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.
Ivan’s right arm transformed. George took another swing. This time, Ivan grabbed a hold of the chair and yanked it out of his grasp, then threw it against the wall, where it broke into several pieces and clattered to the floor.
“Didn’t take long to violate the no-weapons agreement, huh?” Though Ivan’s tone was sarcastic, his eyes flashed with anger. The hit with the chair had obviously hurt. Ivan the Werewolf wasn’t invulnerable after all.
He had, of course, just taken a brutal chair hit to the head without his skull fracturing, so George was still in plenty of danger.
“I thought you weren’t going to change,” he said.
“You cheated first.”
And George was going to cheat again. He bolted back for the kitchen. A few close-range gunshots to the face would certainly test the wolfman’s resilience.
He leapt over Diane’s corpse, slipped on the blood, and fell on his ass.
He scrambled to get back on his feet, but his hand flew out from underneath him as he tried to push himself up on the blood-covered floor. If he were lucky, Ivan would pass out from laughter at George’s predicament, giving him a chance to escape.
Ivan’s sense of humor was apparently on hold for the moment. He grabbed the back of George’s shirt with his clawed werewolf hand and dragged him back through the blood and over the corpse. She still had the butcher knife in her face. George yanked it out as he slid over her.
He twisted himself around and jabbed the knife at Ivan. Missed.
Another jab and the blade went an inch into Ivan’s upper leg. He winced, and then backhanded George across the face with his wolf hand. The handle of the knife popped out of George’s grasp as he struck the tile yet again. It fell to the floor. Ivan kicked it out of the way, so hard that it slid all the way across the kitchen and onto the carpet of the dining room.
George chose his target, bent his knee, and then slammed his foot into Ivan’s groin with as much force as he could summon.
It was a spectacular direct hit. Ivan howled and clutched at his balls.
His head transformed, but it wasn’t the rapid transformation from before. Fur sprouted in random patches on his face, and his skull became misshapen. His cry of pain revealed wolf-sized teeth in a human-sized mouth. His nose changed into a snout and then back into a nose, and three of the fingers on his left hand grew talons; unfortunately, they were not positioned in such a way as to further damage his scrotum.
A line of fur raced across his arm and then disappeared.
The leg George had stabbed changed into a wolfman leg, throwing him off-balance.
Despite his size and constant urging from the coach, George had never played football. He wasn’t into team sports. But he sure as hell knew how to do a tackle, and he took advantage of Ivan’s distraction to charge him, ramming into his gut and knocking the still-shifting werewolf to the floor.
Ivan’s head changed to full wolfman and he bit at George’s arm. George pulled away just in time, threw a punch that connected solidly with Ivan’s jaw, then got off him and went for the sink.
Ivan grabbed his ankle just as George snatched the gun.
George fired a shot. Even at almost point-blank range, George’s aim was slightly off, and the bullet tore across the side of the werewolf’s head, ripping a trail of red through his fur.
Ivan released his ankle.
George fired again, hitting him in the forehead. A gout of blood burst from the wound. He emptied the rest of the clip into the werewolf’s chest, wanting to shout something clever but settling for a primal scream.
Ivan, bleeding profusely, fell back against the counter. Aside from a two-inch patch around his right eye, he was now a full wolfman.
His werewolf eye glowed red with fury.
George almost threw the empty gun at him, but didn’t. Ivan was still very much alive, and George might need the weapon later.
Ivan ran his palms down his face and chest in one fluid motion, wiping off some of the blood. He said something that looked like it was meant to be a sadistic, menacing comment, but came out only as a growl.
Not wanting to lose his advantage, George hurried over and threw a punch at the werewolf, hoping to hit him directly in one of the bullet holes. He didn’t quite succeed, but it was a solid blow to the chest. One that had no visible impact.
He punched again. Still nothing, except a bolt of pain in his hand that made him think he might have broken a finger or two.
Ivan drew his hand back, bloody claws glistening. With him in full werewolf mode and pissed off beyond belief, George had no doubt that a full-force swipe could knock his head off, or at least remove most of his face. He ducked underneath Ivan’s arm and sprinted through the dining room.