Skulk

by Rosie Best

  As a fox I took a second to sniff around the base of the bin for scraps, hoping there’d be a bone or some stale bread, maybe even a mouldy potato. But there was nothing. My stomach rumbled.

  I’d sometimes stared out of the car window as we shot across the flyover and wondered what kind of people lived in the trailers down below. Did traveller families live there permanently, or was it just a passing stop on the way to some better, greener place? Once or twice I’d seen children playing, chasing a ball or taking it in turns to ride a beaten-up bicycle round and round the gravel yard between the trailers. But apart from that there were gaps in my imagination where real life people ought to have been.

  I hadn’t given it all that much thought. Just written it off as something I didn’t know, and would never need to.

  But now I knew.

  Addie lived there.

  Blackwell was right: I crossed the threshold, under the metal arch, and I could immediately pick out her scent among the smells of traffic pollution, fast food and diesel oil. It was because she was younger, I guessed, as I sniffed around the edges of the trailers, trying to figure out which one belonged to her family. I could pick up the scents of shifter and growing and female, all tied up with fleas and something musty and sort of like wet paper.

  I tried not to think about my house – comfortable, warm, furnished in the finest mix of modern and antique, and only a little bit like a prison. I tried not to pity Addie. After all, my house had been warm and safe right up to the point Victoria walked in. Now I might never be able to go back.

  I followed the scent around another trailer. It seemed to lead around to the back – maybe they had a back door? The gap between the trailer and the wall of the park was tight, though, and only got tighter as I padded down it.

  Addie’s scent suddenly grew so overwhelming I had to look around to check she hadn’t appeared out of thin air. There was a line here. I could almost see it – a line of marked ground. This place was hers. Her territory.

  I stepped around the corner, and found myself in a little den. Cardboard boxes and a plastic sheet formed the roof. There were blankets on the floor. And Addie was curled up on top of them, her head on her paws, asleep.

  She didn’t even live in the trailers. She lived under them. Pity kicked in and I edged towards her, trying to make a sound loud enough to wake her, but not loud enough to startle her.

  “Addie? It’s Meg. Addie?” I was close enough to touch her. I nudged the blanket a little with my nose.

  One of her paws lashed out and her mouth opened in a violent hiss. I sprang away, panting, my heart hammering. She staggered to her feet, blinking hard, her eyes still full of sleep.

  “Get out! Get out! I’ll rip out your throat!” Her jaws snapped viciously in the air just where my head would’ve been if I hadn’t jerked out of the way, then she dropped back into a defensive crouch, her back to the wall of cardboard and her teeth and claws bared.

  “Addie, I’m sorry, it’s me, Meg, I – I’m sorry!”

  Addie sniffed the air and the slits of her eyes prised fully open.

  “Meg? What the hell?” She sat back on her haunches, her flanks heaving. “What are you doing here?” She sniffed the air again, looking around jumpily. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes, it’s just me, I... I just came to...” I came to ask her to help me, but her eyes were glazed and panicky and I couldn’t just spring my troubles on her like this. “It’s OK. It’s just me.”

  Addie panted a little more, and then seemed to relax. Her ears tipped back, sadly. “How did you find me?”

  “Um. Blackwell, from the Tower – from the Conspiracy – he told me you were here.”

  “You spoke to a raven? And he knew where I was?” Addie’s stance turned defensive again. “How did he know?”

  “He’s been keeping tabs on a few of us,” I said. “He showed up at my window last night.” God, was it only last night? “It’s a bit complicated…”

  Addie licked her paw and washed behind her ear. “I wish you hadn’t come here.” She didn’t sound angry any more. She sounded miserable.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise. Addie, are you... homeless?”

  “What about it?” Addie snapped, and I cringed back, feeling blunt and stupid.

  “N-nothing, I just...” I started backing away. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe I’d be able to find someone else to help me. Hell, maybe I’d brave the school again by myself.

  Addie shook her head and sat back. “Hey, look, Princess... I didn’t mean to. Y’know. Did I get you?”

  “Nah. I’m fine.”

  “Good. You look hungry.”

  “Uh – yeah, actually.”

  “What happened, did the Ritz shut for the day?”

  “I... actually...” I swallowed. “Something happened to my parents. I can’t go home. Maybe ever.”

  Addie’s eyes widened. She turned and rooted around behind a flap of cardboard and pulled out a small box. It had several half-chewed chicken bones in it. “Here,” she said, pushing it towards me.

  “Oh, Addie.” I couldn’t help giving another glance around at the cardboard walls and roof, the crumpled blanket. On a second look I was pretty sure it had been a jumper once. There was a cheery kitten half-chewed away on one corner. “Are you sure?”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Don’t gimme that. I do fine. Take one.”

  I reached in and grabbed one of the lovely chewy, greasy bones, tugged it out and lay with it between my paws, gnawing gratefully.

  “D’you run away?” she asked, when my chomping started to slow down. “Was it like – they hurt you?”

  “That’s sort of complicated,” I said. I took a deep breath, swirling the scents of chicken and Addie and diesel and grime around my taste buds for a second, and then launched into my story. She listened attentively, punctuating every couple of sentences with a burst of passionate swearing. It was oddly therapeutic.

  “Now there’s nothing I can do except get the stone and hope we can keep it safe, but I’m too scared to go back there by myself. You can say no,” I added quickly.

  “Bollocks to that,” said Addie. “I’m with you.” I sprang forwards, fox instinct kicking in, and head-butted her affectionately in the side of the neck. She flinched, but then rubbed the side of her muzzle against mine. “You’re all right, Princess,” she said.

  We hugged for a few seconds longer and then she pulled away, sniffing.

  “We’d better get going. If this bitch knows you lied to her maybe she’ll search the school again, right? If we go now we might still get there first.”

  I really, really hoped so.

  I wanted to go back for my clothes, but Addie convinced me not to. She was right – we’d be quicker as foxes, it’d be easier to slip into the school, plus we’d be able to talk. Really, it was the last thing that convinced me. I had so many questions buzzing around my head I could barely make out which ones were the least rude.

  “So, you live as a fox,” I said, as we pounded along the pavement. “Like, all the time?”

  “Yep,” said Addie.

  She leapt up onto a low wall and disappeared into a row of bushes, in one swift fluid movement, and I followed her lead. Leaves whipped past us, but we were hidden from the road.

  “Can I ask...?”

  “What, why do I live as a fox?” Addie snorted. “C’mon Princess, think about it. I’m fourteen and homeless.” She gave a dramatic pause, letting this sink in. By the time she carried on, I knew pretty much what she was going to say, and I already felt a bit sick. “If it’s not the druggies it’s the preachers or the pimps or the creepy guys in cars who want you to blow them cause you’re not in fishnets or anything, you’re walking around looking like a little lost kid, and they like that. And if you get into a shelter for the night, there’d be guys outside giving out free drugs in the mornings when they kicked you out for the day, to get you hooked, so they could control you and get you on the game. The instant I had
another option I took it and I didn’t look back. I’m not homeless now, I’m wild. Being a shifter is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “How did you get it, then?”

  “An old homeless guy, innit. Froze to death right in front of me one night. Couldn’t have been less than eighty, and crazy with it. I dunno if he even knew he was a shifter. Don says he never came down the Skulk. Poor old guy should’ve been in a hospital. Sodding crime.”

  I concentrated on my paws for a while, letting all that sink in. I had a hundred more questions – how did she get to be homeless in the first place? Where were her family? How could this happen? But I knew, deep down, those were all stupid questions. More to the point...

  “Did you know about the stone? About us being weards and having this sacred duty?”

  Addie hesitated. “Never seen the stone myself, but I heard of it. Don knew. He’d hidden it in our meeting place, not told anyone. He went batshit when it disappeared.”

  “So Ben took it?”

  “Well,” Addie said, and then stopped to look around before leading the way back down onto the pavement and across the road. “Which way?”

  I pointed with my nose and we headed off the main road, towards the leafy square where, until today, I’d gone to school. Something told me I wasn’t going to go tomorrow. Somehow I thought my A-Levels were no longer my top priority in life.

  Not that they had been before, either.

  A whole roll-call of things I wasn’t going to have to worry about now marched through my head. A-levels. Waxing. University. A burst of something like triumph hit me, although it was a really sick, hollow triumph.

  “Thing is, Don says James took it,” Addie said. “Cause he’s a thief. I mean really, that’s what he does, like for a job, he thieves.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” I said. “I think he might’ve just stolen something when I met him.”

  “So... I dunno, maybe Ben found him and they had a fight and Ben took it back off him,” Addie said.

  “But – does that mean James killed Ben? And not Victoria?” I shook my head. “That’s weird.”

  “I think it’s bollocks,” said Addie. “Don knows a lot of stuff, but–”

  “But what?”

  “Well, James wouldn’t stab anyone for a start. Believe. He’s just not like that.”

  “And...? You said for a start.”

  Addie shook her head. “Don’s a bigot. He hates James cause he’s camp and gay and he’s not ashamed of it. Don thinks that makes him untrustworthy. You try arguing with him, if you’ve got a spare lifetime. Aren’t we nearly there?” Addie squinted up at the road signs.

  Actually, we were. I led her along one side of the square and soon we were looking up at Kensington School for Girls. Some of the lights were on, and a window was open on the ground floor. I guessed some of the teachers were still there, or maybe the caretakers. With a bit of luck, we’d never have to disturb them.

  But maybe something already had. There was something else overlaying the scent of glue, bleach and flaking paint from the doors and iron railings.

  I could smell blood.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Addie shivered at my side as we padded softly across the garden. It felt surreal to be back here, seeing it all with brand new eyes for the second time in twenty-four hours. I sniffed the damp grass and caught a whiff of old blood like rust among the scents of nature. I glanced up and blinked as the piercing light over the bins came on, throwing everything into stark light and shadow. Was this how Ben had seen it all, that night?

  The smell of fresh blood seemed to follow in my footsteps, like a dog, whining for me to pay it attention. But I couldn’t see anything out here. Maybe that was just the scent that the fog left behind when it searched the place. Perhaps it had killed recently. I pushed the thoughts away. We didn’t need to be here long. We could get the stone and get out.

  “It’s just down here,” I whispered, leading her around the woody, varnished scent of the Kit Shed. Ash flew up into my nose as I sniffed around for my own scent, looking for the right place to dig. Addie stood guard, her ears pricked for the slightest sound. I could hear nothing but my own breathing and the scrape of my claws in the earth.

  I started to think I’d got it wrong and I was digging in the wrong place, but then my claws hit something smooth and solid. I dug around it. It seemed bigger to me now – which would make sense, because it was about half the size of my head, except that the star seemed to shine brighter, too, a point of pure white in the slightly dulled world around me.

  I plunged my muzzle into the earth and clamped my jaws around the stone. My mouth and nose filled with the scents of dirt and roots and something cool, like the tang of electricity but much gentler, coming off the stone...

  “Meg!” Addie snapped. I pulled my head out of the ground, stone held in my jaws, and looked up. Something had settled in the tree above us. No, two – three somethings. Three flappy, grey somethings.

  “Pigeons,” I gasped.

  “Run!” Addie yelled, and took off at a sprint towards the side-alley and the gate. I followed at her heels, the stone jarring against my teeth. I could hear the chaotic flapping of wings at my back and I put on a burst of speed, careening around the corner, right into the fog.

  I tripped over my own tail in my hurry to stop and sprawled on the ground. The stone dropped from my mouth. The grey, shimmering cloud curled and pulsated in the air in front of us as it flowed through the bars of the iron gate. Addie skittered away from it as if her spine were attached to an invisible string, her paws dancing on the ground.

  “Addie!” I screamed. I scrambled to my feet and backed off. “Back, this way!”

  “But–” Addie looked over my head and I snatched up the stone and ducked out of the way just as a pair of bird claws raked the gravelly ground where I’d been lying. I took a hard swipe at the pigeon. It was fat and grey with a vivid blue-green streak across its neck. Neither of my parents. Someone else’s? Right now, I couldn’t afford to care. I lashed out again and caught my claws on the side of its head. Blood burst from just behind its eye and it flapped off, hissing.

  The fog was after Addie. It flowed towards her and she leapt away from it, all the fur sticking up on her back. The fog moved slowly, as if it had all the time in the world, but something told me it would never stop.

  The pigeons were faster. Another one swept down just as I was turning to see if there was a way around the fog so we could slip out onto the street. I heard flapping and when I looked up all I could see were grey feathers... and then a flash of orange fur crossed my vision, like a grubby shooting star. Addie caught the pigeon in mid-air. I saw her fangs dig hard into its neck, and as she landed she gave the pigeon a violent shake. The pigeon’s eyes went dim and it thudded to the ground when she let go of it. Dead.

  Someone’s dad? I thought. I’m sorry. That’s not enough, but it’s going to have to do.

  Addie nipped at my throat.

  “Come on!”

  The fog was rolling around towards us. It was about to corner us against the wall. I head-butted Addie gratefully and we ran back into the garden.

  “There’s a window open,” Addie yelled. I looked up. Thank God, she was right.

  “There was one open at the front as well; we can get through.” I took a running leap up onto the windowsill and tumbled headfirst through the gap, into the school hallway.

  My paws splashed down into a lake of blood. I skidded, landed on my belly and rolled over and over in it.

  Addie let out a guttural howl as she came down beside me with a splash.

  The scent of blood filled every pore; every halting breath I took just pulled in blood and more blood. It was blinding. I could feel Addie scrambling beside me and hear her panicked gasping. Her fur pressed, stickily, to mine.

  We could see all the way to the front door, from here, down the long main corridor. All we had to do was run down it.

  But through the ha
ze of blood I could make out shapes, scattered along the hall. Bodies. One of them lay right beside us under the window, hands outstretched. A shirt, a simple gold necklace, and serious grey tights. A teacher. Her head was missing. Her blood had flooded out over the floor and splashed up onto the walls.

  A dark halo gathered at the corners of my sight.

  No. I won’t black out. If I do, I won’t come up again.

  I forced myself to look up. The fog was at the window, its tendrils creeping through. And through it I could make out more swooping shapes against the dark sky.

  “We,” I said, “have to keep moving. Addie. Addie.”

  She was shaking harder than I’ve ever seen a living thing shake. I put my head down and prodded her forwards. She scrabbled for a foothold and turned to me. Her eyes were black and her jaw hung limp.

  “We’ve got to get out. That way is out. Go.” I leapt forward, my feet slipping in the teacher’s blood, and shouldered her towards the front door.

  Time seemed to stand still as we made our way through the river of blood. Limbs like islands forced us to slip and slide around them. Gory handprints littered the walls like messy children’s finger paintings. I couldn’t look back, couldn’t do anything but reach deep inside and take myself by the throat and force myself to push on. I had no idea how close the fog was, or if there were vicious beaks and claws crowding through the window. I could have had all the sulphur-stinking demons of hell on my tail and I wouldn’t have known it.