Chapter 46: The Mama’s Boy’s Counterattack

Chapter 46: Chapter 46: The Mama’s Boy’s Counterattack

Chapter 46: The Mama’s Boy’s Counterattack

Lionel Cosgrove felt agony explode through his chest as Freddy’s four blades punched through him from behind. The pain was so intense that his knees almost gave out immediately, and his trembling hand instinctively reached toward the metal protruding from his body. Before he could touch it, Freddy Krueger yanked the glove free with a wet sound and sent fresh blood spilling down Lionel’s shirt.

Lionel dropped to his knees as his strength seemed to disappear all at once. Freddy flicked the blood from his blades and leaned closer with a hideous grin. "That girl in the fire engine is your girlfriend, right? Stay right there and watch while I take her apart."

Freddy turned toward the cab and took two steps before stopping. Something behind him was wrong because instead of hearing Lionel’s final breaths, he heard slow, heavy breathing growing steadier. Freddy looked over his shoulder and saw Lionel swaying on his feet as he somehow stood again.

"What?" Freddy muttered.

Lionel was just as confused. He looked down at the horrific holes in his torso and could see torn tissue beneath the blood, yet his legs still supported him and his body responded normally despite the unbearable pain. He pressed one shaking hand near the wound and nearly screamed from the sensation, but nothing inside him felt weak enough to explain an injury that should have killed him.

Then he remembered what Paquita’s grandmother had told him before he left the fire engine. You can do this. You have this ability. At the time, Lionel had assumed she was only encouraging him, but now he finally understood that she had meant something much more literal.

Lionel slowly raised his head and stared at Freddy.

His fear had not disappeared.

It simply no longer mattered.

"Stay away from Paquita," Lionel said through clenched teeth before charging.

Freddy sneered at the clumsy rush and shifted aside with almost insulting ease. His right hand flashed downward as Lionel passed, and the four blades cut through Lionel’s forearm with a sharp crack. The severed right hand and part of the arm hit the pavement several feet away.

Lionel screamed.

The pain almost blinded him.

Instead of falling, however, the injury only released everything he had been holding inside for days. Fear of Freddy, disgust at what Vera had become, helplessness inside his own home, and the humiliation of spending his whole life under his mother’s control erupted into pure rage.

Lionel did not even look at the missing arm.

He charged again.

Freddy’s expression changed for the first time because this was not how victims were supposed to behave. Lionel crashed into him before he could fully react and drove his shoulder into Freddy’s chest, forcing the weakened dream killer several steps backward.

"You pathetic little freak!" Freddy snarled as he regained his balance. He slashed Lionel across the back, chest, and side in rapid succession, opening wounds deep enough to expose bone. Lionel staggered under every blow but refused to let go.

Freddy had already lost most of his advantages the moment Jason dragged him into the waking world. The Holy Water barrage had weakened him further, and now the timid young man he had tortured for entertainment was throwing himself forward without caring whether his body survived. Freddy found the situation increasingly insulting.

Lionel suddenly opened his mouth and bit down on Freddy’s forearm.

Freddy howled.

"You bit me?"

He grabbed Lionel by the hair with his free hand and tried to rip him away. Lionel’s teeth remained locked around his arm, and no matter how hard Freddy pulled, the young man refused to release him.

Then Lionel noticed his severed forearm lying nearby.

The exposed bone at the torn end was jagged and sharp.

A desperate idea came to him.

Lionel released Freddy only long enough to grab the severed limb from the ground with his remaining hand. His clothes were still soaked with Holy Water from the pumper discharge, so he dragged the exposed bone across the wet fabric before turning back toward Freddy. Then he drove the sharpened end straight into Freddy’s abdomen.

Freddy screamed.

Smoke erupted from the wound.

Lionel stabbed again.

Then again.

Each strike drove Holy Water-coated bone into Freddy’s physical body and left behind a smoking hole that refused to close properly. Freddy clawed at Lionel desperately, but the younger man had become completely indifferent to his own injuries.

Inside the fire engine, Paquita Sanchez covered her mouth with both hands as tears filled her eyes. "Grandma, what happened to Lionel?" she asked while staring at the blood-covered figure fighting outside. "How can he still be standing?"

Her grandmother watched with a deeply troubled expression. "I warned Vera years ago that her need to possess that boy was becoming unhealthy. I never imagined she would take those little binding rites and turn them into something like this."

Paquita turned toward her. "What did she do to him?" The old woman hesitated before explaining that Vera had effectively turned Lionel into a living bound effigy, linking his physical body and spirit through a distorted protective ritual.

"His soul is no longer sitting inside his body in the normal way," the grandmother said. "Part of it is bound outside the usual limits of flesh, so wounds that should immediately kill him cannot fully separate him from life." She looked toward Lionel and added that the Sumatran rat-monkey infection surrounding Vera might also have corrupted the ritual into something far stronger and stranger than what Vera had originally been taught.

Paquita stared outside in horror. "So he can’t die?" Her grandmother shook her head and said Lionel could still be destroyed if enough of his physical body was lost or if the binding itself collapsed, but ordinary wounds would no longer work normally. Whatever Vera had done, it was protection born from obsession rather than mercy.

Outside, Lionel had finally forced Freddy backward against the side of the fire engine. Blood covered almost every part of him, one arm was missing, and deep wounds crossed his torso, yet his grip remained strong. Freddy struggled beneath him while Lionel grabbed the burned killer by the scalp.

"You like hurting people?" Lionel shouted.

He slammed Freddy forward.

Freddy’s face went directly into the uncontrolled stream of Holy Water pouring from the open pumper discharge.

"MMMPH!"

Holy Water blasted across his mouth, face, and chest.

Black smoke exploded from Freddy’s skin as he thrashed wildly. Lionel held him there with everything he had, forcing the weakened dream killer against the torrent while supernatural water flooded over and through his physical body.

Freddy’s abdomen began swelling grotesquely beneath the pressure and spiritual burning. Dark cracks spread across his burned flesh as Holy Water continued attacking him from the inside and outside at the same time. Lionel refused to release him even when Freddy’s blades tore fresh wounds through his side.

Then Freddy’s abdomen ruptured.

A muffled blast sent dark purified fluid spraying across the pavement.

Lionel stumbled backward while Freddy collapsed beside the engine, smoke pouring from the ruined opening in his body.

"Nice work, kid!" Axel Vance shouted from farther down the street.

Lionel barely heard him.

Another roar shook the battlefield.

The reason became obvious when everyone looked toward Vera Cosgrove.

Almost every remaining infected corpse had disappeared.

Vera had eaten them.

The thing that had once been Lionel’s mother now towered more than thirteen feet high, her body swollen into a grotesque mass of infected flesh. Her human face had been almost completely distorted, while a second enormous mouth filled with jagged teeth had split open across her abdomen.

The giant Vera dragged herself toward the fire engine.

Her attention never left Lionel.

"Lionel..." a broken voice rumbled from somewhere inside her swollen body.

Across the road, Jason Voorhees stopped pursuing Axel.

His hockey mask slowly turned toward the giant creature.

Vera was larger, louder, and far more threatening than anything else currently standing in front of him. Whatever simple instincts governed Jason decided immediately that she had become the most important target.

Jason charged first.

He slammed into Vera with enough force to shake her enormous body backward. Vera roared and seized him with both arms, and within seconds the two monsters were tearing at one another in the middle of the street.

Jason ripped chunks of infected flesh from her side.

Vera slammed him into the pavement.

Blue-green fluid, rotten tissue, and pieces of newly regenerated flesh flew across the battlefield.

Axel finally gained a moment to breathe. He rapidly reloaded his shotgun while watching Jason and Vera tear into each other with enough fury to ignore everything else. "Great," he muttered. "Let them stay busy."

Then he looked toward Lionel.

"Lionel! Get the spare hose hooked up!"

Lionel raised his head.

Axel fired another shotgun blast toward the fighting monsters and shouted again. "We need that Holy Water stream back!"

Lionel forced himself to move.

His body looked like it should have been lying in a morgue, but the strange binding kept him upright. He staggered toward the fire engine’s equipment compartment, opened it with his remaining left hand, and pulled out the rolled backup attack hose.

The uncontrolled pumper discharge was still blasting Holy Water into the street.

Lionel dragged the replacement hose toward it.

He reached for the coupling and immediately recoiled when the force of the stream hammered against him.

The pressure was enormous.

Even though the Holy Water itself did not harm him, getting close enough to the open discharge to connect the hose was another problem entirely. Lionel tightened his grip on the coupling and stared into the violent stream, knowing Axel needed that line restored before Jason or Vera finished their fight.

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