Barking

by Tom Holt

  They could have been enormous black birds, crows or whatever - Duncan was no twitcher. But birds didn’t glide quite like that, with their wings held out straight and stiff, and besides, there aren’t any birds with bodies as big as people, or not in this country at any rate. Pete snapped at the nape of Duncan’s neck but he dodged easily and, seeing a gap, shouldered Kevin out of the way. He expected to get bitten for that, but Kevin didn’t seem all that interested in him; he was growling, his ears were flat to his skull, and a moment later he launched himself in the air, snapping wildly at the nearest of the flying things. He missed and dropped down again, by which time Duncan was past him; but Luke was blocking his way. Still, even Luke seemed preoccupied with whatever those creatures in the sky were.

  His curiosity got the better of him, and he glanced up in time to see a black shape swooping right at him, going unbelievably fast. Luke barked and hurled himself into the air; his teeth caught in something trailing from the creature’s wing and he hung suspended by his jaws for a moment, until the creature flapped wildly and fell to earth. Its wild screech nearly drowned out Luke’s deep, guttural growling; they were fighting on the ground in a tangled ball of movement and noise. Another of the creatures materialised out of the darkness and soared up directly over Duncan’s head, hovering motionless for a split second before putting its wings back and swooping down. Kevin hurled himself at it and they collided with a thick, solid noise that was painful to hear. Bugger this, get out of here, Duncan shouted to himself. But something flew low over him, washing him all over in a soft bath of cool air. He felt something like fingers clamp onto his shoulders. All four of his feet left the ground. He was flying.

  Or rather, being flown. Staring down, he saw Clive leaping up at him like a dolphin, heard the snap of his jaws closing on thin air an inch or so below Duncan’s trailing paw. Then the scene below him panned back and grew small, as the werewolves dwindled into unreliable shapes and blended into the darkness. He tried to look up, but all he could make out was black cloth billowing in the slipstream. He remembered that he was shit-scared of heights, and shut his eyes.

  The flight was no fun at all, worse even than Virgin Atlantic, but eventually he felt something hard bash against the soles of his feet, first the back pair and then the front. The grip on his shoulders went loose, and he didn’t go tumbling through empty space. He opened his eyes, and found that he was looking up at a woman.

  Actually, she was quite nice-looking, if you were into Goth. Her face was very pale and she’d seriously overdone the eyeshadow, but—Fuck you, he yelled at himself, you’ve been snatched from the jaws of death by vampires, you don’t know where you are or whose side these people are on, and you’re actually checking her out. Deeply ashamed of being himself, he rose slowly to his feet.

  ‘Happy landings,’ the vampire said.

  And that was another thing: vampire. That, quite definitely, was what she was. He took a step back. It brought him out of a patch of shadow, and moonlight fell on his face.

  ‘I wouldn’t get carried away with the walking-backwards business if I were you,’ the vampire said pleasantly. ‘Thing is, we’re on a roof.’ She smiled reassuringly, then glanced over her shoulder. ‘I don’t know what’s keeping the others, but they should be along in a moment or so. They won’t have hurt your friends, by the way, not unless they really had to.’ She shrugged. ‘Assuming you still care,’ she added. ‘My name’s Veronica, by the way, Veronica Zhukov. I’m mostly maritime law and conflicts of jurisdiction, though I like to dabble in intellectual property when they’ll let me.’ She shivered. ‘Would it be all right if we went inside now?’ she asked. ‘Only it’s a bit nippy out here, and time’s getting on.’

  She led him down a ladder through a trapdoor. ‘In case you were wondering,’ she said, ‘this is the Crosswoods building. But you’d guessed that, I’m sure.’

  As soon as the trapdoor closed, shutting out the moonlight, Duncan changed back. His paws became hands just in time to grip the rungs of the ladder and save himself from falling twenty feet onto hard concrete—

  ‘Oops,’ Veronica Zhukov said. ‘Sorry, wasn’t thinking. You all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ Duncan replied. ‘Are you going to kill me?’

  She looked shocked. ‘Heavens, no,’ she said. ‘What a strange thing to say. Besides, if we’d wanted you dead, we’d simply have left you with your furry friends.’ A serious look reshaped her face. ‘I can see why you’re suspicious about us,’ she said. ‘But there’s no need, really. I want you to look on us as the good guys.’

  Like a fish-hook: not easy to swallow. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘But you tried to kill me.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘We’ve only just met.’

  ‘Well, maybe not you personally, but your lot. You shot at me in a coffee shop.’

  ‘Good gracious.’ Veronica’s eyebrows rose. ‘I honestly don’t think that could’ve been us. After all,’ she added, ‘we’re lawyers. Which isn’t to say we don’t do nasty, spiteful things sometimes, but not shooting at people. It’s so gauche.’ She sighed. ‘If we’re going to be melodramatic, we might as well do it in my office, or the interview room. I hate standing about in draughty corridors.’

  She led him to a door which opened onto a plushly carpeted landing, down a flight of stairs into a passageway, the most startling aspect of which was its normality. It reminded him of the top floor at Craven Ettins - industrial-grade Wilton underfoot, woodchipped walls, plywood doors with aluminium handles. Junior-grade employees and support staff lived here: real people, as opposed to executives and bosses. He felt almost at home. Trainees, clerks and secretaries, he felt, don’t get to turn into wild animals at the full moon, or swoop in through windows on fluttering black wings. That sort of caper would inevitably be reserved for the graduate-entry types.

  ‘I thought your office was in the basement.’

  She grinned. ‘That’s just PR,’ she said. ‘We like people - in the trade, I mean, not the public - to believe we can’t get about much in daylight. Actually, so long as we’ve got our barrier cream on, it’s no bother. Let’s have a coffee,’ she added brightly. ‘The kitchen’s just through here.’

  And a kitchen was what it turned out to be: lino-floored, with battered-looking chairs retired from front-line service. There was a handwritten note Blu-Tacked to the wall urging everybody to wash their mugs up before leaving, and when she opened the fridge for the milk he saw a cardboard fish-fingers box, twelve bottles of something red with labels marked with letters of the alphabet, and a tub of strawberry ice cream.

  ‘Sugar?’ Veronica asked.

  He nodded. ‘Two,’ he added. ‘Thanks.’ It came in a Piglet mug. He grabbed it and held it, savouring the warmth.

  ‘If you don’t mind me abandoning you for a bit,’ she said, ‘I’ll nip down and see if the others are back yet. There’s biscuits somewhere,’ she added, ‘if the girls haven’t eaten them all.’

  Biscuits. The door closed behind her, and he sat still for a while, catching his mental and spiritual breath. Biscuits: he remembered them, vaguely. They belonged to a world where people were people, rather than werewolves, zombies, vampires or unicorns; a place he might once have taken for granted, but never again. The events of the last two days suddenly rushed up around him, like flood water, and he huddled in his chair, his face in his hands, as though his memories were a cloud of buzzing flies.

  He tried to concentrate his mind on what had Luke said. I was right, he’s the traitor. What the hell was all that about?

  The door opened. He looked up, but it wasn’t that nice-looking Veronica, and it wasn’t Sally, either. It was just some middle-aged dark-haired woman in a sort of gown thing, like students wear when they get their degrees.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  Duncan decided he really wasn’t in the mood. ‘Well what?’ he snapped.

  ‘What’ve you got to say for yourself?’

  Duncan considered for a moment. ‘Help!’
he suggested. ‘Or Leave me alone, you bunch of weirdos. Take your pick.’

  The woman raised both pencilled eyebrows. ‘That’s a funny attitude from a man who’s just been saved from being torn apart by wild dogs.’

  He shook his head. ‘Wild lawyers,’ he corrected her. ‘Dogs is just what they do in their spare time. Can I go now, please?’

  She looked at him as though he was burbling. ‘You want to leave?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With them still out there, hunting you?’

  ‘Well, yes. Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Oh.’ She shrugged. ‘But you were the one who came to see us,’ she said. ‘We assumed you’d got something for us.’

  ‘Me? No.’

  ‘Oh,’ the woman repeated. ‘But you were so persistent. First you came to the front desk. Then you were hanging about for hours earlier on this evening. We thought—’

  ‘I wanted to speak to Sally,’ he said. ‘Sally Moscowicz. My ex-wife.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ She frowned. ‘You mean it was personal, rather than—’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ The frown deepened. ‘I’m Caroline Hook, senior partner. ’ The woman stuck out a hand, and without thinking Duncan shook it. Very cold skin. ‘It seems like we’ve been at cross purposes, then. No matter.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘In that case, yes, you can go whenever you like. The rescue’s on the house, by the way.’

  He nodded. ‘You wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t thought—’

  ‘If we hadn’t thought you had something for us. Frankly, no.’

  ‘I see. So it wasn’t Sally who—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fine.’ Duncan stood up. ‘In that case, thanks ever so much, sorry for any inconvenience.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m really free to go, am I?’

  ‘I just said you were, didn’t I?’

  ‘Anywhere I like?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘New Mexico?’

  Caroline Hook looked vaguely startled. ‘I suppose so. Why?’

  ‘No reason.’ He took a long stride towards the door, then paused. ‘Just out of interest.’

  ‘Well?’

  He furrowed his brows. He had to ask. ‘If I had had something for you,’ he said, ‘what sort of thing would it’ve been?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘What sort of thing? Secrets? Troop movements, encryption keys, home addresses, formulas? The thing is, I don’t know - bank account numbers? Or would it not have been information at all: an actual thing, like a key or—?’ He looked at her. ‘You aren’t going to tell me, are you?’

  She shook her head. ‘What seems to have happened is a simple case of mistaken identity,’ she said. ‘We assumed you were the traitor. Our bad judgement. You get a free rescue out of it, compliments of Messrs Crosswoods. Just think: services from a lawyer that you don’t have to pay for.’

  The T-word. ‘So there is a traitor,’ he said.

  Suddenly Ms Hook was interested in him again. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you happen to know—?’

  ‘Sorry. Betraying what, exactly?’

  He’d lost her. ‘It’s a quarter to two in the morning,’ she said. ‘Sunrise is at seven. If I were you, I’d find somewhere dark.’

  ‘All right.’ He walked past her, then stopped in the doorway - like Colombo used to do, except he’d have figured it all out by now. ‘There is a traitor, though,’ he said again.

  ‘Yes,’ she repeated.

  ‘A traitor to who?’

  She smiled. ‘Client confidentiality,’ she said. ‘You know better than that, Mr Hughes.’

  ‘Fine. I had to ask. How do I get out of the building?’

  ‘Out of here, turn left, down the corridor to the end, brings you to the main lift.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He nodded politely, then added: ‘And thanks for the rescue. Do the same for you some time.’

  Ms Hook smiled frostily. ‘I doubt that very much. You see, I don’t get into messes like that.’

  ‘No,’ Duncan replied, ‘I don’t suppose you do.’

  Out of the door; he paused, sniffed, and turned right. When they’d been married, Sally had never worn perfume or anything like that. But earlier that evening, when he’d been talking to her in the Tube station, she’d practically reeked of the stuff. Camouflage, he guessed: to mask the smell of the barrier cream, or caked blood on her breath, whatever. Following the scent trail was like being given a guided tour. He went down two flights of stairs, down one corridor, up a flight of stairs, along another corridor, left, left again, right, through a fire door, through a room full of computer monitors - he stopped and wiggled a mouse on its pad, waking the screen up out of its flying-stars screen saver; what he saw there was interesting but by no means unexpected - down another corridor, across a landing, up more stairs, across another landing. He hesitated in front of the door he’d come to and listened. Then he smiled. He’d know that snore anywhere.

  Not actually a snore, strictly speaking; more a sort of popping noise, like a demijohn of home-made wine peacefully fermenting. It came from a large, long black box lying in the middle of the office floor. Only one kind of box is made in that very unusual shape. It was lined with red velvet, which showed a touching respect for tradition. Duncan peered down into it.

  Sally had always looked her best when she was asleep. Something to do with her eyes being closed; there was always that fierce, brisk, not-suffering-fools look in her eyes when they were open. Snuggled on her side in the velvet-lined box, her cheek resting on her hand, she looked like a party girl who’d flopped down to sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, with all her make-up still on. But each time she breathed out there was that little pop, like a raindrop hitting the surface of a pool, and you couldn’t help smiling.

  Tough.

  Duncan rummaged in his pocket until he found the expensive sausage roll - minus the fragment he’d used to distract Mr Loop - that he’d doggy-bagged from Moondollars. It was flaking up into crumbs and bits of pocket fluff had ground themselves into it, but he wasn’t planning on eating it. Instead, he crumbled it to bits until he was able to retrieve the ice-cream stick he’d inserted into it for safe keeping, a lifetime ago. Once he’d got it out he binned the handful of sausage-roll debris and looked round for a sharp edge.

  In the end, he had to sacrifice a pencil-sharpener. It was one of those cheap plastic ones; he put it between his teeth and crunched down on it, spat out the flakes of chipped plastic and fished the tiny blade off the tip of his tongue. As cutting tools went it was pretty pathetic, but it’d do. He perched on the edge of Sally’s desk and slowly, carefully whittled the end of the ice-cream stick into a point. Then he picked up a ruler and measured it. Four inches. Not having the handy paperback edition of Gray’s Anatomy on him, he couldn’t be sure it was long enough, but since he hadn’t got anything else it was going to have to do. Finding the big heavy thing to go with it was no problem at all - the bookshelves were lined with them. In the end he chose Kemp & Kemp’s yellow bible of personal-injury damages; apt, he thought, and it weighed three pounds if it weighed an ounce.

  With Kemp & Kemp in his left hand and the ice-cream stick poised behind his ear like a carpenter’s pencil, Duncan used his right hand to nudge Sally very gently onto her back. She stirred and made a growling noise, like a sleepy lion-cub, but didn’t wake up. Fine. He teased the ice-cream stick out from behind his ear, balanced it sharp end down over where he guessed her heart must be, rested Kemp & Kemp as lightly as he could on the blunt end, and cleared his throat.

  ‘Hi, sweetie,’ he whispered. ‘Time to wake up.’

  She made that cute little snarling noise he remembered so well. It meant a variety of things, depending on context: your feet are cold, I want more covers, no, I’m too tired. This time it meant, it’s too early, let me sleep. He hardened his heart and applied a few more foot-ounces to Kemp & Kemp.

  ‘Wake up, my little fruitbat,’ he murmured. ‘I want a word with you.’
r />   Her eyes opened, and she looked at him through the 1960s-style bead curtain of sleepiness.

  ‘Duncan?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Hello.’

  Her eyebrows cuddled up to each other. ‘What you doing here?’

  Well, she’d never been a morning person. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Wass time?’

  He glanced at the clock on her wall. ‘Two-thirty a.m.,’ he said.

  ‘For crying out—’ She stopped. Maybe she’d noticed the slight but nagging pressure of the ice-cream stick. ‘What the fuck are you playing at, Duncan?’

  Duncan smiled. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘As wooden stakes go it’s pretty pathetic. On the other hand, never underestimate the effect of Kemp & Kemp slammed down hard with a good wristy action. It might work, it might not. Do you want to find out?’

  Sally’s eyes were wide open now. ‘Are you out of your tiny mind?’ she said, and he felt a certain satisfaction when he heard the fear in her voice. ‘For Christ’s sake put that thing down, before you do me an injury.’

  He shook his head a little. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘You’re such a hard person to pin down figuratively, I reckoned my best bet was to give literally a go.’ He sighed. ‘I know, I’m lousy at threats, I haven’t had the practice. But I mean it. Either you give me a straight answer or you get my Buffy impersonation. Entirely up to you. Five seconds. One—’

  ‘Duncan, you lunatic. You can’t just go around murdering people.’

  ‘People, no, I grant you. But you’re not people any more, are you? I’m prepared to go to the House of Lords with this one if I have to. I suppose they could have me under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, on the grounds that bats are a protected species, but that’s a risk I’ll just have to take. Two.’