by S. A. Hunt
Pouring blue moonlight at her feet, the broken front door yawned in front of her. “Get your ass in that crawlspace!” she shouted over her shoulder, and went blind as the room turned black.
Blocking the moonlight, a colossal shape filled the hole where the front door had been, shoulders brushing the frame on both sides. Golden eyes glittered in the massive silhouette, embedded in a massive head. Big enough to swallow her whole, a mouth opened in a man’s distorted, bearded face, revealing meat-tearing teeth as long as Robin’s fingers.
The Mexican Mountain was a bear.
Half a ton of gold-eyed, pants-shitting man-bear. He roared again, filling the house with trumpeting Godzilla noise, and lumbered into the living room, standing up to his full height of what looked like eight or nine feet.
Everything from that moment to the kitchen passed in throbbing, panicked slow-motion.
One swipe of a massive claw raked the shotgun out of her hands and flung it aside. Black talons flayed the back of her forearm and hand down to the bone, but as amped up as she was, she didn’t even feel it.
She turned and half-hobbled, half-ran.
Max fell forward with an incredible SLAM! that trampolined the floor and the behemoth gave chase. She threw herself into the first room she came to, a side bedroom off the living room, and slammed the door in Maximo’s face.
Room was empty. A hole had been knocked in the wall to her left, but something was pushed in front of it from the other side. A fridge. Robin pressed her hands against it and shoved it out of the way. Max hit the door behind her and knocked it across the bedroom, barely missing her, smashing a window.
Diving through the hole in the wall, she threw herself into the kitchen. An enormous claw reached through after her, and Robin grabbed the tomahawk, hacking at him. Max growled and withdrew, and she shoved the fridge back into place.
“Gotcha, bitch,” snarled someone behind her.
Werewolf in the kitchen, the back door standing wide open. She drew the katana out of its scabbard and said, “Get this, fuck-boy,” surprising him with a tomahawk across the face.
The werewolf recoiled in pain and lunged at her, jaws gaping, arms outstretched. She stepped aside and parried his awkward charge with the katana; the sword sliced through his wrist with a sick, bony chop.
Blood pattered on linoleum. Kenway kicked the cellar door again.
The sudden BANG made the werewolf look up from his severed hand, and Robin took advantage of the distraction, plunging the sword into his neck. Fever-hot blood sprayed from the wound and she followed it with the tomahawk in the other hand, whacking him across the forehead, peeling his hairy scalp back.
Yelping and staggering away, the werewolf turned and ran out of the house, face-planting in the dirt.
A hulking shadow stepped over him, another werewolf taking his place.
To Robin’s left, the door leading from the living room exploded into sticks and the Max-bear leered through. His patchy, sweaty half-man face was a nightmare, a swollen deathbeast with a hell-mouth and dead black eyes, but the door was narrow enough that he couldn’t get in. The doorframe groaned under his weight.
As she took off for the dining room, Robin ducked a swipe from the other monster coming in through the back door. Talons whistled through dusty air.
Not the good idea she hoped for. Soon as she stepped into the room, she realized the only way to go was back into the office, and that only had one other exit—the window looking out onto the front yard. This window collapsed in a crash of broken glass, a werewolf leaping through.
“Shit,” said Robin, and the dining room wall caved in. Maximo pushed through the chaos, a hairy bulldozer shoving through the drywall.
Powdery sheetrock fell onto the floor in shards. Wooden studs splintered against his shoulders but refused to break, restraining him. He reached through with one massive paw, clawing wood shavings out of the floor.
The werewolf leapt out of the office at the same time the other one came in from the kitchen, pincering her inside the dining room with the bear. Maximo snapped at her with slobbery jaws and Robin did a back somersault over the tabletop, rolling off the other side.
Landing on her feet, the trap-chewed leg howling in pain, she kicked the table into the bear’s face.
Snarling in a blood-rage, she turned to slash at Backdoor Wolf’s mouth with the sword, then sank the tomahawk into the side of Office Wolf’s head. Backdoor gargled, spitting out teeth. Office reeled from the blow to the skull and halfheartedly tried to bite her once before sprawling on his back, pulling the tomahawk out of her hand.
Wall studs crackled. Gnarly teeth clashed just a foot away. Max trying to bite her again.
Someone reached through the door to her left and fired a Roman candle of sound and fury. Buckshot tore through Maximo’s face, splattering the dining room wall with blood and snot. The bear actually gasped, a hoarse coughing noise, and retreated into the living room. Every one of the beast’s footfalls shuddered the house’s frame.
Breaking open the sawed-off shotgun, Gendreau snatched out the hot casings and flung them over his shoulder.
By the look on his face, Robin could tell he was terrified. Pride roared in her chest at seeing him in the fray. “The hell are you doing? You’re gonna get killed. Let me handle this.”
He reached into a hip pocket for a shell, reloaded the shotgun, flicking it shut, ka-chik, then he knelt to apply some healing energy from the ring to the wound in her leg. “I was hiding in the living room. And it’s a good thing, because you lost the sawed-off. Come on. You aren’t the badass you think you are. That demon inside you doesn’t make you invincible.”
“Didn’t need the sawed-off.”
Gendreau rolled his eyes at her. She sneered at him.
Blood streaming from his face, Backdoor Wolf tried to collect himself, and Robin shanked him twice in the back, deep, the sword scraping bone. He didn’t get up again.
“Be that as it may,” said Gendreau, “you need to get into the cellar with us.”
“Yo!” Santiago, outside.
Careful to stay in the moon’s shadow, Robin approached the window and the magician joined her, the two of them peering through dingy curtains. Men and wolves stood together in the sagebrush, watching the house. Some of the men carried pistols.
“Send me my daughter, and I won’t kill you,” Santi called.
“Hard to believe,” said Gendreau.
“Just trying to get the kid out so he can shoot the place up,” Robin told him. “He doesn’t want to send any more of his boys in. I think he’s getting the picture: I’m not somebody he wants to fuck with.”
Santiago shouted again. “Ain’t nobody else got to die! Come on, hard-ass, let’s talk this out!”
Eyeing Gendreau, Robin tried to pull the tomahawk out of the werewolf’s head, but it was stuck fast, wedged deep into his skull. She abandoned it and reached behind her back for the Osdathregar tucked into the waist of her jeans. “Here,” she said, handing the dagger off to Gendreau. “Get back downstairs. If I don’t make it, at least this won’t end up in their grubby hands.”
The Maximo-bear roared from somewhere else in the house, a resonant saurian blast. Through the hole in the wall, she saw his great hoary bulk shuffling around on the far side of the living room.
Sudden light turned the window into a fireplace.
For a brief second, Robin thought Santiago’s men were throwing firebombs onto the roof, which would have been par for the course.
Screams of pain in the night. Robin and the curandero ran to the window and found a rush of heat and light as a fire-tornado billowed up from the grass. Flaming werewolves scattered into the brushland, some of them running for the cover of the house, bringing the fire with them.
“It’s the cavalry!” cried Gendreau, grinning madly. He ran for the kitchen. “They came back for us! Callooh callay!”
“Callooh callay?” Robin followed him. The magician handed her the shotgun and unlocked the c
ellar door. But instead of sticking around or going below, Robin stormed into the living room.
“Hey, where you going?” demanded Kenway, bursting out of the cellar.
“I’m loaded for bear.”
The instant she went in, Maximo swept the couch out of the way, throwing it into the fireplace, and charged her. The shotgun barked fire and buckshot into his face, but he kept coming. She rolled out of the way and Maximo slammed into the staircase. Farm implements rained down from the walls in a metallic cacophony.
Blinded, the behemoth man-bear wheeled around, raking a claw over Robin’s head, and the witch-hunter countered with her own slash across his belly, the katana opening a rubbery mouth that belched a cascade of steaming intestines. Blood ran down his thighs in a waterfall of red.
Dropping the empty shotgun, she ran for the stairs.
Kicking off the wall, she leapt, pivoting, pulling the sword back, and at the last second, she thrust the blade into the side of his neck in another Superman punch, letting the heavy muscle guide the sword down into his body and into his mammoth heart.
Both of them crashed to the floor, and Maximo went through it, wood planks collapsing in around him. They plummeted into the cellar through a deafening apocalypse of debris and dust.
Track 21
Blood bubbled out of his jaws as Maximo struggled to breathe. One of his eyes had been punctured, fluids running down the side of his face, and the lips on that side had been blown away, teeth glinting through gore.
Robin stood over him, watching him die.
“That’s what you get,” she said, and spat on him.
Eyes glinted from a small closet under the cellar stairs. Carly gaped out at her, hunkered in the back with her arms around her knees.
Fire lit up the room as a bright shape came billowing through the front door upstairs, screaming and flailing. Tongues of flame flickered from the werewolf’s arms, and his feet left a burning track. Fire spread to the walls, the drapes becoming a fence of flames. He stumbled right into the hole, pitching himself on top of the dying Maximo.
“Come on, baby, we got to get out of here,” said Robin, running for the crawlspace.
The girl screamed, pressing herself into the corner.
“House is gonna burn down, you idiot!” shouted Robin, reaching for her.
Taking a deep breath, Carly started shrieking at the top of her lungs, like she was being sawed in half. The expression on the rest of her face couldn’t have been anything other than absolute ice-cube-shitting terror.
Robin recoiled. “The hell is—”
“You murdered my wife,” said Santiago, right behind her.
Toward them padded a monster nearly as big as Max. Orange and white hair made a Creamsicle masterpiece out of his skin. His oversized head divided in the middle to reveal twin rows of jagged white teeth. Honey eyes stared out of the ugly bulge of his face, ringed in black tiki stripes. Santiago Valenzuela looked like a kindergartener’s crazed fridge-art rendition of a tiger, his face a crazy Picasso mishmash of man and monster.
No hesitation, no thought. Robin lunged for the jerry cans near the crawlspace and whipped one at Santiago’s face. To her surprise, there was at least half a can of fuel in it. He batted it out of the way, TONK!, and it spun over his head into the fire.
“Now give me—”
The gas can exploded in a blast of light and heat, sending a shudder through the concrete floor and showering Santiago in gouts of flame. The ceiling caught fire as well. Santi screamed—row-rowwr!—and writhed around on his back, trying to scrub out his burning pelt. Robin had a weird moment, thinking about the Jungle Book—Shere Khan hates man’s red flower.
Grabbing Carly’s arm, she dragged her out of the crawlspace and pushed her up the stairs.
The girl stared at the tiger-thing. “Is that—”
“Not anymore,” Robin said, truthfully. “Not anymore.” She shoved the girl. “Get your ass out of here!”
Filthy sneakers ran up the stairs. Robin thrust the sword into the belly of the remaining jerry-can and gasoline dripped from the blade. She flourished it once to get rid of the excess (causing several more fires to erupt as she did this) and held it up in the air like a barbarian, letting the ceiling ignite it.
Fire raced down the sword’s length. She held it out in both hands, a kendo pose aimed at the creature just getting to his feet. “Strike me down,” she quipped, scoring an Obi-Wan Kenobi reference. Maybe she’d get the hang of this one-liner thing after all. “Whatever doesn’t kill me just makes me stranger.”
“Finally, the bitch that kidnapped my family.” Santiago’s black-ringed face warped into a bizarre grimace as he paced around her. “Smaller than I thought you would be. You look stringy.”
“I didn’t kidnap anybody. They were afraid of you.” Robin backed toward the stairs, the flaming sword pointed at his face. “They ran from you and hid in my Winnebago. And I didn’t kill anybody, either. Marina’s death was your buddy Tuco’s fault. He caused the crash. You wanna blame some—”
“MY WIFE DIED ON YOUR WATCH!”
Saliva misted her face. Santiago feinted at her and Robin thrust the burning sword at him, the flames rumbling and woofing. The handle was growing hot—she was going to have to fight or run. And soon.
As if he were being dragged, Santiago slid backward.
Talons pried up chunks of concrete. Confused, Robin looked up through the hole. The Origo Rook was upstairs, holding her Zippo lighter up like a groupie at a Grateful Dead concert.
Telekinesis.
The Gift of Manipulation relic. Pulling the tiger by his tail. “Get out of there!” cried Rook. “While I’ve got him!”
Didn’t have to tell Robin twice. She scrambled up the stairs, the sword leaving tongues of flame along the risers, and flung herself into the kitchen, where Kenway was fighting a wolf with the tomahawk. The veteran’s arms were a hash of deep scratches, blood running off his wrists. He split the werewolf’s skull and the creature went down in a heap.
Robin finished it off with a flaming sword blow. “You okay?”
“Need some quality time with Doc, but otherwise I’m good,” he said, surveying the nasty cuts on her arm.
Two werewolves wedged themselves into the back door, snarling and snapping, trying to claw their way into the kitchen. Carly screamed from her hiding spot in the corner. Robin grabbed her and pulled her into what was left of the living room, skirting the edge of the hole in the floor.
Fire had overwhelmed the room, blanketing the ceiling and walls in orange, and the air was thick with smoke. The man-tiger screamed downstairs.
“Go!” shouted Rook, waving them out the front door.
Running out onto the front porch, Robin was not thrilled to see a herd of shadows flowing up the hill toward them. Wolves bellowed from the moonlit brush. Terrified, Carly shrieked and veered to the left, sprinting into the dark desert. “No!” yelled Robin. “The hell you going?”
Navathe came around the corner of the house just in time to almost get bowled over by the girl as she ran into the night. “What’s going on?” he asked in his urbanite London accent, and thrust his snow globe out, throwing jets of flame across the slope. Werewolves and greasy stands of sagebrush burst into flame, turning the desolate front yard into a wildfire.
“I’ll go get her!” Gendreau ran after the kid.
The werewolves ignored them. Robin began to say something and then a hairy shape leapt out of the dark, throwing her down, tearing at her before they’d even skidded to a stop. Slash marks across her chest. Kenway pulled him off, planting the tomahawk in his ear with sick squelching noises.
Rook screamed from inside the house.
“Dammit,” growled Robin, running for the porch steps, clutching the cuts on her chest. Through the front door and back into Hell.
Fire curtained from the walls of the living room, mushrooming across the ceiling. Santiago clung to the edge of the hole, suspended over the flames in the basement, and hi
s claws were embedded in Rook’s leg. The magician lay on the floor like the elderly lady from the emergency-alert commercials: Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!
“Got you!” Robin shouted, sliding to the edge of the hole as if it were second base.
Trails of fire licked up through the floorboards as she jabbed Santiago with the sword. The tiger-beast roared in pain and renewed his grip, Robin’s blade jutting from his flesh. Talons pried up burning boards.
Embers and shards of wood slipped through the cellar’s joists: the floor was coming apart under them. Kenway appeared out of the smoke to hack at Santiago’s arm, trying to either get him to let go of Rook or chop the fucker’s hand off, whichever one happened first. The tomahawk hit thick bone and stopped cold.
“GRAAAAH!” Santiago reached out and snagged Robin’s arm, letting go of the joists, and as he fell, he dragged both women back into the basement in a cascade of burning wood.
She landed in the fire and rolled out onto cold concrete, tumbling through a blizzard of red sparks. The sword danced across the floor, singing and clanging. Floundering up onto her hands and knees, Robin slapped at the flames on her jeans.
The magician had pulled off her flaming shirt, throwing it aside.
“Get out of here, Haruko,” she told Rook.
“But I can—”
“JUST GO!” bellowed Robin.
Burning timbers fell from above, battering the edge of the hole in the ceiling. “Aaugh!” Kenway said, flinging himself back.
A meteor-like shape sprang out of the inferno, screaming, claws flashing. Santiago was covered in fire, thrashing around on the cellar floor, screaming, tearing the shelves off the walls in an attempt to find something that would put him out. He set the stairs aflame, blocking their escape.
“Fuck’s sake!” Rook screamed. She scrambled into the crawl space.
Robin snatched up the sword and stuck it into Santiago’s back. The malformed beast let out an agonized roar and belted her across the stomach, flinging her against the cellar wall. Black meat hooks tore strips of skin from her bare belly. Before she could recover, he was on her, throwing her across the room.