by Kevin Wright
“Jesus, Robert, weren’t you a dentist?” Pussywillow asked.
“I don’t understand.” The Count covered his mouth. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean to say, Bob, is that you make mosquito larvae seem attractive,” Pussywillow said. “I mean, I would rather suck a church cookie, while a Bishop douses me with holy waste and a nun saws away at my neck slowly with a dull, silver Crucifix than even hear your voice.”
“I, don’t understand.”
“I want you to walk out that door, Robert, and to never come back,” Pussywillow said. “I want you, should we ever meet, ten thousand years from now, to turn around and walk the other way. I want you to get the hell out of my lair and get the fuck away from me. Period.”
“Puss-puss, why can we not stop playing these games?” the Count asked, his Transylvanian accent gone. “Why can’t we just come out and say how we feel about each other?” The Count, arms outstretched, took a step forward. “Don’t hold back, baby.”
Pussywillow retreated behind her bed.
“You truly prefer this?” The Count grasped the boy. “This, boy, you crave?” Hatred shining in his eye, his hand spasmed into an arthritic, Lugosi-claw. “This, over me?” He tore at his hair, smearing black spray hair down his face like run mascara. “The Count!?”
His claw hand raised high.
“Blasphemy!”
He grasped the boy and hurled him out the door.
* * * *
There is no thought of escape. It is a concept foreign to him.
The blue men are blown away. Slow, they are, weak. The pack of sleek steel hounds cannot keep pace. They are domesticated, tame. Even the great black screaming bird is too slow, left in the clouds of ashen road dust he kicks up pounding down the tight paths and whipping into caves of the stone forest. It has been a long time, but still he remembers.
No pretense he makes of escape. Indeed, he is oblivious to them. They were nothing. They are nothing. Threats are alien.
It is the man on his back, latched on like a tick, burrowing into his back, digging into his spine, to soften him, to master him.
He will fail.
He must be dislodged. Deep he has dug, though, and he, too, is strong.
The wind blows.
Mountains shatter as he crashes into them, through them, red stones flying, men and women screaming. They are not innocent, but shall not die this night. He will remember their warmth on cold nights ahead and judge them hence.
Steel hounds wail as he barrel rolls into them.
Crush Him!
They cave, overturn, blaring, screaming, bending, eyes shattering underfoot as he gives this man the ride of his short little life.
Across mountaintops and down through their caves. Down hills and into the stinking tunnels he blazes. Somehow the steel blue hounds find him, baying. They are ahead. They are behind. They are many.
Hard nails dig into the stone of the span as he sprints across. Nothing is to either side of him, nothing but water, air, the moon.
The blue lights emerge, and he is surrounded.
He howls. He growls. He will take them. He will take them all.
Halfway across the span, blue lights blazing before and behind, he skids to a sparking halt, spins. There are more blue lights. He howls again. The bridge wriggles beneath his feet. Water ripples and shakes in growing circles, the baying hounds are silenced.
Flashing blue, the hounds careen in from either side, tearing and screeching, stopping, poised, staring at him, dozens of dead black little eyes that see only pain and death. He has looked in those eyes without fear, without hesitation, and triumphed.
In defiance he howls again, and his lungs burn as vessels pop within. No matter. It is louder, deafening. The hounds shatter, the black eyes faltering, looking away. They are his now to take.
The black death god, he sees it, the giant bird in the sky, the raven. It is death come to greet him on high, yet he is not so polite, not so inviting. He does not to hesitate.
Forward he leaps from the span as the great black bird turns to meet him. It opens up, blazing, roaring in mid-air, its dark talons ripping at him, invisible, but still momentum carries him forth, and his claws scrape the great bird, scoring its iron scales, his teeth closing down, tearing pieces free, and he falls, falls, falls, soaring for seconds before crashing into the icy black water below. And still this man on his back holds on.
* * * *
Kade Valentine blinked.
And, mercilessly, it prolonged his life.
A pair of shapely legs emerging from within a cool white silk robe, the last thing he remembered. Porcelain feet padding across thick carpet. Those long legs had been attached to the rest of her, Pussywillow, a nice package, and Kade had been ensnared in her trap even as he realized who it was, what was happening.
“Well now.” Kade raised his shotgun and fired repeatedly into the chest of that raging rat-bastard, the Count.
It barely slowed him down.
As he fired and pumped and fired and pumped, Kade slid from the bathroom and strafed along the wall to his left, over the soft bed and off the other side. His shotgun was level and blazing at its gothic target throughout.
Every shot hit its mark.
Every shot enraged the Count more. Any man would have been dead eleven times over, but the Count, the torn and ripped, bloody-mad Count, was no longer a man.
* * * *
“Well, now,” someone said, somewhere.
Peter was nuzzled toward consciousness.
Something, something was tugging at his arm? No, the gun…
Guns started firing. Nearby.
“What the—?” He yanked the gun to his chest.
Bolting to his feet, Peter immediately dropped back to the carpet as stray rounds blasted through the doorway and wall. Animal heads fell, cascading from above. The walls were covered in them, deer mostly, and an unobtrusive moose.
“What the hell?”
Something white flashed from the corner of his eye, a white robe, into the kitchen.
“Pussywillow!” Peter scrambled into the kitchen as shot after shot was fired in the bedroom, and the walls went polka-dot.
The moose head crashed.
Stumbling into the kitchen, Peter flew, tripping over redcap carcasses, just glimpsing the blur of Pussywillow as she made it out the front door and into the hall.
Then a blast went off in the bedroom. The floor shook. Peter didn’t stop.
High-stepping over and through corpses, slipping on slick linoleum, he slammed into the hallway wall. He turned.
Pussywillow, robe flying, sprinted away, banging on doors and screaming for help the whole way.
Peter took off after.
Doors opened before and behind Peter.
Tenants emerged.
“They are all fucking-leeches,” he said, stopping, surrounded.
“Leeches, huh? You pissant,” one said.
Pussywillow, mounting the stairs, turned and shouted, “Kill him!” And the vampires’ confused looks were traded for looks of purpose.
Peter uttered the inevitable line, “Fuck,” as more bodies emerged between him and Pussywillow. He glanced for an instant down at the gun in his hand.
“Going somewhere?” a leech asked.
The leeches closed in.
The gun answered.
As claws from all about latched onto Peter, seeking his flesh, to pull him back, to pull him down, his insides out, the gun answered. Demon visages hovered about his face. But he was prepared this time. The gun was prepared. He felt nothing as nail and tooth sank into his flesh, no pain, no anguish, no fear, nothing but the cool steel perfectly tooled to fit in his hand, and one other thing, recoil.
* * * *
Detective Winters slogged up the riverbank through weeds and mud, on hands and knees, coughing and gagging, and sputtering up water. Against a rusted chain-link fence, he collapsed and watched headlights zoom by on route 495, not far away.
&nb
sp; Wrestling free of his trench coat, which had done nearly as much to drown him as Lord Brudnoy, he flopped down on his back in the wet mud, shivering in cold and pain. Which was worse? He looked to the stars for the answer. Orion, his colleague, stared back down at him.
The pain, definitely, he decided. And the cold was probably dulling it. He staggered up and faced the highway through the steel curtain. Grasping it with his left hand, he took a deep breath and yanked his body back quick and hard. He grunted. With a sucking pop, his shoulder slid back in place, and once more he slumped against the fence and back to the ground. He raised his elbow, feeling the burn of strained muscle and sinew, wincing at the effort, but relishing it somehow. He brushed his sopping hair out of his eyes and placed his hat back on his head. He looked down.
His suit was definitely ruined.
* * * *
“They don’t count,” Peter said to himself, hobbling up the stairs as fast as he could.
They only look like men, like women … like children. Blood seemed to ooze from every inch of his body, and his clothes were in tatters.
“They don’t count.”
He pushed open the front door to the building and stepped out. He didn’t glance back. He had to move on, find Pussywillow, save his father. He couldn’t let her go.
Down the stairs, aided heavily by the banister, and out into the parking lot, he staggered, scanning for Pussywillow…
A flash of white.
Any trace of Pussywillow.
Anything at all.
Nothing...
She was gone then, long gone, escaped. I failed. Wherever vampires go in the night, to do what they do, kill others, innocents, his father. Gone wherever she wanted. There was no way to follow her, no way to find her.
He stood in the night, broken, defeated, gazing down the business end of the gun as though watching a sunset, a sunset so beautiful he wanted to cry. So warm. So comforting. A breeze blew. Tempting, so tempting to watch it forever, were that possible. It was. It so was. It would just make everything so much simpler, easier — a car horn suddenly blared behind him.
“Hey, man, you okay?” asked a man.
“Sid?” Peter turned.
It wasn’t Sid.
The man saw the gun and bloody clothes, shifted, and did the wise thing. Tires screeched.
“Fucking Sid.” He glanced around the parking lot. Sid, in his taxi, was gone. “Useless.”
Cops’ll be coming soon.
And anyways, he had to be moving on.
His stomach growled.
They don’t count.
Chapter 37.
“SIR… HAVE TO … newspaper keeps calling … official statement.”
The Chief blinked slowly, shook his head and stood up with the aid of two detectives who proceeded to shoot him questions he wasn’t quite ready to comprehend let alone handle. His wife was still on the floor inside the vault room, curled up in the fetal position next to Mr. Farnsworth and Denise.
“Here, let me help.” The Chief pulled his wife up off the floor. “Barnes, where’s the mayor?”
“We’re moving him to a more secure location,” Detective Barnes said.
The Chief nodded succinctly. “And the beast?” he asked, gaining momentum, adjusting his tie.
“Half the department chased it down, Chief, cornered it on the bridge,” Barnes said. “It, uh, it dove into the river. Detective, uh, Joshua Winters went in with it.”
“So, Winters is in league with the beast?” the Chief asked.
“Actually, sir, Officer Pepper, who was first on scene, he felt—”
“So, Winters was in league with the beast.” The Chief nodded to himself. “Why was he not arrested? We’ve had a warrant out on him for over twenty-four hours. I’d like to personally speak with Officer Pepper.”
“They did attempt to apprehend him, Chief,” Barnes said, “but he—”
“Resisted arrest,” finished the Chief. “I see. Shots were fired, of course?” He looked around at the walls, the damage.
The detective nodded and began flipping through a notebook.
“Stop that.” The Chief placed a hand over the notebook. “It ended at the river?”
“We believe so, sir,” Barnes said. “We have a dive team—”
“Good. I also want men on either bank combing down all the way to Lawtown. How cold is that water?”
“Cold sir,” Barnes said, “a man couldn’t last long in it.”
“I want both banks swept until they find something,” the Chief said. “It’ll take more than cold water to kill a werewolf and Winters. Like fucking cockroaches.”
“Should we notify the Lawrence, Methuen, and Haverhill depart—”
“Should I remind you of the confidentiality agreements you signed?” the Chief asked. “Should I remind you of the repercussions you and your family shall incur should you break silence for any reason?”
Barnes clenched his teeth.
“I thought naught, detective,” the Chief said. “And the officers won’t be seen, will they? Will they, detective?”
“Uh, no sir,” Barnes said.
“How big a blanket are we going to need?” the Chief asked.
“Big, sir.” Barnes again flipped through his notebook. “I don’t think, uh, the newspapers won’t stop calling, and four of the big stations are all over town interviewing eyewitnesses. What should I give them? Animal from the zoo story? Circus?”
The Chief shook his head in frustration, “God-damnit! Three incidents in one week! What’d we use Monday? Gang violence, suppress the body count. Last night? Gas main break, suppress the body count. Tonight, fill in the blank, suppress the body count.”
The detective shifted uncomfortably.
“What is the body count?”
“Fourteen here, sir. Guests and help.”
“And on the street?”
“None, sir, thankfully. A few officers were injured when it broke out of the house. Broken arms, twisted ankles, nothing life threatening. Few eardrums ruptured. A lot of damage to the bird. Pilot had to set her down on the bridge. They’re moving it now.”
“Good.” The Chief scratched his chin.
“Media’s going to have trouble swallowing whatever we give them,” Barnes said, “especially after last night.”
“I don’t give a shit about the media,” the Chief said. “They’ll swallow what the blanket squad gives them. If not, we just shove it down their throats. Remind them who signs their paychecks, detective.” The Chief took a deep breath. “No, it’s the feds I’m worried about. Don’t want them getting wind of this and sending in any of their ‘independent investigators.’ This will not be another Kingston.”
Barnes nodded, scribbling.
“How many 911’s were called in?” the Chief asked.
“One hundred and four related to this call,” Barnes said. “We only kept up with the wolf by tracking the origin of the 911’s. Lot of people saw him.”
“Any up close?”
“Uh, not that we can tell,” Barnes said. “It’s early still, and we’re talking to the dispatchers now, but it seems like most of the calls registered on the enhanced 911 system, so they were in their homes. Easy to follow up. No payphones. A few cell phones, though.”
“Any bystanders injured?” the Chief asked.
“No.”
“Good, health insurance is out of the line. How about property damage? You’re talking to the owners?”
“Yes. We’re also assessing the damage,” Barnes said, “but it seems like at most a few damaged automobiles and probably some fences and trash cans. Stuff like that. There were a few apartment buildings, as I said.”
“Okay,” the Chief said. “Moriarty’ll handle that. You’re sure no one was hurt?”
“None reported, sir,” Barnes said. “Down at the River Street apartments, though, two officers—”
“Never mind that,” the Chief said. “Tell Fitzsimmons, no, no, write this down. Tell Fitzsimmons to get A
lagiery down to the bridge. I want a standard movie blanket. It’s been a few years. They’ll bite. Bring the whole shebang. Film crew, lighting, get some teamsters down there.” He scratched his chin. “I want Alagiery as the director down there in fifteen minutes. Get a wolf or a fucking bear costume and get someone in it, and have them tossed over the bridge. Tell Alagiery he’s there for a retake on some scene or other, let him handle the details. Cops on the riverbank are security. They’re paid by the movie people. This is not overtime for them, make sure the news gets that. Alagiery fields all the questions. He’s filming a … a werewolf movie on scene here, like the others. He knows. Cheap permits, friendly local government, inner city ambiance, the works. Tell him to come up with a title, get creative. Last Tango of the Wolfman, or Fall of the Werewolf Lord. Something like that. Got it?”
“Uh, yeah, Chief,” Barnes said, still scribbling.
“I want this done yesterday, detective,” the Chief said, “and I want the television crews and newspapers down there. Any of the property damage caused by the film crew will be reimbursed by the movie producers. The city will also fine them and … and the Mayor’s going to reconsider the permit in light of the ruckus caused tonight. Again, Alagiery does the talking. Only Alagiery. And I want a formal apology to the people of Colton Falls on the eleven o’clock news tonight.” The Chief wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Okay, now, detective, tell me what happened on River street.”
“Okay, two officers were gunned down outside, but that was nothing compared to…”
* * * *
“Jesus, what’re they feeding you?” Shotgun stepped into the room. “Crisco?”
“Why? This make me look fat?” croaked Carmine, pulling on his hospital johnny. He pressed a button on his rail, and with a whirr, the motors in the bed sprang into action, raising his torso until he was sitting up. “Suppertime.”
“Just what you need.”
It was past midnight.
Carmine pressed another button, marked ‘nurse,’ and sat smiling, waiting.
“You’re never going to leave here, are you?” Shotgun asked.
