The Last Werewolf

the floor. “The organisation’s too unstable and our numbers too small. We’re looking at three, maybe four key deaths in the U.K. cabal. A dozen in the States. We don’t want to overdo it. We’re looking at quietly making our presence felt. Gentle steering. You see how this would work? The zealots, admittedly, have got to go, and Grainer’s a zealot to the core, but the cynics can be persuaded. Either to go voluntarily or to stop abusing the organisation. Not a bloody revolution, but not an entirely velvet one, either.”

“Then you don’t need me,” I said. “Just kill Grainer yourself. In fact you have to for the threat of your group to be credible.”

“I am going to kill him,” he said. “It’ll be me replacing the silver ammo with regular shit. You just provide the camouflage, Jake. It’s the perfect faux cover. We have to let these guys know we did it without giving them the means to prove it. They’re connected in the straight world. We could face regular legal prosecution if we don’t get it right.”

“You’ve left it a bit late, haven’t you?” I said. “I mean, there’s only me left. What difference is keeping me alive going to make?”

He looked at me, almost smiling. “Nice, Jake. But there’s you and her. You didn’t know if we knew about her. You had to find out. We do.”

A slender hope, but worth a try.

“Grainer knows about her?”

“No. Just my people.”

My inner strategist was working through the terror. Grainer doesn’t know about her. Is that any good? Can we use that? Not sure. Give me a minute.

“Okay,” I said. “So there’s me and her. That’s two of us. Big deal. Hardly enough for a Hunt renaissance.”

For a moment Ellis didn’t reply, indeed seemed to attend to some frequency only he could hear. Then returned, with a short sigh. “Jake,” he said. “Oh, boy. You have no idea what’s going on. I don’t even know where to start.”

My scalp shrank. I didn’t want him to start. The details, in any case, wouldn’t matter. All that mattered was that some giant First Principles error had produced fantastic false ramifications. Now everything you thought you knew … Everything you were sure was … Didn’t you see this coming? You, the big reader?

“We’ve cracked the antivirus,” Ellis said.

The temptation to say “What?” though I’d heard him perfectly was all but overwhelming. I resisted, just.

“Serendipitously, too,” he said. “I guess it’s always like that with the big discoveries, a bit of raw meat falls on the fire and voila!—cooking. Anyway, we’ve got your girl to thank.”

For the werewolf, but they’d hit me. In the calf. A tranquilizer, presumably, since a moment later I was out like a light.

No, angel. Not a tranquilizer. Jesus Christ.

“Is Alfonse Mackar dead or not?” I asked.

“He’s dead,” Ellis said. “He died the night he ran into Talulla in the desert, though he wasn’t killed by us. Some local amateur outfit in a fucking Jeep. Can you believe it? We had to recruit them to shut them up. Seriously, Jake, it’s a circus out there, a free-for-all. Every teenager with a smelting kit and a diploma in Buffy. I mean there was a time when—”

“Would you just tell me what’s going on?”

He held up his hand. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Let me get a refill. You want?”

I did not. While Ellis fixed himself a fresh cup I picked up the few items of Talulla’s clothing that lay scattered around the room and put them out of sight. Covered the bed, too. It was horrible, him seeing the evidence of our intimacy now that it was wrecked. I couldn’t stop thinking of the way she’d taken my hand last night and neither of us had been able to say anything. As if we’d shared a premonition of loss.

Ellis put his head round the French window. “You want to sit out here? It’s a beautiful day.”

Teeth clenched, I joined him on the veranda in dazzling light. The sun said maybe three o’clock. Below us a scatter of small white houses dotted the hill down to the village, where Konia went about its absurdly picturesque business. A brown-skinned fisherman sat on a capstan mending a net. A waiter leaned against a lamppost, smoking. Four teenagers lounged around an orange Vespa. I took the seat opposite Ellis with the light behind me. The sun’s heat fit the back of my head like a hellish yarmulke.

“Okay,” he said. “Research on werewolf infection stopped officially five years ago. Unofficially, our boys carried on. It was tough, with the shortage of live specimens—but we had Alfonse Mackar. Alfonse was our golden goose—until he got away. Escaped, for Christ’s sake. Can’t believe we were so slack there. Some of those young guys …” He looked away, shaking his head. “Anyway,” he continued, “that night in the desert we were trying to recapture him. Failing that, get a shot of the latest version of the antivirus into him. What happens? The shooter hits Talulla with the dart by mistake.” He leaned forward, eyebrows raised. “And who is the shooter? Me! Fucking Dead-eye Dick!” He relaxed and leaned back again, smiling. “Serendipity, Jake, every time. All along we’d been trying to treat the werewolf. Suddenly, accidentally, we treated the victim. Talulla’s the first person to survive the bite—and Turn—in more than a hundred and fifty years. She survived and Turned because the meds our eggheads cooked up actually work. We still don’t know if they kill the virus in an established lycanthrope, but they obviously kill it in a new one. A dose of this when you’re bitten and bingo—brand-new werewolf. That’s Poulsom’s thinking, anyway. He’s the brain. These are exciting times.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “You killed Wolfgang. You. You’re Grainer’s surrogate son. You’ve killed loads of us.”

He nodded again, lowered his head. Ridiculously, sighed. “You’re right, Jake,” he said. “It took me too long. I was under the man’s spell. He’s got the gift, you know, the charisma. He has been like a father to me. But I had to stay close to him to find out who the crucial players in the organisation are. He’s got access to everyone. Even now the thought of him not being around makes me a little ill, and it’s a year since I joined the renegades. There’s the ghost of ambivalence like a spirit that can’t cross over. It’s the price of double agency.”

I felt ill myself. Not least because it was clear Ellis was mad. His inner universe was impenetrable. He might be telling the truth. He might be suffering a protracted hallucination. The fundamental reference points and parameters weren’t there. You had to make a decision to take him at face value. Easy enough, since the alternative was a void where another explanation should be.

“By the way,” he said, “it’s only fair to tell you: You’ve had the antivirus yourself. The new one. More than once.”

“What?”

“Drinks at the Zetter. Again in Caernarfon. Poulsom’s still after a version that destroys the virus in the biter. Talulla got bitten, and got the antiviral, and as a result Turned. But we still don’t know if she can Turn anyone herself. Plus, having the drug that allows successful infection in the bitten victim gets us nowhere in the big picture. I mean, think about it: We’d have to be there every time someone got bitten to administer the drug. It’s completely impracticable.”

There was a memory of a Scotch at the Zetter that hadn’t tasted right. I ordered an Oban, I’d said to Harley. I think they’ve given me Laphroaig.

Harley.

My life, I thought, is a list of people I’ve failed.

“Trouble is of course you haven’t bitten anyone,” Ellis went on. “That’s another condition of the deal, obviously. You’re going to have to start leaving survivors. We’re thinking two living for every one dead. You guys are going to be in clover while the numbers go up again.”

The light sheeting off the white veranda was irritating my eyes and the heat was an angry sentience. In spite of their irrelevance the details maggot-tickled my brain.

“Why didn’t you take her?”

“Say again?”

“Talulla, in the desert. Why didn’t you take her in then?”

Ellis’s phone rang. He glanced at the number. Ignored it. “We would have,” he said, “but another unit turned