My young man thrashed, screaming behind his gag. The ship did something, offered some large tilted response to the sea, and I genuinely thought (God being dead etc.) I might vomit over the wretched creature. I let the lid fall shut. Then worried lest he suffocate. Jacqueline opening the case to find him not mauled but asphyxiated was hardly the denouement I was after. A quick check revealed air holes in the steel flank. Very well. But the Hunger had twigged I was serious. No barbs, no bennys, no chloroform, no laughing gas. No chains, no time locks. No teasing or dallying. Just Jake Marlowe, cold turkey, saying No .

There was an inner silence while the Hunger took this in.

I went back to the bars (thinking of Tantalus, of Christ in Gethsemane, unjustifiably of Samson at the Philistine Pillars), wrapped my monster fingers around the steel, closed my eyes and waited for the agony to begin.

Second Moon

Fuckkilleat

23

READER, I ATE HIM.

About three hours after resolving I wouldn’t.

Throughout the dull solo feast the refrain from Tennyson’s “Mariana” repeated in the hot spaces of my gorging head: She only said My life is dreary, He cometh not, she said . She said, I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead .

I would that I were —Yet here was the flesh that took my teeth in helpless succulence and the warm sour fountain of blood, the puncture moment that never gets old but stops being enough. And afterwards the swollen headache of my unsurprised self, the old exhausted cognisance of all the times I’ve vowed it was the last time and all the times it wasn’t.

Don’t misunderstand me: There was no guilt. Only the cavity where guilt used to be. This and the weight of my own still-hereness slumped on me like a corpse. For a long while I lay in the recovery position, eyes closed. Total self-disgust is a kind of peace.

At dawn Jacqueline returned, accompanied by the baby-faced skinhead. Both wore rubber boots over surgical scrubs. From the doorway they unrolled a length of plastic to form a walkway up to the cage. A hosepipe was unwound from a corner of the hold. I understood: a murder scene in the age of CSI. Leftovers were in the crate. The kid’s half-eaten carcase in a gelid blood soup. Wolf remnants wriggled under my human skin like rats in a sack. My fingernails, as always after the withdrawal of their wolf counterparts, hurt like hell.

“It’s warm water,” Jacqueline said. “Do you mind? I’ll help as best I can, with your permission.”

I sat (naked, obviously) in profile to my captors at the side of the cage with my back to the bars, knees drawn up, face smeared and sated. I was full-bellied, heavy in the human-again limbs. The wolf’s ghost dimensions played with me when I moved, the snout’s weight and the long hybrid feet, the haunches still struggling to unload their late mass. The goon had his gun levelled at my belly, but at his mistress’s gesture lowered it.

“Here,” Jacqueline said, handing me a squeezy bottle. “It’s just a sterilising detergent. Would you prefer it if he holds the hose?”

“Decorum and I don’t keep company,” I said, my throat howl-sore. “Besides, the role of prison guard suits you. Go ahead.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Really I am. I promise this is the very last discomfort you’ll suffer as my guest. Please forgive me.”

To repeat: Total self-disgust is a kind of peace—because further ignominy can add nothing to it. Standing there washing myself in front of her I made an intellectual concession to the debasement, but it was only moments before I was enjoying the soft soap and perfectly adjusted heat of the water. Put the right music behind this, I thought, and I could be advertising shower gel.

I dried off with a white towel that might have been manufactured in heaven. The flesh can’t help it. The flesh merely reports. When I’d finished I was tired and roseate and curiously pleased with the ongoing failure of myself.

“The ammunition is pure silver,” Jacqueline said. “I tell you this not as a threat but only so that you know you’ll die if you decide to attack me the minute I open the door. I wouldn’t blame you. You must be furious with me. But there’s a helicopter waiting which will have us at my home in thirty minutes. Once there, I promise you nothing but luxury, rest and conversation. If you prefer, I can make arrangements for you to be taken to any destination you choose, and I’ll never bother you again. But I so much hope you’ll agree to hear what I have to say. Is it safe for me to open the door?”

The heroic thing would have been to refuse. Take her at her word and get the chopper to drop me at the nearest airport. Fuck conversation. But I was exhausted. The appeal of putting myself in someone else’s hands bordered the sensuous.

“I assume you keep a full bar at home?”

“Three full bars.”

“Then it’s safe to open the door.”

When we stood facing each other on the plastic she offered me her hand. I was tempted to take it and bite off a finger (leftover wolf aplenty for that) but settled for a gentle squeeze. “Now we can be relaxed,” she said. “I’m so pleased to meet you.”

I followed her to the doorway. The gargoyle with the gun stayed put. In the short corridor facing us was a little fold-out table, on it, my clothes (including the woollen hat Harley had given me) washed, dried, pressed. She opened a door on her left, which revealed a small locker. I saw a shower unit, a plastic chair, a dress the colour of wheat on a hanger. “I just need to get out of these,” she said, indicating the scrubs. I was checking the overcoat’s inside pocket for the journal. It was there, along with passports and wallet. I didn’t waste time wondering if she’d read it. “And?” I asked.

“Fascinating,” she said. “But let’s discuss it over a drink.”

24

JACQUELINE DELON’S VILLA sits a few miles south of Biarritz on a wooded hill a little west of the tiny town of Arbonne. Modern, white, glass, oak and steel, surrounded by eight private acres. The trappings you’d expect: helipad, infinity pool, tennis court, gym, CCTV, a combo-staff of domestics and security personnel. The rooms are big, full of light, ornamented with artefacts reflecting her obsession with the occult. From the upper floors (there are three, plus roof terrace) you can look down over the tops of the evergreens to the pale beach, the surf line, the ocean. In the basement there’s a library to rival Harley’s. All the tech hardware is up to the minute. There are indeed three bars—lounge, pool, master bedroom suite—and it was to the first of these Mme Delon and I retired alone on our arrival.