Wolf Hunt (17 page)

It was far from subtle, and it wasn't
something they really wanted to do in front of a tavern full of
witnesses, but they didn't have much of a choice at this point.

They pulled out their guns.

Moving faster than George would have
ever expected possible in his human form, Ivan slid below the
table. He was an arrogant prick, but apparently not such an
arrogant prick that he hadn't anticipated that he might be in
physical danger. As he disappeared from sight, George and Lou
shoved their guns underneath the table and squeezed the triggers.
They were blind shots but almost point-blank ones.

The table went flying into the air, sailing
across the bar and crashing into the dancing couple, knocking them
to the ground with what looked like a spatter of blood, though
George caught this only in his peripheral vision and couldn't be
sure.

He and Lou opened fire on the fully
transformed wolfman, pumping bullets into his face and chest. The
"shoot and shoot and shoot" portion of their plan was working
nicely.

Blood sprayed and Ivan recoiled with each
shot, throwing up his clawed hands to defend himself. One shot got
him directly under the left eye. Another broke off most of a talon.
At least three got him in the heart.

In the background--the faint, distant
background--George heard people screaming. Lots of commotion.

Lou's gun ran out of ammunition a couple of
seconds before George's did. They both kept pulling the trigger for
a few clicks after bullets stopped firing, staring at the
blood-soaked monster that stood before them.

Ivan let out a howl of animalistic fury.

No way were they going to get the blanket on
him. George didn't even make a move for it. Better not to let Ivan
know they had it.

Lou, who'd taken out the silver cross
so quickly that George didn't even see him do it, put their
emergency backup plan into action: he lunged forward with the
weapon, thrusting it toward Ivan's heart.

Ivan swiped at Lou's hand, striking it with
such force that George thought he might have snapped Lou's wrist.
The cross flew across the bar, striking the wall and falling to the
floor. Lou was lucky that the same thing didn't happen to his
hand.

Though Lou cried out in pain, it didn't slow
him down. He punched Ivan in the chest, hitting him hard enough to
create a shower of crimson from Ivan's blood-soaked fur.

George threw his own punch, aiming for Ivan's
neck but hitting him in the shoulder. The bastard was solid as
hell, and George felt as if his knuckles burst inside his skin.
Both George and Lou could throw mean punches, but though their
blows clearly hurt Ivan, they didn't knock him down.

God, he wished they'd had silver bullets.
What kind of irresponsible scumbag would send you on a trip with a
werewolf and not provide silver bullets?

Ivan balled his hand into a fist and punched
Lou in the face, sending the big guy crashing into the bench,
against the wall, and onto the floor. At least Ivan hadn't tried to
kill him--had he used his claws, Lou's face would be splattered
across the bar next to the silver cross.

The werewolf slammed its
hands against George's arms, pinning them to his sides. He tried to
knee Ivan in the groin but though his knee connected with its
target it was just a glancing blow that seemed to have no effect.
Ivan squeezed George's arms, just until it hurt, and then
he...well, he didn't quite
throw
George, but George definitely didn't hurtle across
the room of his own volition.

He struck a table, knocking it over
and sending a couple of beers flying. He grabbed for a chair to
stop his fall, but it toppled along with him and he crashed to the
floor, a leg of the chair bashing into his kidney, hard.

The pain was unbelievable. He'd be pissing
blood for sure.

He blinked away the wave of dizziness,
and took a half-second to survey his surroundings. People were
screaming and running for the exit in a mad panic, with at least
two of them on the floor being trampled.

The twenty-one year-old knelt on the floor,
wailing and cradling her older dance partner in her lap. Blood
gushed from a laceration in his forehead and his neck was bent at a
hideous angle.

A man behind the bar cocked a shotgun.

Lou, dazed and confused, was trying to get
back up.

George wanted to get up as well, but he
needed just a few seconds for the worst of the agony to fade before
he'd be of any use to anybody. Just a few. Not long.

The man behind the bar pointed the shotgun at
Ivan, but Ivan was at the counter before he could shoot. Ivan
knocked the barrel of the gun upward just as the man squeezed the
trigger, firing into the ceiling, creating a cloud of plaster, and
eliciting a scream of pain from above.

Holy shit. Had he
actually
shot somebody
upstairs
?

Ivan wrenched the shotgun out of the man's
hands and shoved the barrel in his face. The man held up his hands
in surrender. "Don't shoot!"

The werewolf seemed to consider that. Ivan
moved the shotgun barrel away from the man's face, fumbled a bit
with his claws on the trigger, then fired into one of the man's
upraised hands, blowing it completely off. The man's shriek was
silenced a moment later as Ivan tossed the gun aside and swiped off
his entire lower jaw.

Before the impact of that could even sink in,
Ivan pulled the man forward by the front of his shirt, opened his
mouth wide, and then bit down on what remained of the man's face.
Ivan spit the bloody chunk onto the counter, let the man's corpse
fall, and then turned toward George.

Ivan held up his index finger and wiggled the
talon.

The message was
clear:
That's one...

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Massacre at the Cotton Mouse
Tavern

George and Lou both got up. Despite the
agony, George was able to find his voice, if not his wit. "I'll
fuckin' kill you!"

Ivan beckoned.
Bring it on.

But instead of waiting for George, Ivan ran
over to the formerly dancing couple, pouncing on them with his
claws and fangs bared. The girl died first, unless the old man was
already dead when the werewolf got there, which was entirely
possible. Ivan didn't try to be inventive--he just ripped their
bodies apart in a matter of seconds, tearing off flesh with such
speed and intensity that George couldn't be certain which piece
came from which victim.

Lou patted his pocket, then
frantically looked around on the floor, presumably for his
switchblade. Had he lost it in the fall? Lou quickly gave up the
search and went for the cross.

About half of the patrons had made it out of
the bar already, but there was a bottleneck at the doorway.
Panicked drunk people shoving each other was not conducive to an
efficient exit.

An overweight bearded man pushed a skinny
girl out of the way, his hand cupping one of her small breasts in
the process. She bashed a beer bottle against the side of his head,
spraying glass and Bud Light everywhere. The bearded man fell,
taking the two people in front of him down with him.

Another man, clean-shaven, his eyes wide with
terror, had apparently retained his sense of chivalry and pulled a
blonde woman out of the way before she could get trampled.

It didn't surprise George that Ivan went
after the nice guy.

Ivan leapt off the two mangled dancer
corpses, knocked another man out of the way, and grabbed the nice
guy's arm. As the guy cried out and tried to pull away, Ivan gave
it a brutal yank. It wasn't enough to rip off the limb, but it was
clearly enough to pop his arm out of its socket.

With the second yank, the skin split. The arm
remained attached. A third yank, and the arm came most of the way
off. Ivan quickly finished the job with his teeth.

Lou crawled around on the floor, searching
unsuccessfully for the cross.

George slammed his foot down on the wooden
chair, breaking off the leg that had bashed his kidney and creating
a makeshift wooden stake. Even if it didn't kill Ivan, they might
be able to injure him enough to finally subdue the creature.

Ivan shoved the one-armed nice guy toward
George. The guy, spurting blood and almost completely drained of
color, dropped to the floor before he could get in George's way.
George leapt over him, tried to fake a swing to the left, but took
a werewolf fist to the face and stumbled backwards, almost but not
quite losing his footing.

Ivan snarled and tossed the severed arm
aside. There was so much gore in his fur that it was hard to say
for certain, but his gunshot wounds no longer seemed to be
bleeding.

Most of the bar patrons had finally
made their way out of the place. Aside from the bearded guy and the
two people on the floor with him, only a man and woman who looked
to be in their early twenties remained at the doorway. They were
presumably a romantic couple, since they were dressed in matching
cutesy light green shirts.

One of the people who'd been trampled had
apparently made it outside to safety. The other, a middle-aged lady
with pigtails, lay dead on the floor, her body broken and
bloody.

Ivan ran to the doorway, bashed the cutesy
man out of the way with his right hand, then grabbed the cutesy
woman with his left. Instead of killing her, he tossed her over
with her lover, then pulled the door closed.

The bearded guy scrambled away, his ass
dragging along the floor as he did a clumsy version of a crab-walk.
George ran at Ivan again, focusing all of his attention on Ivan's
heart, but the werewolf knocked him aside once more. George's
landing was not gentle.

As he got up, he noticed two other people in
the bar, hiding underneath the table of a booth. Assuming the nice
guy with one arm hadn't bled to death yet, that left eight
potential victims in there, not counting George and Lou. Ivan might
very well make his body count goal.

George caught a glimpse of silver as Lou
found the cross and quickly palmed it. Lou got up and wobbled a bit
on shaky legs, but didn't fall.

"Hey, Ivan!" George shouted. "You hit like a
ferret!"

Ivan let out what was clearly meant to be a
derisive laugh. George tried to think of an animal comparison more
rage inducing than "ferret" but nothing immediately came to
mind.

George had hoped that Ivan might change back
just to offer up a snappy retort, but he didn't. Instead, he looked
around the bar, still smiling, as if joining George in tallying up
his potential victims.

Ivan's ear perked up a bit as he noticed the
people under the table in the booth.

The man and woman who were dressed
alike grabbed each other's hand and sprinted away from Ivan,
running toward a plate-glass window covered by neon signs. Ivan
followed, taking down the man before they made it halfway across
the bar. The woman bellowed and desperately pulled on her boyfriend
or husband's arm, refusing to let go of him even as Ivan slashed at
his legs and back.

"Just leave me!" the man shouted, gurgling
the words. George winced as Ivan ripped out a particularly meaty
strip of his leg, exposing bone.

George picked up another chair.

Lou moved cautiously toward the
werewolf, not revealing the cross. His breathing was as heavy as if
he'd run a marathon and George hoped that he wouldn't have a
massive heart attack before he made it to Ivan.

Ivan extended all ten of his fingers, then
slammed his claws deep into the man's neck all at once. The woman
finally let go of her lover and ran for the window again.

The two people who'd been knocked down by the
bearded guy--another man and woman, also in their twenties, but
hopefully not a couple considering their complete lack of interest
in assisting each other in a moment of crisis--got the door open
again. It slammed into the man's shin and he let out a grunt of
pain as the woman opened it, but they both rushed through the
doorway and out of the bar.

Two more survivors. If this upset Ivan, he
didn't show it. The woman who'd just lost her boyfriend or husband
ran straight at the window, arms extended.

Lou took another hesitant step toward Ivan.
The werewolf's attention was directed toward the running woman, but
it was pretty hard for a guy the size of Lou to sneak up on
somebody in a wide-open bar.

George threw the chair as hard as he possibly
could, so hard that he thought he might have injured his shoulder.
His intent was for the chair to smash directly into Ivan's head,
distracting him from the woman long enough for her to escape,
during which time George would figure out how to deal with a
murderous werewolf whose attention was now on him. The chair didn't
hit Ivan's head, but it smashed into his side with enough force to
stop him in his tracks.

The woman struck the window. The glass did
not shatter. She bounced off, careened to the side, and doubled
over in pain.

Taking advantage of Ivan's distraction, Lou
picked up his pace and held the cross like a dagger. George
hurriedly grabbed another chair to keep Ivan's attention focused on
him.

"Did that hurt, you hairy bitch? Did you get
a boo-boo?"

Lou was only a couple of steps away
from being able to slam the cross into his back. They were, of
course, assuming that the silver cross would do a lot more damage
than just stabbing him with a regular old sharpened object, and if
that turned out not to be the case, Lou was in a lot of
danger.