the rain. Whining like a mosquito, it struck the steel sole of my left shoe and ricocheted into the coffee-machine. Like I said, it doesn't always do to move too fast.
With a shriek, the machine shattered, spraying hot coffee up the wall. I ground my teeth in fury—that coffee-machine and I went back a long, long way. But still I didn't move.
I let the next four bullets hit my feet before pulling the lever. The desk holster launched the little pistol into my hand. Then I moved.
Rolling off the chair, I jumped the man in the hat and shouldered the door shut. Just in time: the invisible shooter had already reloaded. Six fresh bullets bounced off the glass, just below my nameplate. I told the door to stay shut, no matter what, and heard the satisfying clicking sounds as it dead-bolted itself into the floor.
Knowing I was safe, I knelt down beside my visitor. The carpet he'd buried his face in was now soaked in blood as well as rainwater. Each time he breathed out he made little red bubbles. He made three more bubbles before giving up for good.
Great. Now I had a corpse on my hands, my office was a crime scene and I had to get my carpet cleaned—again.
And things just kept getting better.
I was about to roll the stiff on to his back, so as to get a good look at his face, when he started to twitch. Undead, I thought at once. It was the obvious conclusion. Feeling in need of a little extra protection, I tucked the pistol into my shoulder holster and grabbed my coat off the wall. Some folk might think it odd that a guy like me should turn to his coat in times of trial but, trust me, that coat and I go back even further than the coffee-machine.
I turned the coat inside-out four times until its lining was made of titanium (chain links, herringbone weave) and put it on.
When I turned back to look at the dead man in the hat, he was already halfway through changing into a wolf.
Okay, a word about werewolves. You've seen it all before. We all have. Feet stretching out to become enormous paws, fur exploding everywhere, this great, fanged muzzle punching out from inside the guy's jaw . . . all accompanied by a sound like a championship knuckle-cracking team making popcorn in a fireworks factory. Yeah, there was all that—there always is—but what most folk don't realize is that there's this weird kind of beauty to it all. No really, trust me, there is.
It roots me to the spot, is what I'm trying to say. Always has done. Seeing a body change like that, whether it's alive or dead, is like getting a glimpse of something you're not meant to see. Not that I want to get all sappy about it—it just gets to me, you know?
The thing is, it's not like it's really the body that's doing the changing. It's like the body is being changed from outside. Like there's this invisible sculptor picking things up and molding them into something else, rearranging them, whittling them like soft wood and pressing them like warm clay, only it's happening inside as well as outside. But, get this: it's gentle. The noise is moderately alarming, no question, but to look at . . . it's like poetry. And whenever I'm privileged enough to witness it, I get to thinking about who that sculptor might be, and where he might be, and what else he might get up to in his spare time . . .
Enough already. The changeover routine got to me a little, that's all you need to know. I stood like a tree while the dead guy in a hat turned into a dead wolf in a hat. When it was over, I snapped myself out of it and went over to examine the remolded corpse.
The first thing I did was check the beast's pulse. The last thing I wanted in my office was a gun-shot werewolf waking up and deciding lunch was served. I held my breath until I was happy the werewolf didn't have any of its own left to hold, then I set about working out what pack it belonged to.
They all belong to a pack, you see. Like a clan—it's a family thing. There are hundreds of packs scattered, mostly across Europe, although there's a big cluster in Siberia too. Each pack has its own badge. The