'Yeah?' said Roma, when they stared.

'Step off, dog,' said one of the bulls, 'or we'll have to put you down.' Roma stared at the twin bony protrusions threatening to break the skin on his forehead and considered her pack's chances against the three men. She bared her teeth and snarled, but gave Ronnie and Reggie an almost imperceptible shake of her head and the twins set Domino back on his feet. Roma stepped to him, menacingly pushing her face into his as she straightened his creased jacket. Domino could smell blood on her breath when she whispered, 'We'll be back later, Mister Man. Make sure you've got plenty of Bad Moon left for us.'

And they strutted off down the street and disappeared into an alley.

'Kane happened to notice the drama through the window,' said the giant gorilla of a man in the sports suit. 'All good in the 'hood, Domino?'

'Yeah, Cesar. Thanks guys,' said Domino, rubbing a patch of vitiligo on his neck nervously. 'The wolves, man, they give me the creeps. Like something out of a f.u.c.king horrorshow or something.'

'You can't show no fear in this part of town, son,' said Cesar.

'I don't know if I'm up to this job. Might have to speak to my man Vidmar.'

'Vidmar? I didn't know this was Vidmar's turf.'

'Sure is. He took over when Carlucci got banged up for the bank-job that went sour. Why are you so interested?'

'Nothing. Just a coincidence, that's all.'

'He'll be down here later if you want to do business.'

'Yeah? Maybe,' said Cesar.

'Well, you got my number. Beep me if you want me to set something up.'

'Will do. Take it easy Dom. Come on boys.'

The three men stepped back inside the Reincarn8 to find their meals waiting for them, and while Joshua and Kane didn't waste any time devouring the pile of sauerkraut mash and bratwurst, Cesar picked at his food, his thoughts elsewhere, and guilt chewing at his appet.i.te.

Chapter 20.

It was Crystal's idea and she wouldn't be talked out of it.

'It makes perfect sense,' she said, swinging into a parking s.p.a.ce. 'They know our faces, right? They know what we look like, never mind what we're wearing. Plus, this way, we're off the beaten track, out of sight for an hour and if they are still searching for us, they certainly won't be expecting to find us here. Besides, it might be fun.'

'It's too... public.' Lek argued, although they both knew he was clutching at straws.

'You're just scared, Doctor,' said Crystal, and she pulled him out of the car and down the street.

Ursula Fayette hadn't had a single customer all day and was sitting with her head in her hands at the counter, trying to balance the books for Skindeep, her failing beautox parlour when Crystal pulled Lek through the door.

'What time do you close?' asked Crystal breathlessly.

'Well, I was about to clock off now actually, but if you need something urgently...?' Ursula left the question hanging, and Crystal found herself on the verge of saying too much, until Lek interjected.

'We're eloping,' he said. 'Our families don't approve. My fiancee here, well, her brothers are looking for us, so we need a complete...' he searched for the word, 'overhaul?'

If Ursula's face lit up with surprise and joy, there was no sign of laughter lines around her eyes or on her forehead. She slammed the accounting ledger shut and sashayed around the counter, her Amazonian ear-plates swinging with every step.

'Well you've come to right place! Congratulations!' she squealed, and kissed Crystal on both cheeks in such an intimate way, Lek might have thought they were related. He was quick to extend a handshake for fear she might try to embrace him.

'So here's what we're going to do. Hair, no question. Eyes, I think so. Certainly for you, honey. Semi-tatts and paints, definitely, yes, they're just so hot right now. Blepho-suck? Chin-tuck? We'll see. Let's get started! I'm so excited!' Lek looked almost as horrified as he had been the moment Delia had pulled the Meister on him earlier that afternoon.

'So, she takes the python to the vet, yeah? Because it hasn't been eating and she's starting to worry about it, yeah? Because every morning when she wakes up, she finds the python stretched out next to her in the bed, yeah? So she thinks the snake's, like, lonely bro, or cold or some s.h.i.t like that. So anyway yeah? The vet tells her a get this a the vet tells her that there's nothing wrong with the python, yeah? It's like totally measuring itself against her to see if it can swallow her in her sleep!'

Ulan and Fogo fell about laughing on the sofa in Osaze's bedroom. Arid had already heard the story about Ulan's aunt and her pet snake and though he had found it funny at the time, right now he had other things on his mind. Osaze was speaking to him in hushed tones about the rumble taking place that night a he'd been looking forward to it for weeks, after he had heard the rumours from a sixth form drug dealer at school.

'It happens every month bro,' he whispered to Arid, 'The wolves and hyenas come together for a pack-clash under the full moon to fight for turf rights south of the river. It's part of the deal. If you're using, then you've got to do your duty for your pack. It's going to be a-maz-ing.'

If Arid was beginning to have doubts, he pretended not to show it. He hadn't been taking Hyenarc for long a a couple of months perhaps, and he felt he could stop at any point, whenever he wanted in fact. Osaze had given him his first wrap, telling him he had to try it, that everybody was doing it, that it made you feel 'connected'. And Arid had to admit, it did. For the first time in his life, Arid Bomani truly felt he was part of something.

The legal equivalents of Hyenarc and Lupinex were originally created for sports teams a footballers, basketball players and the like a to give individual sportsmen and women a better understanding of their position within the team, and to bring them together as a cohesive unit on the pitch or court. It helped coaches and managers find the natural leaders in the group, and in turn helped the group understand the strengths and weaknesses of its members.

It wasn't long after these authorized scions were introduced into the world of professional sport, that companies like those controlled by Pechev began to flood the market with low-quality cheaper versions. Across the nation, 'Laughing Bag', 'Little Red', 'Joker' and 'Bad Moon' found their way into the hands of ambitious university and college PE teachers, who would stop at nothing to further their careers with another trophy on display in the school cabinet. The same was true of the students themselves: so keen were they to be the captain of the winning rugby team, or the girl who had scored that all important goal in the county hockey tournament, or the player who had won the baseball scholarship in Florida.

Before long, the drugs were everywhere: outside the gates, in the yard, on the corridors, in the cla.s.sroom. School governors and head-teachers had at first turned a blind eye to the drugs, seduced by the impressive extra-curricula scores and weekend results into believing they were creating good team-workers and fine young men and women. Now they faced the challenge of a drug epidemic: schools overrun with aggressive junkie teenagers, forming vicious cliques and gangs, all vying to be the best.

Scion drugs wielded a strange power over the impressionable minds of the youth. School-psychologists found themselves inundated with pupils complaining of alpha peer pressure, fear of failure, irrational bouts of rage, mood-swings, and deep-seated inferiority complexes, resulting from their lowly position in the pack. Their adolescent bodies, still enduring the turbulence of p.u.b.erty, also struggled to cope with the changes which the drugs affected in them. Gender became harder to distinguish: both girls and boys were stocky, muscular and broad-shouldered, and they all had facial hair, whether they wanted it or not. Those addicted to Lupinex complained of severe lower back and leg spasms, and chronic pain in their gums and teeth. Hyenarc abusers suffered from inexorable acne, stiffness of the neck and jaws, and a once rare psychological condition called pseudobulbar palsy, which left them paralysed by bouts of uncontrollable laughter. Everybody had nits.

In short, it was school on steroids.

In time, the fierce compet.i.tion on the playing fields turned to violence and spilled out on to the streets after school hours. Muggings, house burglaries, looting and car crime became commonplace in local communities, but it wasn't until the body of thirteen year old Simon Casey was found at the bottom of a wheelie bin in Kennington that society as a whole realised that it had created a monster. While many still clung to the belief that Simon had been savaged by a rabid fox or wild dog that had somehow made it through one of the Europatrans Tunnels, forensic evidence confirmed otherwise: in spite of the extensive bite marks and lacerations, Simon's killer had been human. He, or she, was never apprehended.

It wasn't the last slaughter of its kind. In 2026, for the first time in a decade, juvenile gang violence and related suicides resulted in more teenage deaths than skin cancer. Since that time, the statistics had only worsened. Fourteen years later and the situation was beyond the law. Armies of juveniles, many born into the drug culture, had turned the city suburbs into gang-lands, and patrolled every night after electricurfew, killing one another at will for the right to say they owned a sc.r.a.p of wasteland.

Full moon pack-clashes were the only formalised gatherings of the various gangs throughout the city. At any other time of the month, a pack had to look after itself, protect its own and fight for its turf. But long standing members - Mohawk-sporting, perma-tattooed, one-eyed veterans in their twenties - from both sides spoke of the feelings of togetherness and camaraderie that the full moon clashes engendered. Like all wars, there had to be casualties, and over the years, the hyena brothers had suffered more at the hands of their lupine counterparts. It seemed they simply couldn't focus on the fight in the same way, content instead to scavenge on the fallen. But not tonight...

'.... Not tonight!' said Osaze, and Ulan and Fogo were jerked out of their hysterical laughter at the emotion in his voice. 'I have promised Yakuba that we will be with him, and that we will fight like... like lions!'

'Like hyena!' shouted Arid, in all seriousness, and they all fell about laughing once again.

The door bell rang - the carry-out had arrived. Osaze paid the delivery boy, only a couple of years his junior, and tipped him ten creds, because he liked the way it felt to hand out money to people who had to work for a living. There wasn't an ounce of altruism in the gesture. The boys cracked open the pastry-bag sh.e.l.ls and let the aroma of oxtail wash over them. Osaze had ordered it the way he liked it these days a b.l.o.o.d.y. He found that nothing else quite satisfied his aching jaws like crushing a piece of bone between them. Arid had to agree. He ate until he could eat no more, then lay back on the floor and picked at a patch of acne on the side of his mouth.

Osaze picked up the landline again and dialled a number. When he heard the beep on the other end, he replaced the handset. 'We need more carry-out,' he said to the room, by way of explanation, and the phone rang immediately.

'Dispatch,' said the voice on the line, 'what do you need?'

'2 grams of your finest clown.'

'Collection or delivery?'

'Delivery.'

'Address?'

'Flat 16, number 8, St Olaf's Road, Fulham.'

'Will you be paying by cred or thumbprint?'

'Cred. How much will that be?'

'120 cred. Should be about ten minutes. Please have the money ready for the driver.'

'Not a problem.'

'Have a nice day.'

Eight minutes later, the door-bell rang again.

In a haze of Hyenarc ecstasy, Ulan had fallen asleep, and Fogo, also woozy from overindulging, announced he was going to 'w.a.n.k in the bathroom,' to wake himself up.

'Osaze, brother' said Arid, when they were alone, 'I don't know the... the rules south of the river. Am I ready for this? Tonight?'

'Yes, brother. Do not worry. Tonight we will fight as one. There will be safety in our numbers. Yakuba has told me it will be so. Victory will be ours. Do you have a weapon?'

Arid showed him the blade he had tucked inside his vest.

'That is strong bro! What you need now, my brother, is some courage to stick it where it deserves to be stuck.' And he opened the palm of his hand to reveal a wrap of 'Joker' with its distinctive smiling face logo, and Arid Bomani took it and held it under his nose as if he were savouring the aroma of a fine Castro, and Osaze laughed.

Chapter 21.

By the time they emerged from Skindeep, the skies above the city were completely dark, and Lek and Crystal looked like new people. Crystal had enjoyed the whole experience and even Lek had to admit, it wasn't quite as traumatic as he had imagined it would be. As for Ursula, she couldn't believe her luck a four hundred cred for one hour's work and a hundred cred tip for staying late. She had wished them the best of luck in their new life together and kissed them both as they left.

They stood under a street lamp and looked at their reflections in a shop window. Lek's hair had been cropped short and dyed from dark brown to brilliant white. He was also sporting something the beautician had called a 'doughnut', taking hairs from his head and electro-planting them as a perfectly circular white goatee beard and moustache. Finally, his eyes, which before had been hazel and hidden behind his scientist spectacles, now shone with bright blue semi-tattooed irises in 24-hour corneal viz-skins.

'I look just like one of them,' said Lek, bemused. 'Look at me! I could be Vidmar, or Delia, or any of them! I look like a gangster!' He smiled and turned to Crystal. It was inconceivable to him that anybody or anything could make her more beautiful than she already was. Ursula was clearly fond of her scissors and had cut Crystals long locks into something she called a 'bob', whispering 'Cla.s.sic Sa.s.soon' to herself while she ran her fingers through the new cut. Then, against Lek's protests, she dyed the 'bob' pink; bright pink. The whole process took only a couple of minutes - chameleonic semi-permanent alkalizing gel a and when Lek opened his eyes to see the results, he was more than pleasantly surprised. The contrast of the colouring against Crystal's warm brown skin was something to behold. 'You look wonderful,' he had breathed, and Ursula had shed a tear, either through the depth of the emotion in his voice, or pride in her own work. Lek had drawn the line at semi-tatts for Crystal's irises however, and refused to give a reason. In truth, he did not want to look at her that night of all nights and have to search for the real Crystal Purcell hidden behind another woman's eyes. As a compromise, Ursula had gone to great lengths over Crystal's make up, face-painting spectacular paisley peac.o.c.k-feather swirls of colour around her cheekbones and lips. A Metropolitan Fashion Police Officer swaggered past, swinging her riding crop, looked them both up and down and raised her bowler hat in acknowledgement.

'What should we do now then? Less than three hours to go,' Lek asked, curling Crystal's pink bob behind her ears and holding her face in his hands. He felt almost invincible in his new disguise and when Crystal whispered in his ear, 'Let's park up somewhere quiet and you can try to smudge my face-paint,'

he grinned like a schoolboy and led her to the car, thinking nothing could possibly go wrong.

Vidmar watched them from across the street. He was standing in plain view, but Gorski and the woman were too wrapped up in their own fantasy world to notice. Still, there are too many people around to attempt a s.n.a.t.c.h, thought Vidmar. It didn't matter. He saw them jump into the Proto, like a pair of newlyweds on their honeymoon and for a moment he wished he could be them, and despised them both for their good looks and carefree att.i.tude to life and love. His breath hissed through his teeth.

His textabeep sounded as he watched them pull out into the evening traffic and drive away. He strolled lazily to the nearest skypephone box and dialled the number.

'What is going on Vidmar?' Pechev said, cutting to the chase.

'Well, I've just watched Gorski and his woman drive off.'

'You've done what?! Why didn't you stop them? Where is Delia? Why can't I reach him on his textabeep?'

'I don't know. He thinks Gorski's dead. Who cares?' Vidmar replied petulantly.

'I feel this situation is beyond you both. It is spiralling out of control. I'm... disappointed, to say the least.'

'Lyubomir Pechev,' said Vidmar, with a sigh, 'I don't give a f.u.c.k what you think anymore. The deal's off. I know Gorski has a book, a book containing the recipes for all his scions, and I know where he is. So you can keep your s.h.i.tty half a mill. I'm looking at the bigger picture.'

'Vidmar, turn your back on me and you will regret it. I have only to say the word and every low-level yellow-bellied street rat from Bow to Battersea will know there's a price on your head. So, do the smart thing boy. Do your job. I'm going to give you one last chance. Do you understand me? Vidmar? Vidmar?'

But Vidmar was standing in the middle of the street staring into the distance, the traffic racing past him on either side. The Proto had long gone, but he saw the path it had made through the city streets as clear as the wake of a Thames riverboat. He cupped his hands around his nose, and breathed in the smell of Crystal Purcell and Lek Gorski. He could taste them both on his saliva. The ten minutes he had spent in the underground car-park near Calabas' club, breaking into the Proto, sniffing its seats, rubbing his fingers in the dust of the foot-wells, and licking the steering wheel had certainly paid off. There was slaver pouring from his mouth and onto the lapels of his scarred suit jacket, and the skin of his cheeks had already lost all its elasticity when he took the near empty vial of Bloodhound from the chain around his neck and snorted it all, right down to the last speck.

Chapter 22.

Crouching in the carca.s.s of a burnt out Hyundai on the corner of Rattray Road, Dahlia Ortega ran the blade of her flick-knife against her thumb and dreamt of cutting Roma Bruce's throat. She had yet to make a kill, and there was immense pressure on her to drive her blade into somebody at the rumble that night, but as far as she could see, there was only one person who truly deserved it. Roma had ruled the gang for too long, and Dahlia had grown tired of waiting for Zevon, the natural successor, to do the deed. Ronnie and Reggie, although they had probably notched up a dozen killings between them, were nothing but muscle, and faithful to the last. Their brains were so pickled in Lupinex they had lost virtually all capacity for human thought, and went through the motions of their violent existence like Roma's trained guard-dogs. But not Dahlia. If the opportunity arose tonight.... Suddenly, Zevon gave the call and instinctively, she was on her feet, running to the join the chase. Roma had sniffed out a kid who had become separated from his flock in the network of streets and was scrambling to get home before he was spotted. The hunt was on.

Dahlia sprinted across the broken tarmac, her heightened senses acutely aware of Zevon's movements in a parallel street. In her peripheral vision, she saw him flash past at the cross-section of Talma and Bankton, but she didn't break her stride. She tore down an opening between the high-rises and cut across the allotments, the long yellowing toenails of her bare feet digging up the soft earth as she smashed through carefully planted rows of ca.s.sava and runner-been frameworks. With a clatter which shattered the quiet of the housing estate, she knocked over a recycle-biffa on another side alley, before bursting out onto Dalberg Road, where Ronnie and Reggie were a hundred metres ahead of her. Dahlia was lithe and agile, built for speed, and in the open s.p.a.ce she changed gear and outstripped the Twins in a matter of seconds. It was then that she caught her first glimpse of the prey as he darted through a patch of pampas gra.s.s growing between two terraced houses. Zevon came thundering down Jeff Road on all fours, and simultaneously Roma appeared on Dahlia's right a the pack came together and then, without a word, fanned out again: the pace never slackened. Dahlia's breath came in tight grunts and she felt her lungs burning with the exertion, but the Lupinex forced her body to move faster still, her mind always conscious of the positions of the respective members of the pack. She saw Roma leap over a set of railings on the corner of Morval without breaking her step, leading the pack through the patch of wasteland. The prey, a boy of about thirteen or fourteen, was in her sights now and she saw him scramble under the barbed wire and out onto Brixton Water Lane, where a Datsun Synapse had to screech to a halt to avoid smashing into him. Zevon hurdled the bonnet in a single bound, while Dahlia and Roma shot through the gap between a parked Credibus and a cla.s.sic Skoda, and took the lead. Before she knew it, Dahlia was out in the open again in the flat scrub of unknown gra.s.slands. In the back of her mind, she knew something wasn't right. But what? Zevon and the twins were bringing up the rear; she and Roma were neck and neck, gaining on the boy in the darkness, and for an instant, Dahlia considered jumping Roma instead and plunging the knife she was still holding into the bunched muscles between her leader's shoulder blades. Suddenly it hit her - her female canine intuition told her to pull back. Roma felt it too, just in time, for the boy had disappeared behind a wall of bodies. Roma howled the order to retreat as the pack before them, twenty strong, began to move as a single body in their direction. 'How could you have been so stupid?' snarled Dahlia, as they turned and ran, 'You led us into Hyena-turf!' Roma's eyes flashed fire at the slight, but Dahlia saw fear in them as well. Behind, the hyena pack laughed maniacally.

Delia woke with a start, slumped against the stinking body of a tramp seated next to him on the bench in front of the Smarte Lockers. He was still fighting the ongoing soporific effects of the sloth-extract, but when he sat upright and looked around, he found himself in the middle of a gang of vagabonds, all staring at him with red rat-like eyes. On the floor before him, a tattered man with a beard that reached down to the torn collar of his ragged business suit was spitting the sh.e.l.ls of sunflower seeds on the ground. Delia kicked him brutally in the face and sent him reeling backwards. With a chorus of angry shouts and drunken threats, the tramps moved away to gather instead around a burning picket-fire - Starbucks staff members were striking against the new 24ahour coffee laws. Delia wiped the dribble from his chin and gave himself a couple of slaps around the face to try and wake up. Stay alert, he told himself. For all he knew, the locker might have already popped open and revealed its contents to the world, but Delia felt sure the noise would have woken him. He pulled a fresh bag of gojis from his inside pocket, popped a few and threw a couple in the direction of the tramps, making a pistol-shooting gesture with his thumb and forefinger when they looked back. Sc.u.m, he thought. The clock in the station read 19:30. One hour to curfew.

Roma's crew sat together in a rat-infested abandoned warehouse on King's Avenue where they had holed up to hide from the Dulwich Jackals. Dahlia had been needling Roma ever since they had stopped running, pushing her into admitting that she had run them too hard, for too little, and over enemy lines to boot. At first, Roma had said nothing, content to pluck rats from the cracks in the floorboards to prove to herself as much as to the others that her reflexes, if not her judgement, were still as sharp as ever. Eventually she cracked, and with a fluid shifting of her weight, rolled on top of Dahlia and pinned her to the floor in a flash.

'I am tired of your barking, b.i.t.c.h! Challenge me, if you've got the b.a.l.l.s,' and she squeezed a clawed hand around Dahlia's windpipe. 'What's that you say?' she growled, 'Oh, nothing. Now get the f.u.c.k away from me!' And she stalked off to the corner of the room, where Zevon joined her to lick her palms and give her his last vial of Bad Moon.

'What do you want to do Roma?' he asked.

'I want full-stress, straining off the chain, Zevon - no half measures tonight. I want. I want. I WANT. I want to find some cred, hit Domino for all he's got and I want to take it to those laughing sons of b.i.t.c.hes. And when it's all over, later on, I want you to help me celebrate, dog.' With that, she licked his face, her long tongue lapping over his lips.

Zevon pulled back, 'Save it for later then. We haven't even got an hour before lights-out. Best we get moving if we're going to fit it all in baby. Cash, stash and clash.'

'Cash, stash and clash.' Roma pulled her lips back in a smile, but the effect was terrifying. Years of prolonged Lupinex abuse had not only transformed Roma's once pet.i.te nose and mouth into a wolfish muzzle, but over time four short canines had forced their way between her teeth and ripped her blackened gums apart. Even Zevon had to stifle his disgust for fear she would notice. He cast a quick glance over to Dahlia, who caught his eye and gave him a piercing look ***