Barking (42 page)

‘Werewolf reflexes,' he said, with a grin. ‘I figured if that ditzy little gun of yours couldn't shoot through a tape-measure—'

‘Bastard,' she said.

‘That's it, isn't it? You haven't got any more silver bullets.'

‘That's right, be all smug about it. Hardest thing I ever did, staying married to you for a whole year.'

‘At least I don't pop.'

She scowled at him. ‘What do you mean, pop?'

‘In your sleep. You make this sort of popping noise with your mouth. Makes you look like a goldfish.'

‘That's not true - you're making it up.'

‘I am not. Pop, pop, pop. Kept me awake for hours. I'd just lie there, waiting for the next pop. Enough to drive you mad.'

‘I don't—'

‘How would you know? You're asleep at the time.'

‘Well rid of me, then, aren't you?'

Yes, Duncan thought. I suppose I am. ‘Are you going to try and stop me leaving now?'

Sally shook her head. ‘Not try so much as succeed, actually. I'm faster than you, and stronger, and I can fly. Also, the others'll be here in a moment. I don't know what it's like at Ferris and Loop, but around here you can't go letting off guns without attracting a certain amount of attention.'

He took a step backwards. ‘You surprise me,' he said. ‘I wouldn't have thought you'd have wanted your friends around right now.'

‘What on earth makes you say that?'

Duncan grinned. Not his best effort ever. ‘You know what your boss asked me, that Caroline? She asked me if I knew who the traitor was. At the time, of course, I hadn't got a clue, but it's sort of come to me, like a revelation or something. Next time I see her, I must remember to tell her. I'm sure she'll be interested.'

Silence. Duncan could hear Sally's heart beating, the faintest creak from her shoes as she shifted her weight just a little. ‘Nice try,' she said. ‘Wrong traitor, actually. Besides, she won't believe you.'

‘Well, if she doesn't, no harm done as far as you're concerned. Let's try it and see what happens.'

‘You please yourself,' Sally replied. ‘Anyway, it's not true.'

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that right?'

‘Yes. You're the traitor. You have been all along, you just didn't know. Oh, you were quite right about Bowden Allshapes putting me through law school and getting me a job here, but I was only ever just a way of getting to you. Ironic, really,' she added bitterly, ‘because I'm quite bright, though I say it myself, and you're just a dead loss, no wordplay intended. But no, it was you they wanted, and I was just an eyelash-flutterer with a law degree.' She scowled. ‘I got my partnership on merit,' she went on. ‘I worked bloody hard and I'm good at my job. You'd still be a miserable little assistant solicitor at Cravens if Luke Ferris hadn't wanted you to complete his collection. Of course, that's men for you. It's not how good you are, it's who you happened to be at school with.'

Duncan nodded. ‘I see,' he said. ‘So I'm the traitor. What am I supposed to be betraying? Your boss knows,' he added quickly, before Sally could speak. ‘That Caroline, she knows but she wouldn't tell me. So why don't you—?'

He hesitated. Sally was smiling, but he was prepared to bet she wasn't aware she was doing it. Habit of hers, one he remembered; small recompense for the heartbreak and misery, but if he hadn't been married to her, he wouldn't have known about the habit, and a tiny little light bulb wouldn't have started to glow in his head. Looked at from that perspective, it'd been a small price to pay.

‘Why don't you tell me what it is?' he went on. ‘And then at least I'll know if I've actually done something to deserve all this. Not that it matters—'

‘No, it doesn't.' A goodness-is-that-the-time look flickered across Sally's face. ‘What matters is delivering you, dead or alive. I know it's the most appalling cliché, but there's a hard way and an easy way. Your choice. Five seconds.'

He had to admit, she did melodrama really rather well. Not many people could've said that without making him want to snigger, because it was something people only said in movies, and he didn't watch that kind of movie. But she said it with a kind of eyes-wide-open sincerity that almost made it sound like a genuine choice. Bloody hell, they were trying to
kill
him . . . A surge of irritation swept through him, because it was really nasty of her to put him in a situation where someone could come out with a bloody stupid line like that and expect to be taken seriously. He reached behind him, grabbed hold of the plain wooden chair provided for the Crosswoods receptionist and swung it over his head, bringing it down as hard as he could on the edge of the desk. It flew apart, leaving him holding one splintered leg, ending in a nice sharp point where it had split along the grain. One improvised wooden stake; and in the other hand, the wrist-numbing weight of Megarry and Wade.

‘I've chosen,' Duncan said.

But Sally just sighed. ‘You and your male ego,' she said. ‘You really think you can fight your way out. With a chair leg.'

He shrugged. ‘You talk like a bad film, I think like one. I guess we're all victims of American popular culture.' (As he said it, a strange but pleasing thought occurred to him:
she may be a vampire and trying to kill me, but I'm not afraid of her any more. When we were married, she scared me stiff. I was always afraid I'd do something wrong and she wouldn't love me any more
.) ‘Well, go on, then,' he said wearily. ‘If you're going to try and kill me, go ahead. If not, I'm leaving. No offence, but I've had just about enough of you to last me.'

‘Oh for crying out loud,' she said, and flew at him. Literally: both feet off the floor, arms spread like wings, she lifted into the air, hovered for a moment, then swooped like a diver, straight at his face.

There are some things you can never really prepare yourself for, and one of them is seeing your ex-wife zoom at you through the air like a huge black seagull. Duncan ducked just in time, dropping the chair leg and the book as he instinctively shielded his face with his hands. As she shot by overhead, he felt the hem of her sort-of-cape-thing flick the corner of his eye, and noticed that she was wearing perfume. That, and make-up too. Being undead had clearly helped her express her long-repressed feminine side.

Sally banked a foot or so from the wall and came by for another pass, sending Duncan scuttling under the front desk. He banged both his head and his knee but neither of them hurt. She screeched - it was the cry of a pterodactyl or a Nazgul or a huge killer bat, but it was also unmistakably
her
, the same tone of voice she'd always used for telling him he had to grow up and start taking this relationship seriously (which generally meant it was his turn to Hoover the lounge) - and came down for another pass, grabbing the desk with both hands, lifting it off the floor and hurling it across the room. Well, he thought, she always did throw things when she was in a strop.

All in all, it was an inopportune moment for a sudden blinding insight. But intuition is a bit like your mother, it always tends to call when you're in the middle of something else. So absolute was the revelation that he clean forgot about the fight, his history with his opponent and the very real prospect of being killed. Not that they weren't very real issues, but this was simply much more important. He stood up, and said, ‘Wait a second.'

Sally braked in mid-air; it must have been his tone of voice. ‘What?' she said, hovering, her cape barely fluttering, so that she looked like a five-foot-five killer hummingbird.

‘I know what the thing is,' he said, less than brilliantly. ‘The thing,' he repeated. ‘What I'm supposed to betray to you.'

She smiled. She'd always had a nice smile. ‘No, you don't,' she said. ‘You just told me you don't.'

‘Ah, but I've figured it out.' Didn't he ever feel pleased with himself. The way you do. ‘I know why it had to be me, and why I was able to stand up to Luke instead of backing down with my tail between my legs—'

‘You know, I have trouble visualising you with a tail,' she said. ‘Especially between your—'

‘And that's what your lot want from me,' he said, as much to himself as her. ‘You reckon you'll be able to use it, like a command code or something; make us do what you want, use us—' He frowned: not a nice idea, werewolves at the beck and call of vampires, a ferocious and expendable workforce. And they wouldn't be rounding up sheep or carrying newspapers home in their mouths. It'd be ‘
Good boy, kill
' - ‘I'm right, aren't I?' he said defiantly. ‘Your lot want it - the vampires, I mean. And your other lot, too: Bowden Allshapes and Wesley Loop and all those nutters. You want to be able to say “Heel” and we'll all do exactly what you tell us to—'

‘Not bad.' Sally nodded approvingly. ‘That's half of it, anyway. It's all right, we don't need you to be able to figure out the other half. In fact, it'd fuck up everything if you did. Right,' she said briskly, ‘we can get on now. You see, there'd be no earthly point killing you if you didn't know the secret.'

Oh, Duncan thought. Sod it. Should've kept my face shut. Except it wouldn't have made any difference. There was no way out of there except over her undead body.

She took her time: careful, meticulous, hallmark of a good litigation lawyer. She drew herself up in the air, studying him like a golfer considering a long putt, and he discovered that he was suddenly too scared to move.
Fine wolf you turned out to be
, he told himself, and waited for the moment.

Which didn't come. She was all ready to swoop when another black-caped figure flew at her, catching her round the neck and pulling her down to the floor. Catfight, he thought; at least, change that C to a B and you'd be nearer the mark. It was that nice-looking Veronica. She must've come round out of her Megarry and Wade-induced slumber, and maybe she assumed it was Sally who'd clobbered her, or maybe they just didn't like each other much. In any event, they were fighting it out in fine style, though it was all happening too fast for Duncan to catch the finer points. It was mostly wrestling, with some karate, kick-boxing and biting thrown in. A bit like having an episode of
Xena Warrior Princess
filmed in your living room, and the production people had forgotten to tell you about it in advance.

Duncan was ashamed to admit it, but he knew quite a few people who'd have paid money to watch. Not, however, his cup of tea. As quietly and unobtrusively as he could manage, he started to creep on all fours towards the door.

For a while, he thought he was going to make it. He paused three times and glanced up, and they seemed to be getting on just fine without him. The main problem appeared to be that no matter how hard they bit each other, they couldn't break the skin; it didn't stop them trying, though, and no matter what your views might be on violence in the workplace, you had to admire their perseverance and dedication. But, when he was no more than seven feet from the door and wondering whether a quick lunge might carry him through, he heard a noise like someone gargling custard, followed by a heavy thump. He wanted to ignore it and make his dash anyway, but somehow he couldn't. He looked over his shoulder.

Nice-looking Veronica was hanging in the air as though she'd got her cape caught up on an invisible coat hook. Beneath her on the floor, Sally lay in a heap, like some bulk commodity tipped off the back of a dumper truck. He stared at her for a moment, wondering if she was—

‘It's all right.' Veronica's voice sounded unbearably weary. ‘She'll be OK.' She looked at him, and added: ‘You still care, don't you?'

‘Yes. Well, no, actually,' he added. ‘Not like that. What've you done to her?'

‘Throttled her till she blacked out.' Long sigh, as of someone completely fed up. ‘She'll have a hell of a sore throat for a day or two, and I doubt I'll hear the last of it for a long time. But never mind. Going somewhere?'

Duncan nodded. ‘New Mexico,' he said.

‘Oh.' Veronica sounded disappointed, which was—Although she wasn't nearly so nice-looking now. Her hair was tangled like a bramble patch and there was spit dribbling down her chin. ‘Why? Got relatives there or something?'

‘No. That's the point,' Duncan said. ‘I suppose I shouldn't have told you,' he added, wondering why he had.

She shrugged. ‘To be honest with you, I'm feeling too tired to care. Properly speaking, I ought to stop you, but—' Slowly, like a drifting leaf, she let herself glide gently to the floor. ‘If you want to go, go. I'll tell the others that we fought and you won. Which is probably what'd happen, seeing how knackered I feel. Well, go on, then.'

Duncan didn't move; which was bloody odd, he had to admit. He blamed it all on curiosity, but that was only a very small part of it. ‘What was all that about?' he said.

‘What? Oh, you mean—' She grinned. ‘I was saving your life,' she said. ‘I'd rather assumed you'd figured that out for yourself, which was why I hadn't mentioned it.'

‘Oh,' he said. ‘Thanks,' he added.

‘Thanks,' she echoed. ‘Well, that makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it? Sorry,' she added. ‘Uncalled for. After all, I didn't rush to your rescue out of a high-minded regard for the value of canine life.'

(Or because I like you, she didn't add.)

‘It's because your lot needs me. Because of the secret, right?'

Veronica nodded. ‘I overheard a bit of your conversation,' she said. ‘Dreadful manners, but I was too woozy to move. Was it you who bashed me, by the way? I remember something whirling towards me, but that's about it.'