Barking (26 page)

‘
Can you read my mind?' He intended to say the words, but no sound came out.

He found the mirror. In it—He froze, bewildered. Shouldn't he have turned into a wolf, like the others? The reflection didn't seem to be any different: it was just him, same as usual. Or rather, he looked like a big vicious dog, with a hairy snout and a button nose and two pointy ears lying flat against the side of his head, and will you check out those fucking
teeth
- but anybody would know it was Duncan Hughes, entirely the same as always, nothing important changed. That's me, he thought; that's how I've always been, except until now, for some unaccountable reason, I've chosen to dress up as a monkey derivative. Bloody silly thing to do, because it didn't suit me. This is much better. So much more
me—

The urge was irresistible; he threw his head back until he was staring at the silver square in the ceiling (his head went so much further back on this neck) and howled.

He wasn't entirely sure what he was trying to say, because he'd never had the capability to express anything so complex before. It was his whole life, basically, compressed into one loud stream of sound; in particular, it was everything that had been wrong with his life, all its frustrations and disappointments, shortcomings, failures, missed and denied opportunities, and of course the special, miserable and bitterly, bitterly unfair pain of being
him
rather than somebody else, all blended and sieved into a compressed burst of noise. It was also the wild delight of being free of all that, but still himself. It was being very pleased indeed, for the very first time ever, that he was who he was: the one and only Duncan Maurice Hughes, werewolf-at-law, proud partner in the Ferris Gang, the best bunch of werewolves on the whole frigging planet. It was
yetch
and
yes
at the same time, and terribly, delightfully loud.

You're pleased, then
. Luke was grinning at him, and Duncan felt his tail wag like a rotor blade. (Talking of which, how the hell had he managed all those years without one? It was amazing, you could say so much with it, just think what Shakespeare could've achieved if only he'd had a tail.)
That's all right, then. Come on, we're wasting time
.

Which was when the sadness hit him; because, of course, this ecstasy was only temporary, brief as moonlight, once a month when the moon was full and the sky wasn't overcast. He heard himself whimper, and the others laughed at him inside his head. He growled, which made them laugh even more. Then Luke jumped up against the wall and pressed the lift button with his front paw, and Duncan understood how unbearable it was to be cooped up inside a building on a night like this. The lift doors sighed open and the pack shuffled inside, demure as a junior-school outing. He took careful note of the order of precedence: Luke first, naturally; surprisingly, Pete next, ahead of Micky; then Clive, Kevin and finally himself. The doors closed. It was rather a tight fit for six wolves; he felt warm fur and hard muscle pressing against him, bodies that weren't his own but weren't foreign, either. Very faintly, he could hear a mind mumbling
om mane padme om
, but not with any real conviction.

The entrance hall was deserted, and the tall glass street doors were slightly ajar. Outside, the glow of street lights mixed uncomfortably with the moonshine, like orange juice in milk. Luke stopped to sniff; there were human scents, but tolerably far away. There's never anyone much around in the City after going-home time. Even so—

Don't worry about it
, a voice told him; Pete's, at a guess, although he wasn't quite sure. Only Luke's voice in his head was completely unmistakable; the others, he realised, sounded a bit too much like his own voice to be instantly recognisable.

They were out on the street now, running briskly along the pavement, close in to the buildings, where there was a decent bit of shadow. Of course, he could see perfectly in this light, and what he couldn't see he could smell. It was as though he was replaying in his mind CCTV footage of everybody and everything that had passed that way since it rained last, on a huge bank of monitors that allowed him to watch every minute of every day simultaneously. Every detail, apart from a few trivial things that only the eye could record, was sharp: age, sex, height, weight, diet, lifestyle, everything you really needed to know about people, as opposed to their mere appearance. He'd read somewhere about some scientific tests that proved that the difference between beauty and ugliness was generally no more than twenty-five thousandths of an inch, the breadth of a propelling-pencil lead. Move the eyes that much closer together, or widen the mouth, or exaggerate the uplift of the nosetip, and drop-dead gorgeous turns into water-buffalo's-arse ugly; as total and decisive a change as, say, that between man and wolf. Smells don't deceive the way looks do. They aren't susceptible to subtle advocacy, the manipulative persuasion of the deceitful lawyers of the mind that make us want to like pretty people and hate ugly ones.

Luke had stopped, for no apparent reason. He lowered his head and snapped at something on the ground. It proved to be the inset handle of a manhole cover. He got his teeth hooked round it and began to pull, his back arched, feet thrusting at the ground for leverage. The cover lifted, then rolled back as he released it and it fell with a clang. Luke looked up, scanned the area for potential threats and witnesses, and jumped down into the hole.

That's dangerous, Duncan thought; I can't jump that far, I'll hurt -
No, you won't
. The answer was entirely satisfactory and when his turn came he jumped into the dark hole without a moment's hesitation.

He landed hard and skidded a few inches, thinking
piece of cake
. Then he followed the others. It was darker, sure, but there was still plenty of light. The overwhelming strength and richness of the smells was rather disconcerting; a bit like an art gallery with the pictures hung much too close together. The sheer complexity of the tones of decay made him long to stop and drink them in, tracing each one, like unravelling a huge tangle.
Don't dawdle
. He quickened his pace to a smart trot, following the tail in front until the pack broke into a wonderful, exhilarating run. He'd have been quite happy if it had lasted for ever, and of course his sense of time had changed along with everything else - no more seconds, minutes or hours, just blissfully elastic moments that contained as much as you cared to cram into them. You could live the rest of your life in the glory of one second breathing in a new scent; it could expand to crowd out the hour of standing motionless that followed, or squash down into nothing to make way for the next scent or sight or sound. He needn't have worried after all. This night could be the whole of his life, if he wanted it to.

After a while Luke stopped, sniffed, jumped up suddenly and braced his front legs against a spot on the roof. It gave way, and orange light flooded into the tunnel. Luke sprang up into the light and vanished; the others followed. This time, Duncan didn't even bother to think
I can't jump that high
as he peered up at the lip of the manhole. If the others could do it, so could he. He jumped, only just made it, scrabbled with his paws until he'd got his balance, and looked round.

It could have been a park: too big for a city garden, and they hadn't run for long enough to get out into open country. The grass he stood on was politely short, and the trees carefully arranged, like decorations on a cake. He saw Luke throw back his head and howl. For ten seconds or so the sound filled the world; then a short tense silence, followed by a distant echo - no, very slightly different. A reply. And, since there aren't any natural wolves in Britain any more, that could only mean another pack of Us, a long way away. He remembered what Luke had said, about territories and boundaries, some other gang whose turf covered Kew, or was it Sutton? Hearing them, however, was rather different to hearing
about
them. It was as though he was the first man on Mars, and someone had stopped him as he vaulted from his landing module and asked to see his passport.

Just letting them know we're here
. A vague intonation he couldn't quite isolate told him the voice in his head was Pete's. He understood. The two packs bore each other no ill will, but if they happened to meet, they'd have no choice but to fight it out until one or the other was annihilated. Perfectly reasonable, like China getting stressy if the USA violated its airspace. You can understand most things, even nuclear war, when you're a wolf.

Luke was sniffing again. He was the nose of the pack, sniffing on behalf of all of them. He turned his head and the other five heads moved with his; Duncan felt his tail bristle, and although he didn't know why, he understood that he didn't need to, so long as Luke did. It briefly crossed his mind that at some point in the recent past he'd contemplated rebellion - leaving the pack, going to New Mexico or somewhere equally improbable. He could have been angry with himself if his understanding wasn't so perfect. Silly human. Clueless.

Luke had started to run and, as he followed, Duncan caught the scent. At once it filled him, as though he was an engine filled with petrol. With a scent to follow, he was alive.

Fox; splendid. But it didn't last. He'd barely warmed up his lungs when Luke stopped, jumped up on his hind legs, twirled round in a circle, dropped down to all fours and growled horribly. Duncan realised they were standing on a tarmac road; Luke was dancing round the body of something, and the scents told the story. Some idiot car-driver had run their fox over, and it was lying on the kerb, all flat and useless, like a burst balloon. Stupid, pointless waste; the frustration was almost more than he could bear, for about five seconds. Then Luke started running again, and he'd forgotten all about it.

Cat. Cat? Thought we didn't do cats.
Yes, but time's getting on, can't be all night looking, must chase something
.
The pursuit of happiness, remember?
That made sense. Besides, there had to be some justification for cats, or else a person could lose faith in the universe.

It was a big, fat, black moggy, and Duncan heard it clearly:
badbadbadbad
, its funny little brain broadcast as it scampered away from them. Luke stretched his back and shoulders into an impossibly long stride, his nose almost brushing the cat's absurdly fluffy tail; but then the cat jumped, landed on the side of a tree and ran straight up it. The pack stopped, slamming into thin air as if hitting a wall. There was the cat, simply reeking of delicious fear, but it was eight feet off the ground. Pete was trying to climb the tree, jumping with his back legs, scrabbling with his front paws, his jaws snapping like castanets. Micky was running round the tree in a tight circle, as if he couldn't believe the chase was over. Duncan could hear the cat mewing,
Nyanyanyanya
, and caught himself leaping at it like a dolphin. For a split second he hung in the air, just long enough to close his jaws on a patch of air no more than six inches from the fucking cat's fucking tail—He landed on all fours and tensed his legs to jump again, so full of anger that he believed for a moment that it would float him off the stupid, gravity-ridden ground.

Leave it
, Luke commanded. It was as though a valve had opened. Duncan felt his ears go back and his tail wag.
Good effort, though
. That made him glow; praise from the pack leader, like having his tummy rubbed, pure joy. He let out a short, sharp bark, like a stick breaking. Something Jenny Sidmouth had said once came back to him, hard and fast as a returning lunar module:
it's only when you start thinking as a part of the team that you can really call yourself a lawyer
.

The cat was still taunting them, but it didn't matter now. He understood; by climbing a tree, cheating, the cat had admitted its basic and incorrigible inferiority. Besides, they didn't do cats. Wouldn't dirty our teeth on a cat. They climb trees, after all. Might just as well chase squirrels.

Then Luke howled again. There was a slight but all-important difference about this howl: not command, not authority, but a deep, unquenchable longing for something that could never be attained. Duncan didn't need to sniff. This wasn't a scent you had to hunt out of the air. It was itself a predator.

Leave it
, Luke ordered, and Duncan thought, quite right. Hadn't he had one lucky escape already, the night of his first run with the Ferris Gang, when he'd actually seen it on the railway lines? The scent flooded all his senses, and he could see it perfectly, as though it was there in front of him: the white unicorn, with silver hooves and a golden horn. He understood without even having to think. Chasing the unicorn while in human form was stupid and dangerous, but chasing it as a wolf would undoubtedly be fatal. A human being would probably pass out and fall over, just this side of terminal exhaustion; a wolf would keep going until his heart stopped and his brain burst.

Do you know why there're no wolves in Britain any more?
Luke was talking, just to him.
They'll tell you it was humans, hunting them to extinction. Bollocks. The truth is, they ran themselves to death, following Her. That's what happened to
—Pause; the data stream broke up for a moment.
Well, anyway. Just leave it, all right?

He could feel the pain in Luke's mind, of course. Everything he'd ever wanted, everything he would ever want, lay at the end of that scent trail. Duncan understood, and a terrible desire to catch the unicorn for him ripped into him like claws. Luke couldn't go, because the pack needed him; if he ran himself to death they'd be leaderless, a living body with a dead brain. But they could spare me, Duncan thought; they managed all right without me before, and if I could catch her—