I hoped. “I’m right behind you,” I said, and Will flicked me a smile.
“That’s what I like to hear.” Raising his voice from Will to Will Fagin, ATF, he called down the hall, “Federal agent! Whoever’s up here, show yourself!”
The hallway had sloped ceilings, like so many of the old houses in Nocturne City, and there were three doors—one on each side and one dead ahead.
The one in front of us was where all the snarling was coming from.
“Help me!” a woman’s voice screamed. “I’m in the master bedroom!”
“That’s Petra,” I said, and Will sprinted ahead, hitting the bedroom door with his shoulder.
We both pulled up short at the scene in the bedroom. Nathaniel Dubois lay facedown, a pool of blood big enough to fill a lake still spreading from under his throat. Dark blood. Arterial blood. The spray was all over the white linens on the king-sized bed, the wall above it and his wife, who cowered in the corner holding a Colt .45 Army pistol on a hunched, dirty, snarling customer that I took to be Belikov’s hitwere.
I didn’t need to check Nathaniel’s pulse to know that he had shuffled loose the mortal coil, so I carefully stepped over his body and drew a bead on the creature.
“Get the fuck away from her.”
The were turned on me, flat nostrils flaring. His face was deformed, half in and half out of the phase, hirsute in all the wrong places, his eyes pupiless and gold. He looked like Lon Chaney in The Wolf Man, as viewed through the filter of a royally bad acid trip.
“Mine,” he snarled, and lashed out at Petra, who screeched and struck at him with the gun.
“Hold still!” Will shouted, tightening his firing stance. “Back away from her!”
“He killed Nate,” Petra sobbed. “Nate tried to protect me and that bastard just tore his throat out…”
“Petra, it’s going to be okay,” I said. “I promise you.”
The assassin snarled, spittle hanging from his lower lip, and he turned and gave me the smile that I imagine Death gives to you just before your number is up. It was a chilling, animal expression, a grimace of challenge.
“Will…” I said, and that was all I got out before the creature went for Petra’s throat.
His lunge knocked her pistol upward and it went off with the big boom that Colts give, raining plaster and asbestos insulation down on Petra and her attacker. She let out a scream, thrashing beneath him, kicking and scratching like only someone staring their own grisly murder in the face can do.
“I don’t have a shot!” Will snapped. “I’ll hit her.”
“Same here,” I said, jamming his pistol into my waistband. Will rotated his gaze a fraction toward me.
“Luna, don’t do it.”
Really, all of it happened inside five seconds. The creature reared back to tear out Petra’s throat, I dropped my firing stance and launched myself at him, catching him high in the chest like a football tackle, tearing him off Petra with my weight, sending the both of us backward.
The big picture window over the Duboises’ front porch came up too fast and we fell through it. I felt glass tug at my skin, and the creature and I hit the porch roof with a bone-shaking thud.
He was on top of me, howling, snapping, and I jammed both feet into his gut and heaved with all of my strength. The creature went over my head, scrabbling for purchase, and fell from the roof with a yelp.
I rolled over in time to see him pick himself up from the Duboises’ lawn and take off running.
“Hex it,” I muttered, looking at the twelve-foot drop. “Well, you’ve had worse,” I said, before I launched myself after him. If he got away, the only evidence of Grigorii Belikov’s bioengineering program went with him. So not happening on my watch.
Tires squealed and I saw a flash of green metal and chrome before the creature went airborne and crashed down in the street, one leg twisted at an improbable angle.
He struggled up almost immediately, the bone knitting and twisting under the skin before my eyes, like his body was alive, possessed of its own primitive need to hunt and kill.
The driver of the car that hit him jumped out, sweaty, his baby blue tie askew. “Don’t you move, asshole!” the driver shouted ineffectually, leveling a Glock.
“Bryson!” I shouted, recognizing my stocky detective and his green Taurus.
“Wilder? ” he cried. “Shit. What the fuck is going on here?”
The creature was up now, and he rotated toward Bryson like an alcoholic hones in on an open bar.
“David! ” I screamed, drawing my own gun. “Get down!”
Bryson ducked behind his car door as the thing started for him at a dead run, and I raised my pistol.
The were grabbed the car door, yanking it half off its hinges, one hand reaching for Bryson through the shattered window and leaving a long line of claw marks in David’s blocky forearm.
I squeezed the trigger. One-two-three, pop-pop-pop. No hesitation, no wavering, three shots into the center mass, just like they teach you at the academy. I’m not too modest to say that I dropped the creature like a sack of cement.
He fell in the street, boneless, the exit wounds in his back echoes of the flowers on the Duboises’ porch.
Bryson shakily pulled himself upright. “Jesus Christ in a motorboat, Wilder,” he said. “Jesus Christ. ”
“I know,” I said. “I know, but he’s dead now. We’ll get your arm looked at.”
“No, not that, ” Bryson said. “Who the fuck is going to pay for my gods-damned car? ”
“David…” I said, and then shook my head. “Put in a reimbursement request to the department. You did total it in the line of duty.”
Will came out of the house leading Petra, who was wrapped in his suit jacket. She was sobbing, clinging to Will like he was the life preserver and she was Kate Winslet in Titanic.
“David, secure the scene,” I said. “I
