Talulla Rising (33 page)

THE OTHERS.

But there was no shifting Fergus and Trish. There was barely any
reaching
Fergus and Trish. Even when – with that same creepy sense of mutual invasion we’d shared back at the Dorchester – Maddy and I opened to each other, plaited wills and mentally screamed at them in unison:
WE GO NOW!
we got nothing back. Or maybe something, like a drunk on the very edge of complete inarticulacy trying to say
Fuck you
, but it had too far to travel from where they were, out there in the wolf-constellated void. Trish’s head was back now, soft-haired throat at full stretch. Fergus’s hands roamed and squeezed as if madly searching for something concealed under her skin. The stink of their sex was concussively sweet, wrapped around the big olfactory mass of slaughter, which was even now, even
now
a profound temptation—

‘Get in here now!’ Konstantinov shouted. ‘Or we go without you!’

I slung Caleb over my shoulder and ran towards the gate.

49

Ten hours later, human again, I sat washed and dressed in my own (Cloquet-provided) clothes at the breakfast table in Lucy’s cottage, holding Zoë in my arms. Holding Zoë in my arms. Holding Zoë in my arms. Love still made me an obscenity. Love still forced the sickening fall away from her. That wouldn’t change. Not for a long time. Not unless I got her brother back. This logic, like the idiot-proof logic of the Curse, was a comfort. Something to rely on. Something to help me through the cruelty I was going to have to inflict if I was ever
going
to get him back.

A wood-burning stove radiated narcotic warmth. All the curtains were closed but each window showed a lozenge of blue-grey light. The place was spotless, smelled (beyond the swirling perfumes of vestigial
wulf
) of fresh linen, frangipani incense, terracotta tiles and oiled oak – only occasionally muddied by the odour of the Undead: Caleb was in bed in an upstairs room, shivering, in and out of delirium, skin oozing the gelatinous pink sweat. I didn’t know how long his system would take to burn the blood he’d had last night, but he didn’t look like dying just yet. I’d tried to get a number for Mia out of him, but he was too far under.

A vampire boy, obviously, hadn’t been expected. Lucy had almost thrown up when we carried him in. (Which, given
what
she would have thrown up, would have been a forensic disaster, despite the painter’s plastic lining walls and floor.) I hadn’t realised how used to Caleb’s smell I’d got in prison. In the close confines of the van (yes, a Transit van with comedy contents: three humans up front, three werewolves, a vampire and half a human leg in the back) his stink had caused serious trouble: it left Madeline and Devaz too queasy to fuck. They couldn’t eat, either. I ended up finishing most of the leg myself. (Who wants a leg? my dad used to ask, carving at Christmas or Thanksgiving.) They were disgusted and furious at the wasted opportunity. Devaz kept brattishly kicking the walls of the van, until Konstantinov turned in his seat with the silver-loaded Springfield and told him very calmly that if he didn’t stop making such a fucking racket he’d shoot him there and then. We’d driven for maybe an hour – all minor roads, all unlit – to Lucy’s divorce-settlement cottage, which appeared to be in the middle of nowhere, but which was in fact only a quarter of a mile from the nearest village – Yatesbury (which I’d never heard of, naturally) – but screened from the road at the front by a tree-lined garden and backed by sheep-dotted farmland. Unless anyone had been looking and listening for us they wouldn’t have noted our arrival. Nor, if all the precautions had served their purpose, would they have any idea that inside the chocolate box cottage, with its limewash and thatch and honeysuckle and rosebushes, a man had been killed and eaten by monsters. One of them less than a month old.

Even now, sitting in clean clothes and warmth and freedom with my daughter in my arms (and my obscene heart stuck in the loop of being forced near the love that forced it to fall away), I found it incredible that what had happened had in fact happened. After his escape Konstantinov had made it back to London and called Cloquet. Not because he had any regard for Cloquet’s abilities, but because he needed money. Lots of it. To buy information and raise a team. I’d underestimated his friendship with Walker. He wasn’t prepared to abandon him. ‘The team’ didn’t materialise. Word of Hoyle’s fate had spread. The WOCOP moles went silent and of the individuals on Murdoch’s hit-list only three were still in the UK – and they emphatically weren’t interested, at any price. Cloquet, meanwhile, having heard nothing from me for days, had contacted Madeline for help with Zoë. The dots were there to be joined: Madeline, Fergus, Lucy and Trish would come out of it loaded, Konstantinov would get four werewolves ready for human slaughter (or rather three werewolves, since one of them still had to babysit Zoë) and the monsters would get a free all-you-can-eat WOCOP buffet more or less without risk of legal reprisal. Konstantinov had guessed what sort of show Murdoch had in mind so he was confident Walker would be kept alive till full moon. They’d have to get in quick, as soon as the werewolf troops were transformed.

There remained – for Cloquet, for Lucy, for Zoë – the problem of feeding.

Cue Madeline – and the punter she didn’t like.

‘Wife beater,’ she’d told me, earlier. ‘He wanted to hire me to join in.’

‘In beating-up his wife?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But not because she’s a masochist?’

‘You’re not getting it. She’s not a masochist – she’s terrified of him. He wanted me to burn her with cigarettes then shit in her mouth. This is his
wife
, right?’

The expected moral reflex – checked.
It’s only the best thing for us if it’s the worst thing for someone else
. Moral judgement rights went that night in Big Sur. Before that, even. I kept my mouth shut.

‘So I thought, Well, it’s got to be
some
one, you know?’

She contacted him and told him she was considering his proposal (double her usual rate, to make the lie credible) but wanted see him on his own one more time before taking the plunge. This weekend she had the use of a friend’s cottage in Wiltshire. Why didn’t he come down so they could discuss it?

‘And that was him fucked. I slipped him one in his drink and off he went to sleep. Luce said he didn’t wake up till things started to happen.’

When he did wake up – when things started to happen – he was naked, gagged and hog-tied in Lucy’s bathtub. With Lucy standing over him. Not looking like the Lucy any of her friends would have recognised.

‘Serves him right,’ Madeline had said. ‘And I hope he was life insured up the arse too. Poor cow deserves a pay-out.’

I hadn’t been able to discuss any of it with Lucy, how it had gone, how Zoë had been, whether she’d had any trouble feeding. Initially because we were all still in
wulf
mode and physically incapable of discussing anything, later because once the moon had set there were too many grim practicalities to deal with. Before it could be disposed of the wife-beater’s body had to be prepped: decapitated, fingerprints burnt off, teeth knocked out, lungs punctured. I did most of it. It seemed appropriate. A lot of his face was gone. Not eaten, just rubbished. To erase the person, I knew. His St Christopher had survived, as if to prove its own uselessness. It went in the bleach along with his wedding ring and wristwatch, to be disposed of separately far from here. Separately from the rest of him. Lucy’s ex had a tiny boat at a quiet mooring a few miles south of Weston-Super-Mare. As soon as she was back in human form she’d left with Cloquet (and a single portion of human remains) in the van. They were to take it out into the Bristol Channel and drop the weighted carnage overboard.

Konstantinov had gone with Walker in a separate car after dropping us here. Courtesy of my funding via Cloquet he had a crooked doctor on call and a place to hole-up. I hadn’t been able (physically, again) to say anything to him about what had happened to Walker in custody. I wondered if he’d know. Masculine rape-radar. Thinking of Walker hurt my heart. I supposed it was over between us. Not just because of what had happened to him, but because of what he’d seen: me in all my filthy glory. Richard used to claim Linda Blair never got laid after
The Exorcist
; guys couldn’t shake the footage. Nonsense, obviously – but maybe not when the footage was from real life. The goodbye between us had been a stare through the windshield. What else could it have been? An embrace? I was a nine-foot monster covered in blood. The woman in me was ashamed and the wolf around her was full of contempt. In any case, even if he wanted me (and hadn’t been left terminally impotent) what future was there? What future had there ever been?
See you later, babe. Um-hm. Have a good kill.
And that was before we got to the other bitterly laughable truth: that the more I felt for him the more likely it was he’d end up
being
the good kill.

Unless of course I Turned him.

Why not? If I didn’t get Lorcan back there’d be no end to the warped gestures I could make in the void. Well, I could imagine my mother saying, with arch reasonableness,
why
not? What’s he got left to lose?

That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that if I Turned him he’d end up hating me. Sooner or later he’d forget he’d wanted it. Sooner or later he’d start to wonder how I could have done it to him. Sooner or later every shitty thing that happened to him would be my fault. It was a structural certainty. I knew it, the monster knew it, even Walker knew it.

It was getting light out. Zoë was asleep in my arms. Bubbles of
wulf
were trapped in my veins and the ingested lives were standing around confused and weeping like children on their first day at school. Monster strands clung in my neck muscles, buttocks, calves. The virtues of victim blood and victim meat throbbed and glowed, a sensation like indoor warmth after freezing outside.

Devaz, who’d taken longer in the shower than any of us, was stretched out asleep on the couch in the lounge.
He
hadn’t been expected, either, so there were no men’s clothes for him. Instead he’d had to squeeze into a pair of Lucy’s baggiest sweatpants. It was such an unappetising sight everyone was relieved when he conked out and we could throw a blanket over him.

‘Shouldn’t they be back by now?’ I asked.

Madeline, also scrubbed, precisely made-up and in clean clothes (dark blue Levis, tight white t-shirt, black suede cowboy boots), had just come in and put the kettle on. There was a rich ambiguous atmosphere between us,
wulf
’s telepathy still volatile. I knew she was aware of me having turned over the sapphic possibility back in the WOCOP compound, though I couldn’t tell how she would’ve reacted if I’d reached out and touched her. I supposed she ‘did’ girls, professionally, if only because it was economically dumb not to, but for all I knew it was strictly business. Besides, there were Devaz and Fergus now, if I was looking for a loveless version of fuckkilleat, no need to resort to lesbianism. I heard this phrase – no need to resort to lesbianism – in the voice of our neighbour in Park Slope, Mrs Spears, who was brisk and brusque and always absolutely knew her mind and yours too and always told you what not just you but everyone in the world should do. Good Lord, Talulla, there’s no need to resort to lesbianism! At which I was forced to concede that I was more interested in Madeline than I was in either of the two males. Partly a little titillating masochistic jealousy. Partly an irritation with what suddenly felt like absurd (
super-
absurd, given my other activities) anachronistic bourgeois repression. Partly sexual curiosity that went all the way back to Lauren. Partly just the feeling that since it was going to happen sooner or later I might as well get on with it. Partly, of course, Jake between us. Jesus, he must be loving this. I imagined him settling down with a Macallan and a Camel and a big grin in front of his afterlife TV: and now, a little earlier than advertised, ultra-hot two-girl werewolf action. Fan fucking tastic. Where’s the slow-motion on this thing? Where’s the repeat?

‘Don’t worry,’ Madeline said, opening a fresh carton of milk. ‘Luce knows what she’s doing. They’ll be fine. Anyway, come on, you still haven’t told me.’

How I’d ended up with Devaz and the late Wilson, she meant, werewolves conjured up from the WOCOP faithful. Jake’s journal, incredibly, had survived the night, but she still hadn’t seen it. It wasn’t necessary. I knew the relevant lines by heart. I knew the lines and the scene: The Castle Hotel room, Caernarfon, night. Jake staring at the Harley phone in the wake of the Harley message. Madeline emerging from the en suite, post-coitally repaired, clipping up her hair:

‘Look at
that,
’ she said, turning her cheek and showing me a tiny lovebite on her pliable young neck. ‘That’s a
mark
, isn’t it?’

I knew it well enough, having read and re-read it countless times once the penny – thanks to Caleb’s story of his making – dropped.

‘Jake gave you a lovebite,’ I said. ‘That night in Caernarfon. The night Grainer and Ellis turned up with Harley’s head in a bag.’

I watched her thinking back. It brought the images again, Jake fucking her, her face’s worked-for look of professional collusion. Somewhere else in her the little girl (like Cloquet’s little boy on the dock) was waiting for the reunion that would never come. And yet maybe it could come now. My own childhood self hadn’t minded the monster much. It was the older versions that had freaked out. In fact it was like the little girl’s revenge: See? I
told
you it was like this. All these terrible and wonderful things.

‘He gave you a lovebite,’ I said. ‘It had to have broken the skin just enough. Meanwhile the anti-virus they’d been slipping him had worked. There’s no other explanation. The next night, full moon, you changed, just like he did.’

A few moments while she took it in. ‘How do you know all this?’