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.