Blood and Silver - 04 (6 page)
Read Blood and Silver - 04 Online
Authors: James R. Tuck
My voice was a snarl. “No more warning shots. Tell me where she is!”
“Sweet, delicious Kaylee is gone. I just finished her off, as a matter of fact.” His hand twitched, knocking the wad of fabric he had used to wipe his mouth off the table. It tumbled slowly to the floor, billowing out.
It was a tiny sundress made of pink paisley fabric.
Revulsion slammed into the back of my throat, bile churning in my mouth. I roared out, squeezing the trigger. The shotgun bucked, spitting a load of silver shot across the room.
The pellets smashed into the small table, absorbed by the thick wood.
Faster than sight, the big man had snatched the table, putting it in front of him as a shield. Before I could rack the slide, he raised it up and threw it across the room at me. I ducked to get out of its path, twisting away. The heavy wood struck across my shoulder. Numbness flashed down my arm like lightning. The shotgun tore out of my hands, spinning through the air and clattering inside the open oven. It rattled around and stopped, hung up on the wire oven racks.
I was knocked to the ground. My face slammed into the slick linoleum and there was a hot gush as my eyebrow split open from the impact. White sparks flew across my vision. I threw my weight to the side, scrambling. I wound up with my back against the dishwasher. My right hand yanked the Desert Eagle from its holster and my left hand wiped blood from my eye. I swept the room with the gun, the tactical laser burning trails through the air.
The man was standing in the center of the room.
Massive shoulders hunched over, veins standing like cables on his arms. The polo shirt ripped at the seams as he screamed to the sky. His muscles were swelling, twitching, and jerking as they grew. I watched his arms and legs twist. Joints distended as his legs became thicker. The supernatural in the air was like soup. Heat washed over me, my skin felt like it was on fire. The desire to plunge in salty, icy water consumed me.
The man roared as his ribs broke with a snap and a jerk, chest expanding into a barrel. The bones in his neck grew and his skull re-formed itself. His face pulled into a snout, big and square. Head thrown back, I could see his teeth grow. All four incisors split gums, shooting out into four-inch-long enameled daggers. A thick tongue lashed out to lick the blood off them. His nose colored black as it changed shape, becoming a square at the end of his snout.
Power rushed over me in a tide. My stomach tore itself apart in hunger. I wanted meat, red and raw and briny. I wanted to lick salty blood off the ice. I wanted to rend flesh, to tear blubber from bone in strips to swallow it whole.
The man convulsed as his body swelled. His skin thickened over muscles that had reknit themselves to three and four times their size. His clothes were shredded, hanging in rags. His square skull brushed the ceiling. Hands and feet had elongated into paws, razor-sharp black talons jutting from the end of each former finger. A deep guttural grunt tore out of him as one last convulsion ran from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head. In its wake, white fur sprouted from his skin, lengthening and growing into a thick pelt.
Inside the kitchen, inside a crack house in the ’hood, stood a fucking polar bear.
Holy shit.
4
I scrambled to my feet as the bear turned to look at me. A roar tore through the air, washing hot and moist over me. My finger squeezed. The gun in my hand kicked back, its roar shorter and sharper, but just as loud as the bear’s. Four .357 Magnum bullets in four blinks of the eye. They slapped center mass into white fur.
And disappeared.
The bear jerked his head down, looking at where the bullets had vanished. His skull convulsed, shrinking back with a shift of bone until it was a mix of bear and man. The voice that came out of that mouth was completely inhuman. It sounded like a garbage disposal trying to form words in English.
“Silver? You shot me with silver?” That mutated face looked at me. “What the hell are you doing with silver bullets?”
My finger squeezed the trigger in response.
The next two bullets disappeared into that expanse of white fur.
“QUIT SHOOTING ME!” he screamed. “IT BURNS!” Sure enough, I could see black spots forming where I had shot him. Tiny wisps of smoke curled out between strands of white fur.
I pulled the trigger on the last four bullets.
The air shook as the bear screamed out. Between my pulling the trigger and the bullets reaching him, he turned, grabbed the refrigerator, and yanked it in front of him. It was so fast I didn’t see it happen. One second he was standing in my line of fire, the next he had the refrigerator in front of him. The bullets splatted against the insulated side of the fridge, tearing holes and leaving marks, but not penetrating through to hit him.
The slide of my pistol locked back, open and empty.
Dammit!
Thumb sweeping the release button made the clip drop out of the bottom of the gun. It fell and clattered on the floor. My left hand had a fresh clip and was already moving to the opening. It slid home and clicked into place. I flicked the slide release and it jerked forward, stripping a round off the clip and seating it in the chamber.
The bear threw the refrigerator at me.
Time shrank around me again as I watched hundreds of pounds of metal fly toward me. The door swung open as it flipped toward me in the air, food tumbling out. Mustard, ketchup, carton of eggs, head of lettuce; my mind took stock of these on one track. On the other was the thought:
That damn fridge is going to crush me
.
That damn fridge is going to crush me
.
Without thinking, I threw my feet out and dove under the flying hunk of metal and insulation. My shoulder slammed into the floor as I rolled. The door to the fridge whirlwinded over my face so close it brushed my goatee. I kept tumbling to a stop as the refrigerator smashed into the wall behind where I had been standing. Sheetrock exploded into dust, raining down over the kitchen appliance. I was on my stomach. Pain throbbed across my shoulder and my breath was gone.
Get up!
I pulled my knees under me when something slammed across my back like the fist of God and drove me back to the floor. Another blow hit me across the kidneys, this one with a tug and a ripping sound. The Kevlar vest jerked around my body, edge of the collar rubbing a cloth burn across my throat that blossomed lava hot immediately.
I rolled away. The bear was standing over me, pieces of my Kevlar vest hanging off black talons. Kevlar is just a cloth. The weave and layering is what makes it stop bullets, but it isn’t worth a damn against bladed attacks. That included bear claws.
I swung the Desert Eagle up, pulling the trigger, absorbing the shock through my shoulder, letting the recoil carry the gun up in an arc. Silver bullets stitched a haphazard line up the bear’s body from knee to neck. The skin convulsed around the entry points, white fur rolling back to expose black holes.
There was no blood. There should have been blood.
The bear’s skin was too thick for the .357 bullets to penetrate. The rounds were lodging in the layer of blubber that protects polar bears from arctic chill. The .357 is a hot-loaded .38 caliber bullet—more powder, more kick, more penetrating force. It’s a substantial bullet, good for almost anything, but it was still about the size of a large pea. They just weren’t enough to do any real damage to something as big as a bear.
The slide locked again as the bear pawed the air in anger. Before I could grab another clip, the polar bear began to fall. On top of me. Two tons of killing machine fell like a redwood toward me. My heels dug in and I pushed off the floor, clambering to my feet as it crashed down on all four paws where I had been laying.
My foot landed on the mustard bottle that had flown out of the fridge earlier. I jerked myself to a stop so I could keep my feet. That massive square head, the size of my chest, swung around. Black lips pulled back on jaws full of murderous teeth. Faster than sight, they clamped down on my right arm. Both sets of incisors punched through my bicep in a shower of blood as the jaws closed just above my elbow.
Agony exploded in my arm, spasming from fingertip to shoulder, then running down my lat and across the small of my back. Pain splashed across my chest, and my heart closed like a fist. It held shut, skipping beats, locked in the throb of sheer agony. With a sharp shock it thudded back to life. My mind went blind for a second and the world disappeared.
My bones vibrated as the bear growled in victory. The vibration carried more pain in its path as it jolted through my skeleton. Acid boiled in my stomach, growing hot and queasy. Left hand reaching back, it closed on the Glock tucked in my waistband. I drew it out and pressed it against that bog white skull. My finger jerked the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Semiautomatics jam at the worst possible times.
Anger chased pain, clearing my head. I drew back and whacked the pistol across that black snout. Beady, brown, bear eyes closed and he snorted around my arm. The bear’s head shook, yanking pain through my arm and chest again. I began to pound the useless gun into its head. Over and over. Bringing it up, slamming it down. My strength leaked away with each hit. The skin split across the snout. Blood ran freely, staining the white fur crimson. Thin nasal bone crumpled under the butt of the gun.
The bear tossed its head back, lifting me off my feet. Killer jaws opened at the top of its swing, flinging me away. My stomach flipped as I sailed over, landing on the stovetop. I banged to a stop, hanging off the counter and stove.
I couldn’t see. I was blinded by pain. My arm was a throbbing, sticky mess, the fingers completely useless. I shook my head to clear it. My sight came back in a tunnel of dark gray. The polar bear was gathering itself, readying to charge.
My guns were gone, both of them knocked out of my hands. I was lying in a pile of broken ceramic shards with cookie crumbles scattered in the pieces. My useless arm was under me, hand on an overturned knife block.
My left hand snatched a handle from the block, drawing out a thirteen-inch butcher knife like Excalibur from the stone. The bear charged. It thundered up, jaws snapping toward my face.
My hand flashed out holding the knife. I slashed down with all the strength I had.
And stabbed it in the mouth.
The blade slid through the bear’s tongue with no resistance, the pink tip of it flew past my ear to smack the wall behind me. A thin arc of blood from it whipped hot across my cheek. The blade punched through the bottom of the jaw, between the bones. Blood and saliva washed over my hand as I shoved it to the hilt and let go.
The bear jerked back, paws swinging toward its face. Swatting, trying to grab without fingers. Blood streamed down the blade where it jutted out of the bottom of the jaw. The gore blared out, day-glow bright against the white fur of the bear’s chest. It kept trying to close its mouth, ramming the handle against the roof of its palate. This drove the knife even deeper, which made the bear try harder in a cycle of pain and frustration.
The Were-bear fell over, rolling on the floor. Its throat convulsed to try and dislodge the knife. Blood smeared across the linoleum in weird abstract patterns.
I sat up and slid off the counter. Heat from the open oven baked against my leg. I looked down to find the shotgun still lodged in the oven rack. My left hand closed on it. The skin of my palm burned, the barrel hot from being inside the oven.
I didn’t care.
I managed to rack the slide, juggling the shotgun with one hand as the bear finally shook the knife free. It skittered across the floor, slinging blood droplets in its trail. The bear looked up at me. Natural polar bears don’t have expressions besides calm indifference and kill. This polar bear had murder in its eyes and blood on its fur. It roared as I pointed the shotgun in its face. I squeezed the trigger as it turned away. The silver-shot blast tore across its snout, ripping away the bottom jaw, leaving it to hang askew on one thin, bloody tendon. The stump of its tongue splatted on the ceiling, sticking there like some gigantic, gory, obscene spitwad.
The bear fell into a puddle of its own blood. Seizure convulsed it, jerking the bear’s body into knots. It began to shrink, its body re-formed, writhing back into the form of a man. Pushing off the stove, I walked unsteadily to the bloody, naked man twitching on the linoleum. As the last dregs of bear washed away from McMahon, he sprawled out, arms and legs akimbo, muscles still bunched into charley horses.
I racked the shotgun again as I stepped over him. The lower half of his face was a red ruin. Gnarled hands batted at my legs weakly. His eyes rolled around, looking wildly from side to side as he made
ghuk
,
ghuk
noises from what was left of his throat. Silver poisoning ran black from the edges of the wound. I swung the shotgun over his face, putting the barrel against his eye socket.
ghuk
,
ghuk
noises from what was left of his throat. Silver poisoning ran black from the edges of the wound. I swung the shotgun over his face, putting the barrel against his eye socket.
“This is for Kaylee Ann Dobbs.”
I pulled the trigger.
Exhausted, battered, and injured, I fell into the Comet’s seat. The armload of guns I had carried from the house clattered into the passenger side, some of them spilling into the floorboard. Weary from blood loss, I felt like a piece of beef jerky. Pulled tight and dried out. The bicep on my right arm was tourniqueted with my T-shirt. It wasn’t pretty, but it should keep me alive until I got to medical attention. I had torn the shirt and tied the knot with my teeth. Each heartbeat throbbed through the arm, sending a cutting pain all the way down to my fingertips. I couldn’t see out of my left eye. It had swollen shut, and the skin was sore and mushy to the touch. The eyelid had sealed shut with clotted blood from the split on my eyebrow. I would take care of it when I got back to the club. My head was fuzzy, full of ache and cotton. That would be the combo pack of abuse and blood loss. My left hand fished in my pocket, looking for the keys. They weren’t there.
Dammit.
“You okay, mister?”
I jumped, one open eye jerking to the rearview mirror. I was too spent to react more than that. In the small rectangle of glass I saw little Mary sitting in the backseat. Her eyes were wide as she stared at me.
I relaxed, tension washing away. “Yeah, kid. Why do you ask?”
She slid forward, putting her thin arms on the back of the front seat. “You don’t look so good.”
“You should see the other guy.” I laughed at my own joke. Laughing made my stomach spasm and turned into a wet, hacking cough. I caught it in my hand. When I looked there were tiny droplets of blood on my palm. I wiped them away on my pants. Mary didn’t seem to think it was funny. “Do you still have my keys, sweetie?”
Her arm came forward over the seat. My keys dangled from the end of her thin brown fingers. I reached over to get them with my left hand and that sent a jolt of pain across my arm that made my head spin. When it passed, I leaned up and tried to put the key in the ignition with my left hand. I dropped them to the floorboard with a curse.
“Let me help.” Mary scrambled over the seat and ducked down to snatch up the keys. Unmindful of the guns, she scooped up the keys. They jangled as she shoved the right key into the ignition and turned it. The Comet roared to life, happy to see me. I nodded a thank you to Mary. She pushed guns in the floor and pulled the seat belt around her thin frame. I shifted the car to Drive. Before I could go, Mary spoke up, “Where’s the little white girl, mister?”
The thought of Kaylee punched me in the gut. I was going to have to tell her father what had happened to her. I didn’t want to tell her father what had happened to her. I would. That’s part of the job. The shitty part, but still a part I had to do. I looked over. “She didn’t make it, kid. I was too late to save her.”
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