Barking

by Tom Holt

  ‘Fine,’ Duncan croaked. ‘No problem.’

  Felicity Allshapes smiled. Of course, you can’t analyse smiles. You can’t measure them with micrometers and Vernier callipers and say, if the left upper corner of the top lip had been twelve-thousandths of an inch lower down, it’d have been completely different, no big deal at all.

  ‘That’s so nice of you, I really appreciate it. And we’re all so grateful to you for agreeing to carry on acting for us, what with you changing jobs and all. You’ve done so well for us already, it’s such a comfort knowing you’re here looking after us.’

  Something’s wrong, Duncan thought. ‘Oh, it’s all part of the service,’ he said vaguely, and managed to load himself into a chair without falling over. ‘What did you want to see me about?’

  ‘Well.’ She bit her lip, and Duncan had to try very hard not to think about pearls on a bed of rose petals. ‘I’ve got to say, we’re all really sorry about this and we do hope it’s not going to mess everything up, not after all the hard work you’ve put in already. The thing is, there’s some more assets of the estate we’ve only just found out about: stocks and shares, building land, a small block of flats in Canberra, stuff like that.’ Her face clouded up, and for a split second Duncan wanted to burst into tears. ‘Is that bad? I mean, is it going to make all sorts of problems for you?’

  While she was saying that, Duncan was setting himself a test. Look away, he ordered himself, and see if you can tell me what colour her hair is. He looked away. He couldn’t.

  ‘Well yes, actually.’ It was a sort of deep chestnut brown. His favourite hair colour. ‘You see, it’s the duty of the executors to make a full declaration of the assets when applying for probate, so the Revenue can calculate the amount of tax payable—’ Luckily, the speech came out automatically, no thought required. He couldn’t be bothered to listen to himself making it. Instead, he tried the test again, this time with the colour of her eyes. They were green (he’d always had a thing about green eyes) but he had to look.

  Query: had the hair been chestnut and the eyes green when she came into the room? Would they be those colours if there wasn’t anybody there to see them?

  ‘Oh.’ He must’ve come to the end of the speech, because she was gazing at him, all guilty and sad. ‘So what you’re saying is, you’re pretty much going to have to start all over again.’

  Duncan nodded. ‘Not quite as bad as that, but we’ll have to submit a corrective account, and it’s going to have a knock-on effect because of reassessing all the other property, not to mention the income-tax implications. There may also be penalty charges from the Revenue, if they don’t believe it was an honest oversight. And then there’s the problem of some of the new assets being located overseas—’

  Now he knew what it was, the thing that was so wrong. He wondered how he could’ve been so stupid. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, cutting the foreign-domicile speech off in mid-flow, and made a show of looking at his watch. Then he frowned, took it off his wrist and shook it before dropping it in his pocket.

  ‘Very sorry about all this,’ he said. ‘Can you possibly tell me the time? My stupid watch has stopped, and I’ve got these clients coming in at ten-fifteen.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Felicity said, ‘it’s nearly that now.’ He knew that, of course. ‘ Look, would it be all right if I came back to see you at half past nine tomorrow morning? I really would like to get this wretched mess sorted out, otherwise I’ll be worrying myself to a frazzle about it.’

  Duncan smiled warmly. ‘That’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘If you could bring the rest of the papers with you, that’d be a great help.’

  As soon as he’d shooed her off the premises, Duncan scuttled back to his office, dropped into his chair like a dead weight, and lay back with his eyes shut for five uninterrupted minutes. Then, with a long sigh, he opened the file and pulled out the great fat bundle of correspondence.

  He hadn’t been able to smell her. That, of course, was what he’d noticed, but hadn’t realised he’d noticed until the penny finally dropped right on top of his breeze-block-thick head. On the other hand, he’d taken a good long look at her reflection in the shiny stainless-steel back of his watch, so she wasn’t one of them (shit; he was doing it now). In which case, what the hell was she? And why was she suddenly at risk of worrying herself to a frazzle over a transaction she’d cheerfully allowed to go to sleep for well over a year?

  Most of all, though: why now?

  There was some work to be done: post to be answered, the missing information he needed to finish off a couple of complex inheritance-tax returns, a few grossing-up calculations, a handful of apportionments of income . . . He tore through them like a wild boar in brushwood, not stopping to check his results (he knew they were perfect), devouring them like a starving man eating. When he’d finished he felt a great pang of regret, because now there was nothing to stop him turning his mind to the important, impenetrably bewildering shit that had showered down on him over the last forty-eight hours. Trying to remember how Luke had done it, he stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The first two attempts sounded like a live duck in a blender. The fourth was exactly right, and a moment later the little bald man appeared with a tray. Duncan nodded, not looking up, and reached for the sugar bowl, which he emptied into the cup until it started to slop over.

  Vampires exist; well, if werewolves are real, why not? If he’d heard it on the news, he’d have been able to get over it and put it away in the none-of-my-business folder, along with earthquakes in the Philippines. But he didn’t have that luxury, because she was one, and she—

  All right, fine. He admitted it. Duncan Hughes and the guy who starts off the Olympics: outstanding torch-carriers of our time. Needless to say, Luke had spotted it within minutes of meeting him again. Probably he’d been able to smell it, with that superbly sensitive nose of his. The question - the only question that actually mattered in the whole wide world, now he came to think of it - was the one he’d asked her. Had she dumped him because she’d joined Crosswoods, or because she didn’t love him any more? He’d heard her answer and Luke’s views on the matter. Presumably, one of them was right. A typical Ferris throwaway line: or maybe the girl’s still fond of you. Oh, and by the way. The world’s going to end in ten minutes, and you’ll end up in heaven or hell. One or the other. Does it really matter which?

  Bloody Ferris: self-centred as a drill, sensitive as tank armour, but what if he was right? If Sally still loved him, the world was a road that led somewhere. If she didn’t, it was just the playground at Lycus Grove, ruled by the Ferris Gang, evolved superhuman hooligans. Simple as that.

  He was grateful for the clarity, at any rate. There were side issues, of course. Just his bloody luck that there was a stupid feud between his lot and her lot. Romeo and Juliet: another of Luke’s maddeningly perceptive asides (except that it went further and deeper than that; Romeo, proverbially, wasn’t built in a day). And there was Luke’s alternative explanation to consider: the mole theory. (Could you be a mole and a werewolf at the same time?) If there was any truth in that - actually, it wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of difference. Political issues between the furry Montagues and the pointy-toothed Capulets didn’t really interest him. All that mattered was the question, to which he kept coming back like a driver going round in circles in the fog; no matter how much distance he tried to put between himself and it, everywhere he looked, there it was.

  Hopefully, he reached out for the counter-irritant. The curious behaviour of the gorgeous, completely unmemorable, odour-free Felicity Allshapes. Not a vampire, not a werewolf, definitely not human, and he couldn’t get the fucking accounts to balance. Furthermore, he was going to have to redo the whole bloody thing practically from scratch, because of these new assets that had decloaked like Klingons in front of him. Well; he tried, but he couldn’t muster up much in the way of interest for that, either. Clearly the Allshapes clan were some kind of weird non-human, but he was just their lawyer, peripherally i
nvolved and getting well paid for it. Didn’t matter a toss what kind of life form they were - goblins, angels, leprechauns - so long as they approved the bills. Just work, that’s all.

  Most of all, though: why now?

  He glanced at his watch; eleven-forty-five. In a little under eight hours, the full moon would shine (assuming it wasn’t cloudy). Sally’s lot used barrier cream to keep the sunlight off; would it work with moonlight as well? But he daren’t even try it, for fear of Luke and the rest of the gang. They hadn’t actually talked about it much, but he’d got the impression that That Time was far and away the biggest thing in their lives, the greatest pleasure, the thing they lived for. Not wanting to think about it, he’d sort of assumed he’d enjoy it too, while deliberately keeping it at the back of his mind, so he wouldn’t dwell on it. I don’t want to turn into an animal, thank you very much, he confessed to himself. So maybe it was like parties when he was a kid - you’ll enjoy it once you get there, his mother had assured him, and that was how he’d come to learn the truth about lies. He hadn’t enjoyed parties, in spite of his mother’s solemn promises; but when he told her and said he didn’t want to go to any more of them, she’d either not believed him or chosen to ignore him, as if that would somehow make her promise come true. The intriguing thing was that, up to a point, it had worked. He’d gone to more parties, hating them, persuading himself that he was having loads of fun. Maybe that was when he’d realised he had a career as an advocate; believe something enough and you make it true. Like religions. Or lawyers.

  Or, he thought, I could slip out of the office right now on the pretext of buying socks, book a one-way flight to New Mexico and spend the rest of my days peacefully hunting javelinas through the sage-brush. He didn’t know an awful lot about New Mexico, but he had an idea it was big and empty, and the locals were pretty relaxed about harmless eccentrics, so long as they paid their bills and didn’t eat anybody who’d be likely to be missed. Yes, he had that option; and who knows, he might meet a nice girl out there, settle down, buy a house and a Toyota. He could do that, if it wasn’t for the question.

  Talking of the Americas: while Sally and Duncan had been married, he’d met an insufferably huge number of her relatives and heard all about a thousand or so others, none of whom had been an aunt living in Buenos Aires. He’d have remembered something like that.

  He grunted, and clicked his mouse to print out the letters he’d written. Less than eight hours, and he wouldn’t be even remotely human any more. A quotation floated into his mind - Dr Johnson, or one of those people: something to the effect that someone who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

  Which would be fine, if it actually meant something. But quotations and aphorisms are generally just verbal Christmas presents; enticingly done up in pretty paper and ribbon, but once you get them open they generally turn out to be just socks.

  I’d like to go home now, please.

  Well, at least he’d had the courage to admit it to himself. The trouble was, of course, that as far as he knew it wasn’t possible. Whether he liked it or not, he was stuck like it. Going back to being wimpish, feckless Duncan Hughes, assistant solicitor with Messrs Craven Ettin and general all-round loser, wasn’t an option. It was like his eighth birthday, when he’d have given anything to be seven again.

  The door opened, and Pete looked in. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pub. We’re waiting for you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Duncan closed his eyes. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I really don’t feel like—’

  But Pete had gone, leaving the door ajar. More compulsory fun. As he dragged himself to his feet, Duncan felt the weight of the ludicrous irony of it all. One quick nip in the side of his neck had given him everything he needed to be free - extraordinary senses, freedom from fear of injury and sickness, mental abilities that could make him rich, secure, independent; but it had also bound him to the pack, so that his life for the foreseeable future consisted of silent group lunchtime drinking that didn’t even get him drunk, of evenings spent chasing animals through alleys, over garden fences and dustbins, followed by a few hours of sleep, followed by the same again, endlessly repeated. At some point, he remembered, Luke had called it evolution, and he’d been partly right. He’d evolved into a superior form of life, better than a human. At the same time, he’d regressed to being an adolescent, and tonight he’d slip back one stage further and turn into an animal. He was playing on a board on which the ladders were the snakes and the snakes were the ladders (let’s consolidate: not snakes and ladders, just adders); where every step forward was also a step back, and the good stuff and the bad stuff were all the same. And come sunset, it was all going to get just a bit more serious. Something to look forward to.

  Lunchtime drinking: twelve pints of strong beer, no effect whatsoever, and he didn’t even have to pay for the drinks. The Ferris Gang was even more taciturn than usual, and Duncan had an idea that they were staring at him when he wasn’t looking, as though they suspected him of having done something, or being about to do something. But he wasn’t quick enough to catch them at it, or else they weren’t doing it and he was imagining the whole thing.

  ‘Busy afternoon?’ Luke was talking to him.

  ‘What, me? No.’

  ‘Clients coming in?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Just as well.’ Luke nodded, as if he’d decided not to press charges. ‘Your first time, you’ll want to take it easy, save your strength. It can be a bit intense.’

  Oh, wonderful. ‘What do you mean, “intense”?’

  Luke shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine. Put your feet up. Take a nap, if you can. Oh, and it’s probably best if you don’t eat anything.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s not important, just—That’s not your best suit, is it?’

  ‘What? No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Good. Shoes?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘What’ve you got on your feet? Let me see.’

  Very unwillingly, Duncan lifted his left foot off the floor and rested it on the edge of the table. Pete frowned; Micky made a sort of tutting noise.

  ‘Laces,’ Luke said. ‘Not a good idea. Slip-ons are better, something with elastic in the sides. You might want to nip out at some point this afternoon, Kevin’ll go with you. Where’s there a shoe shop around here?’

  ‘John Lewis,’ Micky grunted. ‘Or isn’t there a sort of sports place in Ludgershall Square?’

  ‘Better off going to Oxford Street,’ Clive said. ‘Oh, and what about curare?’

  Luke shook his head. ‘Won’t need that.’

  ‘Just to be on the safe side?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Duncan interrupted. ‘What the hell is curare?’

  They looked at him, as though they’d forgotten he was there. ‘Muscle relaxant,’ Luke said. ‘But you won’t need it. That whole approach went out years ago, along with aconite and the Lord’s prayer written out backwards.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  Back in his office, Duncan did a Google search for curare; also aconite, and the Lord’s prayer written backwards. Then he tottered as far as the men’s toilet and threw up.

  Not that he was scared about the physical implications; even though curare turned out to be a medicine to control lethally violent muscle spasms, and aconite was a poison derived from the wolfsbane plant (go figure), and as for the Lord’s prayer written out backwards . . . But what the heck: if the Ferris Gang went through this shit once a month and survived, it couldn’t be too big a deal, purely in terms of bodily pain and suffering. Probably no worse than toothache, or breaking your leg (which he’d never done; never had bad toothache, either). All right, so what if it hurt like hell? That really wasn’t what was eating his mind. But the thought of changing, turning into an animal—

  ‘Duncan?’

  Kevin was gazing thoughtfully at him from the doorway. Of course,
the partners of Ferris & Loop never ever knocked before entering someone else’s room. As far as they were concerned, the word ‘private’ meant a foot soldier.

  ‘You ready?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Are you ready? Shoes, remember?’

  By and large, on balance, he’d always quite liked Kevin, in much the same way as people like big clumsy pieces of furniture. He was inoffensive, sometimes he came in handy, and when he wasn’t needed for anything he just stood there. Occasionally you felt an almost overwhelming urge to dust him, but that was all right. He probably wouldn’t mind.

  ‘Shoes,’ Duncan repeated. ‘Oh, right, yes. Did he really mean all that?’

  Kevin frowned slightly. ‘I guess so. Or he wouldn’t have said it, would he?’

  On the other hand, Kevin was big. He’d been six feet tall at fourteen, and by the time he’d stopped growing he’d become a definite menace to door frames, lampshades and low-flying aircraft. He’d been co-opted into the Ferris Gang because, from time to time, when diplomacy or personality failed, Luke had needed to have somebody thumped. Kevin was good at thumping, although he’d always done it in a rather dreamy, absent-minded way, like someone not quite awake swatting at a fly. That, presumably, had something to do with why he’d been appointed as Duncan’s escort. A gentle, six-foot-eight hint.

  ‘Fine,’ Duncan said, standing up. ‘Timothy White’s, was it?’

  ‘John Lewis, Micky said. Or we could try Oxford Street. Up to you, really.’

  So they went to John Lewis, and Duncan bought a pair of light tan slip-ons and (he wasn’t quite sure why) a change of underwear. On the way back, he decided to ask:

  ‘Kev,’ he said. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘What’s what like?’

  ‘You know. Changing. What we’re going to do this evening.’