card into it, reloading his cartoon shotgun before hurling himself up the shaft and back into the lobby.
The assassins looked confused and flat-footed. "Kill the fucking wolf! What is this, a coffee break? You fucking loons!"
They heard the last salutation from outside as Tset had already sprinted through the lobby, waving his free arm at them angrily.
The wolf tracks were apparent in the cement, and in buildings.
'Surely the governments of Greater Europe have some team to deal with natural disasters and freakish beasts.' Thought Tset.
'Tokyo does.'
Tset was on his motorcycle and following wolf tracks, ahead he could see it tossing cars and people and masonry in its dash to escape.
Traffic, for once, defeated Tset - he had to pull back on the handlebars and ramp off of a Mercedes he felt guilty about smashing the hood and windshield of.
As he got closer, and this was easy, for the wolf was having a hard time keeping the case from flinging itself into its face and genitalia and sometimes ran on two legs and an arm, he raised his shotgun.
The first blast clipped it, but the recoil slammed Tset backwards onto one wheel and made his engine chug and near stall out.
"Yes!" Tset hissed anyway and pumped his arm, regaining balance and maintaining throttle control.
'No' would have fit better: the werewolf skidded to a halt and spun around to kill him.
It lunged, feral and evil-smelling, claws extended and jaw open wide.
Tset slammed his bike down into a drift and a slide and went under it, instead, righting the bike on the other side and curving it sharply to avoid a parked car.
The wolf had taken off again but Tset was nearly on it, though trying to blink caustic saliva out of his eye, maintain throttle, dodge oncoming, expensive cars and reload his shotgun.
He resorted to using his teeth to open the breach, and broke one, but did manage to not die and not lose proximity to his target, as well as get the shotgun loaded.
He regained balance after his acrobatics, then spotted a two-tier car-transport truck on the right side of the road. It was empty.
"Oh, shit I've always wanted to do this."
He pulled into another wheelie while opening his throttle wide, clearing the tailgate of the truck, coming down balanced and solidly on the left-hand ramp and then proceeding to achieve lift off a second later as he passed over the truck's cab.
The look on the werewolf's face was one of classic confusion, as Tset cruised by, airborne and above it, engine still chugging, wheels hanging free - before the demon-sized shotgun blast took its head and shoulders apart.
It skidded and flipped to a twitchy halt.
Tset, however, propelled by demon-sized recoil, ended up in the office building that had been on his immediate right.
His grip slipped just as he bodily smashed a plate glass window. And he continued on, rolling hard across faux marble flooring, leaving gouges behind and catching himself with a few lumbar vertebrae on a heavy steel-constructed sculpture.
He was brought around when the sprinkler system went off maybe ten seconds after he'd made impact.
He shook his head clear and straightened his sunglasses, then he stood, putting a hand to his back and cracking it.
Dizziness hit him. 'A little wobbly...' He checked himself. 'And my elbow's inverted.' He had hit that very elbow against the intervening floor between himself and where his bike inevitably lay.
Tset put a pencil in his mouth and hit his mis-set arm against a sopping swivel chair. Cartilage going like it often times did gave Tset an acidic lump in his throat, at least when it was his cartilage. He swallowed the bile back down then flexed carefully. More popping, like nursery elbow. He spit and coughed the pencil fragments out.
He shrugged the crawly feeling off and did a second diagnostic scan - no punctures, no other breaks. He exhaled. He'd half expected to find an aluminum bit of window frame peeking out from an armpit.
Then he realized the water cascading down was cause for annoyance and squelched to the stairwell and down a floor to find what remained of his steed, gathering scattered katana and shotgun on his way.
Tset lifted the surprisingly intact and undamaged motorcycle off of the two expensive Italian leather sofas it had crushed, checked for cameras and then rolled it to the stairwell. He was careful to dry the tires and his boots with a wall weave he'd commandeered before heading down the stairs - the flight of his steed had set off its floor's fire suppressant systems, too, and wet tires were bad enough. But wet tires on smooth flooring were unacceptable.
He had an easier time than would be expected getting it down to ground and mildly enjoyed the feeling of driving through a lavish lobby on a motorcycle.
He was lucky it still started, he realized when he was back out on the street.
The case had been knocked well cle
ar by Tset's attack, but was visible and pinned underneath a burning wreck within sight of Haliburton. Tset unwedged it and walked back to the lobby.
When inside he threw the case angrily to Elkin. "Look, I barely work here, so next time I may not be able to bail your ass out when Rover, Fido and Snowy come a'knockin', dig?"
He lit a damp cigarette with shaky hands, continuing to be agitated. Tset was glad he was alive; he'd just nearly been eaten or torn apart on more occasions than he could count on his shaking fingers.
In addition, his bike had nearly been totaled, and even though it had only been cleaned by the sprinklers, and still worked, he still had an excess of adrenalin in his blood.
Thus, the agitation.
His cigarette let up a little wisp of smoke at his insistence with the light and he looked back at Elkin, "I've got to leave before police show up, but do what you have to with that."
Elkin wasn't saying anything, again Tset had put him in a state of dumbstruck confusion and he stared, along with the others in the background. Tset almost bit his cigarette in half. "WHAT!"
All the assassins got into simultaneous motion.
"That's right." He crossed his arms and watched them organize damage control.
After a minute, Tset smoothly slid out of the door and, once outside, sprinted for his bike, mounting and driving as fast as he could away, wanting to avoid police, but also wanting the feeling of freedom riding brought him.
After a few minutes' relaxing drive he realized that he hadn't felt as excited as he did now since before... 'Ever, probably.'
Soon, after the overdrive wore off, he was laughing, waves of solid weight poured off of his shoulders like bags of lead shot.
At first he thought it was a chemical thing - adrenal giddiness at surviving while his nervous system wound down. Then it dawned on him he wasn't truly shaken at all, he was purely exhilarated at life and living itself. He'd been upset about his bike.
The throttle rolled smooth under his grip as he sped home, grinning all the way.
Second Interlude
Tset made it home in one piece after sunrise.
Wight Page 34