Mr Kowalski was the first to pledge his support. ‘Ms Ali is right. We must do this thing ourselves. I volunteer. My two sons as well.’
The others in the gathering looked sheepish, but the outcome was inevitable. Salma Ali turned first to Mr Stewart. ‘Can we count you in, Mr Stewart?’ She smiled at his nod of assent. ‘Mr Harvey, I’m sure we can depend on you, especially after your recent act of heroism?’
There was no way out. If only he’d stayed inside to enjoy his coffee, none of this might have happened. Then again, from what he’d seen of Salma Ali, she wasn’t the kind of woman to permit anything to stand in her way once she’d set her mind on it. ‘I’m happy to help if I can,’ he said.
‘Excellent,’ said Ms Ali, smiling. ‘And I’m happy to volunteer my services as coordinator. Give me a little time to get organized. I’ll see you all back at my house in one hour’s time.’
The little group broke up, leaving Ben standing alone on the pavement outside his home. The dull throbbing in his head had grown steadily throughout the conversation and now a sharp pain lanced through his skull, worse than ever. He tried a sip of his coffee, but it had gone completely cold. He’d been awake for less than an hour, and already he wished he could rewind the clock and start the new year over again.
Things can only get better, he reminded himself.
Unless they get worse.
Chapter Eight
Brookfield Road, Brixton Hill, South London, New Year’s Day
When Liz arrived home from the hospital there was no sign of Kevin or Mihai in her apartment. Her father and the Romanian boy had disappeared without leaving a note of explanation.
She dropped into a chair and pulled out her phone. She needed to know that Mihai was safe and she just didn’t have the energy to go looking for her father in her current state of near-exhaustion. It was funny. She’d never imagined that monsters could feel so tired, so sleepy. But that’s how she felt. And there was no doubt in her mind that she had become a monster. Any bright light stung her eyes, reminding her that the yellow-eye sickness had claimed her, just as it had claimed PC David Morgan. Just as it had claimed the madman who’d attacked her on the Common. She was one of them now. There was no denying it.
‘I am not a monster,’ she whispered to the silent apartment, but it was a lie.
She stabbed at the phone with her finger, speed-dialling her father’s number. She hoped he’d remembered to take his phone with him and not leave it in the apartment. She hoped the networks were still working after all the recent trouble.
A muffled ringtone answered her. Oh, no. He’d left it behind again. The ringtone continued, audible but from somewhere nearby. She couldn’t be bothered to go and look for it. She was just about to cancel the call when her father answered it.
‘Hello? Liz? Where are you?’
Her tired brain could barely make sense of the reply. ‘Dad? Where are you? I heard your ringtone. Are you in the apartment?’
‘Just outside. Hold on.’
A key slid into the lock and the front door opened. Her father entered, Mihai by his side. ‘We was just getting in when you called,’ he said into the phone. ‘Oh, sorry.’ He ended the call and spoke directly to her. ‘Are you all right? You look terrible.’
Liz didn’t need any reminding about how bad she looked. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked. ‘There’s been rioting all over London. Why did you go out?’
‘We just went to the newsagent’s around the corner to pick up a pint of milk. A kid like this can’t get by with no breakfast, can he?’ He ruffled Mihai’s hair affectionately.
Mihai ran to Liz and threw his arms around her. ‘You back, Liz, you back!’ he shouted excitedly.
She was pleased by the boy’s obvious delight. She’d never imagined herself as the maternal type, but she must be doing something right. She gave him a hug. ‘Why did you take Mihai with you?’ she asked her father.
‘What am I supposed to do with him? He ain’t made of glass. He’s a tough kid. He’s seen worse than this.’
‘Sure,’ said Mihai, ‘Much worse.’
Her father took the milk into the kitchen and started preparing breakfast. ‘What about you?’ he called. ‘Are you okay? I saw the rioting on TV. You didn’t get caught up in all that, did you?’
There was nothing to be gained from telling them that she’d been right in the middle of the fighting, so she decided to keep it to herself. ‘A bit of rest and I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll fry some sausages,’ he said, and set to work.
Liz dragged herself out of the chair and followed him through to the kitchen. The smell of sausage, bacon and liver soon made her mouth water. She hadn’t realized just how ravenous she was.
Mihai put plates, cutlery and tomato ketchup on the table while Kevin played at being chef. The man and the boy had forged a strong, if unlikely bond in the few days they had known each other. A chauvinist truck driver wanted in connection with a murder enquiry, living happily with an orphaned Romanian boy and a police officer turned part-time monster. Somehow Liz had gone from living alone to being in the middle of a three-generational extended family. They were almost like a functioning family unit. Almost.
Liz sighed. ‘What am I going to do with you, Dad?’
‘What do you mean?’ he said, his back to her as he turned the sizzling sausages.
Liz glared at him. He knew well enough. Being wanted for a triple murder wasn’t the kind of thing someone forgot – even someone as unreliable as her father. ‘About what we discussed previously. About you going to the police station and handing yourself in for questioning. Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten.’
‘I ain’t forgotten. I was just waiting for the right moment. Things have been a bit hectic, like. Just give me the word, and I’ll go straight over.’
Mihai frowned at Liz. ‘Grandpa Kevin go to police station? What for? He do something bad?’
‘Don’t ask,’ said Liz lightly. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know.’
‘Grandpa Kevin not bad man,’ said Mihai defiantly. ‘He stay here, look after me.’
‘Here you go,’ said her father, serving generous portions of fried bacon, liver and sausages for them all. ‘Tuck in.’
Mihai half-drowned his plate in tomato ketchup and got straight to work. Liz was just about to eat too when her phone rang. Reluctantly she checked to see who was calling. She groaned when she saw. ‘I have to take this call,’ she said. ‘It’s Samantha, my partner Dean’s wife. Dean got hurt in the riots and got taken to the hospital.’
She answered the call.
‘Liz? Oh, thank heavens!’ Samantha sounded like she was almost in tears.
‘Samantha? Have you heard anything? Any news about Dean?’ Liz had been so caught up in her own hospital escape that she hadn’t given much thought to her injured colleague. She hadn’t seen him since they’d been taken into the hospital in the same ambulance.
‘He phoned me from the hospital. They gave him some stitches for a blow to his head, but he seems to be okay.’
‘That’s good news,’ said Liz, relieved. She had been by his side when the iron bar had struck his forehead and knocked him unconscious. It sounded like he’d got off lightly.
‘They want to keep him in for observation,’ continued Samantha, ‘but he’s well enough to receive visitors. I was wondering if you could give me a lift to the hospital?’
‘Sure,’ said Liz. ‘I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes.’
‘You not going out again, are you?’ asked her father when she hung up. ‘You only just got back.’
‘I know,’ said Liz, cramming hot food into her mouth. ‘I’m sorry. But Samantha needs a lift to the hospital. I can’t let her down.’
‘No problem,’ said Mihai. ‘I stay here with Grandpa Kevin.’
‘Okay,’ agreed Liz. ‘Just be sure to stay indoors. It’s not safe out there. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
She drove over to Dean’s house where Samantha a
nd her two-year-old daughter, Lily, were waiting for her. ‘Hop in,’ said Liz. Samantha strapped Lily into the child’s car seat that she’d brought and Liz drove them to the hospital. The sun shone brightly through the window of the car, making her eyes sting. She stopped at some traffic lights and pulled on her sunglasses. Samantha jabbered nervously to her the whole journey, telling her about the violent scenes she’d watched unfold on the news overnight, but Liz hardly heard a word she said. She must be mad returning to the hospital she’d only just escaped from. Was escaped too melodramatic? Liz didn’t think so. If Chanita saw her, she might call security and have her apprehended.
When they arrived at the hospital, Samantha and Lily got out, but Liz remained in the car. ‘I’ll just stay here and wait for you,’ she said.
Samantha gave her a curious look. ‘Don’t you want to come and see Dean?’
‘No,’ said Liz. ‘I’ll let you have some family time together. Just you, Dean and Lily. Take your time,’ she added. ‘There’s no rush.’
‘Thanks,’ said Samantha. She walked slowly toward the main hospital building, the bump in her belly clearly showing. Liz couldn’t remember how many weeks it was until the baby was due. The little girl at her side clutched her hand, a doll held tightly under her arm. A model family unit, so unlike the family Liz herself had known growing up.
She studied her reflection in the car’s mirror. Dark glasses stared back at her, concealing an even darker secret: that she was infected by the yellow-eye sickness.
So here she was, hiding in her car. A fugitive, too afraid to show her face in the hospital in case someone screamed, ‘Monster!’ Yet there was no point denying it to herself. The full moon had done something to her, changed her in some unfathomable way. For a brief moment last night she’d gained superpowers – unimaginable speed and strength. And how had she used those powers? She’d attacked two members of the public and left them for dead. They’d been criminals for sure, but what she’d done to them had hardly been reasonable force. How was she going to explain that when she wrote her report of the night’s events? She would be suspended if anyone found out. And if they discovered she was hiding a wanted murderer in her own home … it would be the end of her career as a police officer. She might even go to jail herself.
So this was how it happened. A little white lie here, a careful omission there. Saying whatever it took to make it through to the next day, and the day after that. Soon the lies would be flowing freely until she didn’t even notice anymore. This must be the murky moral world her father inhabited. There was no way out. She could only go deeper.
One thing was crystal clear – she couldn’t look after Mihai on her own. She had been stupid to try. She needed her father’s help if she was going to give the boy a chance. And that meant that she would carry on telling lies, just as often and for just as long as she needed to.
At least she no longer had any flu symptoms, and the scratch marks on her arm had disappeared. The injuries she had sustained last night had also mysteriously healed under the light of the full moon. Now her only remaining symptom was her light-sensitive yellow eyes. That, and total exhaustion.
She closed her eyes for a while and tried to rest, but her brain kept spinning, turning the same thoughts over and over again. A sudden banging on the door of the car made her jump in her seat. She spun round to look. Samantha and Lily had returned, and Dean was with them.
She unlocked the car doors and Dean swung himself gingerly into the passenger seat next to her. The others got into the back, and Samantha began strapping Lily into her car seat.
Dean’s face was red and black with bruising. A row of stitches in the middle of his forehead gave him the appearance of Frankenstein’s monster.
‘You look terrible,’ Liz said to him. ‘What the hell are you doing out of hospital?’
‘I could ask you the same.’
‘Yeah, well,’ said Liz. ‘They said I could leave.’ Another lie, and this one so easy she hardly felt it.
Dean grinned. ‘Well they told me to stay in the hospital, but I feel okay, and I’m not staying there while there’s a job to do.’
Samantha touched Liz on the shoulder. ‘Can you persuade him to at least stay home and rest for a few days?’ she asked. ‘I’ve tried, but I can’t talk any sense into him.’
Liz looked at her partner and saw the look of resolve on his face beneath the grin. ‘I’m sorry, Sam, but I don’t think I can.’
Chapter Nine
Upper Terrace, Richmond upon Thames, West London, New Year’s Day
Sarah sat rooted to her television screen. News had never been so astonishing, so unbelievable, so utterly compelling. What had begun as an interest had bloomed into an obsession, then a compulsion, and now an addiction. She couldn’t bear to leave it, not even to fetch a drink, or use the bathroom.
Grandpa grumbled when she refused to let him watch his usual quiz show, but missing out on the constant stream of speculation and reports was unthinkable. ‘You can watch it another time, Grandpa,’ she told him, although she knew it was a lie as soon as she said it. As long as Sarah controlled the remote, the TV would be showing nothing but news channels until this crisis was over. If it ever was.
One TV reporter had managed to track down a woman who claimed to have witnessed one of last night’s Beast attacks at close quarters. He was interviewing her in central London, on the north bank of the River Thames. The glass and steel triangular tower of the Shard thrust above the jumbled skyline behind her. Bright shafts of sun burst through the clouds that scudded overhead, turning the muddy water blue and silver wherever it struck.
‘Tell me where you were standing when you saw the creature,’ prompted the reporter.
The woman was young, with shoulder-length ash blonde hair and black-framed glasses, smartly dressed in a navy suit. ‘I was watching the fireworks, on the south bank of the River Thames, with friends.’ She paused and pointed at the bank opposite. The area was still sealed off, lines of police cars visible across the river, their yellow, blue and white checked patterns garish in the winter light. ‘We had a good spot, right at the front of the crowd. From where we stood, we could see the laser show at the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye about a mile downriver.’
‘What time was this?’ the reporter asked.
‘Just after midnight. We heard Big Ben chime the hour, and then the fireworks began. It was a minute or two later that I first noticed the man.’
The reporter pushed the microphone closer. ‘Can you describe him?’
‘He was a young man, not much more than a boy really. He looked like a student, with blonde hair, neatly parted. He was dressed well, with a kind of preppy look. No jacket, just a polo shirt and some chinos. Honestly, I wouldn’t have paid him any attention except that he was fixated on this girl standing next to him.’
‘Fixated?’
‘Staring at her intensely. His eyes hardly left her. Everyone else was watching the fireworks, including the girl. But he just kept looking at her. I don’t think she even noticed. So I watched.’
‘What happened then?’
‘The firework display was in full swing. Suddenly the moon came out from behind a cloud and the man looked up at the sky. He began to change. His skin started moving, rippling, like there was something underneath trying to get out. It was hideous. I grabbed my friend’s arm and she saw it too. At first I couldn’t understand what was happening, then I realized that hair was growing all over his body, even over his face. That’s what was making his skin appear to move. In less than a minute he was entirely covered in sandy hair.’
‘Covered in hair. What else?’
‘His body was changing shape, becoming more muscular. His shoulders broadened, his chest expanded. His arms were bare, so I could see the muscles tightening, all the sinews stretching taut. And his face was changing too. That was the most awful part. His nose grew longer, like a dog’s snout. He even started sniffing at the girl. That’s when she noticed, I th
ink.’
‘What did she do?’
‘Nothing. She just stood there, looking back at him. I think she was too terrified to move. It was too late anyway. The man lunged at her and bit her throat. It was horrible. He wasn’t a man anymore.’ She trailed off, dabbing at tears that ran down her cheeks. Behind her, a small gathering of onlookers stared at her, while others hurried past. A police siren blared out suddenly and blue lights flashed briefly across the street.
The reporter raised his voice above the noise. ‘What happened to the girl?’
The woman gestured with her hands, her fingers curling and uncurling as she remembered the details. ‘There was blood everywhere. She just fell to the ground. I think she was already dead. I’ve never seen so much blood before. Then a second creature appeared, with black fur. I don’t know where it came from. The two of them ran away through the crowd, just seconds before the police came. Then there was gunfire, and people started running, and ... it was all just chaos.’
‘Some people may find your description of events incredible,’ the reporter said. ‘Is it possible you may have been mistaken?’
The woman fixed the reporter with an icy stare. ‘I know what I saw,’ she said. ‘I saw a man become a wolf.’
‘Preposterous,’ sneered Grandpa. ‘What are we watching? Some kind of prank show?’
‘It’s the news, Grandpa.’
‘How can it be?’
Sarah shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It just is.’
The weirdest thing of all was that none of this seemed unbelievable anymore. In fact it had taken on an air of inevitability, like a train that had been set in motion. Something had shifted, whether it was the world, or just Sarah’s mind. It seemed obvious to her that this series of extraordinary events, whatever it was, was only just getting started. The old certainties had gone, as if her old life had simply been a dream, as if the world was one of those movie sets made of cardboard, nothing more than a surface illusion. Push at a seemingly-solid wall too hard and it fell away revealing an emptiness behind. Now, anything felt possible, anything at all. And Sarah, having lived her entire life in the shadows at the edge of a dream, could hardly wait for it to get started.
Lycanthropic (Book 2): Wolf Moon (The Rise of the Werewolves) Page 4