Blood Moon (4 page)

G
loucester arrived back with the children, most of a rusty engine and my floater, with oil on its seat and a skull and crossbones chalked on its door. I wondered whether to explain that unlike my last floater, this one had been hired in my name and I was responsible for any damages.

But why bother? I could afford them.

‘We were a pirate ship,’ explained Portia, elbowing me in the breast as she scrambled onto my lap.

‘In the floater?’

‘Yeah!’ Portia looked at me scornfully, as though to say, ‘of course!’. She had good eyes for looking scornful, bright blue and slightly slanted.

‘Did you find any treasure?’

‘Some,’ Portia looked uninterested. ‘No gold or jewels though. Do you have any gold and jewels at home?’

‘Me? No.’ I was going to ask why I’d have gold and jewels, then realised that as I had chocolate and floaters, it might make sense to a child if I had jewels too.

Would the Black Stump kids like a real pirate ship, I wondered? One that seemed to sail…

‘We made the prisoners walk the plank!’ declared Portia, reaching over for a pumpkin fritter. ‘Then the sharks came and ate them and all the waves were red with blood.’ She bit into her fritter happily.

‘Sharks?’ I asked.

‘Gloucester said sharks always ate people who
walked the plank. They tear their arms off then they eat their legs then…’

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ said Romeo quickly.

‘Why?’

‘Because the food goes all over the table.’

I glanced at Gloucester. He shrugged, expressionless. He’d lost weight since I’d seen him last. His eyes were shadowed, as though they still saw last year’s events.

‘Lunch,’ said Yorik, dumping a platter of boiled corn cobs next to the pumpkin fritters on the table.

Coriolanus, Viola and Horatio scrambled up beside the adults. Portia stayed on my lap and Malvolio sat on Juliet’s and spat leftovers into his beard while Romeo fed him spoonfuls of cornmeal mush.

‘Do you want to hear me recite?’ demanded Portia, her mouth full again. ‘“The quality of mercy is not strained”—did you know we’re going to strain the honey later? You can help if you like,’ she added generously. ‘“It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven…”’

‘Recite it for her after lunch, honey,’ suggested Yorik. ‘Did anyone pick any salad?’

No one answered, so it seemed no one had.

‘Do the people at the Tree know I’m coming?’ I asked, shifting Portia to another knee. My right one had pins and needles.

‘I called them this morning,’ said Ophelia, putting another fritter on Gloucester’s plate. He picked it up absently. ‘They’re expecting you to stay with them. I explained you’d need a base to find out who really did the killings.’

I blinked. I’d expected to stay at Black Stump, not in the heart of werewolf territory. ‘I hope you didn’t lead them to expect too much.’

‘You could have stayed here, of course,’ added Juliet, wiping cornmeal mush from his beard. ‘But when people see you’re staying up at the Tree, they’ll know that you think they’re innocent.’

‘I don’t know anything of the sort yet!’ I protested.

‘Of course they’re innocent,’ said Yorik. ‘You should see Uncle Dusty with the kids. He pretends to be a pony and gives them rides around the orchard!’

‘Uncle Dusty!’ bleated Malvolio from Juliet’s lap.

‘I like Uncle Dusty’s hair,’ stated Portia. She passed me the biggest corn cob in the bowl, probably as a bribe for another ride in my floater.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘It’s nice and long. Can I have some more fritters?’

Gloucester held the fritter platter out to her. ‘It’s all beside the point!’ he cried passionately. ‘We should be concentrating on finding the murderer! Don’t you realise? While she’s up there, he could kill again!’

Yorik mouthed, ‘Not in front of the kids.’

Gloucester smashed the platter down on the table. ‘Why not? They’ll be safer if they know the danger! It’s no use pretending to them that this is a nice world! We need to get organised! Start patrolling the valley properly! There are monsters out there, psychopaths…oh, what’s the use?’ He pushed his chair back and flung himself out of the room.

‘What’s a psychopath?’ asked Portia.

‘Someone who’s sick in the head,’ said Ophelia absently, her eyes still on the door as though she expected Gloucester to come back in. ‘It makes them do bad things.’

‘Sweet!’ said Portia appreciatively. ‘Can we play pirate ships again after lunch?’

I hesitated.

‘I’ll take them,’ offered Hippolyta, pushing her chair back too. ‘Come on, last one in the floater has to feed the parrot.’

‘What parrot?’ demanded Portia.

‘Pirates always have parrots.’ Hippolyta patted Ophelia’s shoulder as she passed. ‘I’ll pick up Gloucester on the way,’ she promised. ‘He won’t have gone far.’

Ophelia nodded.

No one spoke for a while after they left. Then Yorik said, ‘He’s right you know. We’re tackling this the wrong way. We need to find who did it, not prove the wolves innocent.’

‘We’ve been through this a million times before,’ said Ophelia wearily. ‘The person who did this is probably long gone. If there was some crazed killer living round here they’d have struck before. It must have been some Wanderer…’

‘Didn’t you say you had a Wanderer here?’ I asked.

‘Lucy?’ Yorik grinned. ‘She wouldn’t even eat the deer after she saw Gloucester gut it!’

‘Yes, she did!’ said Ophelia

‘Only after the poor boy spent an hour persuading her.’

‘Where’s Lucy now?’

‘She left after the second murder. She told Mummy and Daddy all about it, and Mummy and Daddy sent a dikdik to bring her home.’

‘She was all right,’ said Ophelia tolerantly. ‘Just young.’

‘It was a good bit a venison though,’ said Yorik, looking wistfully at the last of the pumpkin fritters. ‘Take a bag of corn up with you, will you? We could do with a bit of meat.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever eaten deer meat,’ I said.

‘You will tonight,’ said Romeo. ‘Emerald’s a great cook. Great big roasts every night. You’ll have a lovely time,’ he promised me. ‘Won’t she Julie, sweetheart?’

‘Of course she will,’ said Juliet, picking bits of Malvolio’s spat-out corn off the table.

Werewolves. A house that was a Tree. Uncle Dusty who had long hair and gave the children rides. Eleanor the management consultant who had created the doctrine of neo-authoritarianism. Two murder victims, one with his throat ripped out and the other with his heart left resting by his body. And me.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be fantastic’.

W
hen you think of a tree house you think of Pooh and Piglet and their house in the wood, small and cute and ‘let’s have honey for tea’.

The Tree wasn’t like that at all.

The werewolves’ house grew on on a rocky hill surrounded by cliffs, streaked with wedgetail eagle droppings and littered with the occasional stubborn bush that hadn’t heard it was more comfortable to have soil around your roots.

In the midst of this barreness a single Tree towered over the landscape. It was as wide as my house at its base, but taller, taller, taller, so the top branches looked ready to fight the cliffs if they came any closer.

It was only as the floater drew closer that I could see the door at the base, the windows set within the trunk, the flattened lower branches that were presumably rooms and corridors.

Somewhere back in my past life I’d scrolled data on a building like this: a Newsteel framework that has the Tree cells force-grown around it, so that they eventually swallow the ‘steel and then keep growing to branch out above and around it.

Someone—or some werewolf—had spent a lot of money to create this—they must have bioengineering contacts too.

The rest of the werewolves’ valley looked green, even in the drought, though as I grew closer I realised the
green wasn’t grass at all, but some small-leafed ground cover that Neil would probably have recognised but was foreign to me. Whatever it was, it must have been expensive to seed the whole valley with it. The werewolves were doing well…

There were no gardens. A few shrubs sat calmly among alien greeness as though they’d wandered out of the bush beyond the valley ridges and decided to stay. There was no sign of deer, or any paddocks or fences for that matter, apart from the tall stone wall that stretched from cliff to cliff.

Presumably there was a gate somewhere, unless the inhabitants jumped the wall every time they wanted to leave their valley. Perhaps, I thought, that was exactly what they did.

Not that my floater needed gates either. We rose above the wall then descended again and crept over the close-cropped green towards a floater pad, apparently set on open signal. Without my telling it to, my floater circled around the Tree and landed in a rough courtyard bounded by blank-faced stone sheds.

I opened the door. The Tree rose above me, its branches casting dappled shadows around my feet. There were steps leading to a door and next to the door, a giant boulder, angled so it caught the afternoon sun.

A dog lay on the boulder, its head on its paws. It watched me as I crossed the courtyard. Its coat was black and grey and very long. A watch dog, I thought. From its vantage point on the boulder the dog could see the entire valley, as well as a close-up view of anyone arriving across the paddocks or from the floater pad.

I hesitated. What is the etiquette when you meet a dog in a house of werewolves? Click your fingers and say,
‘Here, boy! Good dog!’ Or say ‘Good morning, lovely weather isn’t it?’, then blush when the dog says ‘Woof’ and the human-shaped inhabitants giggle—or worse—are offended, as they peer at you through the window?

I compromised. ‘Hi,’ I said.

The dog raised its head, and suddenly and horribly I realised it wasn’t a dog at all.

The face was human. Human? No, the nose was too long. It was a snout, not a nose at all. The chin was almost nonexistent. The face was hairy too. But the eyes were human. They stared at me, intelligent and amused.

The dog—wolf—person—stood up stiffly, and suddenly, now it was upright, it became more recognisably human. Yes, long hair covered his legs and body, his shoulders looked too narrow and the joints looked subtly wrong. But now he was standing I could see he wore shorts that the long hair had covered before. He padded over to the floater and held out a hairy paw.

‘I don’t bite,’ he said.

‘I…I didn’t think you did.’

He grinned. ‘You wondered,’ he said. ‘Admit it. Could smell your fear.’

‘I wasn’t afraid.’

‘Don’t lie to a wolf. We’ve expert noses. I’m Dusty.’ He shrugged, which looked odd as well, though it was hard to tell why. Were the arms too long? ‘Uncle Dusty,’ he added.

‘Oh…Portia says hello then. She says you have nice hair.’

Dusty laughed. His teeth were long and white and the tongue looked just a little too flat, too wet, too red…what was the normal colour for a tongue? Somehow I knew it wasn’t this.

‘Precious kid,’ he said. ‘Adorable at that age. Pity they grow up.’

I nodded agreeably. As far as I was concerned the sooner kids grew up and stopped spitting cornmeal mush at you and clambering on laps with their grubby feet, the better. But it wasn’t a point I felt like arguing. Not given the size of the teeth and the hands that were too curled and clawed to really be called hands.

I glanced down. His feet were bare. And the nails were claws too.

He noticed. He grinned, and though his tongue lolled wetly the grin didn’t have quite the humour he’d shown before. ‘Please come in,’ he said formally. ‘Kind of you to help us,’ he added.

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know how much help I’ll be,’ I said. ‘Black Stump and Michael have an inflated idea of my abilities.’

I had sent a brief message to Michael to tell him where I’d gone. I had been grateful that his comsig was on message mode. I had no wish to speak to him.

‘Michael?’ said Uncle Dusty vaguely. ‘Right, yes, City bloke Eleanor works for.’ Another grin, this time with the faintest edge of wet tongue hanging out. ‘Don’t matter if you’re no help,’ he said frankly. ‘Gesture of solidarity. Shows neighbours that Black Stump trusts us. Reminds them we’ve influential friends.’

I blinked. ‘Ophelia? Romeo?’

He grinned at me damply. ‘The City.’

‘But I’m not from the City.’ Well not now, I added in my mind.

‘City friends. City floater. City influence. I’ll take your bag.’

He managed it quite well, despite the malformed—
no, wolf-formed—hands. I reached to open the front door for him, but there was no need. The door slid open automatically at our approach. Uncle Dusty grinned wetly again. ‘Retinal scan. Opens for any of us. You too when Eleanor programs you in. Hate doorhandles. Doors at Black Stump usually open.’

I stepped inside and blinked.

The room was enormous, and eerily dim, despite the windows that looked out over the valley. The room was simply too large for their light to penetrate the gloom.

At first glance it seemed a normal room. Then slowly my eyes began to pick out differences. A smell of dog, and fur and damp fresh wood. Walls that curved to an irregularly rounded ceiling. Scattered massive sofas, far too low and wider than the norm, as though the inhabitants curled up on them more often than they sat. There was a wide hearth before the giant fireplace, where even in today’s heat the remnants of a fire burnt.

There was a table too—Japanese, or maybe werewolf-style—low to the ground, with big cushions instead of chairs. The mats and cushions on the floor had a slightly tattered, chewed quality.

It looked like a room someone had tried to make normal, but it hadn’t worked. Or maybe they hadn’t known quite what a Truenorm room should look like.

There was no Terminal. No paintings on the stone walls, not even the kids’ sketches that covered the walls at Black Stump. I could smell cold ashes too, and fur and something sharp and pungent and almost familiar—a bit like the fertiliser pellets we fed into the irrigation system back home.

And there were cubs everywhere, wriggling and wrestling on the cushions, tumbling over the backs of the
sofas. Then they stopped and looked at me and as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I saw there were only three of them and they weren’t cubs at all, but children, a few years younger, perhaps, than Portia.

They stood up as I approached.

Uncle Dusty put my bag down on the floor and absently scratched behind his ear—with his hand, I was relieved to see, instead of dropping to all fours and aiming with his hind paw. ‘Connie, Bonnie, Johnnie,’ he said. ‘Kids, Danielle Forest.’

I never know what to say to children. Hello kids, would you like a new Realbeach, with genuine surf, Virtual seagulls and up-to-date software? I settled for ‘Hi’.

‘Hello,’ said the boy. There was no trace of growl about his voice. It was hard not to stare, to try to trace the wolf in his features. Narrow brown eyes, too-coarse hair, receding jaw, but the face was bare of hair and so were his arms. Too bare, I realised suddenly. Even children have down on their arms. The boy’s arms and possibly his face had been shaved, or permanently lasered, to make them human-like.

‘Are you here to solve the murders?’ asked one of the girls. Her ears stood up like a wolf’s and were pricked towards me and her wide nose sniffed in my direction. I hoped my scent was confident enough now to impress her.

‘Well, maybe,’ I said.

She snorted, a true child’s snort. ‘I bet my Mummy solves them before you do,’ she said, the furry ears flattening slightly. ‘My Mummy is best at everything.’

‘Er, well, yes, I’m sure she is,’ I said soothingly.

Someone laughed across the room. ‘You shouldn’t say
that unless you mean it. Not in this house. We can sniff out insincerity at twenty paces.’

A woman limped forward, into the light where I could see her. She was short but looked powerful, despite the narrow shoulders. Her body was lightly furred, her nose and mouth pure wolf, her neck almost nonexistent, but the eyes wide and surprisingly human. Surely, I thought, this couldn’t be Michael’s ‘brilliant’ and ‘extremely attractive’ Eleanor?

‘I’m Emerald. Auntie Emerald,’ she added wryly as though like her brother she could smell what I was thinking. ‘Eleanor’s my sister. And these gorgeous little beasts are my nieces and nephew! It’ll take a while for you to sort us out.’ Her voice was clearer and more human-like than her brother’s, despite what looked like an excess of teeth in the too-wide mouth. She held out a calloused, furry hand.

I shook it. Now she was closer I could see her nostrils, flexible and slightly moist.

She laughed. She and her brother seemed very keen on laughter. It must be a happy household, I decided. ‘I’m not as wolf-like as you first thought.’ Her voice was amused.

‘Well, no.’

‘We’re turning humaner and humaner each generation. Is there such a word as humaner? There ought to be. Human beats wolf in the long run it seems. A pity in a way, wolves are a nicer species. But not nearly as successful. Sit down. I’ll fetch some tea…or coffee?’

‘Tea would be fine.’

‘Eleanor is trying to turn me into a tea drinker. Can’t say I like it. Why heat stuff up just to let it cool down so you can drink it? She’ll be out in a few minutes. She’s in
her study, in that Virtual hook-up of hers. Extraordinary thing, isn’t it? You can even smell the people she’s been conferencing with…’

I frowned. ‘It doesn’t work that way. The Terminal picks up the other person’s scent, but it’s only transmitted as signals to the receiver’s brain. You can’t send a real smell over a Terminal.’

Emerald frowned, and the hair on her face creased. ‘Are you sure? It’s a shock sometimes, like her room is inhabited by ghosts.’

‘Maybe what you’re smelling is Eleanor’s reaction to whatever she’s received. Yes, that’d be it.’

‘Really?’ Emerald seemed more interested in the smells than the explanation. ‘Well, I’ll get the tea. Rusty isn’t here I’m afraid. He and the older kids have taken a load of venison down to one of the river Utopias. They won’t be back for a couple of days. Ah, here’s Eleanor now.’

A woman emerged from the shadows. But a woman like Eleanor can never really be in shadow. How can I describe her? She was small, but she gave the impression of height. She was slim, without the chunkiness of her sister, but I could see the muscles taut under her skin.

My first thought was that she didn’t look wolf-like at all. She moved like a Truenorm. It was only when you looked a second time that you realised how much she must have trained herself to do so.

Narrow shoulders. Awkward elbows. A long skirt that probably hid awkward wolf-style knees as well. Narrow brown eyes, but the brows that arched delicately over them, making them appear wider, appeared to have been plucked. Coarse black hair, and when she smiled I saw the skin inside her mouth was darker than Truenorm too.

But the nose and mouth were small, her face and arms bare of fur, her neck was human-like. If I hadn’t been told she was a wolf I’d have taken her for a slightly odd Truenorm.

Michael had called her beautiful—she wasn’t. She was compelling and assured and so she gave the impression of beauty. This was a woman who succeeded; who made a career of convincing others that they might succeed as well.

She was also—I saw to my surprise—extremely pregnant.

‘It’s lovely of you to help us!’ The voice was husky. She held out her hand—no, not paw-like at all—and when I began to shake her hand she covered mine with her other hand and pressed it warmly. ‘I’m Eleanor. And you’ve met my little cubs, and darling Uncle Dusty and Auntie Emerald too? Emerald, do get us some tea—Danielle here must be parched—and some biscuits; those lovely ones you made this morning.’

Despite the flattery she didn’t bother looking at Emerald as she spoke. Nor did Emerald seem to expect it. The confident aunt who had met me a few minutes before seemed to evaporate with her sister in the room. Emerald simply nodded, turned and limped off in what I presumed was the direction of the kitchen.

I wondered what accident had caused the limp.

‘Come into the study Danielle. Connie, sweetheart, do get that bone off the sofa. We eat at the table, remember?’ Then to me. ‘Chaos, isn’t it? We’re always like this. Now what shall we do? Pretend this is just a social visit or would you like to ask questions straight away? Dusty…’ She turned the full warmth of her smile onto him as she spoke. ‘Take Danielle’s bag up. The first room in the
second branch, don’t you think?’ She smiled at me. ‘It has a door!’ Then to Dusty ‘Thank you, darling. Bonnie, no, not the ball indoors. Take it outside, that’s my darlings.’

Ah, I thought. A manipulator. No wonder Michael likes her…