by Mac Flynn
"If you survive they can be very good."
"That doesn't sound very definite."
"Nothing in life is definite, Mr. Patterson," Sphinx pointed out.
"And the duties? Will it involve weekends?" he teased her.
"I'm afraid you'll be on call personally from me," she told him.
"And what will be your commands?" he wondered. I had no idea how he could be so smooth with the waiter beside us with a gun, and these two psychotics sitting opposite us. I wanted to run straight through the wooden false front and to the nearest station-wait, that wouldn't have been a good idea. Maybe home to bed-wait, that wasn't safe, either. The more I thought about where to run, the fewer options I had except for my workplace, and I'd never run there.
"You've taken care of several of my men without any problems, so why not take care of the men causing me problems?" Sphinx suggested.
"Murder?" he asked her.
She wrinkled her nose and leaned back in her seat. "Murder is such an ugly word."
"An ugly word for an ugly job," Greg countered.
Sphinx shrugged. "I prefer to see it as competition elimination, but all this talk is boring me. Will you or won't you take my offer?"
"A moment, please. I've heard the benefits of taking the job, but what about the consequences of refusing your offer?" he asked her.
Sphinx gestured to the waiter who stood on the other side of Mr. Swallow. The man opened his vest and pulled out his gun which he pointed at me. "Does that answer your question?" she returned.
"Unfortunately, very perfectly," Greg replied. He glanced at me with a smile, then looked back to Sphinx. "Would you mind giving us a moment alone?"
The gang leader smiled and bowed her head. "But of course, but only ten minutes." She stood and Mr. Swallow followed suit. "Oh, and don't think of trying to run away. I have more than just his gun on this table."
Greg bowed his head. "We wouldn't think of doing such a rude thing."
"And remember, ten minutes."
Chapter 13
Sphinx took her two stooges off to a far table, and I swiveled in my chair to face Greg. I was careful to keep my voice low enough so no one could overhear me. "What in the world are you doing here?" I hissed at him.
"Don't you recognize a rescue when you see one?" he teased.
"I can, and this isn't it. You've practically handed yourself over to that woman," I replied.
Greg shrugged. "I've been in worse spots."
"Do you have a plan to get out of this one?"
"Not really."
"Then I'd say this one is topping your list of worse spots."
"Only because I haven't got us out of it yet." He glanced around the room at all the well-dressed people. "A nice crowd tonight. I wonder if maybe she wouldn't stay her guns for her high-class clientele."
"I think she's crazy enough to shoot through herself if she thought it'd hit her enemy," I quipped.
Greg tilted his head up to look at the white-paneled ceiling. There were cameras in the corners and waiters positioned throughout the room. "Perhaps, but I have a feeling our green-loving friend has a fondness for greenbacks, and shooting one's clients wouldn't be good for business," he countered.
"And where'd you learn to speak so well, anyway? You look and sound like a different guy," I asked him.
Greg turned to me and wagged his eyebrows. "Do you like it? It's a disguise I haven't used in years."
I looked down at his suit. "Disguise?"
He followed my gaze and laughed. "Not this, this is new. A gentleman walked outside and I, shall we say, borrowed it."
"How about we just say the truth and he's probably stark-naked outside."
"Fair enough."
"And as for the accent and nice words, I guess it passes the smell test if you were going for the eau de caviar crowd. Just to change the subject away from disgusting foods, how in the world did you find me?"
"That isn't changing the subject. You're very easy to track," he told me. "I merely followed your scent, noticed a well-dressed man vacate a vacated building, and donned the disguise to blend in with the crowd."
"But you were in the attic when I was kidnapped, and Cranston was supposed to keep you busy" I pointed out.
"He's very boring and obvious when he tries to distract people, and I kept one sharp ear on the basement. I heard Brandy smash my apartment to bits and watched your kidnapping from the roof."
"You heard him in the basement while you were all the way in the attic?" I wondered in awe.
Greg smiled and shrugged. "A benefit to this curse."
"It'd be pretty convenient if we both had that benefit right about now," I pointed out as I glanced around the room.
"Well, about that. . ." Greg hesitantly spoke up. I whipped my head back to him and raised an eyebrow.
"What about that?" I asked him.
"I may or may not have slipped you some of my blood a few days ago."
I froze except for my hands in my lap. They clenched around my jeans. "And what does that mean?"
"It means your shaving cream and razor expenses are soon going to go up," he told me.
My eye twitched. "Are you trying to tell me you fed me werewolf blood-"
"-you drank it. It was in the coffee I gave you the first night we talked," he corrected me.
My other eye twitched. Soon I'd be able to do Morse code. "You gave me tainted coffee and now I'm a werewolf?"
"Pretty much."
I jumped out of my chair and tried to wrap my hands around his throat, but he grabbed me by the wrists. "You asshole! Why the hell did you do that to me?" I shrieked at him.
"Because I really like you!" he replied.
"You've got a funny way of showing it!" I yelled back.
Our lover's quarrel caught the attention of the rest of the room, and our high-class human shields ran out of the building. Three waiters raced over to separate us. Greg stood up and swung me around to try to get away from my death hug of his neck, and I collided with one of the guys. He dropped back on the ground and we stepped on him as we fought to gain the upper hand in our fight. The other waiters met a similar fate, with one elbowed in the jaw when Greg yanked my arm toward him and another collided with my head when Greg violently swung me around into the waiter. They lay strewn on the ground unconscious and with shoe marks all over them. That's when I noticed a pattern to Greg's fighting style, or rather it was more like a dance between us where he wouldn't let anyone else be my partner.
Unfortunately, Sphinx noticed that all her men were on the ground and we still grappled, ready for any more unsuspecting waiters. Her lips pursed together and she gestured to the remaining two waiters. "Shoot them!" she yelled at her men. Mr. Swallow tried to take the opportunity to scurry from the room, but Sphinx grabbed his coat jacket and hung onto him. She probably figured to make his rotund body into a human shield.
"Time to duck," Greg ordered, and pulled me down beneath the table's long cloth. The flimsy sheet was no match for the waiters' bullets, and several shot past us as we lay down on our stomachs. Greg grabbed the center leg of the table that was nailed to the floor and with a groan he broke the thick wooden leg. The table toppled down in front of us providing cover from their bullets.
I turned to Greg, who had a grim look on his face. "You going to tango me into those guys, too?"
"I don't think they want to dance," he countered. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and a grin spread across his face. "How's your vertical?"
I gestured down to myself. "How do you think it is?"
"With my help it's about to get a lot better. After I've tossed you up you climb toward the front of the building and see if you can get in front of the false wall," he told me.
"That's a lot of ifs," I pointed out.
"Life's full of uncertainties," he countered.
"Yeah, but-hey!" Greg took advantage of a lull in their firing by lifting me up and tossing me the nine feet through the ceiling tiles. There were metal supports a
bove the tiles to hold them up, and when I crashed through my hands grabbed the solid rungs. I pulled myself up and found myself in a maze of electrical wires and crisscrossed bars of metal that made up the gap between the ceiling and the actual roof. The empty space stretched from one end of the building to the other. I glanced through the broken tile to Greg below.
"Move!" he ordered me.
"Shoot her!" Sphinx ordered her men, and they resumed firing, but now at me. The flimsy ceiling panels didn't even slow down the bullets, and I scurried my way to the front of the building.
I froze when I heard a hideous roar of an angry, wild animal beneath me. The sound was followed by exclamations of terror from the gunmen, followed by random shooting and screams. One scream in particular came from a woman, and it was filled with such anger and agony that I didn't want to hear anymore, so I scrambled to the front of the building. When I hit the wall I kicked out one of the panels and dropped down into the dilapidated front. Behind me were one or two random shots, but they were retreating and so was I. I ran through the broken doors and out into the deserted street. The patrons had long since left in their cars, leaving me alone and unsure where to go. If I went back to my apartment the crooked cops would get me, but I didn't have any other place to go.
Turns out I didn't need to do the thinking because something large and furry crashed through the false front behind me. I swung around in time to be caught up by a clawed hand and tossed onto Greg's large back. "Hang on!" he growled at me.
I lay down and grasped his fur tightly in my hands as we raced down the street. My fingers dug into something wet and sticky, and I saw that his fur was matted with blood. "I yanked on his hair like they were reins, but he didn't even slow down. "You have to stop! You're bleeding!" I yelled at him.
"No time," he replied. I heard and saw what he meant when I heard a screech of tires and looked over my shoulder to see a car come careening out of the alley beside the restaurant. A man leaned out the passenger window and took a few wild shots at us.
I got whiplash when Greg took a hard right and galloped down an alleyway between two crumbling five-floor office buildings. Our pursuers skidded by the opening and swerved back to follow, but Greg had other plans. "Tuck your knees against me," he ordered me.
"What? Why-ah!" Greg jumped at the left crumbling brick wall and slammed his claws into the bricks. I scrunched myself up against his back as he climbed the wall like he'd done at the apartment, but for forty feet instead of ten. His strong hands punched holes into the soft bricks and we scurried up while the car parked at the bottom of the wall.
The gunmen got out, four in number, and shot at us. One or two grazed me, and I know Greg was hit in the hind legs and ass before we scrambled over the side of the roof. Greg picked up the pace and raced toward the adjoining building roof. He jumped the short wall between them and covered several more roofs the same way until we hit the end of the block. I saw the gap that meant a road, but Greg didn't slow down. "Um, road. Road. Road!"
He dove off the side of the building and twisted around so his claws dug into the wall. We slid down twenty feet with his hands creating two thick lines of ruin along the wall. Greg hit the sidewalk running, and we escaped into the alleyway on the opposite side before the men in the car rounded the corner. We ran hard and fast through a myriad of streets and over countless roofs. Greg didn't slow down until the buildings were replaced with orchards and fields, and he didn't stop until we hit an abandoned barn along one of the old highways that led out of the city. By that time he wheezed and coughed, and I was soaked in his blood. He tipped me onto the ground and opened the barn door enough to let me through, and I stepped back when his body changed. His fur sucked back into his body and his frame shrunk to his wimpy size. Bullets pushed out of the shrinking skin and onto the dirt, but the blood clung to his skin. When the transformation was done he wore only a pair of ragged boxers.
Greg collapsed against the door and I caught him before he slipped down into an old cow pie. His eyes closed and his breathing was labored. "Oh no you don't. Don't you dare die on me," I ordered him. I shook him for good measure. He winced and cracked open an eye.
"Mind not jostling me around so much? I'm kind of hurt here," he requested.
"Just as long as you stay awake until I've got a good look at you," I countered. I put my shoulder to the door and opened it wide enough to drag him through. The place smelled of musty hay and pigeon poop, but I found us a nice stall to the side that was dusty but clean. I gently lowered Greg onto a pile of hay and looked at his body. I couldn't see anything through all the blood.
"It's not as bad as it looks," he hoarsely spoke up.
"Good because if it was I'd be digging you a hole," I quipped.
He weakly nodded toward the door. "There's a hand pump out there that should still work. The water's clean enough to drink and wash in."
"I'll go out, but if I come back and find you dead I'll kill you," I warned him. He chuckled and winced when his bruised body told him to hold still or else.
Chapter 14
I stepped outside and found a hand pump a dozen yards from the barn, and an old wooden bucket close by. The handle was rusted, and when I tried to pull it down it didn't move an inch. I glared at it. "Listen, pump, I'm not going to put up with your bullshit. I'm tired, covered in blood, and you're going to give me water if it's the last thing you do." I grabbed the handle with both hands, and pulled with all my strength. It groaned and creaked, and under my stubbornness it gave way. I pumped a few more times before water came out, and got a bucketful before I hurried back to Greg.
I found him on the hay with his eyes open and watching the door. He looked relieved when I slipped inside and went over to kneel beside him. "Trouble with the pump?"
"Yeah, but it listened to reason," I replied. I looked around for rags, but didn't find any ones I'd use to clean wounds.
"That pump can be hard even for my strength," he mused. "If you were able to pull it then that means-" He paused when I pulled off my shirt and tore it into pieces. His eyes wandered up and down my pale, flabby stomach and full breasts.
"My face is up here," I snapped.
"Heh, sorry, was admiring the landscape."
"Uh-huh, I'll bet." I dunked my shirt in the bucket and applied a healthy covering of water over his chest. He yelped and tried to squirm away, but I held onto his arm and washed the blood off him.
"Are you trying to kill him?" he exclaimed.
"No, now stop squirming," I commanded.
"Aren't women supposed to be gentle?"
"I'm just trying to distract you from your carnal desires," I quipped.
"But I don't want to be distracted!"
"Don't be such a baby. Hasn't this happened to you before?"
"The wounds, yes, the horrible treatment afterword, no."
"Fine, I'll stop torturing you." To be honest I'd been eager to see if he had any bullets still in him, but all I saw were shallow holes where they'd sat when he'd been in his werewolf form. Mind you, those were bad enough and I looked around for some covering.
"I'll tell you where the blankets are if you promise not to kill me," Greg spoke up.
I snapped my attention back to him. "How'd you know what I was thinking?"
"It's written on your face."
"I hope not in permanent ink, that stuff's impossible to get out."
"You do tend to wear your thoughts on your sleeve."
"Then I just scrubbed them all over your chest, but where's this secret stash?"
Greg nodded at the stall opposite us. "I hid supplies beneath the boards just in case I'd need to come here after some trouble."
"I'm pretty sure this qualifies as trouble." I scampered over and soon found the loose board. There was a hole beneath it, and out of that I dragged a heavy metal box. Inside were blankets, medicine supplies, and even a couple of changes of clothes. I also noticed some driver's licenses with names I didn't recognize but the face was always Greg. There was eve
n a baseball card wedged between the licenses, an old one from the twenties. I pulled the box over to our stall and unloaded the blankets. "Mind telling me why you had this stuff ready here just in case of trouble?" I asked him.
"You know me, always getting into some mess," Greg joked. He tried to sit up, but I put my hands on his shoulders.
"I'm starting to think I don't really know you at all, but I kind of think you should be lying flat, or you're going to end up flat forever," I advised him.
He chuckled. "I'm a quick healer, and if I was going to die I'd like to do it at least sitting up." I frowned, but tucked my hands beneath his arms and hefted him up to a sitting position. He leaned against the stall wall and sighed. "I really did it this time."
"Yeah, those aren't pretty wounds," I agreed.
He shook his head. "Not that, with you. I've dragged you into more trouble than you deserve."
I looked away into the box and shrugged. "If you hadn't shown up all the times you did I'd be in worse trouble, but I guess it's alright now. I don't think we'll need to worry about all those with their boss gone."
Greg cringed. "There might be a problem with that."
I glanced back to him and frowned. "What do we have to worry about? Didn't you kill whats-her-name?" I asked him.
"That's the problem. I don't think I did."
"How can you be unsure about killing someone?"
"I managed to cut one side of her face, but only one side and not very deep," he explained to me. "Then more of her goons came in and hit me with a wall of bullets. Even being a werewolf I'm not completely invincible, and I had you to worry about."
I narrowed my eyes. "And speaking of being a werewolf, you'd better have been joking about putting your blood in my coffee. I only take sugar in mine."
Greg sheepishly grinned. "I'm afraid that part's a little true." My eye twitched, and he defensively held up his hands. "You won't injure an injured man, would you?"
My teeth ground together and my hands twitched at my side. "You're not a man, you're a werewolf."
"And so are you. The werewolf part, that is, and before you kill me I might remind you that I'm the only werewolf around who can help you with the change."
