“No!” someone beneath Dez shouted. It was Gattis, who swung the mace as the werewolf leaped. The glass-speckled instrument proved as ineffectual as a broomstick. The werewolf crashed into Gattis and both bodies hit Dez’s leg chains so hard that something in Dez’s left ankle cracked. Dez cried out, tried not to look, but the blood fanning up from Chaney’s whirring claws splattered on the soles of Dez’s bare feet and collected like dew in his leg hair. Gattis wailed like a squalling newborn, the voice going wet and devolving into garbled pleas for aid. Dez’s chains continued to tug, the bloodbath taking place right up against the eyehooks. Dez gritted his teeth, steeled himself against the yanking, but he knew deep down that all Chaney would have to do was to pull once on the chains, and Dez’s legs would be torn from his body.
“Let us the fuck out of here, Keaton!” someone shouted from the front entryway, and a score of voices echoed in agreement. But most of the crowd was backing away from the door.
Keaton was transforming.
The diminished throng near the doors seemed to clue into this fact, and they, too, began to back away. And despite the pockets of yelling and flurries of activity, the predominant sound in the Four Winds Bar was a collective inhalation, the bated breath of dread at what Keaton was becoming.
Dez’s arms juddered. He realized he was being lowered from his stretched position. The slackening of the chains brought with it an elemental relief, his back and shoulders no longer so attenuated he feared his arms would be ripped from their sockets. Yet as the chains continued to tremble, his logical side kicked in, and he understood the consequence of this relief.
He was being lowered onto the werewolf and Gattis’s eviscerated corpse.
But lowered by whom? The slack in Dez’s chains allowed him greater freedom of movement, and though figures raced back and forth through the main bar area, he realized who was lowering him. Iris’s toned arms flexed as she worked the crank, her face grimly intent on getting him down.
“Wait a second!” he shouted.
Though she was thirty feet away, she glanced up at him in annoyance.
“You’re putting me right on top of Chaney!” he yelled.
“There’s no time,” was her answer.
No time? he thought. No time for what? If he continued to descend, he’d end up on the werewolf’s writhing back.
“Stop cranking,” he pleaded.
In answer, she compressed her lips but did not cease her efforts.
Dez shot a glance down – only four feet from the werewolf now. “Iris, I know you’re trying to help, but—”
“Would you look?” she shouted, with a nod toward the front of the bar.
Dez swung his face around in time to see Keaton pitch forward onto all fours. His shoulders were swelling, his chest and back expanding. There were – and for a moment, Dez doubted his eyesight – ivory objects sprouting from the sides of his head, which was growing dark with fur.
The crowd backed away from Keaton. Bernadette was edging away from Keaton too, the gun hanging limply at her side.
Keaton’s head was down, and the horns sprouting from the sides of his head began to curve inward, their length more than ten inches, fourteen, a foot-and-a-half long. The face remained downcast, but Dez realized what Keaton was even before he beheld the enormous hoofs that had replaced his feet, even before Keaton raised his face and Dez beheld the bloodred eyes, the enlarged nostrils.
The minotaur rose to its full height and roared at the crowd.
Part Five
The Minotaur
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Axemen
Holy fuck, Dez thought.
As one, the crowd undulated inward, the mass of people, unmindful of the werewolf, bent on eluding the new, gigantic horror that stood before the chief exit of the bar. Dez thought at first that Chaney was unaware of the new creature, but a downward glance showed him that the werewolf, also, had been roused by the minotaur’s roar.
As werewolf and minotaur regarded one another, the crowd parting before them in a broad swath, Dez couldn’t help scrutinizing the beast that moments before had been Bill Keaton. Like most monsters, Keaton was like, yet unlike the fictional conception to which society was accustomed. Yes, Keaton’s bull-like face possessed horns. Yes, Keaton’s feet had transformed into hooves. And true, the nostrils and cheekbones had shaped themselves into a vaguely bovine form.
But that was where literature ended and perverse nature began. The face was more demonic than bull-like, the eyes not glowing infernally, like the vampire’s phosphorescent orange or the werewolf’s lambent yellow, but rather a cheerless, unhealthy crimson, as though someone had painted the whites with ruby-red fingernail polish.
There was madness in Keaton’s eyes. And rage. Whereas the face of the werewolf revealed nothing but an ungovernable bloodlust, the minotaur’s gaze was appallingly intelligent. It knew Chaney was the one who’d murdered its mistress; it knew this werewolf was its enemy.
Chaney stepped toward Keaton, the distance between them fifty feet. The chains holding Dez’s arms continued to shudder.
Iris was lowering him. Thank God for Iris.
Keaton stood on his great hooves, panting, and yes, actually snorting, but Dez scarcely noticed. Because even though Iris was relieving him of the massive pain, what then? He was still in manacles and leg cuffs; he was still, in essence, screwed.
A flurry of movement to Iris’s right. Though it taxed his aching body to look behind him, Dez was glad he did. He found it difficult to breathe for fear that the new development was a mirage.
Joe Kidd and Michael Summers were hurrying through the crowd.
Both men carried axes.
Though the minotaur hadn’t moved from his position by the front doors, Chaney had halved the distance between them. More, Chaney’s voice reverberated in a trembling growl.
A member of the crowd rushed toward Chaney, a heavyset woman Dez hadn’t noticed before. She raised a hatchet, apparently as a show of allegiance to Keaton. She swung the hatchet at Chaney, but so quickly that Dez barely tracked it. The werewolf’s arm shot out, swiped a backhand at the woman’s face. Her skin ribboned from chin to crown, the hatchet clanked on the floor, her body tumbling at the werewolf’s feet. Her screams were muffled by her hands and the blood, but Chaney didn’t seem to give her a second thought; he kept stalking toward the minotaur as though nothing had happened. For his part, Keaton’s bloody eyes remained fixed on his adversary.
Something touched Dez’s toes, and he sucked in breath, was surprised to see he’d reached the floor. Behind him, Iris continued to crank. The pressure left his arms, his shoulders, but before he could appreciate this development, the chain on his right ankle jumped. He whirled to see who had jerked on it.
Michael Summers and his axe. Before Dez could react, Joe Kidd went to work on the other chain, both men attacking the places where the chains touched the eyehooks. Joe was the more muscular of the two; his hewing was more effective, and by the third stroke, the chain was severed. Michael continued to hack at the chain attached to Dez’s right ankle. Iris continued to slacken the chains.
Dez tested his left leg. Though the cuff and the twenty inches of chain still attached to it weighed him down, it felt incredible to be able to flex the knee, to move without encumbrance.
Another stroke by Michael, and the chain fettering his right ankle let go. He walked in place a little to restore sensation to his legs. The arm chains had loosed to the point that he could lower his wrists to his waist. Almost free.
Commotion from the front of the room drew his attention. The werewolf had drawn to within ten feet of the minotaur, was circling like a junkyard dog, its great mane bristling. For his part, Keaton merely revolved slowly, tracking Chaney’s movements, seemingly in no hurry to adopt a defensive stance.
Everyone near the pair of monsters had paused to watch the
showdown. The room wasn’t silent, but the werewolf’s growl, the slow pivot of the minotaur’s giant hooves, were clearly audible.
“On your knees,” a voice at Dez’s ear hissed. He turned as someone seized his shoulder and drove him to the floor. Dez’s knees hit the unyielding wood, and though a dim region inside him – the one where unreasoning pride still dwelt – took offense to being manhandled by Joe Kidd, Dez’s more intelligent nature understood that the man was preparing to chop down at the chains binding Dez’s wrists.
Joe took a step back, raised the axe, and fixed the chain in place with a boot. Dez scooted his wrists away from his body as far as they would go, and buried his face against his shoulder to protect his eyes from any debris that might be kicked up from the axe blows. Joe swung and one chain parted.
“Get him, Bill!” someone shouted.
“Rip his goddamned head off!” another voice joined in.
Dez glanced up in time to see a small portion of the crowd near him watching Joe Kidd’s attempt to free Dez. One patron actually raised an old-fashioned blackjack as though to assault Joe with it.
Crosby.
Before Crosby could swing the blackjack at Joe, Michael Summers intervened, shoved Crosby back into the massed crowd, and pulled out a compact pocketknife, which he pointed at Crosby’s face.
“Keep your ass back,” Michael said.
“What’re you gonna do with that?” someone asked. “Remove a splinter?”
“Hold still,” Joe said, and with the next axe stroke, the last chain parted and Dez found himself free. Sure, he had cuffs and chains attached to all four limbs, and yes, he was clad in nothing but a pair of sweat-soaked boxers, but at least he wasn’t strung up in the air like some twisted piece of modern art.
“Hey, Joe,” someone said.
Dez turned to see who had spoken.
It was Badler, who shoved the muzzle of a .45 in Joe Kidd’s stomach and fired.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Drew Barrymore
Joe Kidd went flying into the wall of crowd, but Badler unloaded three more slugs into his midsection just for spite. Michael Summers screamed, but it was too late to do anything for Joe, who slumped on the floor, his chewed-up belly gushing blood. Michael darted at Badler, the paltry little pocketknife extended before him, and Badler turned his gun on him.
A shot exploded, and like the rest of the crowd, Michael froze. But it was Badler who stumbled sideways, his gun tumbling to the ground, his shooting hand clamped over his bleeding shoulder. Dez went for the gun, but Wyzinski, the guy with the piercings, was there first, quick-moving if not quick-thinking. Wyzinski brought the gun up to shoot whoever had shot Badler, but Dez whipped a wrist at him. The foot-long chain dangling from it cracked Wyzinski in the jaw, sending him flying into the crowd and the .45 pinwheeling under a dozen sets of boots.
Dez only had a moment to glance at who’d saved Michael Summers’s life and was unsurprised to find Iris aiming at Badler, who was crawling toward Joe Kidd’s bleeding corpse.
“Don’t do it,” she said.
Dez expected her to shoot Badler again, but before she did, a thundering roar erupted from the front of the bar, the minotaur’s voice unmistakable above the chaos.
Dez swiveled his head that way, saw the werewolf tensed to spring, but before Chaney could launch himself at the minotaur, a pair of figures detached from the crowd and darted at Chaney. One, Dez saw, was a muscular, middle-aged man who bore the unmistakably stout body of a cannibal. The other was the woman with the wind-burnt face. As she drew closer, Dez saw her lips wrinkling back from yellow teeth, her eyes enlarging in diabolical fury.
Witch, he thought. Oh my God, I think she’s a witch.
Chaney’s mouth hinged open in a bloodcurdling yowl, his body obviously plagued by some intolerable pain. Indeed the wind-burnt woman was muttering something under her breath as she approached, her cannibal cohort grinning in triumph as they bore down on Chaney.
Do something, Dez thought, and despite the adrenaline and terror coursing through him, he recognized his father’s voice, the tone as unwavering as it was moral.
What am I supposed to do? Dez demanded. I can’t cast spells, can’t transform. What can I—
Something, the voice cut him off. You’re supposed to do something.
Dez had taken two steps toward Badler’s gun when movement drew his attention. He turned and saw Michael Summers with his right arm extended, palm forward, reminding Dez ridiculously of Iron Man. But instead of emitting a pulse of bluish light from a computerized palm, Michael stood there, seemingly in a trance, as the figures converged on Chaney, who’d dropped to his knees and was wailing in agony.
Three feet from where Chaney knelt, the witch froze, her lips no longer writhing. She was staring in horror at her cannibal companion, who in turn was gaping at Michael Summers from across the room.
Michael was sweating profusely, his face strained in concentration, his extended hand quivering. The cannibal shrieked and when Dez looked that way he saw the man’s head was ablaze. The man was slapping at the flames but unable to do a thing to extinguish them. He fell forward, screaming and batting at his roasting face.
Dez turned and looked at Michael Summers, whose shoulders were slumped in exhaustion.
“Just like Drew Barrymore,” Dez said.
Before Michael could respond, someone seized his arm – Iris. She said, “The weapons are behind the bar.”
Dez moved to follow her, but before they entered the poleaxed crowd, he saw one more thing that made his skin ripple into gooseflesh.
Instead of dying, Badler had begun to lap at Joe Kidd’s leaking belly.
As Dez watched in aghast silence, the gunshot wound in Badler’s shoulder began to close.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Warriors
Dez didn’t make it to the bar. The giant in the black jacket had evidently retrieved Badler’s gun. As Dez watched in numb horror, Black Jacket aimed the .45 at Terhune, the old waiter, and though Terhune raised his hands in surrender, Black Jacket squeezed the trigger, reducing Terhune’s head to a leaking, misshapen tomato.
Black Jacket never stopped leering. It’s his chance to kill for sport, Dez thought. My God, as if there wasn’t enough to worry about already.
Black Jacket didn’t show signs of transformation, and though Dez wondered if he was another Latent, more imperative in his mind was the need to stop him or escape his homicidal gaze, which was rotating slowly Dez’s way.
Another patron, this one a nondescript man in his thirties, was knocked into Black Jacket’s vicinity by the melee; before the nondescript man could even throw up his hands, Black Jacket leveled the .45 and popped him in the left eye.
Black Jacket spun toward Dez.
Dez darted at Black Jacket, but he knew he’d stood there too long, his brain too gummed by terror to kickstart his body into action. Dez was still eight feet away when the muzzle of the .45 swung around and pointed at his face, and though Dez threw up an arm to prevent the slug from ending his life, he knew inaction had damned him.
The explosion came. A moment later, Dez slammed into Black Jacket, who, impossibly, had dropped the gun and was pawing at the side of his neck. Black Jacket didn’t go down from the impact, but he did stumble backward into a table. Dez ended up on hands and knees, and looking up, he saw it was Lefebvre who’d saved him, the muzzle of the thin man’s gun lowering.
Dez couldn’t suppress a grin. “Well, you son of a bitch.”
Lefebvre’s return smile was subtle, but it was there.
Then a roar shook the Four Winds Bar, and all turned toward Bill Keaton. In the foreground, Dez could see Chaney fighting against the witch’s mental assault, but if Keaton noticed the struggle, he didn’t let on. He was striding through the center of the bar, toppling tables, whipping a chair out of the way to shatter against a wo
oden pillar. Had it connected with a bystander, it would have impaled him.
But it was toward a specific bystander that Keaton’s great hooves were striding.
It was toward Lefebvre.
As the minotaur approached, Dez got a better look at the beast, and a childlike part of him wanted nothing more than to wake up and find this was all a nightmare. Dez had seen terrible things over the past two years, had beheld horrors untold.
Yet in its own way, the minotaur was worse than all of these. It was a ragged monster, the horns asymmetrical, the bloodred eyes gleaming with wicked intelligence. Keaton’s clothes hung in tatters. The face was alien enough to banish all thoughts of humanity. This creature would not be talked out of violence or turned to the side of good.
This creature was a living Shade.
Dez dove for Badler’s gun, got hold of it, but before he could aim it at the minotaur, a volley of shots erupted, Lefebvre yes, but a pair of others from atop the bar as well.
Iris and Michael had reached the weapons cache.
The barrage of bullets caused the minotaur to jolt and stumble sideways – Dez spotted six places where the slugs had torn into his ugly mud-colored pelt – but it would clearly take more to bring the creature down.
Dez rose and fired at the beast’s head. He saw one horn chip, but the minotaur whirled on him, bellowed in rage. The minotaur bunched, preparatory to a lunge, and Dez fired again, as did Lefebvre and Michael and Iris, the four of them opening ragged flaps of hide. The minotaur roared in outrage but never quite went down. Dez’s gun clicked empty, and with teeth gritted, he flung it aside, started toward Iris and Michael to arm himself again, but something bashed him between the shoulder blades and sent him sprawling on his chest. Dez spun and saw who’d blindsided him.
The Raven Page 21
