George felt like he was going to vomit. What
the hell was he supposed to do? Rush him? Try to shoot him in the
face? It was absolutely killing him to stand there helplessly, but
what else could he do?
"Hey, George, I'll make you a deal. You throw
that gun over here, toss it into the sink, and I'll let her go. I
won't even slice off an ear. Maybe I'll slice off part of an ear,
but not the full ear, I promise."
"No way."
"Okay, okay, I won't cut off anything. No
mutilation. You won't get that offer again, and you've got five
seconds to decide."
George put on the safety, then tossed the gun
across the kitchen into the sink. Bullets didn't seem to hurt Ivan
anyway, so it wasn't as if he was worse off.
"Nice toss," said Ivan. "Just for the
record, I wasn't worried about getting shot, but I don't want you
squandering bullets and attracting the cops while we're having
sooooo much fun."
"I said, the cops are already on their
way."
"And I believe you're
fibbing. I at least know that
you
didn't call them. Hey, George, do you know who
else in this room likes to lie? I'll give you a clue. It's not the
woman."
Oh God
...
"That's right. Well, Diane, it's been lovely
chatting with you, but now I need to create a couple of
orphans."
He slowly slid the blade across her throat.
Diane's eyes widened, her legs buckled, and Ivan let her fall to
the floor, clutching at her neck and making horrible choking
sounds.
"You sick fuck!" George shouted. He took
another step forward--he couldn't help himself--and Ivan held up
the bloody knife in a defensive position.
"Don't do it, George. You'll get it a lot
worse than she did." He crouched down next to her. "See how I
didn't cut all that deep? I could've cut all the way to the bone,
but then she would've bled out too quickly. This way it lingers a
little more." He ran a finger through the gash in her neck and held
it up for George's inspection.
"She didn't do anything to you!"
"No, but you did."
Diane's body twitched as the pool of blood on
the tile expanded. George had witnessed some terrible things in his
life, even a few cold-blooded murders, but those were brutal,
emotionless killings designed to punish or send a message. He'd
never seen anything like the sense of malicious glee that was on
Ivan's face right now. The guy couldn't be happier if he were a
ten-year-old at an amusement park.
Diane coughed, sending blood trickling down
both sides of her mouth.
Ivan held the butcher knife over her, moving
it back and forth. "I think I should stab her again. What do you
think, George?"
"If you do, I'll kill you."
Ivan shrugged. "Eh, empty threat." He stood
up and picked George's gun out of the sink, then pointed it at him.
"I don't want to shoot you. You won't be much fun if I do." He
crouched back down next to Diane. "Wow, lots of blood in the human
body, huh? You don't think there's that much just looking at
somebody, but we leak pretty good."
George forced himself not to scream in rage.
"You've made your point."
"Oh, I'm so far from having made my point
that it isn't even funny." Ivan slammed the knife into Diane's
stomach, burying it all the way to the hilt. Most of her strength
was gone by this point, but she still let out a gasp of pain
through the gurgling blood. He wrenched the knife out of her,
considered his next target for a moment, then slammed the knife
deep into her thigh.
George clenched his fists so tightly that his
fingernails dug into the skin.
"Pretty frustrated, aren't you?" Ivan asked,
yanking the blade out of her leg. "I would be too, in your shitty
situation. You should beg me to let her go. That would be pretty
entertaining, since she's basically dead at this point."
Ivan stabbed her five more
times, running the length of her body, each
thunk
making George cringe. Then Ivan
stood up and rolled her onto her back with his foot. Diane lay
splayed out on the kitchen floor, eyes open, unquestionably
dead.
"You're pathetic," said George, his mouth
completely dry.
"Pathetic? That's the
adjective you're going to throw out? Pathetic? You had to stand
there and watch me murder a mother of two. Your best buddy
apparently isn't even going to check on you. George, dude, at this
particular moment, I am most definitely
not
the one who's
pathetic."
"Then why don't you come after me, instead of
an innocent woman?"
"It's not an either/or deal. I can do
both."
That comment scared George a lot more than he
wanted to admit, but he stood firm and held up his fists. "Then
let's do it."
"No rush, no rush." Ivan put
a hand to his ear. "Hear that? No sirens. Amazing what you can get
away with during a weekday, isn't it? Let me tell you a little
about me. Secret origins kind of stuff. I
love
to kill people. Absolutely love
it. Always have. It's the usual serial killer deal--I caught a frog
when I was in grade school, and spent the afternoon playing around
with it, putting it in a Lego maze and that kind of thing. Tried to
make it eat a grasshopper. Great afternoon. Then my mom called me
in for dinner, and I knew she wouldn't let me bring the frog
inside, so I was going to let it go, but instead I took out my
pocketknife and cut off its arms and legs. Frogs are a bitch to
hold down while you're doing that. Loved watching it writhe. I
spent the whole meal wondering how my poor dismembered frog was
doing, and I didn't even have dessert. That's right, hot fudge
sundaes on the table and all I cared about was that
frog."
George wiped some sweat from
his forehead. He'd really hoped that Lou would come in, guns
blazing, even though Lou didn't currently have a gun. His partner
had to be doing
something
, right?
"I went back outside, looked in the shoebox
where I'd left that frog, and he was still alive. Oh, he wasn't
doing much, just sort of opening and closing his mouth, but he was
alive. So I dissected him. I couldn't tell you what the frog parts
were called or what their biological functions were, but I saw all
of them."
"Am I supposed to respect this?" George
asked.
"I don't care if you respect
it or it disgusts you or gives you a big fat boner. I just want you
to listen. I killed a lot more frogs after that. I mean a
lot
more. If the Supreme
Being turns out to be a frog, I am more fucked than Hitler. From
there I moved up to mammals. Mammals were even more fun. Bagged my
first human when I was twenty-one. A hooker. I wish I'd been more
inventive, but no, it was the typical 'crack whore who won't be
missed' scenario. Wanna know how I did it?"
"Actually, I don't."
"Oh, come on."
"How did you do it?"
"Blowtorch. It's extremely inefficient."
"So how many people have you killed?"
"Americans, not that many, probably not even
a dozen. But I spent some time in Africa, and, oh, I racked up a
body count there. Same thing in Mexico. You go to the poor parts of
the world, and you can live like a king and slaughter like a
dictator. It's pretty fantastic."
"Yeah."
"I love how you're reduced to saying
things like 'Yeah.' Very weak. Question, would it weird you out if
I started licking up Diane's blood? Because I don't want to be
nasty or anything, but it's smelling really good to me right now,
and I'd love to just bury my face in her neck and slurp
away."
"Don't let me stop you."
"I probably shouldn't indulge. You seem like
the kind of person who would attack a guy when he's licking blood
from a mutilated corpse."
"What about the whole werewolf thing?" George
asked.
"Oh my God, it's more
awesome than you can imagine. I mean, I know it's supposed to be a
curse and everything, but if you'd be killing people
anyway
, it's the best
thing in the world. Not everyone takes to it. Lot of suicides in
the werewolf community. They're always fighting the change instead
of embracing it."
"So clearly the full moon is bullshit."
Ivan shook his head. "Pretty much. I
mean, the full moon causes the transformation whether you want it
or not, but there are a lot of other factors. Most werewolves--and
I don't want to imply that there are hundreds; we're actually a
very rare species--they're terrified of what they are. But if you
relish the change, and you practice, practice, practice, you can do
it whenever you want. Hurts like hell, but you can learn to even
like that part. I love it."
"How'd you get caught?"
"I let myself get caught."
"Yeah, right."
"Okay, maybe that part wasn't entirely
intentional. But I sure got out, didn't I?"
"What happens next, Ivan? Are you trying to
make me the first person in the world to get talked to death by a
werewolf?"
"Ooooh, we're back to being saucy again, huh?
Didn't take you long to get over your horror. I want to fight it
out. No guns, no butcher knives, no wolves, just you and me, man to
man."
"You're going to stay human?"
"Yep."
"For how long?"
"Until you're lying on the floor with
a broken jaw. I know, you're thinking that you'll get one good
punch in and I'll instantly wuss out and change, but you're wrong.
Let's see who's the better man."
"Fine," George said. "Let's do this."
"Excellent." Ivan dropped the butcher knife.
It hit Diane's face and stuck there. Then he set George's gun back
in the sink. "I recommend that we move out of the kitchen, so that
nobody slips on the blood."
CHAPTER TEN
Thug Versus Wolfman
"Works for me." George
walked into the dining room. Though he was so scared that he was
practically trembling, he forced himself to remain optimistic. He
was going to get out of this with a dead werewolf at his feet and
his dignity restored. Ivan was positive that he had the upper hand,
and technically he
did
, but it would only take one moment of arrogance and
carelessness for George to make his move.
Ivan had joked about "one good punch," which
was exactly what George planned to do. Werewolf or not, superhuman
or not, you didn't immediately recover from a nose-breaking blow.
If it didn't send shards of bone rocketing into Ivan's brain,
George would pound on him until his own knuckles were bloody and
Ivan's face was nothing but frothing pulp.
Ivan followed him. The two men stood about
five feet apart.
George rushed forward,
throwing a sideways punch at Ivan's nose, hoping to make it
splatter
. Ivan pulled back
out of the way, and George cursed as he hit nothing but
air.
Ivan punched him in the stomach, so hard that
George dropped to his knees, gasping for breath. The pain was so
incredible that he was honestly surprised Ivan's hand hadn't burst
right through his stomach and come out his back.
He knew he needed to get back up, quickly,
but his guts felt like they'd been completely squashed. Even if he
was a wolfman, how could such a skinny guy hit so goddamn hard?
"Done already?" Ivan asked. "This was barely
worth me wasting time with the frog story."
George forced himself to at least get up off
his knees, though he remained doubled over with his arms crossed
over his stomach. He pulled his arms away, raised his fists, and
stood up straight.
Ivan punched him in the face. His head shot
back with almost neck-snapping force, and he stumbled backwards
against the dining room table. He fell to the floor.
C'mon, Lou, where the hell's
the cavalry?
At this point, he'd almost
welcome a visit by the cops. Better to spend twenty years in the
clink than to let Ivan beat him to death.
"I'm going to give you one more chance to get
up and fight like a...you know, it doesn't even have to be like a
man, just not like a crippled old lady. Can you do that for me,
George? Because if you can't, I'm going to change into a wolf and
start eating you."
George reached up and grabbed the back of one
of the chairs. He used it to steady himself as he pulled himself
up.
"I don't even like the taste of human flesh
that much," said Ivan. "I'm into a lot of demented things, but
cannibalism isn't one of them. And I do consider it cannibalism,
even if I'm in my wolf state."
"Weren't you just talking about licking up
blood?" George asked, bracing himself against the table and trying
hard not to throw up.
"That's different."
"How?"
"It's drinking instead of eating. If
there's no meat involved, it's not cannibalism. Everybody knows
that. Not that I'm morally opposed to cannibalism. It's just not
for me."
George needed to focus his
rage. He had a hell of a lot of rage available to focus.
Just imagine the sense of euphoria you'll feel
when that bastard's head explodes into a billion sloppy chunks.
Work with the pain and fury. Harness it. Make it your
bitch.
He quickly picked up the chair and smashed it
into the side of Ivan's head, like a pro wrestler. Neither the
chair nor Ivan's head broke apart, but Ivan let out a loud grunt
and stumbled away, clearly stunned, which was satisfying
enough.
Not wanting to lose his momentum, George
rushed him and swung the chair a second time. Ivan dodged, but
George got him on the reverse swing, bashing the wood into his
chest and cracking one of the chair legs.