I paused, for too long. She was up and coming at me with murder in her animal eyes. I grabbed the whiskey bottle off Sam’s desk and smacked it across her face. It shattered, spraying her with burning liquid. It was the second werewolf in one night that I’d downed with whiskey, but shit, you’ve gotta stick with what works.

Myra was blinded, taking swipes at me and wailing like a wounded dog. I had precious little energy left, and had to think fast. I was staying just out of her reach. She was temporarily blinded, but her vision was clearing fast. Soon she’d have me. I began to make noises as I moved. She followed, flailing at the air without result. Finally, I had her in place. I took one of the shattered chair legs and rammed it through her heart.

She stumbled backward, blood spouting like a fountain from the hole in her chest. By the time she hit the floor she was dead, and human.

I was too tired to think. Simultaneously, I dialed for the police and dug for another hit of speed, since it looked like I was going to be spending what was left of the night chatting with the LAPD boys yet again. But as the phone rang, something began to happen. Myra’s body smoked and sizzled like hot bacon on the floor.

“LAPD. What’s your emergency?”

I hung up and watched as Myra’s body sizzled down to a bubbling mass, then to ash. Within a minute she was gone. Sometimes that happens. I don’t know why.

Three days passed without Sam’s head arriving in the mail. I spent the entire time in a drunken, alcohol-and-painkillers-induced stupor. I felt like shit. My wounds ached and had me worried. Any number of things can happen when a lycanthrope gets their paws on you. Usually you die. Sometimes you turn into one of them, sometimes you go crazy from a weird fever with rabies-like symptoms. I’d caught the wounds pretty early and had the nurse at the hospital pump me with antibiotics. I just had to keep an eye on the bites and scratches and hope I didn’t suddenly develop a craving for Alpo.

I kept thinking about Myra leaning in to kiss me, then a couple hours later lurching forward to kill me. How fucked up was that? It seemed I’d traveled across the country to live the same screwed-up life I always had. I guess I was a fool to think it would be any different, but deep inside, I’d hoped for more.

And though I tried not to think about it too much, the absence of Sam’s head had me more than a little tweaked. I had the address of the kid who separated Sam from his body, but I didn’t want to risk anything without having the head, too. The downside was that the kid had more time to do whatever the fuck he wanted with the body.