“Yeah.”
“I love how you’re reduced to saying things like ‘Yeah.’ Very weak. Question, would it weird you out if I started licking up Diane’s blood? Because I don’t want to be nasty or anything, but it’s smelling really good to me right now, and I’d love to just bury my face in her neck and slurp away.”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“I probably shouldn’t indulge. You seem like the kind of person who would attack a guy when he’s licking blood from a mutilated corpse.”
“What about the whole werewolf thing?” George asked.
“Oh my God, it’s more awesome than you can imagine. I mean, I know it’s supposed to be a curse and everything, but if you’d be killing people anyway, it’s the best thing in the world. Not everyone takes to it. Lot of suicides in the werewolf community. They’re always fighting the change instead of embracing it.”
“So clearly the full moon is bullshit.”
Ivan shook his head. “Pretty much. I mean, the full moon causes the transformation whether you want it or not, but there are a lot of other factors. Most werewolves--and I don’t want to imply that there are hundreds; we’re actually a very rare species--they’re terrified of what they are. But if you relish the change, and you practice, practice, practice, you can do it whenever you want. Hurts like hell, but you can learn to even like that part. I love it.”
“How’d you get caught?”
“I let myself get caught.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Okay, maybe that part wasn’t entirely intentional. But I sure got out, didn’t I?”
“What happens next, Ivan? Are you trying to make me the first person in the world to get talked to death by a werewolf?”
“Ooooh, we’re back to being saucy again, huh? Didn’t take you long to get over your horror. I want to fight it out. No guns, no butcher knives, no wolves, just you and me, man to man.”
“You’re going to stay human?”
“Yep.”
“For how long?”
“Until you’re lying on the floor with a broken jaw. I know, you’re thinking that you’ll get one good punch in and I’ll instantly wuss out and change, but you’re wrong. Let’s see who’s the better man.”
“Fine,” George said. “Let’s do this.”
“Excellent.” Ivan dropped the butcher knife. It hit Diane’s face and stuck there. Then he set George’s gun back in the sink. “I recommend that we move out of the kitchen, so that nobody slips on the blood.”
CHAPTER TEN
Thug Versus Wolfman
“Works for me.” George walked into the dining room. Though he was so scared that he was practically trembling, he forced himself to remain optimistic. He was going to get out of this with a dead werewolf at his feet and his dignity restored. Ivan was positive that he had the upper hand, and technically he did, but it would only take one moment of arrogance and carelessness for George to make his move.
Ivan had joked about “one good punch,” which was exactly what George planned to do. Werewolf or not, superhuman or not, you didn’t immediately recover from a nose-breaking blow. If it didn’t send shards of bone rocketing into Ivan’s brain, George would pound on him until his own knuckles were bloody and Ivan’s face was nothing but frothing pulp.
Ivan followed him. The two men stood about five feet apart.
George rushed forward, throwing a sideways punch at Ivan’s nose, hoping to make it splatter. Ivan pulled back out of the way, and George cursed as he hit nothing but air.
Ivan punched him in the stomach, so hard that George dropped to his knees, gasping for breath. The pain was so incredible that he was honestly surprised Ivan’s hand hadn’t burst right through his stomach and come out his back.
He knew he needed to get back up, quickly, but his guts felt like they’d been completely squashed. Even if he was a wolfman, how could such a skinny guy hit so goddamn hard?
“Done already?” Ivan asked. “This was barely worth me wasting time with the frog story.”
George forced himself to at least get up off his knees, though he remained doubled over with his arms crossed over his stomach. He pulled his arms away, raised his fists, and stood up straight.
Ivan punched him in the face. His head shot back with almost neck-snapping force, and he stumbled backwards against the dining room table. He fell to the floor.
C’mon, Lou, where the hell’s the cavalry? At this point, he’d almost welcome a visit by the cops. Better to spend twenty years in the clink than to let Ivan beat him to death.
“I’m going to give you one more chance to get up and fight like a...you know, it doesn’t even have to be like a man, just not like a crippled old lady. Can you do that for me, George? Because if you can’t, I’m going to change into a wolf and start eating you.”
George reached up and grabbed the back of one of the chairs. He used it to steady himself as he pulled himself up.
“I don’t even like the taste of human flesh that much,” said Ivan. “I’m into a lot of demented things, but cannibalism isn’t one of them. And I do consider it cannibalism, even if I’m in my wolf state.”
“Weren’t you just talking about licking up blood?” George asked, bracing himself against the table and trying hard not to throw up.
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“It’s drinking instead of eating. If there’s no meat involved, it’s not cannibalism. Everybody knows that. Not that I’m morally opposed to cannibalism. It’s just not for me.”
George needed to focus his rage. He had a hell of a lot of rage available to focus. Just imagine the sense of euphoria you’ll feel when that bastard’s head explodes into a billion sloppy chunks. Work with the pain and fury. Harness it. Make it your bitch.
He quickly picked up the chair and smashed it into the side of Ivan’s head, like a pro wrestler. Neither the chair nor Ivan’s head broke apart, but Ivan let out a loud grunt and stumbled away, clearly stunned, which was satisfying enough.
Not wanting to lose his momentum, George rushed him and swung the chair a second time. Ivan dodged, but George got him on the reverse swing, bashing the wood into his chest and cracking one of the chair legs.
Ivan’s right arm transformed. George took another swing. This time, Ivan grabbed a hold of the chair and yanked it out of his grasp, then threw it against the wall, where it broke into several pieces and clattered to the floor.
“Didn’t take long to violate the no-weapons agreement, huh?” Though Ivan’s tone was sarcastic, his eyes flashed with anger. The hit with the chair had obviously hurt. Ivan the Werewolf wasn’t invulnerable after all.
He had, of course, just taken a brutal chair hit to the head without his skull fracturing, so George was still in plenty of danger.
“I thought you weren’t going to change,” he said.
“You cheated first.”
And George was going to cheat again. He bolted back for the kitchen. A few close-range gunshots to the face would certainly test the wolfman’s resilience.
He leapt over Diane’s corpse, slipped on the blood, and fell on his ass.
He scrambled to get back on his feet, but his hand flew out from underneath him as he tried to push himself up on the blood-covered floor. If he were lucky, Ivan would pass out from laughter at George’s predicament, giving him a chance to escape.
Ivan’s sense of humor was apparently on hold for the moment. He grabbed the back of George’s shirt with his clawed werewolf hand and dragged him back through the blood and over the corpse. She still had the butcher knife in her face. George yanked it out as he slid over her.