Fear Nothing

fiercely that the beast screamed in pain. It wouldn't let go of Sasha, however, and as I struggled to tear it away from her, it tried to pull her hair out by the roots.
        Bobby pumped another round into the chamber and squeezed off a third shot, the cottage walls seemed to shake as if an earthquake had rumbled under us, and I figured that was the end of the final pair of intruders, but I heard Bobby cursing and knew more trouble had come our way.
        Revealed more by their blazing yellow eyes than by the guttering flames of the remaining two candles, another pair of monkeys, total kamikazes, had sprung into the windows above the sink.
        And Bobby was reloading.
        In another part of the cottage, Orson barked loudly. I didn't know if he was racing toward us to join the fray or whether he was calling for help.
        I heard myself cursing with uncharacteristic vividness and snarling with animal ferocity as I shifted my grip on the rhesus, getting both hands around its neck. I choked it, choked it until finally it had no choice but to let go of Sasha.
        The monkey weighed only about twenty-five pounds, less than one-sixth of my weight, but it was all bone and muscle and seething hatred. Screaming thinly and spitting even as it struggled for breath, the thing tried to tuck its head down to bite at the hands encircling its throat. it wrenched, wriggled, kicked, flailed, and I can't imagine that an eel could have been harder to hold on to, but my fury at what the little fucker had tried to do to Sasha was so great that my hands were like iron, and at last I felt its neck snap. Then it was just a limp, dead thing, and I dropped it on the floor.
        Gagging with disgust, gasping for breath, I picked up my Glock as Sasha, having recovered her Chiefs Special, stepped to the broken window near the table and opened fire at the night beyond.
        While reloading, apparently having lost track of the last two monkeys in spite of their glowing eyes, Bobby had gone to the light switch by the door. Now he cranked up the rheostat far enough to make me squint.
        One of the little bastards was standing on a counter beside the cooktop. It had extracted the smallest of the knives from the wall rack, and before any of us could open fire, it threw the blade at Bobby.
        I don’t know whether the troop ha been busy learning simple I don't know whether the troop had be military arts or whether the monkey was lucky. The knife tumbled through the air and sank into Bobby's right shoulder.
        He dropped the shotgun.
        I fired two rounds at the knife thrower, and it pitched backward onto the cooktop burners, dead.
        The remaining monkey might have once heard that old saw about discretion being the better part of valor, because he curled his tail up against his back and fled over the sink and out the window. I got two shots off, but both missed.
        At the other window, with surprisingly steady nerves and nimble fingers, Sasha fumbled a speedloader from the dump pouch on her belt and slipped it into the.38. She twisted the speedloader, her belt and slipped it into neatly filling all chambers at once, dropped it on the floor, and snapped the cylinder shut.
        I wondered what school of broadcasting offered would-be disc jockeys courses on weaponry and grace under fire. Of all the people in Moonlight Bay, Sasha had been the sole one remaining who seemed genuinely to be only what she appeared to be. Now I suspected that she had a secret or two of her own.
        She began squeezing off shots into the night once more. I don't know if she had any targets in view or whether she was just laying down a suppressing fire to discourage whatever remained of the troop.
        Ejecting the half-empty magazine from the Glock, slamming in a full one, I went to Bobby as he pulled the knife out of his shoulder. The blade appeared to have penetrated only an inch or two, but there was a spreading bloodstain on his shirt.
        “How bad?” I asked.
        “ Damn!”
         “ Can you hold on?”
        “This was my best shirt!”
        Maybe he would be all right.
        Toward the front of the house, Orson's barking continued-but it was punctuated now with squeals of terror.
        I tucked the Glock under my belt, against the small of my back, picked up Bobby's shotgun, which was fully loaded, and ran toward the barking.
        The lights were on but dimmed