by John Conroe
“My, you are big for your age. What are you, Carnizhop? Four, maybe five months old?” I asked.
His eyes were enraged, his spine already healed by the Change, and he roared. My Grim senses tracked everything around us and I smiled at his defiant display as I heard and sensed what was coming.
“Careful, Dragan—or do you prefer Carnizhop? Anyway, toddlers shouldn’t play in the road. They might get—” I said, and then the tractor trailer he’d ignored clipped the back end of the taxi which in turn hit the were beast—again. He was thrown into a palm tree in the median green space and Grim was on him while his vertebrae were still molding themselves around the dense tree trunk. Three punches—groin, stomach, and sternum, following the line of the tree, his tissue between my fist and the heavy wood of the tree. He grunted and shoved both paws at me, knocking me flying. I twisted in the air and my feet touched back down on the side of the bridge, Clinging in place.
I paused to look him over. There were two tiny black elastic strings blending with his black fur. He was wearing one of those sport backpacks that kids always seem to have on, especially the skateboarders. His was blue and had the name of a mutual fund company on it. Must have taken it from the same two men whose clothes he’d been wearing.
“Hope you didn’t smash that fossil all to shit in your pack there. Old Yellowstone won’t probably much like that,” I said, watching him as he pulled himself away from the palm.
His muzzle shifted and his growls became words. “Fallennn. Howww low you have ssunk,” he hissed.
“Are you wolf or snake? Mama make you watch a lot of Jungle Book? Get you all confused?” I asked. “She’s dead, ya know?”
He stared at me for a moment, then a strange noise like rocks tumbling came from his chest.
Laughing. It was his laughter. “Tool. Just a broken tool whose purpose has been served,” he said, voice smoothing out.
“Whereas you’re a broken tool who hasn’t done shit,” I said. “All this time on Earth and you haven’t amounted to a soiled diaper. What’s the boss gonna say when I pop your blackened heart and send you back to Hell?”
People on the sidewalk, bridge, and in stopped cars were all watching.
“You cannot sssstop what I’ve sssstarted,” he said, smug.
“Ya think?” I asked, holding his attention as Omega’s drones came at him from behind and both sides.
At the last second, he jumped straight up, grabbing one drone and flinging it at another. The third didn’t hesitate, zipping in, its attached hypodermic aimed straight at his thigh while he was still rising in the air. But the massive wolf hybrid twisted himself around and batted the little quad copter to the ground.
He missed my jump though, both aura-lined hands palm together like a diver. The double mono-edges on my middle fingertips caught the left side of his back, about kidney height.
The force of my jump, the weight of my body, and the double auras ripped through his hide, fingers going in past the knuckles all the way to the middle of my hands. I pulled them apart, ripping a huge wound in his side.
His roar turned higher pitched as he felt true pain—almost unimaginable pain to a demon. A big hand came down on my head and shoved, his body going one way and mine the other. I rolled and came up.
Dragan was on top of the cab, roaring at me and turning to snatch the cabbie right through the broken windshield. The cabbie’s seatbelt resisted the pull of the werewolf till his claws tore through the material and the poor man’s body came partway out of the car. I was in motion, jumping for the demon wolf at the same time his jaws slammed shut on the driver’s shoulder and neck. My feet touched pavement and I jumped again, but almost simultaneously, Dragan jumped, his neck convulsing as he swallowed the huge lump of meat and bone he’d excised from the now suddenly dead body.
People were screaming and others were filming and a pair of street cops were shooting. Dragan ignored the little pistol bullets, the lead and copper hardly a hindrance to his hybrid body.
We landed ten feet apart, him on the grass of the green space, me on the trunk of another of the line of palms that grew in the massive green medians between the north and south boulevard lanes. Grim dropped us to the ground, cut the trunk of the palm clean through with my right aura-lined hand. Posting my body to the earth itself, he grabbed the bottom of the trunk with both hands and swung the massive bat. Dragan jumped back out of the path of the swing but Grim stopped the massive bludgeon directly in line with his body and slid forward, one powerful Cling step. The top of the tree smashed the were beast like a blunt spear, knocking him back between a Captain Jack Sparrow impersonator and a sixty-year-old Elvis, straight into the base of the MGM sign. Grim threw the tree at him, knocking him further into the sign’s structure, then shot across the space in a blur. The two street actors didn’t have time to turn, but our passage blew Sparrow’s hair into his face and took the wig right off Elvis’s bald head.
The tree trunk came flying back at me, Grim hammer-fisting it down and away. Dragan shot away, body blurring into a new form, a wolf the size of a small cow. The huge canine shot away up the street, literally tearing through the crowd on the sidewalk, jaws snapping left and right.
I tore after him. A section of MGM’s drive was blocked off with portable steel barricades. Grim grabbed one and threw it at the wolf, hitting it square in the head. The wolf yelped and fell, tangled in the steel. Snarling, it stood up, tearing the barricade to pieces before bolting straight away, ignoring the pedestrians in exchange for speed.
“Track him,” I yelled.
“On it. He’s headed straight up the boulevard,” Omega said through my cell phone. Multiple EMT squads are inbound, along with SWAT and regular LVPD units.”
I stopped to triage the wounded. LV is a bitch of a virus. A tiny wound like Stacia endured would either infect you or leave you normal. But in a heavy mauling, which was almost always the result when a were attacked, the virus would either kill you while it tried to save you, or it would heal you. It was kinda like the surfers who’ve been bitten by a Great White shark. The shark usually is just tasting the surfer, unsure of what they are. In most attacks, there are just one or two bites. But often, that’s all it takes for a human to bleed out. Same with a were attack, except it’s usually the raw rage of an out-of-control were and not an exploratory bite.
This wasn’t like the minimal damage Stacia had gotten in her attack. I had stopped that one fast. But Dragan in wolf form was the size of a Wyoming grizzly bear. His chomps and slashes had eviscerated one man, torn the leg almost off a woman, and removed the entire right arm of an old lady. The man and the old lady died before I could even get to them, bleeding out in seconds amid huge pools of blood. The younger woman, really just a girl, maybe twenty or so, I was able to stabilize. She was surrounded by friends, all girls her own age, all wearing sparkly black shirts that said Party of the Bride. Her shirt just said Bride. I ripped open my own palm and poured my blood on her torn leg, shoving the ripped flesh back together.
“Hold this,” I demanded of her friends. They looked at me for a split second, then one stepped up and held her leg. Nodding at her, I tore off my shirt and wrapped it around her wound, knotting it tight.
“Tell the paramedics not, I repeat, not to untie this. My blood has a shot at healing her, but not if they yank it apart. You know who I am, right?” I asked.
They all looked at me, shocked with the violence, shocked at finding me in their midst. The one holding the bride’s leg nodded. “What’s your friend’s name?” I asked.
The brave one, the leg holder, spoke after a little pause. “Holly. Her name is Holly,” she said.
“Stay with her. I think she might be okay if you hold that tight,” I said to her. She nodded and I was gone, chasing the wolf.
Chapter 27
Omega told me Dragan had veered off the boulevard near the Linq. There was a broad pedestrian-only street, lined with stores and restaurants that led toward the mega ferris wheel, the High
Roller. A trail of screaming, sobbing, shell-shocked tourists did all my tracking for me. That and a police helicopter flooding the ground below with a super-high-power spotlight.
He had run right through a fountain, bulldozed an outdoor eating area at a cupcake shop, and knocked over two Victorian-looking street lights. But at least he was moving too fast to stop and bite anyone.
Claw marks showed where he’d run up a big palm that grew next to one of the tallest buildings on the little side street. I skipped the palm tree and just jumped the thirty feet to land on the building top. The massive steel circle of the High Roller loomed high overhead, passenger orbs moving slowly amidst an orderly web of support cables. A dark shape bounded across the rooftops headed directly for the Roller. The helicopter’s light swiveled to light it up. Grim sped up.
The Roller moved at glacial speed, the big forty-person observation pods taking at least a half hour to make a complete circuit. That made it easy for Dragan to catch the most crowded pod, one with a mobile bar, bartender, and maybe thirty partiers inside.
He raced across the loading platform and leapt almost straight up, his wolf form shifting smoothly back to the hybrid man-beast in mid-air. He landed on the outside of the massive pod, shaking it slightly on its reinforced mounts, staring in at his snack pack. The halogen spotlight from the chopper hit him, lighting up the whole pod. Two gunners sat in the open door of the aircraft, but if they shot now, they might hit the pod as well as the demon wolf.
I jumped three times, each bound covering thirty or forty feet. I was still behind, but now that he was clinging to the outside of the pod and ripping at the thick glass with his claws, I was rapidly closing the distance.
The pod glass was too strong for his claws, so he made a fist and pounded the glass, forming a little impact star of fractures deep in the crystal. The sharpshooters in the chopper opened fire. They must have decided the glass would resist their bullets. Dragan roared as their rifle rounds hit him. Grim knew from the sound that they were shooting 5.56mm. Too light.
Dragan moved around the pod, now hanging under the metal frame. He swung and hit the pod’s glass wall. This spot starred as well. He hit it again, and the fractures spread. The party inside was shoved against the far side, people screaming and falling all over each other to get away.
I made a last leap, reaching the pod below Dragan’s, this one occupied with just two couples who jumped when I impacted their vessel, forcing them to turn horrified faces from the beast above to the stranger clinging outside. Inside the pod, a recorded voice blithely told them facts and information about the ride, the actor a mix of tour guide and comedian.
The helicopter descended, the gunners now almost even with the High Roller. They opened fire again. Dragan stopped his pounding and turned, bringing up his hands. A ball of fire formed in his massive furry palm. It shot out and hit the helicopter, the flames bursting over the cockpit glass, the pilot wisely pulling up and away.
Great. The furry fucker could work magic.
Climbing like a monkey on speed, I made it to the Roller’s circular metal frame and then up to Dragan’s orb.
He spotted me while I was still on the frame, and then ignored me for a moment to take a third swing at the failing safety glass. Fragments spalled from the inside surface, leaving the glass twice as fractured and half as thick. Demons and their need for chaos and carnage… almost as dependable as death and taxes.
Grim slowed us down, giving the demon werewolf enough time to punch it a fourth time, his fist going through the glass in a compact circle that looked like a giant bullet hole, like a tank cannon might make.
I was on him before he could widen the opening, his right forearm still stuck in the glass, his left hand still holding the steel frame that the rotating orb car traveled on. He was momentarily trapped, like a raccoon with his paw in a trapper’s snare, while I was riding his back.
Four lightning-fast punches to his head, each more than capable of pounding through a car door. It didn’t kill him. Must’ve hurt, though, especially when his sensitive snout slammed into the glass four times in a row. He roared, flailing his right arm to yank it free, but it was stuck in the thick glass. I paused to notice the blue skateboarder’s pack still incongruously strapped to his massive black-furred back.
A quick couple of snips with an aura-lined finger, and the pack came free. I hurriedly retied the cut strap ropes and slung it on my own back, the weight of it confirming that the petrified disk of stone was inside, although maybe not all in one piece.
Then I dropped the mother of all hammer fists on the top of his head. And fell backward off the pod.
The strike actually rattled his brain a bit. At least that’s the impression I got from his unfocused, slitted snake eyes. Can’t fault his recovery, though. He shook his head and roared at my falling form. I waited till his yellow eyes were locked on me before spinning in place so he could see my new blue backpack. With its heavy stone contents. I even pointed at it in case he missed it.
His next roar was truly impressive, at least as loud as Awasos’s best. Totally focused on me, he yanked, pulled, and ripped his arm free of the glass, black blood spraying from his shredded flesh.
I Lightened at the last minute, absorbing the ground’s impact and then springing back toward the Strip. Behind me, the beast snarled, leaping after me. The hunter had just become the hunted. Perfect—now I controlled our path.
But I was as strong as he was and all that strength was powering a Lightened body that currently weighed only as much as a child. My jump took me sixty feet, and the follow-on leap took me almost sixty-five. I was back to the Strip, the demon in fast pursuit.
“Status?” I asked.
“Arkady will be in position in approximately four minutes,” Omega reported. “Stacia is helping the EMTs with the wounded female. Vegas police are en route to you now.”
“Can you keep them away? Their guns are too light and he’ll just kill them by the dozens,” I asked.
“I will do what I can.”
I angled back toward Bellagio, stalling for time. My next jump pushed me right out over the lagoon into the middle of a lighted fountain of water. Bellagio’s speakers were pumping out “Viva Las Vegas” while the jets pumped out bursts of water. Releasing my Lighten mode, my denser-than-human body sank straight to the bottom of the thirteen-foot-deep pool.
I crouched and held my breath. Seconds went by and then a massive form cannonballed ten feet to my left, plummeting to the deepest part.
Werewolves can’t swim; their bodies are too dense to float. I’m not much better, but I at least was prepared, my lungs inflated with air, crouching on the bottom, watching the fun. The demon beast thrashed in the water, the pool too deep for him to get his head free.
The energy he expended was awesome, the results less than impressive. When I sensed him weakening, I flexed my legs, Lightening as I shot out of the water, my waterlogged jump putting me right on the sidewalk next to the pool.
“Run!” I screamed at the shocked tourists, knowing the monster would be working to get out of the lagoon before he could drown. Behind me, Dragan thrashed his way from thirteen feet deep to maybe eight, his head now out of the water.
The onlookers got the message, screaming and running in all directions.
The monster with the reptile eyes waded to ever-shallower water, and I took that as my cue to get a running start.
“How we doing?” I asked quietly.
My phone is warded six ways from Sunday against fire, earthquake, dropping, smashing, hurricane-force winds, and all electronic hacking attempts. But Declan’s powers don’t extend to water. So it’s a good thing Chet had outfitted my phone with a really good waterproof case.
“One minute,” Omega said. “I’ve rerouted most of the police units to moving pedestrians off the Boulevard.”
Time to get serious. I poured on the speed, heading directly north, following the boulevard.
Behind me, Dragan made it to shallow wa
ter and jumped clear of the Bellagio pool. I was worried he’d stop to attack civilians, which would in turn make me stop and fight him in a less than ideal place. In fact, that would have been his best tactic, but my head start didn’t leave him any time for fun and games. I was already two hundred yards away and still picking up speed. Nope, if he wanted to get back that elemental’s name, he was gonna have to catch up.
Ahead, the Trump Hotel loomed larger, but I blew on past it, tearing through its parking lot. I danced over the cars while behind me, Dragan was shoving and throwing them out of his path. I pulled a little further ahead. A lone police car squealed to a halt, the officer pulling his cruiser shotgun and firing twice. That’s all he got off before the wolf beast was on his position, pausing only to slam the cop’s car door hard enough to crush him.
“Hey Dragan. Mind if I smash this rock?” I yelled. Not my best work, but it achieved the desired effect. He left the poor broken cop and charged after me.
