“What happened to the girl?”
“What girl?”
“Don’t be coy with me. The girl you had with you. Did you create a Wikipedia page for our whole operation and drop her off at the CNN studio?”
“The werewolf killed her.” George assumed that the lie would be exposed before too long, but for now he just wanted Ricky off his back.
“Well, that’s one good thing to come out of this. Didn’t I tell you not to hang up on me?”
George stripped a brown wire. Now that he’d gotten some practice with the claw hammer, the process was going more smoothly. “We got disconnected.”
“The hell we did. Did you finish the car yet?”
George touched the brown wire to the red wires. The engine roared to life. “Just got it.”
“I could’ve done it in half that time.”
“Can I hang up now?”
“Are you going to 7151 Pegg Avenue?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to create any more disasters on your way there?”
“No.”
“Then you can hang up. Jerk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
An Unpleasant Conversation
And, just like that, Michele was screwed again.
Honestly, it wasn’t all that surprising that Ivan had snatched her, but she would have expected it to be when she was being stupid and hanging around the tavern, not when she was being smart and going to the hospital.
They’d been driving for a few minutes. Ivan hadn’t said anything, though she caught him glancing at her in the rear-view mirror several times, and she made no effort to start a conversation. Thus far she’d successfully forced herself not to cry. He could carve the entire Bible into her skin before she’d give him the satisfaction of watching her cry.
She wouldn’t beg, either.
There was nothing she could do about the trembling, though.
God, she was scared. She didn’t want to die. She considered lying and telling him that she was pregnant, to see if she could appeal to some tiny shred of goodness, but she didn’t think he had any. He’d probably love it if he thought she was pregnant. She could just hear him: “Oooooh, then I’d better save your belly for last!”
She adjusted her position. Her only solace was that he’d have to open the cage to kill her, at least if he wanted to do it with his teeth and claws, and she’d have an opportunity to escape.
“How are you holding up?” he finally asked.
“I’ll be honest with you: not so well.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You can still talk, can’t you? A lot of my prey gets so scared they can’t even do that.”
“Then I’m honored.”
“You should be. Mute people just aren’t much fun.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Do you think I should?”
“No.”
“Why not? Appeal to my sense of reason.”
“I never did anything to you. I tried to help you.”
“I don’t recall that.”
“I guess I was being too subtle, then. We were both victims.”
“Correction. I was no victim. I had George and Lou exactly where I wanted them the entire time. There’s evidence of this back at the tavern we just left. How many people do you think I killed? Guess.”
“Six.”
“Higher.”
“Twelve.”
“Lower.”
“Ten.”
“Lower.”
“Nine.”
“This is going to take all night,” said Ivan. “I killed seven people. Murdered two people earlier today, for a twenty-four hour total of nine so far. Messed Lou up in a big way. Shredded two cops. Got a lady shot. Let two people go on purpose, and believe me, that’s the only reason they’re not dead.”
“What about George?”
“I didn’t kill him yet.”
“Why not?”
“He comes later. Got to save the good stuff. Are you impressed by the seven people I killed at the tavern?”
“Sure.”
“I think you’re just humoring me. I’ll bet you’ve never killed nine human beings in a day. I bet you haven’t even killed two. Am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“You know what sucks about the number nine? It’s not a monumental number. Nobody celebrates the ninth anniversary of something. It’s all about those nice round numbers. That’s what people like. If I went around telling everybody that my body count for today was nine, they’d be amazed by my awesomeness, of course, but they’d feel that something was missing. It just wasn’t quite at the next level. You can’t really have a party for nine. Do you see what I’m saying? Can you think of any possible way for me to fix my little quandary with the whole number thing?”
“Just lie and say you killed ten.”
“Hmmmm. I never thought about that. I hate to be deceptive, though. There has to be a better way. Thinking...thinking...thinking...”
“Do you really want people to know about your feat?”
“I like that you called it a feat. I figured you’d feel a little more revulsion than that.”
Michele ignored him and tried to steer the conversation back toward reasons he shouldn’t kill her. “I could have run away. They let me go.”
“You did run away. I found you at the hospital.”
“I had a chance before that. I stuck around because I want to tell this story.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah.”
“So, what, you want to write The Dastardly Deeds of Ivan the Werewolf?”
“Something like that.”
“Or maybe Interview With a Werewolf. Let Anne Rice sue.”
“If you let me go, I’ll make you famous.”
“If I wanted to be famous, I’d walk onto Oprah’s set and transform in front of her cameras. Then I’d rip out her throat. I appreciate your efforts, Michele, but there’s really not much you can offer me.”
“I disagree.”
Ivan smiled. “Well, I mean, there’s that. You like it wolfy style?”
Michele felt the blood drain from her face, but tried to keep her voice steady. “Why are your aspirations so low?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have this incredible power, something that’s so amazing that nobody who hadn’t seen it for themselves would ever believe it could be true, and yet you just use it to kill people.”
“Killing people is fun. It’s better than not killing people, I’ll tell you that.”
“There’s so much more you could do.”
“Like what? Bring canned food to homeless people? Teach our children about the wonders of volcanoes?”
“You could be a superstar celebrity. How much earning potential do you think a werewolf in the public eye could have?”
“A lot, until somebody put a silver bullet in his heart.”
“There are plenty of rich celebrities who a lot of people want to assassinate and they do just fine. With that much money, you could keep yourself safe.”
“I’ve got it! Maybe I could be a superhero!”
“Maybe you could.”
“I could be Werewolf Man, and I’d go around biting evildoers. I could wear a furry cape with a big W on it. Oh, man, I never even dreamed I had so much untapped potential. You’ve opened up a whole new world for me. How can I ever repay you?”
“I’m serious, Ivan.”
“Are you trying to become my manager or something?”
“Maybe.”
“I think you’re talking just to keep yourself alive. I think you’re too adorable and innocent to actually want to go into business with a big bad werewolf, who would probably ruin all of his promo ops by going on bloody rampages.”
“That’s not true.”
“You’re certainly an opportunist. I admire that. But, again, let’s say for the sake of argument that I was interested in your idea. Maybe I looked in the mirror one day and said ‘Golly, I’ve devoted my whole life to evil. How shameful. Woe is me for my poor decisions. I must balance out all of the death and destruction by doing good deeds.’“
“I didn’t say they had to be good deeds.”
“You mean I should become a supervillain? Now that might be cool.”
“You’re not taking me seriously.”