Dead Men's s Boots

He sagged and I rolled so he was under me, kneeing him in the balls en passant to make sure he didn’t get up any time soon. I scrambled free and managed to get upright again, leaving him wrapped around his pain.

Juliet was down on one knee, her face a mask of blood but her guard still up despite the terrible damage she’d already sustained: the loup-garou was dancing around her, looking for an opening. It danced right into my open arms and I nailed it with the flowering branch right in the kisser.

‘Hoc fugere,’ I snarled.

The beast jackknifed like a sideswiped truck, its head snapping back, its eyes wide but unseeing. A ripple of pain passed through it and its feet found no purchase for a second or two as its shorted-out nerve endings popped and fizzed with agonising static. I used those precious seconds to shift my balance and slam both my fists into its throat.

For all its wiry strength it didn’t weigh all that much, and the effect was gratifying. It hit the ground hard at an oblique angle, tumbling and rolling in a cloud of dust across the full width of the dirt track.

My sense of triumph was short-lived, though, because it touched down on all four feet like a cat and it was suddenly heading my way again as though I’d never landed a finger on it. I knew the punch wouldn’t do much damage, but I’d had better hopes for my makeshift ward. I guess its lack of efficacy had something to do with my lack of faith: a Christian blessing spoken by an atheist isn’t likely to hit as hard as one spoken by the archbishop of wherever-the-fuck.

The loup-garou, claws raised to rend and tear, launched itself into the air with a miawling scream that rooted me to the spot. If it had landed where it was aiming for, it would probably have excavated half my internal organs in a single blood-boltered moment. But Juliet plucked it out of the air and used its own momentum to slam it hard into the dirt once more. Really hard: this time it was seeing stars, and it was a few seconds before it moved again. By that time, Juliet was kneeling beside it.

She took the loup-garou in a tight embrace as it scrambled up and slowly, almost lovingly, bent it backwards until its spine broke. It slid to the ground, its head twitching feebly, its body terribly still. Juliet raised one stilettoed foot and I looked away. I just wish I’d thought to slam my hands over my ears, too, because the sound of a skull giving way under pressure is one that’s kind of hard to forget once you’ve heard it.