Vicious Circle

gaping hole that Peace had just punched in the decorative fascia above the breakfast bar. He curled and unfolded his fingers three times: as far as I could see, he hadn?t even broken any skin.

?If I ever see you again,? he said to me, a fraction calmer now, ?I?ll kill you. I mean it. I?ll kill you. Don?t come looking for me unless you?re ready to cut my throat while I?m asleep, because that?s the only way you?re getting her. And don?t assume I?m asleep just because I?ve got my fucking?eyes?closed.?

He punctuated these last three words with three sharp jabs of the gun barrel into my face. He flicked a glance at Reggie, and then at Greg. ?Give me five minutes,? he said, ?and then let him go.?

Reggie nodded. Greg just blinked. Peace was already heading for the wide open spaces in any case, tucking the gun back into his belt, and he didn?t look back as he ducked to clear the low door.

Well now. I liked these odds better.

I drooped a little in Reggie and Greg?s grip, making them take a little more of my weight. Irritably they hauled me upright, which meant that they were off balance when I came up with them and shoved backward. We all lurched against the bulkhead together. I dragged my arm clear of Greg?s grip and punched Reggie hard in the throat. He gave a choking gurgle and staggered sideways into the breakfast bar, letting go his hold on my other arm as both of his hands flew to his neck. I didn?t need the arm, though, because I was already taking Greg out with a sharp butt to the bridge of the nose.

I was out through the door before either of them could recover enough to mount a counterattack, but by the time I got up the stairs and out into the companionway, Peace was already legging it down the gangplank. He turned on the quayside and looked back at me.

He kicked the gangplank away just as I got to it, and it tumbled end over end into the Thames, hitting the Collective?s hull with a series of hollow metallic booms like a clock chiming the hour inside a coffin. The distance to the shore was only ten feet or so, but I had to back a few steps to get a run-up, and meanwhile the guy was already having it away on his toes.

I made the jump, and I landed with both feet under me?but then a moment?s dizziness, coming out of nowhere, made me stagger and almost fall backward into the river. I pulled myself together and took off after my quarry, who?d reached the pier?s gate by now and was hauling it open.

To my horror I saw him take the key out of the near side of the lock and throw it toward the water. Then he was through and slamming the gate shut behind him a second before I reached it. I dragged down on the handle but the damn thing didn?t budge.

Damn damn damn damn damn! No lockpicks, no time, and the razor wire on top of the gate looked like the most serious kind of bad news. I cast around for some object I could use to smash the lock, and saw the key: it had landed on the edge of the pier, a couple of inches short of the water.

I snatched it up, put it in the lock, and turned. Running out onto the street, I looked left just in time to see Peace?s burly figure disappear around a corner fifty yards away. As I started in pursuit, a car roared past me, heading in the same direction and accelerating: it was a battered- looking Grand Cherokee, sheathed in dried mud and looking faintly military. With a jolt of alarm, I saw that there were two men in the front seats, the passenger a man so tall that he was folded over on himself, his raised knees showing in the window. Even from a single high-speed glimpse, Po was unmistakeable.

I put on a fresh spurt of speed, but they still reached the corner well before me and disappeared around it with a whump-chunk sound as the car rocked and yawed on its wheelbase. When I got there, I saw Peace running hell for leather along a narrow stretch of road where the pavement all but vanished. Faceless low-rise office blocks hemmed him in on both sides, with no alleys or breaks that he could duck into. Up ahead of him, though, the street opened out on one side onto the broad, asphalted plain of a car park. It was laid out as a mazelike grid of two-foot-high concrete bollards, some of which were linked by chains.

The Jeep was only a few feet behind Peace when he reached the first of the bollards. He jumped right over it like a hurdler and kept on going: the Jeep was forced to swerve wide, back out onto the street, first of all keeping pace with him and then accelerating past him. When it got to the far end of the open space it swerved to a pinwheeling halt and the passenger door was thrown open.

Po clambered out, at first human but unfolding as he moved into something that looked like it never had a mother. His arms elongated and thickened and he bent from the waist to lay them on the ground. His mouth gaped, and kept on gaping, deforming into a fang-ringed muzzle like the maw of a shark. I?d been right after all about him being an exotic, but he was no gorilla. He was a hyena, or something that had been a hyena once, and even on all fours like this he was as high at the shoulder as a man.

Peace saw that he?d been outflanked, stopped at a skid, turned, and went into full reverse, his arms and legs pumping. Po loped after him, slow at first but gathering speed. Meanwhile the Jeep heeled around, passenger door still flapping and banging, and headed back down the street toward me. Again it came alongside Peace and then accelerated past him. If it hadn?t been for the bollards it could have just moved in and cut him off. As it was, the driver had to brake again and jump out himself. It was the other man I?d met last night?Zucker, the one with the deep, growly voice and the fondness for sharp edges. I was barely twenty yards away now, and running toward him, but he only had eyes for his quarry. He jogged forward to meet Peace, completing the pincer movement.

But Peace turned in a wide arc, heading for the back of the car park where a high wooden fence separated it from the watersports dealership it presumably served. The fence looked too high to climb, but Peace?s two pursuers saw the danger that he might somehow slip away from them and pushed themselves harder, narrowing his lead.

I reached the Jeep, and saw from the slight vibration of the bonnet that the engine was still running. Without even thinking about what I was doing, I jumped in and backed it out onto the street.

Peace was almost at the fence, the two were-kin were only a few yards behind him. I gunned the engine, slammed it into second, and roared forward. The two bollards directly in front of me were linked by one of the chains: I hit it full-on and it parted with a crunch, the loose ends snapping away like steel whips to either side. I kept on going, swerving to avoid the barriers where I could, smashing straight through them when I had to. Something caught in one of the front wheels and the Jeep started to lean to the right; I turned the wheel frantically to compensate.

Up ahead of me, Peace had reached the fence, and he tensed for a leap that would take him some of the way up the side of it. Before he could, Po closed the last few yards and was on him in a frenzy of claws. They both went down. There were two gunshots, so close together that the second sounded like the echo of the first. Peace kicked Po away from him?a pretty amazing feat in itself?and scrambled up again. The were-thing was hurt, blood on its face seeming to blind it so that although it swiped out with one obscenely long, clawed forelimb, it missed Peace by a good few inches.

Zucker was closing fast. Seeing how bad the odds were about to get, Peace turned and made a powerful leap, hitting the fence about four feet off the ground and hauling himself up with his hands. Close behind, Po gathered himself on his haunches to do the same thing?but his leap would bring Peace off the wall in the way a cat would claw down a low-flying bird. At the same time, Zucker was groping in his pocket, probably for his knife. One way or another, Peace didn?t have a chance in hell of making it to the top.

I clamped my hand down on the horn. The harsh, diminuendo blat of sound made the loup-garous turn, and they saw their own car bearing down on them: four thousand pounds of metal, give or take, tearing out its engine as I pushed it up to fifty in second gear.

It was too late now for Po to tackle Peace. Instead, he and Zucker grabbed tarmac on either side as I accelerated past them. At the last moment, I pulled the wheel hard over. I hit the fence full-on, about ten feet to the left of where Peace was still scrambling up: hit it, and went straight through it onto a paved forecourt where the remains of the fence rained down around me as splintered flotsam.

The front tires blew and the Jeep settled like a broken steer, its front bumper hitting the ground in a shower of sparks. That took care of a lot of my speed, which was good as far as it went, but a second later the air bag inflated, slamming me backward in my seat and pinning my arms. A secondary impact after that told me I?d smashed into something else that I hadn?t even seen.

I lay there dazed. There was a wailing sound in my ears, and for a chilling moment I thought I must have hit someone?but then I realized it was an alarm of some kind going off.

Forcing myself to move despite the aches and the shock of impact, I managed to get my hand into my pocket and groped around until I found my penknife. On the third try, I succeeded in puncturing the air bag: then I had to wait until it had deflated far enough for me to slide out from under it.

Staggering out of the remains of the Jeep, I saw that I?d actually slammed into another car on the forecourt of the sports shop. It had been a very nice electric blue BMW: it still was, except for the front third, which was twisted scrap.

Amazingly, nobody was coming to see what the noise was. The shop hadn?t opened yet, and neither had any of the offices on the street behind me.