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.