The Last Werewolf Read Online Free PDF Page A

The point of civilisation is so that one can check in to a quality hotel. “Well, he managed it somehow, Jacob, I assure you. I’ve just got off the phone with Farrell at HQ. The French agent identified you and—belatedly—called us. Trust me, WOCOP knows you’re here, but only as of ten minutes ago.”
    I wasn’t convinced, but Harley sounded exhausted and I couldn’t bring myself to worry him further. It was true I’d been preoccupied in Paris. One of my companies was involved in a large takeover and I’d had too much contact with my human proxies for comfort. It was just possible, I told myself, that I might, with a headful of irritating practicalities, have missed a tail, even the moron with the Magnum. The bullets of which, Harley had also confirmed, were pure Mexican silver. Whoever Cloquet was, he knew the nature of his quarry.
    “Obviously we oughtn’t meet face-to-face for a while,” Harley said.
    “What while? In twenty-seven days I’ll be dead.”
    Quiet on his end. Remorse on mine.
    “Don’t you trust me anymore, Jake?”
    “I’m sorry. Forget it.”
    “I don’t blame you. Sad old queen with hypertension and a sore arse. We should have found you someone young by now. We should have found you someone who—”
    “Forget it, Harls, please.” Again quiet. It was possible Harley was crying. He’s prone to emotional fracture since the prostate surgery. The truth is we
should
have found someone else, or rather no one else, since I haven’t actually needed a human familiar for a century or more. The real truth is I should never have let Harley in to begin with, but I’d been in a phase of deep loneliness the night I put him in my exploitable debt. Now, hearing him sniff, once, and take a big sip, I thought: This is me. Every present anger derives from past weakness. Enough.
Let it come down
. “Ignore me,” I said. “I’m just miffed about this tool following me.”
    Harley cleared his throat. Sometimes the sound of him doing this, or the sight of him struggling to open a pickle jar, or patting his pockets for the specs that are resting on his forehead breaks my heart. But what’s heartbreak? A feeling. I’ve had it with feelings, even if they haven’t had it with me. “Well, there’s no point leaving the Zetter tonight,” he said. “They already know you’re there. Why don’t you call me tomorrow morning when you’ve had some sense fucked into you?”
    “Why don’t I do just that?”
    Another pause. There are these silences in which I can feel him restraining the word “love.”
    “Who is it tonight?” he asked. “Not the one with the plastic twat?”
    “That’s Katia,” I said. “This is Madeline. No plastic. All real.”

6
    A VAMPIRE HAS written: “The great asymmetry between immortals and werewolves (apart from the obvious aesthetic asymmetry) is that whereas the vampire is elevated by his transformation the werewolf is diminished by his. To be a vampire is to be increased in subtlety of mind and refinement of taste; the self opens the door of its dismal bed-sit to discover the house of many mansions. Personality expands, indefinitely. The vampire gets immortality, immense physical strength, hypnotic ability, the power of flight, psychic grandeur and emotional depth. The werewolf gets dyslexia and a permanent erection. It’s hardly worth making the comparison …” For all of which you can read:
Werewolves get to have sex and we don’t
.
    Though I’m not a misogynist I only have sex with women I dislike. Emotionally there’s no alternative, but it’s tough. Not because dislike impedes desire (on the contrary, as we modernly know, as we’re modernly cool with) but because
my
dislike rarely lasts, especially with prostitutes, most of whom go out of their way to be likeable. Very many contemporary metropolitan escorts are ruinously likeable. Last year I hired a twenty-nine-year-old Argentinean girl, Victoria, whose soul spoke to mine in its own occult tongue