The Last Werewolf

other hells of jail: trying to be civil to Poulsom. Truth was I hated him on sight, and he knew it, but he also knew I wasn’t going to risk pissing him off. I read an interview once, someone—an actress—complaining that Christopher Walken—or it could have been James Woods—smelled or maybe even tasted of formaldehyde. Either way I could believe it, and Poulsom had the same deal, the fish eyes and the waxy skin, that look of having been under fluorescents too long …)

The Hunter spoke into a headset: “Okay, we’re good here. Come ahead.” An armoured van crept from a concealed gap in the trees and pulled up behind the people-carrier. While the medics were closing the ambulance doors and setting the bike upright, Poulsom and I were escorted to the van’s rear, where the motorcyclist opened the doors. The vehicle’s interior was occupied by a steel cage, snugly fitted and bolted down. No sign of lock or key, only a mystifying plate of what looked like dark glass in a metal housing where the lock should be.

Not mystifying for long. The Hunter pressed his palm flat against it. With a string of blips and a gasp of what sounded like hydraulics the cage door popped open.

“Inside,” the Hunter said. Poulsom clambered in, gracelessly, and in a moment had been seated on the floor and secured, cuffs to bars. The motorcyclist helped me in, fastened my wrists to the cage, then released and removed the ankle cuffs altogether. “Better for you like this,” he said. “Save you getting tossed around like a lettuce.”

The Hunter leaped up into the van and stood over Poulsom. Shouldered the automatic and pulled out a pistol from a side holster. Pointed it at Poulsom’s head. “Phone,” he said.

“What?”

“Call in. You’ve drawn heat. You’re going round about. They wait for your update but Ellis is green for go. That’s all.”

“They’ll know—”

“They won’t know shit without any of the alert words, all of which you know I know. Are we clear?”

Pause.

“I’m not going to ask twice.”

Poulsom opened the phone.

“I dial,” the Hunter said.

Poulsom’s performance was surprisingly convincing, considering he had a gun at his head, a blend of tension, weariness and irritation; he was the horrifically overworked dictator who had to suffer shit luck and universal incompetence.

“Good,” the Hunter said, pocketing the phone. He gave the motorcyclist a nod, not looking at me. Palpable contempt came off him. Not for me personally but for all women. I had an image of him choking a young girl while sodomising her, his face testifying that it wasn’t enough, nothing was enough. My nose has sharpened for these things. He knew I knew, which made a disgusting claustrophobic intimacy. It was then I began worrying again about getting raped. Rape was his default. To him the only obstacles were practical. But fear was a practical obstacle. He knew what I was. This, I had to hope, would keep him off. Another surge of the Hunger went through my thighbones. My face was hot. He turned and jumped down from the van.

The motorcyclist produced a small capped syringe from his pocket. “Bobo time, doc,” he said. Poulsom’s face quivered—fear and a look of sensuous revulsion—as the motorcyclist approached him. “Relax. It’s a sedative, that’s all. Hold still.”

“Whatever you’re doing,” Poulsom began—but the motorcyclist belted him, hard, a backhander; my armpits went suddenly hot—across the face.

“Hush. And relax. There we go.”

“Where are you taking us?” I said.

“Can’t tell you, miss. Sorry. Not far, though. Don’t worry.” He saw me eyeing the syringe. “You’re not having any of this.” He winked, then went to join the others. Poulsom’s eyes had closed.

“Let’s move ourselves, gentlemen,” the Hunter said. I heard the people-carrier doors slam and the ambulance start up. The whole ambush had taken no more than two or three minutes.

A slight weight shift said our driver had left the armoured van, and a moment later a man in his early forties wearing Securicor overalls appeared alongside the Hunter. “Thought you should know, sir,” he said. “Looked like a tail a couple of miles back. Can’t be certain. Probably paranoia.”

“Vehicle?”

“Land Rover, white, Alfa Lima two five five Juliet Papa Romeo. Single male driver. Nothing, really, one mile too many, maybe.”

“It’s because it was white,” the motorcyclist said. “You notice white more. It’s the Moby Dick effect. What sort of moron tails someone in a white car?”

“The world’s full of them,” the Hunter said. “I’ll let the boss know anyway. Let’s go.”

57

WE DROVE FOR what felt like fifteen or twenty minutes. There was only a small opaque glass window in the back door, and the Hunger soon had motion sickness to keep it company. I was close to throwing up (or dry heaving, since I’d eaten nothing for a week) by the time we stopped. The van’s rear door opened and the Hunter palmed the cage’s lock. The Securicor guy climbed in to unfasten me and put the leg cuffs back on. Over his shoulder I could see the motorcyclist dismounting. Poulsom, still out cold, was left shackled where he was.

Hard to make out detail in the dark. We were outside a small stone farmhouse with no lights showing. The land around felt empty. I had a sense of deserted fields, remnants of dry stone walls. No cattle, no sheep, nothing.

“Get her inside,” the Hunter said, not looking at me.

The farmhouse was L-shaped, low-ceilinged, damp, furnished with junk-shop crap from what looked like the 1930s. A dark wood bookcase with no books. A green couch you didn’t want to sit on. An armchair with stuffing coming out like ectoplasm. A faded floral carpet. All the curtains were closed. They lit a log fire in the stone hearth. My shins ached. Wolf in my finger- and toenails like the dull biting shock you get from an electric cattle fence.

“I suppose it’s pointless me asking what’s happening?” I said to the motorcyclist, when the Hunter was out of earshot.

“ ’Fraid so, miss,” he said, with the diamond smile and alert friendly green eyes. His curly hair was surfer two-tone, blond and brown.

“Or how long I’m going to be held here?”

“I wish I could tell you, I really do. Try not to worry about it.” He was tearing the cellophane off a pack of Marlboro. Poulsom had forbidden me cigarettes and booze, but since his reign was over …

“Any chance of bumming one of those?”

We lit up. “Thanks,” I said. “Now all I need is a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Maybe you could have a quick rootle arou—”

“Carter,” the Hunter said. The motorcyclist turned. “Outside. Check Poulsom in an hour. If he’s not quiet when he wakes up, give him another shot.”

When the motorcyclist—Carter, evidently—had gone, the Hunter approached me on the couch. I thought, excruciatingly, of myself jerking off in my cell. In the dark, yes, but there must have been infrared. A terrible feeling of disgust came over me. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a roll of duct tape. “You can agree to keep quiet—silent in fact—or I can stick this over your mouth. It’s up to you. You won’t be given the choice again.” The space between us held information. He was up against a higher authority. He was restricted. Whatever he was capable of, he wasn’t capable of it yet. And there was, no mistake—the curryish stink of it came off him—fear. It was causing him trouble, that he could be afraid of a woman. It didn’t compute. He had to keep reminding himself this wasn’t a woman, this was a monster.

“I’ll be quiet,” I said, looking straight at the fire.

It was a bad night. They rotated the watches, two men outside, one in. Obviously I couldn’t sleep, with the pre-Curse fevers and the Hunger like talons trying out their grip on different bits of my insides. In the white jail Poulsom had “allowed” me muscle relaxants, which I’d taken with deep resentment. I would’ve taken a handful with gratitude now. I lay curled up under a blanket on the couch, shivering in spite of the log fire. And if not the shivers