Barking (38 page)

‘Silver bullets, naturally,' the woman said. ‘Did you know that we have to get them individually hallmarked, by law? It's true. They've all got a little lion and some numbers stamped on them. Ridiculous, isn't it? Oh, would you mind terribly putting your seat belt on?'

The car tore round a corner, throwing Duncan hard against the window. He straightened up again. The driver, he noticed, was a short, bald, round-headed man who reminded him of someone. The hard, cold pressure on the back of his head was still there.

‘Suit yourself, then,' the woman said. ‘Only George does so like to drive fast. Of course, you're practically indestructible, so it doesn't matter terribly much. Talking of which: Wesley's fine, in case you were worried. A few broken bones, and one of his feet came off, but nothing that can't be put right in a jiffy.'

Wesley. Wesley Loop. In that case—

‘We've met,' he said dully. ‘Haven't we?'

‘That's right,' the woman chirruped. ‘And this time it's me chasing you, which is rather fun, isn't it? Not that it makes any difference in practice. Oh, while I think of it, I'd just like to say thank you for all your hard work, looking after our legal business. Now I really don't want you to think, just because it was all a bit of a sham and there was no way you could ever have got those silly accounts to balance, that we don't really appreciate all your effort on our behalf. In fact, it was your sheer perseverance—'

‘It's dogged as does it,' the driver muttered.

‘Be quiet, George. It was your perseverance that convinced us that you were just the person we were looking for; which is why you're here now, of course. Though we were just a little bit surprised when Wesley said you were - well, like that. We assumed you'd have transformed, but clearly you haven't. That's really very clever of you. George, did you
really
tell Wesley dead or alive? You know what he's like. No sense of humour, but he does so love to show off.'

The kiss, Duncan thought, hold on to it. If he could believe that the kiss was the only real thing he'd experienced that night, he felt sure that somehow he'd find a way out of all of it - wake up and discover it had all been a dream, something like that. But the kiss was slipping away, and instead he was being made to understand that reality was being driven way too fast in a car with a shape-shifting zombie gangmaster who probably didn't mean him well. In a reality like that, kisses and everything they stand for couldn't really exist, could they? You could want to believe in them with all your heart and soul, but deep down you'd always know that they were imaginary, as mythical as werewolves or unicorns. There are kisses at the bottom of our garden, you'd say, and your mother would smile faintly and say, That's nice, dear, now go and wash your hands, tea's nearly ready—

Without really knowing why, except that it was all make-believe anyway so it didn't really matter what happened, Duncan shot out his hand, grabbed the driver's elbow and shoved it hard. The car swerved violently. He smelled burning rubber and the noise of metal meeting concrete and losing a short but nasty fight was so loud that it hurt. His head shot forward, only very briefly delayed by a sheet of toughened glass, and he sniffed blood as his head emerged through the shattered windscreen into the fresh air. And the moonlight.

‘
George
!' Her again. But George couldn't move. He was sitting with the windscreen round his neck like an Elizabethan ruff. ‘George, I've dropped the stupid gun - do something.'

Oh well, Duncan thought, and he threw himself at the scrunched remains of the windscreen. He felt little mosaic tiles of glass patter round his shoulders like snowflakes as he sailed through the air, and then he landed, on all fours, on the tarmac. There was a loud noise behind him; from context, he guessed it was probably a gunshot. He ran half a dozen strides, to the cover of a parked van, and ducked down. No more shots. He crept round the side of the van and sprinted away up the middle of the road. He'd cleared fifty yards before he realised he was still on all fours, and that it wasn't hindering him at all. In fact, he couldn't run any other way. Also, his hands were paws, and he knew without having to look round that at some point in the past few seconds he'd acquired a tail. He'd transformed.

H
e couldn't help it. He lifted his head and howled.

Why the hell did I just do that?
Duncan asked himself. But now he came to think of it, why shouldn't he? After all, he was a wolf, he was entitled: freedom of expression, a fundamental lycanthropic right. Likewise, what was he doing skulking behind parked cars just because some prat of a human (or ex-human - like it mattered) was taking pot-shots at him with, yes, all right, silver bullets? But it was dark and the bloke hadn't looked like the sort of human who possessed the considerable skill needed to hit a moving target with a pistol. And he only had their word for it that the bullets really were silver. And he wanted to bite somebody, a lot, and they did seem to be the obvious candidates—

He trotted round the car onto the pavement, so as to come up on their blind side. It was a pity he didn't have opposable thumbs, since getting a car door open would be tricky, but there were other ways of getting humanoid bipeds out of their metal boxes. He debated the relative merits of getting his snout under the sills and turning it over like a hedgehog and simply crashing his way in through the back window. Both were entirely possible, of course, for a werewolf with superlupine strength, and both struck him as potentially enormous fun. Pity he had to choose between them, really.

In the event, he didn't need to decide. They'd opened their doors and climbed out, the silly creatures; the man saw him and pooped off a shot from his little gun. It went high and left, and before he could waste another shot, Duncan leaped. The man collapsed under his impact like a flat-pack coffee table; Duncan heard the chunky thud of his skull on the pavement, as his teeth met in the loose, flabby skin of his throat. A quick sideways jerk of the head, and that one'd keep. He looked round quickly for the female.

‘Mr Hughes, don't be annoying.' She didn't sound the least bit worried. He stood still, waiting for her to move so that he could attack. She looked down at him and smiled.

‘In case you're feeling torn apart by remorse,' she said, ‘George'll be just fine. Of course, he won't be able to talk much until he's been fixed up, but really, that's not a problem. In fact, I may just leave him that way, at least for a day or so. There, that's your mind set at rest. Now hop in the car and sit still.'

There was such a terrible, casual authority in her voice that for a split second Duncan felt an urge to obey her. Probably, if she'd just kept to ‘
Sit
' or ‘
Here, boy
,' he wouldn't have been able to resist. As it was, he tore himself free just in time. She frowned, as though the thought that he wouldn't obey hadn't crossed her mind. Then she gave a slight shrug, and turned into a unicorn.

Oh, Duncan thought.

Dead or alive, the annoying Mr Loop had said; to her, obviously, it made no odds. He growled, and the fur on the back of his neck was as crisp as the bristles of a hairbrush. She was keeping perfectly still, winding him up; she knew perfectly well that he couldn't start chasing her until she moved, just as he couldn't stop until he caught her or died trying.

‘Last chance,' she said cheerfully. ‘It'll end the same way, but you can save yourself a run.'

I like running
, he thought. She nodded her head just a little, arched her back and leaped off the pavement into the air.

At one point, Duncan tried to get a car to run him over, but it swerved and hit a concrete bollard. He tried to dislocate his shoulder by jumping a wall that was obviously far too high, but he cleared it easily, landed smoothly and hardly missed a stride. He tried to get people to notice him, so they'd call the RSPCA or some other paramilitary organisation, someone with black helicopters and steel nets to haul him in with. But the few people who weren't looking the other way as he thundered past them must've assumed he was just an unusually big dog and they walked on by. When she crossed the canal, he could have sworn that she bounded over the surface of the water, her step so light that the meniscus bore her weight. He plunged in, doing his best to take his eye off her so that when he reached the other side she'd be long gone and there'd be no scent trail to follow. But as he grimly doggy-paddled through the treacly black water to the far bank, he saw her waiting for him, standing under a street lamp whose amber light blazed on her horn and hooves. It was punishment as well as execution, and he had no more choice in the matter than a car being towed.

After a while, when his lungs were beginning to cramp and the roaring in his ears was drowning out every other sound, he realised that she was running him round in a circle. That, he couldn't help thinking, was simply taking the piss, as though she was getting him to chase his own tail. The Paradise Garden Chinese restaurant flashed past the edge of his vision for the sixth time; he'd gone there once, with some of the Craven Ettins people - what were their names? Chris and Nina and Dave and Ramesh and Pauline; he'd got on well with them, but they'd all found better jobs and moved on, leaving him behind just as this stupid white unicorn was doing, running himself to death trying to keep up with yet another effortless front-runner . . . There comes a point when you've simply got to stop, even if it's only because you're about to die—

Something crashed into Duncan from the side, lifting him off his feet into the air. He landed badly and scrabbled to his feet, desperate not to lose sight of the unicorn, not really caring what had hit him. He sniffed for the scent trail, but before he could move after it a stunning weight landed on his back, smearing him onto the road surface like butter. He heard growling, loud enough to make itself audible over the thudding of his heart, and felt something sharp pressing against his throat, unable to penetrate his skin but determined to try its best. Teeth—?

It was Luke: a huge grey and black wolf tearing at his throat, grappling at his face with its claws, trying to flip him over onto his back and pin him down. Duncan was amazed at how much of a fight he managed to put up against it, in spite of the overwhelming weariness that was numbing every muscle in his body. He twisted his spine like a rubber band and bit back, catching Luke's nose between his jaws and grinding down on it. Luke yelped and clamped his teeth on Duncan's ear; Duncan tried to jerk his head free and felt tearing, like a frayed sheet.
Luke, you arsehole, let go, I'm busy
, he thought furiously, but the pressure grew rather than slackened; Luke was forcing his head down onto the tarmac, and Duncan didn't have quite enough strength left to resist. It was pretty close, all the same - if he wasn't so miserably tired, he realised, he'd be winning - and he knew he had no choice but to keep fighting until he'd definitively lost.
Get off me, Ferris, you fucking lunatic
, roared his hidden voice inside his head.
She's getting away, don't you—?

Yes,
Luke's voice replied calmly.
Isn't she?

It was as though Duncan was an engine and some small but essential component had broken. He stopped fighting and froze. The pressure from Luke's jaws didn't increase but stayed at the same constant level.

Duncan tried to nod, but Luke's grip meant he couldn't move his head.
Yes
, he thought back.
It's OK, you can let go of me
.

No chance
. Luke was laughing, somewhere under all that fur and spittle.
If I let go now, the first puff of air with her scent on it and you'll be off again. Oh and by the way
,
I think you've cracked a couple of my ribs. Don't know your own strength, that's your trouble
.

Duncan's head felt like a stream when you disturb the mud at the bottom and it turns all cloudy and yuck. His throat was raw and full of blood and bitter goo, as though he'd just thrown up. One of his eyes didn't seem to want to open, and his nose—

He couldn't smell her.

He panicked and tried desperately to throw Luke off him. The pain in his ear increased sharply, then faded away.

I'm going to let go of you now
, Luke's voice murmured in his head.
Don't even think about following the unicorn, it's long gone. Now, when I count to three; one, two
—

As the force applied to him waned, Duncan felt himself tense like a spring and then gradually relax. She'd gone, there was no point. No point to anything any more.

(Now there was a familiar thought—)

Fuck you, Hughes.
Luke's voice in his mind sounded relieved, almost joyful.
Always chasing after women, that's your problem. Anything female, even bloody horses. You want to get a grip
.

Well, yes, Duncan thought. Yes to both.
Where did you come from?
he asked.

What? You called me
.

Duncan was about to deny it when he remembered the howl. But that had been sheer reflex, an instinctive reaction to the transformation. Lucky, though.
Thanks
, he thought quietly.

You're welcome. Apart from the cracked ribs, of course. And now, for crying out loud let's get out of the bloody road before we're seen. I really don't want to spend what's left of my holiday dodging police marksmen
.

He had a point there, of course.
Sorry
.

No. Definitely not there.
If it's all right with you, I'd rather go somewhere else
.