A large, burly man walked out of the bar, looking annoyed and angry, as if he’d just had a heated argument. “Sir?” she said, gently touching his arm.
His eyes lit up, but then he frowned as he noticed her bandaged-up shoulder and bloody clothes. “Yes?”
“Can I borrow your cell phone? It’s an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?”
“I need to call the police. A man just went in there with a gun and I think he’s going to start shooting.”
“Is this a scam?”
“No, I swear.”
“I can’t give you my phone.”
“Then could you call the police for me?”
“Sure, sure.” He took out a cell phone and punched in three digits. “You say a guy with a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Should we be standing here?”
“Probably not.”
They began to quickly walk away from the building. The man touched a button on his phone, and the speaker came on. “911, what is your emergency?” The man kept the phone in his hand, but held it toward Michele so she could talk.
“Hi,” she said. “I think there’s going to be some trouble...”
* * *
Ivan didn’t look back at the cops after he savaged them. They were both probably still alive, but they’d be needing some serious skin grafts. Fuckers. He hoped they spent the rest of their lives being shunned as disfigured freaks.
The pain was almost unbearable. Yeah, he was a fast healer, but he’d been shot, sliced, punched, stabbed, and kicked. Bullets didn’t just pop out of his body when he healed--he had to dig them out, and that was not a pleasant process. He didn’t mind getting mangled every once in a while, but Jesus Christ, this was insane.
He reached back and tugged the car keys out of his neck. Slit throat, stabbed neck--he was lucky he hadn’t been decapitated. When he’d fully recovered he’d hunt George and Lou down and make them die ever so slowly, but for now, he just needed to get away. Revenge could wait. A dish best served cold and all that shit.
Or...not.
He saw their black van. If he couldn’t kill them, he could at least steal their van using the keys they’d stabbed him with. That would keep them nicely frustrated until he came back into their lives.
He transformed back into his human form as he reached the driver’s side door and hurriedly unlocked it, blood gushing down onto his hands as he did so. He got inside, slammed the door shut, and started the engine.
Shit. He was really bleeding bad. He didn’t think he could die from this, but he’d never sustained these kinds of injuries. He’d gotten cocky again. Time for that to stop.
He sped off, but then managed a smile. It didn’t matter how badly he was hurt, the sight of George and Lou running after their stolen van was fucking hilarious.
* * *
“He stole our van!” Lou shouted, as they ran after Ivan in a rather pathetic half-run, half-limp.
“I know!”
“A werewolf just stole our van!”
“I know, Lou!”
“With the keys you stabbed him with!”
“I can see! I still have my eyes!”
“So now what do we do?”
“We get the hell out of here before more cops show up!”
“We should have just waited for the reinforcements.”
“Well, freakin’ duh! How’d you figure that out? The slaughtered corpses? Your eight thousand werewolf wounds? The fact that he just drove away in our goddamn van?”
“It’s not even our van.”
“I realize that! Believe it or not, I’m not a complete ignoramus and I am aware of the severity of the situation!”
Lou stopped running. “I bet you’re not.”
“What do you mean?”
“We left the briefcase of cash in the bar.”
“Fuck!”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, that is bullshit!”
“What do we do?”
“So, what, you’re back to being cool with me making decisions again?”
“George, we don’t have time for this!”
“I know, I know. You keep running. Find us a car that we can hotwire. I’ll run back in and get it. It’ll only take a minute.”
“All right. Don’t get killed.”
“I’ll try.” George turned and ran back to the bar. He couldn’t believe how badly things were working out for him today. Next there’d probably be some kind of earthquake that split open the earth and swallowed him up, dropping him right into Hell, which might be preferable to dealing with Ivan.
Oh, how he hated that werewolf. Despised him. Loathed him. Abhorred him. He could take every synonym in the thesaurus, plus all of their foreign language equivalents, including dead languages that only a couple of scholars in the world still knew how to translate, and it wouldn’t come close to expressing just how deeply he hated that man-beast.
From now on, every old man whose thumbs he broke would have Ivan’s face superimposed over his own. And George expected to start doing some mad cackling in the near future.
The black cop lay on the ground, walkie-talkie to his lips. “Officer down...” he said, voice weak. The white cop looked at George with pleading eyes, which was one of the only facial features that was still recognizable. George was not a cop-hater--he had no problem with them or their duties as long as they weren’t specifically coming after him--and he felt horrible. What if the guy had kids? Still, there was no time to offer a moment of comfort. He hurried past the cops and went back into the bar.
He could hear somebody sobbing upstairs. He wondered how badly the woman up there had been hurt when she got shot.
George ran to the booth where they’d sat in slightly happier times. He stepped on some viscera but, thankfully, did not slip on it.
He picked up the suitcase, the side of which was stained with werewolf blood. He quickly glanced around for the guns they’d dropped, or the sharpened cross, or Lou’s switchblade, but didn’t immediately see them and he could hear sirens in the distance, so he ran back out of the bar. Not stepping in blood was a challenge.
Now they needed a vehicle. George and Lou both knew how to hotwire a car, but it wasn’t as easy of a task as it looked in the movies. They couldn’t do it here. Hopefully they’d find another car relatively nearby where they could break in without arousing suspicion.
* * *
Ivan was getting blood all over the seat. Good. Another reason for Bateman to hunt down his unfortunate, incompetent thugs. Ivan rubbed his palm on the dashboard, smearing blood everywhere.
No, wait. He didn’t want George and Lou to get exterminated by their employer. That would be too painless, even if Bateman used a red-hot poker and a cheese grater. And besides, Ivan wouldn’t get to watch.
He stuck his tongue in the gap from his missing tooth. He’d never lost a fang before. He didn’t think it would grow back.
He could turn the van around and--
No.
Let them go. Even if their ghastly fate didn’t come at his hands, he had to let this drop. He was too badly injured right now. Werewolves who didn’t learn from the past ten minutes were condemned to repeat them.
It was also disappointing that Michele hadn’t come with them. He still wanted to sink his teeth into her. He wondered where she’d gone.
Then he laughed out loud. He knew exactly where a person in her position would go. The GPS was still mounted on the dashboard, so he bloodied up the screen and found the nearest hospital. Six miles away. He floored the accelerator and sped off.
* * *
Right after she’d gotten into his car, Michele suddenly decided that the burly guy was a serial killer, and that her arms and legs would turn up in four different counties. Then she decided that he was just kind of weird.
When the chaos inside the tavern began, she’d rolled down the window, leaned out, and vomited onto the pavement. She should’ve called the police sooner, but she didn’t want them to scare Ivan away.
The man had insisted that they drive off. She’d protested. The man had explained that it was his car and that she was welcome to get out. She’d decided that it was time to revert back to her stance on tornado chasers and leave with him.
“Could you take me to the hospital?” she’d asked.