gill man to bipedal prune in less than five seconds.'
The She Creature snarled and started to loosen her grip on Gnasher, clearly tempted to let him go so she would be free to attack me.
'Don't listen to him, Marla,' Rondo warned. 'He's just trying to goad you into making a stupid move.'
The She Creature looked like she was still considering having a go at me, but in the end she tightened her grip on the verman once more.
Rondo gave me a triumphant grin and I shrugged.
'Can't blame a guy for trying. So… what's next? She's going to hold Gnasher while you and I fight? Do you really think that will help? I managed to kick your ass all by myself the last time we met and I only needed a little sneezing powder to do it. You're not nearly as tough as you think you are.'
Rondo kept grinning, but his gaze turned deadly cold.
'Much as I hate to admit it, I agree. Which is why I've brought along another former friend of yours.'
A crowd of prisoners had gathered as we talked, all of them looking excited at the prospect of witnessing some prison yard mayhem. But now they began whispering among themselves and looking back nervously over their shoulders. More than a few moved off, as if they decided they'd be better off watching the proceedings from a distance. A moment later I found out why when a husky man with shaggy brown hair came walking toward us. He wore a loose tan shirt and matching pants, but no shoes. His black eyebrows were just as thick as the hair on his head and they met in the middle, a sure sign that he was a lyke. But I already knew that because I'd encountered this shapeshifter before. I didn't know what his given name was, but I was all too familiar with his street name.
Lycanthropus Rex.
TEN
'Don't take this the wrong way, Rex, but I sincerely hoped I'd never see your butt ugly face again.'
'I bet,' Rex growled.
For reasons that were still unclear to me about a year earlier Lycanthropus Rex had gone on a rampage in the Sprawl one night when I happened to be working on a separate case. I was in the right place at the right time (or maybe wrong place, wrong time – take your pick) to stop him. When the dust settled, seventeen people were dead, thirty-two were injured and Papa Chatha had to reattach all four of my limbs. Rex had been taken away by the Sentinels and cast down into Tenebrus.
Rex walked up to join Rondo, and while I was gratified to see the lyke also kept his distance from me, the feeling was tempered by the knowledge of how much firepower he packed. I'd been lucky as hell during our last encounter and even then I'd barely defeated him. I didn't think much of my chances to win a rematch, let alone survive it.
'I never met Rondo before today,' Rex said, 'but he and I have something in common. We've both spent every minute since we were thrown into this shithole dreaming about someday getting a chance to tear you to fucking pieces. And you know something, zombie? That day's today.' He grinned, displaying a mouthful of sharp canine teeth. 'Who says dreams don't come true?'
Rondo began to step away from Rex then and I knew what was coming. Lycanthropus Rex was going to show his fellow inmates how he'd come by his name. A lyke's transformation from human to wild form is usually a rapid one, but with Rex it took a bit longer, I think because he got off on watching people's reactions when he changed. And I had to admit, the man put on a hell of a show.
There were two separate aspects to his change. First came the standard shift from humanoid to animalistic features and in Rex's case that animal was a wolf. Thick tufts of brown fur sprang forth from his skin, his fingernails darkened and lengthened into ebon claws, his ears became pointed and moved farther up on his skull and his mouth and nose blended into a canine snout. His already intimidating teeth became longer and razor sharp and his eyes – while still blazing with human intelligence – became a feral yellow. But as impressive as that change was, the second part of the transformation was what really made you want to drop a load in your shorts.
Rex began to grow. And when I say grow, I don't just mean Rex put on a few dozen extra pounds of monster muscle and another foot or two of scary height. This son of a bitch grew. He stood about 5'5' in human form but as he assumed werewolf shape he increased in size to seven feet tall, eight, nine, ten – and he kept on growing. His clothes had been loose on him when he'd started changing, but they soon grew tight, then split at the seams and fell away to become nothing more than torn rags lying on the ground.
Everyone in the vicinity was watching the spectacle of Lycanthropus Rex's transformation – everyone, that is, except Rondo. He was watching me and grinning like it was Christmas morning and Santa Claus had brought him a pair of gold-plated hand exercisers.
'You liking this, Richter?' he asked, grinning. 'Because I'm loving it!'
Fifteen feet… twenty… twenty-five… and Rex's growth showed no signs of stopping.
One of the things about monsters is that they're so used to being well, monstrous. Like animals facing off in the wild, they often seek to intimidate one another with displays of size, strength and ferocity before attacking, partly because – like Rex – they enjoyed scaring their victims first. And if, also like Rex, you can scare other monsters… well, it just doesn't get any better than that. So while Rex was busy frightening the piss out of everyone within eyeshot, I had a few precious moments in which to act.
First I checked my pants pockets to see if I was carrying anything that might prove useful in combating a gargantuan wolfman. I usually carry all my best weapons in my suit jacket, though, and what I had left was even less deadly than the sneezing powder I'd used against Rondo. And even if the Sentinel hadn't taken my jacket and gun from me back at the Nightspire none of my weapons would've had much effect on Lycanthropus Rex. My 9mm was loaded with silver bullets that had been dipped in a solution of holy water and garlic along with a few other herbs and chemicals given to me by Papa Chatha that make them effective on just about any creature I might encounter in Nekropolis. The silver in my bullets might've killed Rex when he was normal sized, but now… But I didn't have my gun, so the matter was academic. What I needed was a weapon powerful enough to slay even a giant werewolf, preferably one I could get my hands on in the next several moments.
Something like Gnasher's dire blade.
I glanced at the verman and the She Creature who still held him in a tight grip. I couldn't just run over and try to grab hold of the dire blade, though. For one thing I didn't know where Gnasher kept it. In his jacket, I assumed, but since his pockets seemed bottomless, it was possible there were other enchantments on his frock coat that would prevent anyone else form locating the blade, let alone taking it off his person. But that wasn't what made me hesitate. I may be unique among Nekropolis's zombies, but there's one thing I share with my dead brothers and sisters: I'm slow. If I made a go for Gnasher's blade I'd move so slowly that both Rondo and the She Creature would guess what I was up to and one or both of them would stop me. If I wanted a chance at Gnasher's dire blade I'd have to use my head. Good thing Victor Baron had put it back on for me.
'You know, Rondo, you didn't have to go to all this trouble,' I said. 'If you want to destroy me, all you have to do is walk on over and give me a close-up look at your face. The shock would be so intense that I'd probably just collapse into a pile of dust on the spot.'
Rondo's grin gave way to a truly impressive scowl.
'Laugh it up, Richter,' he snarled. 'That's the last joke you're ever going to make.'
'No it's not. This is: when you were born, you were so ugly the doctor couldn't tell which end was your ass, so he slapped both ends just to make sure.'
Rondo roared with fury and came racing toward me, ham-hands outstretched and ready to cause some serious damage.
I had to time this just right. When Rondo was almost upon me I sidestepped and angled my body so that instead of grabbing me his right hand struck me a glancing blow on the shoulder. I didn't feel the blow, of course, and I allowed the impact to spin me around, and I stumbled toward Gnasher and the She Creature, trying my best to make it look like an accident. As ungainly as I was I didn't have to try very hard.
The verman guessed what I was up to, for as I collided with him, he whispered, 'Inside front pocket,' and spoke a couple words in a language I was unfamiliar with. Some sort of mystic phrase I figured, designed to
