A Copper's Instinct: Chapter 11
Title: A Copper's Instinct
Fandom: Hot Fuzz
Characters/Pairings: Nicholas/Danny, Nicholas/OC, Doris, Bob, Andes, Saxon, Turners, OC
Rating: PG-15
Chaper 10
Nicholas awoke in cold rain, which was a bit odd, considering he couldn't remember falling asleep. He'd just been lying in a brief slant of warm spring sun on his fur, surrounded by little white-and-black scraps of his old, useless clothes and waiting interminably for something, some sort of plan of how to come to him and- that more or less answered himself, really, because he hadn't had the greatest sleep last night.
Danny is probably worried sick.
He swatted the unhelpful thought away and peeled himself off the puddle, the texture of which had become possibly even more disgusting when exposed to the wet.
It wasn't likely something else would come along soon that would mask his scent so well. Now or never.
*
Kinnell splashed carefully through a shallow stream, grimacing inwardly as the cold water soaked through his fur, and ducked under a thatch of low-hanging branches, nose to the ground, ears high. Up ahead, he could see the old sheep-track which ran over the hills, a gash in the trees fogged by a thin haze of rain. He'd cut across country as soon as he'd picked up Nicholas's scent, an old trail but so deep and ingrained and comfortable that it had to be outlining a route of special significance. He was pretty sure that Nicholas wouldn't be able to detect his smell if he came up the track from the direction of the village- which, if Kinnell's reasoning was correct, he probably would.
It was all about familiarity, in the end. There'd been a girl, one time, the only other one who'd ever found out he had the same condition as she did. She'd been less than willing to listen to him, and through a combination of bad timing and bad luck, it had come down to a full moon. He'd been startled to find that while she'd been happy to try and rip his face off with her nails when he was in his normal shape, the sight of him on four paws, looking the same as her, had made her cave in completely. It was a good thing to bear in mind, but he doubted that Nicholas would react the same way. No, he needed the wolf body right now for its speed and the element of surprise it might still give him, but he'd still give talking a try. It could still be a clean fetch, once all the collateral had been dealt with. Definitely not yet a disaster.
Kinnell backed a little way into the bushes, just shy of the track in a place where a natural bottleneck between two dense hedges meant anything that walked between them had only one way to go, and settled down to wait.
*
In the late afternoon drizzle, a wolf, fur slicked dark brown-red, picked its way across farmland and pastures. It kept downwind of the stables and sheep, in the vain hope that it would cover up the scent-trail, tail clamped between its legs to keep the glands muffled.
Keeping far clear of the roads, it kept casting about when it reached the crest of the Sandford valley, but it was picking up more and more confidence as it went along. It had not been found, so far, which made it more likely that it wouldn't be found at all. There was even a slight wag to the tail as it loped and crawled out of the open into more sheltered areas, giving a shake once it was under the cover of the trees.
“Nick,” barked a voice, curt and clear.
There was a wolf sitting at the top of the slight incline, where the trees thinned into the hedgerow. It was just as wet as the other, its flattened fur grey-brown and dark over most of its body and pale underneath, a compact, powerful-looking animal. It got to its feet as it spoke, tensed, at the ready.
"Don't run. There's no point.”
Freezing midshake, Nicholas found a brief and nearly rational urge to tear the smoke-like wolf to pieces, tail first. "You... you just destroyed my life, Alex. Those people were my friends. That job was my life. What am I expected to do in London? Live on the dole? It's more than just a job for me. If you thought you ever had the chance to tell me what to do, you've just gone and lost it with that stupid stunt. Keeping us protected? Safe? What a fucking joke."
Kinnell sniffed. “Ech. What's that stink? Oh, yeah. Big ol' reek of stupidity. You're not fooling anyone, Nick. You're mad at me because you know I'm right. I did what I had to do to show you."
His voice sounded subtly different in Canine. Less practiced, less persuasive, more forceful. As a human, his voice said listen to me, I know what I'm talking about. In Canine, it said listen to me, or be sorry.
"Our... condition- it's not like having fucking diabetes. You can't just take a shot every now and then and be like everyone else. We play at being normal, we pretend until we're found out. Some of us get more time to play than others. You've had thirty-three years, so I wouldn't push it if I were you.”
"Why?" snarled Nicholas. Despite the wet, his hackles were doing their very best to stand on end. "When'd they come for you? Were you eight, killing some chickens for a laugh? Or did they get you before your eyes were even open? ...Yeeah, I bet it was that. That mum story sounded all kinds of bullshit."
“Did it?” said Kinnell. “Actually, Alpha knew about me before I was born. I didn't know about them until I was twenty-one, when they came and offered me my dream job. They're here to help us, it's not my fault if you're too brainwashed to realise that.”
Nicholas actually shrank back against a tree in surprise at that, lip hitching and showing a bit of disgusted fang. "Dream job? You always wanted to go around ruining other people's personal and public lives? That's just..." He pressed forward again, forcing his frightened tail up and proud, lowering his head aggressively, switching quite suddenly from flight to fight.
"Just how many have you seduced, Kinnell?"
“I'm not at liberty to disclose information about past cases,” Kinnell told him, lowering his head truculently in response, his paws set squared and firm in the bracken. “I always wanted to be a detective. CID. Just like you always wanted to go around poking your nose in where it's not wanted and telling people they can't just trample all over the law. So I'd get off my high horse if I were you. 'Cause I'd never have had a chance if it wasn't for them.
He bared his teeth. "So your ignorance, yeah, I can understand, but less of the holier-than-thou attitude. Our government has no reason to trust us or our disease, let alone give them jobs like yours and mine. Type-A lycanthropes have killed people, Nick. And I'm not talking about government-sanctioned murder in a dark room with a team of witnesses behind you to tell everyone you had to, and I'm not talking about some crackhead no-one'll miss, either. From one animal to another...”
"Don't even start about that. I quit armed response. I made a choice to stop being involved when I saw it wasn't helping people the way I wanted to help them. For that matter, people have been killing other people ever since there WERE people. Why don't we just lock them all up for good measure? How many?" insisted Nicholas. "Thirty? A few hundred? Women? Children?"
“Think I can remember off the top of my head?” snapped Kinnell. “How many people've you arrested? Yeah, you had a choice, brilliant, good for you. We can't all help people 'the way we want.' There has to be accountability somewhere.”
"I'm going to say a lot of women, then," said Nicholas, easily, but under the fear and horror there was suddenly a lot of anger radiating out of his fur. "Did you play the gentleman?"
“Haha,” barked Kinnell. Wolves don't laugh, or at least they don't laugh the same way that humans do; the sound he made sounded as harsh and strange as an English word in the middle of a flood of fluent French.
“Don't flatter yourself, Nick. I do what I have to do, which means giving them what they want until I get what I want. If I wanted to get philosophical I could point out that's all a relationship is, anyway. My record's near-perfect, I've never had a single official complaint, so don't try painting me as some kind of lothario. You took exactly what you wanted, I didn't force you to do anything. Believe me, if I had that kind'f power I wouldn't have used it to get you to fucking kiss me, that's for sure.”
Nicholas's ears flattened and his eyes narrowed, but he didn't back away. "Yeah. Yeah, you just come across as charming and perfect and maybe a bit of a div, but that's okay because you've got a great arse and you're so damn nice they don't care, and if they're putting out before you have to turn them in, hey, why should you protest? It's just one of the perks of the job."
“Well, fuck you, too,” Kinnell replied. “And incidentally? You have no idea about me. You just have no fucking idea. Alpha is your only chance to have something approaching a normal life, can't you get that into your skull? This isn't some big puppy-kicking bad guy you have to defeat for the good of fucking mankind, are you really that naïve? I thought that sort of crap was the province of that fat, thick-headed coronary waiting to happen you call a partner.”
"You're not a lothario, Alex," said Nicholas, gently. "You wish you were. No, you're nothing but a whore. You seduce them, sleep with them, and get paid accordingly."
Kinnell laughed, again, dangerously. “Okay. Enough. You know what... you want to know the truth? Doesn't really matter much now, you're coming back with me if I have to drag you every inch by the neck, so here it comes. You had- have- an incredible mother who didn't just accept you for what you were, she kept you successfully hidden throughout your entire childhood. You got into the right schools, you passed all the right exams, you could do anything you wanted with your life, and you did. No-one ever told you you couldn't, you weren't allowed, no-one even told you there were rules- all your life, you've had the kind of free pass the rest of us saddled with this miserable hand of cards can only dream about. You've got a partner, friends who risked their arses for you, this entire village thinks you're their fucking saviour, their own personal Jesus Christ. You've got fucking everything, anyone'd think you'd be over the moon. But no. No. All you do is go around with a long face and piss and moan and bitch about not fitting in.”
He whined, mockingly, claws digging into the bracken. “Everyone haaates you. Oh, God, the responsibilityyy. You're sooo alone. I've had to listen to you going on about how hard you've got it every day for a week- have you got any idea how hard it's been not to laugh right in your face?”
Nicholas couldn't believe he'd ever found the man attractive.
"So you caught me on a bad week- which you've been exacerbating, by the way, by getting under everyone else's skin and having them take it out on me. What're you complaining about? I thought this was your dream job. Don't you enjoy getting caught up in various personal problems? It's like your own private soap, especially when you're supplying your own damn answers of 'frustrating gaps' and 'you're sooooo different'."
He simpered like a puppy, tail tucked low, a subservient caricature of Kinnell's DC persona.
“I said enough. Are you going to come quietly?”
Nicholas bared his teeth. "In your wet dreams."
“Fair enough,” shrugged Kinnell.
Then he-
-blurred and his tensed-up back legs stretched out to their full length and shot him across the space between them, jaws open, paws skimming the leaves, aimed straight for Nicholas and his bared neck.
But Nicholas rolled with the strike instead of trying to resist it like every instinct in his body was telling him, kicked a forepaw against Alex's ribcage to brace himself, and tore a tuft of fur out of Kinnell's shoulder.
Shit. he really hadn't fought a wolf since his uncle Derek, and that was puppy-fighting, where a twist of Derek's neck could send Nicholas bowling across slick kitchen linoleum, and this was nothing like human martial arts, which taught you how to move a human body against another human. This was all speed and teeth and crap, Kinnell was faster and better than him, of course he was, he spent his life bringing in reluctant wolves.
Kinnell twisted like an eel and sank his teeth into Nicholas's paw, ground down hard and drove his head inwards, twisting the captured limb while butting him hard in the ribs, bearing him to the ground.
Nicholas howled as the old stiff knife wound reopened, kicking up leaves and moldy clods of dirt in every direction, and slashed Kinnell across the face with his other paw. "Leave me the fuck alone!"
But Kinnell was done with talking. He yanked back in vicious reflex at the pain in his face, the other wolf's paw still between his teeth, then spat it out and twitched and suddenly there was a human knee in Nicholas's underside and a fist slamming into his muzzle, once, twice, numbing, dazing punches that covered that second of confusion and blurring fur, and then canine teeth locked in Nicholas's ruff and chewed down.
The fur around Nicholas's neck was a lot thinner than Kinnell's ruff, and he could get a better grip than Nicholas could, especially when Nicholas was half-staggering and cross-eyed from such an assault to the sensitive nerves around his muzzle and already beginning to feel the horrible urge to submit, to yield pack dominance and be done with it, there wasn't anything for him here...
Nicholas dug his claws into the earth and yanked away until he felt something give, hot and wet, around his neck, then immediately dove back in and snapped his teeth hard into Kinnell's rump. Kinnell wasn't the only one to know the specific weak spots of wolves. Thanks to Danny, Nicholas knew why canines loved their tailbone scratched, exactly how deep that pressure point would go, and, best of all, how sensitive- painful- someone else could make it.
A high-pitched yelp told him he'd struck a nerve- several, probably. Kinnell pulled away like he'd been burned, then darted in again behind him, half-reared-up and dragged his claws across Nicholas's back, bearing down deeply, as hard as he could. He lunged for his opponent's scruff again, then seemed to change his mind and sank his teeth hard into Nicholas's left ear.
Nicholas screamed.
Somewhere in the background of the pain- oh god he was going to tear it off- there was the revelation that he'd been forced to the ground, head twisted back and neck utterly, utterly exposed.
Kinnell was drooling badly, blood and spittle flecking his clenched teeth, pinning Nicholas down under his own body, twisting his exposed neck even further back as he breathed a last, satisfied promise into the bleeding ear.
“I'm... gonna find... your mum... myself.”
"NO!" Nicholas jerked forward, eyes closed, felt something inconcievably a part of him tear...
A heavy crashing in the undergrowth- confused shouts, movement- and the next instant the pressure on his back lifted, and Kinnell was gagging and choking above him, his snarling mouth gaping frantically open, writhing like an animal in a snare with a loose silver wire around his neck yanked suddenly tight.
“Got you,” said a voice so very low and dark and dangerous that it very nearly wasn't Danny's at all.
Nicholas whined in relief and pain, smearing his head against Danny's knee. He had no idea how Danny had got there, which was an unprecedented example of Danny being Batman, but it didn't even matter, because he couldn't recall being more relieved about his presence since the time Danny had shot the village doctor's foot off.
“I've got 'im right in the shot,” said another voice, and Doris pushed up behind them, stumbling a bit due to the absolute mammoth of a camcorder, circa probably 1986, held on her shoulder, squinched to her face. She seemed to be having a slight fundamental difficulty with which eye you were supposed to keep open while filming, but Kinnell was dead in her sights. "Evil little Russky bastard."
“Jus' make sure he's all you got,” said Danny, passing the restraint pole to Andy Wainwright, dragging Kinnell struggling and strangling backwards over the torn-up earth. Andy grabbed hold of it at arm's length as if there was a poisonous python on the other end, his face behind the sunglasses drawn into the kind of deep, deadly frown that suggested he wished he were smoking three cigarettes at once and even that wouldn't nearly be enough soothing nicotine to counteract having to deal with this sort of thing.
As soon as his hands were free Danny dropped and gathered up as much floppy furry bloody Nicholas as he could. He couldn't see if there was anything badly wrong straight away- there was too much fur and blood, so he started running his fingers carefully through his coat, searching for the worst cuts.
“'Ey. It's okay. It's gonna be fine.”
Trembling in his arms, Nicholas slopped Danny's face, trying not to flinch when blunt fingers snagged on bites and hidden bruises. There was something wrong with his ear, it moved through the air wrong when he twitched it forward and back.
Someone, who by the smell of awkward authority had to be Tony, snuck up behind Danny and poked him in the shoulder with a fluffy blue thermal blanket.
Danny took it and flopped it carefully over Nicholas's back. He touched the tip of the injured ear.
“Shit. BOB!”
“-don't care, j'stop squabbling over who gets to hold him, y'big girls- oi! Watch it, you nearly dropped it then! Keep 'im STILL!”
Bob clambered stiffly over a knee-high thicket of brambles and bent down, his knees crackling. Behind him, the Turner twins were clomping belatedly through the bracken, Owen still looking a bit wobbly and red in the face and Evan keeping a cautious hand near his shoulder just in case.
Danny held his breath as Bob examined the ear, then the worst of the rest. After a long, anxious pause, the old man patted Nicholas heavily on the head and grunted. “Geraun 'tvitnry. 'Eel be'aight.”
“Says you'll be alright,” said Danny, massively relieved. The ear looked nasty. “We'll get you to the vet, 'e won't ask questions.”
It appeared that the small crowd gathered among the dripping trees had been listening closely, or at least the art of it not currently occupied by keeping a maddened, struggling wolf restrained on a pole had been. There was a straggling sort of cheer.
"How about a hospital?" suggested Nicholas, taking advantage of the blanket to preserve a modicum of dignity- although after a day like today, he wasn't sure if it hadn't all shredded away like warm cloth on a hot filthy pavement. It didn't even register that the lingering effects of Kinnell's bastard taser had evidently worn off until he was wrapping the blanket around him up to his ears and voicing his own opinions.
God, it felt like he'd taken a good kicking, too, bleeding in half a dozen places with a semi-circle of ear just gone, his dirty fingers exploring the unnatural dip along the rim. He could even slot his thumb-
"Don't touch it," said Danny, sharply, restraining Nicholas's hand with the simple method of engulfing it in his own. He squeezed, gently. "You'll get pesticenia."
Kinnell strained at the pole, which was now being hung on to by both Andes, who were dividing their efforts between yanking savagely on the pole every time he moved and trying not to step on each other's feet. His teeth were bared in a manic snarl, but he clearly didn't dare to change while the camera lens was fixed on him like an accusing eye.
"Or a hard-on," murmured Nicholas into Danny's chest, so quietly that it was only audible through the vibrations. "Which would be a little awkwardly timed."
Danny stayed still for a moment, quiet, his chin tucked over the top of Nicholas's head.
“Oh, yeah- an' we got his thing.” He fished the taser out of his pocket and handing it across. Curiously, it was in an evidence baggie. “What're we gonna do with him?”
Nicholas didn't answer the question just yet, holding the baggie between thumb and forefinger and trying to synch the blanket a bit higher. He was staring at the rest of his team. Tony, hovering and uncertain; Doris, with her camera, hellbent on capturing blackmailing footage while the Andes used ancient sheep-wrangling techniques to push Kinnell's face into the ground; even the Turners had abandoned their post and their sleeping cycle to be there; and lastly Saxon and his master, the latter looking calm while the former looked worried and his tongue lolled, occasionally giving a toothy glance to the other canine in their midst.
"You sure they're okay with me?"
“You wanna take a vote? Nicky, they're here. It only took us so long 'cause Owen got cake on him an' puffed up like a pair'v bagpipes an' then we couldn't find the keys to the van. Next time, don't go runnin' off. I mean, I know why you did, but... you do need us too sometimes, right?”
"Yeah." Nicholas curled a little more, and realized his neck was bleeding. "I did. Do. M'sorry. They all looked so frightened."
“Think it's prob'ly safe to say they were a bit surprised,” said Danny. Then quite a few days of pent-up geekery and enthusiasm without a target boiled over and found an outlet at last, and he exploded. “Though, though not half as surprised's that prick when I nailed him in the face, earlier, right, you missed it 'cos you weren't there, he was all sort of like 'everyone stay calm!' an' I was like 'I'll show you fuckin' calm, an' wham, Christ, I don't think I ever hit anyone so hard in my life, not even Fergus Crabtree after Sally Ottley's nineteeth birthday party, I nearly dragon-punched 'im into next week.”
And at this flood of pure, undiluted Danny, Nicholas grabbed Danny by his lapels and tugged him down into a kiss, letting the blanket fall to the mountain range of knees and barely covered the rather important bits. In front of everyone. Who even cared anymore?
You rescued me.
Bob, the closest, turned his head and coughed.
Nicholas tasted like blood.
"I think- think I'm in love with you. The you that goes all enthusiastic like that, not the one that laughs at me behind my back. And I'm sorry I'm so confused about it, it still doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me, but- And I'm sorry about what I said in my office. I- um." Nicholas was blushing now, muttering under his breath and half into Danny's mouth. "I like coercing you. Sometimes. It just makes me feel weird."
Danny nuzzled his forehead, kissed him back. Hard.
"S'at mean you're staying, then?"
"After a personal errand. .....Danny, do you want to come and meet my mum?"
“Okay,” said Danny, although his voice hopped up a little in pitch. It was great that Nicholas wanted him to meet his mum, it was just that meeting people's mums sometimes didn't go quite right, for Danny. For a start, mums seemed to have a limited amount of tolerance for Ow My Eye.
"Yeah. I'd like that."
"Oi! Benders!"
Andy C had fallen over and was currently being dragged through the bracken, facefirst. Andy W was darting after the pole using Nicholas Angel's patented Swan Gathering Technique.
"Stop bein' fuckin' gay all over each other and give us a hand, then!"
“Course, you're gonna hafta put up with that f'rm them,” Danny said, under his breath, just before they both leapt for the pole. “They're probably at it an all, y'know that, right?”
Bunching the blanket around his hips like a bath towel, Nicholas got up out of the mussed, bled-on earth, and walked up the hill towards the ruckus. He watched the three big, heavy men get the pole back under control, keeping Kinnell in one place, if not still. There was a rising matching black eye on Cartwright's face.
Nicholas waited, crouching out of reach of the snapping teeth and blurring limbs and black tail, then snapped a hand out, snatching a ear between thumb and forefinger and squeezed with sharp, short fingernails. "I want a word."
“You... have no idea,” growled Kinnell, panting and squinting out of the eye closest to his pinioned ear, “how much shit you're going to be in, if you don't tell these fucking monkeys to let. Me. Go.”
"Really. How large is this Alpha of yours? How many Fetchers are there? Tell me exactly how much shit I'll be in, then."
“You think I'd tell you-” Kinnell made an attempt to force his voice level. “Come on, be reasonable. That's classified information. Tell them to get this thing off me, then we'll talk.”
"Kinnell," said Angel, patiently, twisting his grip. "When I told you to let me go, you punched me in the nose. When I asked before, you told me that you would when I'd calmed down and co-operated. And just so you know, wolves don't lie very well, so don't try."
The bitch of it was that it was true. The human part of the mind knew how to lie, of course, regardless of how many paws it happened to be walking around on. The wolf part, on the other hand, and the body... they just didn't have the vocabulary. Lies just didn't translate.
“I gave you every chance,” growled Kinnell. “Every chance and more. You forced it to this. I don't know how many there are. I've never met another one.”
"And how many wolves, would you estimate, are in the UK right now?"
“I don't know. Thousands, maybe- look, the sort of thing you're asking is top-level information, I don't know." Kinnell struggled. "Ever heard of not shooting the fucking messenger?”
Nicholas cuffed him across the muzzle with his other hand, not enough to be painful, but enough to shock. "I start thinking about it when the messenger rips my bloody ear off. And how many 'registered' wolves are being forced to live around Battersea? How many have you personally handed over, then?"
Kinnell choked, angrily. “Just over a hundred type-A's. And I don't know how many stay around Battersea, I don't see them again afterwards, alright? I don't know where they're asked to live.”
"Sounds like a close pack," said Nicholas in Canine, in utter sarcasm. Bob, just downwind, stiffened. "Let me guess- you're the Omega, always rushing about to please. I would have been a big fish to haul back for them to admire, yeah?"
“Alpha isn't a pack,” spat Kinnell. “It's a government organization, not a bunch of animals. People with lycanthropy aren't wolves! They always do it though, all of them, try to gather a pack around them, even if they don't know they're doing it, and all it does is make them easier to spot, for me and for anyone else who might be watching. Makes them weak.”
But Nicholas just laughed at him. "You haven't a clue how pathetic you are, do you? Why do you think I've won? How do you think you're still stronger than me, when you're the one pressed into the dirt with a collar around your neck? You have no idea how to function like a human or a wolf. You have no friends, no colleagues, no mate. You don't solve problems in a pack, you make them. My pack makes me- all of us- strong, and if Alpha tries to depose me again, they'll protect me, because I'm their leader, even if I'm not the same species."
The more he said, the more he believed it.
"You have no one to protect you, Alex, and that makes you weaker than a puppy."
Kinnell snarled. “You can't seriously be this thick. See if you can bear to let go of your ego and think about what you just said for a second. Your little team from the back of beyond, against the fucking government.”
"Oh, yes, the government. Because you think your Alpha will have enough balls to take on the pack that took down the deadliest village cult in England, improving the lives of all its citizens. You think that when you go back to HQ and tell your people that the humans in Sandford are ready to accept wolves and not go around burning down houses and rioting in the street, you think it won't leak? You think that other wolves, these thousands and thousands of wolves, won't come here seeking protection and form a megapack, living here peacefully among humans until they find themselves threatened by a little squealing shit like you? Hmm? What, may I ask, do you think will happen?"
Kinnell's ears flattened back. Wolves weren't that good at subtle human facial expressions, but another wolf could pretty much fill in the gaps from body language. He looked horrified, angry, scared.
Nicholas cuffed him again for good measure, let go his ear, and stood up, dragging his blanket higher. "Danny," he said, in English, the ragged tip of his ear twitching. "There's something coming. Something heavy. What is it?"
“Er.” Danny was peering through the trees towards the track, where the paddy wagon was already parked ('parked' in this case being a euphemism for 'slewed gently into the hedge with its back doors wide open.') “It's another van.”
Behind him, Owen mumbled something.
“The RSPCA,” clarified Evan. “We rang 'em special.”
Chapter 12
Fandom: Hot Fuzz
Characters/Pairings: Nicholas/Danny, Nicholas/OC, Doris, Bob, Andes, Saxon, Turners, OC
Rating: PG-15
Chaper 10
Nicholas awoke in cold rain, which was a bit odd, considering he couldn't remember falling asleep. He'd just been lying in a brief slant of warm spring sun on his fur, surrounded by little white-and-black scraps of his old, useless clothes and waiting interminably for something, some sort of plan of how to come to him and- that more or less answered himself, really, because he hadn't had the greatest sleep last night.
Danny is probably worried sick.
He swatted the unhelpful thought away and peeled himself off the puddle, the texture of which had become possibly even more disgusting when exposed to the wet.
It wasn't likely something else would come along soon that would mask his scent so well. Now or never.
*
Kinnell splashed carefully through a shallow stream, grimacing inwardly as the cold water soaked through his fur, and ducked under a thatch of low-hanging branches, nose to the ground, ears high. Up ahead, he could see the old sheep-track which ran over the hills, a gash in the trees fogged by a thin haze of rain. He'd cut across country as soon as he'd picked up Nicholas's scent, an old trail but so deep and ingrained and comfortable that it had to be outlining a route of special significance. He was pretty sure that Nicholas wouldn't be able to detect his smell if he came up the track from the direction of the village- which, if Kinnell's reasoning was correct, he probably would.
It was all about familiarity, in the end. There'd been a girl, one time, the only other one who'd ever found out he had the same condition as she did. She'd been less than willing to listen to him, and through a combination of bad timing and bad luck, it had come down to a full moon. He'd been startled to find that while she'd been happy to try and rip his face off with her nails when he was in his normal shape, the sight of him on four paws, looking the same as her, had made her cave in completely. It was a good thing to bear in mind, but he doubted that Nicholas would react the same way. No, he needed the wolf body right now for its speed and the element of surprise it might still give him, but he'd still give talking a try. It could still be a clean fetch, once all the collateral had been dealt with. Definitely not yet a disaster.
Kinnell backed a little way into the bushes, just shy of the track in a place where a natural bottleneck between two dense hedges meant anything that walked between them had only one way to go, and settled down to wait.
*
In the late afternoon drizzle, a wolf, fur slicked dark brown-red, picked its way across farmland and pastures. It kept downwind of the stables and sheep, in the vain hope that it would cover up the scent-trail, tail clamped between its legs to keep the glands muffled.
Keeping far clear of the roads, it kept casting about when it reached the crest of the Sandford valley, but it was picking up more and more confidence as it went along. It had not been found, so far, which made it more likely that it wouldn't be found at all. There was even a slight wag to the tail as it loped and crawled out of the open into more sheltered areas, giving a shake once it was under the cover of the trees.
“Nick,” barked a voice, curt and clear.
There was a wolf sitting at the top of the slight incline, where the trees thinned into the hedgerow. It was just as wet as the other, its flattened fur grey-brown and dark over most of its body and pale underneath, a compact, powerful-looking animal. It got to its feet as it spoke, tensed, at the ready.
"Don't run. There's no point.”
Freezing midshake, Nicholas found a brief and nearly rational urge to tear the smoke-like wolf to pieces, tail first. "You... you just destroyed my life, Alex. Those people were my friends. That job was my life. What am I expected to do in London? Live on the dole? It's more than just a job for me. If you thought you ever had the chance to tell me what to do, you've just gone and lost it with that stupid stunt. Keeping us protected? Safe? What a fucking joke."
Kinnell sniffed. “Ech. What's that stink? Oh, yeah. Big ol' reek of stupidity. You're not fooling anyone, Nick. You're mad at me because you know I'm right. I did what I had to do to show you."
His voice sounded subtly different in Canine. Less practiced, less persuasive, more forceful. As a human, his voice said listen to me, I know what I'm talking about. In Canine, it said listen to me, or be sorry.
"Our... condition- it's not like having fucking diabetes. You can't just take a shot every now and then and be like everyone else. We play at being normal, we pretend until we're found out. Some of us get more time to play than others. You've had thirty-three years, so I wouldn't push it if I were you.”
"Why?" snarled Nicholas. Despite the wet, his hackles were doing their very best to stand on end. "When'd they come for you? Were you eight, killing some chickens for a laugh? Or did they get you before your eyes were even open? ...Yeeah, I bet it was that. That mum story sounded all kinds of bullshit."
“Did it?” said Kinnell. “Actually, Alpha knew about me before I was born. I didn't know about them until I was twenty-one, when they came and offered me my dream job. They're here to help us, it's not my fault if you're too brainwashed to realise that.”
Nicholas actually shrank back against a tree in surprise at that, lip hitching and showing a bit of disgusted fang. "Dream job? You always wanted to go around ruining other people's personal and public lives? That's just..." He pressed forward again, forcing his frightened tail up and proud, lowering his head aggressively, switching quite suddenly from flight to fight.
"Just how many have you seduced, Kinnell?"
“I'm not at liberty to disclose information about past cases,” Kinnell told him, lowering his head truculently in response, his paws set squared and firm in the bracken. “I always wanted to be a detective. CID. Just like you always wanted to go around poking your nose in where it's not wanted and telling people they can't just trample all over the law. So I'd get off my high horse if I were you. 'Cause I'd never have had a chance if it wasn't for them.
He bared his teeth. "So your ignorance, yeah, I can understand, but less of the holier-than-thou attitude. Our government has no reason to trust us or our disease, let alone give them jobs like yours and mine. Type-A lycanthropes have killed people, Nick. And I'm not talking about government-sanctioned murder in a dark room with a team of witnesses behind you to tell everyone you had to, and I'm not talking about some crackhead no-one'll miss, either. From one animal to another...”
"Don't even start about that. I quit armed response. I made a choice to stop being involved when I saw it wasn't helping people the way I wanted to help them. For that matter, people have been killing other people ever since there WERE people. Why don't we just lock them all up for good measure? How many?" insisted Nicholas. "Thirty? A few hundred? Women? Children?"
“Think I can remember off the top of my head?” snapped Kinnell. “How many people've you arrested? Yeah, you had a choice, brilliant, good for you. We can't all help people 'the way we want.' There has to be accountability somewhere.”
"I'm going to say a lot of women, then," said Nicholas, easily, but under the fear and horror there was suddenly a lot of anger radiating out of his fur. "Did you play the gentleman?"
“Haha,” barked Kinnell. Wolves don't laugh, or at least they don't laugh the same way that humans do; the sound he made sounded as harsh and strange as an English word in the middle of a flood of fluent French.
“Don't flatter yourself, Nick. I do what I have to do, which means giving them what they want until I get what I want. If I wanted to get philosophical I could point out that's all a relationship is, anyway. My record's near-perfect, I've never had a single official complaint, so don't try painting me as some kind of lothario. You took exactly what you wanted, I didn't force you to do anything. Believe me, if I had that kind'f power I wouldn't have used it to get you to fucking kiss me, that's for sure.”
Nicholas's ears flattened and his eyes narrowed, but he didn't back away. "Yeah. Yeah, you just come across as charming and perfect and maybe a bit of a div, but that's okay because you've got a great arse and you're so damn nice they don't care, and if they're putting out before you have to turn them in, hey, why should you protest? It's just one of the perks of the job."
“Well, fuck you, too,” Kinnell replied. “And incidentally? You have no idea about me. You just have no fucking idea. Alpha is your only chance to have something approaching a normal life, can't you get that into your skull? This isn't some big puppy-kicking bad guy you have to defeat for the good of fucking mankind, are you really that naïve? I thought that sort of crap was the province of that fat, thick-headed coronary waiting to happen you call a partner.”
"You're not a lothario, Alex," said Nicholas, gently. "You wish you were. No, you're nothing but a whore. You seduce them, sleep with them, and get paid accordingly."
Kinnell laughed, again, dangerously. “Okay. Enough. You know what... you want to know the truth? Doesn't really matter much now, you're coming back with me if I have to drag you every inch by the neck, so here it comes. You had- have- an incredible mother who didn't just accept you for what you were, she kept you successfully hidden throughout your entire childhood. You got into the right schools, you passed all the right exams, you could do anything you wanted with your life, and you did. No-one ever told you you couldn't, you weren't allowed, no-one even told you there were rules- all your life, you've had the kind of free pass the rest of us saddled with this miserable hand of cards can only dream about. You've got a partner, friends who risked their arses for you, this entire village thinks you're their fucking saviour, their own personal Jesus Christ. You've got fucking everything, anyone'd think you'd be over the moon. But no. No. All you do is go around with a long face and piss and moan and bitch about not fitting in.”
He whined, mockingly, claws digging into the bracken. “Everyone haaates you. Oh, God, the responsibilityyy. You're sooo alone. I've had to listen to you going on about how hard you've got it every day for a week- have you got any idea how hard it's been not to laugh right in your face?”
Nicholas couldn't believe he'd ever found the man attractive.
"So you caught me on a bad week- which you've been exacerbating, by the way, by getting under everyone else's skin and having them take it out on me. What're you complaining about? I thought this was your dream job. Don't you enjoy getting caught up in various personal problems? It's like your own private soap, especially when you're supplying your own damn answers of 'frustrating gaps' and 'you're sooooo different'."
He simpered like a puppy, tail tucked low, a subservient caricature of Kinnell's DC persona.
“I said enough. Are you going to come quietly?”
Nicholas bared his teeth. "In your wet dreams."
“Fair enough,” shrugged Kinnell.
Then he-
-blurred and his tensed-up back legs stretched out to their full length and shot him across the space between them, jaws open, paws skimming the leaves, aimed straight for Nicholas and his bared neck.
But Nicholas rolled with the strike instead of trying to resist it like every instinct in his body was telling him, kicked a forepaw against Alex's ribcage to brace himself, and tore a tuft of fur out of Kinnell's shoulder.
Shit. he really hadn't fought a wolf since his uncle Derek, and that was puppy-fighting, where a twist of Derek's neck could send Nicholas bowling across slick kitchen linoleum, and this was nothing like human martial arts, which taught you how to move a human body against another human. This was all speed and teeth and crap, Kinnell was faster and better than him, of course he was, he spent his life bringing in reluctant wolves.
Kinnell twisted like an eel and sank his teeth into Nicholas's paw, ground down hard and drove his head inwards, twisting the captured limb while butting him hard in the ribs, bearing him to the ground.
Nicholas howled as the old stiff knife wound reopened, kicking up leaves and moldy clods of dirt in every direction, and slashed Kinnell across the face with his other paw. "Leave me the fuck alone!"
But Kinnell was done with talking. He yanked back in vicious reflex at the pain in his face, the other wolf's paw still between his teeth, then spat it out and twitched and suddenly there was a human knee in Nicholas's underside and a fist slamming into his muzzle, once, twice, numbing, dazing punches that covered that second of confusion and blurring fur, and then canine teeth locked in Nicholas's ruff and chewed down.
The fur around Nicholas's neck was a lot thinner than Kinnell's ruff, and he could get a better grip than Nicholas could, especially when Nicholas was half-staggering and cross-eyed from such an assault to the sensitive nerves around his muzzle and already beginning to feel the horrible urge to submit, to yield pack dominance and be done with it, there wasn't anything for him here...
Nicholas dug his claws into the earth and yanked away until he felt something give, hot and wet, around his neck, then immediately dove back in and snapped his teeth hard into Kinnell's rump. Kinnell wasn't the only one to know the specific weak spots of wolves. Thanks to Danny, Nicholas knew why canines loved their tailbone scratched, exactly how deep that pressure point would go, and, best of all, how sensitive- painful- someone else could make it.
A high-pitched yelp told him he'd struck a nerve- several, probably. Kinnell pulled away like he'd been burned, then darted in again behind him, half-reared-up and dragged his claws across Nicholas's back, bearing down deeply, as hard as he could. He lunged for his opponent's scruff again, then seemed to change his mind and sank his teeth hard into Nicholas's left ear.
Nicholas screamed.
Somewhere in the background of the pain- oh god he was going to tear it off- there was the revelation that he'd been forced to the ground, head twisted back and neck utterly, utterly exposed.
Kinnell was drooling badly, blood and spittle flecking his clenched teeth, pinning Nicholas down under his own body, twisting his exposed neck even further back as he breathed a last, satisfied promise into the bleeding ear.
“I'm... gonna find... your mum... myself.”
"NO!" Nicholas jerked forward, eyes closed, felt something inconcievably a part of him tear...
A heavy crashing in the undergrowth- confused shouts, movement- and the next instant the pressure on his back lifted, and Kinnell was gagging and choking above him, his snarling mouth gaping frantically open, writhing like an animal in a snare with a loose silver wire around his neck yanked suddenly tight.
“Got you,” said a voice so very low and dark and dangerous that it very nearly wasn't Danny's at all.
Nicholas whined in relief and pain, smearing his head against Danny's knee. He had no idea how Danny had got there, which was an unprecedented example of Danny being Batman, but it didn't even matter, because he couldn't recall being more relieved about his presence since the time Danny had shot the village doctor's foot off.
“I've got 'im right in the shot,” said another voice, and Doris pushed up behind them, stumbling a bit due to the absolute mammoth of a camcorder, circa probably 1986, held on her shoulder, squinched to her face. She seemed to be having a slight fundamental difficulty with which eye you were supposed to keep open while filming, but Kinnell was dead in her sights. "Evil little Russky bastard."
“Jus' make sure he's all you got,” said Danny, passing the restraint pole to Andy Wainwright, dragging Kinnell struggling and strangling backwards over the torn-up earth. Andy grabbed hold of it at arm's length as if there was a poisonous python on the other end, his face behind the sunglasses drawn into the kind of deep, deadly frown that suggested he wished he were smoking three cigarettes at once and even that wouldn't nearly be enough soothing nicotine to counteract having to deal with this sort of thing.
As soon as his hands were free Danny dropped and gathered up as much floppy furry bloody Nicholas as he could. He couldn't see if there was anything badly wrong straight away- there was too much fur and blood, so he started running his fingers carefully through his coat, searching for the worst cuts.
“'Ey. It's okay. It's gonna be fine.”
Trembling in his arms, Nicholas slopped Danny's face, trying not to flinch when blunt fingers snagged on bites and hidden bruises. There was something wrong with his ear, it moved through the air wrong when he twitched it forward and back.
Someone, who by the smell of awkward authority had to be Tony, snuck up behind Danny and poked him in the shoulder with a fluffy blue thermal blanket.
Danny took it and flopped it carefully over Nicholas's back. He touched the tip of the injured ear.
“Shit. BOB!”
“-don't care, j'stop squabbling over who gets to hold him, y'big girls- oi! Watch it, you nearly dropped it then! Keep 'im STILL!”
Bob clambered stiffly over a knee-high thicket of brambles and bent down, his knees crackling. Behind him, the Turner twins were clomping belatedly through the bracken, Owen still looking a bit wobbly and red in the face and Evan keeping a cautious hand near his shoulder just in case.
Danny held his breath as Bob examined the ear, then the worst of the rest. After a long, anxious pause, the old man patted Nicholas heavily on the head and grunted. “Geraun 'tvitnry. 'Eel be'aight.”
“Says you'll be alright,” said Danny, massively relieved. The ear looked nasty. “We'll get you to the vet, 'e won't ask questions.”
It appeared that the small crowd gathered among the dripping trees had been listening closely, or at least the art of it not currently occupied by keeping a maddened, struggling wolf restrained on a pole had been. There was a straggling sort of cheer.
"How about a hospital?" suggested Nicholas, taking advantage of the blanket to preserve a modicum of dignity- although after a day like today, he wasn't sure if it hadn't all shredded away like warm cloth on a hot filthy pavement. It didn't even register that the lingering effects of Kinnell's bastard taser had evidently worn off until he was wrapping the blanket around him up to his ears and voicing his own opinions.
God, it felt like he'd taken a good kicking, too, bleeding in half a dozen places with a semi-circle of ear just gone, his dirty fingers exploring the unnatural dip along the rim. He could even slot his thumb-
"Don't touch it," said Danny, sharply, restraining Nicholas's hand with the simple method of engulfing it in his own. He squeezed, gently. "You'll get pesticenia."
Kinnell strained at the pole, which was now being hung on to by both Andes, who were dividing their efforts between yanking savagely on the pole every time he moved and trying not to step on each other's feet. His teeth were bared in a manic snarl, but he clearly didn't dare to change while the camera lens was fixed on him like an accusing eye.
"Or a hard-on," murmured Nicholas into Danny's chest, so quietly that it was only audible through the vibrations. "Which would be a little awkwardly timed."
Danny stayed still for a moment, quiet, his chin tucked over the top of Nicholas's head.
“Oh, yeah- an' we got his thing.” He fished the taser out of his pocket and handing it across. Curiously, it was in an evidence baggie. “What're we gonna do with him?”
Nicholas didn't answer the question just yet, holding the baggie between thumb and forefinger and trying to synch the blanket a bit higher. He was staring at the rest of his team. Tony, hovering and uncertain; Doris, with her camera, hellbent on capturing blackmailing footage while the Andes used ancient sheep-wrangling techniques to push Kinnell's face into the ground; even the Turners had abandoned their post and their sleeping cycle to be there; and lastly Saxon and his master, the latter looking calm while the former looked worried and his tongue lolled, occasionally giving a toothy glance to the other canine in their midst.
"You sure they're okay with me?"
“You wanna take a vote? Nicky, they're here. It only took us so long 'cause Owen got cake on him an' puffed up like a pair'v bagpipes an' then we couldn't find the keys to the van. Next time, don't go runnin' off. I mean, I know why you did, but... you do need us too sometimes, right?”
"Yeah." Nicholas curled a little more, and realized his neck was bleeding. "I did. Do. M'sorry. They all looked so frightened."
“Think it's prob'ly safe to say they were a bit surprised,” said Danny. Then quite a few days of pent-up geekery and enthusiasm without a target boiled over and found an outlet at last, and he exploded. “Though, though not half as surprised's that prick when I nailed him in the face, earlier, right, you missed it 'cos you weren't there, he was all sort of like 'everyone stay calm!' an' I was like 'I'll show you fuckin' calm, an' wham, Christ, I don't think I ever hit anyone so hard in my life, not even Fergus Crabtree after Sally Ottley's nineteeth birthday party, I nearly dragon-punched 'im into next week.”
And at this flood of pure, undiluted Danny, Nicholas grabbed Danny by his lapels and tugged him down into a kiss, letting the blanket fall to the mountain range of knees and barely covered the rather important bits. In front of everyone. Who even cared anymore?
You rescued me.
Bob, the closest, turned his head and coughed.
Nicholas tasted like blood.
"I think- think I'm in love with you. The you that goes all enthusiastic like that, not the one that laughs at me behind my back. And I'm sorry I'm so confused about it, it still doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me, but- And I'm sorry about what I said in my office. I- um." Nicholas was blushing now, muttering under his breath and half into Danny's mouth. "I like coercing you. Sometimes. It just makes me feel weird."
Danny nuzzled his forehead, kissed him back. Hard.
"S'at mean you're staying, then?"
"After a personal errand. .....Danny, do you want to come and meet my mum?"
“Okay,” said Danny, although his voice hopped up a little in pitch. It was great that Nicholas wanted him to meet his mum, it was just that meeting people's mums sometimes didn't go quite right, for Danny. For a start, mums seemed to have a limited amount of tolerance for Ow My Eye.
"Yeah. I'd like that."
"Oi! Benders!"
Andy C had fallen over and was currently being dragged through the bracken, facefirst. Andy W was darting after the pole using Nicholas Angel's patented Swan Gathering Technique.
"Stop bein' fuckin' gay all over each other and give us a hand, then!"
“Course, you're gonna hafta put up with that f'rm them,” Danny said, under his breath, just before they both leapt for the pole. “They're probably at it an all, y'know that, right?”
Bunching the blanket around his hips like a bath towel, Nicholas got up out of the mussed, bled-on earth, and walked up the hill towards the ruckus. He watched the three big, heavy men get the pole back under control, keeping Kinnell in one place, if not still. There was a rising matching black eye on Cartwright's face.
Nicholas waited, crouching out of reach of the snapping teeth and blurring limbs and black tail, then snapped a hand out, snatching a ear between thumb and forefinger and squeezed with sharp, short fingernails. "I want a word."
“You... have no idea,” growled Kinnell, panting and squinting out of the eye closest to his pinioned ear, “how much shit you're going to be in, if you don't tell these fucking monkeys to let. Me. Go.”
"Really. How large is this Alpha of yours? How many Fetchers are there? Tell me exactly how much shit I'll be in, then."
“You think I'd tell you-” Kinnell made an attempt to force his voice level. “Come on, be reasonable. That's classified information. Tell them to get this thing off me, then we'll talk.”
"Kinnell," said Angel, patiently, twisting his grip. "When I told you to let me go, you punched me in the nose. When I asked before, you told me that you would when I'd calmed down and co-operated. And just so you know, wolves don't lie very well, so don't try."
The bitch of it was that it was true. The human part of the mind knew how to lie, of course, regardless of how many paws it happened to be walking around on. The wolf part, on the other hand, and the body... they just didn't have the vocabulary. Lies just didn't translate.
“I gave you every chance,” growled Kinnell. “Every chance and more. You forced it to this. I don't know how many there are. I've never met another one.”
"And how many wolves, would you estimate, are in the UK right now?"
“I don't know. Thousands, maybe- look, the sort of thing you're asking is top-level information, I don't know." Kinnell struggled. "Ever heard of not shooting the fucking messenger?”
Nicholas cuffed him across the muzzle with his other hand, not enough to be painful, but enough to shock. "I start thinking about it when the messenger rips my bloody ear off. And how many 'registered' wolves are being forced to live around Battersea? How many have you personally handed over, then?"
Kinnell choked, angrily. “Just over a hundred type-A's. And I don't know how many stay around Battersea, I don't see them again afterwards, alright? I don't know where they're asked to live.”
"Sounds like a close pack," said Nicholas in Canine, in utter sarcasm. Bob, just downwind, stiffened. "Let me guess- you're the Omega, always rushing about to please. I would have been a big fish to haul back for them to admire, yeah?"
“Alpha isn't a pack,” spat Kinnell. “It's a government organization, not a bunch of animals. People with lycanthropy aren't wolves! They always do it though, all of them, try to gather a pack around them, even if they don't know they're doing it, and all it does is make them easier to spot, for me and for anyone else who might be watching. Makes them weak.”
But Nicholas just laughed at him. "You haven't a clue how pathetic you are, do you? Why do you think I've won? How do you think you're still stronger than me, when you're the one pressed into the dirt with a collar around your neck? You have no idea how to function like a human or a wolf. You have no friends, no colleagues, no mate. You don't solve problems in a pack, you make them. My pack makes me- all of us- strong, and if Alpha tries to depose me again, they'll protect me, because I'm their leader, even if I'm not the same species."
The more he said, the more he believed it.
"You have no one to protect you, Alex, and that makes you weaker than a puppy."
Kinnell snarled. “You can't seriously be this thick. See if you can bear to let go of your ego and think about what you just said for a second. Your little team from the back of beyond, against the fucking government.”
"Oh, yes, the government. Because you think your Alpha will have enough balls to take on the pack that took down the deadliest village cult in England, improving the lives of all its citizens. You think that when you go back to HQ and tell your people that the humans in Sandford are ready to accept wolves and not go around burning down houses and rioting in the street, you think it won't leak? You think that other wolves, these thousands and thousands of wolves, won't come here seeking protection and form a megapack, living here peacefully among humans until they find themselves threatened by a little squealing shit like you? Hmm? What, may I ask, do you think will happen?"
Kinnell's ears flattened back. Wolves weren't that good at subtle human facial expressions, but another wolf could pretty much fill in the gaps from body language. He looked horrified, angry, scared.
Nicholas cuffed him again for good measure, let go his ear, and stood up, dragging his blanket higher. "Danny," he said, in English, the ragged tip of his ear twitching. "There's something coming. Something heavy. What is it?"
“Er.” Danny was peering through the trees towards the track, where the paddy wagon was already parked ('parked' in this case being a euphemism for 'slewed gently into the hedge with its back doors wide open.') “It's another van.”
Behind him, Owen mumbled something.
“The RSPCA,” clarified Evan. “We rang 'em special.”
Chapter 12