No wonder the witches’ protective spell hadn’t been good enough to save Sheldon; this brute would have gotten over a bit of cockroach-enhanced indigestion without any trouble at all.
I’d caught only a glimpse as this creature had bounded out of the alley behind the Straight Edge headquarters, climbed to the rooftops, and sprinted away into the moonlight. The monster had bashed Hope Saldana’s mission, probably because the old woman aided and comforted unnaturals; he had ripped the four Straight Edgers into little pieces, no doubt because they were incompetent.
Or maybe he had other reasons. I didn’t see the point in psychoanalyzing a loose-cannon monster to figure out logical explanations for his actions.
And he had murdered Sheldon Fennerman.
With Jekyll’s transformation complete and his muscles as hard as braided steel cable, the slugs we had fired into him popped out of his body and pattered onto the factory floor. Sweating bullets, you might say.
The huge creature slammed a meat loaf–sized fist into the churning chemical vat beside him, puncturing it so that noxious fluids spewed across the floor. Then he tore down the metal staircase that ran up the side of the vat, bending the framework and hurling it across the factory floor with a loud clatter.
I kept firing until my pistol was empty. When Sheyenne had also emptied Brondon Morris’s gun, she dropped the weapon, and her ghost swooped into the Jekyll monster and passed entirely through his body, much to her frustration. Backing away, McGoo shot two more times.
His glowing eyes fixed on his first target, the monster came straight toward Robin.
I was not going to let this nightmare juggernaut harm a hair on her head. “Robin, get out of here!” I charged into monster Jekyll like a kid from a peewee football league trying to derail a locomotive—and I was about as successful.
I punched him hard in his cabbage-sized nose, which seemed like a good idea when I thought of it. Jekyll didn’t care which victim he got his huge paws on first. Since I was within reach, the brute grabbed my right arm. I struggled, but couldn’t break free.
With a merciless motion like someone tearing the wing off a roasted chicken, the monster yanked my arm out of its socket, pulled it free, and threw the limb aside like a used toothpick.
Sheyenne screamed.
“Dammit!” I reeled. That wasn’t going to be easy to fix, but at least I’d bought them a second or two. “McGoo, get her out of here!”
McGoo hauled Robin toward the exit next to the dismantled scaffolding and the sign on the wall that politely cautioned JLPN workers about the hazards of chemicals. “Come on!”
For some reason, I heard howling outside the factory.
Yanking my arm off wasn’t good enough for Jekyll. He lifted me bodily and hurled me against the giant chemical vat. I slammed into the curved side, leaving a man-shaped dent like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, then sprawled into the gushing Compound Z chemicals that continued to vomit out of the tank. I was drenched and disgusted, but fortunately the dissolvogen had no effect on me.
Leaving me behind, Jekyll bounded after McGoo and Robin. Even if they managed to get outside, this huge beast would catch up with them in only a few steps.
I tried to pick myself up. Lopsided and off balance without my right arm, I slipped in the oozing, steaming liquid and fell on my butt. A severed hand—not mine—plopped out of the punctured vat into the puddle beside me. Well-manicured . . . no doubt Brondon Morris’s.
Across the room, reenacting a scene from a bad horror movie, my detached arm flopped about, the hand clenching and unclenching, trying to finger-walk along the concrete. That’s the thing about being undead: After coming back to life, the pieces are very persistent.
McGoo threw open the door to get Robin outside, but before they could escape into the moonlit night, a Tasmanian Devil flurry of fur, muscles, claws, and fangs bounded into the factory, snarling and thrashing.
McGoo instinctively grabbed his other sidearm, the one loaded with silver bullets, and aimed at the vicious wolf-woman. But I saw the line of pearls that ringed the werewolf’s neck like a very expensive dog collar. “Don’t shoot, McGoo! It’s Miranda—Miranda Jekyll!”
The she-wolf hurled herself upon the bloated monstrosity that had been her husband. Jekyll twisted from side to side and swung at her, but Miranda sank her fangs into the rope-cable muscles of his neck. Her she-wolf body was covered with hair, made out of solid muscle, more sleek and attractive than her normal form.
Jekyll knocked his wife aside with an arm the size of a bent telephone pole and sent her sprawling across the concrete floor. She landed on all fours, and her paws skittered on the sealed surface. She just barely managed to keep herself from tumbling into the Compound Z–laced puddle.
Now we could add spousal abuse to her case against her husband.
Ignoring Miranda, the brute lurched toward my two friends like a poor man’s King Kong. Robin picked up one of the steel pipes from the scaffolding and brandished it to defend herself against the oncoming monster. “I have had a very rough night already!” She swung the pipe back and forth, but didn’t manage to look threatening.
I finally got to my feet and went after Jekyll with weaving footsteps. Armless and off balance, I must have looked like one of those clichéd Walking Dead zombies.
My severed arm crawled toward the door, working its way toward the monster. It was disorienting to try to move a part of my body from ten feet away, but the arm couldn’t wait for me to catch up. It had nearly reached him.
The chorus of howls outside grew louder—a whole pack of werewolves closing in.
Miranda bounded forward to join Robin and McGoo, her lips curled back, fangs bared. She plucked the metal pole out of Robin’s hands and faced Jekyll. The monster would tear them all to pieces in just a few seconds.
“Harvey!” I shouted. “For all your big talk, you’re just as unnatural as the rest of us!”
He turned his head to snarl at me. Jekyll wasn’t expecting my severed arm to grab onto his ankle with a grip like a ferocious poodle. He roared, looked down.
In that instant of distraction, Miranda swung the heavy steel pipe with all her lupine strength, like a golfer trying to make the longest drive on a championship course. She cracked him solidly between the legs. And regardless of how massive and muscular the Jekyll monstrosity was, he did not have testicles of steel.
Six bristling werewolves bounded through the door, letting out angry howls—Miranda’s friends from the full-moon party, I assumed. They loped forward, some walking on two legs, others reverting to a more animal form.
Preoccupied with his own agony, Jekyll didn’t even notice. His groan sounded significantly higher pitched than before. He bent over and seemed to fold down and shrink in upon himself. With a long, miserable whimper, he curled into a ball on the floor.