The corpse flopped to the floor beside Courtney, and she saw that Bill had twisted so hard that the head was turned around backward, the flesh ripped in a long gash. He had nearly torn the monster's head off.
Courtney's stomach convulsed and bile rose in her throat. Only the terror of the moment, the fact that it was not over, kept her from throwing up.
Chest heaving with deep, snarling breaths, Bill stood over the other. The monster reached behind his back and drew his hand forth again, smeared with his own blood.
He glared at Bill with bright green eyes. "Didn't think you still had the wild in you. Never figured you to be so nasty . . . so fast . . ."
"I know you," Bill growled. "Dubrowski."
The injured Prowler stood a little straighter. "It was a long time ago, Cantwell. You were a coward even then."
"Is that what you call it?" Bill mused.
He stood a little straighter, then, and for the first time, Courtney could see some of the man in the monster. Then it was gone, subsumed within the Prowler, the savage beast.
Bill's claws flashed down again. The injured Prowler blocked one of Bill's arms, but missed the other, and a quartet of deep furrows was torn into his chest.
Again the beast roared.
Bill grabbed hold of Dubrowski with both hands and slammed him against the wall hard enough to knock a framed print off its hook. The frame hit the ground and glass shattered. The injured beast snapped at Bill, jaws clamped around his wrist, fangs digging into flesh.
With a hiss of pain, Bill slashed the Prowler's face.
This time Dubrowski did not roar.
He shrieked.
Courtney winced at the horrible brutality of it and felt tears begin to brim at the corners of her eyes.
"Jasmine sent you," Bill snapped at the monster who was bleeding all over the floor. "Where is she?"
The other Prowler laughed, a sound almost like choking. Bill rammed him against the wall again, and a window cracked with the impact.
"Where?" Bill roared.
No more laughing. The Prowler wiped blood from his face and glared balefully at Bill, not even glancing at Courtney, who lay sprawled on the floor only half a dozen feet away.
"We haven't seen Jasmine since the night your little friends killed Tanzer, traitor. She ran. Only Braun and I were faithful enough to stay behind, to wait for a chance to end the lives of the ones who killed the leader of our pack."
Dubrowski sneered. "The word from the other packs is that Jasmine has been running since then, trying to find a place to rest, to rebuild. Last I heard she was headed to the sanctuary in Vermont to rest up before coming back for you."
"And you were thinking to beat her to it, establish primacy over the pack," Bill said, a clear spark of understanding in his eyes.
Courtney got it now. They wanted to lead the pack. This Dubrowski did. And they would have bought themselves that leadership with the blood of the people responsible for Tanzer's death.
She shuddered.
Then something else occurred to her. The sanctuary in Vermont.
"Bill? Vermont?" she said quietly.
He stiffened, black lips curling back from his fangs, and leaned in toward Dubrowski. "Where is this sanctuary in Vermont? What town?"
"No town. It's in the mountains," Dubrowski replied, again wiping at the blood on his face. "As though I'd tell you the name of the town anyway."
Courtney glared at him. She pulled herself up to a seated position, leaning on the desk and beginning to rise.
"Buckton," she said.
Dubrowski twitched, unable to hide his surprise at the mention of the town's name.
"Damn it!" Bill roared.
The injured Prowler took that moment of distraction as an opportunity to break Bill's grasp and lunge for his throat. With a snarl, Bill slapped his hands away as though his opponent were beneath notice. He loomed over Dubrowski, grabbed the bleeding creature by the human clothes he still wore, and took two strides before propelling Dubrowski through the half-open window, shattering the glass.
The monster fell thirty feet to the pavement in the alley below in a shower of glass. When Courtney had managed to retrieve her cane, she moved around the fallen fan - which the Prowlers had pushed in to gain entry - and went to the window to glance down at the broken body below.
Bill had been here to protect her. But Jack and Molly were on their own. She turned around to find that Bill had withdrawn inside the human disguise within which he lived most of his life. He stood naked before her, dressed in an illusion of vulnerability that she doubted she would ever truly believe again. How that would impact her feelings for him, she had no idea.
"Call Detective Castillo," she said quickly. "He'll get rid of these bodies quietly. I'm going to call Jack and warn him."
"I'll leave for Vermont as soon I board this window up," Bill told her. "I think you're safe now."
"Safe as I'll ever be."
The moon hung low, just above the mountains, peeking in on them around every curve in the road. It was already nine-thirty and Jack was glad finally to be doing something he felt was constructive. He and Molly had spent the afternoon at the movie theater, then had a late dinner at the Jukebox. Though he knew that the Prowlers were unlikely to move on the library until long after dark - if they did so at all - and it would not have been practical for them to have come to the library earlier, the hours had passed slowly for him.
The headlights picked out a narrow road on the left and a wide blue sign with the words Buckton Regional High School. The library was
