The room's comm was bolted to its own table. His shoulder protested as he lifted it. The cable connection ripped out of the wall, taking a wall plate and ripping a hole up the drywall for nearly a meter before it snapped free. Knee shaking, he lifted the comm over his head—it had to weigh thirty kilos—and listened to the Zips.
One was near the wall. It sounded like he had a nine-millimeter. Nohar aimed the comm at that one—
The comm and attached table flew in an arc that intersected the wall. It hit dead center at a fake painting—some anonymous landscape—and crashed through the drywall separating the two rooms. The mylar wallpaper tore away in sheets, following the comm through the hole.
Perfect hit on the rat—bandage on the face marked this guy as Bigboy—the side of the comm hit the rat in the face and the picture tube imploded, adding a small cloud of phosphor powder to the plaster dust.
The comm kept going, knocking away a table another rat was using for cover.
The rat—dressing on his arm marked him as the one with the chain—turned to face Nohar. That was a stupid mistake. The cop was still covering the picture window from behind the cop car.
The cop put a .38 slug through the rat's neck before the ratboy realized he had lost his cover.
The hole in the wall was a meter square.
Nohar jumped through without any hesitation. He aimed at the third rat, who was hiding behind a set of dresser drawers.
For a moment Nohar bared his entire flank to the cop, the kid had a perfect shot through the long-ago-vaporized picture window. Nohar didn't care.
Nohar landed on the third rodent, Fearless Leader. Fearless had a revolver, a forty-four. An old gun but powerful. He tried to turn it on Nohar, but Nohar
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grabbed the ratboy's wrist—it was in a cast—and slammed it into one of the open drawers of the dresser. Then he crunched the drawer shut with his entire weight. The gun went off inside the dresser, blasting chunks of particleboard over the rat the cop had shot.
Fearless was looking at Nohar with wide eyes, going into shock. Somewhere, under the growling, Nohar found his voice. "So, 'pretty kitty's' next?" The rat tried to shake his head.
Nohar slashed Fearless Leader's throat open with his claws, opened the drawer, and removed the gun from the sputtering rodent.
The gunfire had ceased.
He could smell perfume coming from the bathroom, over the cordite. Nohar could also smell blood that didn't come from a rat. He gave the cop a great shot at his back as he bolted for the bathroom door at the rear of the motel room. Somewhere, where his rational mind was hiding, he prayed to Maria's God he wasn't too late.
He kicked the door open, sending a piercing dagger of pain through his right leg, Terin turned toward him. She was picking up a nasty looking assault rifle. It looked too big for her. It was certainly too big for the small bathroom. Terin couldn't sweep it to cover the door.
There was a bloody knife sitting on the sink. Something small and blood-covered was hanging in the shower—
"I'll give you the fucking Finger of God."
The first shot hit her in the chest, slamming the rat into the white tile wall.
The second got her in the face,
The third clicked on an empty chamber.
There was a weak sound from the shower "... way to go, Kit . . ."
CHAPTER 25
Angel's voice brought him back. The Beast didn't go back to its mental closet—the closet didn't seem to be there anymore—but it did let his rational mind take over. For the first time Nohar felt the full impact of what he had put his body through. Glass had been ground into his left foot. The falls and the leaping had strained his back. His knee couldn't hold his weight anymore. Any pressure on it was agonizing-He grabbed the sink and pulled himself into the bathroom. He looked into the shower. Angel's hands were tied to the showerhead. Her feet didn't touch the floor. She was still conscious, and her iace was recognizable. Terin had been working from the bottom up. Terin was experienced at shaving moreys—the process was supposed to be long, painful, and the victim was supposed to live up to and, hopefully, a little past the end.
Angel's legs had become strips of bleeding meat. "Kit, you look like hell . . ." Nohar gritted his teeth and knelt slowly to examine the damage. It was bad, Angel was probably in shock. He dropped the forty-four in the toilet and grabbed Term's knife. He stood on his left leg and circled his right arm around, under Angel's armpits, as he cut the bonds on her hands. Her weight nearly toppled him over. He pulled himself along, out of the bathroom, with
his left hand. The three rodents that had been covering the picture window didn't move. Every half-second the room was bathed in the searchlight glare 260
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of the cop's flashers. Nohar wondered where the cop was.
He laid Angel out on one of the twin beds. Her legs began to stain the white sheet. "I'm calling an ambulance— ''
Her head was cocked toward the front of the room. "Only one?"
Nohar went to this room's comm, it was intact. He called emergency. "I need a half-dozen ambulances, Woodstar Motel off route 322 in Chesterland, humans and moreys—cops, too, some of these people are dead-"
The dispatch cop nodded. "What's the problem there?"
Nohar spun the comm to face the carnage. "That's the problem."
He didn't bother to hang up. He turned to Angel. Somewhere along the way he had screwed up, badly. "Where's Stephie?" He almost didn't get the words out. He was too afraid of the answer.
"Back in our room, last in line. Talked about having a hostage. Left a Zip with her ... "
Oh, shit. If a ratboy was left with her, the bastard would probably kill her once he saw how the fight went. Nohar hobbled over to the picture window; still no sign of the cop. He reached and turned Bigboy over. The rat had been using an Uzi. Nohar grabbed the gun and crawled out the window. Once outside, he saw the cop. Fearless had got off one well placed shot. The cop was unconscious or dead.
Because of his knee, he had to advance on Stephie's room while leaning against the wall. His progress was agonizingly slow. He passed the wreck of the remote and the door he had busted in. He passed an unoccupied room. Slowly, he came upon the last in the line, the black GM Maduro parked in front.
He checked the clip on the Uzi. Good thing Bigboy wasn't spraying the cop. There were a few shots left. He hit the ground and scrambled under the picture FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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window—his right knee was beginning to make popping sounds every time he moved—and rolled in front of the door.
With the feeling this was going to be it for him, he shouldered the door open and covered the room with the Uzi.
And there was Mister Mad Bomber, looking like he was about to wet his pants. The rat's twenty-two thumped on the carpet.
Stephie was alive, and apparently unhurt. She had been stripped naked and tied to the bed. She turned her head toward the door when it burst open. She had never smelled so good to him.
The Beast wanted Nohar to shoot the rat. To Nohar's surprise, he still had control. Even though the mental door was no longer there.
"Kid, second chances are rare, use yours. Get out of here."
The rat carefully approached the door, where Nohar was still half-sitting, stepped over him, and ran into the night. Stephie's eyes were wide as she watched Nohar pull himself into the room and on to the bed. Nohar didn't waste time. He bit through the rope.
As soon as Stephie was free, Nohar found himself on the receiving end of an embrace that smeared her with blood. "God, what's happened to you—where's Angel?"
"Angel, I called an ambulance for her— and everyone else. They killed Manny—" Stephie broke off the hug. "Oh, Christ, I'm sorry—"