Prowlers - 1 (32 page)

Castillo had the bullhorn out. He shouted something, but it echoed off the buildings around Copley Square so much that the words were garbled. Jack was sure it was some approximation of "Come out with your hands up." But of course, Castillo didn't want them to come out.

The police waited only seconds. Then four of them rushed up the steps dressed in riot gear and carrying a metal ram. The door shattered instantly, and the others swarmed around the front of the bell tower, armed to the teeth with shotguns and service weapons.

Jack swept the binoculars up and watched the windows. Watched the belfry.

Tanzer should have appeared in the belfry and then begun working his way down. But he hadn't.

"Damn!" Jack snapped.

He cursed again under his breath.

"What?" Molly demanded.

"They're bolting. Tanzer and his mate. They went over the roof and disappeared, didn't come back into the belfry, and I see no sign of them at the windows."

Molly shook her head. "That's impossible. How the hell did they get down from up there?"

"I don't know. But I know I'm not going to let them get away." Jack took her hand, studied her eyes again. He was reluctant to have her with him, but he knew there was only one way to do this, and that was together.

"Let's go," he said.

Side by side they ran down the rain-slicked library steps and dodged traffic as they darted into Copley Square. Jack felt the weight of the fully loaded Beretta against the small of his back and the extra dips in his jacket pocket. In a duffel bag he carried in his right hand was a shotgun Bill had dug up for him. Molly had another pistol and her stun gun.

Jack knew he should have been filled with terror.

And yet somehow all he could think about was Artie.

Now it ends, he thought.

On the street in front of the tower, Jason Castillo took cover behind a patrol car, his service weapon in his

hand. He stood beside a Boston PD sharpshooter who kept his eye on the windows, just in case. Inside the building, shots were being fired. Things shattered, and there were human shouts and decidedly inhuman roars and howls of pain.

A third-story window exploded in a shower of glass, and a ravening beast plummeted through the air in a controlled fall. It landed hard, rolled with the momentum, and came back up again a dozen feet from where the tangle of police cars had lined up to block off the area.

The monster crouched amid the shattered glass, its blue jeans and black boots giving it an almost comically surreal appearance. But its eyes blazed and it snarled at them, and there was nothing comical about its razor-sharp teeth.

Then it bolted.

Castillo shouted for his men to fire, and the thirty-seven police officers lined up behind the cars did just that. The Prowler jittered, dancing like a flag buffeted by strong wind, as bullets tore through its flesh. The sharpshooter beside Castillo fired, and a high-caliber bullet punched through the Prowler's skull, shattering it like an overripe melon. The beast went down hard on the pavement, twitched once, and was still.

More of them crashed out windows, trying to flee. Then a couple made it out the front door. Which meant the cops he'd sent inside were likely dead already.

Castillo ground his teeth, revulsion and bitter anger

rising like bile in his throat. He set his feet apart, leveled his gun, and began firing.

"Kill the monsters!" someone shouted. "Kill them all."

He thought it might have been his own voice.

From a window ledge on the fourth floor, Jasmine leaped to the roof of the church below. Her animal reflexes allowed her to alight upon the building almost silently. She spun, sniffed the air with alarm, and then uttered a tiny bark to alert Tanzer.

More police were coming. They were moving around the building to watch for just this kind of escape.

With the rain dappling her fur and her ears pinned back, listening intently for humans coming closer, she looked up at the side of the tower and saw Tanzer there, ready to spring. His enormous form rippled with muscles and grandeur, and she knew she could not afford to lose him. His was the vision and his was the ability to inspire the most lowly cur among them. Jasmine had a mind of her own, and dreams of her own, but Tanzer was her mate, and she loved him.

Tanzer easily dropped down onto the roof of the church and landed in a crouch on the rainslicked surface. Both of them wore boots, human constructions not made for this sort of thing. But Jasmine knew they could not simply throw off their clothes and shoes. They would need them to merge back into the flow of

humanity, to get out of the city unseen. Tanzer's shirt was torn, but he wore a leather coat that hung nearly to his knees, and that would have to be buttoned dosed over his shirt until Jasmine could get him another.

For the moment, the coat flapped around him, leather stretched over the bestial musculature beneath.

Jasmine caught his gaze, tilted her head, and growled low, an expression of her love and fealty. Tanzer nodded grimly, snout lifted to sniff at the sky. His ears were pricked up, listening to the din of chaos and death they were leaving behind, alert to any sign that their escape had been noticed.

"Come," Tanzer growled.

He loped carefully across the slanted roof of the church, and Jasmine followed. Her own steps

were as silent as caresses on the slate roof, but she knew that Tanzer's passing would not go unremarked by those inside the church. She could only hope that the building was vacant, or that the reaction of the police would be slow enough to allow her and her mate to pass.

On the other side of the church the gap between buildings was too great for them to leap. Jasmine glanced around nervously, orienting herself. The church fronted on the street where the police cars were spread out. More gunfire tore through the night, telling her there was no escape for them in that direction. They could not go back the way they had come. They had two choices: climb down the side wall of the church and hope no one noticed—which was possible but not the most appealing of alternatives—or leap

from the rear of the church to the building directly behind it, a structure she had paid little attention to.

The LaFayette Hotel had been a swanky place to stay in the 1930s. Its reputation lingered now like a faded Hollywood starlet; it was still a gem and could still draw a crowd, but all the real money went to the younger, more glamorous hotels. Jasmine remembered the place in its heyday. She had sung in the lounge when she was still traveling with Duke Ellington and his orchestra. Another time. Another world. Another life. That was the past. Tanzer was the future.

"This way," she said, pointing to the rear of the hotel.

Tanzer drew up beside her, crouched like a gargoyle on the edge of the church roof. "It's too high," he told her.

"The fire escape."

Jasmine pointed. The LaFayette was only five stories high, but they could not leap up to its roof. Even from where they stood, they would not be able to make it to the fourth-story fire escape.

"We can try for the third-story landing," she explained.

With a grunt, Tanzer studied the leap. It was at least twenty feet, probably more. Simple for a Prowler on the ground. But here they would have no running start and no margin for error. On the other hand, if they gauged it right and took gravity into consideration, they should be able to make the jump and grab hold of the third-story landing of the fire escape.

"You stay." Tanzer stroked the fur on her snout with his daws. "If I make it, follow. If I don't, stay here until it's all over. Stay until tomorrow night. Then climb down."

Jasmine nodded.

Tanzer crouched, stretched his legs and shoulders and arms. Then he sprang out across the gulf that separated the church from the grand old hotel. His talons lashed out, and with a dang he caught hold of the iron railing on the fire escape's third-story landing.

Someone shouted from below. They'd seen him, up there in the dark.

Police? Jasmine wondered. There was more shouting and she knew the answer was no. No police. But they would come soon enough.

Tanzer barely had time to move out of the way when she leaped across to the fire escape, hauled herself up, and snarled to urge him on. They could not go down the fire escape. Jasmine smiled to herself. It was simple now. Tanzer growled and turned to go down. He was tired of running, she knew. His nature was to stand and fight. But they had come this far.

"We have to go up," she said. "Or you'll never have the chance to pay them back for this."

Tanzer hesitated only a moment, then nodded. Jasmine led the way and the two of them hurried up the fire escape. It reached the fifth floor, but did not go all the way to the roof. Still it was a simple matter for the Prowlers to stand on the railing and leap the last few feet.

On the roof was a door into the hotel. It was locked but its frame shattered easily and with less noise than Jasmine had imagined. By the time the elevator doors slid open to admit them on the fifth floor, both Jasmine and Tanzer had once again retreated within their human facades and Tanzer had buttoned his jacket over the torn shirt he wore beneath.

When they stepped out into the lobby, Jasmine was amazed at how calm it seemed. The wall to her right was all frosted glass. Once upon a time an enormous lounge had been beyond it, but now there was only a small restaurant and bar. Only a handful of people were in there this late. On the far side of the lobby, a short white-haired man dressed in the faux-military uniform of the hotel staff sat behind a long counter looking bored. An exotic-looking woman with olive skin and braids stood at the concierge's desk. Otherwise the place was empty.

"We could just check in," she whispered to Tanzer.

He shook his head. "We'd draw too much attention, arriving this late. Without luggage and with the timing of what's happening."

Even as he whispered to her, Jasmine noticed the woman at the desk stare at them curiously. Tanzer was right. They had no time to waste. The sooner they left the city of Boston behind, the better off they would be.

Together they walked across the beautiful marble floor of the lobby. The front doors sensed their approach and slid open to allow them to exit. Jasmine reached out and twined her fingers with Tanzer's as

they stood in the light patter of rain. She stuck her tongue out and tasted it.

Not far off, a couple of loud pops split the night. More gunshots. But they were slowing now. Whatever was happening back at the lair was almost over.

"Let's go," she said, and squeezed his fingers.

They turned away from the front of the hotel.

The wind shifted.

Jasmine caught a familiar scent.

With his heart pounding, adrenaline surging through his body, Jack wiped rain from his face and hurried around the corner. Molly followed hard on his heels in total silence. He wished he knew what was running through her head—thoughts of Artie, he guessed, and what these monsters had done to her boyfriend. What the Prowlers had tried to do to them, more than once. Jack knew he was a target. Molly too and probably Bill and Courtney as well. What they were doing now was not a choice, not some act of bravery. It was life insurance.

The cops had moved in. Attacked. Shot the hell out of the church tower and the Prowlers inside. But nobody had seen Tanzer and the woman, on the roof above the belfry. Nobody had seen them take off across the roof except Jack and Molly. They had sprinted across Copley Square, giving a wide berth to the police, and come up to the side of the church just in time to see the two monsters leap from the church to the hotel fire escape.

"It's time," Molly had muttered, her voice cold.

But she had been wrong. The Prowlers had gone up instead of coming down. The only escape route from the roof was through the LaFayette.

Now they stood, Jack on one side of the hotel's front door and Molly on the other. He had taken the shotgun from his duffel bag and stashed the bag behind a large planter next to the doors. He leaned against the wall with the gun behind his bade The Beretta packed a kick, but nothing like a shotgun.

His heart thudded in his chest as though his body were hollow except for that one frightened, fluttering, bloody muscle. That and a stomach knotted into a tight fist around a swirl of angry hornets.

Jack glanced around the tree that stuck up from the planter beside him and caught Molly's gaze. Her eyes were dark and cold, lips pressed together in a grim line. Despite all she'd been through, all they'd seen together, she stood there fearlessly awaiting the monsters. Rain spattered her face but she ignored it. Her wild red hair blew across her eyes and she shook it away. She nodded at him.

I'm all right, she seemed to say.

He fell in love with her, just a little, right then. In that very moment.

Which was when Artie appeared in front of him, a few feet away from the front door of the hotel. He was transparent, as always, the few cars on the street visible through him. The rain did not touch him, pattering the sidewalk beneath the phantom's feet without the slightest deviation.

"She's something, isn't she?" Artie asked.

Jack's mouth opened. Nothing came out.

Artie smiled. "It's all right, Jack. Just keep her alive. I want her over here with me, of course. But that would not be fair. It's cold here, and when people touch me, I can't feel them."

"I'm sorry, Artie," Jack whispered.

"Bro," Artie said. He shook his head, a small smile on his face, as if that one word was all that needed to pass between them.

Jack was surprised to realize that it was.

He glanced across the street and saw Father Pinsky standing on the other side, the ghostly priest gazing at him gravely. There were others. Too many others. Jack flinched, blinked, and the world inverted again, the ghosts taking on flesh.

"Jack?" Molly whispered across to him. 'Are you all right?"

"Not now," Jack snarled. He blinked, hard, and shook his head. When he opened his eyes the world was back to normal and all the ghosts were gone except Artie.