Seeing Carol on some sort of altar, apparently about to be sacrificed, galvanized me into action - action that probably seemed insane, and probably was, but it was the best I could think of at the moment - I demanded all nine figures in the room surrender as I was placing them under arrest.
Part of this was due to cop training, part due to desperation and part due to the fact that, over the sounds of the ritual, I had heard sirens in the distance. Maybe there was a fire nearby, or maybe there was a car chase through downtown that was heading into the nicer areas on the outskirts. Or maybe my brief moment of optimism would be justified and that was my partner rushing in with reinforcements.
I simply did not have time to wait, so I bellowed out “Everyone, hands in the air, you are all under arrest. Ten heads turned to face me. One of them, a man I had known as Domenic Mercotti for some time now, snarled and said, “I will deal with this fool.”
Price resumed his chanting but the odd, gurgling voice spoke over him: “Remember, you had too few men and she spilled your blood too early for this to work last night!”
Then I heard Mauricio’s voice: “Be careful - it looks like the idiot opened the Witch Hunter’s Chest!”
Again, every face in the room that had been looking elsewhere glanced at me. I was starting to feel popular. That or like I had a bit of spinach in my teeth.
As Domenic moved towards me, I got to witness his change again - he got taller, hairier, bat wings sprouted from his back, his head did the bat-wolf thing.
“One question first, Dom,” I said, as nonchalantly (OK I had to look that one up) as I could. “Do I have a piece of spinach stuck between my teeth?”
In a deep voice as monstrous and inhuman he had become, the thing that had been Domenic Mercotti bellowed: “Zoligahr grows tired of your constant prattling little man. I will shut that mouth, permanently.”
It was at that moment that I remembered that I was still holding the gun I had taken from Vito. I quickly flicked the safety off and fired two shots into the charging monster. One hit it in the chest, the other struck an arm and ricocheted off the bone, embedding itself in a wall. The second wound closed up almost instantly. The first one made a nice hole, gave me a brief glimpse of very dark blood and what might have been an internal organ, and then began to shrink. It was almost gone in the space of a second, and then the bullet, covered in black or very dark red blood, popped out with a squishing sound barely audible over the chanting.and plunked to the floor. He was close enough to swipe at me with a claw, and bellowed in my face. The roar was loud and painful, the breath even worse.
“Zolly, has anyone ever told you about breath mints? I should have a few in my pocket,” I said, trying to be helpful, as always.
It roared even closer to me this time - a roar clearly meant to distract me as it sprouted tentacles from each arm - a neat trick, I must admit - and proceeded to wrap them around me as it “spoke”: “Zoh - Lih - Gar! Not ‘Zolly’!” It roared in my face.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
It had one leg bound and was trying to pin one arm against my body - the other was too busy swinging at it to be caught so easily. The flaming glove hit it on the side of the face, and burned an imprint of my fist into the gray fur.
It roared wordlessly this time, and one tentacle tried to pull me one way while the other pulled the opposite direction and I wound up slamming into the ground.
That would’ve hurt badly, probably ending the fight then and there, except I had already turned the dial on the belt as far as it would go on the “turn to stone” side. I did more damage to the concrete than was done to me, but the impact still hurt, and the follow-up attack, as Zoligahr tried to jump on top of me and rend me with both hand and leg claws, probably would have killed me, despite his apparent boss’s warnings, if I hadn’t immediately rolled to the side and thrust in its general direction with a flaming fist. As before, the fire leapt from my hand and shot at the monster. This time there seemed to be quite a bit more of the flame and it engulfed the creature’s left leg from knee to waist. The tentacle on the left arm withdrew as the hand closest to it grew larger and more flipper-like and began parting out the flames.
I took the opportunity to try one of the martial arts moves I had been taught at the academy, and, for the first time ever, managed to pull off a successful “instant stand” - pretty sure it didn’t look as cool or fluid as in the movies (or even what my instructors did), but I was impressed. I pulled back to deliver a punch to Zoligahr when I suddenly felt something attach to my arm. I looked down and saw the wolf-thing had joined the fray and had my elbow in its smoldering jaws. “Fighting fire with fire, eh?” I asked it. It just growled and continued trying to bite and burn through my arm, but as it was pretty much stone by now, the dumb doggie was just scratching it and ruining my shirt.
“Bad doggie!” I yelled and bapped it on the nose with my open palm. It yelped and let go. Before I could think of a follow-up move, what felt like six hundred pounds of furry muscle slammed into me and slid me back almost ten feet to impact against a wall. Domenic had been a fairly successful linebacker in high school, and apparently this thing retained some of his skills; that coupled with its insane strength meant I felt that blow, and it almost knocked the wind out of me. It did knock me off balance, and again I crashed to the ground after bouncing off the wall. This time I tried the instant stand thing but just kind of flopped like a fish. I did manage to roll off to the side as Zoligahr tried to smash me into the ground with a double fisted strike.
Fighting him up close was getting me nowhere, and the only thing that seemed to hurt him was fire - the leg still showed some blistering, and the fur was still gone, while the fur where I had punched it was still singed. Then I saw the doggie thing charging at me, flames coming out of its mouth and nostrils, and a thought that I knew I was going to later hate myself for started forming in my head…
Dredging up decades old memories of my once promising career as a shortstop, I rolled away, and dove for the dog, landing, as I had hoped but honestly not really expected (yeah, my career had not really been all that promising) very close to the canine’s hindquarters, then surged to my feet and grabbed the beast by his haunches. Using his forward momentum plus my own increased strength, I began spinning like a shot putter. Zolly gamely chose to charge at me and suddenly found roughly a hundred pounds of flaming dog slamming into his chest at high velocity.
It was hard to tell which scream was louder - the dog thing's as it breathed its last, Zoligahr's as his thick fur ignited at the impact, Zolly's next scream as he slammed against the wall, apparently pulverizing every bone in his body, mine, as I discovered that only the gauntlets were fireproof and that I had to suddenly remember how to “stop, drop, and roll” myself…
Or the joint scream of Morgan Price and his gurgling echo of “NOOOOO! Not again!”