Skulk (6 page)

And then I knew where I wanted to go first. I turned on the spot, trying to find my bearings, and then set off, springing across the roof along the line of shops, heading west.

I reached Acton much quicker, and much less tired, than I’d expected. My paws were hardly even sore, even though I’d been running along the half-empty streets for at least half an hour.

I found E3’s masterpiece, hidden from the road down a cut-through alley crowded with weeds and rubbish, and I sat back on my haunches and stared. My ears flattened against my head in disappointment and a sigh turned into a hiss as it escaped my jaws.

I’d seen photos of the
Arabian Dragons
on the forums. I knew that the painting was intricate and beautiful, two dragons entwined in a fight or a dance, in vivid red and green. And they were there alright – I could make out the faint shape of their outline against the brickwork over my head, the dim, fuzzy sweeps of colour taunting me with their shades of brown and more brown.

Foxes were colour-blind. I don’t know how I’d not realised – I guess on the night-time streets everything was orange-tinted and dim. Their – our – sense of smell was like a second sight. It made up for the indistinct edges of things and for not being great at traffic lights. Even now I could scent dirt from the path, oil and smoke and sharpness rising from the nearby train tracks. I could smell the water in the drains, full of
foul
and
fresh
all at once. There was a sticky kind of plant smell coming from the weeds by the fence, and I could smell an animal scent too, something acrid but vividly alive and strangely mouth-watering. I wondered if it was a rat.

But none of it was any use to me now. I’d come all this way to see the
Dragons
, liberated by my new body – but to really see them, I needed my old eyes back.

Well,
I thought.
I have to know, anyway. I had to try it sometime
.

It was strange to realise it, but clubbing and spiders and wardrobes aside, there were a lot of things about my human life I would miss.

Like red, and green.

I drew in a deep breath and shut my eyes, concentrating, trying to remember what it felt like to be human. My rib cage stretched out... and kept stretching. My claws scraped the dirt as my fingers spread and lengthened. I flexed my back muscles and they started to twist, my spine clicking weirdly as new vertebrae popped into existence.

It stopped being like stretching and became a feeling like air flowing into a void. I could feel cold, exposed skin on my arms and legs and stomach. I opened my eyes.

Just for a second – less than a second – there was a burst of light. It was too bright. The scents were too sharp. I could see everything, scent everything. I could do anything. It was too perfect, too much.

Then it was gone. I couldn’t smell the water or the dirt. My mouth felt shallow and soft. I could still feel the bruise across my lips. It tasted of purple. My teeth clacked together and my knees shook as I stood up.

Two things hit me as I shook off the change.

First – my God, it was
so
beautiful
. I had no idea. The dragons were both made of letters. Arabic lettering, words and sentences coiling around themselves, forming wings and claws. “Vivid” barely scratched the surface. The colours seemed to radiate heat and movement and life off the bare brick wall in front of me.

And then, second – oh God, I was
so naked
.

I gasped, swallowing a mouthful of cold, dulled scents. I threw my arms up awkwardly across my chest, as if my
chest
was my biggest problem, and twitched away from the road, pressing back against the wall. It was rough and freezing on my skin, but I didn’t dare move away. Shoulder-to-shoulder with the red dragon, I shivered with every beat of my pounding heart.

Stupid.
Stupid
. What did I think would happen? I’d left my clothes in an alley.

A clatter sent shocks like electric sparks shooting up my spine, and I flinched back and changed again.

The first few times, every change felt different. Instead of panicked writhing or intense stretching, this time it was pure animal instinct, and it felt like taking a great leap backwards into my own body. There was a second’s confused twisting and then I landed on the rough ground on all four paws, crouched and ready to run. And just in time, because a man rounded the corner and opened his fly, peeing a solid stream of
foul-male-drunk-urine
against the wall.

With a sigh – a huff of air through my muzzle that tickled the fur under my nose – I turned and slunk away.

I was just a few bus stops’ distance from my house when I saw the patch of fog floating down the middle of the deserted street.

I’d just turned onto one of the little side streets off the main road, where antiques and jewellery shops huddled together like they were sharing a secret they didn’t want the upstart fashion boutiques next door to hear. Dickensian carved signs cast elaborate shadows over steel shutters with high-vis security logos.

The fog was like a fixed, contained column of smoke, or a cloud that had come down to earth – or as though the legendary London fog of the 1800s had returned to one incredibly specific spot.

I was staring at it, wondering if something in the road was on fire, when it moved. I gasped, scenting something tangy and sparkling on the back of my tongue, and crouched back on my haunches. Tendrils of fog reached out, like a thousand tiny tentacles, and then the rest of the cloud followed, rolling along the street.

Another movement: a man in a leather jacket turned a corner and came walking down the street, right towards the fog. I watched him walk right up to it and not give it a single glance. As he passed it, the fog swirled its tendrils out around his head, but then drew back.

Hadn’t the fox-man said…?

“Please. The fog...”

Was this something only fox-people could see? What
was
it? What was he trying to tell me about it?

I got to my paws and took a deep sniff of the air. That tangy scent again – something like electricity, but less physical somehow. It tasted of bright lights. It filled my jaws with imaginary fizzing. I couldn’t feel it, I just
knew
it.

Magic?
I wondered.

I took a step forward.

“Hey! Vixen!”

I skittered around, my claws clattering on the pavement. There was another fox standing behind me. He was a male, with a grey streak between his eyes and deep red socks on his paws. He smelled of
male
and
fox
... and something chemical I didn’t recognise. There was something at his feet... a small black bag with something lumpy inside.

“Yes, you,” he snarled. His black lips drew back, showing me his teeth. I felt my fur bristle and my throat tighten. “Get away from that thing,” the fox barked.

I turned back. The fog was closer now. It reached out its tendrils and rolled forward, faster, right towards me. I took a couple of faltering steps away. The fog kept coming.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Don’t ask bloody stupid questions, just run!”

I felt something snatch at my brush and yelped, tugging it away from the grasping tendril of fog. The other fox turned and bounded away in a flash of orange. I leapt after him. He turned into an alley like a fuzzy bullet and I skidded along in his wake. He was all line and muscle and grace as he jumped up onto the back of a car and a tall council bin and the low roof of a garden shed. I tried to follow, but I slipped on the car, leaving ragged scratches in the paintwork and sliding off again.

“Come on,” he shouted down from the shed. I looked back. Fog-tentacles were coiling around the corner of the building, glowing bright and dirty orange in the street light. I took a shaky step back and jumped up onto the car, steadied myself and made the leap up onto the bin, and then to the thankfully rough and graspable roof of the shed.

As soon as I’d made it, the fox was off again. He jumped down into a scrubby garden and headed for a tiny hole under a fence.

“Wait,” I called, jumping down after him. The impact was hard on my paws, but I recovered.

He hesitated for a moment, tossing his head. More of his composure seemed to return to him and he preened, looking down his nose at me. “Do you want to lose it or not, darling? Let me tell you, that thing’ll do more than pull your pigtails if it catches us.”

I followed him across two gardens, up a slippery climbing frame and over a row of garages. Finally he jumped up through a metal railing onto someone’s private balcony and came to a halt. I clambered after him and sat, panting and staring.

He smirked at me. He still looked like a fox, but I could read his smirk in the way his eyes narrowed and his ears twitched. I felt so clumsy next to him, and it wasn’t just that I was new at this. Something told me this fox had more grace and poise than I’d ever have.

“What was that? Who are you?” I panted. “Are you like me?”

“If by ‘like me’ you mean ‘a shifter’, then yes,” said the fox.

“Shifter.” I rolled the word around my mouth. “Wait, how are we talking? Are we making sounds?”

“My word,” said the fox, “you really are new to this, aren’t you, love?”

“I have absolutely no idea what’s happening to me,” I admitted.

“
Well
,” he said, sitting back on his haunches and curling his brush neatly around his paws, “it’s certainly lucky for you I came along. Top tip: you don’t want to get caught in the fog.”

“Um. Thanks,” I said. “Um. My name’s Meg.”

“James Farringdon,” the fox said, getting to his paws and giving a deep bow. “It’s been a pleasure, but I should really be going.” He picked up the bag in his jaws again. It rattled.

“What, now?” I sprang to my paws. “Can’t you… I mean… can’t you tell me more about this? What’s a shifter? Is it just like shapeshifting? How did this happen? Am I... am I safe?”

“Ish,” said James through the mouthful of bag. He blinked at me and then put it down again. “Look, dear, I’ve been doing this for a while, and there’s not much more to say. We’re people who can change into foxes. What you choose to do with that is entirely up to you.” He licked his muzzle thoughtfully with a thin pink tongue. “Although... which one died?”

“What?” I shook my head.

“You’re new. So one of the others must have died.”

“There are others?”

James rolled his eyes. Fox-face and everything, they actually rolled.

“Well,
yes
. Did you think it was just you and me?”

I sat back on my haunches and scratched my ear. After a couple of scratches, I realised I was doing it with my back leg.

“So, what? I got it from the dead guy? Like a disease or something?”

“That’s how it works.”

So, it wasn’t the stone. I frowned.
But then the stone and the fog and the shifting – how are they connected?

“Can you describe him?” James Farringdon asked, his claws flexing impatiently on the balcony. “Was he black?”

“Um... no, er, he was white. Short hair. Brownish.”

“Ah. That would be the nurse chap. Too bad, he was a bit of all right. Now, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to leave now and I don’t mean for us to meet again.”

If there was a right way to take that, I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Why not?” I whined.

He narrowed his eyes at me – I thought I could sense another little smirk. “I generally avoid the Skulk. I don’t play well with others. Good morning.” With that he took up his little bag, turned and leapt off the balcony, sprang from fence post to car roof and disappeared into the darkness.

I stared after him for a few minutes, my mind racing.

He hadn’t mentioned the jewel. Could it be it had nothing at all to do with the shapeshifting? But then what was it? The man had been a nurse.

One of the Skulk.

CHAPTER FIVE

The next morning, Gail barged into my room to wake me up for breakfast at half past eight, even though it was a Sunday. The full strangeness of the night’s adventure came screaming back as I sat up to glare blearily at her, and I got my legs tangled in my blanket and faceplanted onto the floor. Then when she’d finished tutting at my gracelessness and left I made it to my chest of drawers only to find there was a spider in my bra.

The day only got worse from then on.

There are a couple of problems that shapeshifting into a fox just doesn’t solve. Lack of sleep is one. Replacing lost keys and Oystercards and mobile phones, without having to explain how the “mugging” also left you naked, is another.

And then there’s my mum.

“...ready by five,” she said, at breakfast. I blinked. She gave me a look as though, hangover or not, I was getting on
simply
her
very last nerve
. I’d been wolfing my muesli and not listening to her. “Margaret, will you please come back to planet Earth for just two minutes? The party starts at six, so I’d like you to be ready by five, understood?”

Oh God. What party?
I crunched slowly on my mouthful of wholewheat grains to cover the fact I was racking my brains.

“I’ll have Gail lay out your outfit,” Mum went on. My heart sank.

“Mum, there’s no need–”

“No excuses, I won’t have you turning up in jeans like last time.” Her lips pursed and her thin fingers tightened on her knife as she spread a violently thin layer of jam on her wholewheat muffin. I braced for a rant – how she didn’t care if it was
fashionable
it had been so
embarrassing
and the people had been so
important
and how everyone was
shocked
and she was
humiliated
by my
constant rebellion
and...

Gail saved me, for once.

“Excuse me, Mrs Banks,” she said, taking a respectful loitering half-step into the room. “I have the Chief Whip on the telephone.”

Mum rolled her eyes, took a long and deliberate sip of her tea and then stood up.