“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.”