Fear Nothing

had gone to the light switch by the door. Now he cranked up the rheostat far enough to make me squint.

One of the little bastards was standing on a counter beside the cooktop. It had extracted the smallest of the knives from the wall rack, and before any of us could open fire, it threw the blade at Bobby.

I don’t know whether the troop had been busy learning simple military arts or whether the monkey was lucky. The knife tumbled through the air and sank into Bobby’s right shoulder.

He dropped the shotgun.

I fired two rounds at the knife thrower, and it pitched backward onto the cooktop burners, dead.

The remaining monkey might have once heard that old saw about discretion being the better part of valor, because he curled his tail up against his back and fled over the sink and out the window. I got two shots off, but both missed.

At the other window, with surprisingly steady nerves and nimble fingers, Sasha fumbled a speedloader from the dump pouch on her belt and slipped it into the.38. She twisted the speedloader, neatly filling all chambers at once, dropped it on the floor, and snapped the cylinder shut.

I wondered what school of broadcasting offered would-be disc jockeys courses on weaponry and grace under fire. Of all the people in Moonlight Bay, Sasha had been the sole one remaining who seemed genuinely to be only what she appeared to be. Now I suspected that she had a secret or two of her own.

She began squeezing off shots into the night once more. I don’t know if she had any targets in view or whether she was just laying down a suppressing fire to discourage whatever remained of the troop.

Ejecting the half-empty magazine from the Glock, slamming in a full one, I went to Bobby as he pulled the knife out of his shoulder. The blade appeared to have penetrated only an inch or two, but there was a spreading bloodstain on his shirt.

“How bad?” I asked.

“Damn!”

“Can you hold on?”

“This was my best shirt!”

Maybe he would be all right.

Toward the front of the house, Orson’s barking continued — but it was punctuated now with squeals of terror.

I tucked the Glock under my belt, against the small of my back, picked up Bobby’s shotgun, which was fully loaded, and ran toward the barking.

The lights were on but dimmed down in the living room, as we had left them. I dialed them up a little.

One of the big windows had been shattered. Hooting wind drove rain under the porch roof and into the living room.

Four screaming monkeys were perched on the backs of chairs and on the arms of sofas. When the lights brightened, they turned their heads toward me and hissed as one.

Bobby had estimated that the troop was composed of eight or ten individuals, but it was obviously a lot larger than that. I’d already seen twelve or fourteen, and in spite of the fact that they were more than half crazed with rage and hatred, I didn’t think they were so reckless — or stupid — that they would sacrifice most of their community in a single assault like this.

They’d been loose for two to three years. Plenty of time to breed.

Orson was on the floor, surrounded by this quartet of goblins, which now began to shriek at him again. He was turning worriedly in a circle, trying to watch all of them at once.

One of the troop was at such a distance and angle that I didn’t have to worry that any stray buckshot would catch the dog. Without hesitation, I blew away the creature on which I had a clear line of fire, and the resulting spray of buckshot and monkey guts would cost Bobby maybe five thousand bucks in redecorating costs.

Squealing, the remaining three intruders bounded from one piece of furniture to another, heading toward the windows. I brought down another one, but the third round in the shotgun only peppered a teak-paneled wall and cost Bobby another five or ten grand.

I pitched the shotgun aside, reached to the small of my back, drew the Glock from under my belt, started after the two monkeys that were fleeing through the broken window onto the front porch — and was nearly lifted off my feet when someone grabbed me from behind. A beefy arm swung around my throat, instantly choking off my air supply, and a hand seized the Glock, tearing it away from me.

The next thing I knew, I was off my feet, lifted and tossed as though I were a child. I crashed into a coffee table, which collapsed under me.

Flat on my back in the ruins of the furniture, I looked up and saw Carl Scorso looming over me, even more gigantic from this angle than he actually was. The bald head. The earring. Though I’d dialed up the lights, the room was still sufficiently shadowy that I could see the animal shine in his eyes.

He was the troop leader. I had no doubt about that. He was wearing athletic shoes and jeans and a flannel shirt, and there was a watch on his wrist, and if he were put in a police lineup with four gorillas, no one would have the least difficulty identifying him as the sole human being. Yet in spite of the clothes and the human form, he radiated the savage aura of something subhuman, not merely because of the eyeshine but because his features were twisted into an expression that mirrored no human emotion I could identify. Though clothed, he might as well have been naked; though clean-shaven from his neck to the crown of his head, he might as well have been as hairy as an ape. If he lived two lives, it was clear that he was more attuned to the one that he lived at night, with the troop, than to the one that he lived by day, among those who were not changelings like him.

He held the Glock at arm’s length, executioner style, aiming it at my face.

Orson flew at him, snarling, but Scorso was the quicker of the two. He landed a solid kick against the dog’s head, and Orson went down and stayed down, without even a yelp or a twitch of his legs.

My heart dropped like a stone in a well.

Scorso swung the Glock toward me again and fired a round into my face. Or that was how it seemed for an instant. But a split second before he pulled the trigger, Sasha shot him in the back from the far end of the room, and the crack I heard was the report of her Chiefs Special.

Scorso jerked from the impact of the slug, pulling the Glock off-target. The floor beside my head splintered as the bullet tore through it.

Wounded but less fazed than most of us would have been once shot in the back, Scorso swung around, pumping out rounds from the Glock as he turned.

Sasha dropped and rolled backward out of the room, and Scorso emptied the pistol at the place where she had stood. He kept trying to pull the trigger even after the magazine was empty.

I could see rich, dark blood spreading across the back of his flannel shirt.

Finally he threw down the Glock, turned toward me, and appeared to contemplate whether to stomp my face or to tear my eyes from my head, leaving me blinded and dying. Opting for neither pleasure, he headed toward the broken-out window through which the last two monkeys had escaped.

He was just stepping out of the house onto the porch when Sasha reappeared and, incredibly, pursued him.

I shouted at her to stop, but she looked so wild that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see that dreadful light in her eyes, too. She was across the living room and onto the front porch while I was still getting up from the splintered remains of the coffee table.

Outside, the Chiefs Special cracked, cracked again, and then a third time.

Although it seemed clear now that Sasha could take care of herself, I wanted to go after her and drag her back. Even if she finished Scorso, the night was probably home to more monkeys than even a first-rate disc jockey could handle — and the night was their domain, not hers.

A fourth shot boomed. A fifth.

I hesitated because Orson lay limp, so still that I couldn’t see his black flank rising and falling with his breathing. He was either dead or unconscious. If unconscious, he might need help quickly. He had been kicked in the head. Even if he was alive, there was the danger of brain damage.

I realized I was crying. I bit back my grief, blinked back my tears. As I always do.

Bobby was crossing the living room toward me, one hand clamped to the stab wound in his shoulder.

“Help Orson,” I said.

I refused to believe that nothing could help him now, because even to think such a terrible thing might