Wolf in Shadow-eARC

by John Lambshead

  The wolf leapt.

  She hit the gangster hard, catching his face in her jaws and wrenching around his head until the salty taste of warm blood filled her mouth. Movement caught the wolf’s eye. Without hesitation, she dropped her victim and jumped to the right. A shotgun blast rattled the car wreck. The wolf jinked left to avoid the second shot, which tore up the ground where she had been standing.

  This gunman was made of sterner stuff than his colleagues, calmly breaking open his weapon to eject the spent cartridges as if he were doing nothing more dangerous than a grouse shoot. He behaved like a professional, an ex-soldier maybe, smoothly reaching into his coat pocket for reloads. The wolf gathered her back legs under her body. The gunman pushed the cartridges home and snapped the weapon shut as she charged.

  In two more bounds the wolf would have him, but the muzzles of his levelled shotgun opened wide before her like the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel. He pulled back the hammers when she was just two miserable meters away. It might as well have been a mile.

  She saw the twin flash before she heard the concussion. Max knocked the shotgun up, the shot whistling over her head. The wolf took the gunman’s throat, dropping him when he stopped moving.

  Shots punched through thin metal car bodies and clanged off engine blocks. The wolf bounded across the floodlit yard, jinking left and right. Bullets hammered past her.

  A gunman’s nerve broke and he tried to run. The wolf hit him in the small of the back and the gunman fell, arms outstretched, as if he was appealing to a deity for divine protection. He was an easy kill.

  The wolf bit into the back of her victim’s neck and he went limp. She shook him a few times, puzzled that something with the arrogance to try to kill her should die so easily.

  She and Max moved through the scrapyard, hunting, keeping to the shadows. The wolf was aware of Max close by but ignored him. He was of the pack, a member of the hunt.

  “Lenny?” a voice asked from the other side of the yard. “Have you got them?”

  “Lenny’s lost his head,” Max replied, adding a low chuckle that might have crawled out from a crypt.

  A fusillade of wildly aimed shots from a variety of weapons spanged through the scrap. Max watched coolly, gun extended in one hand in the classic target-shooter’s stance. He fired a single shot that elicited a cry of pain.

  An automatic weapon replied with a sustained burst.

  The night belonged to the wolf. She put her head up and howled, filling the yard with throbbing sound. Moonlight broke through the London clouds as if Morgana heard the cry and blessed her with a shower of silvery light.

  “Jesus Christ!” said a voice from across the yard.

  The wolf cleared the BMW in a single bound. Her powerful haunches drove her halfway across they open center of the yard before the first ill-aimed shot sounded. More followed, but she thrust forward, paws only briefly in contact with the ground. Her heart pounded, pumping oxygenated blood from her lungs to her heavy musculature.

  She focused on her objective, a breakdown truck with a rounded bonnet and cab and an open rear. A shotgun blasted burning scraps of wadding from its barrel. A grey blur shot past her nose, leaving a spinning column of air in its wake.

  A kiddies’ toy, a plastic gonk, was wired to the bonnet of the truck as a mascot. Two men behind were silhouetted against the yard lights. She used the gonk as a target marker and jumped. The wolf skidded across the metal and crashed into a man standing on the other side. They hit the ground together with the wolf on top. The man cracked his head and lay still. She whirled and jumped for the second gangster, who dropped his gun and ran. The wolf pulled him down by ripping into his calf muscles until he rolled over screaming.

  Her nose warned her of a human behind, so she leapt sideways. A shotgun blast tore through the air where she had been, and her last victim went quiet. Chunks of his torso decorated the truck. The shotgun wielder gazed in horror at the gore-spattered vehicle. The wolf ripped out his throat before he could fire the second barrel.

  Something burned her shoulder and she snapped at the wound. Diving under a truck, she shuffled on her belly towards a set of legs on the far side.

  “Where’s it gone?” a voice asked in panic.

  His knee joint crunched in her jaws and more screaming started. A man turned to flee, but she caught him and bit through the spinal cord in the base of his neck.

  The night was awash in noise: shouts, cries, and the sharp brisance of discharged firearms. The wolf heard a new sound, a rhythmic whump, whump, whump approaching from the sky. She ignored it, fearing nothing that flew.

  A man stood upright behind a cube of crushed car metal, paralyzed like a frozen corpse in a glacier. He stared at her, face a rictus of fear, gun forgotten in his hands. His throat tore open between teeth like carving knives.

  Shots blasted from three men standing in the back of a tow truck. One of them had an oversized pistol that fired bursts of automatic fire. Flame flickered from the barrel, driving the muzzle up and to the side, spraying rounds wildly.

  The flyer slid overhead. Blasts of wind lifted dust through the yard, stinging the wolf’s eyes.

  “I can’t see,” a man in the truck cried.

  The wolf jumped into the back of the truck. She grabbed the arm that held the machine pistol. It triggered a long burst, stitching a man from right hip to left shoulder. He dropped without so much as a sigh. She bit down hard, bones snapping between her teeth, until the machine pistol fell away still clutched in a hand. A chunky gold bracelet slipped off the severed wrist, glittering as it fell.

  Ignoring the screaming gangster, she searched for the next threat.

  He threw himself head first over the side of the truck to escape her, but she bit hard into his groin and thigh and pulled him back in. She shook her head to tear through flesh. Hot gushing blood soaked her fur. The man’s screams faded into liquid gurgles—and he died.

  Something whimpered behind the wolf, so she turned lightly on her paws. A gangster knelt, left hand wrapped around the stump of his right arm, trying to stem the blood. He whimpered again, staring at the floor of the truck. He wasn’t a threat, so the wolf lost interest.

  Rhian remembered all the times that men like this had scared her, bullied her, made her run. She had the power now. If she pushed, the wolf would finish him.

  Wind blasted as the flyer came back for a second low pass.

  “Fuck off, you bastards,” Charlie Parkes’ voice sounded over engine and rotor noise. He triggered a long burst into the sky causing the helicopter to sheer off.

  Rhian knew that this had gone on too long. You can’t have gunfights in London. It just wasn’t done. The helicopter was merely the first sign of police interest, and the Met had a well-deserved reputation for being trigger happy. You couldn’t get a Brazilian plumber not for love nor money in London during a terror alert. Armed response units would be on their way filled with nice young men like the one on the tube train. Rhian didn’t want to kill nice young men. She didn’t want to kill anyone. It had to end.

  The wolf picked up the feeling behind the thought. It had to end. She jumped from the truck and headed for the Portakabin, keeping a pile of car engines between it and her for cover. She found Max kneeling down behind the scrap.

  “So there you are, Snow White,” Max said. “It won’t be easy to winkle him out of there. This is what we’ll do . . .”

  The wolf was not interested in listening to Max talk. When in doubt it attacked, instantly, without warning.

  “Wait!” Max said, as she broke cover and raced for the Portakabin.

  Parkes appeared at the window and fired a short burst at her. Max fired back. The gangster ducked down. The wolf ran, her world shrinking until dominated by the window. It was thrown wide open. Bright aluminum gleamed on the Portakabin wall where the handle had chipped the paint.

  Parkes popped up and pointed an AK47 at her. Max’s pistol fired twice, punching silvered stress holes in the aluminium. Parkes swung
the gun and triggered a burst at Max before retargeting her. The momentary distraction was all the wolf needed. She jumped high, a burst from the assault rifle passing beneath her.

  The wolf landed on the Portakabin’s flat roof with a loud thud. Parkes sprayed a long burst through it, smashing wood into fragments. The wolf was already away, diving into the darkness behind the ‘kabin. Wood splinters stung her haunches. Max’s gun sounded again, and Parkes switched his attention back to the vampire. His inability to concentrate on a single target was a weakness.

  The Portakabin was in darkness but the wolf could see Parkes inside, silhouetted against the yard lights. Space between the ‘kabin and the yard’s back wall was tight, but the wolf pivoted on her back legs. She dived through the window, exploding into the room in a shower of glass shards. Parkes had his back to her, still firing at Max.

  The wolf touched down on a table, claws scrabbling. Parkes turned slowly, as if he was rotating in syrup. The wolf could get but slight purchase on the smooth surface, but Parkes was only a meter away so it sufficed. She bit hard into his shoulder, shaking her head to tear through flesh and tendons. His arm disengaged from its socket. Parkes screamed like a cathedral castrato. The rifle dropped to the floor, unloading a few rounds into the end wall.

  Parkes lay on his back, the wolf’s front paws on his chest. His eyes were wide with fear and his throat lay temptingly within reach. The wolf could see arterial vessels pulse and smell the blood dripping from his shoulder. She opened her jaws for the kill.

  Rhian wrestled with the wolf, demanding control. She reluctantly conceded Rhian’s right to avenge the attack on her pack.

  Rhian, human Rhian, knelt on all fours on Parkes’ chest. She cocked her head.

  “Still want to take me out, lover boy?” she said, with a smile that she didn’t feel.

  Charlie’s eyes rolled up in his head and he fainted.

  Rhian heaved herself up and opened the ’kabin door, stepping into the yard. Max sat in the open, reloading his pistol. Behind him a truck burned fiercely, flames spitting from something volatile in the back.

  “Why is it,” Max asked, rhetorically, “that every time I take you on a date I get shot?”

  “We don’t go on dates,” Rhian said automatically.

  She felt numb. She couldn’t think. She didn’t want to think. She wasn’t sure what had happened. It was blurred, unreal, like a dream.

  “And talking of getting shot,” Max continued as if she had not spoken, “you should have called out before walking through that door. How do you think friendly fire accidents happen?”

  Rhian helped him up. A blood-stained tear in his coat over the heart marked the passage of a bullet. The wound obviously bothered him, as he leaned on her shoulder.

  “Can you drive?” Rhian asked.

  “No problem,” Max replied.

  “Good, I never learnt and the police must be close.”

  She helped Max towards the car. They passed down a line of broken and mutilated bodies. Gore spattered the yard, marking her kills—her kills, not Max’s. One gangster had dragged himself two or three meters before expiring from loss of blood. She remembered biting his hand off. She remembered the taste of blood in her mouth. She remembered it all.

  The greasy smell of burning rubber mixed with roasting meat filled the yard like the emanations from a dodgy kebab shop. Someone’s remains must be in the burning truck. She felt sick. Horror dripped into her consciousness like acid. She relived each act of violence and brutality. At the time, they were just a sequence of events forced on her by circumstance, by the gangsters. Now she saw that the butchery was the result of her choices, her decisions. She felt sickened to the lowest quanta of her soul.

  Max chuckled.

  “You are hell on tracks when you get going, little witch,” Max said, admiringly.

  Rhian threw up. Max held her while she shook and vomited until there was nothing left to heave but thin bile.

  “You are such a conundrum, Snow White, so powerful and yet so squeamish. You kill without hesitation but go into shock at the sight of a few bodies. You really are the most interesting human I have met for centuries.”

  The BMW had no obvious damage. Rhian climbed into the passenger seat beside Max.

  “Ouch,” she said.

  “Problem?”

  “I think I’ve got a wood splinter in my bottom.”

  Max squeezed her knee. “No problem, I’ll get it out for you later.”

  Rhian removed his hand, which seemed to amuse him for some unaccountable reason. Max drove steadily, without obvious hurry, but the sports saloon covered the ground quickly. Rhian wondered where the forces of law and order had got to.

  “They’ll set up a perimeter around the yard and faff about with health and safety for hours yet,” Max said, noting her anxious looking around and guessing the reason.

  He was still chuckling at his own joke when they rounded a bend to find the way ahead blocked by two police cars staggered broadside on across the road. She thought he would run the roadblock, but Max slowed down.

  The policemen had carbines slung across their chests on black leather straps. Rhian tensed, noticing that their right hands curled around the pistol grips.

  “Let me do the talking,” Max said, touching her leg to steady her.

  The BMW’s window slid down smoothly and silently, another demonstration of the superiority of Bavarian engineering.

  “Can I help you, officer?” Max asked the policeman who approached.

  Max’s accent was clipped English upper class, entirely fitting the car he drove and the expensive clothes he and Rhian wore. Neither looked like a policeman’s expectation of a gangster.

  “Yes, sir, may I ask your identity?” the policeman asked.

  “Sir Max Emmerman, my card.”

  The policeman examined it then looked at Rhian.

  “This is my personal assistant, Miss Olegeva Leggova. She’s Lithuanian and doesn’t speak much English,” Max said. “She’s been assisting me in going over some figures.”

  “I see, sir,” the policeman said, looking where Max’s left hand rested casually on her thigh.

  It did not seem to occur to the policeman to ask why a wealthy businessman would have a young female assistant who didn’t understand English. In fact, Rhian had the impression that the man was smirking. She could only see the back of Max’s head, but she suspected that he had winked at the officer, and she felt her cheeks burning red. The copper smirked some more as if he and Max were part of some male club, all bloody boys together.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything unusual?”

  “Indeed not, officer, Miss Leggova and I have been busy.”

  By now Rhian thought she was way beyond embarrassment, but Max always managed somehow to take matters one step further. Leg-over, dear God!

  “Sorry to trouble you, sir. Have a nice evening.”

  “I intend to, officer.”

  Another smirk hovered on the copper’s lips, demonstrating that claims of the elimination of canteen culture sexism from the Met were wildly optimistic.

  Max manoeuvred between the patrol cars and drove away.

  “Are you really a knight?” Rhian asked.

  “Amongst other things,” Max replied. “It depends what identity I adopt.”

  He gave her thigh a squeeze, reminding Rhian that his hand was still inappropriately placed, so she removed it.

  “I think I handled that rather well,” Max said, back on his default setting of smug.

  “Have I mentioned how much I dislike you?” Rhian asked.

  “Often,” Max replied.

  He seemed to find the exchange funny.

  CHAPTER 15

  ROLE PLAYING

  Jameson’s racing-green Jaguar came to a halt by the curb near silently. He and Karla climbed out.

  “Parkes Security Services & Scrap Metal Dealership,” Jameson read the sign out loud. He had the impression that he should know that name but
couldn’t quite place it. A uniformed copper held his hand up to prevent them entering through the open gate.

  “Crime scene, sir,”

  “That’s okay, constable. We’ll wait while you get the officer in charge,” Jameson said.

  The constable looked doubtfully at Karla’s black leather jacket and trousers but clocked the hundred-thousand-pound sports car, not to mention Jameson’s immaculate Savile Row suit and Guards’ officer accent.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Please wait here.”

  Jameson lit a cigarette while Karla looked on disapprovingly. Her researches into increasing the lifespan of the human male had indicated that smoking was frowned upon so she had a campaign to wean him off them. Jameson was digging in his heels. She was not his wife, not even a woman. Why did their relationship increasingly feel like a marriage?

  The officer returned. “I am afraid Superintendent Bates is too busy to see you, sir.”

  “Indeed,” Jameson said.

  Very deliberately, he dropped his cigarette after a last deep inhalation and crushed it. Then he took out his Metropolitan Police Special Branch Card and held it up for the officer to see.

  “I’ll find him myself.”

  “But sir—,” said the constable, as Jameson and Karla swept past him.

  The yard was like a back street in Beirut on a bad day. Socos—Scene of Crime Officers—in white plastic suits that left only their faces uncovered, photographed and sampled bodies and debris. The place stank of burned rubber and spilled diesel.

  “Oy, you, what’re you playing at?” asked a man in a strong Scottish accent.

  He strode over and thrust his face into Jameson’s, breathing whisky fumes strong enough to mask all other smells. “Get out before I nick you.”

  “Commander Jameson, Special Branch,” he said, holding up his ID.

  “Get out before I nick you, sir,” Drudge said. “This case is under the Sweeney’s jurisdiction.”