A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [58]
All three werejaguars were approaching now. The mother and her young. Apparently, the family that ran drugs together, stayed together. The mother’s features shifted, fur covering her body, though she remained humanoid. Combining the best of both forms. Her sons simply drew their guns.
This time, Elena was faster. Her coat flew out behind her as she leapt, drawing a chrome-plated .45 and killing the first werejaguar before he could react. She put a bullet into the arm of the second, and his weapon dropped into the water. Undeterred, he charged, slamming into her with his full weight.
Elena rolled back, planted her feet in his gut, and flung him away. By the time he attacked again, she was ready. Her sword hissed through the air, and he fell into the river.
She spun, hurling the sword to catch the mother in the stomach even as she leapt.
“What are you?” the last werejaguar asked, sharp teeth distorting her words.
Elena walked toward her. “Bow down to him, for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his adversaries. He repays those who hate him and cleanses his people’s land. Deuteronomy, chapter thirty-two.”
She grabbed the hilt of her sword and planted a foot on the werejaguar’s chest. “Answer my questions, and I’ll be merciful.” Eduardo would like that. Much as he hated the darkness, he also hated suffering of any kind. She would do her best to make this quick.
JIANG SHI
Elizabeth A. Vaughan
My doorway was filled with a small army of angry bikers, dressed in leathers and tattoos. The one in front snarled at me, his fist still tight from pounding on my front door. “Lady, your van was found with our stolen hogs alongside I-75. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?”
Uh-oh.
Itty and Bitty, my two white Westies, stopped barking and smelled the biker’s boots, their little tails wagging like mad.
Now, normally, my pre- menopausal middle-aged response would have been to curse and slam the door in the biker’s faces, but it had been a rough couple of days, what with attacks by evil possums and ninja rats, trips to the ER, mysterious doctors who threw lightning, and one ancient Chinese sword-wielding mouse with a magical artifact who still hadn’t explained much of anything. So what the hell . . .
I shushed the dogs, opened the front door wide, gave the group a weary smile, and lied through my teeth. “I have no idea. Would you like some coffee?”
They all just looked at me, and the anger bled from their faces. One of the bigger ones, the bald one with the nose ring, said, “That would be real nice, ma’am.”
Ma’am. Swell. “Please,” I said. “Call me Kate.”
It took two pots of my special stash of Michigan Cherry coffee before they really calmed down. I just kept listening to their outrage, nodding, pouring fresh cups, and repeating my lie. “I have no idea what happened. Sugar?”
They’d thank me and tell me again how their hogs had been stolen from outside the honky tonk where they’d been hanging out. They’d found their bikes gone, and gotten the runaround from the cops and the impound lot where all the vehicles had been taken.
I think they’d have forgiven the thefts, but the bikes had taken the worst of it when the rats had attacked my minivan as I was driving home from the hospital. Bud, the one with the nose-ring, was especially upset, since his ride had been found in the ditch. “Some sumofabitch side-swiped it.” He mumbled into his coffee.
I made sympathetic noises and topped off his mug. In point of fact, I’d rammed the bike from behind with my van. The sparks had been very impressive as it slid across the expressway.
Not the time to offer that detail.
Tiny, who was not, leaned back and made my dining room chair creak in alarming ways. “The world is going to hell, ma’am. Plain and simple, just going to hell . . .”
There was a stirring under my collar at that statement. Wan, short for Wan Su Yi, the aforementioned ancient Chinese mouse, had been riding on my shoulder when they’d knocked. He’d taken cover