Barking (25 page)

‘Ah.'

‘Micky says he enjoys it,' Kevin said. ‘Pete's got an old leather belt he bites into. I think Clive does some sort of yoga thing. You know, like those blokes in India who walk on red-hot coal.'

‘I see. What about Luke?'

Kevin shrugged. ‘He's never mentioned it.'

‘Figures.'

‘Sorry?'

‘Nothing.' Not making the most of a rare opportunity. ‘So,' Duncan pressed on, ‘what exactly happens, then? From the beginning. I mean, do you start sprouting hair all over your face, or what?'

Something had gone wrong. Kevin didn't answer, and this time it wasn't because he was thinking. It proved to be the end of the conversation, and they shared the taxi back to the office in cold, dead silence.

Back in his room, Duncan tried the shoes on again. Kevin had insisted that he get a pair that was two sizes too big for him; the girl in the shop had tried to point this out, until Kevin had looked at her. After that, she mumbled once or twice but that was all. Duncan walked round the room in them a couple of times, feeling like Charlie Chaplin, then flopped into his super-comfy chair and leaned his head back as far as it would go.

Have a nap, Luke had said. Yeah, right. With his head buzzing the way it was, even a heaped handful of Kev's cousin's zonk pills wouldn't do any good at—

 

She was looking down at him, which suggested he was lying on the floor or something. She was just as stunning as he remembered, except that he couldn't quite focus on her. Also, the lid was in the way.

‘It's how he'd have wanted to go,' she was saying, to someone he couldn't see. ‘Running, hot on the scent. It's the only time they really feel alive.'

‘Ironic.' A man's voice. ‘He wouldn't have felt anything, would he?'

‘A bit,' she replied. ‘Not a terrible lot. His heart just stopped.'

‘Ah. Cholesterol. Too many choccy biccies.'

She shrugged. ‘Anyway,' she said, ‘he's ours now.' She unfolded a sheet of paper. He couldn't see any of the writing on it, but he recognised it as the CV he'd sent in when he applied for the job with Craven Ettins. ‘A bit out of date,' she said, ‘but it doesn't matter. He never did anything during the last five years.'

‘Let's see.' She moved the paper out of his field of view. ‘Oh dear. Not much here, is there?'

‘Oh, I don't know. Seven GCSEs. Three A-levels. Clean driving licence.'

Offstage tongue click. ‘Yes, but they died with him, didn't they? What does it say under
other interests
?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Sports and hobbies?'

‘Nope.'

‘Well, fine. So all he's good for is basic non-skilled, then.'

‘General clerical?'

‘That's even worse. We've got 'em stacked up six deep in the stockroom, you can't hardly walk about in there.' Sigh. ‘How come we never get a wheelwright? Or a silversmith? There's a worthwhile vocation, we could use all the silversmiths we can lay our hands on.'

She frowned. ‘Maybe he's got hidden talents.'

‘Balls,' sneered the unseen voice, ‘he's a lawyer. Bloody professionals, all they do is take up space.' He laughed, whoever he was. ‘And this one can't even add up.'

Apparently, that was a joke, because she laughed. ‘Oh well,' she said. ‘Waste not, want not. And you've got to say one thing for werewolves, they're always in pretty good shape.'

The man he couldn't see lifted off the lid, and she leaned forward. She was holding something; a bit like a croupier's rake, except that it was made of chunky steel and glowing red hot. There were letters embossed on the side of the blade facing him; letters the wrong way round, like mirror writing—

 

 

The glowing metal came closer and closer, until he could feel the heat—

 

Someone was shaking him. Duncan opened his eyes, and saw Pete, staring down at him with a strange blend of concern and fury in his eyes. ‘For fuck's sake,' Pete said, and Duncan noticed something sticking out of his jacket pocket: the end of an old leather belt, much chewed.

‘Sorry,' Duncan mumbled. ‘Did I doze off?'

‘You could say that,' Pete grunted. ‘For a moment there I thought you were dead, till you snored. You idiot,' he added, ‘do you know what time it is?'

Over Pete's shoulder, through the window, it was dark except for the orange haze of street lamps. ‘Oh,' Duncan said. ‘That time.'

‘Yes. You ready?'

‘As I'll ever be.'

‘You'll need to drink this.' Pete was holding out a test tube, filled with clear blue liquid.

‘Will I?'

Pete nodded. ‘Medicine,' he said. ‘Stops you turning back into a human every time you step out of the moonlight. Good for twelve hours, then you need to have some more. Don't ask me what's in it, and it tastes like shit.'

Pete was wrong there. Much worse. ‘Finished?'

‘Mm.'

‘Then get your arse up out of that chair. Luke's waiting for you in reception.'

‘Pete.'

‘What?'

‘I don't want to.'

For a tiny fraction of a second, a unit of time that only specialised equipment could have registered, the look in Pete's eyes seemed to say
me neither
. But it passed. ‘Don't be such a fucking wimp, Duncan,' Pete snapped. ‘What you want or don't want—'

‘If I stayed indoors, with the blinds drawn, it wouldn't happen, would it? I could just stay here, I wouldn't be letting anybody down or anything like that. The rest of you don't need me, you got on perfectly all right before I joined. I'll just be in the way.'

Pete shook his head. ‘It isn't like that, Duncan mate,' he said. ‘Look, you've got a good life. A bloody good life. Great job, loads of dosh, no stress, hardly a crippling workload, and you're with your mates all day. Be reasonable. Is one night every month really so much to ask? Besides,' he added, momentarily breaking eye contact, ‘it's a good laugh. You'll enjoy it once you're there.'

Duncan glanced down at the belt-end. It was strong leather, a full quarter-inch thick, but in a couple of places it had been bitten right through. Kevin had said it didn't hurt, and unless he was in court or drawing up a bill, Kevin rarely made the effort to lie. But he got those tablets from his cousin, even though it was completely painless. Of course, there's more than one kind of pain.

‘You've got to,' Pete said.

New Mexico, Duncan thought; I haven't got to do anything I don't want to. That's the whole point of being one of them. One of us.

‘I'm scared,' he said.

Pete closed his eyes for a moment. ‘'Course you are,' he said, ‘you're not a complete moron. But it's OK. You'll come through it all right, I promise you.'

Pete, who'd wanted to be a teacher. ‘Fine,' Duncan said, and the strength leaked out of him. ‘Sorry. I didn't mean to—'

‘Whatever.' Pete glanced down at his watch. ‘Shit, look at the bloody time. Come on, move.'

Out of his nice, safe office into the corridor, through fire doors, round corners, into reception. They were all there, dead silent, not looking at each other. Kevin was flopped in the chair behind the front desk, his head forward in his lap. Fast asleep.
Don't tell Luke
, he'd demanded, but Luke wasn't stupid, he must've realised long ago. It hadn't occurred to Duncan that he'd have to undergo this terrible experience in front of other people - not just other people, in front of
them
, his oldest and closest friends, who could be relied on to pick up on the slightest nuance of weakness in his conduct and hold it against him for ever. He tried to comfort himself with Kev's tablets, Pete's chewed-up belt, Clive's transcendental meditation or whatever it was, but it was no good. He was going to make a bog of it, he knew it, and they'd be watching him like hawks. They might make allowances, feel sympathy, forgive him, but they'd never, ever forget—

The backs of his hands were tickling. He glanced down, expecting to find them covered in hair, like welcome mats, but there was nothing unusual he could see. Crazy expression, to know something like the back of your hand. He'd never really given them much thought, certainly never taken the time and trouble to memorise them to the point where he'd know at a glance if something about them had changed. They were just hand-backs, as far as he was concerned. There were a couple of small scars that he could call to mind, but that was it. If he ever needed to claim them from the lost-property office, he'd have a devil of a job describing them convincingly.

‘Fuck,' Pete said. He said it as though answering a tedious but entirely legitimate question. Duncan looked at him, and saw that he was standing perfectly still, apart from his left hand, which was feverishly trying to tease the leather belt out of his jacket pocket. It was hard to see what could possibly be difficult about it, but Pete was fighting a losing battle. So, it must be about to begin—

Except, they were indoors. No moonlight. Surely—

‘Ready?' Luke, sounding maddeningly calm. Nobody replied, and he leaned forward and stabbed at something with his index finger: pressing a button on a console, presumably. There was a whirring noise, which seemed to be coming from the ceiling. Duncan looked round for its source, and saw a flat panel slowly opening a few inches from the electric-light rose. It struck Duncan as a bit too James Bond to be true, but Luke was pressing another button. Then the lights went out.

But it wasn't dark. A silver beam, like a searchlight, shone down through the open hatch, and Luke stepped into it.

Looking back on that moment, Duncan was prepared to admit that his expectations had been coloured somewhat by the movies. He was anticipating a state-of-the-art special effect, a morphing sequence that would've set George Lucas back a year's wages, even at cost. It wasn't like that. A human silhouette stepped into the beam, but the pale silver light illuminated a wolf; a wolf on its hind legs, as if it had just tried to catch a bird in flight, or was trying to get its nose into a particularly tall wheelie bin. It stayed like that for a moment with a puzzled look on its face, as if trying to figure out what it was doing standing on its back legs. Then it dropped to all fours, swished its tail and walked - swaggered - out of the beam into the shadows.

Shit, Duncan thought, there's a fucking
wolf
loose in the room. But then he found the new scent. One less human in the room, but we've been joined by one of us.

Pete and Micky had grabbed the arms of Kevin's chair. They lugged it under the beam and jumped clear, and suddenly there was a wolf in the chair, curled up with its nose buried in its tail. It lifted its head, sniffed and jumped down. Two wolves.

Micky went next. He stepped forward impatiently:
my go now
. His tail was wagging as he left the silver circle. Pete left the beam with the belt still in his mouth. Clive got as far as
om mane pad
—, but his wolf trotted out with its tongue lolling.

My go now.

He was very acutely aware of five wolves, grouped around him in the shadows. The scent was fine: strong, friendly, reassuring,
normal
, like coming home after a trip abroad. But the five restless shapes communicated a rather different message. There's a human in this room with us, they seemed to be telling him, and our self-control isn't perfect.

I don't want to do this, Duncan thought. On the other hand—

A small step for a man, a giant leap for inhumanity. As soon as his right foot breached the circle, he felt the light more intensely than he'd ever felt anything before. It didn't hurt. On the contrary, it was
wonderful
. It was the most amazing thing ever, it was so much better than being human, it was—

As he completed the stride and the light fell on him, Duncan suddenly realised exactly what it was that Pete and Kevin and Clive were so afraid of. Not the pain. The pleasure.

T
he biggest wolf lifted its head and howled.

There were no words in the sound. Thinking about it later, Duncan decided that it was wordless in the same way that there aren't any bits in clear soup. All the words had been mashed up in a blender until they were puréed, the solid lumps reduced to a flow of tiny particles of meaning. It was language improved, evolved into what language ought to be: pure communication without ambiguity or approximation. What it said was,
Right, let's be having you
.

It had been dark, with the lights off; but now it was as bright as day. Duncan noticed that his senses had somehow run into each other, and he realised that that was how it should be, of course. Poor bloody humans have senses that know their place; you see sights, hear sounds, smell scents and so on. Demarcation, like the unions back in the 1970s. He wondered how on earth humans coped. He had just one sense - one-stop perception - and it was so much better.

So
. Luke's voice, in his mind.
What do you think of it so far?

Duncan looked at them. They were five grey-and-black wolves, thick-furred, red-eyed, their tongues hanging out, but they were also Luke, Micky, Pete, Clive and Kevin, looking exactly like they always did; every nuance of profile and proportion exactly the same - Luke's strong chin and exaggerated nose, Pete's heavy jowls, Micky's small, sharp eyes, Kev's rather unfortunate ears, Clive's weak forehead and tree-trunk neck.
There's a mirror on the far wall
, Micky's voice said, and Duncan started to move towards it, then stopped.