The Night Beat

at worst.
    I was both. I was also out of options. The monster finished forming. It was twelve feet tall if it was an inch, and almost as broad as the alley. I aimed for what was likely either its head or its main organ area and fired.

Chapter 3
     
    “Impressive lack of something happening,” Maurice said nervously.
    I continued to fire. I spread the shots around -- up, down, interesting patterns -- to keep the monster guessing. Guessing about where it was going to get tickled next, as far as I could tell. Despite their reputation and my previous experiences with them, the projectiles weren’t working. At all.
    The monster raised a limb. A limb covered with about a thousand tentacles that all had awful suckers and pincers on them, but a limb, nonetheless. “Any ideas?”
    “Turn to mist, fly away?” Amanda didn’t sound like she was joking.
    “Cry like a baby?” Maurice didn’t sound like he was trying to be funny, either.
    There was a rumbling noise, and the monster lost a few feet. Now it was only about six feet tall. And dark. Not handsome, however. Neither was what came out of the hole in the ground the monster had fallen into, but I was sure happy to see it.
    A thick, long, and altogether huge white worm wrapped itself around the monster, effectively preventing it from attacking. Not from struggling, but you couldn’t have everything.
    “Good boy, Rover,” a deep, rumbling voice said. Monty’s head peeked out from the hole. “Vic, only you would find an ancient Sumerian demon while on routine patrol.” He looked around. “Rover, tighter, boy, tighter.” The worm constricted and the monster struggled a little less.
    “H.P.’s on his way,” I offered.
    “Good. We’ll need his help.” Monty slowly crawled out of the hole. All his parts stayed put, which was pretty impressive. He’d been a lich for so many centuries it was sort of amazing he didn’t disintegrate, though he insisted turning into stone was a bigger risk. Hard to prove it by my experience.
    Rover had the monster well-wrapped, but he was only a giant white worm, after all, and his power wasn’t going to hold an ancient demon forever. “Monty, is anyone helping Rover control our monster?”
    “Dirt Corps is on it,” he said, rather huffily.
    “Oh, good.” I tried to keep the concern out of my voice. Dirt Corps consisted of undeads who weren’t exactly up to Enforcement standards. Most of them weren’t whole bodies, even. Though, you had to give them a lot of credit for willing. Not a lot of credit for success, but sometimes they got lucky.
    I looked over my shoulder. Jack leaned against the sedan with the dazed, confused and happy look on his face most humans got when a vamp was exerting serious influence. Ken, ever the multitasker, was on the radio, imitating Jack’s voice and ordering all police units elsewhere.
    Maurice drew in his breath sharply, always fun when it was a vamp doing it, and I turned around. To see the monster stepping out of his hole, a variety of Dirt Corps grunts clinging to his, for want of a better word, legs, and Rover draped over Monty’s shoulders, looking tired. White worms were able to adjust their size, and Rover was back to his usual five feet, though he looked a little flabby around the middle, likely from his efforts to contain Slimy.
    “Why is it never easy?” I asked no one in particular. Until H.P. showed up and told us, exactly, what to do to stop this thing, we only had one option.
    It was time to kick icky butt and take unpronounceable names.

Chapter 4
     
    The nice thing about being a modern-day undead in general and werewolf in particular was that the whole clothes issue had been solved by brighter minds generations earlier. So while I went more wolfy, my clothes didn’t rip and shred so that I wouldn’t be naked when I went back to human form. The Spandex-poly blend was a shape-shifting undead’s best friend and it was spelled to let our fur through, so when we were in wolf form we didn’t look like we were wearing stupid dog coats.
    I shoved my so far useless special gun back into its rear holster, did my best to guess where this thing’s vulnerable spot was, and gave it the old werewolf leap. I landed on what you could generously call its head and started clawing and biting.
    “Go, Vicki, go!” Maurice was all over the cheering.
    “This thing tastes worse than whatever’s in the trashcans. And a little aerial support wouldn’t be considered an insult.”
    Amanda