Barking

by Tom Holt

  ‘Fuck it, Luke,’ he heard himself squealing, ‘you bit me.’

  Laughter all around him; loud enough to float the top off his head, but not loud enough to drown out a million other distinct and fascinating sounds - a phone ringing on the floor below, the beating of six hearts, someone talking out in the street.

  (In the street; and I’m on the twenty-first floor, and all the windows are sealed and double-glazed.)

  ‘That’s right,’ Luke said. ‘How do you feel?’

  Three days ago, Luke had eaten curry; to be precise, roghan ghosh with tarka dal, pilau rice and sag aloo. Since then—

  ‘Weird,’ Duncan said, clapping his hand to the side of his neck. Cocaine? LSD? Could Luke’s teeth have been carrying enough drug residue to get him instantaneously stoned out of his brain? Instinctively, however, he knew it wasn’t anything like that. It was more like coming down out of a really bad trip back into blissful reality. Even the air was as delicious as chocolate. It smelled completely new and different. It smelled of air.

  Then Pete said, ‘You did tell him, didn’t you?’

  Pause. Then Luke growled.

  What Luke growled was, No. Want to make something of it? There were no words, just as you don’t get English subtitles on English-language films. Pete lowered his head and his shoulders slumped.

  ‘Tell me what?’ Duncan said.

  Another pause. Then Luke said, ‘You might want to sit down for a minute.’

  Duncan’s legs were wobbly as he walked over to the chair behind the desk. He pulled it out, turned round three times and sat down. Then he raised his head and said, ‘Why did I just do that?’

  ‘Ah.’ Luke grinned. ‘Let’s say it’s something you’re going to have to get used to.’ Apparently absent-mindedly, he’d snatched a biro out of Micky’s top pocket, and was chewing it. ‘Pete, you tell him.’

  The world might have changed, but not the hierarchy of the Ferris Gang. Pete Thomas had always been Luke’s duly accredited herald. ‘It’s quite simple,’ Pete said. ‘Smart bloke like you, I’d have thought you’d have figured it out for yourself. We’re werewolves.’

  At some point over the last ten days, someone had eaten peppermints in this room. Duncan sniffed again to make sure; then he realised what Pete had just said.

  ‘Bollocks,’ he protested. ‘There’s no such thing as—’

  Something whizzed through his field of vision; something small. Without thinking, he sprang out of his chair and caught it. A small rubber ball; and, to his deep embarrassment, he appeared to have caught it in his mouth.

  ‘Actually, there is,’ Luke said, retrieving the ball from between Duncan’s teeth (Duncan felt a strange but strong urge not to let go) and dropping it back in his pocket. ‘Are. Whatever. The lightning reflexes are a definite plus; the short attention span’s a bummer, but you learn to work round it, if you see what I mean. The biggest problem, of course,’ he went on, ‘is lamp-posts.’

  The others were nodding sagely, as if to say that they too had been sorely tried in the furnace of temptation.

  ‘The heightened sense of smell and hearing should already have kicked in by now, so you don’t need me to brief you on them,’ Pete said, scratching behind his ear. ‘You’re going to love the extra strength and stamina; also, you can eat and drink anything you like, as much as you like, and no worries about putting on weight or anything like that. You may find it a bit awkward keeping your temper around humans for a day or so, because patience isn’t really one of our top virtues, but it’s like everything else, you find your own ways of adapting. Really, it’s just the little things, like not jumping up at people when they come into the room, or begging at tables in restaurants.’

  There had been a key word in there, Duncan realised. ‘Humans,’ he repeated.

  ‘Ah.’ Luke gave him a thin-lipped smile. ‘It’s probably best you don’t dwell on that side of it for a while, at least till you’re more settled,’ he said. ‘But sooner or later, you’re going to have to square up to it. Everybody else out there is only human. We, on the other hand—’ He shrugged. ‘Welcome to a small, underrepresented but basically extremely fun minority.’

  Duncan thought for a moment, very hard indeed. ‘I’m a werewolf,’ he said; and to his surprise, it wasn’t a question, it was a statement. ‘Hang on,’ he said, as panic flooded his mind, ‘does that mean—?’

  ‘Once a month, yes; and then things get, well, let’s say they can get a bit hairy, if you follow me. No bother at all if you follow a few simple precautions and then just go with the flow.’

  ‘Once a month,’ Duncan said, raising his voice a little, ‘I turn into a wolf. Right?’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds, really.’ Clive talking; he had thickets of hair in his nostrils and his ears, and two of his front teeth were missing. ‘You don’t actually feel a lot while it’s happening, especially if you’re completely rat-arsed at the time. I find that helps a lot.’

  ‘You carry on being you, if that’s what you’re concerned about,’ Micky put in. ‘In your case, a mixed blessing—’

  ‘The walking-on-all-fours thing’s no bother,’ Clive went on, ‘though it helps if you practise a bit first; really, just to get used to seeing what the world looks like when you’re two feet closer to the floor. It’s also a good idea to have a really good blow-out half an hour beforehand.’

  ‘Plenty of red meat,’ Pete added. ‘Mixed grill’s my favourite: the steak not too well done, and loads of black pudding. Let’s say it helps you keep a sense of perspective, if you start off with a full stomach.’

  ‘And of course we’ll be there, to see you through it all.’ Luke was looking at him, head slightly on one side. ‘After all, that’s what it’s all about.’

  Duncan blinked. ‘Is it? What?’

  Luke grinned. ‘Loyalty, my old mate, loyalty. That’s the whole essence of the thing. It’s something humans can never hope to understand, not the way we do.’ He laughed, drawing his lips well away from his teeth. ‘That’s the secret of our success in the legal profession. We’re not just a partnership, we’re a pack.’

  Duncan studied him for a moment, then said: ‘Fine. What’s the antidote?’

  ‘There isn’t one.’ Pete sniffed; an unmistakable and unique sound, something between a pistol shot and tearing calico. The sound of Pete’s sniff was an abiding memory, part of the fabric of Duncan’s youth. Hearing it again now brought the past thundering back, six years of concentrated memories all coming at once, like buses. ‘That’s why I was a bit puzzled when Luke said he hadn’t explained to you first; I mean, before—’ Pete caught Luke’s eye and stood back a little. ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘it’s permanent, there’s no cure. You might say a wolf is for life, not just for Christmas.’

  ‘Talking of which,’ Clive put in, ‘a considerably prolonged lifespan is definitely part of the package. Double, possibly even triple.’

  ‘Right,’ Micky said. ‘We don’t just chew old bones, we make them. And we’re obnoxiously healthy, and very hard to damage; unless you stop a silver one, of course, but that’s hardly a problem these days. After all,’ he added with a grin, ‘nobody believes we exist. Culling mythical beasts isn’t really a priority, not even for DEFRA.’

  ‘So there you have it,’ Luke said, with extreme mock gravity. ‘You’re practically immortal. You can stop a bus just by standing in front of it, and the worst you’ll get is torn trousers. You can appreciate the world around you the way no human could ever do. You can run fast enough to interest the speed cameras without even getting out of breath. And once every thirty days or so, you get to party like you wouldn’t believe. All that, and you’re also a member of a very small, select community that’ll look out for you, do anything for you, till the day you eventually die. All in all, looking at it in the round and not letting yourself get sidetracked by conventional, trapped-inside-the-box-hammering-on-the-lid thinking, wouldn’t you say it’s a pretty good deal? Also,’ he added, with a twitch of his nose
, ‘it’s done now and you’re stuck like it, so accentuating the negative’s not going to do you any good. All right.’ He clapped his hands together, and all of them (Duncan included) were suddenly still, silent and alert. ‘I think it’d be nice to round off a pretty good day by doing some lawyering.’

  A moment later, Duncan and Luke were alone. ‘Now then,’ Luke said. ‘Wills, probate and tax planning.’

  It was like hearing someone talking your own language after you’ve been stranded on a desert island for twenty years. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Administration of estates. Trust management. I sort of got the idea it’s what you do for a living.’

  ‘Oh, you mean work.’

  Luke smiled pleasantly. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘We do dabble in it occasionally. We find it’s a nice, easy way of making money, among other things.’ He took hold of Duncan’s arm and led him out of the room, back into the corridor. ‘We don’t actually have a death-and-taxes bloke at the moment,’ he said. ‘Clive’s been doing it up till now, but he’s really conveyancing, commercial leaseholds, that sort of thing. I got him to dump all his death files in your cabinet; you might like to browse through them, see what sort of an unmitigated bog he’s been making of them. Death’s an area we’re really keen to get into, but none of us has got the divine spark, if you know what I mean.’

  How Luke could be prattling on about work at a moment like this was beyond Duncan. He wanted to shake free of Luke’s grip, charge down the stairs out into the street and chase taxis. Instead, he asked if he could meet his new secretary.

  ‘There aren’t any,’ Luke replied cheerfully. ‘We do our own typing - piece of cake with computers and voice-recognition software - and all our own filing and copying and all that sort of thing. Even make our own coffee. Oh, I forgot, you’re a tea addict, aren’t you? Sorry, but you’ll have to make do with coffee till I get a chance to go out and do some shopping.’ He yawned. ‘Apart from the six of us, and Bruce on reception and Arthur the cashier, that’s it as far as personnel’s concerned.’

  ‘The cashier and the receptionist; are they—?’

  Luke shook his head. ‘If they were, they wouldn’t be doing boring rotten jobs like answering phones and counting the petty cash. But they’re all right, they know what’s going on, and they do their jobs well, which is all that matters, isn’t it? Oh, stationery. The cupboard’s down the corridor, second left then right and right again, just past the photocopier room. Help yourself to pencils and stuff.’ He was chewing on one again, pausing to crunch the end between his back teeth. Was he going to suck out the graphite and eat it? Duncan wondered. The thought made him feel hungry. ‘Just remember,’ Luke went on, spitting out a few splinters. ‘The rule here is, anything goes, so long as you do the job, get money and don’t do anything to let down the pack. Other than that; if you want to chew through the phone cables or wee on the carpets, that’s fine. This place is as much yours as mine or anybody else’s.’ He stood up and grinned. ‘Enjoy,’ he said. ‘It’s actually a bloody good life once you stop worrying about it.’

  He closed the door behind him, and Duncan crossed to the huge, valuable-looking desk, sat down in the amazingly comfortable chair, and began to shake all over.

  Obviously, he thought, it isn’t actually true; because werewolves don’t exist. They’re like vampires and zombies and all those other high-camp horror clichés. When Newton and Einstein and Hawking created the universe, they didn’t allow it any scope for men who turned into wolves at the full moon. But, undeniably (he paused for a moment to eavesdrop on a girl in the street talking into her mobile phone; she was wearing expensive scent, but her breath stank of coffee and peppermints) something had happened to him, and whatever it was, he didn’t feel inclined to complain about it.

  That reminded him. He put his hand to the side of his neck, expecting to feel wet blood, or at the very least a big clotted scab, but there was nothing there. Maybe he’d imagined the bite after all. He looked round the office for a mirror but there wasn’t one. He frowned, but then he heard the sound of a cistern flushing, not terribly far away.

  Duncan had gone through life hampered by a pathetic sense of direction; but he could have found the bathroom with his eyes shut, and all from hearing that one sound. Out of his office, up the corridor, left then right and there it was. He went in, bolted the door and looked in the mirror.

  It didn’t work. At least, the middle of it didn’t. The edges were working just fine; he could see the wall behind him, the door he’d just come through, all that. But the centre of the mirror, the place where his face ought to be, was on the fritz, because all he could see in it was the wall, the door &c.

  Oh, he thought.

  Among other things, he said to himself as he walked slowly back to his room, it’s going to make shaving difficult. Probably why the others all have those great big bushy beards. Also, there’s this business of not being human any more—

  Bollocks, he thought. Of course he was human - how could he not be? It wasn’t like renouncing your citizenship when you emigrate. Of course he was still a human being; just one that could hear voices in the street twenty floors below, and who didn’t show up in mirrors. A bit different, but basically the same.

  He sat down at the desk again. Inhuman; no, superhuman, like Superman. That was more like it. What had Luke said? Greatly increased strength. Well, he could do with some of that. He reached under the desk with his left hand, pressed his palm against the underside and tried to lift it. No bother; it was like balancing a tray. He let it down gently and grinned. What else? Practically immortal, couldn’t be injured. That would account for there not being a scab where Luke had bitten him. Very much like Superman, in all sorts of ways. A smile slowly spread across his face, like a slick of oil under a British motorbike. A person could have all kinds of fun if he had superpowers, and couldn’t be killed or hurt.

  Furthermore - Duncan stood up, crossed to the filing cabinet, and chose a file at random from the half-filled top drawer. Furthermore, he told himself, if Luke was right and there was no cure or antidote; if he was stuck like this for ever and ever and nobody could do anything about it, not even Luke and Pete and Clive and the gang; what was to stop him walking out of here, quitting the legal profession for good and getting a job as James Bond or a superhero or something? Much more fun than boring old wills and probate.

  He turned that possibility over in his mind as he quickly skimmed through the file on his desk. They might not like it if he walked out on them, but so what? Nothing they could do to stop him. Presumably they’d taken it for granted that he wanted to belong to their gang again, so it hadn’t occurred to them that he might just up sticks and push off. But why not? The world was full of grand and glorious things, particularly for someone who could smell the roses in the posh florist’s three blocks away, or the exhaust fumes of a 747 just leaving Gatwick. There was absolutely no reason—

  He frowned. Without realising it, he’d just read the whole file from cover to cover. What was more, he’d understood it; he could have recited most of it by heart if he’d wanted to. How long had it taken him? Remarkable. He’d just done four hours’ work in as many minutes. Absently, he picked up a biro as he reflected on that. No effort; his mind certainly hadn’t been on it. He picked out a blank IHT200 form, remembering how much he loathed filling out the wretched things: all the complicated sums and having to keep looking up dates and figures as he went along. He remembered; but it was like thinking back to when you were a kid, and you needed to stand on the footstool and use both hands to turn the sitting-room doorknob. Just for the heck of it, he started jotting things down on the form - he didn’t have to look anything up in the file, because he could remember it all, and he could do all the sums in his head. Not only that; he could write so much more quickly than he used to. He could even write legibly.

  The form took him just under a minute, and there was about fifty seconds’ worth of other stuff to do on the file to bring it rig
ht up to date; half a dozen letters - he did the first three on the keyboard (couldn’t he type fast now), then remembered that Luke had said something about voice-recognition software. He’d never used it before, but it only took him a moment or so to figure out how it worked. A heartbeat or so later, the letters came spooling out of the printer; he folded them, tucked them into their envelopes and tossed them into his post tray. All done.

  It had been like doing things in a dream; the sort where you’re an airline pilot or a brain surgeon, and you can do all the incredibly difficult and dangerous stuff, even though in the back of your mind you know you wouldn’t have a clue where to start if you were awake. It was, of course, impossible for anyone to do the best part of a thousand quids’ worth of legal work in less than seven minutes. By the same token, it was impossible to be a werewolf.

  He stared at the desk: the wire tray full of letters to be posted, the completed IHT form. A man who could work at that sort of speed could make himself a fortune in the law business, where work is charged for on a time basis: a hundred and fifty, two hundred quid an hour. You could earn a million in a day; or, if you preferred, you could earn a hundred thousand before elevenses and spend the rest of the day just slobbing about—

  His eyes widened (what great big eyes you have, Mr Hughes). The hell with being a ninja special agent or a supermercenary. Too much like hard work. To test the theory he got another file from the cabinet and attacked it. Apportionments, drafting assents, drawing up estate accounts for approval and signature. Six hours of slog for a mere human, but Duncan got it done in about the time it took his clunky old kettle to boil. Then he leaned back in his chair, threw his arms wide, kicked up his legs and yelled ‘Woo-hoo!’ at the top of his voice.