The night air was alive, and as Roma ran towards the epicentre of the rumble, she could feel the call of the whole pack in her blood and bones. Her own crew struggled to keep up as she set a dogged pace, moving fluidly across the sleepers in the darkness of the railway tunnels, kicking up ballast dust into the faces behind her. Even Dahlia, usually her equal for speed, could not match her now. They had missed the prelim at Falcon Park while Roma had been writhing in agony in the alleyway, overdosing on rough-cut Bad Moon, and Dahlia knew that she would be keen to make amends to her brethren for their absence. She felt the bile rising in her throat at the thought of being forced to kill. Deep down, she believed without any doubt that she was capable of murder, but not just anybody. It would have to be a righteous kill: either somebody who deserved to die or else somebody whose death would benefit the pack. She thought again of challenging Roma.

While the wolves moved through the park for the next meet-up, since they could not deny their natural desire to run across gra.s.slands under the light of the moon, the jackals and hyenas stuck to the streets, since they could not deny their natural desire to scavenge and loot. And so it became over time one of the unwritten laws of the rumble, and allowed the gangs to move freely about the city without fear of too many unplanned attacks. The shop- and store-owners of Battersea Park Road did their best to protect their property, but on nights of a full moon, they resigned themselves to the loss and damage, emptied their shelves, and left the doors and windows open to protect their already extortionate insurance premiums, if nothing else. Some even left unwanted goods out on the pavement for the looters to rip apart. Osaze had procured two soya-cream slices and a Chelsea bun from an unlocked bakery and handed the bun to Yakuba as an offering to his new G.o.d. Yakuba thanked him, before throwing it across the road in the style of a baseball-pitcher, where its stale crust shattered on the head of a wolf lying drunk and bleeding in a doorway. The hyenas laughed hysterically: even Osaze, heartbroken at first, couldn't help but join in. Windows shattered and bins were set on fire. Ulan and Fogo threw firecrackers at one another and sprayed a stolen can of aerosol-cream into their own open mouths. 'You're about my brother's size, here...' said a stunning jackal girl with emerald eyes, stopping Arid in his tracks and holding a fur gillet against his chest. 'Perfect!' she said, stuffing it in her bag. She kissed Arid on the cheek and ran off. He thought the night couldn't get any better, even before another pack-leader slapped Yakuba on the back, handed him a half dozen lotto-wraps of Joker and told him to share it around, courtesy of the Tooting Dingoes. Arid Dysoned his whole wrap, b.u.mp after b.u.mp, with the tip of his blade, which Osaze said was the height of machismo. A car exploded behind them as the gang made its woozy way to the Queen's Circus to rumble proper.

The crowd of teenage wolves had begun to thin out, leaving only drunken stragglers behind, those who never intended to fight and were only coming along for the ride. Lek and Crystal held hands and for a moment, it seemed everything would be fine. n.o.body on the planet could ever have guessed their location. Lek breathed deeply, and ignoring the pain throbbing behind his eyes, pulled Crystal closer so that they could kiss under the moonlight.

'We've never done this before,' she said.

'Which part?' asked Lek, and he kissed her again, while a couple of wolves whistled their approval. Lek heard the bells of St George Harrison's Church toll nine.

Up the embankment at Ingate Place, the claws of Roma Bruce's bleeding hands and feet dug into the soft earth as she pushed her heavyweight body through the tangle of brambles and nettles and landed neatly on the other side of the retaining wall in a quiet residential area which was taking shelter from the storm raging on the streets. Her pack were still five-hundred yards behind, but Roma couldn't stop, couldn't wait for them, such was her desire to spill hyena blood. She thundered around the corner into Queenstown Road and the smell of the foe was thick in her nostrils. Up ahead, at the intersection with Battersea Park Road, her newly-acquired crisp night-vision picked out a gang of jackals who were waiting for the main event, taking digisnaps with stolen cameras and laughing at one another. Roma closed the distance in a matter of seconds and launched herself at the first hyena within range.

Osaze Mboku may as well have been hit by a speeding Lexus biorg. So powerful was the force of Roma's attack, he was lifted clean off his feet and sent flying into the base of a streetlamp. His thick neck snapped on impact, but that didn't stop Roma from tearing at his throat and chest with her bare hands and teeth, leaving his flesh tattered and the panic-stricken onlookers spattered with his blood. Roma turned to face them and instinctively the hyenas backed away, for they could see that there was rabid madness in her eyes and too much poison in her veins. She barked ferociously, raised her head to the skies and howled, calling her pack to her side; but still she could not wait. As the crowd came to their senses and began to form a circle, she spun around, howled again and sprinted off towards Queen's Circus to rumble. A single scream split the ensuing silence as Arid Bomani ran to kneel at the body of his fallen friend. In his heart he already knew he was dead, but still he went through the motions of feeling for a pulse in his wrist, looking into his eyes for any flicker of life and telling him between sobs that 'everything will be alright'.

Yakuba came and knelt at his side, laying his hand on Arid's back. His face studs sparkled in the moonlight. 'Your brother has gone, my friend. True. He was a brave soldier. True again. Did he not say himself that he knocked a man down tonight? And now you will do the same. You must avenge his death. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.'

The horrified screams and shouts from the hyenas standing on the nearby street corners reached a new pitch as four lean wolves, three males and a female, darted into the crossroads and stopped dead as they tried to make sense of the scene before them.

It was more than a killing. It was a slaughter, unlike anything they had seen before. Ronnie and Reggie were dumbstruck, and could only watch as Dahlia headed straight for Osaze's body and Arid weeping next to him.

'What happened here?' she asked, staring at the mixture of emotions on the faces of the surrounding hyena.

'One of your b.i.t.c.hes went berserk,' said Yakuba, 'she killed an innocent.'

'n.o.body's innocent, blud,' replied Zevon smartly, and no sooner were there words out of his mouth, than Yakuba had grabbed him around the throat with a sinewy hand. In a move which he must have practiced a thousand times, Yakuba swept Zevon's legs from under him, and slammed his body against the tarmac in the middle of the street. He pulled a knife from his back pocket and held it fast against Zevon's windpipe. Ronnie and Reggie found themselves unable to make a move a they were surrounded by an angry mob of hyena, baying for their blood.

'Stick him!' somebody shouted.

'Not I,' said Yakuba and without taking his weight off Zevon, he flipped the blade and held it out to Arid.

'A tooth for a tooth?'

Arid stared at the knife for what seemed like an eternity, then he shook his head wearily, as though there were simply no other course of action, and reached out for it.

'Wait!' said Dahlia, unsure of what she was about to do. She stood up, wiped Osaze's blood on her shorts and found her voice.

'My name is Dahlia Ortega. I run with the Brixton Wolves. I... understand that you are angry. Our alpha a the boy's killer a will be challenged...'

'What are you saying?' croaked Zevon, and Yakuba squeezed his hand tighter around his throat.

'Let the woman speak. What are you saying wolf?'

'I am saying,' Dahlia began, and the words almost choked her, 'that we will punish our own.'

'But what of our loss? What of our fallen brother?'

'Accept this as a gesture of our good will and respect for your comrade,' and she pulled Domino's bag from her vest and threw it to Yakuba.

When he unzipped it, he was unable to hide his astonishment at the number of Hyenarc vials inside. He tipped them out on to the street so that everybody could see. 'There must be two thousand creds' worth....' Yakuba said to n.o.body in particular. 'What was your name again, wolf?'

'Dahlia Ortega.'

'Go well, Dahlia Ortega of the Brixton Wolves. Right the wrong within your pack. We have a truce until you do. You feel me?' And with that, he took his weight off Zevon, pulled him upright and signalled to the rest of the hyenas on the corner of Battersea Park Road and Queenstown to let them pa.s.s.

Ronnie and Reggie, Zevon and Dahlia huddled together to discuss their options.

'What have you done?' said Zevon.

'What have I done? I saved your life, s.h.i.thead. You could start by thanking me. I saved all of our lives. What could I have done? The hyena are killers - they may not always seem it with their constant laughing a but make no mistake Zevon, they will kill to protect what's theirs.'

'Roma is out of line,' said Reggie.

'She's out of control,' said Ronnie, nodding in agreement. 'That kid is only, what? Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Beatlemania,' he whispered.

'So what now?'

'I've made a pact. I have to challenge her,' said Dahlia.

'It's not your place to challenge.'

'I just bought your life, Zevon, or have you forgotten? I own you now.'

Zevon bowed his head in reluctant acquiescence.

'But it's all moot anyway. We have to find her first.'

Chapter 29.

Though the crowds had dispersed and Lek and Crystal had been left alone on the streets, they could tell that something had changed. As they moved further north, away from Clapham and nearer to Battersea, they became aware of the orange glow of fires burning in the darkness. The boisterous shouts and chanting of earlier had turned to screams and cries of pain, and they saw more young men and women retreating now from the action, many of them wounded and crying. The further they walked the more destruction they saw on the roads: smashed windows, overturned cars and recyclo-bins on fire. Crystal looked worried and asked Lek if it might be worth taking the back streets instead, but he didn't like the idea of getting lost - or worse, cornered - in the tight network of dead end roads. 'Plus,' he said, 'we're heading straight for Chelsea Bridge a this is the most direct route.'

'It just seems like we're walking into the middle of it.'

'Maybe we are, but the clock is ticking. The train leaves in forty five minutes and we've got to get the money before then.'

'Fine. Whatever. Where are we anyway?'

'I think we're about five minutes' from Queen's Circus.'

The news of the killing had spread like wildfire through the gangs, and the entire mood of the night was changed within minutes. Banter and bravado became barbed insults and thrown punches. Violent scuffles had already begun to break out between the wolves and hyena gathering at Queen's Circus, before the official commencement of the rumble. By the time the first gunshot echoed through the night, there were bodies from both armies lying face down in the gutter. Word had spread that Brixton Roma was on a killing spree, that she had already slaughtered a boy on the street and scattered a pack of jackals shooting-up in a looted p.a.w.n-shop. Outnumbered four to one, but tearing at them with her claws she had managed to rip the femoral artery of one before the others managed to beat her back with chains. She was overdosed, they said. She had 'turned animal'.

It was all true and the hyena were incensed: just as Osaze had predicted earlier that day, they fought hard. If the prelim had been a relatively mild affair, this was an all-out street-war, the likes of which hadn't been seen in years. Here, now, knives were drawn, and the sound of shots and the smell of cordite filled the air. Roma had tasted blood and wanted more: she felt she could run forever as she bounded into the thick of it, slashing at any stray jackal separated from his pack. As the rumble began to take on a life of its own, her presence only served to fuel the fire. The former order of the wolves was split apart as she moved at random, knocking down and biting anybody in her path. A group of wild hyena rounded on her, slashing at her with flick-knives, but she smashed her way through them and continued unharmed on her rampage, pouncing on the back of a boy who was brandishing a machete. As he fell, the blade was forced into his own chest and tore its way out through his shoulder. His screams sounded like a sheet of metal being ripped in two. Roma did not hear them, but moved on pitilessly to her next victim a a young girl with emerald eyes, who was swinging a weighted bag to defend herself. Without breaking her stride, Roma barrelled into her flank, and before the girl had hit the ground, Roma had sunk her teeth into her scalp, and had pulled away a b.l.o.o.d.y chunk of flesh and hair.

Meanwhile, the hyena fought on bravely, redressing the balance against lesser wolves. Yakuba's men, fresh on the scene, chased and cornered a pack-leader, beating him to death with their fists as he cried out for help from his gang. Arid was there too, in body, if not in spirit, watching without seeing, as they tore away the plastic seats from a Credibus shelter and flung them at a tight knot of wolves. He saw a jackal whirl a bleeding boy around by the wrist in a parody of a dance move, and heard the cheekbone smash when it connected with a hyena's raised claw-hammer. He saw the hyena's back explode as he was shot at point-blank range in the chest. He saw the horror in the shooter's eyes as a knife was plunged into her neck.

Roma had completed a full circle of Queen's Circus roundabout, killing at will and notching up a chilling tally of hyena casualties and fatalities. The exertion was finally beginning to take its toll when she approached the Queenstown Road exit, and she drew breath for a moment in the middle of the battle and focused on the people milling around the edge of the rumble. There, amongst the cowards and the spectators, she noticed somebody: a woman, and the part of Roma Bruce which was still human registered a fleeting memory, a spark of envy for the woman's beauty.

'I want a trophy,' she growled.

Lek paled at the scene in front of him. What had started as a rumble was now a war, raging like an inferno across a square mile. The dead were strewn everywhere, others sat at the edge of the crowds, grey with shock and nursing horrendous injuries, but still there must have been four hundred youths brawling on the street and on waste-ground in the centre of the roundabout.

'What have we done?' said Crystal, horrified. We've got to go back; get a later train, anything! We can't go through this. It would be suicide.'

Lek cursed their luck. He felt his escape slipping away from them, and the very idea of trying to survive for another hour - or maybe more - in this city brought tears to his eyes. He struggled to remain in control, realising he couldn't let Crystal see him like this. 'But we can't. We can't,' he said to himself, knowing that they couldn't stay where they were, couldn't afford to wait, couldn't carry on.

They were weighing up the options when something in Crystal's peripheral vision caught her attention. Before she had even turned her head, her subconscious screamed at her to move and she grabbed Lek by the wrist and yelled at him to run.

Twenty yards to the end of the road at full pelt. Hand in hand, Lek and Crystal sprinted into the darkness of the Kidholme Housing Estate, screaming for help: the residents knew better than to open their doors to anybody on the night of a full moon, but they still peered out from behind their curtains at the strange couple fleeing across the courtyards. Crystal let out a cry when she heard the deep howl echoing off the walls around them and she knew they were being hunted.

'Who is it?!' shouted Lek. 'What is it?!'

'It's the psycho who mugged us in the car. It's the girl!'

Another howl resounded in the deserted yards.

'That isn't a girl.'

He pulled Crystal along a row of squat houses, moving as fast as he could and trying to keep low. They darted across a pampas gra.s.s verge and found themselves at the foot of a staircase leading up to the high-rise flats towering above them.

Roma Bruce was barking somewhere in the network of housing rows and they could hear the sound of her footfalls as she followed their scent and closed the gap.

'The lift!'

'The doors won't open! Curfew! Keep moving!'

Crystal began to run up the steps, but Lek dragged her back. 'No, she'll trap us! This way!' and they turned left and ran back in the direction of the main road, hoping to lose her in the crowds there. The estate was like a rabbit warren: a maze of walled gardens, underpa.s.ses and stairwells. The pair ran through a covered recyclo-bin shelter and into another courtyard, banging desperately on the doors they pa.s.sed, in the hope that somebody, anybody, might take pity on them. It was useless.

Roma Bruce could smell their fear and it drove her wild. She summoned the reserves of her own human DNA. 'Barbie-doll,' she sang, 'Barbie-doll!' 'Where are you baby? You never... introduced me to that... fella of yours. I just want to be... friends,' and she cackled hoa.r.s.ely and the sound carried though the underpa.s.ses and sent a chill down Crystal's spine.

'There!' called Lek suddenly. He pointed across the yard, but was already pulling Crystal in his direction. He could see the flames of a burning car on the corner of Nine Elms Lane. When he saw that their path was blocked by a padlocked iron gate, too high to climb, he swore bitterly. In his desperation to be in the open s.p.a.ce, drawing out the distance between themselves and the monster, Lek made his mistake. He turned down a blind alley.

Together Lek and Crystal ran into the shadows, into the darkness of the dead end. Lek slammed the palms of his hands against the brick wall and cursed. Twelve feet above him, the razor-wire glinted in the moonlight. He scrabbled desperately at the wall, hoping to find any crack, any foothold, knowing that there would be none, and that he had no chance of climbing it. Crystal frantically searched the ground at her feet for anything that would pa.s.s as a weapon. She only found an empty c.o.ke can and tossed it aside.

Roma Bruce sloped into the courtyard. She picked out the two figures at the end of the pa.s.sageway, seeing them as clear as day, and she laughed cruelly again, knowing that there was no way out for them. She gave a low growl to announce her presence and felt a shudder of excitement as she saw their heads snap up in fear. Roma Bruce wanted to hold that pink hair again, wanted to know how it would feel against her own skin, wanted to rip it from the scalp of that smug b.i.t.c.h with her model good looks who had never in her easy life had to touch an ounce of Bad Moon to get a man's attention. She stepped into the alley.

Lek breathed deeply. He had an idea but didn't like it. He needed time to consider the implications. But there is no time, he told himself, stop thinking like a scientist!

'This... girl. She's going to kill us, right?' Lek already knew the answer. 'And there's no way out of here, is there?' He put his hand inside his pocket. If Crystal replied, he didn't hear her. 'If we stay, we're dead. And if we miss that train, we're also dead'. He pulled out a handful of extracts and a hypo. 'OK then, let's do this.' Lek looked down the alley a fifty yards away, he could see Roma's yellow eyes glowing in the dark. He spun around and held the first vial up to the moonlight. 'Octopus,' he cursed, and held up another, 'Arctic fox... no,' and then another 'Moose.'

'Lek! Do something!' hissed Crystal.

'I AM!' Lek shouted and held another vial up to the moon, 'Got it!'

He clipped the vial into the hypo, took another deep breath and rammed the needle into his own neck.

'Lek! Lek! What did you just give yourself?'

Roma took a few paces forward, sniffing the air. Something wasn't right.

Lek was having trouble breathing. He leant forward, choking for air and thought he was about to vomit. His chest was on fire. He swallowed hard and forced out a single word.

'Grizzly.'

Lek only created the formula for scions. He was the scientific mastermind behind the operation. In his tiny high-rise lab, overlooking the river a the apartment he would never see again a he made up a tiny amount of the drug from his vast collection of replica bases, mixed it with appropriate levels of weak alkaline solution and alcohol to increase its uptake, and tested it on a mouse. Tigranol, for example, contained a number of animal extracts, carefully mixed to balance out the effects of pure tiger DNA. After all, n.o.body really wanted to share their bed with a tiger. But a tiger with his claws clipped and his fangs filed down, with extracts of dolphin or spaniel a that was another matter. When he was sure that it was clinically safe enough for the streets, he pa.s.sed his workings on to a group of chemists, none of whom knew one another, working out of a number of separate company-owned laboratories throughout the city. Each chemist was given a part of the formula to make into a functioning element of the final drug. Vast quant.i.ties of these elements were then delivered to the 'cutter' a a paranoid schizophrenic named Barry Krantz who sat happily all day in his flat in Bethnal Green mixing the packets as they arrived from the four corners of London, with common low-tox, low-effect agents: extracts of Golden Labrador, Jersey cow, and so on, as well as baking soda and talc.u.m powder. There was no point in flooding the market with one-hundred percent pure product when users were happy to take drugs which were only sixteen percent shark, or gorilla, or wolf. When this part of the operation was complete, a sample of the end product was bicycle-couriered back to Lek for final testing and the circle was complete. As much as he was a scientist though, Lek also believed himself to be something of an artist, and he liked nothing better than to sit under the cherry-trees in Finsbury Park, or the olive groves around Camden and create another masterpiece, another scion symphony from the bases he always carried around in his briefcase and test it when he got home to his lab. So it was that he had been able to administer a pure shot of sloth extract into the unsuspecting Delia that afternoon, and how now, in a dead-end alley in the Kidholme residential estate in Battersea, with his lap-dancer girlfriend by his side, facing down a young woman who had overdosed on one of his own creations and in doing so had permanently crossed her own DNA with that of a wolf, Lek Gorski had imbued himself with the brute strength, the savage power and the ferocity of an Alaskan grizzly bear.

'Lek! LEK!' screamed Crystal, 'You're dying!'

'N..No' Lek stammered.

'What then?'

'Ch...changing. Grafting.'

'Ringo Starr, Lek! She's coming!'

Roma was moving stealthily down the pa.s.sage, smelling the change in her prey. The female reeked of fear and she could see that the male was doubled over in agony, but there was something new in him....

'Get... behind... me!' Lek managed to say, and Crystal heard his voice lower an octave over the words.

'How long will it take to work?'

'SecONDS!' bellowed Lek, as Roma lowered her head and charged at them.

Lek felt like he had been reborn. Anybody looking at him, standing there with his beautox parlour haircut, bloodstained face and XXL sports suit hanging off his lean frame would have seen a madman, but inside, Lek's muscles were charged with electricity and his bones felt like reinforced steel. Why didn't you let me out years ago? screamed the Grizzly in his head and Lek was lost for an answer. He wasn't big, by any standard, but even an average man forced to work out in the Dynagym for an hour every day had fairly decent muscle tone. Lek pulled himself to his full height, stretched his arms back behind him, and roared like a beast as Roma launched her attack. In a move which reminded Crystal of a man crashing a pair of cymbals together, she saw Lek catch the wolf with both hands in mid air, before throwing her back against the ground. With a strangled yelp, more from surprise than pain, Roma scrambled to her feet, gathered herself and came again, rising up on her hind legs to slash at Lek's chest and neck. 'Get BACK!' yelled Lek and clouted her in the muzzle with a stinging blow. Her head cracked off the wall and for an instant, Lek saw more than confusion in her eyes. Crystal screamed and clung to his back for safety and without thinking, he twisted in his rage and knocked her to the floor. Roma seized the opportunity his momentary distraction had afforded her and darted forward to close her jaws around his leg. She sunk her teeth down to his shinbone - Lek roared out in pain and instinctively kicked her away. She hit the edge of a steel ash-bin and felt a rib break. In an instant, Lek threw his weight on top of her and the two rolled around in the alleyway, like animals, each trying to pin the other to the ground. Roma was fast and vicious, rabbit-kicking him in the stomach and groin as they grappled, catching him with her claws and ripping his skin, but the bear felt only bramble-scratches and fought on furiously. Lek had the weight advantage and shifted his bulk, rolling her over and headb.u.t.ting her with all his might. Roma was stunned and Lek saw his moment, pulling her towards him by the shoulders and smashing her head down against the cobblestones again and again. He tried to hold on to his humanity, but the bear in him would not be restrained and released all of Lek's anger in a torrent of violence. Years of pent-up aggression and frustration, two decades of living in fear of his life, and the last cherry-on-the-cake day he had spent running from Delia, Vidmar and Pechev, Pechev, Pechev poured out of Lek Gorski and he cracked Roma's head on the ground with such rage, he heard her skull fracture and she finally gave up the fight and lost consciousness. Lek leaned back, throwing out his chest in victory and then lowered his head again to bellow once more in Roma's grotesque face, blood and spit running from his bottom lip. He rolled off her then, and crouching like a man who had been stabbed in the stomach, limped a few paces down the alley on his wounded leg, before collapsing in a heap against the wall.

Crystal ran and threw her arms around him. There was still fire in his eyes, but Lek was there too and he held his shaking hands in front of his face and whispered gruffly, 'What did I do?'

'You saved us, Lek. You saved our lives!'

'My leg!' he said through gritted teeth, when he saw the crooked rows of puncture wounds bleeding through the tattered fabric of his trouser leg. Crystal tore the sleeve off his sports suit and having absolutely no clue about first aid, fashioned a makeshift tourniquet around his shin.

'We'll have to get that looked at. And you'll need a shot,' she remarked crisply, trying to sound like a nurse.