by Tom Holt
Railway lines: he tried to remember the geography of Chiswick from the fleeting glance he’d had at Luke’s A-Z during the run from the City. He knew that the line ran from the river in the north-west to Mortlake in the south-east; interesting, but not exactly relevant. Knowing where he was didn’t really matter; what he wanted to know was where the prey had got to. He sniffed, but the scent was too faint, overlaid by oil, dust, exhaust fumes, rats, cats, dogs and God only knew what else. He’d failed.
He wanted to kneel down and weep. His first hunt; the others had trusted him, and he’d let them all down. The others; of course. They were much better at this sort of thing - they’d be able to pick up the scent and carry on in spite of his gross inadequacy. He looked round for them, but they weren’t there. Marvellous, he thought, I’m useless and lost.
Human thinking. All he had to do was use his senses; listen out, sniff. Now that he’d evolved, he need never be lost again. He flared his nostrils and jerked air into his lungs.
Luke was about two hundred yards away, with Pete close behind him. The others were a bit further off, and he could hear Clive muttering something, though he couldn’t quite make out the words. In other news, the bitch was still trying to open negotiations, and someone was yelling (in human) at the intruder-alert dog. The fox was well away; it had doubled back at the railway track, following its own scent backwards (crafty bugger). Duncan unilaterally declared the hunt at an end, and was plotting a course to rejoin Luke when he caught a taste of a new scent.
It was, beyond all doubt, the most wonderful, tantalising thing he’d ever encountered; so intense that all he could do was close his eyes and shake his head, to try and keep from being overwhelmed by it. Beauty, beyond all hope of description or analysis; but mostly it made him feel desperately hungry, in every literal and figurative sense of the word. He forced his head to clear and opened his eyes.
A horse, no bigger than a child’s pony, slender and white as paper, stood perfectly still on the railway track about thirty yards away from him. Although Duncan found it hard to concentrate or think at all, he couldn’t help noticing two things. One was the golden horn, fluted, slender and perilously sharp, in the middle of its forehead. The other was the fact that it was standing on the live rail.
Its ears were back and it was staring at him wide-eyed, its tail swishing just a little. Moonlight made it glow like a filament, and its breath was cloudy white in the chilly air. Duncan knew for a certainty that if he moved, or breathed, it would take fright and run; and if it ran, he would chase after it. He knew that he could never catch it, but that he’d never stop trying, not until his heart seized up or a blood vessel burst in his brain. He could feel the danger as if it was something physical, a net or a spider’s web brushing softly against his raw skin. The urge, the longing to make the movement that would start the hunt that could only end in his ruin and death was almost unbearable; the pain of keeping still was worse than hanging by one hand from the edge of a cliff. He also knew that sooner or later the horse would move away, even if he didn’t spook it. There would be some other noise, a barking dog or a rat scuttling, the vibration of a distant approaching train felt through the rail it stood on. Despairingly, he tried to convince himself that he was asleep and dreaming the dream again, but that was too big a lie, even for an experienced lawyer. It was real, more real than anything he’d ever seen, and it had him pinned down, poised for the kill, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to save himself.
He could hear it breathing: short, snatched gasps in and out, implying apprehension. Could it see him? One thing he’d noticed about his new and improved senses: there was a kind of built-in filter, which made it possible for him to tune out the vast swell of background information and concentrate only on those things that interested him. Just as well, or his head would’ve exploded hours ago. He narrowed the focus of his attention down to a fine point, until there was nothing in the world except the—
Unicorn. It was a massive word to have to accept; like swallowing a mountain. But there was no doubt about it. The thing he was watching wasn’t a small white pony with a brass spike sticking out of its head. It was a unicorn, a mythical beast, a medieval allegory of something or other, innocence or purity or some such. It was also real: a real unicorn, being observed by a real werewolf. And if anybody had told him, fifteen hours ago, that by ten o’clock that night he’d have no problem with either of those concepts, there would have been a brief, embarrassed silence and then he’d have changed the subject. Talk about a rich, full day.
The unicorn’s left ear twitched and went forward; the right ear stayed back. Quickly, Duncan realigned his hearing to pick up whatever it was that had startled it.
That bloody dog: a quarter of a mile away at least, but it must’ve picked up the unicorn’s scent, because instead of intruder alert it was now barking strange horse smell, does not compute . Which said a lot, Duncan reckoned, about canine intelligence, and maybe explained why so few dogs win scholarships to Cambridge University.
The unicorn’s ears were back now, and it was snuffling the air. Fortunately, Duncan was downwind of it, but he wasn’t sure about the dog. The unicorn was alert, unquestionably, but it didn’t seem unduly concerned. After what seemed like a very long time, it lowered its head a little and sniffed at an empty hamburger box lying on the ground a foot or so away from its front legs.
A thought began to quiver in Duncan’s mind, like an egg on the point of hatching. How far away was it? His first estimate had been thirty-odd yards, but on further reflection he was inclined to cut that down to twenty-five. In which case, it’d be a straightforward case of drag racing: which of them could do nought to sixty in the shortest time. If he could accelerate from a standstill significantly quicker than the unicorn could, he stood some sort of chance of catching it. If he managed to catch it, he might still have a chance of getting out of this in one piece. If he missed and scared the unicorn away - well. Try and make sure that doesn’t happen.
A whistle; some bloody inconsiderate fool was blowing a whistle. The unicorn must’ve heard it just before Duncan did. Its legs and back tensed up and it jumped forward; not going away, but sauntering straight at him. Twenty yards; I can do this, he told himself. One good spring—
‘Duncan!’ Luke’s voice, bellowing. Immediately the unicorn spun round and leaped, all four hooves off the ground, into the first stride of a gallop. Duncan hurled himself at it, as if his body was a stone he was throwing. Not a hope. Three paces and the unicorn was out of sight, and Duncan was following the scent blind—
Something grabbed him; he twisted, desperate with anger and fear, and tried to grapple, but the constraining force was much too strong for him. It lifted him off the ground and held him in the air, his legs pumping like the cat in a Tom and Jerry cartoon when it runs off a cliff.
‘Duncan,’ Luke said, his voice infuriatingly calm. ‘Slow down, it’s OK.’
Luke Ferris. For a full second, every part of Duncan’s body and soul concentrated on hating Luke Ferris. He stopped moving, and Luke put him down.
‘Arsehole,’ he said. ‘Arsehole.’
Luke punched him in the solar plexus. For a moment he blacked out; when he came round he was gasping like a fish dangling on a line. Even so, he knew somehow that the punch had been kindly meant. ‘It’s all right,’ Luke was saying. ‘Pull yourself together, it’ll be fine.’ Duncan managed to get about an eggcupful of air back in his lungs. ‘Ar—’ he mumbled, and collapsed in a heap.
Some time later, he sat up. The Ferris Gang was clustered around him, exuding a mixture of concern and contempt. ‘Talk about jammy,’ Micky was saying. ‘First time out and he scents the unicorn.’
Duncan could feel it draining out of his mind, just as the dream had faded when he woke up. ‘It’s real, then,’ he said. ‘I didn’t just imagine it.’
‘Oh, it’s real, all right,’ Pete said, with just a sprinkle of bitterness. ‘Luke, you’d better clue him in, before he does himse
lf a mischief.’
Instinctively, Duncan turned his head and looked at Luke. ‘I think you’ve probably figured out the gist of it for yourself,’ Luke said gravely. ‘Yes, it’s a unicorn. As far as we can tell, there’s only one. I’ve tried making discreet enquiries of the other packs, but when I start talking about unicorns they act like I’m taking the piss. Anyway, that’s not important. What matters is, when you smell it, for crying out loud don’t chase it.’
Murmured agreement from the rest of the pack. Still, he had to ask. ‘Why not?’
‘Because you’ll never catch it, that’s why,’ Micky said sourly. ‘She’s fast. Even when it’s that time of the month and we’re, well, normal, we can’t get anywhere near her. When we’re like this, human, we don’t stand a chance.’
‘Pete chased her once, didn’t you, Pete?’ Clive put in. ‘Luckily we realised what was going on and there was a short cut; we managed to catch up with him and pull him off before it was too late. Even so, he was flat on his back for six weeks, couldn’t eat anything except single cream and Heinz vegetable soup.’
‘That’s right,’ Pete said. ‘If the lads hadn’t rescued me, I’d have been a goner. Once you start, see, you just can’t stop, even when your eyes blur over and you’re spitting up blood. Of course, I’d actually caught a glimpse of her, which made it so much worse—’
‘I saw her,’ Duncan said.
Dead silence.
‘I did, really,’ Duncan said. ‘Smaller than a proper horse, white, with a golden horn. She was standing there, about twenty-five yards away.’
For a long time, none of the Ferris Gang breathed, let alone spoke. Then Micky whispered, ‘Fuck me,’ in the voice of a man who’s just seen a miracle.
‘That’s more than I have,’ Luke said, and his voice was very slightly shaky. ‘Look, Duncan, no buillshitting: did you actually see—?’
‘Yes, I just told you.’ Duncan made an effort and calmed down. ‘I was following the scent of the fox and I came out on the railway line. I realised it’d given me the slip, and then I saw her. She was just standing there looking at me. I kept still so as not to spook her; then Luke came along, she ran off, I started to follow—’
‘Shit,’ Luke said, with deep and sincere emotion. ‘Look, standing around next to the railway lines isn’t the cleverest thing in the history of the galaxy. Let’s get out of this and go somewhere we can talk.’
By a delightful stroke of synchronicity, the pub they ended up in was called the White Hart. For the first time, Duncan had no trouble swilling down his pint of Guinness as quickly as the others.
‘We know bugger-all about her,’ Luke was saying, ‘where she comes from, what she’s in aid of, what she means. Obviously we’ve done the research. Unfortunately, the only proven and unassailable fact we’ve been able to find out about unicorns is that they don’t exist. That and a load of thinly veiled soft porn about horns and virgins is all there is to it. Which is interesting, actually, now I come to think of it.’ Luke paused for a moment, frowning. ‘The thing is,’ he went on, ‘Pete’s the only one of us who’s ever actually set eyes on her; and we thought, bearing in mind the medieval legends and all, that was because he’s the only one of us who’s still—’
‘Shut your face, Luke,’ Pete growled. He’d gone a sort of beetroot colour.
‘But obviously not,’ Luke went on. ‘I mean, since you were married, I’m assuming - yes, fine. Another theory blown out of the water. Not that it matters a damn, at that.’ Luke put down his empty glass and took its replacement off the table. ‘There’s only one thing you need to know about the unicorn, Duncan. Leave it alone. Ignore it, don’t chase it; because if you do—’ He scowled, as if remembering something very bad and stupid he’d done once, a long time ago. ‘She’s already cost me one very dear friend,’ he said quietly, ‘and I’m buggered if it’s going to happen again. All right?’
He swallowed his beer and wiped his moustache on his sleeve; and then the grin was back on his face. ‘We call her Millie, by the way,’ he added.
‘Millie?’
‘Mphm. No reason, I just happen to like the name. Knew a girl once called Millie. Never managed to catch her, either. One more, I think, and then we’ll call it a night. Duncan.’
Automatically, Duncan stood up and went to the bar. As the Guinness surged lava-like up the glasses, he tried to purge the memory from his mind; a glare of pure white, burned on his mind’s eye like the residue of a welding flash. Millie, he thought. Well, quite.
They ran back to the City in silence; outside the office building in Mortmain Street they split up without goodnights or see-you-in-the-mornings; each went his separate way into the darkness, until Duncan was standing alone. He shrugged; it was the only gesture that seemed to help.
He walked to the Tube, but didn’t go down the stairs. Screw riding in trains, he thought. Instead, he ran home, rejoicing in each long, effortless stride. There were still a few people in the streets but nobody stared, or even seemed to notice him (a man in a business suit, tie flapping in the slipstream, tearing down Kingsway faster than Seb Coe, at a quarter to one in the morning). He arrived home pleasantly warm, not at all breathless; trotted up the stairs, let himself in, switched on the light.
His Aunt Christine had said once that he was so untidy that if ever he was burgled, he wouldn’t notice for a fortnight. It was good to be able to lay that old slander to rest. He noticed as soon as he walked through the doorway. Not, however, because of the mess. It was the smell.
Intruder alert; so much for x million years of evolution. He stood rooted to the spot, and the hair on the back of his neck was bristling. He sniffed, and growled; and then he noticed the yanked-out drawers, overturned furniture, scattered books, DVD-player-sized void, et cetera.
Bastards, he thought; then he was grinning, and he had a good idea why. He sniffed again; then he knelt down next to one of the discarded drawers, put his nose to the handle and breathed in.
Fine: that told him everything he needed to know. His only regret as he slammed the door behind him and set off down the stairs, snuffling as he went, was that he didn’t have a tail. If he’d had one, it’d have been wagging so hard he’d have sprained a buttock.
Their scent disappeared at the kerb, but Duncan picked up a strong smell of diesel and sump oil, so he followed that instead. He lost the diesel after a few hundred yards, blended hopelessly into the general traffic stench, but the oil smell was clear and distinctive. He didn’t have to trail it very far, no more than four or five miles. It took him to a lock-up workshop under a railway arch. He knocked and waited for six seconds before kicking down the door; after all, just because he was a werewolf, there was no call to go acting like a wild animal.
‘Here, what d’you think—’ said the man in the grey parka, just before Duncan sprang. He went down on his back with a thump, with Duncan’s hands round his neck, too startled and terrified to move. Duncan knew the drill. One hard bite into the throat, then shake vigorously until the prey stops moving. He could smell the prey’s fear, and it made him feel painfully hungry. He bared his teeth—
And then he thought, No, this is wrong. No - I’m a human being. Well, a lawyer. Tearing people’s throats out, for a straightforward domestic burglary? Even David Blunkett never went that far.
He lifted his head. Out of the corner of his eye he could see two more men. They were frozen, staring, making no effort whatever to intervene. He looked up at them and growled.
Sometimes, you hear your own voice and somehow, for a split second it isn’t you. On this occasion, he was glad it was him. He wouldn’t have wanted to be in a confined space with whatever had made that noise otherwise. Instinct or deep-seated genetic memory was keeping the three men from moving, and that was probably just as well. Anything remotely resembling a threat or hostile action would have given his own instincts the shred of pretext they needed. He growled again. The man whose throat he was gripping had gone ever such a funny colour, and you didn’
t need a werewolf’s nose to tell you that he was in urgent need of a change of undergarments.
He relaxed his grip, and the man gasped, gulping down air like Luke with a glass of beer. ‘All right,’ Duncan heard himself say. ‘But I want my stuff back. And God help you if you’ve buggered up my PC. Have you any idea how long it takes to install broadband?’
They hadn’t unloaded his things from the van yet, so he took the keys and quickly checked everything was there. Fine. He climbed into the driver’s seat while they opened what was left of the doors. The man he’d jumped on, he noticed, was wiping drool off his chin. Yuk, he thought.
‘I’ll leave the van outside, with the keys in,’ he said. ‘You can pick it up in the morning. Oh, and you’ve got an oil leak somewhere. ’
It didn’t take him long to put everything back and get the place straightened up; another werewolf superpower, he supposed, because usually tidying and housework took him for ever. When he’d finished, he looked the place over and decided he wasn’t going to be staying there long. A dump, by any meaningful criteria. Most definitely not suitable for his new, evolved self; an aristocrat of the animal kingdom, one of supernature’s gentlemen. The hell with grotty little flats. Something large and detached was what he deserved, with a nice big garden you could run in; down by the river, maybe. Chiswick, somewhere like that.
Even the bed felt small and cramped, and he found it hard to get to sleep. By rights he should’ve been exhausted after the day he’d had, but instead he was bursting with energy. After an hour of fidgeting and listening to next door’s clock he jumped up, burrowed around in the coal seam of papers and junk in the kitchen drawer, and found the calendar he’d been given last Christmas and never got around to putting up. It was one of those information-packed calendars, detailing among other trivia the phases of the moon.