Deacon came down the stairs and into the pool room area with Metallica’s “Disposable Heroes” replaying in his head. He unconsciously twirled the little necklace amulet that Captain Buttery-Cheeks had given him for luck. He would need it.

Several sets of eyes turned to him and then went wide with surprise and anger when they recognized him from the night before. He narrowed his own eyes as he looked around the room contemptuously and then stuck his thumbs through the belt loops in his jeans. The pair of wannabe mafioso chumps were back in their corner he’d seen them in the previous night, and he recognized several of the other gang members as well. They were noticeably light about six members though, victims of a bear attack in downtown Chicago.

“Hey, Deathbitch.” Deacon nodded to the big older biker who had taunted him last night. The man returned an icy stare and a mean grumble.

Deacon casually walked over to the wall and pulled a pool cue down from a rack.

“Anyone wanna play a game with me? I got next.” His eyes fixed on the Italians in the corner.

“You got a lot of nerve comin’ back in here motherfucker.” The taller of the two mafioso spoke coldly. “You come in here disrespecting us? Remember what happened last night?”

“Yeah. I do.” Deacon frowned and looked around for effect. “You seem to be missing like six pussies huh?”

The bikers and the Vicelords formed ranks in between the obviously crazy or suicidal long haired cab driver and a brief stare down ensued.

“Oh wait, I almost forgot.” Deacon snapped his fingers together as several sets of footsteps sounded quickly coming down the flight of stairs. “This time I brought some friends.”

Carlos, Mario and Nate all closed ranks behind him. The gang members still outnumbered the four of them by a good margin, but all of them seemed to be a little in awe of the fact that the young man did not seem to barely have a scratch on him after the savage beatdown he had received just the night before. It seemed impossible. In fact, the few cuts and bruises he did wear were now from the fight with the G-men at Zoe’s hotel room and not from the gangsters.

At that moment Brian DiMarco stood up and smashed a beer bottle on the back of one of the gang members’ heads. Jermaul and Ian had also already been down in the basement for some time playing pool on a vacant table and together with Brian DiMarco, they charged the group from behind. Deacon flashed a cocky half-smile before swinging his pool cue with the three behind him surging forward to get in on the action.

The fight was on immediately and the basement was uprooted with chaos. Deacon’s crew was outnumbered and facing truly dangerous criminals, but the momentary diversion of the three combatants coming in from behind and surrounding the superior force did a lot to add to the anarchy and confusion that erupted immediately. Instead of the crowd of bikers and gang members being able to use their numbers to their advantage, the scene devolved into a tumultuous riot, with pool cues, fists, boots and a few knives flying around in every direction.

On his second swing, Deacon splintered the pool cue over an opponent’s head, knocking him out cold. He then used the jagged end still in his hands to keep a pair of bloodthirsty looking street hoods facing off against him at bay. One lunged at him and he thwacked the guy hard in the jaw. His swing was exponentially faster with only half of the cue in his hand and the wet crack that it made upon contact let Deacon know the guy’s jaw was broken for sure. He was going to get hit, he was going to experience pain, but he was going to sell his health and maybe his life at a heavy cost. This was not his group’s first dance.

Another one of the thugs came forward and Deacon danced quickly around a few people and began striking this man with a renewed fury while also swinging wildly in every other direction he saw a human. When this thug came in for another lunge, Deacon glimpsed a knife in his hand, and he moved first. He stabbed the man in the stomach with the broken end of the pool cue.

Two more thugs jumped him at that point and there was little he could do. One tackled him low while the second threw a wild haymaker that felt like a sledgehammer colliding with his cheekbone. Both men’s weight coming at him slammed him hard against the wall and blasted the breath momentarily from his lungs. As one of the thugs, still with his arms wrapped around his waist worked to keep Deacon driven into the wall, Deacon began dropping vicious elbows down on the back of his head, even as the other one started throwing jabs at his exposed face. The more he got hit, the more enraged he became in turn.

Deacon reached out and grabbed this other guy by the back of the head and pulled him closer. The gang member tried to slip him and kept throwing boxing punches that were connecting, but with Deacon’s adrenaline up, he was able to mostly ignore them for now. The one thug was keeping him pinned against the wall, but his hands were free. He finally managed to grab the other guy with both hands and pulled him closer with all his strength.

The cab driver managed to lift a hard knee into the bottom thug’s chin, and he fell away for a moment. The other one began grappling with him and they jockeyed for position for several moments. Deacon managed to get at the man’s back and his hand went to the guy’s face while he tried to keep a chokehold against his throat with his other hand. His fingers slipped down and found an eyesocket and with a quick, deft flip, he managed to slip a finger into the socket behind the soft eyeball and popped it out.

The thug screamed wildly and ran towards the back of the fray while the other one jumped back in. Deacon and the other thug stood toe to toe trading frenzied blows for several slowed-down minutes. This one was not any bigger than Deacon so it became a fierce game of determination and orneriness, who could deliver and take the most pain while standing tall over the other. Deacon had lost many contests in his life, contests of strength, speed, endurance, talent…but in a test of who was the hardest, oneriest son of a bitch, that was one that the young man had yet to lose.

Deacon ducked under the thug’s wild blows, catching one as he did and thrust a headbutt into his nose and upper lip. He didn’t have time to savor the upper hand he had gained, as immediately another pair of bikers set on him, and one of them blasted him with a punch that sent him off his feet and sliding across the ground. He managed to roll aside as a glass beer bottle hit the ground where his head had just been and shattered across the cold floor.

Deacon leaped to his feet and roared with a primal voice. There in the middle of the adrenaline and violence, he was suddenly a primitive human, like something from the dark ages. His mind turned red and all higher consciousness left his thoughts. As this murderous metal rage swelled, so did the roar escaping from his lips. The thug he had managed to headbutt was behind him suddenly and through his rage he felt a hot wave of pain jab into his ribs. He looked down and saw a switchblade sticking into him and instead of cowering, his fury multiplied. He roared once more, now completely berserk, but this time, the sound that escaped him was as animal as his anger in the moment. Pain wracked his body suddenly, but not just from the stab wound. It felt like all the bones in his body cracked and broke at once, and his skin burned and blistered as though it were being stretched out over an open fire.

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Time seemed to decelerate and the men around him seemed to grow smaller, more insignificant in his anger. He looked at them and saw wide eyes filled with fear facing the full might of his fury. With another animal growl that rumbled like a lion and echoed through the low-ceilinged room, Deacon reached out and struck one of the bikers. They were both equally surprised when the burly biker lifted fully off the ground and went crashing into the mirror behind the bar, which shattered down on top of him like a rain of shiny glass.

Before the other biker could react, Deacon’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the shirt. The goateed man struggled, but somehow Deacon was stronger. In fact, the full-grown biker’s resistance seemed like a mere child now against the strength of his rage. With a vicelike grip Deacon lifted the man, who had appeared fully over two-hundred pounds, off the ground with one hand. He had heard of people under extreme life-threatening stress being able to accomplish wonderous feats of strength, such as lifting cars off people and things of that nature, but his muscles didn’t even seem taxed by the full weight of the man. Deacon threw him aside forcefully and was himself surprised again when this man went even further, and smashed across the farthest wall, collapsing into a heap afterwards.

Then Deacon noticed the wild melee had fully come to a stop. Everybody, even his own friends, Nate, Carlos and Mario, Jermaul, and Ian, were all staring at him with their slacked mouths standing open. They all took a step backwards as he took one forwards. He couldn’t understand why his own friends appeared terrified, but his thoughts ran out just then. A gunshot rang out in the confined space, the sound split his eardrums and left them ringing. His gaze shot across the room to the pair of Italians in designer suits, his eyes narrowed at one pointing a smoking gun at him.

Then a series of gunshots followed the first. Deacon felt tiny stinging insects bite his legs, his stomach, and his arm but they were little more than annoyances. The panicked man continued dry firing the pistol after it had run out of ammunition in Deacon’s direction. Deacon cocked a half-smile, the idiot obviously missed, or he’d be dead right now. He shifted to his back leg and gathered all his power into it. He attempted to charge across the room but instead found himself leaping the distance in a single effortless bound.

Deacon swatted the gun aside, which the man was still fearfully holding out at him. He then grabbed this man by the shirt and lifted him up as he did the biker. But he noticed something strange just then. The leather fingerless biker gloves he wore were now stretched tight, where normally he wore them slightly oversized. He did not recognize his hand underneath the gloves, it was huge and clawed and covered in jet black fur.

The second mafioso drew his attention, drawing a handgun of his own. Deacon managed to intercept well before the hand came back out of the inside of his coat. He slashed his hand across the man’s face and felt long talons tear the man’s skin with little effort. The man’s face exploded in blood and he fell to the ground with four long slashes across his face. Deacon looked down at the lifeless body, still holding the other man off the ground. It looked like the lifeless mafioso had been mauled by a bear. Wait…a bear?

Deacon carried the man across the room as he made his way over to another full-length mirror that had somehow not been shattered in the battle royal. Now it was his turn to be surprised, even as the rest of the room stared blankly at what they saw, now he did too. For it was no longer his reflection that he saw looking back, no longer the reflection of a man at all. The snarling, heaving, muscular creature in the mirror was a giant animal on two legs and wearing his leather jacket. In fact, it was wearing all his clothes, or the ones that did not rip at least. He quickly looked down and then back to the mirror, blinking several times as he did.

The animal in the mirror was him, he realized. He was like a werewolf, only black and not exactly so wolf-like. He blinked again; the whole thing took a long time for his brain to digest. But when it did, he grinned slowly, and saw the reflection in the mirror doing the same thing, only with a row of pointed sharklike teeth set in a wide powerful jaw. He noticed he was still holding the mafioso that the night before had been so tough while he was being beaten half to death by his cronies.

“You ready to tell me what happened to the girl now bitch?” Deacon asked, and the deep growling timber of the voice that spoke instead of what he was used to hearing surprised him, but there was a satisfying intimidation behind it. He could feel the bass vibrating from the deep rumble in his voice, like a thunderclap on a rainy night.

“Don’t kill me man! I’ll tell you what I know please!”

Deacon tossed the man to the ground, and he went spinning until coming to a stop below Carlos and Mario, who had been fighting back-to-back moments ago.

“Get what he knows guys.” Deacon instructed.

“Fuck yeah!” Nate cheered suddenly, breaking the silence of the others in the room. “The motherfucking metal beast has arrived! Metal up your pussy asses, bitches!” He quickly came over and kicked the downed man in the ribs, before Carlos and Mario pulled him back to his feet.

Deacon, or the creature that Deacon had become, stepped forwards threateningly and let out an ear-splitting howl at the remaining gang members in the room. They scrambled and fought each other, clawing to get up the stairs and away from the leather jacketed monster with a maw full of razor-sharp teeth.

“You heard ‘im, where’s the girl?” Nate asked. “Dude I ain’t even playin’ I’ll turn the fucking wererat loose on you.”

“Is that what that thing is?” The mafioso was transfixed by the threatening mass of black fur, claws, leather, and teeth that was now pacing around behind Nate. “I was thinking some kind of werewolf at first but…”

Nate cleared his throat, and the Italian man snapped his attention back to the waiting blonde rocker dressed in denim pants and jacket, with a black Slayer T-shirt underneath.

“Do you know who I am kid? You’re in big, big trouble.” The man tried to gather some indignation as he spoke, but his voice quivered despite his efforts and the threat behind the words was weak.

“Does it look like I give a fuck who you are, pussy? Do you know who that is?” Nate jerked his thumb behind him at the massive black furred creature, still pacing the floor dangerously. Two yellow predator eyes watched the man like food, and he swallowed a lump in his throat.

“Okay okay. I’ll tell you what I know. There’s a new gang that came to town a few months ago. It’s a Jamaican gang, or a posse I think they call themselves. Whatever. These guys are fuckin’ lunatics. They went to war with the Vicelords, and then were fuckin’ stupid enough to try to go to war against the Outfit. They took a huge chunk of the drug trade. They just moved in and started doing it. When we tried to retaliate, these guys weren’t afraid at all, they just fought back. They ain’t afraid of anything, you hear me? They ain’t afraid of us, the Vicelords, Police, nothing! They believe in some evil voodoo shit and our threats were completely meaningless.”

“Oh, they’ll be afraid of me.” Deacon remarked in that deep thunderous voice that was quickly growing on him. “My threats have teeth.”

“What does this have to do with the girl, what was her name again?” Nate asked, snapping his fingers a few times.

“Eve?” Carlos questioned.

“Ava.” Mario corrected with a snap of his fingers before Deacon could.

“Man, I don’t even care.” The mafioso quickly cut in. “Look the girl and her boyfriend started frequenting the place, and the guy borrowed some money from me. He was a gambling degenerate, but he was a rich kid, his daddy owned some big business or something. The Jamaicans caught me going to my car one night. Held a fuckin’ machete to my throat. A goddamn machete! I told ‘em where they were holed up. They mentioned something about a ransom, I guess they thought that both of those kids were worth some money or something. I swear that’s all I know!”

Nate looked back to Deacon, and the two Mexican brothers stood behind the blonde and nodded. Ian and Jermaul came over then, holding an injured Brian DiMarco between them.

“Where do we find the Jamaicans?”

The man sighed.

“Well normally I’d say any motherfuckers goin’ against those assholes’d have to be crazy, but I guess you guys got a motherfuckin’ werewolf thing right there so what the fuck? Everyone’s crazy tonight!”

* * * *

“Can you turn it off?” Nate whispered to Deacon, while they stood poised to reenter a crowded club at the top of the stairs.

“I dunno how. I don’t even know how I did it.” The creature shrugged his shoulders. “The last time it happened I kinda blacked out. I don’t know why I can control it this time.”

Deacon’s fingers moved unconsciously to the hobo necklace he still wore draped around his neck. Could it be…?

“Dude, what the fuck?”

“Look, just get Zoe and get outta here. I’m just gonna make a break for it. We’ll have to meet up later. Maybe this will go away.”

“Dude, it fuckin’ rocks and all but I hope so. Maybe you’ll be a giant rat forever.”

Deacon took a deep breath and took off through the club to the panicked soundtrack of gasps and screams.