Barking (29 page)

So far, so agonisingly unresolved. Just as well the lecture delivered itself, and all he had to do was look solemn. For once, that was no bother at all. Poor dead Great-uncle Charlie, he thought. Each man's death diminishes me, as what's-his-name so beautifully put it back in sixteen-something, but right now he reckoned that if the old geezer had to fall off the perch, he couldn't have picked a better time. Werewolf or not, Luke had to observe the basic decencies; which meant that, as long as Duncan was in the interview room with a client, Luke couldn't come bursting in and rip his throat out with his teeth. In which case, the sad man could take as long as he liked. That and the fact that lawyers charge by the hour, of course.

‘Naturally, we want everything done properly,' the sad man was saying, ‘and of course we've all been knocked for six, poor Uncle Charlie going so suddenly and everything. But I just happened to glance through the share prices in the
Telegraph
this morning, and I noticed that Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits is up six on takeover rumours, so if we've got to wait for this probate business before we can—'

Cue for another lecture (Dead Men's Shoes And How To Keep Them Shiny), affording Duncan four good minutes in which to panic at the thought that Luke might be crouched outside in the corridor right now, sharpening his teeth on a bit of pumice. (Or was that budgies?) He listened, sniffed. No; Luke was in his office, talking to some accountant on the phone. Luke was saying that in his opinion, Schumacher had lost his touch and Honda hadn't cured the tyre problem, so it was going to be anybody's guess until Monaco. If anything, he sounded unusually relaxed and at peace. Very odd.

The sad man left, eventually, leaving behind a faint taste of greed and a job of work, which took Duncan six minutes. As the printer spooled out the letters, he sat back in his chair and did his best to brace himself. He didn't really believe that Luke would actually kill him, but that was about all the optimism he could scrape together. It wasn't going to be one of his best-ever mornings.

Luke got off the phone. He dictated an attendance note and two letters, put something away in his filing cabinet, ate a raw-steak sandwich, drummed his fingers on the desktop (it sounded like cannon fire), stood up and paced round his office a few times, went back to his chair, turned round three times, sat down, stayed put for four endless minutes, stood up again, walked to his office door, closed it behind him. Heading this way. He was coming.

New Mexico, Duncan thought, but it was much too late for that. He caught himself checking his office out for hiding places; fatuous. There weren't any, and even if there had been he couldn't hide from Luke's nose. The sound of Luke's feet in the corridor was deafening. Duncan swivelled his chair to face the door.

Knock. Since when did anybody knock before coming into a room in this place?

‘Come in,' he squeaked.

Luke was looking well, as though he'd just come back from a good holiday. He was wearing a smart grey suit, a white shirt that practically bleached the eye, and a pearl-grey tie. He was smiling. ‘Morning,' he said.

‘M,' Duncan replied.

‘How are you feeling?'

‘Oh, fine.'

‘Head all right?'

‘Mphm.'

‘Splendid. Usually, after the first time, you get a sort of hangover; I think it's because there're traces of chemicals left over in the bloodstream that aren't there the rest of the month, if you get me. Also, there's the chance you might have eaten something that a human might have trouble digesting. We change, the contents of our stomachs don't. But if you're feeling all right—'

‘Yup.'

‘Delighted to hear it.' Luke came closer, perched on the edge of the desk. ‘Right, then,' he said pleasantly. ‘Tell me how you did it.'

Always, throughout Duncan's life, that infuriating feeling that he'd missed something everybody else knew. ‘Did what?'

‘Duncan, my dear old mate.' No expression on Luke's face, unless you counted the look in his eyes. ‘Let's not muck about. You lied to me, all right?'

‘Um.'

‘You told me a load of old rubbish about getting run over by a car. Now, I know it can't have been true,' Luke went on, ‘because if a car had hit you, the result would've been one insurance write-off and you standing there with a big smirk on your face. So, whatever it was that knocked you for six last night, it wasn't a pissy little tin box on wheels. Would you like to tell me something at this point, or shall I go on?'

Duncan shook his head.

‘Please yourself. Actually, I'm not stupid, I know what you did. You chased the unicorn. Come off it,' he added as Duncan made a feeble attempt to protest. ‘I could smell the bloody thing. I told you to leave it alone, but you chased it anyway. I'm assuming that's what happened to you, and all I can say is, you're lucky to be alive. I hope you realise that.'

Pause. Something was wrong. This wasn't the pack leader talking to the subordinate who'd defied a direct order. Duncan maintained eye contact and said nothing.

‘Note the word
assuming
,' Luke went on. He was getting tense; Duncan could smell it. ‘I'm having to assume, you see, because I don't know for certain. Which brings me back to my question. How the
hell
are you doing it?'

‘Doing what?'

For a moment, Duncan was sure that Luke was going to spring. ‘You know perfectly well,' he hissed instead. ‘Closing your mind so I couldn't see into it. You lied to me, but how do I know that? Because I worked it out, and because it was a bloody stupid lie that any fool could've seen through. I couldn't read it in your mind, though. I looked, and there was just this blank wall.
Nothing.
' Luke spat out the last word as though it was something disgusting. ‘And the others,' he went on. ‘What the fuck did you do to them? They didn't even realise there was anything wrong. When you told us all that crap about getting hit by cars, they
believed
you. And that's—' He shook his head and watched Duncan silently for a moment, the way a dog watches its prey when it's frozen stiff with terror. ‘I'm a good alpha,' he said eventually, ‘I know all the stuff. I know how this werewolf business works. But for the life of me I can't figure out how you're able to do all this. Do you want to take over from me, is that it?'

Now there was a question. If Duncan said yes - well, he'd be lying, for a start. More to the point, it'd be like pressing the button that launches the nukes that start off World War Three. Inevitably, immediately, there would be a fight to the death.

‘No,' Duncan said.

So far, so good. Luke stayed where he was: no spring, no growl, no teeth meeting in Duncan's throat. ‘OK,' Luke said slowly, ‘that's nice to hear. All right: if you won't tell me how you're doing it, perhaps you'd care to tell me why. Is it because of her?'

Duncan was about to reply when the little cartoon light bulb flickered inside his head. By
her
he didn't mean the unicorn. He was thinking about Sally, and the vampires. ‘Of course not,' he said. ‘Look, I told you everything about—'

‘Quite. Flew up to your window, like a cross between Romeo and a Harrier. At the time, I was sure you were telling the truth. After all, I thought, he can't lie to me, I'd know straight away if he was. But maybe it's not as simple as that any more.'

‘I promise.'

Luke thought about that. ‘Sure,' he said. ‘Cub's honour, and all that. Fine, so it's not about her. In which case, if it's not your loathsome vertical-take-off ex and it's not ruthless ambition, then what the fuck's got into you?' Now, at last, he was allowing himself to get angry. ‘Just doing it for the hell of it, are you?'

‘No, of course—'

‘Hierarchy means nothing to you, I suppose. You think ethics is a character out of the Asterix books.'

‘Luke—'

‘Don't “Luke” me, you bastard.' A snap, but a controlled snap. To his astonishment, Duncan realised that Luke was afraid of him. Well, not actual fear. There was only one thing in the world that Luke was afraid of: it was white, with silver hooves and a highly improbable growth on its forehead. But wary, as of something unknown and as yet unassessed; something that needed to be observed and gauged before it could be tackled. ‘God, you're an ungrateful little shit, Duncan Hughes. You were stuck in a fucking miserable job, right down at the bottom of the heap, people pissing on you like you were a lamp-post. I brought you back, made you a partner, made you one of
us
, and this is how you say thank you. What the hell did I do to deserve that? Well? Come on, I'm listening.'

What Duncan wanted to say (so much that not saying it practically hurt) was,
you sound just like Sally
.
Or my mother
. In which case, he realised, he'd won - though it wasn't a contest he'd started, or a victory he wanted. He wasn't even aware of having fought. Luke had backed down, acknowledging that, if they fought, he wasn't sure he'd win - hence the unsheathing of the emotional claws, rather than the onslaught with the physical teeth. From werewolf to cat; evolution in reverse.

‘Nothing,' Duncan said; and a great urge came over him to tell Luke everything - about the unicorn, what she'd said, the bewildering stuff about getting him fired from Craven Ettins, and Lycus Grove; about Ferris being derived from the great sky-wolf; and by the way, what—?

‘What happened to Wesley Loop?'

He hadn't intended to say it aloud. It just sort of slipped out, like a goldfish when you're changing the water in its bowl. He nearly reached out with his hand, as though trying to snatch the words back before they reached Luke.

‘Ah,' Luke said.

Oh well. ‘He died, didn't he?'

Luke had gone all quiet: werewolf to cat to hedgehog curled up in a ball. ‘That's a good question,' he said.

‘Well?'

‘I think so.' It had taken Luke a lot of effort to say that; it was like watching a hen laying a pyramid-shaped egg. ‘I know what you're going to say, dead or alive, it's not usually a notorious grey area. In Wesley's case, though—'

‘Tell me about it,' Duncan said. It was, he noticed after he'd said it, an order.

‘Wesley.' Luke seemed to shrink a little. ‘Well, it was just after I left school. Round about the time you must've made your mind up that you didn't want to know us any more. We've got to talk about that at some stage, by the way; but all right, yes, I'll get on with it.' He licked the back of his hand and rubbed behind his ear. ‘I met Wesley Loop at a Christmas party. Actually, that's misleading - I'd known him for years. He's sort of my third cousin twice removed, or something complicated like that. Family, at any rate. But he was just one of those bland, boring people round about your own age who you see at big get-togethers and do your best to avoid, because you know that if you get to know them better you're really going to hate them. Anyhow, that was Wesley. All I knew about him was that he'd just finished law school - everybody was very proud, why can't you be more like your cousin Wesley, all that stuff. But we were trapped at this really boring party, and he came up to me and said hello.'

Luke paused, and it was obvious that he'd forgotten Duncan was there. He was talking to himself.

‘He was telling me about law school,' Luke went on. ‘About how great it had been, and how much he was looking forward to starting work, and how utterly fabulous the legal profession was; and, naturally, I wanted to stick my arm down his throat and rip his lungs out just to make him stop, but you can't, not at a Christmas party, with your gran there and everything. So I stood there and nodded and mumbled “Hey, that's great,” until I just couldn't take any more. So I said, ‘Wesley, excuse me a second, I'm going for a piss.' I scuttled off to the bog, and I'd just got my fly open when the door opened - I'd locked it behind me - and Wesley came in. Well, you can imagine. I was just about to explain that I was fine with that, broad-minded as the next guy and really pleased for him, but if he didn't get out in one second flat I'd break his neck in six places; and then he bit me.'

‘Bit you.' Duncan heard himself say. ‘You mean, like—'

‘Yes.'

It seemed for a while as though Luke didn't want to continue with the story. At some point he'd folded his arms; now he was sitting on the edge of Duncan's desk, staring at his shoes, his mind evidently a long way away in space and time. It was, of course, inconceivable that he was regretting what had happened. Wasn't it?

‘And that,' he said, abruptly breaking the silence, ‘was that.' He looked up, and he was smiling. ‘Wesley told me afterwards that he'd been bitten by one of the lecturers at law school. Crazy old bugger, by the sound of it; he had this idea of recruiting the finest minds and the fiercest spirits, and he'd got it into his head that the best place to find them was kids who wanted to be lawyers when they grew up. The way he saw it, the country's run by lawyers anyhow - look at how many politicians started off as barristers, he said - though, if you ask me, that proves the old boy was on the wrong track. He thought - well, anyhow. That was how Wesley got his start; and thanks to his werewolf superpowers he'd done amazingly well in his exams, got a cracking job already lined up, but what he really wanted to do was start his own firm - and, more to the point, his own pack. That was why he'd had his eye on me, it turned out. He knew I was the leader of a gang at school. Apparently, Wesley had always been the archetypal fat-kid-with-glasses, so he didn't have any friends of his own. Then he heard about me, and reckoned that there was a ready-made pack just waiting for him to take over. That was the deal, basically. I'd go to law school, convert the rest of the gang and persuade them to come too. By the time we'd qualified, Wesley'd have served his time and got his practising certificate, so he'd be able to set up his own practice; we'd all join, and there we'd go. Sounded all right to me, and the others were quite happy to go along—'