Prowlers - 1 (27 page)

thick-necks eyed him as he stepped up behind the other two.

Jack took a steadying breath, then tapped the celebrity on the shoulder. Feeling the cold weight of the gun against his back, he let his right hand dangle at his side and shook it out.

The celebrity cast him a sidelong glance. Jack realized that he'd made a mistake in sizing the

guy up from a distance. Next to the pair of Neanderthals he'd come in with, he looked skinny. He was thin, true, but bigger than Jack had thought and he moved as if he were coiled up tight, ready to spring.

"Something I can do for you?" the Prowler asked, his tone light and amused.

"You've made a mistake."

The celebrity frowned. "I don't follow you."

"I think you do. You and the other animals shouldn't have come here. Not just here, as in my place, Bridget's. But here, as in Boston. You shouldn't have killed my friends."

The Prowler's nostrils flared. His eyes narrowed and his lip curled up and suddenly he appeared a great deal more like a beast, though he still wore a human face.

Then he smiled, said one word. "Messy."

As if his voice had triggered it, all three of them changed. The celebrity was smooth, the flesh seeming to recede back into him as bones popped and fur bristled and slavering jaws extended. The other two were cruder, shredding their skin as their true features tore through from beneath.

Jack could smell them now, the animal stink of the Prowlers. He almost gagged it was so strong. Beasts, that's all they were. Fangs and claws and instincts, like bears or wolves or tigers. But Prowlers could also think, and that made them the most dangerous animal of all.

Across the room, a waitress named Missy Keane— who had just happened to be watching the men at the bar—shrieked in terror.

"What the hell?" shouted Tommy Herlihy, one of the regulars just down the bar.

Jack stepped back, whipped the Beretta out from behind his back.

The three Prowlers moved simultaneously. One of them leaped up on top of the bar. Tommy Herlihy reached for it—either drunk or braver than Jack had given him credit for—and was slapped away with a long talon that tore furrows in his cheek. Tommy cried out in pain as his friends caught him, but nobody heard Tommy's shout.

Glass shattered. People screamed and ran for the door. He heard Molly and Courtney urging them on, shouting for them all to leave, to run. Jack tried not to wonder if any of them would ever come back.

All this happened in two seconds, as Jack was drawing the Beretta from behind his back. The thinner Prowler, who had looked like a celebrity in bis human face, lunged at Jack and batted the gun out of his hand. It hit the floor, drove a divot up out of the hardwood, and slid away.. The

creature grabbed Jack by the throat and lifted him one-handed off the floor. Jack

coughed, choking, and grabbed the thing's powerful hands.

"Messy," it said again, its voice a growl, nothing more.

Right about then, Bill brought up the shotgun and blew a hole in the chest of the Prowler standing on the bar. Gore spattered onto the bar and over into the restaurant, and then Bill was flying over the oak top with a leap that Jack would have thought impossible for a man his size.

The beast holding Jack turned slightly, alarmed by the shotgun blast. Its arms were so much longer than Jack's that Jack could not have reached it with his hands. Instead he used the power of the Prowler's grip against it and swung his right leg up in a snap-kick to its sternum. Something cracked when the kick landed. The Prowler grunted and dropped Jack.

"Don't move!" Bill screamed at the thing. "On your knees!" He leveled the shotgun at it, and the beast began to comply.

"Jack!"

The scream was Molly's. Jack spun to see the third Prowler—how could he have forgotten the third one?— going for Molly. The moment seemed to freeze in time. From his vantage point up at the bar he could see the entire restaurant, a nasty bit of wide-screen. Missy Keane was gone, either out to the back or out the front door with some of the customers. The folks at table seventeen were gone, and most of the tables were deserted, people having run out the door or rushed to

the back of the restaurant. A group that stood with their backs to the swinging kitchen doors included some of the waiters, such as Bud Trainor and Kiera Dunphy, and. the Ken and Barbie couple.

From the kitchen, Kiera's brother Tim and a couple of other cooks had shoved their way through people, carrying the biggest knives they could find.

Nobody was close enough to help Molly.

Molly had screamed his name.

Adrenaline pumping through him, Jack ran the three steps to where the Beretta lay on the hardwood floor. It had just stopped spinning, so quickly had everything happened. He snapped it up in his right hand and turned to see the Prowler slash out at Molly. Even as it did so, it leaped back, accompanied by the crackle of electricity and the odor of singed fur.

The Taser! She stunned it.

But the beast was barely dazed. Though it was more cautious, it began to move in on her again. Jack could barely see Molly past the Prowler, but he knew he had to take the shot and hope its body would stop the bullets, that they wouldn't pass through. He leveled the Beretta two-handed and took aim.

Courtney stepped in the way.

With a swing worthy of Fenway she cracked her cane across the back of the beast's head. It grunted at first. And then it roared. The Prowler turned and slashed her across the chest. Courtney screamed as she went down, blood seeping through the tears in her clothing.

But she was out of the way.

"Molly, get down!" Jack shouted. He leveled the Beretta and pumped four rounds into the Prowler as it turned toward Molly again. The beast went down in a bloody heap.

"No!" Bill screamed. "Courtney!"

Tim Dunphy and the other cooks came running up. They were all staring at the dead monsters, at Courtney's blood where Molly crouched over her, at Bill who still had the shotgun leveled at the surviving creature.

"Tim," Jack snapped. "Tim!"

Dunphy blinked, then focused on him.

"Get everyone out of here—staff, customers. Tell them we owe 'em a dinner once we get the place cleaned up, but get them out of here."

Dunphy nodded.

'Ambulance is on the way," a voice called.

Jack looked up to see the customer he'd thought of as Ken waving a cell phone. He shot a hard look at Bill and the Prowler they'd left breathing, and he cursed under his breath. "Go," he told Tim.

As Dunphy started hustling the customers and staff out the door, Jack went over to check on his sister, his mind whirling. If an ambulance was on the way, thanks to Ken and Barbie, there'd be cops on the way as well. And he didn't want cops yet. Not yet.

The last of the customers pushed out the door. Jack took a quick glance at Bill, who had the growling monster down on its knees up at the bar.

"Hey," Jack said to Courtney. "You all right?"

His sister was sitting up, her back against the wall, which he took as a good sign. Her face was pale and sickly-looking as if she might throw up, but she smiled wanly. "Could you take a look?" Courtney asked, voice edgy and hesitant. She gestured at Molly. "Neither one of us could bring ourselves to do it."

Jack nodded grimly. He lifted away a torn bit of her blood-soaked shirt. He grimaced at first when he saw the three wounds on Courtney's chest, just below her bra. But then he narrowed his gaze and studied them. Not her belly, but her chest. Ribs and sternum would have protected her insides for the most part. The third and bottom wounds looked relatively deep, but the other one was superficial. Thank God, Jack thought. I couldn't survive if I lost you too.

"I think you're—"

"You okay, Courtney? Jack, what's the story?" Bill called to them.

Jack turned to him and his eyes went wide with alarm. Bill had allowed his concern for Courtney to distract him. As the bartender focused on Courtney, the Prowler on the floor surged up at him. It grabbed the barrel of the shotgun just as it discharged, blowing out an ornate chandelier. The shotgun clattered to the floor, useless.

Jack lifted the Beretta, but he couldn't take a shot without possibly hitting Bill. He moved closer.

"Back off, you son of a bitch!" Bill shouted as he grappled with the Prowler. "You don't want to do this."

"Oh, but I do," the Prowler snarled.

It slashed at Bill's neck, trying to tear his throat out, but got mostly shoulder and arm instead. The pain must have been excruciating. Bill let out a feral cry as he staggered back, clutching his shoulder. He shook his head, trying to throw off the pain, Jack thought.

"Back off, Bill!" Jack shouted, Beretta now leveled at the Prowler. "I've got him. And we need him alive."

The Prowler glanced at Jack, but only for a moment, as if the weapon did not concern him at all.

"No, Jack," Bill snarled. "Put the gun away. This cocky little bastard is all mine."

His voice changed. A low, guttural snarl. A growl.

Then his body changed as well. With a fluid ripple and a pop of bones shifting in place, with hair bristling out all over his body and needle-sharp teeth glistening in a long, vicious snout, Bill transformed.