Prowlers: Wild Things

by Christopher Golden

  They were all staring away from him, either up at the band or searching the crowd for Jasmine. Alec was the first to turn. The expression on his face froze the instant he saw Bill.

  "Oh, sh —" Alec started to say.

  With a single thrust of his powerful jaws, Bill ripped out his throat.

  And the band played on.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The moment the band had hit the stage, even in darkness, Courtney and Bowden had begun to go to work. Nearly the entire club had turned toward the source of the music, the women on the platform at the far end of The Voodoo Lounge. Only a few determined souls stayed at the bar, waiting for their drinks.

  Courtney thought about Jack and Molly, wondering where in the crowd they were, if they had managed to place themselves where they needed to be in the audience. Focusing, she pushed the thought away. She had her own job to do.

  Fast as they were able, she and Bowden served the stragglers at the bar. By the time the stage lights came up and the band tore into the first song in their set in earnest, bodies had begun to gyrate on the floor of the club. Some dancing, some merely moving to the music.

  With a silent prayer, hoping the band was loud enough to cover the noise, Courtney dropped a bottle of hundred fifty proof rum and it shattered on the floor behind the bar, not far from the corpse of the first Prowler Bowden had killed.

  No one paid any attention.

  Courtney glanced up at Bowden, and he smiled. Then, quick as they could, the two began pulling bottles off the liquor racks, anything one hundred proof or more. At first Courtney tried to pour them out, not wanting to draw any unnecessary attention.

  "What the hell are you doing?" shouted a woman at the bar, halfway between horrified and amused.

  "Mind your business!" Courtney snapped at her.

  The woman held up both hands and backed away, then shot her the middle finger and pushed back into the audience. From that point, Courtney just dropped the bottles.

  A scream tore through the club, audible even over the pounding of the drums and the sweet melody of the vocals from the lead singer and from Olivia on guitar. Courtney and Bowden both whipped around to try to see where it was coming from. Across the floor, people had begun to draw away from the far corner where Jack had seen that group of Prowlers. Like a wave, the crowd swept back from that spot, but still Courtney couldn't see what was happening there.

  The music never faltered.

  Something was happening over there, though. They had run out of time. Courtney looked up at Bowden, about to ask if he was ready, but he already brandished a Molotov cocktail in his hands, a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 with a bar rag poked out of the neck.

  Courtney slid a hand into her pocket, pulled out the lighter she had brought along, and spun the thumbwheel. A tiny flame appeared and she set it to the bar rag. It smoked black a moment and then blazed up like a torch on top of the bottle.

  "Get back!" Bowden said.

  She wasted no time. One hand on the bar to help keep her balance, Courtney rushed along the bar toward the stage. The audience had spread out, some still sitting on the benches along the walls. There was a gap of perhaps thirty feet between the end of the bar and the corner of the stage and it was filled with people.

  Courtney stopped there, turned to watch as Bowden reached the other end of the bar and then tossed the burning bottle of Wild Turkey underhanded back along the bar, where it shattered on the wooden floor amidst the broken glass from twenty or more other bottles of flammable alcohol.

  It exploded with a pop and a hiss of flames, and fire engulfed the middle of the bar. Quickly, it began to spread.

  "Oh my God!" Courtney yelled. "Fire!"

  Though she had helped to set the blaze, she did not have to fake the fear in her voice. Whatever happened now, there would be no slipping quietly out the door at the end of the night.

  Other voices followed her own, cries of alarm. Across the club she could still see some sort of melee going on, a fight, and even as she glanced that way, she saw Prowlers turning. Beasts emerged from within their human shells and they began to attack other Prowlers. Claws tore at air and flesh.

  Then Courtney's view was blocked by the shifting tides of the crowd as the shouts of alarm grew louder and people began to rush for the doors. Up on the stage, the band members stopped playing one by one with a clang of cymbals, a screech of guitar feedback, and whispered cusses over the microphone.

  A fire alarm began to blat loud and urgent as the blaze spread, engulfing the bar, and roared up the wall to begin licking across the ceiling of the club high above. Courtney stared in quiet horror and awe at the people shoving past one another, panicked into fleeing. But not everyone was trying to leave. In the midst of the receding sea of humanity stood tiny islands of three and four individuals who struggled to keep from being carried away by the waves sweep around them.

  Prowlers. They were not running away. They knew that this was only a precursor to something more. But the humans fled, and that was exactly the way Jack and Olivia had planned it. The house lights went on, dimly illuminating the chaos in the club.

  Then, in the midst of the rush to escape, Courtney saw Jasmine stalking across the club, using her savage strength to slap down anyone who tried to move her, to carry her along with the exodus. The Alpha stared at the fire, fury in her orange eyes, which flickered with reflected flame. Jasmine turned to gaze around, searching either end of the bar for the source of this fire. Her eyes settled upon Courtney, and Courtney understood immediately how she must look.

  Jasmine would wonder why she was not running.

  She couldn't run, even if she wanted to. Particularly not without her cane. But Jasmine wouldn't know that.

  The Prowler's long leather coat swayed around her as she pushed through the crowd and moved for the bar. Courtney watched her come, not knowing what to do. There was nowhere for her to go. She turned to look around for Bowden, but he had disappeared into the crowd, ready to combat Jasmine's pack once most of the people had cleared out.

  Above them, with the alarm blaring, the sprinkler system suddenly kicked in and water began spraying down upon them from hundreds of tiny spigots, a cold shower that hissed as it hit the fire. Jasmine paused and stared up at the rain in annoyance. Most of the people had cleared away from the stage and Courtney turned quickly and started to hobble that way, limping badly, trying not to stumble.

  Up on the stage, she saw Jack and Molly.

  Before she reached them, she glanced back over her shoulder and saw Jasmine lunging through the straggling audience members toward her. The Alpha Prowler lashed out at a man in her way and his neck twisted at an odd angle; he fell in a tumble of limbs on the now wet floor of the club.

  "Shit," Courtney whispered.

  But then she saw a tall, lanky figure step into Jasmine's path. She could not see the white streak in his hair, but she knew that it was Winter. Courtney had no idea if he could take Jasmine on, but at the very least, he would buy them a handful of moments. The rest of Jasmine's pack would only now be realizing what was happening, and every moment counted now.

  Alec was dead at Bill's feet and he had snapped the neck of another member of Jasmine's pack before the others even began to notice anything was wrong. Even after Jasmine took off across the club, they had expected him to just sit there and let it all happen. In some ways, that stoked the fires of his rage even higher, because he could not be certain it was not true.

  But Olivia was up there on stage. She was all right. Not safe, perhaps, but in no more immediate danger than he was. Considerably less, actually.

  "You should've left well enough alone, hunted the fringes like before." Bill snarled as he raked his claws across the chest of the nearest Prowler, spilling blood and viscera onto the wood floor.

  They were all changing then, a ripple passing through them one by one as their human masques were cast aside, torn apart, to reveal the monstrous faces of the Prowlers. Black fur and brown, blond and red, male a
nd female, all sizes and body types . . . the tribes of millennia past had been erased and replaced by alliances of convenience and bloodlust. Together they began to move on him. One, nearby, was drooling copiously, tongue lolling out. Another gazed at him with one good eye, the other white and blind.

  "You're a fool, Navarre," snarled the one-eye. "Jasmine's going to draw all the world's packs together and then we will hunt wherever we like."

  Three of them attacked at once. Bill felt claws slash his back, his thigh, and he saw a mouth full of gleaming needle teeth as one of them opened its jaws to tear into him. But they were off balance, in each other's way, and they fought like animals. Bill had lived as a human long enough that he was almost as much man as beast. He rammed his head forward and his skull crashed into the forehead of the one who had wanted to bite him. It cried out in pain and backed off, even as he shot an elbow into the chest of a Prowler rushing up behind him. The third tried to lunge at him, jaws gnashing.

  Bill grabbed its snout in both hands, slipped his talons into its jaws, and yanked them open with all his strength, cracking bone and tearing muscle.

  When he looked up at the others, he saw that they had reinforcements. Others of the pack had moved in to aid these, changing as they came for him, and Bill was cornered. Beyond them, though, something else was happening. He saw a familiar face, the human guise of a Prowler named Diego, a member of the underground in Boston. But what's he doing here? Could he be with Jasmine?

  Diego transformed and lunged at the nearest member of Jasmine's pack. Behind him, several others also changed and entered the fray. Bill's lips curled back from his teeth as he grinned and battered away a beast that tried to savage him.

  "There's no going back, you idiots," he growled. "Only forward. All Jasmine's done for you is get you killed."

  But his words were premature. So far there were more of Jasmine's pack than there were allies. His heart sank and he gritted his teeth. Jack, whatever it is you're going to do, get to it! he thought.

  Which was the very instant he heard a familiar voice shouting about a fire. Courtney! And across the club, fire blazed up the wall behind the bar, spreading quickly. Alarm bells began to jangle a second later even as he slashed and bit and shattered the bones of his enemies. The music on stage stopped. The people screamed and fled madly, prepared to trample one another to escape. Some of them might well have done that. Already some had seen the melee in this corner, had seen the monsters tearing at one another. Bill could just imagine the newspaper headlines the next morning.

  If they all had a next morning.

  Claws raked his left shoulder, slashing to the bone and he roared in pain and let the arm dangle at his side.

  The sprinkler system went off, raining water down upon them, beginning to douse the flames. But the battle raged.

  As soon as the fire was raging and the people began to race for the exit, Molly jumped up on the stage with Jack close behind her. The music stopped with a dissonant clang of abandoned instruments. The two human girls in Thornbush took off backstage, heading for the rear exit none of the audience members would even think to search for in such a panicked state. The three Prowlers who had agreed to have Olivia join them onstage that night leaped off the stage to the floor and began to wade through the crowd toward where Jasmine's pack held Bill. They made it barely a dozen feet before Molly saw them intercepted by others.

  Bodies changed, claws flashed, and blood was spilled.

  A hand landed on Molly's wrist. She spun to see Olivia gazing at her, a dark gravity in her eyes.

  "Hey," Olivia yelled over the din. "Come on. They'll be at us in a second!"

  Molly nodded and turned to see that Jack was already upending the black-painted wooden platform that had been brought out onto the stage earlier. There was a latch on the raw, unpainted bottom and he opened it with a twist and then lifted the hinged door open and reached inside.

  Jack pulled out a chopped-down pump shotgun, the barrel sawed off to get a wider spray with each pull of the trigger. Spread the death, Molly thought, and shuddered.

  It had been a busy afternoon and they had needed a great deal of help. But the word had gone out through the underground and touched off reactions from Prowlers all over the northeast like falling dominoes. They came in from Boston and Philadelphia and everywhere in between, all those Prowlers who had merged with the human race, who just wanted to live and let live, who had put together lives that they would lose if Jasmine fulfilled her own dream.

  They came, this same underground from whom Bill had always gotten his information and his weapons, and they came bearing gifts and willing to put their own lives on the line. They had too much to lose to do otherwise.

  "Olivia!" Jack shouted to be heard over the fire alarms. "You want one?"

  The Prowler girl shook her head and as she did so, she changed. It was one fluid motion. She tossed her hair back and whipped her head around like a supermodel, but as she moved, the transformation came over her and once again Molly found herself face to face with the lean, long-limbed beast with sleek, black fur.

  "That will never not freak me out," she called, surprised at her own words.

  "Maybe that'll keep you alive," Olivia shouted back.

  But Molly wasn't paying any attention to her now. The clock was ticking and it would be only moments before the pack noticed what was happening up on the stage. She turned and went to Jack, knelt down by the wooden platform, and reached inside. She had always disliked shotguns, thought them too unwieldy. Instead she retrieved a pair of nine-millimeter handguns. She slipped one into the tight waistband of the leather pants she wore, the metal cold against her flesh, and thumbed the safety off the other. Then she nodded at Jack and Olivia.

  The sprinkler system went off and water spilled from points all across the ceiling.

  The Prowler girl grabbed the wooden crate and dragged it with one hand across to within a foot of the end of the stage. When Molly glanced past Olivia, she saw Courtney stumbling toward them, stumbling on her bad leg, a stricken expression on her face. The fire had spread to engulf parts of the ceiling but now the sprinklers were beginning to douse the flames. Across the floor, the doors to The Voodoo Lounge were still jammed with people trying to escape the fire and now the water as well, but fully half the club was cleared of human beings.

  Among those who remained, most had already transformed. The club was filling with snarl and growls and roars of pain and rage. With the stench of animals.

  Jack leaped down to the club floor and reached out for his sister, practically catching her in his arms. Then Courtney leaned against the stage, breathing hard. She glanced down at the sawed-off shotgun in Jack's hands and then glanced up at Molly, eyes wide and wild.

  "Give me one of those things," she demanded, wiping a hand across her face.

  Molly reached into the crate and came out with a pump shotgun, handed it down to Courtney. Then she reached in again and pulled out Courtney's cane. A smile crossed the older Dwyer sibling's features as she saw the lion-headed walking stick, but when Molly handed it to her, Courtney laid it down on the stage.

  "Not gonna need that just yet. I'm gonna hold the fort right here." Then Courtney looked back to her brother. "Winter's taking Jasmine on."

  Despite the dim glow of the house lights above, the smoke from the fire and the spray of the sprinklers made it hard to see very well. Hard to breathe as well. Molly coughed and choked as she tried to get a good look at the various groups of Prowlers that were attacking one another in the club. Her gaze was drawn by a screeching and loud sort of howling from the corner off to her right, where Bill had been held. There were at least a dozen Prowlers there, and corpses already littered the ground, blood streaking the water on the wood floor. Molly could see that, and yet in the midst of that melee, she could not tell if one of them was Bill.

  "There!" Olivia said quickly.

  She pointed into the chaos at a pair of the monsters who circled each other warily. One was thin an
d quick with dark fur, and the other had a fine pelt of reddish brown. Jasmine, Molly thought.

  Jack looked up at Olivia. "Go. I'll be right there."

  "No," Olivia replied sharply. "My uncle —"

  "Can take care of himself," Jack said quickly. "We want this thing to be over, we've got to kill Jasmine."

  Olivia hesitated and turned to Molly, who was stunned to realize that the Prowler girl wanted her opinion. The gun felt suddenly heavy in her hand. Water dripped down Molly's face. Then she nodded at Olivia. "As long as Jasmine's alive, they've got something to fight for. We'll go for Bill. Bring him to you."

  Olivia paused, stared at Jack a moment, and then leaped off the stage and ran into the smoke and mist, lights strobing into that miasma of dark, inhuman shapes.

  Then Jack grabbed Molly's hand. "Stay with Court," he said. Then he looked at his sister.

  "Just go get him," Courtney said. "And watch your ass."

  Jack nodded grimly and leaped off the stage, shotgun in his hands. Then he, too, was gone.

  Molly slid down off the stage to stand beside Courtney and even as she did, Courtney raised the shotgun, pumped it once, and fired. The gunshot quieted the room for a moment. Startled, Molly looked up to see a Prowler blown backward, an enormous red hole in her chest. The female creature fell dead to the floor.

  But there were others moving in.

  Her throat dry, her heart pounding, Molly was amazed to find that her hands was steady as she raised the nine millimeter and began to fire.

  Jasmine ducked low, lunged forward, and ripped a chunk of flesh from Winter's side with her teeth, blood sliding down the sides of her mouth. She tasted fur and spat it on the ground.

  Winter clutched at his wound and backpedaled, but his eyes still blazed with defiance. His dark fur was matted with water from above and the white streak on his head looked more gray in the smoke and mist. He did not growl, did not snarl, only gazed at her steadily, warily, looking for an opening.