It was a mask.Obviously.But it was agoodmask.Realistic.The long brown fur looked real.The half-human features weren’t rubbery.The eyes had screened fabric in them so that it looked like a wolf’s eyes were staring back at you, and you couldn’t see the person behind them.
Shoulders hunched, the man turned back toward the house as though about to apologize or complain—respond in some way to the shove that had propelled him outside.And then he saw Jem.
Jem moved first.He shoved Tean backward, along the side of the house.Then he turned toward the wolfman.
A burst of speed carried him to the patio, across it, and within striking distance while the wolfman was still taking him in.Jem didn’t even bother with the paracord.He dropped down, set his shoulder, and hit the man hard enough to send him flying into one of the chairs.Metal screeched.The man and the chair spun across the patio with a clatter.The fall punched the air out of the man’s lungs, and then, with nothing left in his lungs, he tried to groan.
“What the—”
The voice came from behind Jem.He spun.Another wolfman.The same clothes, but nicer.A belt buckle the size of a dinner plate.And a knife dripping blood, held low at his side.
Jem lunged.He whipped the length of paracord, and the hex nut became a gray smear in the bright October day.The man reacted instinctively, bringing up his hand to ward off the blow.The hex nut connected with a loud crack.Or maybe it was the sound of bones snapping.The man screamed and fell back.The knife clattered to the floor.
Kicking off hard from the patio, Jem launched himself through the doorway.The second wolfman was still stumbling back.Still screaming.Jem caught a glimpse of a kitchen.Behind the wolfman, a dark rectangle opened—stairs.Jem drove his shoulder into the second wolfman.Muscle and cartilage compressed against bone.The wolfman’s feet left the floor, and he hurtled into the darkness of the stairwell.A moment later came the thud of impact from below.
“What the fuck?”a man shouted.
Jem turned.
The kitchen was small, with parquet-print linoleum that was scuffed gray in places, white cabinets that still had dried paint drips on them, and a particle-board counter that had bubbled up near the sink.The curtains in the window, white printed with watermelons, were yellow from grease and sun.A brown Masonite table with metal banding took up the middle of the room, with matching brown chairs.On the opposite side of the table was another wolfman, holding another bloody knife.
The wolfman stepped forward.
Jem kicked the Masonite table.He was so hyped up, it felt like it weighed nothing, and it skittered across the worn linoleum.The wolfman tried to dodge, but the table hit him in the thigh, and he lost his balance and almost went down.It was impossible to read the man’s face behind the mask, but the wolfman’s shoulders tensed, and he hobbled another step back, favoring the leg the table had hit.
“That’s right,” Jem said as he slipped one arm out of his jacket.He let it slide down his other arm and flipped the jacket up, and then up again, so that it wrapped around his arm in an improvised shield.“Come the fuck on!”
The third wolfman turned to run.
Jem shot after him.The wolfman paused long enough to kick one of the chairs into Jem’s path, but Jem hurdled it without breaking stride.Out of the kitchen, into a tiny living room with a sofa and loveseat in matching orange-and-brown plaid, a lamp with a pleated shade, and a TV set the size of a small car.
The wolfman was running toward the front door, but he must have realized that he wasn’t going to beat Jem because he spun to face him.The knife slashed the air.Jem closed in.The knife slashed again, and this time, Jem turned it aside with the jacket wrapped around his arm.He swung the paracord, the hex nut blurring—
And the wolfman caught the cord with his free hand.The hex nut lost its momentum and bounced harmlessly off his arm.
For a moment, they stared at each other.
The wolfman was panting.
Jem’s own breaths came deep and harsh.
Then he grinned.
He yanked on the paracord, pulling the wolfman off balance and toward him.And he head-butted the werewolf in the face.
35
Tean stumbled backward.Jem’s shove had caught him off balance, and he almost fell.As he was still catching himself, a shout came from around the side of the house, then the screech of metal, a thud, a scream.
When he cleared the corner of the house, Jem was already moving toward a sliding glass door, the paracord whipping through the air.At the far end of a small patio, an old-fashioned chair lay on its side, and a man was tangled with it.The man wore a wolf mask, like something from Halloween.The fall had obviously stunned him, but he was starting to stir.
A scream came from the house, and a moment later, a crashing thud.
Tean had a glimpse of Jem’s back, framed in the doorway, and then Jem turned left and disappeared.
The man on the ground was trying to get his leg free, propping himself up on one elbow.
Tean jogged over to him.The wolf’s head looked up at him.The snout was bent to one side from the fall, and blood—what Tean suspected wasrealblood—mottled the latex.
