Mort paused.
The annoying thing about Agnetha was that she had spotted the flaw in his argument. They probably could find a way to get out of the school thing – although after hearing how easily this Trish woman had dealt with Khan, Mort wasn’t quite as sure as Agnetha about that. But Mort couldn’t mention the real reason he didn’t want Trish Molyneux anywhere near Festering Hall today of all days.
‘Or is there something you’re not telling me?’ asked Agnetha. There was a funny expression on her face that Mort didn’t like the look of.
‘No,’ he replied, a little too quickly. ‘No reason. I just hate school. Remember Sparta?’
Agnetha shivered. Of course she remembered. Sometime around 510 BC, their parents had had a stupid idea about toughening them up a little and had sent them to a school on the banks of the Evrotas. It had nearly killed them both.
‘Okay,’ said Agnetha, ‘but Unk Shire isn’t Sparta!’
‘We can’t take that chance,’ replied Mort, avoiding Agnetha’s eye. ‘I’ll sort it out. Scare her off.’
‘Like Khan?’
Mort ignored Agnetha and leaned back in his leather chair, folded his arms and frowned.
Sending Khan out had clearly been a tactical error.
He could see now he had been too confident in the ability of the Mongolian to scare off the visitors. Now it looked as though he was going to have to knuckle down and get serious with this Trish woman.
What he needed was something really scary. Something even the conqueror of Khan couldn’t deal with.
‘Mort,’ said Agnetha, ‘I don’t like the look on your face. You look exactly like you did that time you put a shark in Tutankhamun’s bathtub.’
‘He deserved it, the little sneak!’ Mort got to his feet and began pacing back and forth. ‘It’s time to bring out the big guns,’ said Mort, his eyes glittering. Agnetha felt a chill run down her spine. There was a dangerous streak in her brother that had landed both of them in hot water before now. And each time it had started with the same expression on his face he wore now. ‘I’ve been too soft. Much too soft.’
As if in answer, from somewhere deep in the belly of Festering Hall came a rumbling howl. Agnetha glanced sharply at her brother and grabbed his sleeve.
‘You don’t mean …? No, Mort, you can’t! Not Smiler!’
‘Just watch me! I’m going to scare these interfering busybodies so much they’ll swim back to the mainland!’
‘If they make it to the water!’ Agnetha grabbed Mort’s arm. He shrugged himself free from her grasp and sprinted for the door.
‘Wait! Mort!’
Mort was already heading down the stairs two at a time.
‘Don’t worry, Aggers!’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘You’ll thank me for this later!’
Agnetha took a step forward but she was too late.
Mort was gone.
Nigel wasn’t very good at hiding.
Trish spotted him easily from twenty metres away, crouching in a bush and holding a trembling branch in front of him.
‘Come out, Nigel,’ said Trish as she drew closer. ‘Anyone can see you behind that twig.’
Nigel emerged from the bushes. ‘Is that man chasing us?’ he said, his eyes wide.
‘He’s in the swamp,’ said Trish. ‘But he won’t stay in there for long.’ She squinted into the distance. ‘Now let’s see if we can find this Festering Hall place, shall we? According to the maps it’s only about another kilometre.’
‘You don’t mean we’re still going through with this, do you?’ said Nigel.
‘Of course we are,’ Trish said. ‘It’s in the manual. “The Unk Shire Education Department always gets its man.” Section Three, paragraph sixteen, clause four. We’re not stopping for anything until those children are safely at school. Got it?’
Nigel nodded meekly.
Trish turned and began striding towards a gradually rising wedge of land covered in wind-stunted trees. She pointed a finger to the sky. ‘On to Festering Hall!’
Nigel took off after her like an Olympic sprinter. If there was one thing worse than following Trish Molyneux, it was waiting around for that hairy maniac to find him.
Four hundred metres away, and finally free of the clinging mud of the swamp, Khan moved quickly. The woman and her lickspittle servant could only be a few minutes ahead and he was confident he could track them down easily enough.
Khan gingerly reached a hand towards his chin to check the damage done to his beard. As he did so he noticed something so wonderful that, for a brief moment, he felt dizzy.
His collar – the only thing that allowed that poisonous little squidge Mortimer DeVere to control him – was no longer around his neck! Khan punched the air and celebrated his new collar-free existence by dancing a jig. Admittedly it looked more like Khan was trying to shake a cockroach out of his underpants than any dance a normal human would recognise, but dancing wasn’t one of the skills needed to be a successful Mongolian warlord.
He felt free!
He felt light as air!
He felt like doing a spot of beheading or spear-chucking, perhaps even a little disembowelling. Just as a celebration, you understand.
The woman and her pathetic manservant first, and then the one he’d been thinking of eradicating for centuries: Mort.
Mort floored the accelerator pedal on one of Festering’s many golf buggies and headed straight for the compounds. He flipped open his mobile and jabbed a thumb on a speed dial number.
‘Outside Smiler’s compound, Sir David,’ he snapped the instant the phone was answered. ‘Six minutes.’
It was a complicated route through a bewildering maze of corridors and service shafts, but Mort slammed the buggy round corner after corner without a second’s hesitation. Festering was so enormous there were parts of it that even he hadn’t fully explored, but this route was as familiar to him as his own face.
Almost exactly six minutes later, he skidded to a halt outside the steel doors of Smiler’s compound. There, waiting for him in his crisp safari suit, was the famous TV naturalist, Sir David, his hands clasped behind his back.
Sir David was another of Mort’s little secrets.
He and Agnetha had agreed with their parents that any additions to their collections had to already be dead. That way (explained their father at great length) there was less chance of any confusion should the unthinkable happen and a copy find its way back to the mainland. When the copy was of someone famous, the risks were even greater. Mort had tried it once before with Elvis Presley and that little episode had ended so badly that Mort had been grounded for two years.
The trouble was that Mort had wanted Sir David as curator for his collection as soon as he’d seen him on TV. He was perfect.
What was more, Mort’s parents hadn’t been home for two hundred years. And as their holidays usually lasted around three centuries they’d never find out, because the real Sir David would be long dead by the time they returned.
It had been simple to make a copy. Mort snared a sample of Sir David’s hair at a charity event and made his copy from that. And since Agnetha never watched television, Mort had never had to explain. She’d just assumed the man in the safari suit had been copied after he’d died.
‘How is he today?’ said Mort.
Sir David tilted his head to one side and smiled sadly. Which usually meant trouble.
Mort braced himself. ‘Problems?’ he asked.
‘Smiler, or – to put it more accurately, smilodon fatalis – is usually found in the remote areas of the globe,’ said Sir David in his velvety hushed voice, ‘feeding mainly on migrating wildebeest sweeping down in enormous herds from the vast northern tundra …’
Mort interrupted. Good though he was, once Sir David got going there was no stopping him.
‘Sorry, Sir David, could I have the quick version please?’
‘He’s not happy.’
‘Has Vlad been up to his old tricks again?’
&n
bsp; Vlad the Impaler’s enclosure was quite close to Smiler’s and the Impaler liked to enrage Smiler by throwing rocks at him.
Sir David nodded. ‘Most likely.’
‘I’ll get the fencing raised,’ said Mort. He looked away from Sir David. ‘Now, do you think Smiler needs some exercise?’
Sir David looked puzzled. ‘Exercise, Master DeVere? He gets plenty of exercise around the compound. It’s the biggest on the island. Ten hectares.’
Mort paused. ‘I thought we might … um, let him out for a proper run?’
The blood drained from Sir David’s face. ‘Out? On the island?’
‘Yes,’ said Mort a little too quickly. ‘Out. I think he could do with some real fresh air for once.’
From inside the compound came a roar from Smiler. It was almost as if he knew what was coming.
‘I don’t think that’s wise, Master DeVere,’ said Sir David. ‘I don’t think that’s wise at all. Smilodon fatalis, well, to put it bluntly, is a very, very dangerous animal. Anyone on the island would be lucky to escape with their lives!’
Mort felt a twitch of doubt right in the pit of his stomach. But then an image of Trish Molyneux carting himself and Agnetha off to some horrible old school sprang into his mind, followed by another of his lovely Retro machine gathering dust in the lab. He fixed Sir David with a glare. ‘There is no-one else on the island. And if they are, they shouldn’t be! Besides, I’ll be monitoring things from the air. If Smiler looks like he’s going to eat anyone I’ll give him a quick zap.’
Sir David eyed Mort’s wrist controller. ‘From the air? Will it be as effective?’
Instead of replying, Mort leaned forward and pressed the enclosure release button.
‘There’s only one way to find out!’
Eight hundred metres away, in an outdoor section of the fence that ran around Smiler’s enclosure, a massive steel plate slid upwards. Smiler stopped and sniffed the air at the sound of the door rattling on its tracks. Then, with a ground-shaking bellow of joy he galloped across the grass, through the open gate and onto the island.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Master DeVere,’ whispered Sir David.
Mort was already behind the wheel of the buggy. He turned it in a circle and headed back the way he’d come.
‘So do I,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘So do I.’
Nigel was pouring a cup of tea from a thermos flask Trish had produced from her bag when Smiler roared. He leapt to his feet, spilling tea everywhere.
‘Careful, Nigel!’ said Trish. ‘I don’t have much left you know.’
‘Did you hear that?’
‘Of course,’ said Trish, laughing. ‘I’m not deaf, you know.’
She’s laughing, thought Nigel. Actually laughing!
‘And you’re not worried? About what it might be?’
‘It’s probably just a …’
‘Just a what? A flaming T-Rex?! Godzilla?!’ Nigel’s voice sounded like he’d just inhaled the contents of an economy-sized helium balloon.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Trish. She screwed the cap back on the thermos with an air of finality. ‘It’s probably a cow, or something.’
Nigel didn’t have the strength to argue. ‘Right-oh,’ he squeaked. ‘Best get to Festering before we, er, meet this “cow” then?’
‘Good idea,’ said Trish, placing the thermos in her bag.
Trish knew very well that the noise hadn’t come from a cow, but she also knew that Nigel was in no shape to cope with what Trish suspected it was. There had long been rumours of the DeVeres having a personal zoo on Unk and she thought the roar might have come from an escaped lion – but telling Nigel that wouldn’t have helped.
What Trish didn’t know was that the reality was much, much worse than either she or Nigel could possibly have imagined in their darkest nightmares.
Less than a kilometre away, Smiler was having the time of his life.
He’d already eaten three rabbits, some sort of non-flying bird and half a horse.
Smiler, his muzzle coated in blood and feathers, stood on the crest of a ridge and sniffed the air. Standing almost two metres tall at the shoulder and measuring more than three metres in length, he weighed close to five hundred kilos. From his mouth extended two enormous curved fangs.
Smiler was the last sabre-toothed tiger on the planet.
In actual fact, sabre-tooths weren’t tigers at all. They were panthers. But to anyone unfortunate enough to meet one, the difference wouldn’t have mattered. Mainly because they’d be dead.
Mort had been given Smiler to play with as a kitten and the two had once been close. It was only when Mort’s mother had found Smiler sitting in Mort’s playpen with Mort dangling from the big cat’s mouth that it was thought best to put Smiler in his own enclosure, where he had been ever since. The original Smiler had long since gone to sabre-tooth heaven but Mort had kept a copy. In fact Smiler had been the DeVere’s first ever copy.
Now Smiler was enjoying one of his best ever days, running around the island and eating anything that came across his path. And right now he could smell something interesting floating in on the salt-rich breeze.
Humans.
Eighty metres away, another predator also had Trish and Nigel in his sights.
Khan unhooked his heavy throwing spear from his back and balanced it comfortably in his hand. From anything closer than thirty metres he never missed. He’d had plenty of practice.
Khan broke into a trot.
Fifty metres. Thirty metres. Twenty-five.
Close enough. The Mongolian drew back his arm and hurled the spear with all his considerable strength.
It was a perfect throw. Fast and accurate, straight at the centre of Trish Molyneux’s back.
At the precise moment that Khan threw the spear, Smiler sprang from an overhanging stone ledge, his great claws ready to pin Trish to the floor, his mouth wide open to more easily allow his long fangs to sink into her soft neck.
In mid-air, Khan’s spear slammed into him from the side, sending the animal crashing to the ground.
Trish gasped and then looked back towards where Khan stood, a puzzled look on his face.
Nigel, his eyes on stalks, stared at the dead animal and then back at Khan. He didn’t know which was more horrible.
‘Well,’ said Trish, looking at the sabre-tooth. ‘At least we now know what made that sound.’
And then, before Nigel could do or say anything to stop her, Trish ran towards Khan.
‘Thank you,’ she trilled, smiling sweetly. ‘I knew you couldn’t be all bad!’
Trish produced a lollipop from her bag, placed it in Khan’s open mouth and, standing on her toes, kissed his soot-and mud-streaked face.
‘My hero!’ she whispered. Khan turned bright red.
Mort, seated at the controls of the Helix 1550, the silent and almost invisible ‘corkscrew’ helicopter developed by Mort’s father and Leonardo da Vinci almost five hundred years ago, wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. Hovering above the clearing, Mort watched open-mouthed as Trish led Genghis Khan to a rock and sat him down like a mother dealing with an overgrown toddler.
He’d arrived on the scene just in time to see Smiler attack and too late to stop it even if he’d been able to. Sir David had been right; his wristband controller hadn’t worked from the height he was flying.
This woman was clearly a tougher opponent than he could ever have imagined. Anyone who could disable Smiler and Khan – Khan for the second time that morning – was someone Mort needed to take very seriously indeed.
He leaned back on the joystick and drifted lower.
The first priority was to get Khan inside Festering and back to his normal nasty self. A lollipop-sucking enforcer was completely useless. Satisfied that he was now within shock range, Mort lifted his wrist and tapped a finger to give Khan a gentle reminder – just enough to let him know it was time to return to base.
Khan didn’t flinch
. He raised the tea Trish had given him and slurped.
Mort looked closely at his wristband. He tapped it once more, this time a little more firmly. Again there was no reaction from Khan. Mort peered closely at the Mongolian and got a shock almost as bad as the one he’d been trying to give Khan.
Khan’s collar was missing!
This was bad. Very bad. Years of bossing the Mongolian madman around had depended entirely on Mort’s ability to deliver a couple of thousand volts at the touch of a button. Collar-free, Khan was clear to do whatever he wanted. Mort guessed that what Khan most wanted was to take a very close look at Mort’s insides.
Mort wasn’t immortal. He wasn’t indestructible. He felt pain like anyone else. Granted, the DeVere family (and those few families like them) had developed a lot of advanced medicines and surgical techniques to help keep them healthy over the years, but an angry Mongolian warlord would have no trouble ripping out Mort’s guts and wearing them like a feather boa.
Mort gulped.
Then, shaking his head and thrusting out his jaw, he took the controls of the helicopter and headed back to Festering Hall. Being alive for ten thousand years brought with it a certain amount of confidence, and Mort wasn’t quite finished yet.
Nigel hadn’t taken his eyes off Khan.
He might be fooling Trish with that lollipop-sucking and tea-drinking nonsense, but Nigel wasn’t so easily convinced. This hairy lump had been trying to kill them! Of that, Nigel had no doubt. The tiger thing had just got in the way.
But Trish didn’t see it that way.
‘More?’ she said, holding up the thermos.
Khan nodded carefully. He didn’t like tea, not one little bit, but he wanted some time to think things through.
The woman he’d been trying to kill was clearly a witch.
How else could you explain a wild animal flinging itself in front of his spear? Only a very powerful witch could command dumb animals to sacrifice themselves like that.
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