Barking (39 page)

Well, it's in rather a mess
.

Oh, for - All right, please yourself, just so long as we get out of sight. Follow me
.

Luke limped as he ran, which made Duncan feel painfully guilty. However he chose to look at it, Luke had just saved him from a painful, ridiculous and distressingly non-terminal death
,
and in return he'd busted Luke's ribs and done something unfortunate to his friend's front left leg. It could've been worse, but it wasn't good.

There was a sort of shed in a Tesco's car park. Luke smashed the door in as though it was one of those paper jobs you get in traditional Japanese houses. Inside, it was pitch dark: no windows. They huddled in a corner, well away from the moonlight leaking through the remains of the door. It was too dark to see anything, but Duncan felt himself change back, and a long, sad sigh from Luke suggested that he'd done the same.

‘You complete bastard, Duncan,' Luke said. ‘Where the hell did you get to? And what's Wesley fucking Loop doing walking about not dead?'

Duncan closed his eyes. It was, after all, a fair question. ‘You've seen the others, then.'

‘Yes, what's left of them. No, it's all right, they're not hurt. Not permanently. Clive's left ear looks like a helping of coleslaw, Pete's nose is a right old mess, Micky's got a broken leg. Kevin's more or less in one piece; it's just as well his love life is a total zero, because he wouldn't be much use on that score for a week or two. But they'll mend OK.'

‘What about Loop? Did they—?'

‘He got away. Knew he'd been in a fight, though. Duncan, where the hell did he suddenly spring from? He's dead. I know he's dead, I was the one who found him. Your lady friend with the unusual forehead jewellery did for him.' Luke paused for a moment, and Duncan heard him shudder. ‘This is serious, Duncan mate. There's something scary going on. So what—?'

In the end, it came down to knowing who your friends were. True, the kiss had cured Duncan - for a while. But it had worn off, because a kiss is just a kiss. Luke, on the other hand, had saved him from Bowden Allshapes, when nobody or nothing else could have done. He felt his resolve crack, and immediately the pain started ebbing away. If he told Luke, told him everything, his wise, strong friend would put it all right.

‘Truth is,' Duncan said, ‘I haven't got a clue what's going on. But if I tell you, maybe you could make sense of it.'

Luke growled, and at the same time Duncan heard his voice in his head:
I knew there was something you were keeping from me.
‘That'd probably be a good idea,' Luke said aloud. ‘Go on, then. It'd better be worth hearing, though. You realise you've screwed up my night off. The others are all right, they've had a nice fight. All I've done is trotted around looking for you.'

So Duncan told him all about it; from the first phone call from the Bick woman at Crosswoods, all the way through to the revelations of Wesley Loop and the nasty few minutes with George and the silver bullets.

When he'd finished, Luke said: ‘That's it?'

‘Well, yes.'

‘Nothing you've left out? Like, how come you didn't transform when you got off the train?'

Oh, Duncan thought. I forgot to tell him about the kiss - silly me. ‘There
was
one other thing,' he said.

‘Thought there might be. Involving some bird, right?'

‘My wife, actually.'

‘Your ex-wife.'

‘Yes, well.' Duncan realised that when he'd left off the prefix it was because, at some level in his mind, he was already regarding the problem they represented as solved. That was stupid, though: a kiss is just a kiss. If he wanted to get rid of that problem as well as all the others, he still needed help. ‘It's like this.'

So he told Luke about that as well; and when he'd done that, Luke looked at him for a moment, then lifted his chin an inch or so and barked. Duncan glanced behind him. There were black shapes moving outside in the moonlight.

‘I was right,' Luke said, and he wasn't talking to Duncan. ‘He's the traitor.'

There was a wolf in the doorway, standing on the very edge of the silver stain like a border guard.
Pete?
Duncan asked, but the wolf only growled.

‘Not here,' Luke said. ‘We'll deal with him back at the office.'

Duncan shot to his feet, but Luke was too quick; Duncan felt his thumb sticking into the hollow at the base of his throat, and his hand wrenching his arm up behind his back. He fought back, not caring if his arm broke, but Luke pushed him forward. He stumbled, and the moonlight took him.

As soon as his front paws touched the ground the pack was on top of him, crushing him flat and holding him down. He'd seen Wesley Loop fighting all four at once, but he made no effort to resist: the attack was too quick, too shocking. His
friends—

‘And I always reckoned I was such a good judge of character.' Luke was still inside the hut, as though he couldn't quite bring himself to join in. ‘But he left us, and that's when the rot set in. Of course,' he added sadly, ‘it's not his fault, it was that bloody woman.'

‘You let us all down, Duncan.' Luke stepped out into the moonlight; just before he changed, Duncan felt sure he caught sight of silver light flashing on a drop of moisture at the corner of his eye.
Really, I'm not blaming you, not entirely. After all, you didn't even know you were doing it
.

The pack growled. Luke walked slowly towards where Duncan lay and lifted his head, staring at the sky.
Doing what, for God's sake?
Duncan thought at him.
Look, whatever it is I'm supposed to have done, I didn't mean it
.

Luke gazed down at him, his eyes more than usually red.
I know, I know. You wouldn't hurt us on purpose. But
- He looked away.
You're a lawyer, Duncan, you know what strict liability means. It doesn't matter if you didn't do it on purpose, or even if you didn't know. You did it, and that's all that's needed for a conviction: no proof of malicious intent required. Personally, I've always thought strict liability's barbaric; just because you are something or you've got something or someone's done something to you, even though you never meant anybody any harm. But there. Fairness doesn't enter into it. The law's just violence in fancy dress, Duncan. Wesley Loop always used to say that. He never meant to betray us either, but that wouldn't have stopped me ripping his throat out for it
.

They lifted him with their shoulders, pressing hard against him so he couldn't move: Pete, Micky, Clive and Kevin, his best mates.
We're going to have to chance it
, Luke was saying to them.
We can't muck about going the back way. If people see us, they see us. We'll head for the Westway flyover, we'll be under cover there a lot of the way
,
and after that
—

Clive's ears pricked up.
We'd be better off taking the Cromwell Road extension and then carrying on to the Embankment, traffic'll be all right at this time of night, and
—

Can't do that
, Micky interrupted,
there's temporary lights at Earls Court, you'd get caught up in all the slow-moving stuff
.

(Which proved, Duncan reflected, that in spite of everything, deep down under the fur they were still men. Not that that was likely to do him a lot of good . . .)

Something shrieked. Five pairs of ears went back, and Luke reared onto his back legs, staring up at the sky, growling deeply.
Quick
, he broadcast,
back into the hut thing before they see us
,
and don't let him give you the slip
.

They pressed hard against Duncan, lifting him off his feet, and started to run in a half-circle to get back to the hut. More shrieks, and Duncan felt a violent down draught of air, as though there was a helicopter directly overhead. He tried to look up but they wouldn't let him. They were squeezing him so hard that he couldn't breathe, trotting as fast as they could go with him wedged in between them. He heard Pete yell ‘
Look out
,' and the pressure suddenly faded. He felt the tarmac under his paws, shook his head and lifted it.

They could have been enormous black birds, crows or whatever - Duncan was no twitcher. But birds didn't glide quite like that, with their wings held out straight and stiff, and besides, there aren't any birds with bodies as big as people, or not in this country at any rate. Pete snapped at the nape of Duncan's neck but he dodged easily and, seeing a gap, shouldered Kevin out of the way. He expected to get bitten for that, but Kevin didn't seem all that interested in him; he was growling, his ears were flat to his skull, and a moment later he launched himself in the air, snapping wildly at the nearest of the flying things. He missed and dropped down again, by which time Duncan was past him; but Luke was blocking his way. Still, even Luke seemed preoccupied with whatever those creatures in the sky were.

His curiosity got the better of him, and he glanced up in time to see a black shape swooping right at him, going unbelievably fast. Luke barked and hurled himself into the air; his teeth caught in something trailing from the creature's wing and he hung suspended by his jaws for a moment, until the creature flapped wildly and fell to earth. Its wild screech nearly drowned out Luke's deep, guttural growling; they were fighting on the ground in a tangled ball of movement and noise. Another of the creatures materialised out of the darkness and soared up directly over Duncan's head, hovering motionless for a split second before putting its wings back and swooping down. Kevin hurled himself at it and they collided with a thick, solid noise that was painful to hear.
Bugger this, get out of here
, Duncan shouted to himself. But something flew low over him, washing him all over in a soft bath of cool air. He felt something like fingers clamp onto his shoulders. All four of his feet left the ground. He was flying.

Or rather, being flown. Staring down, he saw Clive leaping up at him like a dolphin, heard the snap of his jaws closing on thin air an inch or so below Duncan's trailing paw. Then the scene below him panned back and grew small, as the werewolves dwindled into unreliable shapes and blended into the darkness. He tried to look up, but all he could make out was black cloth billowing in the slipstream. He remembered that he was shit-scared of heights, and shut his eyes.

The flight was no fun at all, worse even than Virgin Atlantic, but eventually he felt something hard bash against the soles of his feet, first the back pair and then the front. The grip on his shoulders went loose, and he didn't go tumbling through empty space. He opened his eyes, and found that he was looking up at a woman.

Actually, she was quite nice-looking, if you were into Goth. Her face was very pale and she'd seriously overdone the eyeshadow, but—Fuck you, he yelled at himself, you've been snatched from the jaws of death by vampires, you don't know where you are or whose side these people are on, and you're actually
checking her out
. Deeply ashamed of being himself, he rose slowly to his feet.

‘Happy landings,' the vampire said.

And that was another thing: vampire. That, quite definitely, was what she was. He took a step back. It brought him out of a patch of shadow, and moonlight fell on his face.

‘I wouldn't get carried away with the walking-backwards business if I were you,' the vampire said pleasantly. ‘Thing is, we're on a roof.' She smiled reassuringly, then glanced over her shoulder. ‘I don't know what's keeping the others, but they should be along in a moment or so. They won't have hurt your friends, by the way, not unless they really had to.' She shrugged. ‘Assuming you still care,' she added. ‘My name's Veronica, by the way, Veronica Zhukov. I'm mostly maritime law and conflicts of jurisdiction, though I like to dabble in intellectual property when they'll let me.' She shivered. ‘Would it be all right if we went inside now?' she asked. ‘Only it's a bit nippy out here, and time's getting on.'

She led him down a ladder through a trapdoor. ‘In case you were wondering,' she said, ‘this is the Crosswoods building. But you'd guessed that, I'm sure.'

As soon as the trapdoor closed, shutting out the moonlight, Duncan changed back. His paws became hands just in time to grip the rungs of the ladder and save himself from falling twenty feet onto hard concrete—

‘Oops,' Veronica Zhukov said. ‘Sorry, wasn't thinking. You all right?'

‘Fine,' Duncan replied. ‘Are you going to kill me?'

She looked shocked. ‘Heavens, no,' she said. ‘What a strange thing to say. Besides, if we'd wanted you dead, we'd simply have left you with your furry friends.' A serious look reshaped her face. ‘I can see why you're suspicious about us,' she said. ‘But there's no need, really. I want you to look on us as the good guys.'

Like a fish-hook: not easy to swallow. ‘Really?' he said. ‘But you tried to kill me.'

‘I don't think so,' she said. ‘We've only just met.'

‘Well, maybe not you personally, but your lot. You shot at me in a coffee shop.'

‘Good gracious.' Veronica's eyebrows rose. ‘I honestly don't think that could've been us. After all,' she added, ‘we're lawyers. Which isn't to say we don't do nasty, spiteful things sometimes, but not shooting at people. It's so
gauche
.' She sighed. ‘If we're going to be melodramatic, we might as well do it in my office, or the interview room. I hate standing about in draughty corridors.'

She led him to a door which opened onto a plushly carpeted landing, down a flight of stairs into a passageway, the most startling aspect of which was its normality. It reminded him of the top floor at Craven Ettins - industrial-grade Wilton underfoot, woodchipped walls, plywood doors with aluminium handles. Junior-grade employees and support staff lived here: real people, as opposed to executives and bosses. He felt almost at home. Trainees, clerks and secretaries, he felt, don't get to turn into wild animals at the full moon, or swoop in through windows on fluttering black wings. That sort of caper would inevitably be reserved for the graduate-entry types.