Chapter Twenty-Eight

Fire and Horns

Dez bolted for the staircase. Even as he mounted the first step and began to take two at a time, he heard the sounds of a scuffle up there, knew on a bone-deep level that Iris was still alive.

Dez and Michael reached the balcony and beheld a wild scene. More than a dozen patrons were cornered up there, another score of them rooting on Keaton as he tracked Iris slowly through the tables. Men and women pelted alongside Iris, scurrying like mice from the massive minotaur.

And as Dez drew nearer, he realized that Keaton’s change had advanced even further. Where before his dark hide had been smooth, there were now bones poking through the coarse hair, some of them blunt and knobby, others as sharp as fillet knives. One jaundiced excrescence protruding from the minotaur’s shoulder reminded Dez of a pumpkin stem, curved and ridged and tapered to a point. The weapon in Dez’s hand felt like a cap gun. The minotaur’s hide was too thick, the armor of bone and sinew impenetrable.

Iris and the other patrons in her vicinity had been herded to the far corner. Their only chance of escape was the window behind them, but a fall from that height – more than twenty-five feet, Dez estimated – could prove deadly.

The minotaur reached down, grasped a table edge, and flung it like a Frisbee. Its heavy base skidded over another tabletop and plowed into a pair of shrieking onlookers.

If Keaton noticed their deaths, he didn’t show it.

Iris flicked a look at Dez, and he saw the terror in her eyes. He realized he’d been harboring the causeless belief that she possessed some otherworldly power, but now, with her life in jeopardy, she appeared as feeble as he was. It made his need to help her even greater. But how? No ordinary weapon could penetrate the minotaur’s bone-studded hide. Hand-to-hand combat meant a swift death. If only he had—

Dez caught his breath, turned to look at Michael.

But Michael was already concentrating, his hand out, fingers splayed, face pinched in concentration. He was sweating with the effort, and Dez wondered to what extent it leeched Michael’s strength to conjure fire with his mind.

The minotaur went ramrod straight. The beast swiveled its head and scowled at Michael. Even as Dez recoiled at the venom on that face, he marked the changes in it. New horns had sprouted from its chin and cheeks. The teeth were a chaotic snarl. Goosebumps misted up Dez’s arms, even as he took aim with Michael’s gun at the creature’s right eye.

It was an impossible shot. He had to get closer.

Iris fired upon the creature. Her aim was true enough to bloody the bridge of the minotaur’s snout.

The creature roared.

Stunningly, several patrons near Iris took the opportunity to rush the minotaur. With a twinge of recognition, he saw at the head of the throng the man and woman he believed to be a couple. The man with the neck tattoo ran apace with his female companion, both of them wielding weapons, his a long kitchen knife, hers a length of chain maybe four feet long.

Dez charged the creature too.

The woman got there first, and in the moments before the minotaur swung at her, Dez was reminded of sports moms in the old world, the kind who wore their children’s team colors and sipped Starbucks on lawn chairs.

The minotaur clubbed her so hard the side of her neck split open. The backhanded swat lifted her off her feet and propelled her over the balcony railing. The man with the neck tattoo cried out in sorrow and plunged the knife into the beast’s stomach. The beast tore down with a fist, the blow so violent that the man’s neck seemed to disappear as he was pounded downward like a driven nail.

Goddammit, Dez thought. These two, this man and this woman, died defending someone they probably barely knew, were snuffed out senselessly by a beast who treated life like it was worthless.

At this, another, more incisive thought occurred to Dez. Or an image, rather.

The back bedroom of the Keatons’ home. The boy in the baseball uniform….

A growl sounding deep in his throat, Dez fired at the minotaur, the shot a good one, right in the side of the creature’s mouth, but even as the beast bellowed in outrage, Dez could see how little it had done. The minotaur stomped toward him, eating the distance with alarming rapidity, and just as Dez took aim, just as the creature reached striking range and raised a great, clawed hand, the minotaur’s head burst into flames. Wreathed in orange and blue, the massive horns whipsawing from side to side, the beast stumbled toward Iris, baying in pain.

“No!” someone shouted, and Dez had time to turn and see Michael enshadowed by a hulking figure.

Hernandez tackled Michael Summers. Both men crashed to the floor, and with a glance, Dez saw the flames encircling Keaton’s head diminish.

For a moment, Dez debated what to do – help Michael with Hernandez, or attempt to finish off Keaton. But the sight of Hernandez seizing the back of Michael’s head and bashing it on the floor decided him. Michael had saved Dez’s life not once, but twice. Another blow like that and Michael would be as dead as Joe Kidd.

Dez took aim. “Hernandez!” he shouted.

Hernandez turned, his expression morphing into surprise.

Dez fired, the slug pulping the center of the man’s face. Vaguely, Dez was aware of the minotaur barreling past him, moving toward the bar.

Hernandez toppled forward, his ursine body burying Michael Summers. Dez rushed over, his chewed-up feet shooting daggers of pain, and with Iris’s help, he rolled Hernandez’s corpse off Michael.

Iris knelt and shook Michael by the shoulder. “You still with us?”

Michael didn’t answer, but he was still breathing.

A chorus of gasps brought Dez’s head around. He saw the minotaur charging along the railing, and in the next moment the beast vaulted sideways, splintering the railing, the massive body arcing down and landing awkwardly on a table below. The whole thing collapsed, the minotaur scrambling through the rubble, and though the corona of fire still glimmered atop the minotaur’s neck, Dez could see the flames had nearly gone out. A bystander in a purple coat froze as Keaton barreled forward, and rather than stopping or sidestepping the frozen figure, Keaton merely whipped his great head at the man. A jagged horn pierced the purple coat and flung the man like a flicked booger twenty feet from where he’d started.

Dez heard a gunshot and a roar and swiveled his head in time to see the werewolf disemboweling a man who’d apparently been foolish enough to attack Chaney from behind. Blood darkened the fur of Chaney’s lower back, but he’d easily bested his attacker, whose shredded guts oozed like wine-drenched cutlets.

A voice rose above the cacophony. It was Wainwright, who’d gone to the sink behind the bar and filled up a gallon bucket. “Over here, boss!” Wainwright was shouting. “Over here!”

Keaton tracked the voice, moved in a desperate gallop toward the bar. Iris sprang to her feet, fired down at the minotaur, and though a scrap of hair twirled off its brawny shoulder, the minotaur scarcely seemed to register the wound.

Keaton reached the bar. Wainwright immediately doused Keaton’s head with water, then dutifully refilled the bucket and repeated the action.

Dez moved up next to Iris, asked, “Should we go?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Go where?”

“The truck,” he answered. “If we get out now, we can—”

“What about Michael?”

Dez glanced at Michael’s prone body, his resolve faltering. “We can carry him.”

She grasped Dez by the front of the shirt.

“It ends here, one way or the other,” she said. “Keaton won’t stop hunting us. Our only chance is to kill him now, while the Hound is on the loose.”

Dez listened and realized that, yes, he did hear the sounds of ripping and tearing, and again the question came to him: Was Chaney aware of what he was doing? The minotaur possessed a semblance of control, but Chaney appeared to destroy indiscriminately.

He killed Wyzinski before Wyzinski killed you.

That doesn’t prove—

But it suggests, doesn’t it? Suggests Chaney is still in there somewhere. A werewolf doesn’t know much beyond spilling blood, but it knows enough to recognize an enemy. At least, this werewolf does.

Dez took a steadying breath, looked into Iris’s fierce green eyes. “How do we kill Keaton?”

She shrugged. “Fire seems to work.”

He glanced at Michael. “He’ll be out for a while.”

Iris hurried over to one of the few tables that hadn’t been overturned and lifted a kerosene lamp from its center.

“There are two dozen of these,” she explained.

“But without Michael—”

“I’ve got a lighter behind the bar,” she said impatiently. “Move your ass.”