Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A Bad Time To Be Lou

Considering the circumstances, Lou thought he’d done a pretty good job of keeping himself together. He wanted to yell and cry and run around in circles and let the dark specter of madness completely engulf his ass. He could use a little bit of insanity right now to keep him from focusing so much on the current reality.

Unfortunately, either he was locked away in a padded cell having hallucinations about a bloody werewolf massacre at the Cotton Mouse Tavern, or he was entirely sane. If this was a hallucination, he could just sit back, relax, and enjoy his tranquilizers and lobotomy, but for now he had to assume that this was all real, and so he had to act.

Lou was not a man who liked to lose. If he wasted fifty bucks at the slots, he’d be pissed about it for hours. The big difference between himself and George was that Lou would ultimately decide that losing fifty dollars was punishment enough and walk away, whereas George would keep pumping coins into the machine hoping to win enough to make up his losses. And, usually, George would leave with enough cash to pay for the hotel, meals, and a topless show, whereas Lou would be out his fifty bucks and fuming.

But there was no “win” this time. Maybe they’d recapture Ivan, and maybe they’d kill him, but there was no happy ending in store for anybody here.

As George hit his head on the floor, with that werewolf bastard on top of him, Lou saw a sudden flash of his partner’s funeral. Closed-casket, of course. Maybe a separate coffin for each piece.

You know, George, Lou had said once, when I die, I don’t want a funeral. I don’t want people sitting in a church crying over my dead body. I just want a few of my close friends to get together and drink to my memory. Maybe share some stories.

Fuck that, George had replied. When I die, I want people to be depressed. I want them to wear black and I want a thunderstorm and I want people to throw themselves on the casket. Why should people be happy I’m dead?

I don’t want them to be necessarily happy that I’m dead. They just don’t have to be all bummed out about it. They should remember the good times.

Well, Lou, I hate to break it to you, but when you die, I’m going to be sad.

Lou figured that the best way to save his partner’s life was to jam the cross right into the back of Ivan’s neck, deep enough that it popped out the other side, and watch him claw at it desperately as his throat dissolved.

Lou would probably fail at that. Especially since he didn’t have the cross anymore, and the cross wasn’t long enough to go all the way through Ivan’s neck anyway. He’d also somehow lost his sterling silver switchblade when Ivan threw him across the bar.

So he had to resort to the second best way to save George’s life: lure the werewolf away from him.

He ran past Ivan, shouting “Ferret! Ferret! Ferret!” The insult was just as lame when he shouted it as when George used it, but hopefully the sheer inanity of it would piss Ivan off enough to make him follow.

Ivan did.

Lou ran behind the bar counter. There was a swinging door that he assumed led to a kitchen, but first he grabbed the nearest object, a bottle of white wine, spun around, and flung it at Ivan. It shattered against Ivan’s chest, sending glass spraying back at Lou. He grabbed a second bottle and threw it, hitting Ivan in his now-wolfman face. The bottle bounced off and broke in half against the counter. The third bottle also hit Ivan in the face and smashed against his teeth.

Lou pushed through the swinging door, which did indeed lead to a small filthy kitchen. He kicked the door back as hard as he could, and it bashed into the werewolf, knocking him against the counter. Lou heard the crash of a few more bottles falling to the floor.

The door flew open with enough force to knock it halfway off its hinges.

Lou decided to attack before Ivan could leap at him. He rushed forward just as Ivan made the jump, colliding with the werewolf’s stomach. The werewolf was stronger. Lou let out a loud grunt as Ivan knocked him back against the metal sink.

Lou thrust his hand into the warm soapy water, grabbed the handle of a frying pan, and smacked it into Ivan’s face with a loud clang. Ivan growled and spit out a bloody fang.

Lou took another swing. This time Ivan ducked out of the way. Ivan grabbed Lou’s wrist, squeezed hard, and then bashed the frying pan against Lou’s face using Lou’s own hand. Lou released his grip and the pan clattered to the floor.

Some blood trickled from Lou’s nostrils.

Ivan grabbed the back of Lou’s neck and shoved his head into the sink. Lou’s forehead struck a pot or some other large metal object as he plunged into the water.

He braced his hands against the edge of the sink and tried to push himself up again, but Ivan was too strong. Holding his breath and closing his eyes against the sting of the soapy water, Lou pushed as hard as he could.

His head popped out of the water for an instant, not long enough to gasp for air. Ivan shoved him back down, and Lou hit the same fucking pot. At least he knew his head was durable.

He stomped his feet several times, trying to crunch one of Ivan’s paws underneath his shoe, but didn’t even hit a toe.

Lou put his hand back in the water and fished around for a moment. He found a fork. He grabbed it by the handle, then slammed it over his shoulder, hoping to strike lycanthrope.

He hit something.

Ivan’s grip on his neck loosened. Lou pulled his head out of the water and gasped for breath.

He spun around. The tines of the fork were buried halfway into Ivan’s upper right arm. Ivan yanked out the fork and tossed it aside. Too bad it wasn’t silver. Then, in a motion like flicking a bug off a table, Ivan slashed his talon across Lou’s cheek. He immediately repeated the gesture with his other talon, giving Lou matching cuts.

Ivan grabbed the front of Lou’s shirt, then threw him away from the sink. He almost collided with the grill, which was still on. A pair of burnt hamburgers sizzled on it. Clearly the cook had been smart and gotten the hell out of there.

The werewolf pounced. Lou tried to move out of the way but was unsuccessful, and a quick contortion later he found himself in the same predicament as before, except that instead of his face being shoved into warm dishwater, it was being shoved toward a hot grill.

He tried to elbow Ivan in the gut but couldn’t get sufficient leverage. His foot slipped out from under him, and his chin came down on the surface of the grill with a thump and a hiss.

He yelped and lifted his head. The searing pain gave him an extra burst of adrenaline, and he wriggled his way out of Ivan’s grip, just in time for Ivan to give him another pair of matching cheek slashes.

Now the son of a bitch was just trying to humiliate him.

Lou punched him in the face--a solid uppercut that connected with Ivan’s jaw. His teeth snapped shut on his tongue. The werewolf howled.

Ivan swiped at Lou’s chest, a ferocious swing that was obviously not meant to humiliate Lou but rather disembowel him. It missed. Not by much. The second swipe missed by even less.

A thick rope of bloody drool dangled from Ivan’s lower jaw. He snarled, then attacked.

Lou screamed. It wasn’t something he would’ve ever expected to do. He shouted a lot, but he’d never screamed in his life.

He bashed into the grill again as Ivan struck him. Rational thought disappeared. Lou thrashed wildly, trying to use his own fingers as claws to lash out at Ivan’s eyes. He slid to the floor, screaming some more as Ivan slashed at his arms and legs and chest.

He hit Ivan, several times, but the pain kept coming. He punched and clawed and kicked in blind panic, thinking that this might be the end because suddenly time seemed to be creeping along as if in a weird dream and he could see a few droplets of his own blood flying into the air in slow motion, almost a beautiful thing, yet his life wasn’t flashing before his eyes, and wasn’t that supposed to happen when you were moments away from death?

Time sped up with a jolt.

Ivan howled and clutched at his eye. Lou had gotten the son of a bitch. Incredible.

Lou scooted away, forcing himself not to completely lose it over the sight of so much of his own blood. Ivan removed his hand from his eye. Instead of the gooey orb dripping jelly that Lou hoped for, his eye was just dark red. Not punctured. Not a fight-ending injury by any stretch of the imagination.

Lou got up, elated that he wasn’t hurt badly enough to simply lie bleeding to death on the kitchen floor, and rushed for the food preparation counter. He saw a flash of metal. A meat cleaver.

He grabbed the meat cleaver and slammed it into Ivan’s chest. The blade sunk in deep. He wrenched it out and slammed it in again. Got him in the heart.

A wave of pain shot through his arm as he pulled the blade out again. Holding the handle of the meat cleaver with both hands and swinging it like a baseball bat, Lou smacked the blade across Ivan’s throat, trying to chop his fucking head right off.

Ivan threw his head back and howled as a geyser of blood spewed forth. The cut was so deep that he shouldn’t even be able to howl, not with severed vocal chords.

Lou swung again but missed as Ivan pushed past him and raced for the swinging door. Lou flung the meat cleaver at him. It sailed through the air, rotating end over end, and hit Ivan in the back--unfortunately, handle-first. The kitchen implement dropped to the floor as Ivan threw open the door, now ripping it completely off its hinges, and rushed back into the main part of the bar.

Lou heard a cry of “Shit!” that obviously came from George.

He glanced down at himself and wished he hadn’t. Ivan had gotten him good in a couple of places, and there were several other small gouges that would have, at another time, ruined his entire day. But he’d worry about that later.

He ran out into the main tavern area just as George tossed the silver ring-lined blanket over Ivan. George struggled to get the blanket completely over him, but could only get it over his head, and as Ivan violently thrashed, even that bit of progress looked extremely temporary.

“Lou, get over here, you lazy fuck!” George shouted.

Moving as quickly as he could, which wasn’t all that fast anymore, Lou ran over to help his partner. George now had Ivan in a bear hug from behind and clutched the blanket tightly in his fists, and though he wasn’t coming close to holding Ivan in place, he did seem to be successfully steering the werewolf in an awkward stumble toward the exit.

The blanket was already soaked red.

Lou reached them just as the werewolf changed direction, claws slashing through the air as he struggled to get free. Lou stuck out his foot. Ivan lost his balance and fell to the floor, with George landing on top of him.

He’d actually tripped a werewolf. Holy shit. Something new to add to his resume.

“He’s getting loose!” George shouted. “Don’t let him get away!”

Lou kicked Ivan in the head, as hard as he possibly could.

“Do it again! Do it again!”

Lou did it again. He wasn’t sure if it was the slit throat or the silver rings or both, but Ivan did seem to be legitimately weakened. A few stomps on his head and they might be able to drag him back out to the van and--

“Get away from it!”

Two cops stood at the broken window, guns raised. Young guys, one black, one white, and both quite visibly horrified by the grisly and absurd scene in front of them. Mutilated corpses, two blood-covered thugs, and a thrashing werewolf with a blanket over its head.

“Everything’s okay!” George insisted.

“Get away from it!” the white cop repeated.

Are the cops seriously trying to save Ivan? Lou wondered, incredulous. Then he realized that, no, they were trying to save him and George from the homicidal beast.

“We can’t do that! But you could help us hold him down!”

The cops exchanged an uncertain glance. Lou didn’t blame them. He sure as hell wouldn’t come through that window if he were them.

“Get away!” said the black cop. “We’ll shoot it!”

“Bullets don’t hurt it!”

“Of course bullets hurt it!”

Lou vigorously shook his head. “No, they don’t!”

Ivan pushed himself up and almost got out from underneath George, but they managed to keep him on the floor. The blanket was dripping. George punched him in the back of the head. “Shouldn’t he be out of goddamn blood by now?”

The cops remained at the window. The white one put a walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Dispatch, where the hell is that backup?”

Lou felt the werewolf slipping away. Oh, crap, we’re losing him...we’re losing him...

“Get over here and help us!” Lou shouted to the cops. At this point, getting arrested was a minor concern. If the cops dragged Ivan away, Lou and George might be able to take advantage of the distraction to get away and live out the rest of their years as hermits.

The cops, apparently not being complete idiots, remained where they were.

Ivan shook his head from side to side, shaking off most of the blanket. Lou felt himself start to panic. They definitely weren’t going to be able to hold him. “Throw me some handcuffs!” Did cops use handcuffs anymore, or was it just those plastic things?

George angrily reached into his pocket, pulled out his keys, and slammed one deep into the back of Ivan’s neck. “Stop moving, damn it!”

Ivan stood up part of the way. George remained clamped onto his back for about a second, as if going for a piggyback ride, and then Ivan bucked him off. Lou grabbed for him again and got the werewolf’s arm, but it popped out of his grasp.

The cops opened fire as the werewolf, George’s keys still dangling from the back of his neck, rushed at them. Ivan flinched with each shot but didn’t fall. He broke more glass as he went through the window and pushed through the cops, swiping with both hands simultaneously. Both cops went down, screaming.

They really should have believed Lou about the whole bullets thing.

Instead of finishing them off, though, Ivan left their fallen bodies and ran away.