Officer McGoohan—McGoo to his friends (well, to me at least)—was taken aback by the explosion of chaos caused by his appearance. His mouth dropped open as he saw dozens of unnaturals—already keyed up with adrenaline and bloodlust from the cockatrice fight—suddenly thrown into a panic.
“Cops! Everybody, run!” yelled a vampire with a dramatic flourish of his cape. He turned and ran at full speed into a hulking ogre, which stunned him. The ogre reacted by flinging the vampire against the pit ring with enough force to crack the barricade.
Inside, the creatures were still hissing and thrashing at each other. Several zombies shambled at top speed toward the back exit. The human spectators bolted, ducking their heads to hide their identities. A bandage-wrapped mummy tripped and fell while other fleeing monsters stepped on him, trampling his fragile antique bones and sending up puffs of old dust. The clawed foot of a lizard man caught one of the bandages, and the linen strips unraveled as he ran.
At the door, McGoo waved his hands and shouted, “Wait, wait! It’s not a raid!” Nobody heard him, or if they did, they refused to believe.
The skittish ogre smashed open an emergency exit door, knocking it entirely off its hinges. The door crashed to the ground outside, and fleeing monsters charged into the dim alleys, yelling and howling.
“We can work this out,” I said, heading toward McGoo, who stood waving his hands and urging calm. He might as well have been asking for patrons in a strip club to cover their eyes. I saw that he hadn’t even brought backup.
Gangly Furguson ran about in a panic, not sure what he was doing. He bumped into unnaturals and caromed off them like a pinball. Scratch and Sniff looked at each other and grinned. As Furguson came close, they grabbed the skinny werewolf and used his own momentum to fling him into the already-cracked pit wall, which knocked down the barricade. All the haphazard currency stuffed into Furguson’s pockets flew up like a blizzard of money.
The cockatrices broke free and bounded out of the pit, still slashing at each other with razor gaffs but now taking a jab at anything that came near. They were like hyperactive whirlwinds, flailing, attacking. Sour Lemonade latched its jaws onto the shoulder of a zombie who did not shamble away quickly enough. Hissy Fit swooped down and attacked the vampire that had already been burned by acid blood; the vamp flailed his hands to get the beast away from his head and his neatly slicked-back hair.
Taking matters into his own hands, Rusty grabbed Hissy Fit by the scaly neck and yanked it away from the vampire, stuffed the cockatrice into a burlap sack, and cinched a cord around the opening. “Furguson, get the other one! We’ve got to get out of here!”
After being bashed into the wall, however, Furguson flew at Scratch and Sniff in a rage. He extended his claws, bared his fangs, and howled, “Shithead Monthlies!” Hurling himself upon Scratch, the nearer of the two, he raked his long claws down the werewolf-pelt overcoat, ripping big gashes. With his other hand, he tore four bloody furrows along the biker werewolf’s cheek.
Sniff plucked Furguson away from his friend and began punching him with a pile-driver fist. Scratch touched the blood on his cheek, and his eyes flared. The tattoos on his neck and face began pulsing, writhing, like a psychedelic cartoon—and then the deep wounds on his face sealed together. The blood coagulated into a hard scab that flaked off within seconds; the flesh knitted itself into scar tissue. The tattoos fell quiescent again, and I realized that it must be some kind of body-imprinted healing spell.
Very cool.
Amidst the pandemonium, I reached McGoo. He looked at me in surprise. “Shamble! What are you doing here?”
“I’m working. What about you?”
“I’m working, too. Just answering a disturbance call. Scout’s honor, your friends sure have hair triggers! Did I catch them doing something naughty?”
Rusty tore a large two-by-four from the cockatrice barricade and waded in to Scratch and Sniff. He whacked each one of them on the back of the head, which sent them reeling, then pulled Furguson from the fray. He shoved the burlap sack into his nephew’s claws. “Take this and get out of here! I’ll grab the other one.”
With the struggling, squirming sack in hand, Furguson bolted for the nearest door and disappeared into the night. As he ran, the poor klutz was still dropping bills out of his pockets.
The two biker werewolves shook their heads after being battered by the two-by-four. They both puffed themselves up, peeled back their lips, and prepared to lunge at Rusty, but the big werewolf swung the board again, cracking each man full in the face. “Want a third one? Believe me, it’ll only improve your looks.”
“We may need to intervene in this, McGoo,” I said.
“I was just thinking that.” He sauntered forward, displaying the arsenal of unnatural-specific weapons that he carried for defense in the Quarter.
The two biker werewolves snarled at Rusty. “Damned Hairball!” Thanks to the hypnotically twitching tattoos, the bloody bruises on their faces had already healed up and vanished faster than they could wipe the stains away.
McGoo stepped up and said to them, “Know any good werewolf jokes?”
Scratch and Sniff looked at his uniform, snarled low in the throat for a long moment, then they retreated into the night as well. Outside, I heard a roar of motorcycle engines starting.
The less panicky, or more enterprising, spectators scurried around to grab fallen money on the floor; then they, too, darted out of the building. Rusty managed to seize Sour Lemonade from the zombie it was still attacking and stuffed it into another cloth bag, which he slung over his shoulder, then loped away from the warehouse through the large doorway the ogre had shattered.
McGoo and I stood together, catching our breath, exhausted just from watching the whirlwind. He shook his head as the last of the monsters evacuated into the night. “This place looks like the aftermath of a bombing raid. Mission accomplished, I suppose.”
“What mission was that?” I asked.
“One of the nearby residents called in a noise complaint. Some kind of writer. She asked me to stop by and request that they keep the noise down, said the racket was bothering her.”
“That was all?”
“That was all.” McGoo shrugged. “Should be quiet enough now.”