Read Online Benighted by Kit Whitfield - Free Book Online Page B

And he’d better be as able as I think he is on this one, or we’ll end up rushing the juvenile to a shelter with a sedative overdose.
    The yellow light of the van has turned everything pale, and the shadow of the pole looms black against the pile of trash. Then Marty’s foot comes down on a gray leaf. It only makes a little splashing sound: that little sound, then silence. The juvenile stops digging. It pulls its head out of the pile, and a waterfall of bags tumble down around it. It looks up, and it sees the pole.
    The sound it makes is like something falling from a great height to smash at the bottom. A whimper, and the whimper rises to a screaming snarl, and then it leaps bare-toothed into the air. There’s a dull gleam as its jaws snap together just under the pole, and it circles around on the pavement preparing for another leap.
    “Marty, hurry,” I mutter. “Catch it while you still can.”
    The juvenile leaps again, up against the wall and back toward us, it’s fast as a cat. Marty swings the pole and misses, it knocks against the side of a building and it’s way out of line. The juvenile gives a high, grinding wail. In a minute, the whole street will start howling. Already there are several voices coming down, they blend and rise, coming down on us, and I press my hands against my head because I cannot afford to panic, whatever the noise I cannot afford to panic. Marty wrestles with the pole and swings again, way off-balance: the collar brushes the juvenile’s head and doesn’t catch it.
    “Marty, in a minute it’s going to attack you.” My voice is as quiet as I can make it. “Catch it now.”
    Marty reaches the pole out. It hangs in the air above the juvenile, and the juvenile cringes down, snarling at it. There’s a moment where there’s nothing but howling voices and the snarls below us, and then the juvenile springs. Marty makes another swing just as it leaves the ground.
    There’s a thud and a shriek, and I see what’s happened. He hit it with the stick. Bad luck, bad timing, he missed and he hit this under-age stray on the head with a heavy ten-foot pole. The juvenile cowers on the ground, its head between its feet and its tail between its legs. Its howls shouldn’t make sense to me, every howl should sound the same. They don’t, though. This pitched, shaking wail may be lune-talk, and I don’t know how lunes think: all of that is true. It doesn’t matter, not just this minute. I know crying when I hear it.
    I take the pole out of Marty’s hands and collar the weeping juvenile in one shot. Once it’s collared it fights, and we shove it, still sobbing, into the van, bruising its neck as we go. It lands a bite on my calf as we get it up the ramp, but its teeth don’t go through the suit. I’ll just have a mark there tomorrow. Marty holds it pressed against the wall.
    “Hold it there for a bit,” I say. Lycos have chips in their necks inserted at birth, to help us ID: I scan the microchip in his neck with the chipper as I pass, and yank open a cage door. Marty harries him in, and I slam the door and lock it.
    “Check this reading, will you?” I say.
    “Toby McInley,” says Marty. “Seven years old.” Toby McInley curls up in the middle of the cage, shivering.
    “What have we got?” I go to look over Marty’s shoulder. What we’ve got on him is nothing surprising. He’s on the at-risk list: a social worker, neglect, suspected abuse. They’re always the ones we find out on the streets.
    I leave Toby sitting huddled on the floor and start the van up again.
    “That wasn’t good, Marty.” This is a matter of fact.
    Marty rubs his fists together and doesn’t say anything.
    “Marty. You have to be quicker than that. You can’t just clout them with the pole, you could get done backward and forward for that. You’re lucky it’s a neglected child whose folks probably won’t sue.”
    “I didn’t mean to,” he mutters.
    “I know you didn’t mean to, it doesn’t matter