As it was, Filax – fierce, wise and lucky in the way that a lot of wise people (and dogs) seem to be lucky – kept the advantage by not letting the great cat get its claws in him. The lion did manage to scratch at his side, leaving gouges in the marble, and he did at one stage get a nasty bite in on his leg, but Filax’s ferocity kept him too busy to do very much damage.
The roaring and romping up and down the corridor was the lion’s primary tactic, hoping to scrape the tenacious hound off his back onto the side walls as he passed. It wasn’t a very effective tactic, though it was a noisy one, as its main effect was to either snap off or bend all the door handles along one side of the passage.
It was one of these door handles that was the lion’s ultimate undoing, because as it reached the end of a particularly vertiginous dash down the corridor, trying to shake off the unwelcome piggyback passenger that had stapled itself to its shoulders by its teeth, it tried to stop.
Unfortunately it put its front paw down on the cylindrical metal of one of the broken door handles, which acted like the wheel of a roller skate and sent it hurtling forwards into the end wall, instead of halting it.
The lion knocked itself clean out. Filax felt it go limp between his teeth. He held on until he was sure, then let go and bounded back down the corridor to bark urgently at Will’s door.
Will, on the other side of the spyhole, took a good look. The dog was panting excitedly and its tail was wagging. He took a deep breath and opened the door. A quick look right and left revealed a corridor sprinkled with door handles like fallen apples, an unmoving golden cobra and a similarly motionless stone lion stacked up against the far end.
Filax barked and tugged at the shield Will held in his right hand.
‘OK,’ said Will. ‘I get it. Time to go.’
Filax thumped his tail and led Will to the fire-exit door.
‘Do you know where Jo is?’ he said.
Filax pawed at the door
Will pushed it open and began to head downstairs. Then he heard the noises from above, and felt the draught of the door open to the roof above him.
He heard Selene’s throaty voice shout, ‘JUMP!’
And without thinking he was pounding upwards three steps at a time.
‘Jo!’ he yelled. ‘I’m coming!’
He got to the doorway at the very moment Jo went over the edge.
It was a sight that might well have stopped his heart dead in horror, but as it happened, the edge she went over was to the right, and his eye was whipped leftwards, following the starry transit of Selene howling across the roof, fighting a swarm of hawk-sized mosquitoes and super-sized flying bugs.
‘Jo!’ he shouted, looking round the wet, empty roof.
Selene heard him and for an instant caught his eye.
‘Run!’ she cried. ‘She’s gone!’
He was about to shout another question, when he saw one of the bugs take advantage of the way he’d distracted Selene from the fight, weaving between her protective cloud of star and fastening horribly on her face. She went rigid with shock, and then began to whirl in place, faster and faster until she was invisible in the centre of a spinning vortex of stars as she tried to hurl the bug off her face and keep the other attackers at bay beyond the defensive golden cyclone of which she was now the epicentre. Every now and then a mosquito or a bug would try and get through the gilded twister, only to be hit by one of the stars with a sharp, metallic impact that sent sparks trailing after the insect as centrifugal force knocked it clear of her.
Will never got to see if she managed to get the suffocating bug mask off her mouth, because one of the mosquitoes, turning away from her, saw him and recalibrated its target. It shot straight towards his head, and without thinking he leapt backwards, pulling the door closed behind him. He would have fallen straight back down the stairs, probably breaking his neck, but luckily Filax was right behind him and absorbed the impact, acting as a safety guard.
The mosquito hit with a loud chunk, and Will saw the door bow inwards with the impact. He almost expected to see the golden stinger pierce the wood.
Then he heard Filax bark, and turned to see the dog was pointing with his nose down the stairs.
‘Oi,’ hissed a voice from below. ‘What you doing?’
He looked over the edge. Two floors down he saw Little Tragedy looking back up at him with his fingers to his lips.
‘What?’ said Will.
‘Shh,’ said Tragedy, beckoning him urgently. ‘We’re up to our unmentionables in bleedin’ lions. That cat’s got ’em all stirred up. We got to go. Wolfie’s waiting in the kitchen, keeping an eye …’
15
Going Underground – part 1
Jo had cartwheeled off the roof into the narrow canyon of air that separated it from the next-door building, grabbing fruitlessly for handholds that didn’t exist. She didn’t even have time to inhale, let alone yell out in horror at the speed with which the hard floor of the alley leapt towards her, a strip of rain-soaked concrete full of sharp-edged things like dumpsters, bicycles and scooters. She just had time to feel two things – a sucking void of sadness in the middle of her chest that she was going to be snuffed out, and to hope she would be extinguished so fast that the pain wouldn’t get to her brain before everything went black and silent forever …
She looked away from the ground and saw, for a miraculous instant, the last thing she knew she would ever see. And maybe because it was the last thing she’d ever lay eyes on, she saw it in unnaturally sharp focus, almost as if her eyes zoomed in on them – the fat raindrops beside her, falling at exactly the same speed as she was …
… and then the end came and hit her …
… and it did hurt, but the pain was more like being winded than smashed, and it was not at all terrible, and instead of black it was golden, and it wasn’t silent either.
It said:
‘Ooof! You’re heavier than you look …’
It was Ariel. The golden girl statue from the Bank of England. The one Jo had last seen melted in half by an angry dragon. Midnight had obviously worked its magic on her as it had on the Fusilier, because here she was, as whole and as fast and graceful as she had ever been, swooping in low to catch Jo and save her life. For the second time.
‘Gnaargh …’ said Jo. Meaning to say ‘thank you’ but being too shocked and winded to get it out in an unsnarled version.
‘And gnaargh to you too,’ said Ariel. ‘Now, hold on.’
Jo did as she was told. Her mind was still catching up with the good news that she wasn’t a splat on the pavement, and her lungs had just managed to fill with their first full breath after the shock of being caught. It felt wonderful. Ariel flew low to the ground, turning right at the end of the alley and heading away from the hotel.
Jo looked back over her shoulder and saw two huge bronze lions the size of elephants nosing at the front door of the hotel.
‘Will!’ she gasped, her moment of elation disappearing instantly. ‘He’s in there. Stuck in the hotel.’
‘Selene and Tragedy will get him out,’ said Ariel. ‘They’ll bring him.’
‘Bring him where?’ said Jo.
‘Here,’ said Ariel, swooping up and over a double-decker bus full of frozen blue-tinged people staring vacantly past them. Jo’s stomach lurched as if she was on a roller coaster. ‘Tragedy had a good idea …’
Ariel landed beneath the well-lit canopy of a tube station and put Jo back on her feet. Jo staggered and realised that somewhere in the fall she had dropped her stick. She straightened up and grimaced.
‘And where’s Tragedy?’ she said.
‘He’s back in the hotel with Wolfie.’
‘Who’s Wolfie?’ said Jo.
‘One of Tragedy’s little gang. We were trying to warn you about the lions,’ said Ariel.
‘Bit late for that,’ said Jo.
‘I know,’ said Ariel. ‘We got rather surprised by them.’
‘Thank you for catching me,’ said Jo. �
��I, er …’
‘Think nothing of it,’ said Ariel breezily, running her fingers through her hair. ‘I thought you were the boy anyway.’
‘Will,’ said Jo.
‘Yes,’ said Ariel. ‘Will. Though I should have caught you just the same if I’d known it was you, which, now I come to think of it, I did.’
She turned a smile on Jo that was evidently intended to dazzle and impress.
‘I’m grateful,’ said Jo. ‘And I’m glad you’re mended.’
‘So am I,’ said Ariel. ‘It was very painful and uncomfortable, the whole dragon thing. I can’t think why they are so stirred up.’
‘Yes,’ said Jo. ‘And now there are lions.’
‘Where?’ said Ariel, the smile sliding off her face as she looked hurriedly around the street.
‘No,’ said Jo. ‘Not here. Not now. I mean back there. You know. Everywhere. They seem to be hunting.’
‘The London Pride,’ said Ariel. ‘That’s what they are called. Every now and then all the lions get together and roam about, but they just do it for fun. I mean, they don’t normally hunt or attack things, not really, and if they do it’s just for fun. Admittedly there are some deer statues and a couple of gazelle sculptures that they will stalk if they wander close, but they’re awfully good sports about it. If they do catch them and bring them down they always drag them back to their plinths so they can be mended at midnight.’
‘Not much fun for the deer,’ said Jo.
‘I suppose not,’ said Ariel. ‘But it’s all done in good spirit; there’s no malice in it. These lions aren’t wild lions. They’re London lions. You know. Fierce but polite. Normally …’
‘But this isn’t normal,’ said Jo.
‘None of it,’ agreed Ariel. ‘And is it your fault?’
‘Why do you say that?’ said Jo.
‘Because you’re the only people not frozen and the lions seemed to be hunting you. And the dragons don’t like you …’ She looked at her with a carefully raised eyebrow. ‘No offence, but it is a tiny bit suspicious, isn’t it?’
Jo wondered why when people said no offence they always followed it with something unpleasant that was a bit offensive.
‘No, it’s not us,’ said Jo. ‘We aren’t affected by the magic because we’ve got these scarab bracelet thingies that seem to be a talisman against it.’
‘Bracelets,’ said Ariel, suddenly interested. ‘Oh, I do rather like jewellery. Show me.’
Jo held out the arm with the bracelet on it. Ariel reached out a slender gold hand.
‘May I try it on?’ she smiled.
‘No,’ said Jo, withdrawing her hand quickly. ‘If I take it off I’ll freeze like everyone else.’
‘Oh, fine,’ pouted Ariel, clearly more than a little piqued. ‘I don’t mind not trying it on. It’s a rather grubby thing; really just a pebble on a string, isn’t it? I expect if I was to wear jewellery it would look better to have something much bigger and more sparkly than that anyway.’
She began running her fingers through her hair again, suddenly preoccupied with carefully teasing it into an artfully tousled look as she looked at her reflection in the ticket-office window.
Jo’s elation at Ariel’s regeneration was beginning to subside slightly: she had forgotten how pleased with herself she always was, and how keen to share that assessment with anyone she was talking to.
‘So what was Tragedy’s good idea?’ asked Jo.
‘What?’ said Ariel, primping a curl and smiling at her reflection.
‘You said he had a good idea?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He thought the way to get around the city without the dragons seeing you was to go underground. On the Underground. I mean, through the tunnels. Because obviously the trains aren’t working. And dragons don’t go underground – at least I’ve never heard of them doing so – so the fact they can swoop around the sky looking for you wouldn’t matter.’
Jo instinctively thought this was a bad idea. She was about to start listing the very many reasons why, beginning with the whole electrified-third-rail thing, but Ariel went on.
‘He says you want to get back to your mother, and this does seem like a good and unusual idea. He’s small but quite clever, for a boy …’
She stepped back, smoothing the material that rippled round her body as she admired her handiwork in the glass window. Jo still couldn’t quite believe how little actual fabric there was, or work out how it always managed to stay eddying round her like a skein of golden smoke, no matter in what direction she moved.
Ariel caught Jo looking at her and smiled.
‘You know, you could look perfectly nice if you did something to your hair and wore a dress,’ she said.
‘Shut up,’ hissed Jo.
‘I was only—’ began Ariel.
Jo just grabbed her and pulled her towards the escalators, ricocheting off the frozen people.
‘Mind my arm!’ screeched Ariel. ‘You’re hurt—’
‘Shhh,’ hissed Jo again.
But it was too late. The truck-sized lion she had spotted moving towards them through the windows of the red double-decker heard Ariel’s screech and bounded round the front of the bus, heading straight for them.
16
Will, herded and hunted
Will and Filax followed Tragedy quietly down the stairs. As they went, they heard other noises in the building, the sound of big creatures patrolling the floors that they tiptoed past.
Tragedy held up a hand as they moved on down from the ground floor to the basement. They paused, holding their breaths, Filax tense and ready to pounce at whatever was snuffling noisily on the other side of the fire door, but whatever it was either didn’t smell them or was unable to figure out how door handles worked, and it stayed shut. The noise moved away and they breathed again.
‘Come on,’ said Tragedy, and led the way down the last flight into the bright white light of the kitchen. It was a glaringly lit maze of efficient steel units and countertops, with a frozen cook stuck in the act of turning an omelette in a pan. He looked bored with his job.
‘Jo,’ said Will urgently. ‘We’ve got to get Jo.’
‘She’ll be fine,’ said Tragedy. ‘Ariel was out there.’
‘Zee little fraulein vent flyink off zee roof and tumbled through zee air like a rag doll,’ piped an overexcited child’s voice from the other end of the kitchen. ‘Seriously, it vas completely highwire bananas! I thought she was goink to splat like a rotten tomato on zee ground, but Ariel caught her so zee Bob iss your uncle and no spilled milk to cry over.’
The head of a small boy made of dark bronze, just like Tragedy’s, grinned round the corner. His face was more refined than the little imp’s and his cheeks a little better fed, but the smile was just as puckish. He wore an old-fashioned wig with side-curls, and a perky little bow and pigtail at the back; he had a long jacket, a bit like a pirate’s, with the ruffles of his shirt poking out of the cuffs, and more flounces tumbling over the high collar of the brocaded waistcoat he wore beneath it.
‘What?’ said Will, looking at Tragedy. ‘Who’s … ?’
There was so much adrenalin pumping through his system, swirling in with his fears for Jo and the overall rising tide of exhaustion that was threatening to drown him, that this new thing, this little boy in the wig with the flounces and the cartoony German accent was just not computing. Or at least if it was computing it was coming up with a big error message, and he did not know how to reboot his head and get back to normal. Maybe normal was now like the past, a place you can never go back to. The thought chilled him and he actually shivered, though that might have been the fight-or-flight surge of hormones flushing out of his system.
‘Oh, that’s Wolfie,’ said Tragedy, as if that explained everything.
‘And, er, what is he?’ said Will.
‘Well, he thinks he’s a bit Austrian. Or German. Or both. He’s not too fussy. Some of the statues say he’s a child prodigy, and some say he’s a wu
nderkind, which is why he talks funny, but I don’t really know what either of those is, truth to tell.’
‘I am a wunderkind!’ giggled the boy. ‘Everyone agrees. And maybe also I will be prodigy, though I don’t know vot it is either, except it sounds fun!’
‘He likes fun, does Wolfie,’ said Tragedy.
‘This isn’t fun …’ said Will, who was desperate to find Jo.
‘I know,’ said Tragedy. ‘Hang on and I’ll fill you in.’
And he quickly explained how he had been on the way back to meet Jo and Will when the animal statues had begun to step from the plinths and unpeel from the walls where they normally stood and stream towards the museum. He’d sent Selene, who he’d whistled out of the sky, to go and get them, while he went to fetch Wolfie.
‘Because we need a secret weapon,’ he added.
‘And Wolfie’s it?’ said Will, voice dripping with disbelief as he stared at the boy, who must only have been nine or ten. He didn’t look like a secret weapon.
‘Just you wait,’ said Tragedy. ‘We get into a tight corner with them animals out there in the streets, Wolfie’s going to buy you a lot more time than a couple of normal soldier-statues.’
‘He doesn’t look like a soldier,’ said Will.
‘Thank you,’ said Wolfie, and bowed.
‘You don’t have a gun. Or even a sword,’ said Will.
‘No,’ agreed Wolfie. ‘I have better.’
And he raised his hand, which had been hanging below the counter so that Will had not been able to see what it held.
The London Pride Page 8