The only law now was the oldest one of all – the strong shall rule the weak. And Warg Daddy was the strongest of the strong.
He was free of Leanna as well. He thought of her, still trapped in central London when the bombs fell. His mind’s eye lingered on her long blonde hair and crystal blue eyes, her slender limbs and chiselled cheeks. She had been beautiful, a babe, and had meant something to him once. She had given him the gift of lycanthropy, and he had loved her, served her, worshipped her. Damnit, he had very nearly given his life for her. But those days were over. Leanna was gone. Only the faintest shadow of her cruelty lived on in his mind, and it was fading with every mile he rode. When his journey was over, she would be gone forever, and he would be free at last. He had Vixen now instead. He leaned back against her and felt her soft touch as her hair fell across his face. She wrapped her thin arms around his broad chest, kissing the wolf tattoo on his neck.
She was an angel, Vixen. A dark angel of death. He had watched her slaughtering soldiers, ripping limbs out of sockets with her bare hands, severing body parts with her teeth, supping blood through pale lips. Vixen took lives like other girls took online dating quizzes. She was a worthy partner, a soul mate. They would always be together, bound by blood, bonded by love. He kissed her back, enjoying the sweet taste of her tongue.
The Brothers finished filling their tanks and returned to their bikes, kicking their engines back to eager life, choking the air with delicious toxic fumes. Of the original twelve Brothers, only eight remained. Slasher, Meathook, Bloodbath and the rest. They were hungry for the open road, and so was Warg Daddy. They turned to him, waiting for him to give them his order. Behind him, Vixen hugged him tight, ready to roll.
He was Leader of the Pack and they would ride wherever he said. But he had no destination in mind. A destination marked a journey’s end. His journey was only just beginning. He had no plan, no goal, no objective, other than adventure.
Ahead of him the long road beckoned and whatever it brought his way, he was ready. ‘Come on,’ he said to the Brothers. ‘Let’s go!’
Chapter Sixteen
Gatwick Airport, West Sussex
A retired doctor lived on the top floor of the hotel, and his name was William Pope. Liz was very pleased to make his acquaintance.
‘Call me Bill,’ he said, shaking her hand. ‘But I’m not a forensic pathologist, just a general practitioner. And I retired more than ten years ago. My real speciality these days is golf.’
‘I understand that,’ said Liz. ‘I just need someone with a medical background to take a look at the body and make an educated guess about the cause and time of death.’
‘I can certainly do that,’ said Doctor Pope.
She led him down to the room where Hannah’s body still lay, and introduced him to the family. Doctor Pope shook hands solemnly with Scott Matthews, the dead woman’s father. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
Scott was bearing up stoically, but the rest of the family were in tears. ‘Perhaps you could take them to your room while we examine the body?’ suggested Liz to Pamela.
‘Oh, right, of course,’ said Pamela, looking disappointed at being asked to go. ‘Come on then, let’s go next door.’
‘I’d like to stay here,’ said Scott.
Liz waited for the others to leave, then closed the door behind them. She really didn’t need an audience for this.
‘No doubt you’ll need to inform Major Hall of the death,’ said Doctor Pope.
‘Who’s Major Hall?’
‘He’s the man in charge here. You haven’t met him yet?’ said Doctor Pope in surprise. ‘I’d have thought he’d be very keen to meet a police officer. He’s a real stickler for rules and regulations. He likes everything to be done by the book.’ He turned to the corpse. ‘Goodness me.’ He kneeled down slowly, his knees creaking, and began to carefully examine the body. ‘Clear signs of pallor mortis and algor mortis, but the muscles are still relaxed. I would estimate the time of death to be between two and four o’clock in the morning. When was the body discovered?’
‘Just before 6am.’
‘And what time was the victim last seen alive?’
‘About midnight.’
‘That sounds about right then.’ He peered closely at the holes in the woman’s neck. ‘Hmm. Very peculiar. Has anyone moved or cleaned the body?’
‘Not as far as I know,’ said Liz. She looked to the woman’s father, Scott, for confirmation.
‘No,’ he answered emphatically. ‘All I did was cover her with the sheet. Why do you ask?’
‘Well,’ said Doctor Pope, pushing his fingers around the neck wounds, ‘these two puncture wounds are not especially deep, but they’ve managed to pierce the common carotid artery and internal jugular vein. That would normally lead to very extensive bleeding, but there appears to be little evidence of that. Only a little blood is apparent on the victim’s clothing, and almost none on the carpet. I can’t explain that.’
‘Could the murderer have used a cloth or towel to mop up the blood?’ asked Liz.
‘Possibly. But it’s clear that a great deal of blood has been lost, and a double wound of this nature would probably have caused a considerable fountain of blood. I’m sorry,’ the doctor added, seeing Mr Matthews’ look of distress.
‘Are the neck wounds definitely the cause of death?’ asked Liz.
‘I would say so, yes.’
‘What about the murder weapon?’
Doctor Pope turned his attention back to the double puncture wound. ‘Some sharp object, roughly cylindrical like a knitting needle, but oval rather than circular. The wounds are clean, so I would imagine a metal weapon, but I couldn’t rule out plastic, resin or even bamboo. The two puncture holes are relatively shallow, no more than three centimetres deep, suggesting something not particularly long – perhaps a nail – or else that the murderer applied just enough force to pierce the vein and artery.’
‘I’ve searched the room thoroughly,’ said Liz, ‘and found nothing like that.’ It would have been a different matter if she’d searched her own room, she reflected. Mrs Singh’s collection of knitting needles would make potentially lethal weapons.
‘I don’t know what else I can do to help,’ said Doctor Pope, returning awkwardly to standing. ‘My main concern now would be the appropriate disposal of the body.’ He turned to address Scott Matthews. ‘Have you given any consideration to whether you’d like your daughter to be buried or cremated?’
Scott shook his head.
‘Well, I think that should be your next priority. There are no facilities for storing a body here. So regardless of the murder investigation, the funeral will need to be carried out within two days at the latest. I trust that won’t be a problem, Constable Bailey?’
The doctor was right. Already flies were buzzing around the room, showing great interest in the deceased. Although Liz’s police training made her want to preserve the body and the scene of the crime until all evidence had been collected, it was clear that in this new world, the window for evidence collection was closing rapidly. ‘All right, doctor,’ she said. ‘Thank you for your help.’
She left the grieving family and returned to her room upstairs. Kevin met her with a concerned look. ‘I saved some breakfast for you, love,’ he said. ‘Full English. It might be a bit on the cold side now.’
It seemed a miracle that the hotel was still capable of cooking and serving food. But Doctor Pope had told her that although the electricity and gas supplies had failed, the airport still had emergency generators, as well as propane heaters. And there was apparently no shortage of diesel and propane to power them. The camp organizers had managed to keep the fridges and freezers in the kitchens running, and had stockpiles of tinned food too. The mains water supply network had failed because the pumping stations needed to keep the water at pressure had all stopped working. But the army had rigged up rainwater collection systems on the roofs of the terminal buildings, and were pumping emergency water from a nea
rby reservoir. Life went on.
At least for most people.
‘So, who did it?’ asked Kevin. ‘Did you catch the bastard?’
‘Not yet. I’ll need to make more enquiries.’
The plate of sausage, beans, bacon and fried potatoes that Kevin had produced was as cold as the corpse she had just left, but Liz devoured the food ravenously, washing it down with a cold cup of coffee. Her work day was only just beginning, and it seemed that her police skills were going to be just as much in demand here as they had been back in London. Perhaps even more so, since she seemed to be the only police officer around.
Mihai, Drake and Vijay were eyeing her eagerly. ‘We’ll help,’ said Drake. ‘We can be your deputies.’
‘Is right,’ agreed Mihai. ‘You need our help now.’
Liz shook her head. ‘No way. You’re going to stay here and help to look after the others.’
‘Come on,’ said Drake. They don’t need us to look after them. We’ll be more use helping you, yeah? You got no one else. Anyway, I reckon that if you’d listened to us when we first told you that Mr Canning was a werewolf, you could have arrested him much quicker.’
Liz stared glumly back. Her failure to arrest Mr Canning was perhaps her biggest regret of recent times. Drake was right. If only she’d taken their tip-off more seriously, she could have saved at least one girl from being eaten by the killer headmaster.
And it was true that she could use some assistance. Now that Dean was dead, she had no one else to turn to. Vijay and Drake were almost adults. Drake was already taller than her and was starting to fill out and develop some muscle. Even Vijay looked keen to help, and she was pleased to see some life back in the boy. Perhaps giving him a job to do would help him get over his recent trauma and take his mind off Rose.
She had doubts about Mihai, but the Romanian boy had proved his resourcefulness on more than one occasion. And she suspected that if she didn’t find a role for him, he would choose one for himself.
He was studying her closely with his dark eyes. He gave her a wicked grin, as if he knew she’d already made up her mind. ‘We all policemen now. We make great team together. So, tell us what to do, boss.’
Chapter Seventeen
The Ridgeway, Oxfordshire
Chris Crohn was happy, and that was a surprise. Chris was rarely happy, and had not been happy for a very long while. In fact he had been deeply unhappy and troubled for as long as he cared to remember.
Being thrown together with strangers in an unfamiliar environment ought to be the worst thing he could have imagined. Normally he hated being in the company of others, as he found almost all other people infuriating. He had always preferred solitary pursuits – tinkering with circuit boards, coding algorithms on his desktop computer, and conjuring digital miracles in the privacy of his small apartment in Manor Road. Few people had ever appreciated the wonder of what he did, and now that his apartment had been turned to dust in a nuclear holocaust he could do those things no more.
He trudged along the rocky path of the Ridgeway, one foot after another in a steady rhythm, remembering all of the activities he could no longer do. The list was long. Long enough to pass several hours. It ought to have left him profoundly depressed, and yet somehow, with the sun on his face and a light wind rustling his hair, life didn’t feel too bad.
A blue sky overhead, fields and trees all around, birds and wild animals going about their business. On a distant hilltop, a wind turbine turned uselessly in the steady breeze. It was kind of ironic, now that all electricity production had ceased. The wind turbine was like Chris himself – obsolete and redundant, and unable to fulfil the job it was intended to perform. What could he ever hope to do in this primitive new world?
The digital age had ended. Computers were history, and even Ryan’s smartphone had stopped working. The networks were all down, GPS had been switched off, and the phone’s battery had run flat, never to be recharged again. Chris had been thrust back into a new dark age. His skillset was badly in need of upgrading, or rather downgrading, back a thousand years or more. He ought to be profoundly sad. And yet here he was, happy.
The reason was simple. Suddenly, unexpectedly, and without even trying, he had become a leader, and he knew why.
In times of chaos, people looked for certainty. When their world had crumbled to dust, they turned to someone who was not afraid to show them the way. Chris was that person. He was a beacon of rationality, shining in the darkness; a fount of knowledge and wisdom, when all around was ignorance and doubt. It was as if his whole life had prepared him for this fate. He didn’t believe in fate, or destiny, or even luck, but he did believe in the law of averages. He had been treated with such little gratitude his entire life, it was about time that his situation changed.
Chris didn’t like to lead from the front. Instead, he walked at the back of the group of four – or five if you included the dog, and even Chris was willing to concede that the animal had a certain degree of intelligence, perhaps not much less than Seth or Ryan – watching them as they made their way in a south-westerly direction along the chalk ridge road. It gave him a deep satisfaction to see them heading that way.
They were following this route because he had convinced them that it was their best option. All his life he had done his best to persuade people that he knew best, and time after time, he had been ignored. Even though he devoted more effort than everyone else to preparing his plans, researching his facts, and refining his strategies, the world had taken no notice of him whatsoever. He had lacked the power of persuasion that could bring his ideas to fruition. Now, they were listening to him. They were following his plan. They were going where he wanted.
Yes, his luck certainly had changed. Even though he didn’t believe in luck.
They were making excellent progress and were almost halfway to Hereford, well ahead of schedule. They had encountered no one else along the path, neither human nor werewolf, and that was all for the good.
Although Ryan’s smartphone had died, removing Chris’ ability to connect to the world of knowledge that was the internet, he was finding out all about the Ridgeway from the informative signs that marked its length. He had learned that the Ridgeway dated back to the Bronze Age period, and had been used by travellers for five thousand years. A large number of important archaeological sites were dotted along its route, from stone circles to hill forts and ancient burial chambers. It would have been interesting to stop and visit some of these places, but of course they couldn’t afford to do that. But there was one place that he wanted to see more closely – the white horse of Uffington, one of the most famous landmarks, and it was directly on their way.
The white horse was a giant stylised image of a horse, carved into the white chalk hillside. The figure dated back some three thousand years, and they ought to be passing it the following day, or the day after. Yes, a gigantic white horse was something to look forward to. His enthusiasm redoubled, he hefted the backpack on his shoulders and hurried to catch up with the others.
Rose turned her head as he reached her. ‘I remember you now,’ she said. ‘I knew I’d seen you somewhere before, but I didn’t know where. You were the computer nerd at school, weren’t you?’
Chris bristled at the comment. ‘My job was IT Technical Support. And have you only just remembered me?’ He oughtn’t to be too surprised, he supposed. In his previous life he had been invisible. He’d been Chris the nerd, who fixed the email and the printer, who ordered more ink cartridges and solved the networking problems. His genius had gone unrecognized for so many years.
‘My mind was muddled before,’ said Rose. ‘The nightmares made me forget everything. Now they’re gone, I’m starting to think clearly again.’ She skipped ahead, running along the path with Nutmeg dancing in delight at her feet.
Up ahead, Ryan was frowning. Of all the people in the group, Ryan was probably Chris’ least favourite. He was all muscle, and Chris didn’t trust muscle. The more muscle, the less brains, in h
is experience. Still, Ryan wasn’t entirely stupid. He wasn’t as dumb as Seth, for instance.
Ryan waited for Chris to catch up with him, before asking a question. ‘What do you think about Rose?’
Chris hadn’t given Rose a lot of consideration. He’d been too busy reminiscing about computers. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Can you be more specific?’
‘Well, how does her behaviour seem to you? Since the nuclear attack.’
‘I think she’s getting better. She’s recovering from her PTSD.’
‘But her dreams have stopped. What does that mean?’
‘It means that she’s recovering from her PTSD,’ said Chris, annoyed at having to repeat himself. Why didn’t people ever listen to what he said? The world was full of idiots.
‘Yeah, but if her dreams have stopped, she can’t see the future anymore.’
‘That’s true,’ agreed Seth. ‘How are we going to know what to do now?’
‘What?’ Chris glared at the two men, fury building in his chest. How could they be so stupid? ‘Rose didn’t see the future in her dreams!’ he shouted at them. ‘They were just nightmares; symptoms of trauma and distress. It’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon.’
‘She told us that London was going to burn,’ said Ryan, ‘and it did.’
‘It was a prophesy,’ said Seth.
‘London didn’t burn,’ protested Chris. ‘It was annihilated in a series of thermonuclear explosions.’
‘Same thing,’ said Ryan obstinately.
‘Anyway,’ continued Chris, striving to restore some calm and order to the world, ‘we don’t need prophets and soothsayers. We have a plan. My plan.’ A leader ought to demonstrate confidence and assurance. A leader should not lose his rag every time some idiot opened his mouth.
But Ryan wasn’t listening. He spoke to Seth instead. ‘If Rose’s visions have stopped, do you think that means that all the bad stuff has come to an end now?’
Seth shrugged, causing his long brown hair to flop over his eyes. ‘Dunno, maybe.’
Lycanthropic (Book 4): Moon Rise [The Age of the Werewolf] Page 8