Mike Carey by Dead Men's Boots (v5)

Author:Dead Men's Boots (v5)
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9780446551458
Publisher: a cognizant original v5 release october 21 2010
Published: 2009-07-23T04:00:00+00:00

Susan Book’s doorbell played the first four bars of “Jerusalem.” For some reason that made me laugh, even though laughing hurt right then.

Juliet opened the door and stood there staring at me in silence, taking in all the details—the bruising on my face, the split lip, and the blood on my shirt. She nodded slowly as if acknowledging that I probably had a valid excuse. All the same…

“You’re an hour and a half late, Castor,” she said sternly.

“I know,” I answered. “And I’m sorry. I got held up.”

“At gunpoint?”

“At clawpoint. Can I come in before I fall down?”

She considered for a moment longer. “Yes,” she said. “All right. But we ate without you.”

She held the door open for me, and I lurched in out of the night. Susan Book bustled out of the kitchen wearing a Portmeirion apron—PASSION FLOWER, it said and showed—and opened her mouth to speak, but then she changed her mind and shut it again. She stared at me instead, blinking a few times as if to clear her vision.

“I’m really sorry, Sue,” I said. “I hope I didn’t spoil your evening. I was on my way here when something came up.”

“Would you like a drink?” asked Juliet, who knew me pretty well. I nodded. “Then come on through into the living room,” she said. She pronounced the phrase with careful emphasis, as though it were still a little alien to her. Some concepts were harder for her to get her head around than others.

“I think,” Susan said hastily, “that we should probably take Felix into the bathroom first.”

Juliet stared at her, momentarily puzzled. Susan pointed at the crusted blood on my shoulder, where the loup-garou’s claws had pierced the cloth of my greatcoat and dug deeply into the flesh beneath.

“Oh,” said Juliet. Wounds are something else she has to be reminded about, mainly because her own flesh (if that’s what it is) flows like water to heal itself on the rare occasions when she sustains any damage. “Yes. Of course. Do we have any disinfectant and bandages?”

It turned out they had both, and Susan did a good job of cleaning my wounds, although she drew in her breath slightly when she first saw them, her eyes widening. Examining myself with queasy fascination in the bathroom mirror, I could understand her reaction. I looked as though some huge bird of prey had scrabbled at my right shoulder, trying to pick me up, and then—judging from the bruising all over my torso—had given up the effort and dropped me from a great height onto some rocks.

“You met one of the were,” Juliet said. An observation, not a question.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “You remember Scrub?”

She frowned, consulting her memory. “The rat-man that worked for Lucasz Damjohn,” she said with no obvious emotion, although she had hated Damjohn enough to linger over his death and add a number of artistic flourishes to it. “You killed him at Chelsea Harbour.”

“I spiked him at Chelsea Harbour,” I corrected her. “Hit him with a hard enough chord sequence to push him out of the flesh he was hiding in.

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