Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [4]
Now Ace stood in the shadow of the fountain, knowing she couldn’t be seen from the gate. She drew her gun and peered cautiously around the edge of the fountain. The cat stirred carefully beside her, eager to see what she was looking at.
Chick could see the tension and excitement in the way Ace held the gun and his own small heart beat more quickly as he shared that excitement. His amber eyes dilated, making the world a brighter place, clearer and more sharply defined in its light and shadow and movement. A more difficult place for an enemy to hide in.
Ace’s face was beautiful to Chick, held taut with concentration and full of life. The cat couldn’t see shapes and details the way a human could but he detected dynamic relationships and read the nuances of movement with great skill. He could sense the life burning more strongly in Ace as she beamed all her attention towards the gate.
Clearly, that was the direction of the enemy.
The thought of the enemy, the thought of a fight excited Chick. He dreamed for a moment of moon‐haunted combat on the rough dark surface of night‐time walls, claws sunk into soft brick, holding fast to provide purchase for quick hot explosions of battle, for the slice and slash of thin sharp claws and fangs.
As the dreamy fury of combat swept through his metabolism, Chick imagined he could taste blood in his mouth. His whiskers trembled, anxiously reaching out, striving to sense and measure the world.
His delicately furred ears twitched and swivelled, and saliva gathered in his mouth. He’d detected the sound of a squirrel. His mind flooded with memories of hallucinatory vividness, memories of crashing past grey branches, claws curving with savage perfection of aim into a small muscular body, teeth tearing the fur and crunching small delicate bones as the hot bloody taste of squirrel filled his universe.
Chick emerged from the hot all‐consuming memory and followed the direction of Ace’s gaze, drawn by the force of her concentration. His ears swivelled and tightened. There were three different kinds of breathing that Chick could hear coming from the gate. This was the breathing of the enemy.
At the thought of the enemy Chick’s excitement became almost uncontainable. He pressed down hard, letting his beautiful sharp claws emerge from the plump pads of his paws, revelling in the length and keenness of them. He stretched the slender and powerful muscles of his shoulders and hips and held them taut. He turned his small head to look at Ace. And that was when the terrible thing happened.
Chick could hardly believe his eyes. Something in Ace’s manner and posture was changing. Softening, relaxing. Before Ace even knew it herself, Chick realized there was no real danger.
Although Ace had hardly moved, although she was still holding the gun, some subtle change in her posture told Chick she had relaxed. Subconsciously Ace had decided the three intruders at the gate presented no threat. Now her conscious mind was catching up with her intuitive decision and she was lowering the gun, standing up from the concealment of the fountain and walking towards the gate.
Chick arched his spine in disgust and disappointment. There was to be no fight!
He twitched and turned his back on Ace. Stretching casually to hide his outrage and fury, Chick sauntered across the dry bed of the fountain, jumped with effortless grace onto the rim, then down to the lawn where he disdainfully trotted away from Ace and the intruders. He was going to sulk.
‘Hello.’
There was a man and a girl standing outside the wrought iron gate, looking at Ace as she approached. It was the man who had spoken. The girl who stood beside him might have been a teenager but he looked at least in his thirties.
He was big and massively pot‐bellied, his fat face framed with lank greasy ginger hair. He had a ragged moustache and beard and the pink