Prowlers - 1 (21 page)

With a muttered curse, Molly stunned the guy closest to her. He went stiff and fell to the floor of the car.

"Get the hell out of my way or be next!" she shouted.

People moved. Some took off, running ahead of her. Molly and Jack got off the train and ran into the Government Center station. It was busier than Park Street, plenty of people around, not to mention the vendors down there, underground. The passengers who had already gotten off the train pointed at them and yelled or just whispered to one another. Next to a newsstand a twentysomething guy had been playing an electric guitar that was plugged into a portable amp. He stopped singing right in the middle of an old Bonnie Raitt song.

"What the hell are they?" she asked.

"They're called Prowlers," Jack told her.

So now she had a name for them.

Molly and Jack ran toward the stairs.

Someone screamed.

She turned around and saw the beast, the savage monster, make a shaky leap onto the platform from between two cars. Molly's heart raced even faster. Her throat felt dry. The thing had taken two Taser blasts and was barely fazed.

"We're dead," she whispered. "Run, Jack. Come on!"

But Jack wasn't with her. She had a moment to fear that the thing had gotten him, that he had

been injured and she had been so concerned with her own safety that she had left him behind. Then she saw him.

Despite the blows he'd taken to the head, Jack ran over to the kid playing guitar. The guy was staring in horror at the Prowler, which was now loping along the train platform toward them. The young guy didn't balk when Jack ripped his electric guitar out of his hands. Its cable popped out of the amp as Jack hefted it.

The Prowler froze, then wobbled a bit on its feet as it regarded Jack.

Then it lunged.

Jack held on to the neck of the guitar with both hands and swung the instrument around with all his strength. It struck the Prowler's head with a resounding crack, and the thing went down hard on the platform, its head smashing against the concrete. Several people screamed, others gasped. The guitar had shattered.

But so had the monster's skull.

Molly ran to Jack Without a word she threw her arms around him. He let the remains of the guitar slip from his hand. The kid who'd been playing it stared at his ruined instrument but said not a word.

"Sssh, we're okay," Jack said.

Only then did Molly realize she was crying. The horror and fear had caught up to her, and she wiped at her eyes now, trying to get control of herself. Her mind whirled with the impossibility of what had happened.

But it had happened.

Shouts rang through the station. They looked up to see MBTA police running across the platform toward them, toward the dead creature that lay on the floor.

Jack stiffened. "We've gotta go."

"But we've got to tell the police—"

"There was another one," he said quickly. "A girl. At the movies. I saw her and knew she was one. She's gotta be around somewhere. Once they've got your scent, they don't stop hunting."

"How do you know that?" Molly asked, shaking her head.

"I just know."

Jack grabbed her hand and together they ran for the stairs. The MBTA cops called out for them to stop, but they were more interested in the creature on. the platform. The police pursued them too, but Jack and Molly had a long head start.

With Molly in front of him, Jack hustled up the stairs. He glanced behind him for the cops, and for the female Prowler that had been at the theater. Artie's words had stayed with him, about the creatures getting his scent. He could not shake the feeling that it wasn't over.

Thoughts of Artie brought back a clear, chilling memory of the moment he had truly seen the Ghostlands, but he blocked it out. It was possible that thinking of it could make him see it again, and he didn't want that, not even if the dead could help him.

Before they reached the top of the stairs, Jack heard sirens.

"The police," Molly said. She glanced back at him as they hurried toward the exit. "We've got to stop and talk to them, Jack. They've got to be told about these monsters."

"They'll figure it out quick enough," he told her, mind racing. "I'm more worried about staying alive."

A moment later they reached the top of the stairs and walked swiftly out of Government Center Station into the the ugly sea of concrete that was City Hall Plaza. Boston's City Hall looked like a parking garage with a broad cement no-man's-land around it. They had to cross that expanse in order to get home. Other people were around, spectators drawn by the police sirens.

A cop car bumped up onto the cement not far away.

Jack took Molly's hand and led her away from the T station, away from the arriving cops, away from everything. Sirens filled the air, but he kept his back to them.

They hadn't gone a hundred yards before he saw the girl.

The beautiful girl with the oval face and the enormous eyes. Her smile was suggestive and mocking at the same time. She stood just ahead of them. A handful of other people were walking around—couples hand in hand, a trio of guys obviously heading for the T after spending some time at a bar. They checked the girl out as they passed, but there were no catcalls, no comments. It was almost as if they knew better.

Jack froze, pulled Molly's hand so that she came to a stop beside him. With a grunt of surprise, Molly shot him a fearful look.

"That's her," Jack said.

Molly pulled the stun gun out of her coat pocket, where she had stashed it on their run up the stairs.

"My name's Don," the girl said. "Thanks for the chase. A good hunt always helps me work up my appetite."

Then, there in the middle of City Hall Plaza, she changed.

It took only a few moments. The drunk guys shouted something and ran toward the T station. A twenty-something couple coming up behind the Prowler stopped short before taking off in the other direction.

Don crouched before them, ready to spring. She growled and began to advance.

"Get ready to split up," Jack whispered to Molly. "You go right, I'll go left. And use that Taser."

With a high, ululating cry, Don charged them.

The night exploded with gunfire.

Don's body danced under the onslaught of bullets, blood splashed over the concrete wasteland, and then the Prowler's corpse dropped to the ground in front of them.

Jack looked up in astonishment as the police moved in.

From the top of the steps that led out of City Hall Plaza and toward Quincy Market, Jasmine watched in

disgust and frustration as Dori was cut down, slaughtered there on the concrete. The police surrounded the two humans who had been her chosen prey.

Police. Dozens of witnesses. Prey who had survived.

Boston was no longer safe for them.

Tanzer would not be pleased.

CHAPTER 10

The cops let Jack and Molly walk away.

Despite all they'd been through that night, it was that one thing that disturbed Jack more than anything else. After all that had happened on the train, in the station, and right there in City Hall Plaza a hundred yards from the mayor's office—after dozens of eyewitnesses had seen a Prowler in the flesh and the police had shot one to death—the cops had let them walk away.

Bridget's Irish Rose was still buzzing with pub business downstairs—the restaurant was closed—but Courtney and Bill left work behind the minute Jack and Molly came in and began to tell them what had happened. Molly looked like hell, pale and wide-eyed, hair even wilder than usual. She appeared afraid it would start again at any minute.

Jack understood. Though he tried to remain calm, he felt the same way. Every shadow suddenly seemed

alive to him. Every strange face seemed impermanent, as if at any moment it might change, might become monstrous and savage. It was chilling.

Now the four of them sat around the kitchen table in the upstairs apartment, trying to understand.

"I don't get it," Courtney said, shaking her head. She glanced at Jack, then looked to Bill as though she thought he might have the answer. "How could the police just let them walk away after all that?"

Big Bill stroked his beard and studied Jack. His eyes did not move at all. He was focused only on Jack. "You tried to tell them what happened?" he asked.