“Open the cage!” George shouted, unhelpfully.
This wasn’t going to work. Lou had no idea if this was even the kind of lock you could pick with a paper clip. If it was, Ivan would have no doubt figured out a way to make his escape sooner than he did. Hell, if nothing else, he could have used his talons.
Shit.
* * *
Michele was wild-eyed and scary and George had thoroughly gotten over his qualms about fighting with a woman. There was nothing left of the real Michele, as far as he could tell.
Why was Lou still screwing around with the lock? Popping that thing should have been no problem. Couldn’t he see that the she-wolf was winning?
She hadn’t bitten him yet, at least not hard enough to pierce his flesh, but not for lack of trying. In fact, her jaws never stopped snapping open and closed, almost like a slower version of a pair of chattery teeth. His hand was clamped over her throat, and he pushed up as hard as he could, trying to keep her teeth away from his face, but he wasn’t going to be able to sustain this for much longer.
“I can’t do this!” said Lou. “Get her away from you! I’ll get a gun and shoot her!”
“What? No!”
“What else do you want me to do?”
“Get the cage open!”
“I can’t get the cage open!”
“Fuck!”
“I know!”
George’s hand slipped off of Michele’s throat, but he elbowed her in the face before she could bite him. He slammed her into the side of the cage.
Her growl deepened. She seemed absolutely furious.
* * *
Rage.
Pure unrestrained fury.
Nothing else mattered.
Kill the prey.
Eat him.
* * *
Lou pulled the paper clip out of the lock and tossed it aside. He was wasting time. He took out the gun and fired two bullets into the lock, turning his head and squeezing his eyes shut in case there was a ricochet.
“Be careful!” George shouted.
Lou opened his eyes. “I am being careful!” No impact. Bullets weren’t going to do it, either. He could try to shoot Michele and see if bullets worked better on her than Ivan, but there was no way he could guarantee that he wouldn’t put a bullet in George instead.
Once again he ran to the front of the van and climbed inside.
He shoved his foot into the cage again, but this time Michele avoided his kick. She grabbed his foot and he had a momentary flash of terror as she pulled him toward her.
George slammed his fist against her arm, breaking her hold. Lou withdrew his foot from within the bars, but then braced both feet against the side of the cage, tightly held the seats of the van, and shoved as hard as he could.
He was already shot and mauled. Why not add a hernia?
The pain was intense but not quite unbearable as the cage began to slowly slide along the floor of the van. It had good traction. After everything he’d been through today, he deserved to have something work out.
Michele slashed George’s chest. It looked like a savage wound, although George had suffered so many injuries that Lou wasn’t sure if that was a brand new one or an old one being reopened.
The edge of the cage slid over the back of the van.
* * *
George cried out as Michele’s claws ripped into his chest. He’d been hit in that same goddamn spot at least two other times today. If it were on the other side, his heart would practically be exposed.
He grabbed her arm, squeezing hard enough that it might have broken a bone if she were in her human form, and tossed her to the other side of the cage. She struck the door, twisted around, and came back at George.
Lou continued to shove the cage forward. George wasn’t entirely certain that this was a good idea.
George began to frantically kick at Michele as she lunged at him. Her jaws closed over his shoe and it took three tugs to get it loose.
The cage began to tilt.
* * *
Ivan watched the struggle with a combination of disbelief and amusement. Yeah, he should’ve just run away, but he had to know what was going on. It was absolutely crazy. Lou should be sobbing over his buddy’s corpse while Michele feasted on George’s remains. He should most definitely not be pushing the cage out of the van.
Insane.
He planned to remain hidden unless it was absolutely necessary to join in the chaos, but there was no way he could turn away from the show.
* * *
There was definitely a hernia in Lou’s future.
His legs were now extended all the way. The cage wasn’t quite ready to topple over the edge, but it was getting close.
* * *
George kicked Michele for what felt like the hundredth time since she transformed. His muscles were so sore that the agony almost threatened to overpower his flesh wounds.
Michele struck the cage door again, and her weight started the point of no return. The cage did a sharp downward tilt and then slid off the edge of the van, crashing to the ground corner-first with a teeth-rattling clatter. George bashed against Michele, nearly knocking the wind out of him but hopefully hurting her just as bad.
The floor of the cage slammed down, stirring up a cloud of dirt.
Michele dove at him. Nope, the impact of the fall definitely hadn’t hurt her as much as it did him.
She pinned him down. George was having difficulty focusing his vision. A trio of she-wolf faces loomed above him.
Then she slid away as Lou grabbed her leg.
“I’ve got her!” Lou announced.
George scooted to the back of the cage. “What good does that do me? Are you gonna hold her forever?”
Lou pulled until her leg was entirely out of the cage, and then grabbed the back of her shirt, holding her tight.
“Get some silver!” George shouted.
“We don’t have any!”
“What do you mean, we don’t have any?”
“Prescott and Angie took it all!”
“Why’d they do that?”
“They didn’t think they’d get killed!”
“Well, do something!”
Lou glanced to the side. George thought he might be looking for an item that might prove to be useful in this situation, but realized he was wrong as Ivan’s werewolf form knocked Lou away from the cage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Lou’s Decision
Lou lost his grip on Michele, who instantly pounced back upon George. Lou fell to the ground and raised his gun, but Ivan was already back in the swamp.
What was that all about?
He doesn’t know what kind of weapons we have, Lou realized. He has to play it safe.
At this point, Lou didn’t give half a crap about capturing the werewolf. Let Bateman and Dewey seek them out to the ends of the earth. If Lou had the opportunity to stuff a grenade down Ivan’s throat, he’d take it without hesitation.
He did not, however, want to spend the rest of his life in prison, and they’d made a lot of noise. Somebody had to be coming to investigate.
Lou reached his hand into the cage, nearly got bit, and quickly withdrew it. “Throw her over here,” he told George. “I’ll shoot her!”
Lou watched carefully for Ivan as George struggled some more with the she-wolf. After a few violent moments, he managed to push her to the edge of the cage.
“Hold her still!”
“I can’t hold her still!”
Lou shot her in the head. Some blood sprayed on George.
Michele howled and bled. But she didn’t flop over and die.
George scooted away as she came at him again. He kicked repeatedly, desperately trying to keep her on her own side of the cage.
Now what?
Leave George to fend for himself?
No. Absolutely not.
He wasn’t going to leave George here to be torn apart by Michele, although if they ended up in police custody, Lou thought he’d be more than justified in trying to cut a deal and let his partner take most of the fall. He wasn’t entirely certain what crimes they’d be charged with, beyond the obvious investigation into their criminal past, but being responsible for a werewolf who killed about a dozen people had to be a pretty serious offense.