He was coughing and staggering, seemingly no longer aware of where he was. Wolf struggled up again, his hair plastered against his face, his dazed eyes peering through a curtain of it like the eyes of an English sheepdog. The cry was low, gargling, full of water. That's it, he's gone, must be, let him go, get out of here. It had been tied at the nape of his neck, Jack saw, but most of it had come loose. The hair of Sloat's Twinner was long, black, flapping, somehow dead-looking. His hair renewed itself, growing forward, first tinting the rondure of his skull, as if some invisible being were coloring Uncle Morgan's head, then covering it. As he came he did his own werewolf number, changing from Morgan Sloat, investor, land speculator, and sometime Hollywood agent, into Morgan of Orris, pretender to the throne of a dying Queen. Jack stood, paralyzed, as Sloat bulled his way through the hole between the two universes. Morgan Sloat's suede boots became dark leather knee-boots, their tops turned down, what might have been the hilt of a knife poking out of one. 'Wolf' Jack screamed, but thunder exploded across the blue sky again, drowning him out.īut the Queen's son died an infant, died, he. There was another clap of thunder, this one a huge oaken thud that rolled through the sky like an artillery shell. He got up again quick, coughing and choking, one hand feeling inside his jerkin for the bottle, afraid it might have washed away. One of them bunted his hip hard and Jack went over, inhaling water. Jack fought his way toward those hands, still dodging the cattle as best he could.
He saw Wolf's head going down again, both hands waving. Jack whirled clumsily around in the stream, barely avoiding another cow-sheep, this one floating on its side, dead in the water. It was like listening to a man shout inside a telephone booth. His voice carried, but it had a muffled, dead quality as it came from the reality of that world into the reality of this one. 'There you are, you little shithead' Morgan bellowed at him. Sorry, but I've got to see if I can avoid getting drowned by Wolf's herd before I see if I can avoid getting fried by your doomstick there. A moment later another of the terrified cow-sheep struck him and bore him under again. Wolf bent over and retched up a great muddy sheet of water. He's found me, oh dear God, he's found me.
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