Shit.
* * *
Michele was wild-eyed and scary and George
had thoroughly gotten over his qualms about fighting with a woman.
There was nothing left of the real Michele, as far as he could
tell.
Why was Lou still screwing around with
the lock? Popping that thing should have been no problem. Couldn't
he see that the she-wolf was winning?
She hadn't bitten him yet, at least
not hard enough to pierce his flesh, but not for lack of trying. In
fact, her jaws never stopped snapping open and closed, almost like
a slower version of a pair of chattery teeth. His hand was clamped
over her throat, and he pushed up as hard as he could, trying to
keep her teeth away from his face, but he wasn't going to be able
to sustain this for much longer.
"I can't do this!" said Lou. "Get her away
from you! I'll get a gun and shoot her!"
"What? No!"
"What else do you want me to do?"
"Get the cage open!"
"I can't get the cage open!"
"Fuck!"
"I know!"
George's hand slipped off of Michele's
throat, but he elbowed her in the face before she could bite him.
He slammed her into the side of the cage.
Her growl deepened. She seemed
absolutely furious.
* * *
Rage.
Pure unrestrained fury.
Nothing else mattered.
Kill the prey.
Eat him.
* * *
Lou pulled the paper clip out of the lock and
tossed it aside. He was wasting time. He took out the gun and fired
two bullets into the lock, turning his head and squeezing his eyes
shut in case there was a ricochet.
"Be careful!" George shouted.
Lou opened his eyes. "I am being careful!" No
impact. Bullets weren't going to do it, either. He could try to
shoot Michele and see if bullets worked better on her than Ivan,
but there was no way he could guarantee that he wouldn't put a
bullet in George instead.
Once again he ran to the front of the van and
climbed inside.
He shoved his foot into the cage
again, but this time Michele avoided his kick. She grabbed his foot
and he had a momentary flash of terror as she pulled him toward
her.
George slammed his fist against her arm,
breaking her hold. Lou withdrew his foot from within the bars, but
then braced both feet against the side of the cage, tightly held
the seats of the van, and shoved as hard as he could.
He was already shot and mauled. Why not add a
hernia?
The pain was intense but not
quite unbearable as the cage began to slowly slide along the floor
of the van. It had good traction. After everything he'd been
through today, he deserved to have
something
work out.
Michele slashed George's chest. It looked
like a savage wound, although George had suffered so many injuries
that Lou wasn't sure if that was a brand new one or an old one
being reopened.
The edge of the cage slid over the back of
the van.
* * *
George cried out as Michele's claws
ripped into his chest. He'd been hit in that same goddamn spot at
least two other times today. If it were on the other side, his
heart would practically be exposed.
He grabbed her arm, squeezing hard
enough that it might have broken a bone if she were in her human
form, and tossed her to the other side of the cage. She struck the
door, twisted around, and came back at George.
Lou continued to shove the cage forward.
George wasn't entirely certain that this was a good idea.
George began to frantically kick at Michele
as she lunged at him. Her jaws closed over his shoe and it took
three tugs to get it loose.
The cage began to tilt.
* * *
Ivan watched the struggle
with a combination of disbelief and amusement. Yeah, he should've
just run away, but he
had
to know what was going on. It was absolutely
crazy. Lou should be sobbing over his buddy's corpse while Michele
feasted on George's remains. He should most definitely not be
pushing the cage out of the van.
Insane.
He planned to remain hidden unless it
was absolutely necessary to join in the chaos, but there was no way
he could turn away from the show.
* * *
There was definitely a hernia in Lou's
future.
His legs were now extended all the way. The
cage wasn't quite ready to topple over the edge, but it was getting
close.
* * *
George kicked Michele for what felt like the
hundredth time since she transformed. His muscles were so sore that
the agony almost threatened to overpower his flesh wounds.
Michele struck the cage door again, and her
weight started the point of no return. The cage did a sharp
downward tilt and then slid off the edge of the van, crashing to
the ground corner-first with a teeth-rattling clatter. George
bashed against Michele, nearly knocking the wind out of him but
hopefully hurting her just as bad.
The floor of the cage slammed down, stirring
up a cloud of dirt.
Michele dove at him. Nope, the impact of the
fall definitely hadn't hurt her as much as it did him.
She pinned him down. George was having
difficulty focusing his vision. A trio of she-wolf faces loomed
above him.
Then she slid away as Lou grabbed her
leg.
"I've got her!" Lou announced.
George scooted to the back of the cage. "What
good does that do me? Are you gonna hold her forever?"
Lou pulled until her leg was entirely out of
the cage, and then grabbed the back of her shirt, holding her
tight.
"Get some silver!" George shouted.
"We don't have any!"
"What do you mean, we don't have any?"
"Prescott and Angie took it all!"
"Why'd they do that?"
"They didn't think they'd get killed!"
"Well, do
something
!"
Lou glanced to the side. George thought he
might be looking for an item that might prove to be useful in this
situation, but realized he was wrong as Ivan's werewolf form
knocked Lou away from the cage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Lou's Decision
Lou lost his grip on Michele, who
instantly pounced back upon George. Lou fell to the ground and
raised his gun, but Ivan was already back in the swamp.
What was that all about?
He doesn't know what kind of
weapons we have
, Lou realized.
He has to play it safe.
At this point, Lou didn't give half a crap
about capturing the werewolf. Let Bateman and Dewey seek them out
to the ends of the earth. If Lou had the opportunity to stuff a
grenade down Ivan's throat, he'd take it without hesitation.
He did not, however, want to
spend the rest of his life in prison, and they'd made a lot of
noise.
Somebody
had
to be coming to investigate.
Lou reached his hand into the cage,
nearly got bit, and quickly withdrew it. "Throw her over here," he
told George. "I'll shoot her!"
Lou watched carefully for Ivan as George
struggled some more with the she-wolf. After a few violent moments,
he managed to push her to the edge of the cage.
"Hold her still!"
"I can't hold her still!"
Lou shot her in the head. Some blood sprayed
on George.
Michele howled and bled. But she didn't flop
over and die.
George scooted away as she came at him again.
He kicked repeatedly, desperately trying to keep her on her own
side of the cage.
Now what?
Leave George to fend for himself?
No. Absolutely not.
He wasn't going to leave George here
to be torn apart by Michele, although if they ended up in police
custody, Lou thought he'd be more than justified in trying to cut a
deal and let his partner take most of the fall. He wasn't entirely
certain what crimes they'd be charged with, beyond the obvious
investigation into their criminal past, but being responsible for a
werewolf who killed about a dozen people had to be a pretty serious
offense.
Hell, even if he did kill Michele, it wasn't
as if Lou could simply load the cage onto the other van and drive
away. George would be a nice little present for the cops. Or, much
worse, Ivan.
He had to get George out of that cage, no
matter what. Even if it meant putting his life at risk.
Concentrate. Get through
this. If you pass out now, it'll be a really humiliating and
unsatisfying end to this whole thing. Think of how good a warm
shower is going to feel tonight. Oh, yeah.
He went back to the other van, hesitated for
a moment as he tried to figure out if he really wanted to do this,
then opened up the box of dynamite. It had about ten sticks inside.
He probably only needed one, but he took the whole box.
There were no lighters inside the box,
which made sense for safety precautions, but a quick search of a
shelf of random supplies turned up a butane lighter with a long
shaft, just like the one he had for his grill at home.
George screamed.
Lou grabbed a couple more grenades and tossed
them into the box, just in case Ivan came back, and then returned
to the cage.
"Did she bite you?" Lou asked, taking out a
stick of dynamite. It already had a short fuse attached.
Perfect.
"Not hard! Hurry!"
"I've got this, George. Don't worry."
Okay, if he put the dynamite right next to the cage door, George
would be caught in the blast. That was no good. Three feet away,
maybe? He was far from a demolition expert.
"What the hell are you doing?" George
demanded.
"I'm getting you out of there!"
"Not with goddamn dynamite, you're not!"
"It's the only way!"
"No, no, no, no! There are millions of other
ways!" George had his hands around Michele's neck again, and his
arms quivered as he tried to keep her fangs away from him.
Lou lit the fuse. "Stay at the back of the
cage!"
"No! No, Lou! Fuck this!"
"Hands over your ears!" Lou grabbed the box
and ran. He caught a glimpse of movement from the swamp. Ivan?
Michele snarled.
Lou grabbed a grenade out of the box, and
then let the entire box drop to the ground. He pulled the pin and
hurled it in what he hoped was Ivan's direction.
The grenade went off first.
Then the dynamite went off in a nearly
eardrum-bursting explosion. The entire cage lifted several inches
off the ground, and toppled onto its side. Lou's ears rang as he
watched the smoke clear.
The cage door hung slightly ajar.
Victory! Lou hurried over to the cage. George
lay on what was now the bottom of the cage, clearly stunned but
also clearly still alive.
Michele's legs had taken the worst of the
blast. There wasn't much left of one of them.
Lou kicked the cage door all the way
open. "C'mon, George!"
George pushed Michele off of him and then
scrambled out of the cage. "What the hell was that?"
"I saved your life!"
"You could have killed me!"
"So could she!"
"Don't
do
things like that!"
"You're out of the cage, aren't you?"
"My legs are all burnt up!"
"They're not that bad. They're singed."
"Look what she did to me! I look as bad as
you do!"
"That's why I tried to get you out!"
"Why didn't you just pick the lock?"
"It didn't work!"
"Why didn't you just get the keys from
Ivan?"
"How the hell was I supposed to do that?"
"I don't know!"
"Stop yelling at me!"
"I have to yell! I'm deaf now!"
"Just thank me, okay?"
"Okay. Thank you!"
They both looked down at Michele. She was
back to human form, bleeding badly.
Lou crouched down next to the cage. "Aw,
shit, I'm so sorry, Michele."
She gave him a weak smile, revealing red
teeth. "How bad is it?"
"Pretty bad," said George.
"I don't think I'll die though," she said.
She turned her head and coughed up some blood. When she looked back
at them, her eyes glistened. "Don't leave me like this."
"We won't. I promise."
"I mean...don't leave me
like
this
. Put me
out of my misery. I don't want to be this way. I don't want to hurt
people."
George nodded. He felt absolutely
terrible, but if he were in her situation, he'd feel the exact same
way. "Lou, are you sure there aren't any silver-tipped arrows
left?"
"I didn't tear the whole van apart,
but I didn't see any. George, I don't want to be cold-hearted or
anything, but we really need to get out of here."
"Use the dynamite," Michele said.
"What?"
"It'll hurt less than silver, I think."
Lou took another stick of dynamite out
of the box. "Are you sure this is what you want? Maybe we can get
you help."
"There's no help for me. I'm sorry, George. I
didn't mean to hurt you."
George almost looked like his eyes
were tearing up. "I'm sorry, too. I thought I was helping you by
rescuing you from those dogs. Bad call, huh?"
"Yeah." Suddenly Michele cried out in pain.
The hairs on her arm began to sway as they did before the first
transformation. "Oh, God..."
Lou lit the fuse and dropped the stick of
dynamite into the cage.
Michele picked it up and hugged it to her
chest.
The thugs walked away from the cage.