by Stephen Cole
‘I thought I heard visitors come calling,’ he explained, a yellow-toothed smile deepening the cracks in his ancient face. ‘So I crept away to check, as quiet as a mouse. As a blind mouse, you could say, yes? But your scent guided me as easily as eyes.’
But while Tom just stared and Kate stood fixed in fright, Mike was still fired up. He pulled out his last hypodermic syringe and threw himself at Liebermann. The needle pushed into the leathery folds of the old man’s neck.
Mike staggered back, watching and waiting for Liebermann to go down.
But the old man only muttered under his breath, cocked his head to one side. ‘Home brew?’ He chuckled and licked his lips. ‘Yes … a compound of lignocaine and morphine, I believe.’
He’s holding back the effect, Kate realised, with nothing more than the power of his mind.
‘Yes,’ Liebermann continued, ‘such a mixture would have a considerable anaesthetic effect on most victims … but not on me.’ Suddenly his elderly fist shot out like a hydraulic ram into Mike’s throat.
Mike crashed backwards into the wall. Kate saw his startled face turn crimson, heard the sound of frothing fluid as he struggled to draw breath through his crushed windpipe.
Tom crouched to try and help Mike, and Liebermann started to chant his dark code.
Kate shrieked at the top of her lungs.
The old man winced, clutched at his ears, then swung around to face her. ‘Sorry, my dear,’ he cackled mirthlessly. ‘I’m afraid that trick won’t help you against me.’ He started to chant again.
In his hand, Kate saw his disconnected hearing aid. She felt a crushing wave of coldness break through her body.
Then there came the sound of broken glass from the main room, and the crazed tinkling of a disturbed windchime. She and Tom both looked up, startled.
Liebermann must have heard it too, however faintly. He paused, cocked his head.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Tom threw himself at the old man. His momentum carried them both into the main room, where they collapsed flailing to the floor.
Kate stumbled forwards to see what was happening and almost fell, her legs numb and unresponsive.
Chung stood swaying in the ball pool next to a broken window. Whether by accident or design, he’d knocked over a heavy brass statue that had smashed through the glass. He staggered over to try and help Tom, who was struggling on the floor with the livid Liebermann.
Kate looked around for an object she could use as a weapon. Maybe Mike was carrying something? She crossed unsteadily back to the bedroom, where he was now lying slumped on the floor beside the unconscious Fayn, beetroot-faced and no longer breathing. His eyes were wide open and as sightless as Liebermann’s. Fresh fear now mingled with her shock and pity – no old man had Liebermann’s supernatural strength. Then she thought of martial arts, the way adepts focused the mind to harden the flesh, smashing through bricks with their bare hands – a child’s trick, surely, for a master of mind over matter, regardless of how old and infirm he might appear.
In desperation she grabbed Fayn’s discarded leather jacket, hoping she could throw the heavy fabric over Liebermann’s head to distract him. But as she ran back out into the main room she saw she was too late. Liebermann had hurled Tom towards an abstract stone sculpture, and he struck it with a sick thud.
The old man was back on his feet, speaking his code in that hoarse, creepy monotone. Again, Kate felt dizzy and cold, but Chung rushed him, a length of plastic foliage held like a rope in both hands. He looped it around the old man’s neck and pulled back hard. Liebermann tottered and fell into the ball pool.
Kate started instinctively towards Tom, to check he was all right.
‘Help me!’ yelled Chung.
Kate’s heart leaped as she saw what he was doing.
He was jamming one of the plastic balls into Liebermann’s dribbling mouth, stifling the flow of words. ‘Swallow that, you old bastard.’
‘What he can’t say can’t hurt us,’ Kate agreed. Her arms cramped and aching, she hurled the leather jacket over Liebermann’s head, muffling his gagging noises as he tried to spit out the ball. The old man’s bony fingers flapped and scrabbled at the heavy fabric, trying to tear it clear.
Chung sunk to his knees, gasping with exertion as Liebermann flailed about. ‘Must rest,’ he muttered, pulling his leathers tight around him like he was cold. ‘Just for a minute. Then we’ve got to get out of here.’
For a few moments Kate stood staring. A part of her, deep inside, felt grey and old and numb.
Violence. Death. All around us.
Kate turned and ran on her stiff legs to see if Tom was all right.
It reaches closer and deeper all the time.
She shouted his name. He was writhing on the floor, shaking.
Always all around us.
As she reached him she saw the fury in his face, saw the muscles bunching in his arms and legs. ‘Tom, no!’ she hissed.
He was changing. Kate watched his strong, straight features lengthen and twist, like seeing his reflection in a fairground hall of mirrors. She saw the claws curve out of his fingers, the dark hair coiling from out of his smooth skin.
The memory of the nightmare she’d had that first night at the Drake came flooding back – of the two of them in the dark together, in each other’s arms, Tom’s ’wolf rising up and tearing through her ...
Violence and death. We run and run but we never escape it.
Liebermann’s half-spoken words were still trapped in her head. Her legs were so stiff now she could barely feel them.
So she fell to her knees and held Tom just as tight as she could.
His bones cracked dully like glass in a fire. His jaw lengthened, his snout trailed cold slime down her cheek. Saliva drenched her hair and neck, mingled with her sweat. He could bite through her throat in a moment without even meaning to, an instinctive snap in the throes of the change. She could die here, cradling his sleek, animal form. Or the bite could change her for ever, set free the lupine that prowled her blackest nightmares. As a pureblood there could be no cure, no going back for her …
But for that long trusting moment while she held him, none of that mattered.
The change was complete now. Tom shook softly, holding himself quite still in her arms. She felt the muscles in his flank shiver beneath her fingers, shifted on her knees and looked into the beast’s dark eyes. Tom’s eyes.
‘We have to get out of here,’ she whispered, wishing she could cry but finding nothing inside.
‘Someone’s coming!’ Chung shouted.
Kate heard the main door creak open.
The two remaining blind mice scuttled into their penthouse.
Anton, the short, portly one, sniffed the air and nodded. ‘It’s the girl again,’ he proclaimed.
Friedrich stooped to lock the door. ‘I did wonder what was keeping Liebermann.’
‘We can’t have this.’ Anton shook his head and tutted, his pride seemingly hurt. ‘No, certainly not.’
Tom rounded on the old men, snapping his jaws, placing himself in front of Kate protectively.
Chung staggered over and helped her to her feet.
‘Stop them,’ croaked Liebermann behind them. He’d managed to get free of the jacket over his head.
Kate bunched her fists and faced up to the old men. ‘You can’t paralyse us like he can,’ she insisted. ‘If you could you’d have done it to me and Sunday before.’
‘Even so,’ said Anton, ‘old ’wolves though we be, we are not entirely toothless.’
Kate opened her mouth ready to scream.
But Friedrich had already started chanting and now Anton took up the low, rasping incantation.
In seconds a fire had taken hold inside Kate’s head. The searing pain drove all sense and words from her mind. The flames consumed her until nothing was left inside but darkness – the bitter, voiding darkness of an unhappy ending.
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CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
For Tom, the codechanters’ verbal assault was like a hundred drums pounding inside his skull. He skittered back, knocking into Chung, who was slapping his bruised head with both hands like it was leaking and he didn’t know how to plug the hole.
He saw Chung’s eyes burn a fierce, pure yellow as his body reacted to his pain, his anger, and let slip the ’wolf.
Tom ran in circles like a deranged animal, smashing into statues, splintering chairs, tearing down foliage with his jaws. He saw Liebermann start to rise, knocked him back down without even meaning to, his body careering out of control.
Then he was at the broken window, gulping down cold air. He had to clear his head, had to go back and attack – rescue Kate. He could still feel her cool hands on him. He wanted her back; the cool hands, the sweet smell.
But then something slammed into him, knocked him through the window.
Chung, the ’wolf, wild and scrabbling for escape.
Tom landed on the gravelled roof of the porch two storeys below, scraping his shoulder. He rolled over and stared up at the window to the penthouse, hopelessly out of reach now. Chung lay beside him, still clothed in the tatters of his leather jacket, and Tom snapped at him, growled his aggression.
But the pain in his head was clearing.
The old men appeared at the window, peering out like they could see, their dry, fleshless faces scrunched up and furious.
Chung leaped down from the roof, and Tom followed him, the thought of the pain in his brain spurring him to flight. He hit the wet turf of the hotel gardens, trying to focus on the cold, earthy smells all around. He had to stay calm, had to think. Perhaps if they circled around, he could reach the penthouse again from the inside …
He saw men out in the grounds, running for him and Chung. His own fault – hadn’t he told those men that the intruders were out here? He saw that even as the guards ran, they were changing. In the blur of a few moments, they were ’wolves, eyes clear and cold, focused in pursuit.
Tom ran after Chung. He nuzzled open a door that led on to a glass and wood structure adjoining the main building. His mind groped for the manmade word – conservatory.
This conservatory was packed with bloody, half-chewed corpses. Most were young men, in torn black leathers. From the pain in Chung’s eyes, Tom knew this must be the Dark Chapter’s massacred attack force. But there were also two older men in the pile. Tom recognised their twisted, terrified faces. They were the scientists he’d found locked up at Takapa’s lair. Their minds had been bled dry, but their bodies were still of use – as food. At least Sunday’s father wasn’t on the menu. Not today’s menu, anyway.
‘They’ll know some peace, soon enough,’ Marcie had said.
While Chung could only stare at the charnel offerings, Tom heard applause wash across from the hotel, enthusiastic human hands clapping. A voice rising over the clamour, and then swift and heavy animal footsteps thundering downstairs. Araminta’s talk had finished, and in reward for the purebloods’ patience, here was a free lunch.
Suddenly ’wolves were padding into the conservatory, scenting the meat and salivating. Tom herded Chung around the back of the pile of bodies as their pursuers burst in through the conservatory doors. But now the hungry purebloods were milling about, snapping at the buffet, a living, breathing barrier between hunters and hunted.
The guards barked and whined, trying to get to Tom and Chung. Tom’s teeth closed on the back of Chung’s tattered jacket and he dragged him away into the main building, pushing through the drooling throng who were focused only on the food.
When they reached the reception area, Tom broke away from Chung, intent on getting back up to the penthouse, to somehow get Kate back.
But the three blind men stood at the top of the stairs, blocking the way.
Tom’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps if he moved fast enough he could kill all three, bite and break their scrawny necks …
Not a chance.
As Liebermann opened his mouth to chant, Tom found himself bolting after Chung with a sick desperation to escape. Afraid and ashamed, and grieving.
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The taxi driver hadn’t wanted to make a fight of it; that was good. But then one guy against two slavering werewolves weren’t terrific odds, Tom guessed. He’d fled his cab, screaming to the wide-open empty street about giant monsters. But the houses around here were set so far back from the road that Tom doubted anyone would hear him for blocks.
Tom and Chung had taken his idling cab and here they were, two naked men sitting in Christmas Eve traffic. Tom was driving. Chung was just sitting in sullen silence, cradling his ruined leather jacket in his lap and shaking his head in shock.
‘We should never have left Kate,’ Tom muttered for about the thirtieth time.
This time, Chung decided to reply. ‘Her mom wants her alive, right? And so does that pink-eyed bastard, Takapa,’ he said. ‘Whereas you – they’ve got what they want from you. If you’d stayed, you’d have been killed. Wound up on the party platter, belly-up – the cherry on the cake.’
Tom could see the logic, but it made him feel no better. Even so, with all Chung had lost today he guessed maybe he should shut up. ‘You know … I’m sorry about—’
‘Yeah,’ Chung broke in. ‘And Takapa’s going to be, too.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘Shit, I still can’t believe that Fayn would betray the Chapter.’
‘Believe it,’ Tom said coldly.
‘He’s pureblood, man. How could he disgrace his name?’ He sighed. ‘Guess it explains all that bull he gave us about how it was you helping to pull that white wolf stunt down at the zoo. He was trying to cover himself.’
Tom nodded. ‘We had a lupine fight – I won, and took his place in the truck with the wolves. I recognised his lupine scent, back there in the penthouse.’
‘You can bet your life,’ said Chung, ‘that just as soon as Fayn got hold of a change of clothes and a quarter for the phone, he was telling Takapa what you’d done.’
‘Probably why Marcie and Lieberman came looking for me,’ Tom agreed quietly. ‘I suppose he would tell you guys I had a hand in it – he didn’t think I’d make it out again to call him a liar.’
‘Liar’s just the tip of the iceberg,’ muttered Chung.
They drove on slowly in silence till they were well into the city’s heart. On one street, a frumpy-looking woman weighed down with bags struggled over to their cab with a hopeful look on her face. Tom swore – the traffic was gridlocked, he couldn’t pull away. The woman leaned in to speak – then her mouth fell wide open as she saw that the cabbie and his passenger were completely nude. Shocked speechless, she turned around and tottered off back to the sidewalk.
Tom and Chung looked at each other for a few moments, then burst out laughing, almost hysterical. It helped them both, breaking some of the pent-up tensions inside.
Chung’s smile faded as the moment passed and reality crept back in to stifle them. ‘So where the hell do we go now?’
‘To see Stacy at that lab,’ Tom decided. ‘I think I remember the address. We can see if she’s found anything out.’
‘And see if she can get us some clothes,’ Chung added dryly.
‘Then we can give her and Sunday a ride over to the Bane Gallery,’ Tom said. ‘Get the lowdown from Blood and Jicaque.’
‘I’ve heard of him. The old medicine man?’
‘Uh-huh. He’s our secret weapon against Takapa.’
‘He’d better be,’ said Chung. ‘’Cause it’s no secret we need something on our side.’
‘He’s come through for us in the past.’
‘And this Stubbe guy’s come through for them from the past. So, Tom – which do you reckon is stronger?’
Tom thought of the resignation, the fear he’d seen in Jicaque’s face, and realised he couldn’t answer.
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Three hours later, Tom sat beside Chung in a lab coat, waiting for cells to divide on a microscope slide and for Sunday to get back wi
th some clothes. They’d dumped the taxi around the corner after a long and frustrating journey in circles trying to find the place. Chung had tied his jacket round his waist like a kind of kilt, but Tom’d had to settle for making leg holes in a plastic carrier bag discarded in the back, so he could at least cover something of his modesty before streaking barefoot to the laboratory.
Telling Sunday and Stacy the bad news about Kate while wearing improvised plastic pants had been a surreal experience to say the least. Then Stacy had sent Sunday off with some cash to try and find them some clothes.
She’d been busy in their absence. A line of three benches in the large, spotless laboratory had been taken over with all kinds of clutter and printouts. Tinctures, solutions, pipettes and bottles and jars were ranged all around Stacy, together with slides and centrifuges and God-knew-what.
‘The wonderful world of big-business immunology,’ she observed. ‘Oh, what it is to be financed. On the grants we get at my hospital …’
‘What are you actually doing?’ asked Tom.
‘Just running tests, playing a few hunches, you know,’ said Stacy airily. ‘I’ve got some pretty interesting results on these skin samples …’
‘Why do you even want to be involved in all this ’wolf stuff?’ Chung asked her, surly and mistrustful.
‘Pretty simple,’ said Stacy, peering through a weird-looking microscope. ‘In New York I saw first-hand how Takapa can hurt people. I want to do what I can to stop him.’
‘What, so you’re a Girl Guide?’
‘I have my reasons. Now shut up and let me work, OK?’
‘Just before we do,’ Tom said, ‘you have Blood’s number, right?’
She tossed him her cell phone. ‘It should be in there.’
Blood answered after a single ring. ‘Adam Blood,’ he said, smooth and cultivated. ‘Is this the lovely Stacy?’
‘Knock it off,’ Tom told him.
‘Anderson! What’s been happening?’
‘Nothing good,’ Tom told him. ‘We lost Kate.’
‘Fornicating furies, how the frigging hell did that happen?’
