Play with Fire

chapter Thirty-Two

LIBBY DROPPED LIKE a puppet with its strings cut. The three vials she’d been holding rolled out of her limp hands and spilled across the floor.

Morris spared her a quick glance, then turned his face back up to where the enemy was. He was worried about Libby, but he had been in this business too long to start acting like a dumb hero. He could go to Libby and kneel over her unconscious form, calling her name and keening, just like on TV. Then the werewolf could jump on his unprotected back and tear his stupid head off, before devouring the two of them. But it looked like Libby’s magic was lost to him for the time being – he was going to have to deal with this thing on his own.

But perhaps not entirely. Glancing down at his foot, Morris saw that one of the vials Libby had been holding had rolled in his direction, and its cap remained intact. Another quick look showed him that the container held a clear liquid, and Morris was pretty sure of what it was. Denatured alcohol is used in a number of white magic spells, and he knew that Libby carried some as part of what she sometimes called her “traveling hocus-pocus kit.”

The shower of books from above had stopped. Morris scanned the top of the bookshelves for any sign of the werewolf, listened hard for any sign of its growls or breathing. Satisfied that he was probably going to be jumped in the next three seconds, he performed a deep-knee bend that allowed him to scoop up the vial quickly and return to a standing position.

Morris held the bottle where the light could fall on Libby’s hand-written label: “Denatured Alcohol.” He’d been right.

He gave a small nod. Morris was no magician, but alcohol has properties that even the layman can make use of, sometimes. He loosened the vial’s cap, so that it would come off with a flick of his thumb. Now all he needed was an opportunity.

Fire was out of the question. Morris, wasn’t a smoker, and didn’t carry a lighter. He was pretty sure that Libby had a box of handmade wooden matches somewhere in her bag, but trying to hold a match, the vial, and the switchblade, with all three ready for instant use, required one more hand than he possessed. Besides, the vial held four fluid ounces, at most – he wasn’t going to incinerate any werewolves with that. But the alcohol still gave him a small edge that he hadn’t had a minute ago.

A few more books fell from above, then something much bigger either jumped or fell from up there, to land with a grunt about twelve feet from where Morris was standing.

Up close, the werewolf was no less terrifying than when Morris caught his first glimpse of it. He’d encountered a few werewolves before, and even killed one, once. But this specimen was huge. The size a werewolf assumes upon transformation is directly related to how big it is in human form, and Morris remembered that the man he’d seen upstairs had been built like a linebacker. He saw the creature look to where Libby lay on the floor behind Morris, still unmoving, and its lips pulled back from those immense fangs in what Morris assumed was the werewolf version of a smile.

Morris backed up slowly until he felt the heels of his shoes touch Libby’s recumbent form. He didn’t figure a few more feet of distance was going to make any difference when the thing came for him, but he was hoping that the werewolf, in human form, watched a lot of TV melodrama. In the fantasy land that is television, when the hero and his girlfriend face the big, bad monster the guy always puts himself between the girl and his adversary, in a “You’ll have to go through me first” attitude. Sometimes, the idiot even says it out loud.

In real life, limiting your freedom of movement like that is a quick way to become Purina Monster Chow, with the girl to follow for dessert. But Morris hoped the werewolf would figure he was copying some TV hero, and was going to stand fast when the creature charged. In fact, Morris planned to hop backwards at the last instant, clearing Libby’s body with the jump and landing behind her. He wasn’t giving Libby to the werewolf – but if the creature found itself clawing empty air where Morris had just been standing, he might just have a chance to do something, with either the alcohol or the knife, or both.

Morris was no fool. Even with his little stratagem, he still put his and Libby’s chances of survival at about one in ten. But a second ago he’d seen no chance at all, so you could say that things were improving for him. A little.

The problem is, werewolves are really, really fast, and there was a good chance that its claws would catch Morris in mid-jump, disemboweling him and leaving Libby unprotected, as well. A small part of Morris’s mind concluded that he was going to die in the next few seconds, but he closed that operation down ruthlessly. The trouble with last thoughts is that they slow your reaction time.

The werewolf growled and began to move forward, taking its time with what it probably saw as easy prey. It may not have noticed that Morris’s knife blade was silver-coated – or maybe it figured he’d never get the chance to use it.

Morris dropped into a semi-crouch. That made it appear that he was ready to do battle, but it would also give spring to his legs when he made the jump back. He was getting ready to play his last card in a really crappy hand – then Adelson appeared, and stabbed the werewolf in the back.

Morris hadn’t seen the man’s approach, since the immense werewolf was blocking his view. The werewolf, on the other hand, may have been so focused on Morris that its normally sharp ears had failed to detect the sounds Adelson made as he ran up from the vault, where he’d been cowering and babbling incoherently. The white-haired man held what looked like a pen knife with a four-inch blade – the sort of thing that a man like Adelson would use to cut twine-bound bundles of books – and he plunged it into the werewolf, screaming, “Get out of my store, you ugly f*ck!”

The werewolf howled in pain, although any wound inflicted on it without silver would heal very quickly. It turned on Adelson, who had just raised the knife to stab the werewolf again – a blow that never landed, since it moved in and tore Adelson’s knife arm clean off with its terrible jaws. The man’s scream of pain and horror didn’t last long, as the werewolf slashed one of its paws fiercely across Adelson’s throat, nearly decapitating him.

The werewolf dropped Adelson’s arm from its jaws and gave a howl of triumph. Then it seemed to remember Morris, who had made a quick adjustment to his strategy, in response to the changed circumstances. As the creature turned back around Morris jumped, all right – but forward. This brought him within three feet of an enraged werewolf, which should have brought his near-instantaneous death. Instead, Morris dashed the contents of Libby’s vial into the creature’s face, which meant that the better part of four ounces of pure alcohol went right into its eyes.

The werewolf howled again, this time in agony. It blindly swiped a paw in Morris’s direction, but he was prepared and ducked, letting the bloody claws pass a few inches over his head. Then he moved in with the knife.

Quincey Morris had once spent a couple of hours with a man named Nick Reynolds, who had served six years for armed robbery in San Quentin, one of California’s most notorious maximum security prisons. In the Q, as in most such places, the weapon of choice among prisoners is a handmade knife known as a shank. And that means some of the best knife men in the world can be found among the lifers at a maximum security penitentiary.

Reynolds claimed he had never shanked anyone himself, but had seen it done, more than once.

“Thing is, with a shank you’ve gotta be quick, but thorough. Can’t take more than a few seconds, or you might get caught by one of the hacks. But you don’t want the son of a bitch recovering in the hospital and coming after you later, or maybe sending a few of his friends. So you gotta make sure. You don’t just hit him once with the blade. Whether it’s his front or back, you gotta get him three, four times, real quick – bam, bam, bam. Then you drop the shank, which, unless you’re an idiot, has got the handle wrapped in tape, so there’s no prints, and you walk away. That’s how you use a knife, if you’re serious about it.”

Quincey Morris had never used a knife more seriously in his life. His arm moved like a piston – one, two, three stabs to the belly. He stepped back, to avoid the inevitable blind slash with the lethal claws. Then he moved in again, fast. The werewolf’s paws were over his bleeding belly now, in an automatic protective gesture. That meant the chest area was exposed. Again the piston – one, two three – all in the area of the heart.

The werewolf gave one last, agonized howl and dropped to its knees, which allowed Morris to bring the sharp edge of the switchblade quick and hard across the exposed throat. Then he stepped back and watched the creature die.

The werewolf writhed in agony for a few seconds, and then it was still. Wary of deception, Morris waited – and watched the immense, furry monster transform into a large, hairy, naked man. A dead naked man.

Morris flicked blood off his blade, folded the knife, and put it away. A glance at Adelson showed that the man was beyond help – his head was attached to his body only by a partially torn spinal cord. Then Morris heard a soft moan from behind him followed by Libby Chastain’s voice saying, “What... the f*ck... hit me?”