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.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bloodbath Aftermath
Michele was having difficulty reconciling her previous beliefs about tornado chasers with her current plan not to run away.
Tornado chasers were idiots. Why would you ever go toward the storm? Why would you stand outside in a hurricane doing a weather report? Why would you take pictures in a war zone while mortar shells exploded all around you? She’d spent many hours vocally criticizing this kind of stupidity while she watched the news on television, even if nobody else was around to hear. Stay out of the shark tank if you don’t want to disappear in a cloud of blood. Don’t wrestle the alligator and be surprised when you lose a hand.
So when George and Lou set her free, she should have just run as far away from this whole mess as she could. Let her role in this little drama come to an anticlimactic conclusion. Find a hospital, get better bandages for her shoulder, finish off a bottle of wine to celebrate her survival, finish off a second bottle of wine to celebrate the fact that she wasn’t pregnant, and happily pass out.
Instead, she stood at the edge of the parking lot and watched George and Lou walk into the bar.
Was Ivan already inside? Probably not. He had to suspect that George and Lou might burst in there with a dozen cops, so he’d want them to get settled first, give himself a chance to scope things out.
A few minutes later, her theory was proven correct (or Ivan was just running late) as she hid behind a pickup truck and watched him pull into the parking lot. Where had he gotten a car? She prayed there wasn’t a fresh corpse in the trunk.
Ivan drove around the building a couple of times, slowly, then parked at the closest space to the front entrance.
She crept a little closer to the building as Ivan walked inside.
This was still her story, her cash cow, and she needed to know how it all turned out. “Oh, yeah, I was terrified,” she’d tell the person who was hired to ghostwrite her book. “I’d never been so scared in my life. Every bit of common sense I had, every piece of knowledge I’d acquired in my entire life was screaming at me to get out of there, but I just couldn’t.”
The ghostwriter would nod as if she understood completely. Her expression would say You were so very brave without having to speak the words, which would be ass-kissing. “And is that when you called the police?”
“Yes. I mean, there was a dangerous werewolf in the building, so I had to let the authorities know. I couldn’t let more innocent people get hurt.”
“And you’d have a better story if the cops actually caught him or shot him down, right?”
“You said that, not me.”
“Do you want to say it in the book?”
“No. That sounds kind of bad.”
Michele didn’t have her cell phone or any change, but there was a pay phone next to the entrance, and she was pretty sure you didn’t need the fifty cents to make an emergency call. She hurried over to the phone, picked up the receiver, and cursed. The entire mouthpiece was gone, exposing a few broken wires.
She placed it to her ear anyway. They’d still trace a 911 call even if nobody said anything.
No dial tone.
Okay, this was a pretty big problem.
Now what? She certainly wasn’t going to go inside the Cotton Mouse Tavern and ask if she could use their phone.