The Last Werewolf (38 page)

Suddenly I caught Jake’s scent. My legs nearly buckled. I twisted myself as close to the rear door as I could get. Overrode the impulse to make as much noise as possible.
It’s me! I’m in here! Jake!

Wait. Be smart. Listen. There were voices.

“I thought you said we’d be alone,” Ellis said.

“I know,” a second voice said. “But something occurred to me after we last spoke.”

Poulsom, presumably at the recognition of Ellis’s voice, began kicking about.

“Who’ve you got in there?” Jake said. “What the fuck is this?”

The van’s rear door opened. Standing twenty feet away were Jake, Ellis and a third man in Hunt fatigues. Mid-forties. Dark hair flecked with grey. Broad cheekbones.
He looks like a Native American
, I remembered Jake telling me—and realised I was face-to-face with Grainer.

The other Hunter, to whom Grainer, it dawned on me, was “the boss,” stood close to the cage with the automatic pointed directly at me.

“Nothing silly, Jake,” Grainer said—then something extraordinary happened.

Grainer took a pace backwards and another half pace to his left. He did it as if woodenly executing a formal dance step. For a second everything froze. Jake’s mouth was slightly open. The shirt buttons were still wrongly done-up. Ellis seemed to very slowly reach around for the rifle that hung slightly behind him on its shoulder strap. Grainer’s right hand went up and behind his head. There was a soft rasp and a flash of bright metal. Everyone observing jumped, as if we’d all been given a small electric shock at exactly the same moment: the moment the blade, a brilliant broadsword, swung—with a sound like a wet branch snapping—through Ellis’s neck.

The head toppled a fraction before the legs went. The long blond hair snagged on the rifle. The corpse’s collapse was curiously neat. It dropped to its knees, hesitated, then fell forward as if in a gesture of complete worship. The head, still attached by its hair to the gun, lay facedown just next to the hip, as if it didn’t want to see anything anymore.

“Lu?” Jake said. “You all right?”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“How did you know?” Jake asked Grainer.

“How do we ever know? We got a good gal on the inside. I’ve always said women make the best agents. Deceit comes naturally to them. It’s hardly surprising: If you were born with a little hole half the population could stick its dick into whenever it felt like it you’d learn deceit too. Biology is destiny. You can’t blame the women.”

Grainer transferred the sword to his left hand and with his right took a pistol from his side holster and pointed it at Jake. I dropped to my knees and retched up bile. It was coming.

“Keep her covered, Morgan,” Grainer said. The Hunter by the cage retrained his gun on me. It had drifted a little during the beheading.

“I’m sorry, angel,” Jake said to me. “I was stupid.”

I couldn’t speak. We got a good gal on the inside. It didn’t have to be Hardass. There were other women at the white jail. But the ugliness of this moment spread backwards.
I know you’re seeing your guy tonight
. And me like an idiot weeping on my bunk. It didn’t have to be her. But there was the cynic’s version of Ockham’s razor: All things being equal the shittiest explanation’s the best.

“I’m so sorry,” Jake said.

“It’s not”—a cramp at which the reflex was to bend double, except I couldn’t, with the cuffs still attached to the cage—“your fault,” I managed to get out. “My fault. I’m sorry.” In spite of everything, Poulsom’s flesh, fear-soaked, piping hot, was a fat pulse in the confined space of the van. Morgan looked at me, smiling. “You ready to party?” he said.

Grainer looked at his watch. “Not long now, kids,” he said. “By the way, before you go, Jake, congratulations. I’m sure fatherhood would’ve suited you.”

Poulsom wriggled and roared.

“What?” Jake said—then dropped to one knee, shuddered, got down on all fours. Jammed his teeth together. His clothes started to tear at the seams. The hair was coming. Mine too.

“Yeah,” Grainer continued, “apparently the big side-effect of the antiviral. Seems your old lady’s nearly two months gone. Ask Poulsom. He’s over the moon about it, all set to go down in history as the man who changed werewolf reproduction forever. Except of course now he’s not going anywhere. Nowhere good, anyway.”

Jake looked up at me. My spine shifted. The shoulders of my blouse split. Movement in the top of my skull. The waistband of my skirt went.
Seems your old lady’s nearly two months gone
. It was impossible, and yet as soon as I’d heard the words it was like falling off a cliff. No smoking. No drinking. Ultrasounds. Harrods towels, television, reassurance. I thought of those Magic Eye pictures, the disturbing moment when three dimensions shiver out of two. It was impossible. But then until the antiviral so was surviving the bite.

“Talulla!” Jake called. He was more than halfway. His eyes were going. His clothes hung in shreds. Soon speech would be impossible.

Grainer, face empty of all expression, pointed the gun at Jake’s head. One of my ankle cuffs broke. The other was cutting its way into the swelling flesh. Jake convulsed. Somewhere far away my clothes were disintegrating and Poulsom was screaming into the duct tape. Fear around Morgan like a swarm of flies.

“Is it better to kill her in front of you?” Grainer said. “Or you in front of her? How about an impromptu Caesarian? Morgan’s pretty good with a knife.”

The van was packed with the heat of my transformation. In the blur of the final spasm I’d snapped the cable free of the cage. The left handcuff was gone. The right cut my flesh with a kind of fierce boredom. In spite of which joy filled me. My mouth was hot. Jake was still in the throes. Poulsom’s legs struggled to get him upright. His body heaved out its stink of fear and meat.

“Your lady’s ahead of you, Marlowe,” Grainer said. “She’s making you look like an amateur.”

Jake foetal as the details of claws and ear tips worked themselves out—then his long soft throat lifted as the last of the Changing resolved itself. He began to get to his feet.

“Good-bye, Jake,” Grainer said—then two things happened simultaneously.

My second ankle cuff snapped (a surge of blood, a lovely feeling of relief) and a silver javelin, travelling at speed, struck Grainer in the chest. He staggered back a pace, dropped the pistol and fell to his knees.

Morgan spun and fired a burst wildly, hit turf and trees, involuntarily took a step backwards. I threw myself at the bars.

The step backwards had brought him—just—close enough. At full stretch I got the collar of his jacket and his nape’s sweat-hot hair, yanked him, flailing, up against the cage, locked a hand around his throat, with the other ripped the automatic from his grasp, though I fumbled and it dropped to the ground. He twisted, but either by deep training or extraordinary will overrode the instinct to reach for the hand cutting off his air, instead freed a knife from a sheath in his belt and drove it into my forearm.
The pain reflex opened my hand and he tore free, went down on one knee and reached for the gun.

When Jake leaped, his trajectory made an arc that framed Grainer for me in weird vividness. He was still on his knees, propped up by the javelin, arms hanging inert, eyes half-closed, a thickened gobbet of dark blood hanging from his open mouth. The image had the remote clarity of a religious icon. Then Jake descended, fell on Morgan with a draught of the evening’s moon-edged air and in a single swipe gashed him—a gesture with a sort of emphatic masculine grace—from throat to belly. The body unstrung, collapsed like a dropped puppet.

Jake wrapped his hands around the bars of the cage and braced himself to pull but I gave him through the confusion—his head was full on the upswelling joy of
pregnant can’t be javelin love by love Cloquet can’t be but please please let her be
—the image of Morgan’s palm, felt it emerge in him amid the chaos like a developing print and felt his own giant animal delight as he went to the Hunter’s corpse, ripped the arm from its socket, pressed the hand to the panel and received, like magic, the string of blips, the gasp, the open door.

We fell into an embrace. Speech had gone from both of us, but we didn’t need it, not now with the wolf melding us and our bodies free and the miracle ghost-flicker (or was I imagining it?) of new life in my womb. For a moment we held each other and everything but the purest certainty of shared nature, of common blood, of
sameness
dropped away. For a moment the world was perfect.

If I hadn’t closed my eyes.

Jake’s written all about
if
and
then
.

As it was, eyes closed in the bliss of feeling his warm arms around me and his heart beating against mine, I saw nothing, only felt the thud-twitch of impact and heard, what seemed such a long time after, the sound of a gunshot.

S
TILL HOLDING HIM
, I opened my eyes. Over his shoulder I saw Grainer, barely conscious, desperately trying to hold the pistol upright for a second shot. Slowly, I lifted Jake and turned, so that my back was to his killer. I thought: Shoot me too, then, since there’s nothing left for me.

Not nothing, angel. The child
.

I looked at him, felt the silver gobbling his life with nonnegotiable greed. Death taking him was like something being dragged out of me. Out of my womb. The cuff cutting into my left wrist broke at last. Blood poured over both of us.

You live
, he sent me.
There’s no God and that’s His only commandment
.

Okay.

Promise
?

I promise. Don’t leave me.

His eyes closed. The seduction was heavy on him, a suave pull on his blood. His heart was going with it, I could feel, like a boat gone from its mooring. But he opened his eyes, with an immense effort of will gathered the remnants, looked at me.

This will hurt
.

He held me with sudden shocking strength—then his claw went into the flesh above my breast.

In spite of everything the reflex was to pull away—the pain was small, precise, white-hot—but everything he had went into keeping me still, and in a moment it was over. A knot of blood and tissue with a tiny metal fragment protruding.

Now they can’t find you
.

A moment of bafflement, then I understood. In the mess of consciousness a distinct little discharge of disgust that they’d been able to do that, get inside me. Make fools of us.

Love …

Stay with me. Stay with me.

His eyes closed again. The tip of the full moon appeared over the dark line of the trees. The clouds had cleared. The sky was a pretty dusk blue.

No second shot came.

•

It’s hard to say how long I stayed there in the middle of what had become a bloody little battlefield, with his body growing cold next to mine. Certainly the moon was clear of the trees when I got to my feet and laid him gently on the ground. In a sort of mild dream my own voice inside my head repeated without any feeling at all, He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone … The forest was very still. Even the stream seemed to have fallen silent. The air had a pared clean quality. The armoured van, the bodies, the trees, all had a weird solid static vividness, as if they’d been carefully arranged like this to mean something.

An indeterminate surreal time passed. There were questions, but they were like vague or distant objects. What would happen to Jake when the moon set? Would his corpse stay Changed? Or revert to human form? There were three human bodies to deal with. What was to be done with them? Where was Cloquet? If I really was pregnant, what would happen if I went into labour on the Curse? What shape would the child have?

There were, yes, these questions—but overwhelmingly, as if the sound of myself was being turned up to a point I knew would cause real pain, there was the Hunger.

Sharp consciousness returned the way sharp hearing does when water you’ve had in your ear suddenly trickles out. A breeze stirred the young leaves. The stream breathed its odour of damp stone. My fingertips tingled. I was freshly aware of my Changed shape, the soft fit of cool air over snout and ears and throat.

I climbed into the back of the van.

Poulsom was a mess. I tore the duct tape (and, accidentally, though I wasn’t particularly careful, a bit of his top lip) from his mouth. A second’s delay then the pain of the ripped flesh hit him and he screamed. I put my right hand, wrist still bleeding, heavily, slowly around his throat and very
gently squeezed. Just enough to silence him. I looked down and pointed to my belly.

For a moment I could tell he was trying to work out whether a lie or the truth would serve him better. It was quite something to watch the stubborn calculator still at work. Then, presumably because of vestiges of the idea that virtue will be (ultimately) rewarded, I saw him cast his lot in for better or worse with the truth. He nodded, croaked out, “Yes. Pregnant.”

Not nothing, angel. The child. You live. Promise
.

Well, I had promised.

I
T WAS FULLY
dark by the time I finished with Poulsom. I’d fed fast, but my appetite had had all sorts in it: grief, rage, loss, confusion. Also a kind of dumb irreverent hope. I had an image of myself holding hands with a child by the polar bear tanks in Central Park Zoo. My own earliest memory, the chance to give it to someone else.

There was nothing I could do about the bodies, even poor Jake’s. If I was going to live I had to start now. I was a monster alone in the middle of Wales. Even if I got through the Curse I had neither money nor ID nor clothes nor any safe place to go. I thought of my dad and the restaurants and Ambidextrous Alison and my apartment and how sweet it would be to be back there in one piece lying on the couch with a cup of coffee and a stupid magazine. I thought how unlikely it was not only that I’d ever see it again, but that I’d make it through the next twenty-four hours alive.

But you have to. There’s no God and that’s his only Commandment.

So, with great difficulty (try it with werewolf hands) I set about equipping myself. Poulsom had the smallest shoe size so I took his footwear. Grainer’s combat trousers and belt, Ellis’s leather jacket. Between them just over a hundred and fifty pounds in cash. Jake’s clothes were in shreds, but the journal, bloodstained and buckled, was there in the inside pocket of his ruined overcoat. I took it. I found a canvas bag with a handful of car essentials—jumper cables, wheel brace, jack, torch—behind the van’s front seat, so I emptied it and stuffed my new wardrobe in there. I kept imagining telling Jake about all this, later, when it was all over. My wrist was already healing.