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I chewed my bottom lip, thinking about it. It would have been better to wait for Dean and the others to catch up, but if we did, what then? I turned my attention to the hovel before me, studying it intently. I couldn’t hear the tread of heavy male boots inside or make out a man’s scent over the regular forest smells. Hmm, maybe Arnie wasn’t there? If we were lucky, we could get in and get out with no one being the wiser.But the longer we waited here, the more we jeopardized that potential opportunity.
“We split up,” I decided. “We’ll circle the house and try to find a back way in. The front door is probably rigged.”
“Shotgun,” Slim Jim said with a knowing nod. “Bit o’ wire an’ some know-how an’ you can make a feckin’ fine deterrent if an enemy tries to kick the feckin’ door in. It’s what I’d do if I was in Arnie’s place. What most o’ us’d do.”
Which was why I really hated being the main monster wrangler for this group of nutty hillbillies. I listened to them MacGyver elaborate traps every damn day, and it was rotting my brain. If Sicily weren’t so cozy with the crew and determined to be their researcher, I’d have opted out of it a long time ago. Then again, if I hadn’t been here, there was no telling if the boys could have found Jeanie and her family in time or stopped the place from blowing sky high even if they had.
“Slim, you take the left an’ I’ll take the right,” I said. “If you don’t find a way in, circle back around an’ wait here for the others.”
Slim Jim raised a bushy brow at me. “An’ what’ll you be doin’, Miss Twila? Should we both be meetin’ back here?”
I gave him a smile. A verysharpsmile as my monster half rose to the fore. My posture shifted noticeably from observer to predator. He shuddered.
“If there isn’t an entrance, I’ll make one,” I said. “Now let’s get goin’ before Arnie comes back an’ tries to murder us all.”
He didn’t argue with me, thank the lord. We started moving at the same time, a motion born of long months of practice. Somehow, we’d managed to almost become a sort of military unit working in tandem.
Well, mostly. There were still the occasional hiccups. Like when one of my teammates shot me in the ass.
Slim Jim kept his rifle slung loosely at his side, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. I hadn’t bothered bringing one of mine. As Dean said, I was the toughest thing around. Unless Arnie was another hellhound, I was certain I could take him. And we knew for sure hewasn’ta hellhound in any case.
The house shifted and moaned in the evening air. The closer I got, the worse the place looked. Time and the elements had chipped almost every speck of paint off the siding, and what was left was so faded, I couldn’t have put my finger on what color it was. The stairs leading up to the front door had caved in, leaving only a pile of rotting wood. There were termite holes and mold everywhere where the wood wasn’t choked out by lichen. It was a miracle this place hadn’t come down around Jeanie and the kids’ ears already. I was going to have to rethink my plan to She-Hulk my way inside. The shack probably wasn’t structurally sound enough to scale to get to the solitary unboarded window at the top, let alone bust in at the ground floor.
“Found a tool shed,” Slim Jim called as loudly as he dared. “Gonna see if I can find a ladder to get to that feckin’ window.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. So, I wasn’t the only one concerned about climbing up to the second floor. A ladder would still be risky, but it would jostle the building less than if I tried to scale the structure like a mountain using only the handholds I could dig out for myself.
“I’ll get it, Slim. Why don’t you go and—”
I cut off abruptly when I heard Slim Jim let out a high-pitched chitter, not unlike the muskrat he so resembled. Something had to be very wrong to make him make a sound like that. On the whole, most of us were still self-conscious about our non-human halves. We tried to stick to human norms whenever possible. Occasionally, we’d slip up and I’d hiss at someone when I got angry, and Bud almost always started barking when he got really excited or his tail would start wagging. It was embarrassing as hell, but the point was: Slim Jim wouldn’t have made that sound unless he’d gotten surprised or hurt.
I whirled around and started loping in the direction of the sound. He couldn’t be far away, I just had to—
The sound cut off only a moment later, followed by an ominous clang. The silence afterward was total and more eerie than any howl or shriek ever could have been. Because it wasn’t normal. Even the rustle of the trees and the moan of the house settling were absent as I tried to zero in on the last place I’d seen Slim. By the time I rounded the corner, my heart was already pounding and all sorts of awful questions were plaguing my overwrought mind.
Was he hurt? Dead? How could Arnie have gotten the drop on him? Slim Jim was fast, and he knew how to fight. Yes, he was getting on in years but that was secondary now that we had our new powers. I was actually more energetic than I was in my teenager years—at least, if you caught me at night. The change had shaved decades off our monster crew, leaving them as spry as your average thirty-year-old, even if half of them were in their seventies.
I crouched low, hiding myself in the sea of bluestem, a metaphorical lioness in the grass. I moved carefully, trying not to stir the stuff just in case Arnie was waiting for me nearby. I’d even thought I’d managed it until I heard the distinct sound of the hammer of a gun being thumbed back as a steady male voice spoke.
Anunfamiliarvoice.
That realization sapped my hope. I knew who had to be behind me.
“Stand up, Miss,” Arnie said in a smooth, almost gentlemanly tone that was in complete contrast to his actions. “Or I’m gonna have to pull the trigger, and no one wants that mess.”
I stood.
There was a chance I could lunge at him and take him out at the knees before he could stop me, but it wasn’t a guarantee I’d survive. He could keep his grip on the gun and loose a shot. Worse, that shot could go wide and hit Slim Jim. Speaking of, I didn’t know what Arnie had done to Slim. Either way, if Slim wasn’t dead already, a shot from a 9mm would do the trick. I’d been around enough hillbillies to know what a revolver sounded like. Guns were a precious commodity in Damnation County now that half the population had gone feral. I wasn’t sure if being gutshot would kill me, but I was fairly sure I wouldn’t survive a head wound.
“Can I turn around?” I asked and was proud of myself when my voice didn’t shake.
“Hands behind your head,” Arnie ordered. “An’ don’t make no sudden moves. Like I said, I’d rather not kill a lady.”
“But you’d kill Slim Jim and threaten to kill Jeanie?” I asked, lacing my fingers behind my head. I’d been arrested once as a teenager for underage drinking, so I was pretty sure I knew what he wanted me to do.
“The muskrat is still alive. I just knocked him out an’ stashed him in the tool shed. Hostages are more valuable than corpses.”
I gritted my teeth. Yes, Arnie was smart. A dumbass would probably have put the barrel between Slim’s eyes and pulled the trigger, damn the consequences. But Arnie knew I wouldn’t do something stupid with lives in the balance.
