Vladimir looks at me, and I look back.

I suppose it would be hypocritical to say that he’s an odd-looking guy – after all, I’m the one with the wolf’s grin and the big ears – but he still is, all the same.

"Now what?"

He’s uncomfortable with me looking at him so intently, and his shape shifts under my gaze, blending from lion to man to lion-man and back again. "Lupa, stop staring. It’s rude."

"Sorry. You had a spot on your nose and it was so big I was wondering if it was gonna make a bid to replace your head."

I look away as he snorts in irritation, and pretend to be interested in the TV. I can still see him anyway, reflected in the screen. He’s relaxed into his most common shape, that of a lion-headed man with pale, clawed hands and a swiping, restless tail that beats against the sofa arm ceaselessly. My own tail wags a little to see him. After all, we have been friends since practically forever. It was a relief, in many ways, when we found each other – who wants to be the only one who worries about fur in the shower head and mud between the paw-pads as well as the ordinary worries like bills and politics? – but it was also a burden. We are the same, you see…like one mind in two bodies…and haven’t you ever thought about what would happen if you actually met yourself? It would be fun, at first, to speak to someone who knew you in and out, who agreed with you on pretty much everything – but fairly soon you’d realise just how annoying your little habit of leaving the tap running while you brushed your teeth was, or how contrived you sound when you’re trying to be funny.

In the reflection of the screen, Vladimir’s eyes light up like flame, one yellow as a bonfire, the other blue like a gas pilot-light, and we both come instantly to alert. My eyes are burning, too, glow-in-the-dark burning. It’s not painful, exactly. Just feels like too many drinks the night before. But it means trouble.

Vladimir’s home is based in the Nexus, a sort of parallel dimension to mine. Although that description isn’t right, either. I guess what you could best call the Nexus is…a meeting place. A meeting place for worlds. And Vladimir’s the boss. He (and to a lesser extent, myself) control the world-gates that lead in and out of the Nexus. We are connected to the place by ties as strong as blood.

Hence, when there’s something wrong, the Nexus calls us, warns us, and our eyes burn. In really bad times, they bleed.

As usual, Vladimir is unimpressed by this display of telekinetic communication from his homeland.

"Bloody thing! What’s wrong with the telephone? Or one of those annoying alarms that says "Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!"

"I think you just answered your own question," I point out, dryly. "What’s wrong with them is that they’re bloody annoying."

He gives me one of those looks, and pauses only to grab his jacket and keys before bolting out of the door with me in hot pursuit.

The warning has come from the eastern gate, right across town and past the shopping mall. The eastern gate has never been as much trouble as some of our more notorious gates: like the western gate, from which one dreadful day issued a swarm of giant cockroaches with legs clicking and antennae bobbing – or the north-east gate, which has a habit of opening into dimensions contaminated with smog: but when it does go bad…ohhhh, brother.

Vladimir swings out across the road in his purple VW Beetle, ignoring the angry beeping of horns and shouting from other innocent road users. I merely sit tight, seat-belt on, my paws drawn up onto the seat because the carpet is still nastily damp from that time the Beetle took a dive into several hundred feet of water. It survived the experience, of course. Beetles are tough.

"Equipment check," Vladimir snaps across at me, eyes on the road. "Butterfly net?"

I lean over to scan the back seat.

"Check."

"Big can of bug spray?"

"Check."

"Gas masks?"

"Check."

"Emergency gatling gun?"

"Nope. You remember."

Vladimir growls and thumps the wheel.

"Of course. It blew up. Oh, well…what do we have in the line of destructive weaponry?"

I sort through the shabby cardboard box that has "Weapons" written on the side in black marker. "We have…three spent shotgun shells, a line of caps, some of that powder that fizzes when exposed to the air, and two thermal grenades left over from that time we went camping."

He sighs, as if vastly disappointed.

"I suppose it’ll have to do. Give us a sandwich, Lupa, love…I didn’t have any breakfast."

The sandwiches are also in the box marked "Weapons". I wonder, as I hand him one, whether perhaps we should be saving them for biological warfare. Vladimir’s cookery is legendary. Or perhaps I should say infamous. No-one leaves his kitchen alive, or at any rate no-one leaves with their stomach lining intact. Houseplants in his lounge regularly die from guests pouring their unwanted tea over them.

The Beetle screeches to a halt in the plaza outside the eastern gate. A flock of white pigeons whirr into flight, startled, as Vladimir bounds out of his car and approaches the open gate, cautiously. Active world-gates are very beautiful things, sparking like moon-lit water with flecks of blue and gold in their depths. Strictly speaking, anything reflective can be used as a gate: a mirror, a pool of water, a shop window – but the Nexus gates are the real deal. The eastern gate is fully open, and its surface shimmers slightly as Vladimir walks up to it. He lays his hand on the gate arch, stroking the rough carved stone. He treats his gates like children. Or rather, he treats them the way good parents treat children. The very idea of Vladimir with cubs of his own, when he can barely look after himself, doesn’t bear thinking about. Someone once suggested to me that all Vladimir needs is the love of a good woman. I agreed. A very laudable idea, I said. It was when they expanded on their idea and said they thought that I might like to take up the position that the sniggering and the pouring of scorn began.

"What’s the matter?" Vladimir purrs, hand on the gate as its surface quivers. "What’s wrong? Is something inside you? Something that wants to get out?"

"You know, you’d make a great midwife."

He ignores me, intent on the gate. It is heaving now, and my pregnancy quip seems horribly apt. The thing is swelling like it’s got quins in there.

"Vladimir –" I say, in my best warning tone.

"Wait. Wait."

"That’s what you said when the giant cockroaches –"

He’s shaking his head. "This isn’t like that. The gate feels…"

He trails off.

"Feels what?" I demand, ducking as the gate bulges alarmingly above my ear-tips.

"Feels…kind of sticky."

And then there is an explosion of sorts. My world goes pink, and all I can hear is Vladimir shouting triumphantly: "Lupa! Lupa! It’s all okay! Did we bring any spoons?"

The eastern gate, as it turns out, has had a mad five minutes and opened up a channel to the ice-cream factory across town. The result? Six thousand litres of unfrozen Strawberry Swirl Surprise come pouring out across the plaza. I am covered in it, and believe me, it feels a lot worse than it looks. Vladimir, unsurprisingly, remains untouched by the goo. This, I find, is the difference between cats and dogs – or to be more accurate in our case, lions and wolves – a cat can manage to be out in a rainstorm for three hours and still come home with only a faint dampness on his pelt, whereas a dog only has to be within spitting distance of a puddle and she will instantly be sprayed with a heavy coating of mud.

He scrapes affectionately at my muzzle with a spoon, trying to free my nose from the cloying stuff. "Could be worse!" he says cheerfully.

"How," I ask heavily, "could this be worse?"

He grins. "Could be vanilla. You hate vanilla."

I flick a glob of the stuff at him, and it gives me great pleasure to see it lodge in his whiskers, glueing them together. That’s another thing about cats and dogs. Vladimir can be a pussycat – but I can be a bitch.