Barking (45 page)

‘Well.' Caroline shrugged. ‘Think about it, Vee. She's in bed with the dead people. As far as they're concerned, it's just something you do; like a christening or a bar mitzvah, only without the reception and the buffet lunch. Might as well let her get it over with in peace and quiet, don't you think? She hates any kind of fuss.'

Which was true; fuss being defined as parties, occasions, things she had to put on uncomfortable shoes and a frock for. Weddings. Funerals.

‘You can't just let her die,' said his voice. There were times when he hated the sound of it.

Caroline frowned. ‘If you feel so very strongly about it, we'll do a deal. Be
quiet
, Vee. You join up with us, the garlic goes back in the safe. Well?'

This time, Duncan glanced at Veronica. She was watching him (now there was a coincidence); she was looking at him as though he was the envelope containing her exam results, pass or fail. No pressure. Lose one, get another, apparently. Plenty more hammerhead sharks in the sea.

‘Deal,' he said.

There are moments when the world stands still; and you notice, but nobody else seems to. Caroline, for instance. She nodded, smiled pleasantly, said, ‘Splendid. Vee, go and see to poor Sally. Mr Hughes - actually, I think I should start calling you Duncan, if that's all right. Come with me, and I'll show you your new office. Of course,' she went on; she'd stood up and was walking out of the door. He snapped to it and followed her, like a dog. ‘Of course, you'll need somewhere to stay for a day or so; from what the girls told me, you won't want to go back to your flat in a hurry, even once the moon's waned. You can camp out in your office for as long as you like, we haven't got a problem with that. In fact, we do it all the time. After all, anywhere long and wide enough to put a box in - and no windows, of course . . . Now, here on the left you've got the computer room - don't touch anything in there, ever, even if you are immortal - and next door to that's the secretaries' room, where they have their coffee. That's the lavatory. We haven't actually got a dedicated men's loo, so a certain degree of discretion . . .'

He was listening, because this was the sort of stuff that governs every aspect of office life and only tends to be told you once, at great speed, when you haven't got anything to take notes with. But he was also thinking: well, love again. Thought we'd seen the back of that particular hazard, but apparently not. She's nice-looking, mind. Very nice-looking. Only . . .

‘Here we are.' Dammit: he'd let his attention wander and forgotten how he'd got here. Caroline pushed the door open, revealing a small, bare room, empty except for a—

‘As I was saying just now,' she went on blithely, ‘you can stay here until you've found somewhere to live. Of course, you aren't used to sleeping in one of these, but I promise you, it won't take you long to get used to it. Much less trouble than a hammock, for example; and in Tokyo I believe the average apartment is smaller than one of these beauties. Lined, of course,' she added. ‘You may find red velvet a bit unrestful, so feel free to change it.'

‘Um,' Duncan said. ‘Thanks.'

Actually, the biggest problem was getting into it. Came with practice, he supposed. It was like climbing into a narrow, steep-sided bath. The previous occupant, whoever she'd been, must've been quite short; he had to lie with his feet up on the bottom end and his arms crossed over his chest. All in all, red velvet was the least of his problems.

Dwelling on the discomfort did help take his mind off the other stuff - for a while. But it had been a very long day, and pretty soon his eyelids began to slide shut. Goodbye Sally, apparently, and what about nice-looking Veronica? The perils of the rebound hadn't really figured much in his life up till now, but rushing into something in his frame of mind - not to mention the vampire thing. He didn't really know anything about vampires; in spite of which, he'd just accepted a job from them, a job involving Bowden Allshapes. Talking of which, what about that other thing, the one he'd been carefully leading his mind away from ever since it had splattered itself all over his mental windscreen? Couldn't really be
true
, could it? Had he really died - several times, apparently - and then carried on as though death was no more than a sneeze? It was all too . . .

Duncan opened his eyes. At first he thought the light was old Mister Sun leering at him through the window; then he remembered where he was, and what he was in. Pins and needles in both feet, incidentally, plus cramp in his knees. Even hard-as-nails werewolf joints couldn't take that kind of abuse.

Just a moment, though. If the light wasn't the sun (because of the room being windowless; and he distinctly remembered turning off the light before he started the getting-in-this-stupid-fucking-thing manoeuvres) then what was it?

He looked up. It was soft white light, the gentlest of glows, a bit like photonic face cream, and it was coming from the magnificent white unicorn standing over him.

‘H
ello, you,' said the unicorn.

He should have recognised the scent, of course. It was everywhere, as soft and all-pervasive as the light. Instinctively he tried to jump up, but his feet weren't working, and an infinite number of tiny stabs of pain bustled up and down his nervous system like commuters on an escalator.

‘You,' Duncan said.

‘Me.' The unicorn nodded her head gravely. ‘We meet again, Duncan Hughes. How are you settling in, by the way? Aren't you a bit uncomfortable in that shoebox thing?'

‘How did you get in here?'

She tossed her silver mane. ‘I can get in anywhere, any time,' she replied brightly. ‘No bother at all. If you're interested, I turned myself into a cold germ and floated in through the air-conditioning. All shapes, see? Oh, but you do look funny lying there, like a man in women's clothes. For two pins I'd tie a great big pink ribbon round you.'

Duncan tried his feet again, but no good; all that happened was that he felt like he was dancing barefoot on broken glass. But he remembered something—

‘You can't touch me,' he said. ‘I can't die. Can I?'

The unicorn dipped her head. ‘The second statement is true. However, it doesn't follow on logically from the first, which is false. You're coming with me, Mr Hughes, whether you like it or not.'

‘Really.' Not so deep inside him, something with red eyes and big teeth started to growl. ‘You're going to drag me with you down the ventilation shaft.'

‘I could,' the unicorn replied. ‘If I absolutely had to. But I don't. I can make you get up out of that silly box and come with me quite voluntarily. I can even make you open doors for me.'

‘Is that right. How?'

The unicorn rubbed her nose against her left foreleg. ‘Quite simple. If you come with me - I won't press the point about opening doors - I'll spare the life of your ex-wife. She belongs to me, after all, and I was going to convert her, now that her cover's blown. But instead, I'll let her go. I'll even stop her being a vampire: she can lead a normal, happy life, get old and fat and die of old age in a nursing home, like regular folks. There, you see? An offer you can't refuse, as the saying goes.'

Duncan took a deep breath. This wasn't going to be easy.

‘No,' he said.

For a moment he wondered if she'd heard him. Then her beautiful soft nostrils flared, and she said, ‘Really? Are you quite sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘You surprise me,' she said, in a slightly harder voice than he'd heard her use before. ‘I had you figured for the decent, honourable type, the sort who always does the right thing. Consider carefully, please. A human life hangs in the balance. This is a genuine, twenty-four-carat moral dilemma. Your response should be as predictable as a scientific experiment.'

Duncan grinned. He enjoyed the grin; he'd earned it. ‘Balls,' he said. ‘Bloody woman screws up my life, then she tries to kill me. Twice,' he added. ‘That I know about. No, you can have her. She wants to come and be one of your zombies, who am I to stand in her way?'

‘Heavens.' The unicorn lifted a hoof and pawed at the carpet. ‘What's got into you, I wonder? Could it possibly be a backbone, or are you just bluffing? What if I were to bring her in here right now and kill her, on the spot? Do you think your iron resolve could handle that?'

Duncan shrugged. ‘I'd rather you didn't,' he said. ‘But if you choose to murder someone, it's hardly my fault.'

The unicorn gazed at him for a while out of her soft blue eyes: swimming-pool colour, Duncan decided, and you could drown in them if you got out of your depth. ‘You are bluffing,' she said. (Admiration? Possibly, coming from her.) ‘But you're doing it so well I'll have to let you get away with it. You've guessed that dear Sally's more use to me as she is. Now, you're far more valuable, but I can't be doing with waste. I'll just have to try something else. How are your poor feet, by the way?'

He'd forgotten about them. ‘Better,' he said.

‘Ah. Well, in that case—' She turned to face the door. ‘Can't catch me,' she chirruped, and trotted out into the corridor.

Fuck
, Duncan thought. But he was on his feet, and he was running. The scent was like a wire loop round his throat; if he didn't keep up, it'd tighten and choke him. Of course, she'd planned this all along—

He sprinted into the corridor, but she'd gone. He flared his nostrils and caught a whiff of her scent, enough to give him directions. He lunged.

Down the corridor, fast as he could go, until he came to a T-junction. He stopped and sniffed again. The scent was there, leading him left, but it was surprisingly faint. There were other scents (damp, mildew, formaldehyde) that crowded it out, trying to smother it. Logic suggested she'd be taking the most direct route to the main exit; trouble was, he hadn't paid attention when Caroline was showing him round, and he hadn't got a clue where the main stairwell or the lifts were. In fact, he was lost. Sod it.

Or, rather, joy.

I'm lost, he thought. In this bewildering maze of corridors, stairs, landings and passages, I'm completely lost. Hooray! Hooray for my shitty sense of direction, and the rich pong of preservatives and decomposing textiles, which can drown even her scent.

Which way now? Can't give up (grin), wouldn't be playing the game. How about left? Well, why not?

Duncan turned left, running fast, and sprinted down a long corridor lined with bookshelves crammed with musty-smelling volumes of law reports and obsolete editions of Halsbury's
Statutes
. He sort of recognised this corridor: there's one in every law office, and when you find yourself in it, you know that the only way you'll ever find Reception again is either outrageous luck or a search party. A smile the width of the M25 snaked across his face and he ran faster.

The corridor ended in a flight of stairs (they always do) which led to a landing (
that
landing) on three sides of which were identical unmarked fire doors. Duncan nearly wept for joy, because he knew that whichever door he took, it'd be the wrong one. He'd spent weeks, maybe months, trailing up and down passageways like these, searching for the way out, an ounce of trial for a hundredweight of error. The sheer delight of running flooded through him as he burst through the left-hand fire door. Not running to anywhere or away from anything; just running. He took a racing line into the bend, accelerated out of it, and crashed into something immobile and extremely solid.

Werewolves, as previously noted, are tough as old boots, even in human form. But running into a horse's bum at close on thirty-five miles an hour takes it out of anybody - it, in this context, being every molecule of breath in his body. He stopped dead, teetered for a split second on entirely numb feet, and fell backwards like a chainsawn tree.

Duncan's last thought before blacking out, and his first on coming round a second or two later, was
Horse? What's a horse doing in—?
Then it occurred to him that horses aren't the only creatures with horses' backsides.
Bowden bloody Allshapes
, he thought, and sprang to his feet, just in time to get the full force of a bucking kick in his solar plexus.

Predictably he sat down again, grabbing instinctively as he folded for something to hang on to. He hadn't really expected to connect with anything, but his flailing hands closed on hair. Tail, he thought, as the world swirled round and round inside his head like the fake snow in an old-fashioned glass paperweight.
Tail
—

He hauled.

It was like those world's-strongest-man TV shows that used to be so popular at one time, where the competitors had to tow a lorry by means of a strap gripped in their teeth. He kept hauling. The horse (the
unicorn
, for crying out loud) tried to kick again, but couldn't get a firm footing and stumbled, allowing him to drag her back a full eighteen inches. She rallied, and for a moment Duncan reflected on why tractors and other such machinery are rated in horsepower. But the mere fact that she was at least five times stronger than him simply didn't enter into it. All the anger and frustration of every werewolf who'd ever hunted the white unicorn, every canine who'd ever run after something too fast for it to catch, raged white-hot inside him and compelled him to hang on. Let go? Are you out of your tiny mind?
Never
let go, not ever; not even if they drag you off your feet or bash you on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

And then:
Just a second
, he thought, and let go.

Interesting and unforeseen consequences. The unicorn, striving with all its considerable might to get away from him, shot forward like a cannon shell. She didn't get far, though. There was a thump and a splintering noise, and she stopped, her horn embedded up to its base in a substantial, meets-all-relevant-British-Standards plywood fire door.