Blood Moon by Jackie French Read Free Book Online

this.
    ‘Precious kid,’ he said. ‘Adorable at that age. Pity they grow up.’
    I nodded agreeably. As far as I was concerned the sooner kids grew up and stopped spitting cornmeal mush at you and clambering on laps with their grubby feet, the better. But it wasn’t a point I felt like arguing. Not given the size of the teeth and the hands that were too curled and clawed to really be called hands.
    I glanced down. His feet were bare. And the nails were claws too.
    He noticed. He grinned, and though his tongue lolled wetly the grin didn’t have quite the humour he’d shown before. ‘Please come in,’ he said formally. ‘Kind of you to help us,’ he added.
    I shrugged. ‘I don’t know how much help I’ll be,’ I said. ‘Black Stump and Michael have an inflated idea of my abilities.’
    I had sent a brief message to Michael to tell him where I’d gone. I had been grateful that his comsig was on message mode. I had no wish to speak to him.
    ‘Michael?’ said Uncle Dusty vaguely. ‘Right, yes, City bloke Eleanor works for.’ Another grin, this time with the faintest edge of wet tongue hanging out. ‘Don’t matter if you’re no help,’ he said frankly. ‘Gesture of solidarity. Shows neighbours that Black Stump trusts us. Reminds them we’ve influential friends.’
    I blinked. ‘Ophelia? Romeo?’
    He grinned at me damply. ‘The City.’
    ‘But I’m not from the City.’ Well not now, I added in my mind.
    ‘City friends. City floater. City influence. I’ll take your bag.’
    He managed it quite well, despite the malformed—no, wolf-formed—hands. I reached to open the front door for him, but there was no need. The door slid open automatically at our approach. Uncle Dusty grinned wetly again. ‘Retinal scan. Opens for any of us. You too when Eleanor programs you in. Hate doorhandles. Doors at Black Stump usually open.’
    I stepped inside and blinked.
    The room was enormous, and eerily dim, despite the windows that looked out over the valley. The room was simply too large for their light to penetrate the gloom.
    At first glance it seemed a normal room. Then slowly my eyes began to pick out differences. A smell of dog, and fur and damp fresh wood. Walls that curved to an irregularly rounded ceiling. Scattered massive sofas, far too low and wider than the norm, as though the inhabitants curled up on them more often than they sat. There was a wide hearth before the giant fireplace, where even in today’s heat the remnants of a fire burnt.
    There was a table too—Japanese, or maybe werewolf-style—low to the ground, with big cushions instead of chairs. The mats and cushions on the floor had a slightly tattered, chewed quality.
    It looked like a room someone had tried to make normal, but it hadn’t worked. Or maybe they hadn’t known quite what a Truenorm room should look like.
    There was no Terminal. No paintings on the stone walls, not even the kids’ sketches that covered the walls at Black Stump. I could smell cold ashes too, and fur and something sharp and pungent and almost familiar—a bit like the fertiliser pellets we fed into the irrigation system back home.
    And there were cubs everywhere, wriggling and wrestling on the cushions, tumbling over the backs of thesofas. Then they stopped and looked at me and as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I saw there were only three of them and they weren’t cubs at all, but children, a few years younger, perhaps, than Portia.
    They stood up as I approached.
    Uncle Dusty put my bag down on the floor and absently scratched behind his ear—with his hand, I was relieved to see, instead of dropping to all fours and aiming with his hind paw. ‘Connie, Bonnie, Johnnie,’ he said. ‘Kids, Danielle Forest.’
    I never know what to say to children. Hello kids, would you like a new Realbeach, with genuine surf, Virtual seagulls and up-to-date software? I settled for ‘Hi’.
    ‘Hello,’ said the boy. There was no trace of growl about his voice. It was