by Pat Cunningham, Savanna Kougar, Rebecca Gillan, Solara Gordon, Serena Shay
Something inside made a noise that shook the walls. Both Deuce and Ewan froze. The echoes had not quite died away before they were overridden by a second noise, this one a heavy grinding. It seemed to be coming from the ceiling.
“You sure you want to go in there?” Deuce asked.
Ewan wracked his brain. He’d done more thinking on this case than he’d had to do in his lifetime. They weren’t going to get these doors open any time soon, that was certain. There must be another exit inside. A huge one, from the sound of it. “Where are we?” he asked Deuce. “What part of the course are we under?”
“I don’t think we’re under the course itself any more. If my sense of direction didn’t get screwed, I think we’re near the swimming pool. They filled that in years ago.” His eyes narrowed, and he said what Ewan was already thinking. “Or made a bolthole out of it.”
Ewan gave the unyielding door a final useless blow with his fist. He shoved Deuce ahead of him. “C’mon. Back outside. We’ll have to catch ‘em out there.” He thought of that first gargantuan noise. That hadn’t been any kind of engine he knew about. It had soundedâ��he swallowedâ��organic. Living. “Let’s hope whatever they’ve got in there can’t fly.”
Chapter Thirty-two:
All Hellephant Breaks Loose
By Pat Cunningham
Ewan and Deuce made it out of Morloxian’s lab without trouble. By now the place was practically deserted. Even the Tiger Yakuza had vacated the premises. Everybody, it seemed, had heard that weird roar from behind the metal doors. Nobody wanted to stick around to find out what had made it.
Ewan charged outside, back onto the mini golf course, and stared around. “Which way’s theâ��”
Oh.
The sod covering the old swimming pool had scrunched back to reveal a metal hatch, now almost completely open. Loading dock, Ewan thought. So that’s how they got all the big stuff in there.
Suddenly a huge furry trunk and a pair of curved ivory tusks thrust up through the opening. That horrible trumpet/roar sounded again, this time with no doors to blunt it. This was accompanied by the shriek of metal as the rest of the impatient beast shouldered its way out of its underground holding pen and into the light.
Behind him, Deuce swallowed a howl of alarm. Ewan, who saw stuff like this at the movies every weekend, just stared.
The thing that thrust itself to freedom wasn’t quite a mammoth, in spite of the trunk and the tusks and a giant bulk that made the statue of Godzilla look like the Geico gecko. Its huge ears came to points and sat too far up on its skull. Its feet, the size of manhole covers, had claws. A wolf’s tail sprouted out of its backside. Its shaggy pelt was brownish blond. It looked like something out of “Ice Age”, if Manny and Diego had a kid.
It had blue eyes. Human eyes.
Ewan’s gut dropped into his undies. All of a sudden he knew what had happened to Freddie.
Even that wasn’t the worst of it. Freddie had passengers. A mutant werewolf crouched on his neck. The fella with the mismatched limbs and bad body haircut had to be the Doctor.
Between them, clutching at the mammoth’s pelt to keep from falling off, was Maureen. Her scream was lost beneath another roar from the mammoth.
The beast paid no attention to them, or to the humans currently fleeing Uncle Fuddy’s Funland. It swung about and lumbered toward the highway, picking up speed as it moved.
“Lupa help us,” Deuce moaned. “What do we do?”
Ewan’s hard stare never left Maureen. “We bring him down.”
“With what? I doubt if Dante left a bazooka in his car.”
“Then we improvise. Is there a gun store around here?”
Deuce shrugged. “It wouldn’t be Montana if there wasn’t.”
“Let’s go, then. I’ll drive. You call Dante, tell him we got us a big problem.” Screams and the squeal of brakes told them the Freddiephant had reached the highway. “I don’t think we’re going to lose him.”
They ran for the car. Behind them, a shaking human teenager was recording it all on his cell phone. “Dude,” he said, “you won’t believe this. This course has some serious hazards.”
****
Maureen dug her fingers into the mammoth’s pelt all the way up to the knuckles and still didn’t hit skin. She lay flat across the monster’s back and tried not to think about what kind of loud, wet noise she’d make if she tumbled off. It had started off at a gut-shaking lurch, but its gait seemed to be smoothing out with practice. This was a positive thing. The beast sounded really pissed off. She didn’t want to annoy it further by ralphing into its hair.
“Whooo-HOOOOO!” Morloxian pumped a fist in the air. “Look at my baby go! Can I cook, or can’t I? By the way,” he added, much less enthused, “where are we going? You’d better not be taking me to Hancock. I’m guessing my unannounced defection left him a little perturbed.”
The mutant werewolf grinned at him over his shoulder. Maureen tried not to look at his fanged and furry face, tried not to remember he was Pete. “Not Hancock,” he rasped in his rough, bestial voice. “I am to deliverrr you to my lorrrrd.”
“Oh shit. There’s another one? I was afraid of that. I guess that accounts for all those tigers. Well, you tell your lord he can bite me.” Morloxian scrambled up. Before Pete could stop him he leaped for the mammoth’s lupine tail, swung himself down to the tip, and let go.
Maureen didn’t bother to scream. As far as she was concerned, he was now one less problem to deal with. She couldn’t hope for Ewan to rescue her. What could he do against this monster? For that matter, what could she?
Her stomach did a somersault. She clamped her jaw shut and hung on and told herself not to think about Pete’s hideous transformation, or how far below her the ground was, or how much worse things were liable to get once Dumbozilla here finally stopped. It really, really sucked to be the group girl in these circumstances.
****
Morloxian timed his fall perfectly. He landed in the moat surrounding Dracula’s castle. The scummy water was just deep enough to save him from serious injury. Almost. He tried to stand and his ankle buckled. He went down butt-first in the water.
“Son of a bitch,” he said philosophically. Now he’d have to find another sponsor, build another lab. Great-Uncle Franz’s hidden catacombs had served the family well for generations. No chance of salvaging anything now, thanks to that idiot mutant mutt running off with a giant hairy, walking billboard. If Hancock didn’t come after him, some other shifter was bound to.
Maybe he’d head for New York, for the Catskills. He still had family out there.
“Well, well, ladies. Look what we’ve got here.”
He jerked his head up. His captive harem had apparently made it out of the lab intact. They’d also armed themselves with the iron putters ditched by the mini golfers. They moved into a ring around him, smiling.
He didn’t like the look of those smiles. No sir.
“Hi, Morry.” Candi bounced the shaft of her putter in her palm. “Mind if we play through?”
He looked at their implacable faces and swallowed. “Oh, bugger,” he said.
The ladies lifted their putters and closed in.
****
Ranjeet grumbled to himself, but only briefly. True, he had lost the scientist, Lord Ghan’s primary target. The Yakuza would be following at a discrete distance. They would have seen the Doctor drop off. No doubt they had collected him already. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was returning to Lord Ghan empty-handed.
The Atcheson wolf-mammoth paused to challenge a tour bus. Ranjeet tugged on his ear until he turned. “Not here,” he crooned in Urdu. “There will be bloodshed and destruction aplenty for you. But not here.” Atcheson trumpeted his frustration, then turned in the direction Ranjeet guided him.
The Ghan family had trained him well. He had learned how to control elephants in his native India, and knew how to manipulate Atcheson from his undercover stint in the group. This hybrid creature was easi
ly steered.
Lord Ghan would be ecstatic. The tiger lord had his own crew of scientists. They would surely glean something from this mammoth offering, and from Ranjeet’s own mutated body, and that of the woman who smelled like a she-wolf, the unexpected prize.
He glanced back at Maureen, her hands knotted desperately in Atcheson’s pelt. She smelled different to him now that he had a wolf’s nose. Enticing. Exciting. He’d never viewed her in that way when he was human, but this new body had other ideas. Feral, primal ideas. Perhaps Lord Ghan would see fit to reward him for the gifts he brought.
The quickest way to his lord’s stronghold was up Route 15, directly through Talbot’s Peak. The beast beneath his feet hungered for destruction. Perhaps it might be wisest to let him run rampant through the shifter town. Drain off some of that massive energy, slake the bloodthirst a bit. Then he’d be more tractable by the time they arrived at the Ghan compound.
He tugged on Atcheson’s ear, and dug his foot-claws into the mammoth’s skull. Atcheson barked and bolted forward, leaving the exit behind, aimed for Talbot’s Peak.
Chapter Thirty-three:
The Wide Open Invitation of the Montana Sky… And the Resurrected Mammoth…
By Savanna Kougar
Was there no place left on Earth where she could roam free, fly the skies without fear?
Of late, Syprelli had grown tired of hiding, of staying concealed in mountain caves while in winged form. Determined to keep the ability to shapeshiftâ��lost to so many of her kind over the centuries — she’d searched the world over, finally discovering an enclave of supernatural folks who appeared to live together in some kind of sustainable harmony.
Syprelli stretched her ten-foot scarlet wings and soared. Unfettered, she kicked her back hooves, and stretched her long neck sniffing the great strong winds. The wide open invitation of the Montana sky had been her undoing.
Danger surrounded her, yes. As a winged horse shapeshifter, her kind was always huntedâ��the number of enemies incalculable at this point. But with the sun’s rays deliciously warming her hideâ��the winds caressing her, and whipping through her long maneâ��Syprelli chose to ignore reality.
Besides, she did need to investigate the shapeshifter haven town of Talbot’s Peak. What superior way than circling from above?
A shiver of apprehension passed through Syprelli. After all, that had just been her excuse to fly the friendly looking blue, blue skies. Truth was, she should have hoofed into town first.
Relishing her freedom, Syprelli sailed ever higher. Catching a whirlwind created by the sky powers that be, she tightened the arc of her wings, and performed aerial pirouettes.
Enough, she scolded herself. Having flown toward the town, Syprelli glided downward, her wings spread wide, the feather tips fluttering from the wind’s friction.
What the…!!! Instinctively, Syprelli braced her hooves trying to come to a screeching halt in the sky. The scene below her, at what appeared to be a mini golf course, was the stuff of nightmares.
If she could believe her horse eyes. Syprelli flapped her wings frantically to keep herself aloft.
Tigers, men changing into tigers, ran in every direction as if demons clung to their tails. Teenagers, their feet apparently glued to the ground by shock, held up their cell phones recording the thundering emergence of…what theâ��?!
Enormous curled killing tusks, a trunk that could have squeezed a couple of buffalo easily, came into view. The beast, some kind of resurrected mammoth with a stench that would have stopped a stampeding horse herd in their tracks, broke into the open.
Not only that! two half-shifted werewolf creatures rode on its hairy-as-a-bigfoot back. And worse, there was a woman who was obviously being abducted.
Syprelli’s heart leaped into her throat and she cringed inside, even as she fought to keep her wings beating swiftly enough. What did she do?
Were there no heroes who would risk life and limb to rescue the woman?
Observing the unleashed Frankenstein-like chaos below, Syprelli somehow managed to stay afloat. As she attempted to figure out a way to save the terrified, clinging woman, she kept circling the mini golf course.
She spotted two men who had their gazes locked on the lumbering progress of the giant, genetically-modified mammoth who sported a wolf’s tail. Likely they were canine shifters by their bearing. And, Oh Thank Epona! one of them shot off vibes she recognized. It was his mate who was being carried off.
Stunned again, Syprelli beat her wings furiously, watching as one of the ugly malformed riders sprang up, then leaped so he caught hold of the GMO mammoth’s tail. He landed in a dirty-water moat apparently unperturbed by his predicament. That is, until a group of women with iron putters surrounded him.
Hearing brakes scream to a halt, Syprelli spun as quick as she could, being airborn. Human shrieks rent the air. The hellbeast resurrected from an icy grave threatened a tour bus, its trunk slashing the air like a pissed off anaconda.
Before a disaster of movie-biblical proportions happened, the werewolfian rider spurred it past the bus. As the franken-monster mammoth pounded along the pavement, the sound terrifying, cars shook and were lifted off the ground�as if an earthquake suddenly hit.
Winging a bit higher, Syprelli followed, unable to do anything else. She’d never been an accident gawker…but the woman remained in peril…and wasn’t that the highway leading to Talbot’s Peak?
She was about find out. Syprelli scanned for the two shifter men she’d observed earlier. They’d launched themselves inside a car. Now they crazily weaved through the stalled traffic, and Syprelli was reminded of a made-for-movie obstacle course.
Her heart sank as she flew above the shifters’ speeding car. The sheer horror of what occurred gripped Syprelli out to her very wingtips, and down to the bottom of her hooves. She wondered if Talbot’s Peak was about to be demolishedâ��torn apart and crushed beneath the brute’s stomping clawed feet that were the size of ancient Greek columns.
Epona’s good grace! She hadn’t even had a chance to explore the ‘supposed’ haven as a new home. And if this was any indication of life there, her search was far from over. Still, she had to help if she could.
As Syprelli flew, she tried to think of ways that would stop the possible, goliath like destruction. If she positioned herself before the mammoth-zilla, distracted it, then winged out of reach…but what would that accomplish, given the rider seemed to be in control.
****
From high on a mountain perch, the man filmed the flying horse as she cavorted in the skies. He’d been tracking her for the last year, in human form and horse form. Now finally, as her coat blazed a beautiful shade of red beneath the bright sun, he’d been able to capture the not-myth filly in flight.
No one would believe him, of course. Despite his evidence. Photoshop and the tech-wonders of the movie industry had seen to that.
He’d already made his peace with that reality. However, he had other plans. A daring one at that.
Chapter Thirty-four:
Running With It
By Rebecca Gillan
She was tiny, cute, and nothing but trouble. At least, that’s what Myra kept telling herself. She’d read every self-help book she could find on the internet about positive re-enforcement. You are what you believe you are. People will treat you the way you project yourself. Picture yourself as you want others to see you. Fake it until you make it.
Yeah, none of that really worked.
To be honest, Myra wasn’t entirely sure she had workable material. She was short. She had been told several times that she was adorable in a gawky nerd girl sort of way. And she was a bit clumsy and did tend to be getting into scrapes all the time, usually in ways that were a bit humiliating. The problem was that she was having a hard spinning that into something vaguely attractive. Maybe she just wasn’t faking it hard enough.
Time to try being hot, young and exciting someplace new, where they didn’t automatically
pull out a first aid kit as soon as she walked in the door. Fake it ‘til ya make it, baby. She still had a couple months until her ten year high school reunion to transform herself from an awkward caterpillar to a glorious butterfly!
Myra peered at the hole-in-the-wall honky tonk bar through the fogged over windows of her Camry warily. They were fogged over because she’d been sitting here in the parking lot, talking herself into giving this one more try for the last forty-five minutes. I wasn’t going so well. Maybe she should go back to her usual bar. Surely they wouldn’t actually pull out the first aide kit again.
It wasn’t like it was her fault that someone had needed a butterfly bandage every time she visited. She had only been at the Bozeman Bar and Grill for fifteen minutes when those drunk tourists got into an argument that resulted in a broken beer bottle and a slashed palm. She hadn’t even talked to them, for crying out loud! And no way could Hank, the bar’s owner pin that bar fight the month before on her.
Fine, she thought. This bar in Talbot’s Peak would probably be much better anyway. For starters, it wasn’t owned by her sister’s ex-high school flame. Why, she’d be willing to bet that no one person here had ever even heard of Myra Mazeltov! With that though firmly fixed in her mind, Myra opened the door of her car and stepped out.
Right into the path of a rampaging mastodon.
As she sat quietly sobbing in the back of an ambulance while a totally hunky EMT used a whole box of butterfly bandages to close up the multiple cuts in her scalp, Myra had to admit that maybe she was the one to blame for all her misfortune. After all, only she could get run over by an extinct species of pachyderm in the parking lot of a bar in Montana…
Chapter Thirty-five:
Armed and Dangerous
By Pat Cunningham
The human kid behind the counter at the sporting goods store barely glanced up from his texting when Ewan and Deuce burst in. “Help you gents?” he said distractedly.
