by Tom Holt
Bugger Superman, he told himself. Faster than a speeding bullet; well, fine. Leaps tall buildings at a single bound; yawn. Duncan Hughes, on the other hand, can earn sixty thousand quid in an hour, of which he gets a one-sixth share, less tax and overhead; say four grand. He followed the entrancing trail of figures through weekly and monthly into yearly net earnings, assuming a five-hour working day and generous holidays - Fuck me, he thought. Not, of course, as much as Julia Roberts or David Beckham or Robbie Williams, but he found he wasn’t really bothered about that. He was, after all, basically a simple, modest person at heart. Doing a short but honest day’s work, doing it well and earning a revoltingly large amount of money would suit him very nicely.
Just to make sure it really worked and hadn’t merely been a fluke, he hauled all the remaining files out of the cabinet, dumped them on the desk and set to work. Far from wearing off, the superpowers seemed to grow with use, as he got used to them and figured out the minutiae of how they worked. For example: he found that he could read to the end of one line, left to right, and then read the one underneath it right to left, as though it was Arabic. He could turn pages quickly and accurately just by blowing on them, which left his hands free for typing. (Multi-tasking? No problem.) Mental arithmetic soon became practically instantaneous, while his newly acquired photographic memory was clicking away faster than a pack of paparazzi. But the strangest, and also quite possibly the most helpful thing was that, the more of it he did, the less tiresome and dull the work became. It was, he realised, the old rule of human nature: we enjoy doing stuff we do well. The faster he went, the more absurdly pleased he was with himself, which in turn boosted his productivity. Not so much a piece of cake as a slice of Black Forest gateau with whipped cream and cherries.
Then, abruptly, he reached the end. He’d finished it all, every last scrap of the work he’d been given to do. The stack of neatly addressed envelopes in his post tray rose like a bonsai mountain, and the finished-with files lay discarded on the side of the desk, like the washing-up after a feast. I can’t have done it properly, he accused himself; but he thought about it and yes, he’d been thorough, accurate, conscientious and in places more or less inspired. The faster he went, it appeared, the better the quality.
He’d also lost track of time. He glanced up at the clock on the wall opposite; then, because what it told him seemed so absurdly improbable, he looked down at his watch. No mistake: it was ten to one. Just in time for his lunch break; and when he came back from that, he’d have no work at all left to do. He could skive off, go home early—
The thought of home - his grubby, cramped little flat - made him feel ill. What possible reason could he have for wanting to spend a minute longer in it than he absolutely had to? Home: sit around on the sofa until it was time to microwave his evening pizza, then telly, indigestion and bed. No way could you describe that as a life, not even if you were using a dictionary compiled by Alistair Campbell. This office, on the other hand - well, it was everything his miserable hovel of a flat wasn’t. Big, for one thing. Roomy, tidy, beautifully furnished, smart but comfortable at the same time. And, of course, the major difference. Where he lived, the building, the street, the borough, he had no friends. Here—
Duncan frowned, and checked the clock again. Lunchtime; he could trek over to the dreary little sandwich bar he usually went to. Or he could stay here, in his personal pocket Versailles. He realised he wasn’t a bit hungry (possibly because, while he’d been working, he’d chewed up a dozen pencils) and lunchtime drinking just made his head hurt. Wouldn’t it be much more fun to go and find his friends and spend the rest of the day with them?
His friends. His fr. His fruth. No; try as he might, he couldn’t quite get the idea to fit into his mind. His oldest and dearest friends, the lads, the gang. They’d always been there, hadn’t they, ever since that first dramatic encounter in the playground. Every memory of his youth that he’d seen fit to keep had them in it; they were the monosodium glutamate of his life, the universal preservative of his past, colouring and flavouring everything that had made him who he was.
He leaned back in the chair, scowling. Question: how had it happened? Logically, it would have to have started with Luke; he must have been bitten first, and of course he’d immediately shared the gift with the others. He remembered what Luke had said about Pete; he’d wanted to be a teacher, but they’d changed his mind. He wondered: had it happened before they all went to law school? He could picture Luke making the decision, choosing the most appropriate career for a werewolf from some handbook. For a nutter, he’d always had the knack of being very calm, deliberate and sensible; that, in fact, was what made him so dangerous. An ordinary nutter decides to do a bloody stupid thing, like fusing all the lights in the street or stealing a police car, and charges at it wildly, cluelessly; he’s caught and stopped straight away, or he winds up in hospital, and no real harm done. It’s Ferris-grade nutters who plan and consider and bring the full force of their intelligence to bear on the slice of mayhem they have in mind who do all the damage.
His friend. My friend the superhuman nutter. Presumably, Luke’s world-view had widened as he’d got older and put away childish things. But it seemed too perfect, somehow; that someone so innately suited to the werewolf life should just happen to get the opportunity to live it. Duncan couldn’t help but suspect, however irrational it might be, that somehow or other Luke had been planning this all along. At the age when other kids want to be footballers or starship captains when they grow up, Luke had already decided, and started to frame his long, patient design - choosing, building and training his future pack, searching for an existing werewolf who could pass on the gift. (Gift? Infection? Whatever.) In which case, his plan must at last be complete, now that he’d retrieved the one little lost cub that had gone astray—
He considered the implications of all that. Then, gathering together every last scrap of honesty he could muster, Duncan asked himself the question. If this is all part of some demonic scheme of Luke Ferris’s and I’m just a component in his machine, does that spoil it?
The faintest trace of the scent of blood and roast chicken, dragged in off the street by the air-conditioning system, caught his nose and he sniffed at it as though smelling the rarest of orchids. Nah. Did it hell as like.
All right; assume for now that Luke had planned the whole thing back in Year Seven, and that Duncan Hughes’s life had been callously steered and manipulated to bring him to this point. So what? It was a nice point. He felt sure he was going to like it. Money, luxury, superpowers, not having to work himself into the ground; guaranteed health and strength throughout an unnaturally long life. If it was true that he’d spent his childhood being hunted and trapped, it was a bit like being stalked by Father Christmas. Drawbacks few and nebulous, advantages manifold and bloody obvious—
(So that’s why they’d all been wearing pure wool suits, he suddenly realised, the way you do. Sheep’s clothing.)
Suddenly Duncan felt an irresistible urge to bite something. He looked round the room and decided on a fine old-fashioned free-standing coat-rack. He knelt down and clamped his jaws on it. The squashy crunch of the wood fibres under his teeth was simply delicious, like the very best fillet steak. He steadied the base of the stand with his hands, arched his back and tore away a chunk of splintered wood.
‘Duncan?’
Pete was standing in the doorway looking at him; deliberately not laughing. Duncan spat out the wood and scrambled to his feet. ‘I was just—’ he started to say, but even a master of instant-excuse fabrication like himself couldn’t do anything with that. He smiled instead.
‘You’ll find it’s like that for a day or so,’ Pete said. ‘After that, you’ll be able to control it.’
Duncan frowned. ‘Why would I want to?’ he asked. ‘It’s fun.’
Apparently he’d said something slightly wrong; tasteless, perhaps. ‘Well, fine,’ Pete said. ‘After all, it’s your furniture. Anyhow, we’re all off down the
pub. Coming?’
Immediately he was ready to go, like a dog wanting to be walked. Pete led the way, walking briskly, not looking round to see if Duncan was following (had a voice in Pete’s head just said Heel? If so, Duncan fancied he might have heard it too) and he had to trot for a few paces to keep up. ‘Pete,’ he said.
‘Mm?’
‘When’s the next full moon?’
But Pete didn’t seem to have heard him, so Duncan quickened his pace a little and followed him to the front office, where the rest of them were waiting. Luke led them across the landing to the lift; nobody spoke on the way down, or as they headed off along the street. Twice Luke stopped to sniff the air. Somehow it was very controlled and disciplined, like a school outing.
The pub was, of course, stuffed to the doors when they got there; but Luke seemed to have no trouble getting to the bar. He didn’t push or shove, because there wasn’t any need. People got out of his way, as though he was an ambulance in a traffic jam, and the rest of the pack followed in his wake like the body of a wedge. A barman was standing ready to take his order: six pints of Guinness. Apparently, that was what werewolves drank.
(In werewolf bars, do they have bowls of bones on the bar instead of peanuts?)
No chance of getting a table; but Luke led them to one. Its existing tenants all got up at once as he approached, like ducks off a pond. They weren’t even looking at him, but they went away in the opposite direction, even though it wasn’t the way out. Duncan watched them; they kept going until they reached the back wall and then stopped, looking rather confused. He wondered if Luke could herd sheep as well.
Luke chose the seat facing the door and the outside world. Nobody said anything, but Duncan somehow knew he was going to sit down last, in the chair that nobody else wanted. He didn’t mind; he hadn’t given it any conscious thought, but he knew it was the right thing to do. Same with drinking; first Luke gulped down his beer - seven convulsive movements of his neck and all gone - and then the others. To his surprise, Duncan found that he was very thirsty. The beer tasted like water and there didn’t appear to be any alcohol in it. Two seconds of dead silence; then Duncan was on his feet, collecting glasses.
‘Same again?’ he asked. Nobody answered; polite silence, ignoring the social gaffe. He headed off to the bar. People got out of his way, and when he got there, a barman was ready and waiting to serve him.
‘Six pints of—’ he began to say, but the barman was already busy. ‘They come in here often, then,’ he said, trying to sound normal.
The barman looked at him. ‘What?’
‘The crowd I’m with. Only, you seem to know what they—’
It struck him that the barman didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘It was Guinness you wanted?’ he asked.
Duncan nodded. ‘That’s right, yes.’
He’d never tried that thing where you sort of squash all the glasses together and lift them up all at once; apparently, though, it worked. He set them down on the table and then remembered. He’d forgotten to—
‘It’s all right,’ Luke said. ‘We don’t.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Pay for drinks, in pubs. At least, nobody ever asks us for money.’ He smiled. ‘The subject never seems to come up, funnily enough.’
‘Oh.’ Duncan sat down, as suit-sleeved arms all around him secured the beer glasses like the tentacles of an octopus. ‘Is it the same in shops and restaurants as well, or just pubs?’
‘Depends,’ Luke replied, after he’d finished drinking. ‘Some places they do, others they don’t. It also seems to depend on whether we’re all together in a group; also, whether it’s a man or a woman serving. To be honest, I haven’t figured it out yet, but there’s bound to be a pattern to it. So,’ he continued, as Micky got up to go to the bar, ‘how’s it going?’
‘I finished all the work,’ Duncan said. No reaction. ‘Didn’t take me long.’ Pete shifted a little in his seat; the others appeared not to have heard him. Another faux pas, obviously. ‘It’s a great office, by the way,’ he said, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Luke looked at him steadily for what seemed like a very long time. ‘How do you like being—’ He paused, and twitched his nose. ‘One of us again. Settling in?’
Duncan nodded, relieved to have been pardoned for whatever it was he’d done. ‘Loving it,’ he said. ‘It’s so - well,’ he added, trying to marshal his thoughts. ‘It’s completely different, of course, and yet at the same time it feels sort of—’ He’d been about to say natural. ‘Meant,’ he compromised. ‘Like this is what I was always supposed to be, if you see what I mean. It’s as though I’ve had to be someone else all my life.’
‘Splendid.’ Oh good, Duncan thought, just for once I’ve said the right thing. ‘Told you, didn’t I?’ Luke went on. ‘You belong with us. The old gang.’
Wasn’t quite what he’d meant, actually, but he didn’t want to upset anybody by correcting the slight misunderstanding. Micky came back with more beer. This time Duncan drank his almost as quickly as the others did. Three pints; but he didn’t feel the slightest bit drunk. Rather, he felt relaxed and alert at the same time. If someone were to throw a rubber ball for him right now, he was pretty sure he’d be able to jump right out of the chair and catch it in flight, in his mouth. Only . . . why would anybody throw a rubber ball for a probate lawyer?
‘Plans for this afternoon, anybody?’ Luke said. No reply, and Luke didn’t seem to have been expecting one. He went on, ‘I thought we might have half an hour up on the roof, then do the bill reminders. I’ve got clients coming in at three-fifteen.’
General nodding, putting Duncan in mind of the little furry toy that used to hang from the rear-view mirror of his Uncle Norman’s Cortina. ‘I’m in court at four,’ Clive said, ‘so that suits me. It’s only an interlocutory, so I’ll be back in plenty of time for the run tonight.’
Run, Duncan thought; compulsory corporate keep-fit? But that was fine. After all, running is one of life’s greatest pleasures, isn’t it? He considered that, and it occurred to him that he hadn’t run more than ten yards since 1989. God, what he’d been missing.
‘You’d better be,’ Luke was saying; both mock-stern and serious at the same time. ‘We can’t hang around waiting for you. Pete, when’s lighting-up time?’
‘Ten to five,’ Pete answered promptly. ‘I checked on the Met Office website. It should be properly dark by five-thirty.’
Luke nodded. ‘Let’s say quarter to six, then. Kevin, beer.’
Six more pints, drunk swiftly and in silence and followed by six more. Since nobody was talking to him, Duncan let his mind drift. Why the deathly hush? That wasn’t hard to guess. Twenty-odd years of living in each others’ pockets meant there was nothing much left to say that hadn’t been said already. A bit like a marriage, really, except that they didn’t bicker. And why the massive alcohol intake, when the stuff clearly had no effect whatsoever? Might as well be drinking tea, or water. Also, nobody had said anything about getting something to eat. On the other hand, he didn’t feel particularly hungry, so maybe werewolves simply didn’t do lunch. The important conclusion, though, was that none of it mattered terribly much. The strange, quirky little details were mildly interesting, but they weren’t taking the edge off his pleasure in what he’d just become. On the contrary: for the first time since childhood, there were all sorts of new and interesting things for him to find out about himself. Just one example: swilling down a pint of Guinness in one go isn’t nearly as hard as it looks. You’ve just got to open your mouth wide, relax your throat and sort of breathe it down, as though you’re a fish.
‘Well.’ Luke had been lolling back in his chair. Now, quite abruptly, his back was straight and his head slightly lifted. He twitched his nose a couple of times, then said, ‘I’m going back to the office.’
Four chairs scraped simultaneously and for about half a second, Duncan was the only one still sitting down. It was half a second of excr
uciating embarrassment, a bit like farting just as you’re about to make your Oscar-acceptance speech. He jumped out of the chair, forgetting for a moment that he was now in the tall buildings/single bound category. Very briefly he hung in mid-air; then he landed half on and half off the table they’d just been sitting at. He could see an empty beer glass apparently rushing to meet him; he saw it break as his forehead slammed into it.
He’d been told that if it doesn’t hurt under such circumstances, it’s probably very bad indeed. It should’ve hurt, he knew. Quite apart from the broken glass, he’d hit his kneecap on the edge of the table, rolled onto the back of a chair, smashed it and dropped three feet to the floor. If he couldn’t feel any of it, the only logical conclusion was that he was dead.
He stood up. Everybody in the pub had turned to look, but instead of staring at him they were looking puzzled, as if they couldn’t see where the noise of breaking wood and smashing glass had come from. Luke, on his way to the door, hadn’t even turned round. Pete gave Duncan a very small wry grin, a don’t-you-hate-it-when-that-happens sort of look. Apparently he wasn’t the tiniest bit dead.
All right, he thought, as he quickened his step to keep up with the others. Until then he hadn’t really believed in the invulnerability thing: too perfect, his inner sceptic had sneered, too Marvel Comics. But he’d seen the glass break with his own eyes. In fact—He paused, tweaked the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb, and from the corner of his eye he retrieved a splinter of glass shrapnel about the size of a small shirt button.
There are those moments when you realise how very close you came to doing yourself a really horrible injury; your stomach muscles crimp, and everything you ever learned about toilet training threatens to slip away like mist through a sieve. He stared at the bit of glass, balanced on the tip of his forefinger, then quickly flicked it away.
Of course, he tried to explain to himself as he followed the others back to the office, I wouldn’t have fallen on the table and bust the glass if it hadn’t been for the amazingly enhanced strength, so really I wasn’t in any danger . . . But even a lawyer, even the incredible superlawyer he’d now become, couldn’t kid the jury into going along with that. On the other hand (the realisation seemed to burst up into his mind, like a rose forcing its way between two paving stones) Luke hadn’t been exaggerating about the invulnerability business. It worked.
