Ekaterina Sedia - Running with the Pack

This was true up to a point; at which Hayden stopped short, and threw himself back on the bed for a luxuriously bone-cracking stretch among the sheets. Had he been only slightly more open to self-examination, he might have gone on to consider both the nature of the attack—the damage done, the extent of the retribution—and the way it made him feel at the time. The buzz, the mega bloody buzz: he could still feel its aftermath, like the tail-end of a marathon coke binge. As it was, all he could think about was breakfast.

Naturally, only the full English would do. Hayden called room service to see if it could be fetched up now, immediately, right away; no question of waiting. When it appeared some minutes later—brought up by Jimmy Tsui, of all people—Hayden was waiting at the door like a zoo animal that hadn’t been fed in a fortnight.

“How you feeling?” inquired Jimmy, wheeling the trolley through into the bedroom before Hayden could wrest it from his grip and fall on the contents there and then. “Hope your medicine is—working out?”

“It’s fine,” Hayden assured him through a mouthful of undercooked sausage. “Look—” pulling back his cheek to reveal the problem grinder. “Worked overnight. Amazing.”

Jimmy stared at Hayden’s exposed dentistry; and as he stared, his own mouth fell indecorously open. Backing up rapidly, he waved away the proffered tip, and was out of the door before Hayden could press the folded bills into his hand. His parting shot came back along the corridor: “All part of the service! Enjoy!”

Shrugging it off, Hayden returned to his breakfast. God, it was great to be able to eat like a man again, and not some toothless old dear! He bit down hard on a crispy slice of bacon, and felt with lupine pleasure the action of his teeth reducing it to pulp. Not the slightest twinge from his damaged molar; all that was in the past now. Good riddance. He had a busy day ahead of him.

Meetings, mostly, rescheduled and rejigged, clean through to half six in the evening, at which point Hayden passed on a corporate dinner with clients. He had to run an errand, he explained; which was true, so far as it went. A quick taxi ride over to Mong Kok, chop-chop, and after half an hour’s wandering the strip, the right back alley and the right set of stairs. As it had been the night before last, the door at the end of the corridor was ajar.

Hayden knocked, and waited till the old man poked his head out like a hermit crab ready to defend its shell against all-comers. Before the door was slammed in his face, Hayden put his weight to it, forcing it open and sending the old man staggering back into the room. Following him inside, Hayden closed the door behind them and pulled out the package from his jacket. “More,” he said, holding it up so the old man could see. “I need more.”

The old man’s response—a near-breathless tirade of what sounded to Hayden like every curse and swear word in the Chinese language—was pretty clearly in the negative. When Hayden asked him again, politely still, it was like standing in the way of a hosepipe of abuse. He tried cajoling him; he tried flashing his wallet, he made increasingly heated demands, but all to no avail. In the end, not knowing what else to do, Hayden ripped off his face mask. “Look!” he said, thickly, as if through a mouthful of something hard and uncomfortable. Immediately, the old man shut up.

Towards dusk he’d started to feel it, deep in the roots of his teeth. At first it had been bearable, actually not at all unpleasant: that rigid crackling sensation like popping your knuckles, only this was taking place inside his mouth, inside his jaw. Then the pressure, the constant pushing upwards, flesh and bone stretching, resettling. Probably nothing could stop it, that was the feeling he had. That was okay, though; that was fine, so long as he had some more of that blue stuff. More gel, now. Surely the old man must understand?

“You did this,” said Hayden, stretching his lips wide open and showing the old man what lay concealed behind the second mask, the mask of his own skin. “You did this,” advancing on him now, and the old man retreating, retreating, till he was backed up against the fish tank, yammering frantically; and then the tank tipped over and everything went flying, and the underground chamber was plunged into dark . . .

“So, anyway, I took all of the stuff he had left,” explained Hayden. “That’s lasted me until now, but . . . ” He spread his hands and looked at Dr. Pang.

The dentist frowned. “Mr. Hayden. I have to tell you, this account of yours raises the gravest questions. The science of transgenic pharmaceuticals is still very much in its infancy; goodness knows what unauthorised, possibly toxic substances you may have received from this, this street vendor . I must urge you to stop self-medicating forthwith, and I shall now examine you to assess the extent of the problem. Please remove your mask.”

Above the antiseptic face-mask, Hayden’s eyes creased in disappointment. “Doctor,” he said wheedlingly, “isn’t there some way we can, you know, come to an agreement on this? You know the right people, I’m sure. Can’t you get hold of some of this?” He waved his scrap of paper from the Scientific American . “I need it. I’d be prepared to pay.”

“It would be more than my licence is worth,” Dr. Pang assured him frowningly. “Now it would be best for me to examine you, to see the extent of the problem.”

“It’s almost full moon,” said Hayden, shifting slightly upright on the chair. “It’ll get worse before it gets better.”

Dr. Pang stared at him. “What did you call that . . . that thing the hotel porter said to you? You repeated it to the street vendor. What was it again?”

“Wanchang dhole,” said Hayden, with none of his former awkwardness. The foreign words seemed to slip more easily between his swollen lips than his birth-language. “I looked it up on the internet, afterwards.”

“Then . . . you know what that means?” Dr. Pang had pushed his chair slightly back from the side of the recliner. The castors rolled silently across the gleaming tiles, till he came to a halt against the wall. No sound in all that antiseptic space except the hum of the air conditioning, a white clock ticking towards one AM, and the fast, slightly ragged breathing of the dentist.

Hayden swung his legs over the side of the chair and sat up, directly facing Dr. Pang. “Yes,” he said, with difficulty. “Yes, I know what it means. But do you?” Lips parted in what might have passed for a grin, he stripped off his mask.

Dr. Pang gave an involuntary cry, and tried to get to his feet. The chair skidded sideways on its castors, and he lost his balance for a crucial second; then Hayden was upon him.

This study seeks to establish a hierarchy of efficacy for various antipathetic materials and delivery mechanisms thereof as used in the extermination of lycanthropes. Pre-existing data on this issue consists solely of folkloric narratives and unsubstantiated anecdotes on Internet communities, neither of which are based upon suitable experimental trials. It is hoped that this study will be only the beginning of a proper body of scientific literature, which might be expanded to include hyena men, were-jaguars, and other therianthropes.

For the purpose of this study, a lycanthrope is a human being who physically transforms into a lupine or hybrid lupine-hominid shape, acquiring greater strength, speed, and reduced vulnerability to ordinary weapons. Available evidence indicates that this alteration is linked to the lunar cycle, though a full explication of the mechanism of transformation and its contagious nature awaits further study.