Barking

by Tom Holt

  Duncan was sure he hadn’t meant to drag on the belt, because that’d have been spiteful and he wasn’t a bully; or at least, he hadn’t meant to drag that hard. Just a twitch was all he’d intended, probably, to remind her who had the upper hand at that particular moment. Possibly he’d forgotten his own strength; just conceivably possibly, he was upset about something.

  Anyhow - she yelped and made a strange gagging noise, and then the belt broke. Actually, it was the stupid little pop rivet that held the buckle on; it tore through the fake leather, and suddenly she was free. A nice example of reality changing because of one little thing, if you cared to look at it that way. Or—

  She vanished, and her chair kicked sideways to make room for a white unicorn. Before Duncan had drawn the lungful of air he needed to swear with, she’d barged past him and shot out of the door. He fought it long and hard this time, the desperate, compelling urge to chase her. He dragged out every last scrap of human rationality. He told himself, you know what it’s all about now; you know what she really is and what you really are. You don’t need to chase her, and you sure as hell don’t want to. This is her way of hunting you, and if you play by her rules you’ll lose. Whatever you do, stay here and don’t run after her.

  He put the case well, and he wasn’t the same weak-willed easily led no-self-confidence loser he’d always been ever since he joined the Ferris Gang. He’d grown a hell of a lot over the last few weeks. He was stronger, wiser, more able to fight back. As a result, Duncan held out for a full two seconds before jumping off the chair and racing out of the room.

  Maybe she’d done something with her pheromones, or maybe the cleaners actually got as far as this part of the building before giving up in terrified despair. The scent was much stronger than it had been, far too strong to ignore. Cursing himself for his stupidity, Duncan ran. The carpet provided excellent traction underpaw. Query: can a unicorn run down stairs?

  Apparently, yes. He clattered down two flights to a landing, stopped to sniff and tore down the first turning on the left. At school they’d told him, no running in the corridors. Another of life’s crucial lessons he’d completely failed to learn.

  I could run into a wall, he thought, or straight through a window. Wouldn’t do me any harm, even though I’m six floors up, I’d just land, smash a few paving slabs, no sweat at all. But I’m just kidding myself. I couldn’t do it, because I can’t ignore the scent. Enslaved. No free will whatsoever. Situation normal, in fact. It’s a dog’s life.

  Round another corner, like a greyhound after an electric hare. And then he stopped. It wasn’t at sudden as that, of course. There was a degree of skidding as his shoe heels failed to grip on the wool pile, and rather a lot of static electricity, and an encounter with a wall that would’ve spoiled an ordinary human’s day. He just bounced off it, though, and sat down heavily on the floor.

  It wasn’t that the scent wasn’t there any more. It was so strong he could feel it tugging at him. But there was another scent now, and it was stronger. For a moment he felt like he was being pulled apart. Then something broke, just like his stupid belt had done, and he turned his head like a horse on a leading rein. Another scent. Not that he knew much about that sort of thing, but he fancied it was mainly violets.

  ‘Hello,’ said Veronica. ‘Why are you sitting on the floor?’

  ‘Hunggh,’ he replied, because he’d been neglecting his breathing lately. ‘Unicorn,’ he added. ‘Chasing. Bowden Allshapes.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked at him. ‘I thought—’

  ‘Your smell,’ Duncan said. ‘Scent,’ he amended quickly. ‘It—’

  ‘Do you like it?’ She smiled. ‘I can’t remember what it’s called, it’s just some stuff I bought at Gatwick last time I went on holiday. Usually I don’t bother much about that kind of thing but . . . ‘ She paused and her brow furrowed. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘You look funny.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Not, perhaps, one of those lies that change the nature of reality he’d been hearing so much about. Just a lie gradually turning into the truth as he got his breath back. ‘Thanks,’ he added.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Saving my life.’

  Veronica raised both eyebrows. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Not sure.’ Duncan pressed his back to the wall and stood up. Feet just about working. ‘At least, you saved me from a fate worse than death, which is kind of the same thing, only more so, I suppose. Look, have you got any more of that stuff? The scent, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, in my desk drawer. Did it really—?’

  He nodded. ‘Stopped me chasing her, yes. One moment I was a complete goner, the next I was just crashing into walls. Which,’ he added, noticing the cracked plaster for the first time, ‘is absolutely fine by me. Sorry about the wall, by the way, but—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ve got loads of them.’ For a split second Veronica froze, with that characteristic did-I-really-just-say-that look on her face. ‘I mean, it’s all right, nobody’s going to notice. If they do, I expect they’ll just hang a picture over it or something.’

  She’s gabbling, Duncan thought. Reminds me of something. Actually, reminds me of me, when I used to try and talk to girls, before I met Sally. He turned down the corner of that reflection so he wouldn’t lose the place. ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘definitely it seems to have done the trick. By rights I should be chasing after that horrible bloody unicorn. But, well, here I am. That’s marvellous, really.’

  She nodded. He had the feeling that, at that moment, she’d have agreed with him if he’d told her he was a trouser press. Very curious indeed; but for once, here was something weird and inexplicable he was quite comfortable with.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘What was she doing in here anyway?’

  Duncan smiled. ‘Came to offer me a job.’

  ‘Oh. Did you—?’

  ‘Not likely. Actually, at one stage I was trying to strangle her with my belt. But it broke.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Just to tempt providence, he sniffed. The unicorn scent was still there, but for some unaccountable reason he felt no urge whatsoever to chase after it. So instead: ‘Could you possibly show me where the kitchen is again? I know you showed me earlier, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten. No sense of direction.’

  ‘Of course.’ Beautiful smile. ‘I was just headed that way myself, as it happens.’

  At four o’clock in the morning, wearing scent? Anything’s possible. ‘That’s lucky,’ he said. ‘Only I could really go for a strong cup of coffee right now.’

  There’s always that stage, when speech dries up, the brain blanks out, and suddenly your feet become so unspeakably fascinating that you spend the next twenty minutes staring at them, rather than, say, at the person of the opposite sex sitting in dead silence next to you. Presumably there’s a good reason for it, or else evolution’s time-and-motion experts would’ve done away with it back in the early Neolithic era. You’ve just got to be patient, sit it out. Counting the lace-holes on your shoe uppers helps pass the time. Eventually, she asked, ‘Is the coffee all right?’

  For the record it was bitter black treacle with thick chewy chunks of undissolved instant granules floating about on top. ‘Fine,’ Duncan replied. ‘Just how I like it.’

  ‘Oh good. I used to like coffee, but ever since - I mean, it doesn’t really agree with us, for some reason. We tend to have tea instead. Earl Grey or lapsang, without milk.’

  You can tell when mere attraction is starting to coagulate into a Relationship when she tells you what she likes to eat or drink, and instead of saying ‘Yech’ or ‘You really like that muck?’ you smile inanely and say ‘Yes, that’s my favourite too.’ Interestingly, this is one of the few lies that not even the cleverest lawyer can bend into a new reality.

  ‘Is it really? I mean, that’s rather unusual. I thought all men liked their tea extra strong with tons of sugar.’

  ‘Not me,’ Duncan replied, and all around him the universe stayed grimly
the same. Oh well. ‘Strong coffee and weak tea, that’s how I like it. About the unicorn.’

  He hadn’t really meant to press Veronica for information. It was just that he felt the need to break the silence, and he didn’t want to trash the fabric of reality by continuing the hot-drinks theme. But she looked up at him, as though this was something she’d been expecting.

  ‘She’s Sally’s client, really,’ she said. ‘Mainly. But you know how it is, we all do bits and pieces of work for her. I mean, if she needs some conveyancing done, Rose or Matilda does it, because Sally’s strictly litigation. I did a couple of leases for her a while back. Would you like a slice of Battenberg cake? We bought one for Rose’s birthday on Tuesday - there should be some left.’

  Vampires eating Battenberg cake? Well. A small, rebellious part of his brain did the maths (Tuesday: by now it’s probably so stale you could sharpen scythes on it) but got no support. ‘Yes, please,’ Duncan said. ‘That’d be nice.’

  ‘I expect you think we eat nothing but raw liver and black pudding,’ Veronica went on, as she opened a cupboard and fetched out a big Tupperware cake box. ‘Actually, most of us have a sweet tooth. And no, before you ask, it’s not long and pointed.’ Her fingers lifted the lid, and a few stray molecules drifted out; enough for a werewolf’s nose to detect a familiar but unexpected smell . . .

  ‘No,’ he yelped. ‘Don’t open—’

  Too late. She’d opened the box. The smell of fresh garlic wafted up, hitting her like a truck. Her mouth dropped open, her eyes glazed like fogged-over glasses, and she slowly fell backwards onto the floor. The sound of her head hitting the lino was—

  Duncan was on his feet, standing over her, but of course he hadn’t the faintest idea what to do. He grabbed the box, of course, and looked round for somewhere to dispose of it. But no window to hurl it out of, naturally, and chucking it in the bin would be rather like stuffing a pinless grenade under a sofa cushion. A choking, gargling noise at his feet started him shivering with terror. He was stranded in an ocean of cluelessness.

  ‘Bit like kryptonite, really,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Only cheaper, of course. Also organic, biodegradable and produced from renewable resources. Hello, Duncan. Bet you weren’t expecting to see me.’

  Luke Ferris straightened up from an empty space under the worktop. He was in human shape, which was something. He looked rather as though he’d just spent twenty minutes trying to climb out of a running combine harvester. His clothes were comprehensively ripped, his hair was full of dust and grit, and the sole of one of his shoes was lolling out like a rude boy’s tongue.

  ‘Rescue time,’ he said. ‘Come on, I haven’t got all night.’

  Duncan stared at him. He didn’t say anything, because they don’t make words that can handle that kind of strain. Luke took a step forward, then looked down at Veronica, who was beginning to twitch.

  ‘You have no idea,’ Luke said, ‘how hard it is to get hold of a simple string of garlic at three in the morning when you’re a wolf. I had to ram-raid a greengrocer’s in Islington for that lot. It says produce of more than one country on the label, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, but it seems to have done the trick. Well? You coming, or not?’

  There was one word that Duncan could just about manage. ‘No,’ he said.

  Luke had never been top of the class in English at school, but you’d have thought he could understand ‘No.’ Apparently not. ‘Don’t muck about, Duncan,’ he said irritably. ‘I think our best bet is to make for the roof and see if we can jump across to next door. It’s about thirty-five feet, but we’ll be transformed so we should make it. Unless there’s a fire escape, but—’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Duncan said. ‘I’m not going.’

  This time, it sank in - rather like a JCB in a swamp. ‘What the hell do you mean, not going?’ Luke scowled at him, then made one of his trademark Oh-for-pity’s-sake head gestures. ‘Look, if you’re worried we’re going to beat you up or tear you limb from limb, forget it, all right? Yes, you’ve got a certain amount of explaining to do, and yes, the atmosphere may be a trifle fraught around the office for a day or so until we’ve got a few issues ironed out, but - sod it, Duncan, we’re your mates. We’ll get over it somehow and everything’ll be fine, you’ll see. Now get your arse in gear and let’s leave. This place gives me the creeps.’

  ‘No,’ Duncan said. ‘And it’s not that. I don’t want to go. And I don’t want to be in your gang any more.’

  On the floor, Veronica had stopped moving. Duncan wasn’t a doctor, or a vet or an undertaker or whatever was appropriate in the circumstances, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t good. But he didn’t know what to do.

  ‘I’ve got to get someone,’ he said. ‘You go away.’

  ‘What?’ Luke stared at him as though he’d just burst into flames. ‘Just a moment,’ he said. ‘It’s her, isn’t it? That thing. Oh, for crying out loud, Duncan, you don’t mean to say—’

  ‘Yes,’ Duncan replied. ‘And if anything bad happens to her, I’m going to kill you. Now, unless you happen to know what to do, I suggest you go away, because in ten seconds I’m going to yell for help, and you may not want to be here when it arrives.’ He looked up, and a spurt of anger filled his brain. ‘You think it’s funny, right? Well—’

  ‘Duncan.’ For a moment, he felt the tug of the old authority. ‘You’re wasting your time, mate. That much garlic - she practically touched it. You can get the whole lot of them in here and there’s bugger-all they’ll be able to do for her. Sorry, mate, but she’s had it.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  So your best friend has just murdered the girl you love. What are you supposed to do about it?

  Well, it depends. You can go on the Trisha Goddard show and get helpful advice from a lot of strangers, and maybe even a publicist and some useful product-endorsement deals. You can check out Yellow Pages for an all-night silversmith who’ll run you off half a dozen .357 magnum bullets while you wait, so you can kill your best friend and have two corpses to stare blankly at instead of just one. You can forgive your best friend (she was a nice girl but there’s no point crying over spilt blood, plenty more bats in the belfry, &c) and go back to working for him with the rest of your boyhood chums. Or you can stand perfectly still with your mouth open, while what’s left of your heart and brain howl No—

  Rewind a bit. The girl you love: when had that happened? Duncan couldn’t say. Didn’t seem to matter. Now that she was lying on the floor gagging up her last few breaths, the chronology of it wasn’t all that relevant.

  Just to complicate matters further, Luke did something he’d never done before, something Duncan wouldn’t have thought was possible. He cleared his throat nervously, like an Englishman about to speak French, and said, ‘Duncan, I’m sorry.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea. Sod it, I thought I was rescuing you.’

  ‘Oh,’ Duncan said. ‘Right.’

  ‘I mean, last I knew, you were being abducted by vampires. You know, the Undead, our natural enemies. It didn’t seem likely they were bringing you here so that you could find true love.’

  Duncan remembered something. ‘You were just about to kill me,’ he said. ‘For being a traitor.’

  Luke conceded the point as though it was a minor typographical error. ‘We were upset with you, yes. All right, maybe we’d have beaten you up a little. It’s not a nice thing to do to your mates, treason. But we weren’t going to kill you. We couldn’t have. Physical impossibility, without silver ammunition or the unicorn. I suppose we assumed you’d know that, but—’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ Duncan tried not to look at Veronica, and failed. ‘You’re right, you’re not to blame. You were trying to help. It’s just one of those things.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And so is this.’ He went to the doorway, pushed the door open and whistled.

  All his life, he’d been pathetic at whistling. He’d practised for hours when he was young
, but all that came out was a rather moist blowing noise. Wrong-shaped face, or something. This time, though, the result was perfect, if a trifle loud. If they failed to hear him in Birmingham, it was because they had earplugs in.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Luke demanded.

  ‘I’m calling for help,’ Duncan explained. Odd that Luke, normally so smart, hadn’t figured it out for himself. He moved slightly, so as to block the doorway completely.

  ‘Damn it, Duncan, I told you. You can fetch in all the vampires in London and they won’t be able to do anything.’

  Smile. ‘I’m not calling vampires,’ he said.

  Duncan waited for a few seconds, then sniffed. Sure enough, the smell he needed was there, and a moment later he could hear the soft thump of hooves on carpet. ‘Help is on its way,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Luke paused, and sniffed too. ‘Are you out of your tiny mind?’ he said, and his eyes were wide with fear. ‘She’s not going to be able to save your girlfriend. What the hell made you think—?’

  ‘That wasn’t what I wanted help with,’ Duncan pointed out.

  Correction: Luke was pretty smart after all. At least, he didn’t seem to have any trouble working that one out. He lunged for the doorway and nearly managed to barge his way through, but Duncan grabbed first his arm and then his neck, and hauled him back into the room. ‘I want you to know I forgive you,’ he said, as Luke’s flailing hand missed his nose by a quarter of an inch. ‘Deep down, anyhow,’ he added. ‘Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked its way to the surface yet.’

  She was coming; they could both hear her footsteps. Luke turned frantic, kicking and scrabbling with more strength than Duncan would have thought it possible for a human body to contain, a strength matched only by his own. Matched and exceeded. After fifteen seconds or so of the kind of wrestling the big US networks would’ve paid billions to air, Duncan lifted Luke clean off his feet and threw him against the wall. More damage to the plasterwork. They’d need a full-sized reproduction of the Night Watch to cover up that one.