Lupine Howl: The Complete First Series (All 8 books)

by Amy Cross

  A lone voice shouts out from further back. "Do you still need a man?"

  Darla shakes her head. "It was a trick," she says, her voice sounding deflated. "An illusion. Magic. You know, make believe. I'm sorry, we just thought it would be funny".

  The priest closest to us sighs. "Then I would ask that you two leave this place immediately and give some very serious thought to the things you have done today".

  Darla puts her arm around my shoulder and we head for the door. But as we get there, she suddenly stops.

  "Can we just go?" I ask. I want to get out of here. I was so sure we'd be able to save Duncan, it never occurred to me that we might fail.

  "In a minute," Darla says.

  I look at her. "What is it now?"

  "Him," she says, pointing.

  I look in the direction she's indicating, and I see a priest sitting at the back of the group. At first, I don't spot anything unusual about him, but then I notice that his glasses have blacked-out lenses, and he has a white cane in his hands.

  "That's sad," I say politely.

  "It's not sad," Darla says. "It's a miracle. Maybe". She grabs my hand and drags me over to the blind priest. Kneeling in front of him, she looks up into his aged face. "Father, I need to ask you something".

  "Go on," the blind priest says.

  "Father..." Darla's voice wavers for a moment. "You didn't see what I just did on the platform, did you?"

  He shakes his head. "I haven't seen anything for many years".

  Darla looks up at me. "He didn't see what I was doing, so there was no way to corrupt him". She turns back to the priest. "Father, which church are you from?"

  "St. Mary's in Shoreditch," he says. "Why do you want to know?"

  "Father," Darla continues, "in the last week, have you conducted any unusual funerals? Any that stood out?"

  The priest sits for a moment, saying nothing. Finally, he speaks. "I have conducted only one funeral in the past week," he says. "And it was the most... unnerving experience of my life".

  "In what way?" Darla asks him. "Think. This is important".

  "I heard... things. Noises. As if the people standing beside the grave were... It sounds silly to say it, but it was as if they were not human".

  "What else?" Darla asks, her voice filled with excitement once again.

  The priest nods, as if he understands. "Thomas Lumic is a very strange man. A very strange man".

  "You buried a man named Thomas Lumic?" Darla asks.

  "No," the priest says. "Thomas Lumic was the man who arranged the funeral".

  "So who did you bury?" Darla asks.

  "I only know his first name," the priest says. "Duncan".

  "Bingo!" Darla shouts, turning to me.

  "We have to get to this church," I say. "It's still hallowed ground. Duncan might still be alive". I turn to the priest. "When did you bury Duncan?"

  "It must be six days ago now".

  "Almost a week," I say. "Darla, we have to go and dig him up right now. He won't survive much longer".

  Darla puts an arm on the priest's shoulder. "Thank you, father," she says, standing up and grabbing my arm, pulling me to the door. "Don't worry," she says, "I know where we can get shovels". At the door, she stops and turns, then she bows to the assembled priests, who watch in horror. "Thank you, fathers. You've been a wonderful audience".

  They stare back at us in silence.

  "Tonight," Darla says to them, "you have been witnesses to proof of the divine effect of brains, ambition and great tits!"

  They stare back at us in silence.

  "It's been a pleasure," Darla says.

  They stare back at us in silence.

  "A real... real..." Her voice trails off.

  They stare back at us in silence.

  "Tough crowd," Darla says finally, before turning to me. "Run," she says.

  We run.

  7

  As we race to Shoreditch to find the church, Darla insists on taking a detour via the Blaum Building. Although she hasn't worked a shift there yet, she has the job and she was shown around earlier. She saw lights, spades and other equipment in one of the storage rooms, and fortunately she already has her security access card, which means we can get in and out of the building in record time.

  "They're desperate for new staff," she says as she uses her card to get us through the front door. "Seriously, they'll take anyone. Completely fucking desperate. You should apply".

  "Thanks," I say, trying not to feel offended, as we head into the lobby. It's almost midnight now, and there's no-one about except for a guy on the night desk who says something as we rush past him.

  Darla leads me down some steps and into a basement storage room, where we quickly find some spades and lights. "Okay," she says. "We're ready. Let's go dig up that grave".

  We head back out to the lobby, but when we get to the door we find that it's locked. Darla tries using her access card, but a red light flashes and a small panel displays an ACCESS DENIED message.

  "Fucking thing," Darla says, trying to push the door open.

  I look over at the security guard, who's sitting at the far side of the lobby. He's just staring at us. I look down at the spades and other equipment in our hands. Bang goes our attempt to look inconspicuous.

  "Darla," I say, tapping her arm. "What about that guy?"

  Darla looks over at him. "He looks weird," she says.

  "He's probably got a key," I say.

  While Darla keeps trying the door, I go over to the guard. "Excuse me," I say as we reach him. "Can you unlock the door?"

  The guard, a twentysomething man with an impassive faces, stares at me. "That property isn't yours".

  "Hmm?" I ask. I look at the gear we're 'borrowing' from the store room. "Oh, we'll bring this back. My friend works here. We're just... we're just making a bad impression. On purpose".

  "That property isn't yours," the guard says again, impassively.

  "Yeah," I say. "I know. But it's really important that we go and do a small job, and then we'll bring it right back. Please don't get weird about this".

  "That property isn't yours," the guard says for a third time. "You have transgressed".

  "Yeah," I say. "Yeah, we have. We've transgressed. But listen..." I lean closer to look at his name tag. "Eddie. Listen, Eddie. We really need this equipment. We really, really need it. And my friend works here. She has an access card and everything, she's totally..." I suddenly stop talking. I stare at the guard. "Eddie?" I ask quietly.

  "My name is Eddie," he says, his voice sounding like a robot.

  "Eddie," I say. "Huh. Do you know my friend? My friend over there?" I turn to indicate Darla, just as she tries (and fails) to take a run-up and bash the door open. She bounces off the glass and lands on the floor. Damn it, sometimes I wish I didn't know her.

  "I'm the guard," Eddie says. "Your friend must stop doing that. She'll damage herself".

  I shrug. "I can't really... I'm sorry, I just thought you might be..." I turn to Darla. "Hey! Come here a moment!"

  She looks over at me. "What?"

  "Just come over," I say.

  She stomps towards me. "What's so important?" she asks.

  "This guy," I say, indicating Eddie. "Is this your Eddie?"

  Darla frowns, then looks at the security guard, and finally a smile erupts on her face. "Fucking hell!" she shouts. "Eddie!" She leaps behind the desk and gives Eddie a huge hug, but he just sits there, staring ahead impassively. Darla slowly realises that his greeting for her isn't entirely enthusiastic. "What's wrong, Eddie?" she asks. "Don't you recognise me?"

  "I'm a security guard," he says. "This equipment is not yours. You have transgressed".

  "What are you talking about?" Darla says. "Eddie, I've been looking everywhere for you". She turns to me, smiling. "Looks like we've both found the people we were looking for, eh?"

  I nod, smiling, but there's something about Eddie that doesn't seem quite right. He just seems almost like a zombie, starin
g at us, saying the same things over and over again. And he doesn't seem to even recognise Darla. It's as if he's never met her before, as if he has no idea who she is.

  "I don't mean to be funny," I say slowly, "but are you sure this is him?"

  "Of course it's him!" Darla says. "He's just..." She looks into his eyes. "He's just a bit dazed. Eddie, mate, are you okay?"

  You have transgressed," he says again.

  "Eddie," Darla says. "Stop fucking about. You've got to open the door. We're in a hurry, we have to dig up a body before it's too late". She smiles. "I know that sounds weird, but you know what I'm like, right? I'm always getting into things like this. I'm always..." She stares at him. "Eddie, are you okay?"

  "You have transgressed," Eddie says, then he turns his head a little. His eyes widen. "Darla," he says, his voice suddenly softer and quieter. "Darla, you've got to get out of here. You've got to run. You've -" He snaps back to how he was before. "You have transgressed".

  "Eddie, darling," Darla says. She puts her hands on the side of his head. "Talk to me. Tell me what's up". She moves her hands around to the back of his head, and then she stops, as if she's felt something odd. "What the fuck?" she asks, and she gets up, looking behind him. "Fuck!" she shouts, and she jumps back, away from him.

  "What is it?" I ask.

  "Fucking fuck," she says, eyes wide open, her face white with fear. "Eddie..."

  "What?" I ask. Keeping my distance, I move around Eddie until I can see the back of his head. Suddenly I see what freaked Darla out. There are half a dozen wires and cables coming out of Eddie's skull and feeding directly into a socket in the wall behind him. It's as if his brain is plugged into something. "What the hell is that?" I ask.

  "I don't know," Darla says. "But it's coming out". She pushes past me, reaches her hand behind Eddie and pulls out the cables.

  Eddie screams, clutching his head and getting up, staggering forwards. Blood starts to pour from the back of his head. He turns to us. "Get me out of here!" he shouts. "Get here out of me! Get -" He stops talking, stares at Darla for a moment, and then he collapses.

  "Fuck!" Darla shouts, kneeling to check on him. But as I look over her shoulder, I can see that Eddie is already dead.

  "What happened here?" Darla asks, her voice wavering as she fights back tears. She lifts Eddie's head and rests it on her knees, stroking the side of his head. With her other hand, she gently closes his eyes.

  "I'm sorry," I say. It's a weak, helpless things to say, but it's all I can think of right now.

  "I knew Eddie since we were kids," Darla says, her voice filled with tears. "He was my best human friend". She looks up at me, tears in her eyes. "I was gonna tell him some time," she says. "I was gonna tell him that I'm a werewolf. I thought maybe if he knew..." She starts to cry. I kneel next to her and put an arm around her shoulder. It's obvious she was in love with him, even if she hasn't said the words.

  As I comfort Darla, I look up at the wall and I notice something odd. The ends of the wires that were in Eddie's head are also bleeding. It's as if his blood was moving in and out of his head, going into and out of the walls.

  "I don't get it," Darla says, sniffing. "What the fuck are those wires? What the fuck is this place?"

  I shake my head. "No idea," I say. "But I want to get out of here".

  "Agreed," Darla says. She rests Eddie's head on the floor and stands up.

  "We can take his body," I say, although secretly I can't imagine how that would ever work.

  Fortunately, Darla shakes her head. "A body's just a body. I don't buy into all that bullshit. He's gone now. This is just a pile of flesh and bone. A machine". She takes a deep breath. "You're right, though. We do need to get out of here".

  We walk across the lobby, heading towards the back area. As Darla walks, she sniffs a little but otherwise she seems to show no emotion following Eddie's death. Is this how she deals with things? I've always felt there's a hard edge to Darla, but now it seems like she's able to completely compartmentalise her emotions. Then again, I can kind of understand her approach. I've had to do the same thing in the past; it's kind of how I ended up in London in the first place.

  "Damn!" Darla exclaims as we find that the rear entrance is also locked. "What the fuck is going on?"

  I look at my watch. If we don't get out of here soon, we might be too late to save Duncan.

  "The control room's on the first floor," Darla says. "We'll go up there and smash everything until the doors open. Plan?" She turns to me.

  "Sure," I say, not really sure whether that counts as much of a plan at all.

  Not trusting the lifts, we take the stairs and soon we're in the first floor corridor. We find the entrance to the control room, which is basically a large dark room with banks of computer monitors on one side. We look at all the information on the screens, but none of it makes much sense.

  "Completely automated," Darla says. "Fancy".

  I hear a strange noise and turn to find that it's coming from the wall. It's that rhythmic, thumping sound that I heard this morning. I put my ear to the wall and listen more closely. It's like a heartbeat, all through the building.

  "What shall we smash first?" Darla asks.

  "Are you sure smashing is the best option?" I ask. I look at the monitors. "Maybe there's just a control that we can use to unlock the doors".

  Darla stares at me for a moment. "Damn you and your anti-smashing agenda," she says. "But you might be right".

  I glance across the room and spot a small door leading to another area. "I'll go and check in here," I say.

  "No," says Darla. "You're better with computers than I am. See if you can figure something out here, I'll go and check in there". She smiles. "But if you can't do anything, I reserve the right to try smashing".

  I nod. "Okay". I pause for a moment. "Darla, are you okay? Seriously. After Eddie -"

  "I'm fine," she says. "Get on with figuring out a solution to this".

  And with that, she goes off to look in the next room while I take a look at the monitors. Unfortunately, while Darla was right that I'm 'better' at computers than she is, that's not saying much. I can just about change my settings on Windows. These screens, though, are much more complicated, filled with information that makes no sense. What's more, as I look at them I realise that there are no keyboards. In fact, there are no input devices at all - no mouse, no trackpad, nothing. It's almost as if the people who sit at these desks aren't here to do anything with the computers, just to watch them.

  "Holy fuck," I hear Darla saying in the other room.

  "What?" I call out.

  Silence.

  Knowing Darla, and knowing that she's not easily spooked or even easily impressed, I head over to the door. "What is it?" I ask. But as soon as I enter the room, I see exactly what she's found. It takes me a couple of seconds to work out exactly what I'm looking at, but when I do, I stand there in stunned silence for a moment before turning around and vomiting.

  8

  "Isn't it beautiful?" Darla says, walking around behind it.

  "No," I say, stepping a little closer but still feeling nauseous.

  "It is," she says. "It really is. It's like... nothing I've ever seen before".

  I get as close as I dare. "Be careful," I say. "It might be dangerous".

  "What's it going to do?" she asks, smiling. "Bite me to death?"

  "I'm not -" I start to say, but I stop as I realise that it has started to slowly open its mouth, with a thin film of gum between its lips suggesting this is something it hasn't done for quote a while.

  It's a head. A human head, suspended in the middle of the room. But it's not just a head. For one thing, there are no eyes: where the eyes should be, there's a large cable coming out of each socket, winding its way up to the ceiling. Also, the back of the head has been split open, the skull pulled away, and the most amazing series of wires is coming out from the brain and running to the walls, disappearing into sockets. Finally, a thick, heavy-looking cable ru
ns out from the bottom of the skull and connects to the floor. The whole head is just suspended like this.

  It looks to be an oldish man, maybe in his 50s or even 60s. The whole set-up looks very clean, very medical, as if someone spent an obscene amount of money on this. And as I look over at the other side of the room, I spot something hanging on the wall. I walk over and realise that it's a human heart, suspended in a small box, with one of the wires from the back of the head running straight into the heart muscle itself.

  "The heart beat," I say, staring at it.

  Darla comes over and looks. "Beautiful," she says.

  "I told you I heard a heartbeat in the walls of the building," I say. "I was right".

  We go back over to the head. The mouth is still moving slightly.

  "He's alive," Darla says. She looks at the cables that fan out from his exposed brain. "He's plugged into the whole building. He's..." She pauses, then she runs back through to the other room. I follow, and find her looking at the monitors. "Fuck," she says. "Look".

  I take another look at the screens. All they contain is rows and rows of data, flashing past so fast it's impossible to read anything.

  "Nervous system, organs, skin..." Darla says, able to read the data despite how fast it's moving. "This man's entire body is spread throughout the building. His blood is being pumped through the walls. His nervous system is part of the structure. It's like they've expanded his body to include the building as part of it".

  "You have transgressed!" calls a voice from back in the other room.

  Darla and I exchange a worried glance.

  "You have transgressed!" the voice calls again.

  We go back to the door.

  "You have transgressed!" the head is saying, its voice sounding old and tired.

  "If we've transgressed," Darla says, "what the hell have you done?"

  "I am Franklin Blaum," the head says. "I am the architect. I am the building. You are in the process of transgressing at this moment. Do you not see? You are not meant to be here".

  Darla steps into the room, approaching the head. "My friend was down in reception. He had wires running into the back of his head. Those wires came from here, didn't they? They came from your skull".