Barking

by Tom Holt

  ‘Duncan—’

  He sighed, tightened his grip on Kemp & Kemp, and lifted it a foot in the air.

  ‘All right.’ It came out as a furious squeal. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you anything you want. Put that fucking stick down, right now.’

  Just as well, he thought, as he lifted the point off her. There was a five per cent chance he might actually have done it if she hadn’t caved in. Of course, the stick would’ve snapped off before it had even punctured her jacket.

  ‘How the hell did you get that thing in here anyhow?’ she demanded, wriggling sharply away from it. ‘We’ve got scanners, they’re supposed to detect stuff like that.’

  Duncan grinned. ‘Thought you might have,’ he replied. ‘So I hid it. In a sausage roll, as a matter of fact. You might want to recalibrate your sensors.’ He took a deep breath, and said, ‘It was something in the lipstick, I take it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you kissed me. Some sort of fiendishly clever lycanthropy suppressant. You wanted me not to be able to change into a wolf, so your friend Mr Loop wouldn’t have any bother bringing me in.’

  Sally had squirmed her way as far up the box as she could get without sitting up. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this,’ she said. ‘I mean, I know there’s a whole lot of things wrong with you, but I never thought you’d turn violent.’

  ‘Just getting in touch with my inner cub, I guess,’ he replied. ‘For crying out loud, Sal, I’m a werewolf. Something like that, the changes aren’t just fur-deep. But you should know,’ he added. ‘You did this to me.’

  Her eyes flashed. But the anger had a little-girl quality to it: a furious rage at being found out. ‘Balls,’ she said. ‘It was your nasty friend Luke Ferris—’

  Duncan shook his head. ‘Oh sure, Luke had a lot to do with it. Luke was the reason you chose me. It was that way around, wasn’t it? At the time I thought it was me chasing after you, but—’ He grinned suddenly. ‘I’ve learned a thing or two about chasing lately,’ he said. ‘Courtesy of Bowden Allshapes. Sometimes, it’s the quarry who does the chasing and the predator who does the leading-on. Otherwise,’ he added, scowling quickly, ‘why the hell would you have married me in the first place?’

  ‘It wasn’t—’ It wasn’t like that, she’d been about to say. Well, maybe not; but that wasn’t the issue under discussion. ‘Let’s leave feelings out of this, shall we?’ Duncan said firmly. ‘Let’s stick to what you were told to do.’

  ‘I don’t know what you—’

  ‘Law school.’ He frowned. ‘Should’ve wondered about that at the time. Expensive business, going to law school. Now, your mum couldn’t afford to pay your fees and living expenses. Your dad buggered off when you were small and was never seen or heard of again. I don’t remember you ever getting a part-time job or anything like that.’

  ‘I got a grant.’

  ‘Really? Clever old you, because they stopped giving them three years before we started the course.’

  ‘I mean a loan, not a grant.’

  ‘Ah, right. That clears that up, then. And there was me thinking that someone else had paid your fees for you. A relative, maybe. Or a prospective employer.’ Duncan moved his head a little so that he couldn’t see her so well. ‘It’s what the army do, I believe, and big corporations: they pay your college bills and in return you’ve got to work for them for a certain number of years. Sort of like indentured slavery, only you get to keep the bit of paper saying you’ve passed all your exams.’

  Sally was looking at him, though he wasn’t looking back. He could feel it, like the little spot of light from a magnifying glass. ‘Duncan,’ she said, ‘what are you talking about?’

  He wasn’t sure why that was too much to bear, but it was. He turned back sharply, suddenly aware of the weight of Kemp & Kemp in his left hand. One tap, like knocking in a nail. ‘It was all about the Ferris Gang, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘Right from the start. I imagine they picked up on Wesley Loop first. I’ll bet he wasn’t as discreet as he should’ve been, at law school or wherever. They found out what he was, and that he was planning on starting up his own pack; they found out or figured out that he’d be most likely to start recruiting with his cousin Luke, who already had a pack of his own. So they started studying us; and they focused on me, because I was the weak link. I didn’t want to hang out with Luke’s gang any more. I quit, which made me the perfect target. I’d detached myself from the pack, but they knew that if they applied the right sort of pressure, I’d go back like a shot. Presumably that’s when you got your orders: get in there, secure him for us, so that when the time’s right we can reel him in. I honestly thought you loved me, but—’ He paused, waiting for a contradiction. No dice. ‘I hope it was worth it, from your point of view. What was it? The price of your admission to the sisterhood?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘And the phone calls? Help and all that; and your sidekick Ms Bick warning me off. To make me think you were in trouble, so I’d come running.’

  ‘More or less.’

  Duncan hadn’t really been expecting a confession. Quite definitely it wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear. It was just the miserable old truth; and the whole point of lawyers is so you don’t have to make do with the truth if you don’t want to. She might at least have done him the courtesy of lying.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘So when Luke said I’m the traitor—’

  ‘Clever old Luke.’

  ‘Oh.’ He frowned. ‘In that case, I owe your boss - Caroline something, nice woman . . .’

  ‘Hook.’

  ‘That’s it, Caroline Hook. I owe her an apology. I told her I wasn’t the traitor after all.’ His frown deepened. ‘But hold on a moment,’ he added. ‘If she’s the senior partner of this outfit, she’d have known, surely—’

  Sally didn’t say anything. Not like her at all. Then bits of stupidity began to flake off the inside of Duncan’s mind, exposing what passed for his intelligence. You mean it was personal, rather than—That nice Ms Hook: she’d told him everything he needed to know, and he’d been too stupid to notice.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Typical Hughes, brain like a tea bag. Someone got you this job, right? Like they got me mine at Craven Ettins. An important client put a word in for you; the sort of client you don’t say no to. Your boss Caroline doesn’t know the half of it, does she?’

  Sally’s face froze over, like a lake in winter. ‘You know what, Duncan?’ she said. ‘You’re a complete waste of time and resources. If you’re going to stab me with that lolly stick, go ahead. If not, I’d like to go back to sleep. It’s been a tiresome day - it’s had you in it.’

  He nodded, and laid Kemp & Kemp carefully down on the desk. ‘Sorry to have bothered you,’ he replied. ‘It was a tape-measure, by the way.’

  ‘What was a tape-measure?’

  ‘In my inside pocket. At that coffee-shop place. It stopped your bullet. Otherwise it’d have been a nice shot. Do you practise a lot?’

  She shook her head. ‘Enhanced hand-eye coordination,’ she said. ‘Comes with the puncture marks on the side of the neck. Our office darts team’s been top of the Law Society south-eastern area league for the last twenty years. Thanks for telling me that, I couldn’t believe I’d missed.’

  Duncan nodded a couple of times. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Only, that nice Veronica sounded so sincere when she said it wasn’t your lot who tried to kill me, I actually believed her. Which only left you.’ He dragged up an excuse for a winning smile. ‘Dead or alive, that’s what they told Loop - which suggests that they don’t care which: it’s as broad as it’s long if you’re in the zombie-making business. Presumably if you’d managed to kill me in the coffee shop, they’d have resurrected me and—’ He clicked his tongue. ‘Don’t suppose you feel like telling me why. For old times’ sake, or whatever.’

  Sally shook her head. ‘You’ve suddenly come over all insightful, ’ she replied. ‘Figure it out for yourself.’

&
nbsp; ‘Already did that,’ Duncan sighed. ‘Dead or alive, says it all. No, I just thought you might like to tell me yourself, in case you were feeling, oh, I don’t know, guilty, something like that.’

  ‘What would I be feeling guilty about? You just told me I didn’t actually miss. And it wasn’t my fault you’d got a tape-measure in your inside pocket.’

  ‘Fine.’ He stood up. ‘Will they be awfully cross with you when you tell them you failed?’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Well, it does rather look that way,’ Duncan said. ‘I’ve been slung out of the wolf pack and they’re out to kill me, so whatever it is I’m supposed to do to betray them, I can’t do it now. I’ve sussed out what your game is, so I won’t be trusting you again, and you didn’t manage to kill me. I’d have said it was as comprehensively fucked up as it could get.’

  And then she smiled. ‘You’re right, of course,’ she said. ‘Oh well, never mind. So.’ She yawned. ‘I guess this is goodbye for ever, then.’

  Duncan nodded. ‘With luck.’

  ‘In which case,’ Sally said, ‘I’d just like to say that you’re the most annoying, immature, self-centred, inconsiderate, shallow-minded, feckless, pathetic man I’ve ever met, and sex with you was like listening to the shipping forecast. Apart from that, no hard feelings.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Duncan replied gravely. ‘And, since we’re being so refreshingly frank with each other—’

  ‘Yes?’

  He grinned. ‘You’re the only girl I ever loved, or ever will,’ he said. ‘Silly me.’ He started to walk backwards, towards the door. ‘Just one last question, something that’s been really bugging me all along. If I ask you, promise you’ll tell me?’

  She shook her head. ‘No promises. You can ask.’

  ‘All right.’ He paused. The door was right behind him - he could feel the handle in the small of his back. ‘How do you and your mates manage to put all that eyeshadow and stuff on if you can’t see yourselves in mirrors? It must be a real—’

  Sally was scrabbling for something in the lining of her coffin. No prizes for guessing what. Duncan dived for the door, opened it and hurled himself through, pitching forward onto his face as soon as he could. He heard the bang and felt the slipstream as the bullet whizzed by overhead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Down the stairs Duncan went, bump-bump-bump like Pooh being dragged by Christopher Robin, ever so grateful for his near-as-dammit-invulnerability as he crashed his knees into steel banisters, or missed steps, stumbled and finished the rest of the flight slithering down on his back or his face. Three landings down he stopped by grabbing onto the rail (it came away from the wall, but it had done its job as far as he was concerned) and looked back up for signs of pursuit. None, apparently. Either Sally’d given up, or she’d been sensible and taken the lift.

  The hell with that, he thought. He hopped up onto the banister, glanced down into the cavernous stairwell beneath, and dropped.

  After a short but interesting fall he landed on his feet, wobbled for a moment and looked all round. As far as he could tell, he had the entrance lobby to himself. Then he heard the ting of a lift bell and saw the light over the lift door starting to glow. As the doors slid open, he dived like a goalkeeper at the front desk and scrambled behind it.

  There was a clock on the wall facing him, which told Duncan it was five past three in the morning. He stifled a groan. Three and a half, four hours before the sun came up. If only he had a jarful of the stuff that Sally had doctored the lipstick with, the stuff that kept him from transforming. Or he could go back and ask nicely for another kiss. Well, perhaps not.

  Still, out of the building would be a start. In which case, since he was cornered and outgunned, he really had no option other than the modern urban equivalent of a good old-fashioned cavalry charge. He didn’t have a horse, but he did have (he suddenly noticed) Megarry and Wade.

  The best thing about Megarry and Wade’s book on the law relating to land transfers, from a tactician’s perspective, is that it’s big. Compared to Megarry and Wade, Kemp and Kemp wrote in haiku, pruning away every superfluous word, rationing the adjectives as though they were fattening. Megarry and Wade, by contrast, believed passionately in the full expansive flow of language. Fortunately, Duncan’s werewolf super-strength allowed him to lift the thing off the floor, where it was providentially lurking, without wrecking his elbow tendons. He hefted it and listened carefully to the woodpecker tap of court shoe heels on laminated wood flooring. Sally’s movements were easy to reconstruct. From the lift shaft, she crossed the lobby until she could see that the main door hadn’t been smashed or unlocked; then she turned and looked round, assessing the merits of the various hiding places that the front office offered. Since the desk was pretty much all there was in the way of useful cover, he anticipated that it wouldn’t take her long to figure out where he was. Accordingly—

  Megarry and Wade’s The Law Of Real Property (seventh edition) flew through the air like a fat, chunky owl, air resistance flicking it open. It hit the side of Sally’s head with a muffled splatty sort of sound, bounced off her shoulder and flopped to the floor. For nearly a whole second she stood looking confused. Then her knees gave way, and she folded onto the floor like a suit of clothes whose owner has been teleported out of them.

  Victory, Duncan thought. Except—

  He jumped up from behind the desk and dashed halfway to where she lay sprawled. Nearly victory, he amended. Good improvisation, perfect timing, excellent throw, but the stunned woman lying at his feet wasn’t Sally.

  Bugger. He leaned down to peer at her face, and recognised her: Veronica something, Russian-sounding name. The nice-looking one. He sat down on his heels, feeling extremely stupid until it occurred to him that, whether or not he’d just knocked out the wrong woman, there was nothing to stop him slipping the catch on the front door and getting away. Fine, he thought; he stood up, turned and saw Sally standing between him and the door. She was pointing something small and shiny at him, and he was prepared to bet money it wasn’t a stapler.

  ‘Cooperation,’ she said.

  Oink? ‘Cooperation what?’

  ‘You asked how vampires put on make-up,’ she said. ‘We don’t. We get our friends to do it for us; and then we do theirs back. I suppose you could say it’s a bit like monkeys and communal grooming, but I prefer to think of it as a symbol of unity and mutual support. You know - I got all my sisters and me, that kind of thing.’ She frowned. ‘What’ve you been doing to Vee?’

  ‘I hit her. With Megarry and Wade.’

  ‘Oh. Bit uncalled for, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I thought she was you.’

  ‘Fine. I wouldn’t bother,’ Sally added, as Duncan surreptitiously reached for the book. ‘I mean, you can try if you like, but I’ll only duck out of the way, and then you’ll die feeling a right prat instead of an innocent victim. Your choice,’ she added reasonably. ‘I’m just trying to be considerate.’

  Duncan looked at her, then slowly and deliberately picked up the book.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she said testily, and pulled the trigger. She fired four times before running out of bullets, and when Duncan lowered Megarry and Wade from in front of his heart, there were four neat holes in the front cover, forming a rectangle no bigger than a matchbox.

  ‘Werewolf reflexes,’ he said, with a grin. ‘I figured if that ditzy little gun of yours couldn’t shoot through a tape-measure—’

  ‘Bastard,’ she said.

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it? You haven’t got any more silver bullets.’

  ‘That’s right, be all smug about it. Hardest thing I ever did, staying married to you for a whole year.’

  ‘At least I don’t pop.’

  She scowled at him. ‘What do you mean, pop?’

  ‘In your sleep. You make this sort of popping noise with your mouth. Makes you look like a goldfish.’

  ‘That’s not true - you’re making it up.’

  ‘I am not. Pop, p
op, pop. Kept me awake for hours. I’d just lie there, waiting for the next pop. Enough to drive you mad.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘How would you know? You’re asleep at the time.’

  ‘Well rid of me, then, aren’t you?’

  Yes, Duncan thought. I suppose I am. ‘Are you going to try and stop me leaving now?’

  Sally shook her head. ‘Not try so much as succeed, actually. I’m faster than you, and stronger, and I can fly. Also, the others’ll be here in a moment. I don’t know what it’s like at Ferris and Loop, but around here you can’t go letting off guns without attracting a certain amount of attention.’

  He took a step backwards. ‘You surprise me,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d have wanted your friends around right now.’

  ‘What on earth makes you say that?’

  Duncan grinned. Not his best effort ever. ‘You know what your boss asked me, that Caroline? She asked me if I knew who the traitor was. At the time, of course, I hadn’t got a clue, but it’s sort of come to me, like a revelation or something. Next time I see her, I must remember to tell her. I’m sure she’ll be interested.’

  Silence. Duncan could hear Sally’s heart beating, the faintest creak from her shoes as she shifted her weight just a little. ‘Nice try,’ she said. ‘Wrong traitor, actually. Besides, she won’t believe you.’

  ‘Well, if she doesn’t, no harm done as far as you’re concerned. Let’s try it and see what happens.’

  ‘You please yourself,’ Sally replied. ‘Anyway, it’s not true.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. You’re the traitor. You have been all along, you just didn’t know. Oh, you were quite right about Bowden Allshapes putting me through law school and getting me a job here, but I was only ever just a way of getting to you. Ironic, really,’ she added bitterly, ‘because I’m quite bright, though I say it myself, and you’re just a dead loss, no wordplay intended. But no, it was you they wanted, and I was just an eyelash-flutterer with a law degree.’ She scowled. ‘I got my partnership on merit,’ she went on. ‘I worked bloody hard and I’m good at my job. You’d still be a miserable little assistant solicitor at Cravens if Luke Ferris hadn’t wanted you to complete his collection. Of course, that’s men for you. It’s not how good you are, it’s who you happened to be at school with.’