Chapter Twenty-Four

Shooter, Monster, Beast

“Spin that goddamned crank!” Keaton shouted.

For a moment, Badler just gaped at Tom Chaney, whose body was flailing in what looked like the worst grand mal seizure imaginable. His body was shivering and convulsing, and though there was no slack in the chains that bound him, his spasms were violent enough to make the eyehooks in the floor creak and to send the crank clicking in the opposite direction.

“Badler!” Keaton bellowed.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Dez noted how Hernandez too had stopped cranking, but it was difficult to linger long on that, given the way Keaton was stalking toward Iris.

Chaney let loose with another wolf howl, this one more powerful and sustained. The hackles on Dez’s neck stood up. The patrons sitting closest to where Chaney hung scrambled to their feet and backed away.

If Keaton noticed, he didn’t let on. “I knew you’d pull some sort of shit,” he growled, an index finger leveled at Iris. She’d ceased unzipping her shirt and now stood between Badler and Keaton looking supremely unworried. Keaton poked a forefinger in her direction. “I knew you were here to get yours.”

“Isn’t everyone?” Iris said, but her words were swallowed up by the noises issuing from Tom Chaney.

Dez was reminded of Jim the Popcorn-Loving Werewolf. When Jim had turned, Dez had been able to run away.

Now he was chained.

Ten feet away from a transforming werewolf.

Dez’s throat burned with acid. He worried Chaney would break free and lunge at him, but Chaney didn’t seem aware of anyone; he was writhing and jittering like a torn power line.

“I’ll leave if you let him go,” Iris said to Keaton.

Keaton laughed so hard he planted his hands on his knees. “You really think I’m gonna let this woman-murdering animal go free?”

“The other one,” Iris said. “Dez.”

Dez couldn’t help experiencing a wave of emotion, despite the futility of her efforts. We’re surrounded, he wanted to remind her. Keaton, Hernandez, Badler. Crosby, Gattis, Wyzinski. The farm boys. Bernadette. And too many other fear-twisted fiends who didn’t care a whit whether Dez and Iris died horrible deaths.

Beneath that, the thought arose: Susan.

Was she really dead? Exsanguinated and left for the crows and feral dogs to squabble over?

Keaton’s voice was flat. “Badler. Hernandez. Turn those goddamned cranks, or I swear to God I’ll have your heads on the wall by night’s end.” He whirled. “And where the hell are you going?”

All heads turned toward the rear corner door, the one through which Dez had left and reentered on his trip to Keaton’s house. Weeks was three feet from the threshold, shoulders hunched, a parody of a child caught sneaking away.

Keaton made a reproving click with his teeth and tongue. “Running away at the first sign of trouble, Pastor Weeks? Maybe I was wrong to protect you.”

Weeks was wild-eyed, contrite. “You didn’t make a mistake, Mr. Keaton! Besides, you know what I can do. You know how my abilities come in handy.”

“Shit,” Keaton said, grinning. “Of course I do, Pastor Weeks. Which is why I need your prissy ass over here.”

Weeks drew back, his bespectacled eyes shifting to Chaney’s writhing form, which was now so hairy he looked as much beast as man.

“Now!” Keaton bellowed.

Weeks jumped and began heel-toeing it across the bar toward Chaney. Despite the pounding of his heart, Dez watched with interest as Weeks bustled around to stand before Chaney.

“That won’t help,” Lefebvre called.

Dez glanced over and was surprised to find Lefebvre and Bernadette with guns still drawn and aimed at one another, the standoff a mere sideshow in this swirling maelstrom of rage.

“Go on,” Keaton said to Weeks. There was something hungry, almost salacious in his gaze.

“Don’t touch me!” Iris snapped.

Dez saw she’d drawn a gun as well, had it trained on the farm boy’s face. Dez struggled for the name, then retrieved it. Caleb, the farm boy had been called. The other one was named Aaron. Had Iris killed Aaron in the back room? Or merely incapacitated him?

Did it fucking matter?

“Look at me, Tom,” Weeks said.

Chaney’s body had gone limp in the handcuffs. His head was bowed as though he were snoozing. But God was he hairy. Like an underfed bear strung up in chains.

“Crank it, Badler,” Keaton said. “Wake the dumb sonofabitch up.”

“Let go of it,” Iris said, her gun shifting toward Badler.

“You like me too much to shoot me,” Badler said and grinned at her.

“Look at me, Tom,” Weeks repeated.

Dez noticed a fundamental change in Weeks’s face. Gone was the prim smile that had been stamped on the doughy features throughout his misguided sermon; in its place was a shifty, half-mad leer reminiscent of an old movie Dez’s dad had shown him when he was a kid, a John Barrymore film that had scared the living shit out of him.

Svengali.

A gunshot shattered the near-silence of the bar. Badler stumbled away from the crank, teeth bared and a hand pinned against his stomach. Dez hoped at first Iris had gut shot him, but as Badler swayed sideways to lean against a post, Dez spotted the wound in the middle of Badler’s hand.

Iris was a hell of a shot, Dez decided.

“You fucking bitch,” Badler muttered. He was bent over, a hand clamped over his bleeding one to staunch the blood flow.

“You’re done,” Keaton said to Iris. “Caleb, take over the crank. And you four – yes, the four of you….” Keaton nodded at the men at a table near the crank and the bleeding Badler. “You four disarm Iris. If she shoots Caleb, butcher the treacherous bitch.”

Amazingly, Iris grinned. She trained the gun on Caleb’s face.

Caleb, who’d been reaching for the crank, glanced at Keaton irresolutely.

“The change is reversing, Tom,” Weeks said, his voice smooth as satin. “The tension is leaving your muscles.”

Dez stared at Weeks’s glittering eyes and thought, Mesmerist.

He understood immediately how useful it might be. You could hypnotize someone to gain useful information. You could plant a suggestion in a subject’s mind, compel him to do your bidding.

Even reverse a lycanthropic transformation.

“Crank it!” Keaton demanded.

Iris’s gun never wavered from Caleb’s young face. From her distance, a mere ten feet, there was no chance of her missing. Maybe Keaton’s plan was to sacrifice his henchmen until Iris ran out of ammunition. Dez wouldn’t put it past the heartless bastard.

Caleb glanced from Iris to the crank, from Keaton to Iris.

“You know I’ll do it,” Iris said.

“All of you!” shouted Badler, who was still doubled over. “All of you rush the bitch!”

The quartet of men he was addressing exchanged glances, and in a few more seconds, maybe one of them would have done as Badler had bidden. But every face in the Four Winds Bar turned toward Tom Chaney then, who’d stirred enough to let everyone know he was still alive.

“Yessss, Tom,” Weeks purred. “Your limbs are relaxing, your toes unclenching. Let the night breeze wash over you, let the cool air in.”

To Dez, who was rimed with sweat from the sweltering heat of the bar, this sounded as absurd as anything had all evening. Still, it appeared to have an effect on Tom, who hung limply from the chains, the hair covering his body not retreating into his skin but certainly no longer sprouting in wiry tufts.

“Look at me, Caleb,” Keaton said, and though Keaton’s voice remained level, to Dez he’d never appeared so menacing. “I know you don’t want to get shot, but look at Badler over there. Did Iris kill him?”

Caleb the Farm Boy glanced at Badler and licked his lips. Although Caleb didn’t speak, his thoughts were plainly written on his face: No, Badler’s not dead, but I’d prefer having the use of both hands rather than one with a hole in it.

“Think, Caleb,” Keaton said, stepping toward the boy. “Once Badler feeds, that hand of his will heal.” His grin widened at Badler. “Won’t it?”

“You’re goddamned right it will,” Badler growled. His face was an unhealthy ashen hue, and sweat dripped off his chin. He nodded at the four men at the adjacent table. “You sons of bitches go to work on her. She can’t hit all of you if you jump her at the same time.”

But Dez scarcely heard this last. He’d glanced at Chaney, whose brow was furrowed and whose eyelids were twitching as though in the thrall of some grisly nightmare.

“Look at me, Tom,” Weeks said. “I can take away the pain. Look…at…me.”

Chaney opened his eyes and looked at Weeks.

Chaney’s eyes glowed a lambent yellow.

Weeks’s face went slack. He recoiled.

Chaney opened his fanged mouth and roared. The noise vibrated Dez’s eardrums.

Chaney raised his head, arched his back, and before anyone realized what was happening, he wrenched his upper body down and his knees up, and though the chains didn’t split in half, they did rip the eyehooks loose from the ceiling joists. The heavy steel pulleys and the chains plummeted toward Chaney, who hit the ground first, his feet landing with inhuman grace. A split second before the heavy pulleys would have crashed down on Chaney’s head, the werewolf lunged forward. Weeks saw him coming but was too slow to move, too slow even to raise his hands before Chaney crashed down on him and buried his maw in Weeks’s pasty throat.

The Four Winds Bar erupted in screaming patrons and overturned chairs. Many took cover behind tables or pillars.

“Bar the door!” Keaton shouted. “Bar the fucking door!”

Bernadette fired at Lefebvre, but Lefebvre, perhaps utilizing his psychic skills to anticipate Bernadette’s move, was hustling under the balcony and taking refuge behind a table. Bernadette fired three times, but none of the slugs found their mark.

“Fuck him, Bernadette!” Keaton raved. “Bar the goddamned door!”

A tide of patrons had begun to swarm toward the front doors, but Bernadette was there first, a four-by-four gripped in one hand and her revolver clutched in the other.

“Back!” Bernadette shouted as she threaded the four-by-four through the handles of the double doors, and to Dez’s dismay, no one took the opportunity to bum rush her while her gun was pointed distractedly in the air.

Chaney had torn through Weeks’s neck, his wolf-like muzzle bathed in scarlet. Gattis, his mangled beard quivering in apprehension, had ventured toward Chaney with the obvious intention of bashing his head in with the makeshift mace. As Gattis widened his stance and raised the mace, Dez thought, Don’t draw Chaney’s attention away from Weeks. He might end up attacking me.

Although he recognized this for the cowardly thought it was, it did carry with it a modicum of logic. Werewolves, once fully transformed, were berserkers, so fraught with bloodlust that they did not – could not – discriminate. The elderly Jim had been a perfect example. Dez was convinced Jim would no more have attacked Dez than he would have attacked his wife when he was in his right mind. But once the change was on, there was no resisting its black vortex of hunger.

Gattis swung the mace, its glass shards walloping Chaney in the base of his skull.

The impact was colossal. So bone-crunching was the blow that Dez expected the werewolf to slump on top of the erstwhile preacher and bleed out on his remains. But without pause the werewolf scrambled to a crouch and regarded Gattis with a look so baleful Dez’s own bladder nearly let go.

Keaton seemed oblivious of Chaney, all his attention fixated on the front doors, where Bernadette now stood, looking terrified, the revolver wavering in her grip as the crowd converged.

“All of you away from the doors now,” Keaton commanded, but no one seemed to hear. They continued to swarm toward Bernadette.

“Goddammit,” Keaton hollered. “I said get away from the goddamned—” He lowered his head, stretched his hands – What the hell? – and galloped along the side of the of the room like some weird gorilla-lion hybrid. Bystanders scattered before him. In moments, Keaton reached Bernadette and her dinky-looking revolver. The crowd took a step back from him.

Below Dez, the werewolf was stalking forward, hands and chains dragging the floor, the enlarged body bristling with rage. To Dez’s horror, Gattis was backpedaling toward Dez’s chains. The idiot was directly below him now.

Dez shot a look over his shoulder, discovered the crank Hernandez had been operating was unattended, and with a further craning of his neck, Dez understood why. Hernandez had positioned himself at one of the two exits flanking the bar, which was why no patrons were trying to get out there. An unarmed Hernandez was more imposing than an armed Bernadette.

Dez jerked around to see the other back doorway, the one through which Iris had emerged, and before he could identify the individual standing there holding back the crowd, something in the foreground flashed, the noise stunningly loud despite the clamor of the crowd, and he shifted his gaze in time to see one of the pale farm boys – Caleb – pitching forward at Iris’s feet.

She’d shot him in the forehead.

“You’ll pay for that, Iris!” Keaton thundered from his position near the front door, but though the boss’s voice was as resonant as ever, the quality of it had altered, become deeper. As Dez watched, Keaton twitched, doubled over like he was about to vomit. Keaton’s shoulders were broadening. The question in Dez’s head recurred: What the hell are you?

“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.