by P. T. Phronk
“Does it matter?” Bloody asked. “Look at all this. Demon or no demon, we know that Wilcox is an evil cunt—language, sorry—and he needs to go.”
Mike shook his head sadly. “We could just run.”
“He’d find us,” Stan said. “I’m with Bloody. We need to take care of this now. He’s weak—we both fell off a God damn waterfall, by the way—but he transformed, so he won’t be weak for long.”
Bloody took a deep breath. “The shaggs are moving. South.”
“That must be where Wilcox is.”
“They saw us here. Maybe we should move,” Mike said.
“We’re not running,” Bloody said. “We’ve got Linda now. We’ve already shown some shaggs not to mess with us. Maybe we can end this.”
Stan shrugged. “It ends now or it ends later. Mike, we’re probably going to die. You get that? You still wanna come with us?”
Mike stared at the ground. “It’s my town. All these people, they don’t know me, but I know them. They need help. You need help. Yeah. I’ll come.”
Stan patted the scratchy fur on his mother’s head. “Mom? You in?”
Her nostrils flared and she nodded her massive head.
Bloody flexed her claws. “Let’s end it.”
Most of the shaggs had cleared off Sandford Avenue. Stan spotted one rummaging through a crashed police car, snacking on a cop inside, but Linda quickly took care of it, tearing it apart with her claws. She tried to hide it, but Stan could feel the vibration of her licking her paws and swallowing blood. She must have been so hungry.
Bloody took the handgun from the cop’s belt, wiped it off, and handed it to a reluctant Mike. He understood that he’d be nearly useless without it.
They passed Town Hall, where there was movement behind the shuttered windows. Probably Joey and his city council friends trying to arrange a defense, though given the number of bodies on the street, and the state of the storefronts, it was too late to do much defending.
They continued down the street. Stan rode Linda, while Bloody and Mike jogged behind, weapons raised. The front window of Timber Jacks was spiderwebbed with cracks, fractured decals advertising TJ’s Rib Nibblers and Pasties with Gravy and The World Famous Tiiimber! Onion Ring Stack. Houses further down the road were boarded up, or laced with strings of half-rotten garlic hanging from the windows, regularly bought in bulk for just such an occasion by the more superstitious residents. Frightened eyes peeked out to watch as the streets were taken back by the run-down pack of four—the only ones left standing.
Stan never got involved with politics, but when his mother was on city council, Stan would hear second-hand accounts of every public meeting. And whenever she stood up for the people of Newbury against the more financially manipulable members of council, the gallery—the same people now watching them take on the town—would shout out to encourage her. Give ‘em Hell, Linda!
Past downtown, Hell was gathering in front of the IGA grocery store. Over a dozen shaggs waited. They seemed to vibrate with energy, their muscles taut. The human blood filling their water tanks must have given them a strength they could never attain from sucking on fish in the river.
A howl erupted from under the bridge leading out of town. The shaggs turned to form a procession for the gigantic creature emerging from the riverbank. Wilcox.
He was bigger than Stan had imagined a werewolf to be. It explained Linda’s size; being half wolf and half moose didn’t fully account for her hunched form rising higher than Stan was tall. Similarly, Wilcox was more than the sum of his parts. Sure, part of him was werewolf—by the looks of it, the biggest, most slobbery werewolf he could find. That was probably from the werewolf saliva he’d used to heal himself whenever his vampire hunting took a bad turn. He probably hadn’t even planned on becoming a wolf after Stan and Bloody nearly killed him, but with so much wolf in his veins, he couldn’t help but turn.
But he also retained some of his humanity. He favored his back paws for running, like a person trying to mimic a four-legged animal would. There was also something else in his unholy mix of DNA. Something familiar.
Linda tensed her neck, ready to impale him. Mike raised his gun. Bloody just stared, her jaw dropped to reveal needly teeth that seemed like tiny knives in comparison to Wilcox’s mouth full of swords.
“He’s enormous,” Stan gasped.
“He’s me,” Bloody said.
Stan snapped his gaze down to her. “Huh?”
But then he got it. That was the familiar piece: the gray fur around his neck, the slight underbite, the extra pudge around his ass. He had some Bloody in him.
“When I tore out his throat…” Bloody mumbled.
Stan finished her sentence: “…your saliva got in him. You made him into this. He’s part you.”
Wilcox stopped by the shaggs. “Is that the demon?” one of them asked, eyeing Linda.
“No,” Wilcox said. He had enough human left in him to produce speech. He switched to a whisper that Stan couldn’t hear as he gave orders to a few of his cronies. They spread out, forming a moving line that turned into a protective half-circle as Wilcox approached.
“Stanley! Linda! Reunited at last!” shouted Wilcox. His voice was no different than when he was human, except for a hint of joviality that had been missing.
Stan was about to say something, but it was Bloody who stepped forward first. “You don’t even recognize me, do you?”
The wolf’s eyes squinted and he jutted his snout forward. “Another wolf? Or something like it. I’ve never seen a mangy half-breed like you before.”
“A dog, actually. And I wasn’t always a half-breed. You’re the one who helped scramble things up to make this possible. Ringing any bells, you dumb fuck?”
Wilcox laughed. He took a step forward. “You’re the broad from the bar! Stan’s friend. Of course. The one I took out behind the church. My plump little apple.” He licked his lips with a tongue the size of a pork roast.
“Ding ding, you got one half right. The human half. Think about it, asshole. What could the other half want with you?”
The joviality suddenly left his voice. “The dog,” he said.
Bloody’s lips pulled back, revealing her teeth. “The dog.”
A low growl grew from Wilcox’s throat, so deep that it seemed to vibrate the ground like a subwoofer.
Bloody growled in return, higher-pitched but so guttural and animal that it sent chills down Stan’s spine. “Annie, wait, don’t do anything stup—”
The two canines barreled toward each other. Linda glanced up at Stan, waiting for his cue. Even the brief hesitation took too long; with a grunting command from Wilcox, the shaggs surged forward to form a wall in front of Stan, Linda, and Mike, but not before Bloody clawed past them and became lost behind that wall with Wilcox.
Stan heard a yelp, but wasn’t sure whose it was. There was no time to worry about it. The shaggs were upon him. He leaned forward, and whispered into his mother’s ear: “Give ‘em Hell, Linda.”
24. Father Figure
BLOODY SPRINTED STRAIGHT AT WILCOX. At the last moment, as his jaws opened to clamp around her, she leapt as high as she could. The dog in her legs gave her strength her human legs never had, and she managed to arc over his head.
It was also the dog in her that gave her the idea that this would work. She’d been so small when she was Stan’s pet, and humans often failed to realize how tall they were. She’d have to strain her neck just to look them in the eyes, and if they were directly above her, teasing her with a dog treat or a french fry, she’d often have to completely turn around to grab it, because her neck just didn’t bend straight up like that.
Wilcox’s wolf neck didn’t either. As she soared over him, he tried to turn, but he wasn’t used to being a wolf, so he was slow to adjust. She landed on his back, right on the pillowy skin that a wolf’s mother would use to pick him up and put him somewhere safe.
She was about to dig her claws into his back, severing his spine a
nd ending this fight, when his own canine instincts kicked in. He shook her violently, like he was wet and she was water. She flew off and crashed through the front window of the IGA. She stood and did some shaking of her own to get all the bits of glass off of her, then ducked into the aisles.
Wilcox smashed into the store a moment later, growling uncontrollably.
Bloody realized she would only have a few seconds to figure something out, but she wasn’t a quick thinker like Stan; she didn’t take in details and put together plans.
But she did know what it was like to be a four-legged animal on a shiny floor.
Wilcox leaped over the checkout counter and followed Bloody down the vegetable aisle. When she reached the end, she used the rubbery soles of her boots to stop herself, turn, and switch to the pasta aisle.
With clicky claws and skinny legs he wasn’t used to, Wilcox couldn’t turn as fast. He skidded sideways while his legs paddled at the shiny floor with zero grip. A freezer full of discount meats buckled as he careened into it.
That gave Bloody some time. Instead of going down the next aisle, where he’d be waiting at the end, she did a baseball slide under the checkout counter, and into the nook where Kimmy—RIP—had showed her how to use the cash register.
She heard Wilcox’s claws click toward her, more cautiously this time. He stopped at the end of the baking goods aisle, then checked the next aisle, and kept going to the next. He didn’t see where she went.
Using the power of opposable thumbs, Bloody clicked the button on the microphone for the intercom system, like Kimmy taught her. After a brief squeal of feedback, her voice filled the store. “Jeffery, Jeffery, Jeffery. I thought you liked me!”
She tried to think while she talked. Could she use anything in the store against Wilcox? Chocolate was poisonous to dogs. Could she stuff a few boxes of discount Christmas candy into his stinking maw and make him barf? Nah, that was probably not much of a plan. Keep stalling.
“Like weevils in my fucking flour,” Wilcox muttered.
“Huh?” Bloody said softly into the mic. “You finally losing it, my man?”
He stalked the bakery. “You bring a bag of flour home, and you’ve had problems before, so you ask your wife to seal it up so tight that no bugs could possibly crawl inside. But no matter what you do, those little bugs, out of all the places in the entire world they could possible crawl to, they sniff out your flour and make themselves at home. You go to bake yourself a nice cake, but lo and behold, pests have ruined it. That’s you, bitch, always sniffing me down, always ruining my fucking cake!” He raked the bakery’s display, sending iced pastries splatting to the floor.
“Jeffery, can’t we put this past us and go to the good old days, when you liked me?”
He calmed himself down. His voice filled the store even without a mic. “I like you just fine, sweetheart. Come out here and I’ll show you just how much I care.”
“Gross. I’m kind of like your mother, if you think about it. My genes are running through your veins.” She briefly wondered if that was how genes worked. Close enough.
Wilcox forced a laugh, the final ha exaggerated. “You know, it’s funny you think that’s even worth mentioning. You think it’ll buy you some sympathy, maybe get you a free pass.”
She peeked over the cash register. Wilcox leapt over the deli counter and swatted aside the microphone that was sitting there, growling when he failed to find Bloody. “Not a free pass. Maybe just a discount,” she said.
He snorted. “You people and your mothers. You should have done your research, girl. I put a stake through my own mother’s heart when I was fifteen years old.”
“Oh. Well. Then … I guess it’ll be kind of like returning the favor when I kill you. Did you know that I ripped David Letterman’s head off in a place kind of like this?”
Suddenly, another voice filled the room, echoing off the walls from the front doors. The voice was undeniably male, but not one that Bloody had ever heard before. He said a single word: “You.”
“Who the fuck?” Bloody asked, feedback squealing from her mic.
“He’s not with you?” Wilcox asked as he stalked toward the register where Bloody hid.
“I thought he was with you.”
“Nope.”
The voice spoke up again. It had a thin, nasally timbre, but confident enough that Bloody could hear it clearly above the sound of fighting just outside the store. “I knew Letterman—before that whole vampire phase, I mean—and his death was bugging me. Such malice in how he was killed, like you had a real beef with him. Or was it a beef with all celebrities?”
Bloody cocked her head, confused as hell. “You … you knew him?”
The voice laughed, in an odd childlike way. “I know a lot of people. Those parasites in Hollywood. I know too many of them, I’d say. I tried to protect my daughter from that life, but that didn’t seem to work, and now she’s dead too.”
It started to come together in Bloody’s head. Dalla’s father was here. In Newbury. Somehow.
“You think I killed her,” Wilcox said. He leaped onto the next aisle over, crunching the counter under his weight.
“I know you did,” Dalla’s father said.
“See, that’s what I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. I know that you think you know who killed Dalla, but we need to have a talk about the man who did it, and where you can find him,” Wilcox said.
Wilcox leaped to the next counter. Bloody scrambled away, but there was no way she’d be fast enough to escape him again, and she still didn’t have a way to get an edge over him, even with her opposable thumbs. The werewolf lunged, his teeth inches from her kicking feet. Then there was a squeak, and a pair of hands dug into her shoulders and dragged her backwards so fast she didn’t even notice the man had gotten behind her.
Wilcox stomped forward, but then the man was no longer behind Bloody, but between her and Wilcox. He wore a trenchcoat with hints of a colorful shirt peeking up at the collar, and a buckle strapped something to his face. “Let’s talk, then,” the man said.
“Yes! Let’s parley, as they say in the movies. I’ve created this welcome party just for you, so we could have a chance to chat. Unfortunately, this nasty woman and her friends have crashed the party and made things significantly more complicated than they needed to be. You can dispose of her.”
“Nah,” he said casually, like he was turning down a bite of Wilcox’s burger. “We’ll talk, but she’s coming.”
Wilcox growled. “Fine. We’ll need to grab Stanley Lightfoot from out there before we sit down. He can clear up this misunderstanding.”
A parsley or whatever sounded better than being eaten by her unwanted son. Bloody stood, brushed herself off, and sneered at Wilcox.
He snapped at her again, slobber flying, but Dalla’s father swatted his snout aside. “Children. Let’s settle this peacefully.”
So they walked out peacefully with the vampire between them. But Bloody kept her muscles taut, her claws out, ready to bolt at any moment, because if this guy was the demon everyone had been talking about, the peace probably wouldn’t last long.
25. Meanwhile
LINDA TOOK ON TWO SHAGGS at the same time by impaling one on each antler. She shook them off, sending them tumbling across the road, where they dusted themselves off, stuffed their bowels back in their torsos, then surged forward again.
Stan swung his sword at shaggs that came in from the side as Linda clawed at more of them approaching from the front. He had to tuck his legs up on his mother’s back to keep them from getting yanked off, trying to hold on with his messed-up hand for balance while he slashed at the shaggs trying to climb aboard. He managed to cut the mask off of one, but she retreated and began to re-fasten it.
A thought crawled into Stan’s head to give him some comfort: what they were doing here was important. Someday, this night would have a catchy name, like The Battle of Sandford Avenue, and it’d change the course of history in Newbury. Maybe it’d even get a
commemorative plaque.
Mike aimed his gun at any shaggs who got near. They hesitated near him—not only because of the gun, but because some seemed to recognize him, or at least recognize that his unwillingness to actually pull the trigger made him harmless.
Still, Mike was forced backwards whenever a shagg got close. Linda, then, was forced back to protect Mike.
Stan tried to see where Bloody and Wilcox had gone, but after they crashed through the window of the grocery store, Hell broke loose and he lost sight of them. His hand squeezed around the fur on his mother’s back. He wanted to tell her to charge through and go save Bloody, like a broken knight on a fucked-up horse, but every time he imagined that part of The Battle of Sandford Avenue, it ended with shaggs ripping them apart from all sides.
So they were forced back, away from Bloody. Back past the houses. Back past Timber Jack’s. Then back past Town Hall. By the time they were at the intersection of Sandford and Falls, Stan’s arms felt like they were about to melt off. The shaggs paused longer before each attack. Some of them were slowed down by the bruises and gashes in their skin.
“Why are we even doing this?” Stan shouted.
A few of the shaggs looked at each other, exchanged bubbly whispers, then stepped forward again, but with less vigor this time. Others hung near the back of the mob. Maybe Stan had gotten to them. Doubt was probably his only hope now. It was a dozen fucking sea vampires against one moose thing and two very tired humans.
One of the shaggs stepped in front of the group, and gestured for the rest of them to hold back. He wore fresher, less tattered leather than the rest of them. Maybe this one was some kind of leader. With his facial expression calm, resigned, he cleared his throat of bubbles, then opened his mouth to speak.