Werehunter (anthology)

herself at the patio door, pulling the Glock 19 from the holster on her hip, and thankful she’d loaded the silver-tipped bullets in the first clip.

Funny how everybody thought it couldn’t be real because it was plastic. . . .

“Andre—the next balcony!” she called over her shoulder, knowing the vampire could easily scramble over the concrete divider and come in through the next patio door, giving them a two-pronged angle of attack.

The scream hadn’t been what alerted her—simul­taneous with the scream had been the wrenching feeling in her gut that was the signal that someone had breached the fabric of the Otherworld in her presence. She didn’t know who, or what—but from the stream of panicked chiffon billowing towards the door at supersonic speed, it probably wasn’t nice, and it probably had a great deal to do with one of the party-goers.

Three amply-endowed females (one Belle, one Ravished and one Harem) had reached the door to the next room at the same moment, and jammed it, and rather than one of them pulling free, they all three kept shoving harder, shrieking at the tops of their lungs in tones their agents surely recognized.

You’d think their advances failed to pay out! Di kept the Glock in her hand, but sprinted for the door. She grabbed the nearest flailing arm (Harem), planted her foot in the midsection of her neighbor (Belle) and shoved and pulled at the same time. The clot of femi­nine hysteria came loose with a sound of ripping cloth; a crinoline parted company with its wearer. The three women tumbled through the door, giving Di a clear launching path into the next room. She took it, diving for the shelter of a huge wooden coffee table, rolling, and aiming for the door of the last room with the Glock. And her elbow hit someone.

“What are you doing here?” asked Harrison, and Di, simultaneously. Harrison cowered—no, had taken cover, there was a distinct difference—behind the sofa beside the coffee table, his own huge magnum aimed at the same doorway.

“My job,” they said—also simultaneously.

“What?” (Again in chorus).

“This is all a very amusing study in synchronicity,” said Andre, crouching just behind Harrison, bowler tipped and sword from his umbrella out and ready, “but I suggest you both pay attention to that most boorish party- crasher over there—”

Something very large occluded the light for a moment in the next room, then the lights went out, and Di distinctly heard the sound of the chandelier being torn from the ceiling and thrown against the wall. She winced.

There go my dues up again.

“I got a glimpse,” Andre continued. “It was very large, perhaps ten feet tall, and— cherie, looked like nothing so much as a rubber creature from a very bad movie. Except that I do not think it was rubber.”

At just that moment, there was a thrashing from the other room, and Valentine Vervain, long red hair liberally beslimed, minus nine-foot train and one of her sleeves, scrambled through the door and plastered herself against the wall, where she promptly passed out.

“Valentine?” Di murmured—and snapped her head towards Harrison when he moaned—“Oh no,” in a way that made her sure he knew something.

“Harrison!” she snapped. “Cough it up!”

There was a sound of things breaking in the other room, as if something was fumbling around in the dark, picking up whatever it encountered, and smashing it in frustration.

“Valentine—she said something about getting some of her ‘friends’ together tonight and ‘calling up her soul- mate’ so she could ‘show that ex of hers.’ I gather he appeared at the divorce hearing with a twenty-one-year-old blonde.” Harrison gulped. “I figured she was just blowing it off—I never thought she had any power—”

“You’d be amazed what anger will do,” Di replied grimly, keeping her eyes on the darkened doorway. “Sometimes it even transcends a total lack of talent. Put that together with the time of year—All Hallow’s E’en— Samhain—is tomorrow. The Wall Between the Worlds is especially thin, and power flows are heavy right now. That’s a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one.”

“And here comes M’sieur Soul-Mate,” said Andre, warningly.

What shambled in through the door was nothing that Di had ever heard of. It was, indeed, about ten feet tall. It was a very dark brown. It was covered with luxuriant brown hair—all over. Otherwise, it was nude. If there were any eyes, the hair hid them completely. It was built something along the lines of a powerful body-builder, taken to exaggerated lengths, and it drooled. It also stank, a combination of sulfur and musk so strong it would have brought tears to the eyes of a skunk.

“Wah-wen-ine!” it bawled, waving its arms around, as if it were blind. “Wah-wen-ine!”