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"Nossir. 'Mafraidnotsir," said the guard, staring straight ahead.
Aziraphale winked desperately. "No, go on, dear boy, take a look, please. "
The guard reached a hand inside his inside pocket, looked surprised, and pulled out a handkerchief, duck‑egg‑blue silk, with lace edging. Aziraphale realized almost immediately that the lace had been a mistake, as it caught on the guard's holstered gun, and sent it spi
The children applauded spasmodically. "Hey, not bad!" said the pony‑tailed girl.
Warlock had already run across the room, and grabbed the gun.
"Hands up, dogbreaths!" he shouted gleefully.
The security guards were in a quandary.
Some of them fumbled for their own weapons; others started edging their way toward, or away from, the boy. The other children started complaining that they wanted guns as well, and a few of the more forward ones started trying to tug them from the guards who had been thoughtless enough to take their weapons out.
Then someone threw some jelly at Warlock.
The boy squeaked, and pulled the trigger of the gun. It was a Magnum .32, CIA issue, gray, mean, heavy, capable of blowing a man away at thirty paces, and leaving nothing more than a red mist, a ghastly mess, and a certain amount of paperwork.
Aziraphale blinked.
A thin stream of water squirted from the nozzle and soaked Crowley, who had been looking out the window, trying to see if there was a huge black dog in the garden.
Aziraphale looked embarrassed.
Then a cream cake hit him in the face.
It was almost five past three.
With a gesture, Aziraphale turned the rest of the guns into water pistols as well, and walked out.
Crowley found him on the pavement outside, trying to extricate a rather squishy dove from the arm of his frock coat.
"It's late," said Aziraphale.
"I can see that," said Crowley. "Comes of sticking it up your sleeve." He reached out and pulled the limp bird from Aziraphale's coat, and breathed life back into it. The dove cooed appreciatively and flew off, a trifle warily.
"Not the bird," said the angel. "The dog. It's late."
Crowley shook his head, thoughtfully. "We'll see."
He opened the car door, flipped on the radio. "I‑should‑be‑solucky,‑lucky‑lucky‑lucky‑lucky,‑I‑should‑be‑so‑lucky‑in‑HELLO CROWLEY. "
"Hello. Um, who is this?"
"DAGON, LORD
OF THE FILES, MASTER OF MADNESS, UNDER‑DUKE OF THE SEVENTH TORMENT. WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?"
"The hell‑hound. I'm just, uh, just checking that it got off okay."
"RELEASED TEN MINUTES AGO. WHY? HASN'T IT ARRIVED? IS SOMETHING WRONG?"
"Oh no. Nothing's wrong. Everything's fine. Oops, I can see it now. Good dog. Nice dog. Everything's terrific. You're doing a great job down there, people. Well, lovely talking to you, Dagon. Catch you soon, huh?"
He flipped off the radio.
They stared at each other. There was a loud bang from inside the house, and a window shattered. "Oh dear," muttered Aziraphale, not swearing with the practiced ease of one who has spent six thousand years not swearing, and who wasn't going to start now. "I must have missed one."
"No dog," said Crowley.
"No dog," said Aziraphale.
The demon sighed. "Get in the car," he said. "We've got to talk about this. Oh, and Aziraphale . . .?"
"Yes."
"Clean off that blasted cream cake before you get in."
– – -
It was a hot, silent August day far from Central London. By the side of the Tadfield road the dust weighed down the hogweed. Bees buzzed in the hedges. The air had a leftover and reheated feel.
There was a sound like a thousand metal voices shouting "Hail!" cut off abruptly.
And there was a black dog in the road.
It had to be a dog. It was dog‑shaped.
There are some dogs which, when you meet them, remind you that, despite thousands of years of man‑made evolution, every dog is still only two meals away from being a wolf. These dogs advance deliberately, purposefully, the wilderness made flesh, their teeth yellow, their breath a‑stink, while in the distance their owners witter, "He's an old soppy really, just poke him if he's a nuisance," and in the green of their eyes the red campfires of the Pleistocene gleam and flicker . . .
This dog would make even a dog like that slink nonchalantly behind the sofa and pretend to be extremely preoccupied with its rubber bone.
It was already growling, and the growl was a low, rumbling snarl of spring‑coiled menace, the sort of growl that starts in the back of one throat and ends up in someone else's.
Saliva dripped from its jaws and sizzled on the tar.
It took a few steps forward, and sniffed the sullen air.
Its ears flicked up.
There were voices, a long way off. A voice. A boyish voice, but one it had been created to obey, could not help but obey. When that voice said "Follow," it would follow; when it said "Kill," it would kill. His master's voice.
It leapt the hedge and padded across the field beyond. A grazing bull eyed it for a moment, weighed its chances, then strolled hurriedly toward the opposite hedge.
The voices were coming from a copse of straggly trees. The black hound slunk closer, jaws streaming.
One of the other voices said: "He never will. You're always saying he will, and he never does. Catch your dad giving you a pet. An int'restin' pet, anyway. It'll prob'ly be stick insects. That's your dad's idea of int'restin'."
The hound gave the canine equivalent of a shrug, but immediately lost interest because now the Master, the Center of its Universe, spoke.
"It'll be a dog," it said.
"Huh. You don't know it's going to be a dog. No one's said it's going to be a dog. How d'you know it's goin' to be a dog if no one's said? Your dad'd be complaining about the food it eats the whole time."
"Privet." This third voice was rather more prim than the first two. The owner of a voice like that would be the sort of person who, before making a plastic model kit, would not only separate and count all the parts before commencing, as per the instructions, but also paint the bits that needed painting first and leave them to dry properly prior to construction. All that separated this voice from chartered accountancy was a matter of time.
"They don't eat privet, Wensley. You never saw a dog eatin' privet."
"Stick insects do, I mean. They're jolly interesting, actually. They eat each other when they're mating."
There was a thoughtful pause. The hound slunk closer, and realized that the voices were coming from a hole in the ground.
The trees in fact concealed an ancient chalk quarry, now half overgrown with thorn trees and vines. Ancient, but clearly not disused. Tracks crisscrossed it; smooth areas of slope indicated regular use by skateboards and Wall‑of‑Death, or at least Wall‑of‑Seriously‑Grazed‑Knee, cyclists. Old bits of dangerously frayed rope hung from some of the more accessible greenery. Here and there sheets of corrugated iron and old wooden boards were wedged in branches. A burnt‑out, rusting Triumph Herald Estate was visible, half‑submerged in a drift of nettles.