by Debi Gliori
By now, Pandora was safely in the passageway outside the kitchen, but she heard Zander's muttered reply, his American accent now replaced by one of impeccable English parentage: “Nearly landed one, but it got away at the last moment.”
“Och well. Never you mind, Mr. Imlach. Plenty more fish in the sea …” And as Mrs. McLachlan closed the kitchen door, she whispered, “Night-night, sleep tight. Watch the bats, these ones bite.” And pressing a finger to her lips, the nanny propelled Pandora upstairs to bed.
A Ring of Spells
lutching an overnight bag containing his pajamas, toothbrush, steam iron, and a battered copy of The Gentleman's Gentleman, Latch hailed a taxi from the rank outside the hospital. There was little, if anything, that the medical staff could do to help him now. Latch's memory was returning, and with it came a clear sense that he had to warn Mrs. McLachlan before it was too late….
Climbing into the rear of the taxi and fumbling with his seat belt, Latch recalled that in his time as butler at StregaSchloss he'd encountered talking beasts, deep-frozen ancestors, Mafia invasions, cloned homunculi, and even monsters dropping in for after-dinner drinks—all of which were par for the course when one was in the employ of a student witch. Over the years he'd grown to expect strange happenings at StregaSchloss but— He clutched his seat belt as the taxi driver braked hard for a suicidal ram, which ambled witlessly across the road in front of them.
“Get oot ma road, y'old de'il,” the driver bawled, swerving to avoid a collision.
Indeed, Latch agreed. There's the problem in a nutshell, as it were. The old devil. Though not so much of the old. The devil he'd met the night the Strega-Borgias were due to fly home from Milan had been middle-aged, slightly balding, blandly dressed in a dark suit, and leaning insolently on the doorbell at StregaSchloss….
“What, now?” Latch muttered, on the verge of lowering himself into a blissfully hot bath. Downstairs, the front doorbell rang once more, demanding an answer.
“It's eight o'clock,” Latch groaned. “I'm due at Glasgow Airport in three hours' time and— Oh, for heaven's sake, I'm coming!” And grabbing his clothes as he hurtled downstairs, he'd just fastened the last buckle on his kilt when the front door flew open by itself, revealing a man standing on the doorstep.
“Ooopsss,” the stranger said, his voice like nails being dragged across a blackboard. “Tssk, tsssk. Naughty boy, Isssagoth. Ssso impatient.”
Beneath his kilt, Latch's stomach announced its intention of vacating itself by all means possible.
“No, no, no,” the stranger murmured. “Not on my shoessss, puhlease. Ussse the bathroom. Behind you, firsst door on the right.”
Latch bolted for the bathroom, emerging minutes later, empty and ashen, utterly convinced that Death himself was sitting on the hall settle, drumming his manicured fingernails on his knee.
“There you are,” the stranger said blandly. “H-h-how did you know where the bathroom wa—wa—is?” Latch quavered.
“I know everything about thisss house. Every last nook and cranny. Every last crook and nanny, too. All I have to do isss read your mind, my dull little friend. I know all your secretsss.” The stranger gave a repulsive snicker and snapped his fingers in front of Latch's eyes. “Now, let'ss not wassste time, shall we? Three words: Where. Is. It? The stone. Comprenez?The Chronostone— capisce?The diamond, Mr. Butler. Where is it?”
Latch's heart squeezed itself into a rigid pebble of muscle and attempted to hide itself behind his tonsils. The diamond? He dimly remembered finding a vulgar gem in the shattered remains of an old grandfather clock several months before … but jewelry not really being his thing, he'd passed it over to Mrs. McLachlan without a second thought. He had the vaguest recollection that she'd said something then about a library, but maybe he'd misheard her.
“Reeeeally,” the stranger murmured. “The library. How parochial. How frightfully small-minded of her…. Tell me, Mr. Butler, where exactly isss dear Mrs. McLachlan at present?”
Latch stared. He—it—this thing was inside his mind, probing around in his memory, helping itself to whatever it chose…and he was powerless to prevent it.
“Shame. She didn't leave a forwarding addresssss, then? So, Mr. Butler, let's just fry a few synapses while we're here, shall we? Nothing permanent. Jussst enough to make sure you can't go blabbing to your preciousss Mrs. McLachlan right now, hmmm?”
The demon reached out and seized Latch's face in its hands, staring into his eyes. Immediately, Latch snapped his eyes shut.
“Oh, come on, you ssstupid little man. Don't make thiss any harder than it has to be.”
Fingernails scraped at Latch's eyelids, peeling them apart. Latch struggled in the demon's grip, opening his mouth in a scream of outrage.
“That'll do nicely,” the demon remarked, and the last thing Latch remembered was the vile taste of sulfur as the demon Isagoth slipped inside his skull.
“Stop the car!” Latch begged and, well-used to such demands, especially after last call at the Auchenlochtermuchty Arms, the taxi driver did as he was bid.
“Are youse sure youse're a' right, big man?” he inquired as Latch, pale and trembling, crawled back into his seat after a noisy communion with the rhododendrons of Argyll. No answer being forthcoming, the driver pressed the pedal to the metal in the fervent hope of delivering this fare to his destination without further mishap.
Flora McLachlan carefully drew back the covers from her side of the bed and eased her legs onto the floor. She hadn't slept at all, spending the night propped upright on pillows, fending off sleep in order to maintain a guard on Pandora. Pandora, who despite the horrors of Coire Crone had instantly fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep the moment her head had touched the pillow…
Wee girls, Mrs. McLachlan thought, regarding her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth, washed her face, and reached for a dry towel. Och, honestly, she continued, if it's not one, it's the other, slipping out of bed and getting up to all sorts in the middle of the night.
“Wee girls,” she whispered, conjuring up the image of Damp and Pandora before her, visualizing the girls standing in the exact center of a sunlit lawn, surrounded by an unbroken daisy chain of spells, one enchantment seamlessly linked to the next, the whole forming a perfect circle of light that was designed to keep them safe from whatever lay in the shadows beyond. Utterly still, Mrs. McLachlan reached out with her mind and scanned the circle, checking and rechecking the hidden joins where Old Norse melded with Sanskrit, where rune flowed into hieroglyph, and where corruption might sniff and lick and try to force a way through….
“Flora?” She heard a hoarse whisper at the bathroom door. “Flora, it's me, Latch. I've got to tell— It's important — Oh, for the love of heaven, woman, would you stop powdering your nose and let me in?”
He sounded so normal, huffing and shuffling his feet on the other side of the door, unable to disguise his impatience. Mrs. McLachlan wrapped a dressing gown around herself and undid the lock, her eyes shining as she opened the door. Perhaps she'd jumped to conclusions about what had happened to Latch, wrongly assuming that he'd been damaged by a close encounter with a demon…. After all, she scolded herself, what evidence did she have to back this up? A stench of sulfur and a temporary memory loss? Maybe both could be explained by a bacterial attack rather than a demonic one?
One glance at Latch's face dispelled such thoughts, for Latch looked as if he'd gazed into the abyss and the abyss had gazed back into him. To Mrs. McLachlan's raised eyebrows, Latch merely nodded, closing his eyes briefly to erase the memory of what he'd seen.
“It…I…he…,” he stammered.
“Hush, dear. I understand.”
“It wanted something, Flora. It's going to come back for it. A stone—a diamond. I had no idea…. I couldn't stop it…. It was stronger than anything I've…I've…”
“Hush, dear. It's all over now.” Mrs. McLachlan stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Latch, her mind a thousand
miles away from the shuddering man in her embrace. Already? She hadn't expected it would all start so soon. She marveled at how calm she felt. Oh, my poor wee girls, she mourned, I had hoped we might have had more time….
Ring of Iron
eeling immensely pleased with himself, the Sleeper returned to his favorite spot in Lochnagargoyle and lolled in the warm shallows near the jetty. Removing the centaur's stone from his pouch, the Sleeper was delighted to find that it was a perfect fit for the metal ring he'd found lying outside the SapienTech building. Held snugly in one half of an illegal iron trap, the Chronostone now looked like part of an engagement ring made for a Tyrannosaurus. The Sleeper had used his brute strength to bend the trap's wicked teeth inward to form a perfect cage for the gem, and the hefty springloaded mechanism designed to cause the trap's jaws to snap shut had been permanently disabled with one swift jerk. Twisting one metal jaw back upon itself, the Sleeper had created a semicircular aperture which would, he hoped, allow the passage of one dragon's talon. One dragon who would be in a state of utter bliss when she caught sight of the vast diamond her fiancé had found for her….
Where is that wumman? the Sleeper wondered, undulating closer to the jetty and scanning the shore for signs of Ffup. Or, noo, hing oan a minute, he thought. Is this no yin of those days she brings ma breakfast and then does a disappearing act? He checked beneath the jetty for evidence of Ffup's loving kindness, and indeed there it was. Or rather, there they were: five waterproofed slabs of plastic explosive, hidden there by Zander and awaiting pickup according to his cell phone conversation of the night before.
Mmmmm… The Sleeper sighed appreciatively as he unwrapped the final breakfast parcel and slipped it delicately down his throat. Verry nice, hen, he decided, giving a discreet belch. A wee bit chewy, mind, and it didnae taste o' very much at a', but it filled a hole, and in ma book, that's whit's important. Blissfully oblivious to the fact that plastic explosive is normally used for creating holes rather than filling them, the Sleeper sank beneath the surface of the loch to digest his dangerous breakfast.
In the kitchen at StregaSchloss, Tock unrolled a large sheet of paper in front of his fellow beasts and stepped back to allow them space to admire it. Busying himself with opening a tin of prunes and slopping them over his breakfast muesli, the crocodile turned back to the company in time to witness Nestor regurgitate a clot of porridge straight onto the middle of the kitchen table. This gobbet landed on Tock's carefully drawn plans for the remodeling of the moat, thus adding an unplanned three-dimensional aspect to the original design.
Clasping a claw over his yellow eyes, Tock gave a small moan. The drawing had taken him ages; many nights of hunching over a blank sheet of paper, followed by days of frenzied scribbling, measuring, rubbing out, and redrafting in order to arrive at this perfect design for a twenty-first-century moat…a twenty-first-century moat that was in danger of being buried beneath a volcanic eruption of porridge-lava. Dribbling with anticipation, Knot leant across the table, opened his mouth, and neatly removed the porridge, unfortunately obliterating a yeti-tongue-shaped section of Tock's original draft and leaving a gleaming saliva trail in its place.
“Nooooo,” Tock breathed, aghast, while Ffup compounded the damage by dabbing the wet patch with a scented baby wipe, then drying the resultant smear with a quick blast of dragon fire.
“There you are,” she said, adding inaccurately, “good as new.”
Tock clamped his jaws shut on the scream that threatened to erupt from his throat. His companions gazed at him expectantly, drooling, snorting, and breathing noisily through their mouths, waiting for him to explain what his beautiful drawing signified.
“Let me see now—is it a…bracelet?” Ffup guessed, her mind, as ever, full of girly ornament.
“I think I'm trying to see it upside down,” Sab said, standing up to come around the table, forgetting that he was over four meters tall just as he crashed into the hanging pot rack over the range. The beasts waited until the din of clashing casseroles died down before continuing.
“S'like I Spy,” Knot mumbled, a steady drip-drip of saliva obliterating yet more of Tock's design. “No. Hang on. I've got it. It's a half-eaten doughnut!”
“Spare me,” hissed Tarantella, who'd been following this exchange with thinly veiled irritation. “Did Gaudì have to put up with this? Oh, Señor Gaudì, ees eet a beeg wedding cake you are beelding for Barcelona? Did Sir Christopher Wren lay his designs in front of dribbling half-wits, only to have them compared to partially masticated pastries?” Launching herself off the cupboard and into the air, the tarantula landed in the middle of the beasts, produced a miniature walking stick from some internal cache, and limped carefully to the edge of Tock's drawing. Using her walking stick as a pointer, she began to explain the design for the new moat in the tones of a weary tour guide. “Your attention, please. Tap, tap. Here we have the water-lily collection—tap —and over here—tap —we envisage putting the Japanese water garden. However, the main thrust of the design concerns the solar-heated swimming pool—tap, tap —which you will note is tiled throughout in lapis lazuli, a design feature that, regrettably, will push the construction costs into the thousands… uncompromising elegance—tap … architect's vision—tap … unique… cultural heritage …financing this project entails…funding not forthcoming from Strega-Borgia bank accounts…forced to explore other avenues for raising money …”
At some point during the spider's long lecture, Knot must have fallen asleep, because when he awoke, things had moved on somewhat. The kitchen was empty of beasts, Tock's drawing had been put away, and in its place lay a newspaper with something outlined on it in red pen.
“So glad you could join us,” Tarantella said, adding, “Here's the plan,” and, bending closer to the newspaper, she read out loud: “‘Volunteers wanted. SapienTech has vacancies for individuals who are willing to assist in scientific trials of a new product. Remuneration in the region of £2500 per diem. No medical certificates necessary. A full examination will be given by our qualified medical personnel prior to the implementation of any procedures.' ”
“Sounds pretty dodgy to me,” Tarantella advised, “but compared to robbing the bank in Auchenlochtermuchty, I think it's got a lot going for it. Admittedly, ‘The Five Volunteers' doesn't have the same impact as ‘The Three Musketeers,' but how else are you going to raise the money for the moat extension, hmmm?”
Arriving at last in the SapienTech parking lot, Tock turned to face his fellow volunteers with a broad smile across his jaws.
“All for one, and one for all?” he inquired hopefully.
“I didn't really understand the last bit,” Knot confessed. Then, seeing Tock's smile fade slightly, he added, “But…uh, yeah. The money's really good. Isn't it?”
Ffup adjusted Nestor's sling on her shoulders and shrugged. “Ah…guys… I'm not so sure Nestor's going to be able to pass an examination. I mean, the poor wee lamb can't even read yet…. ”
Tock's smile vanished. “This medical trial business,” Sab murmured, “I've been giving it some thought. If we have a trial, don't we need a lawyer? Should I give my solicitor a ring? Just to make sure?”
“Look”—Tock sighed—“far be it from me to force you all into doing something you don't feel too sure about. It's my moat, and my problem. I'm the one who needs the money. Why don't you all just go down to the lochside and wait for me. I'm sure it won't take too long, whatever it is…. ”
Peering at the visitors through the one-way glass of a window on the second floor, Dr. Penn Umbra felt as if her heart had stopped. Were these more giant eels? Like the one that had slithered out of the lake last night? Reaching out a shaking hand for the telephone, she forced herself not to faint as one of the hideously mutated creatures waddled across the parking lot and through the main doors into the reception area of SapienTech.
“Security?” Dr. Umbra squeaked. “There appear to be intruders in the staff parking lot. One of them has entered the building. Use a
ll means necessary to intercept them. Tranquilizer darts, Tasers, whatever. Just do it. And don't let them get away this time. Understood?”
Dr. Umbra grabbed a nearby pencil holder, opened a drawer, poured herself a stiff measure from her reserve supply of bourbon, and drank it down in one gulp. Pausing only to remove a paper clip from between her teeth, she made a mental note to drink the stuff straight from the bottle next time…if there was a next time.
This latest series of drug trials at SapienTech had been dogged by disaster right from the start. Despite tight security, someone had leaked information to the media, and when the first stories began to surface about cancer clusters in remote Russian archipelagos, tourists trampled by winged rhinos in Africa, and severed heads that retained the power of speech in South America, it was only a matter of time before bands of eco-warriors began to pay close heed to what SapienTech was up to. Accustomed to battling off such unwelcome attentions, SapienTech prepared itself to repel the usual guitarstrumming, placard-waving, tree-hugging hippies. However, recently the eco-warriors had been replaced by something far more dangerous. SapienTech found itself being stalked by a new, improved species of eco-warrior, one that used guns, not guitars, to underline its message; a streamlined and deadly strain of eco-warrior that didn't pause to hug trees, but burnt whole forests to the ground in the pursuit of some lofty ideal. It appeared that the eco-warriors had evolved into ecoterrorists, declaring that banner-waving was for wimps and adopting far more extreme methods of persuasion.