by Debi Gliori
The little girl smiled, unsure why her nanny was staring at her but swept along by a wave of utter joy at being reunited with her long-lost beloved.
“Och, my wee pet,” Mrs. McLachlan whispered. “What have you done?” Her eyes skidded sideways to where Isagoth’s bobbing head emerged from the waves; he was shrieking something which, if his expression was anything to go by, was unlikely to be an invitation to come on in. “This thread,” she persisted, her voice so sad, so full of foreboding and weary defeat that Damp felt her tummy tumble down to her toes in their rather dashing pink wellies. Uh-oh, she thought. I’ve done something very very not good at all. She closed her eyes and hoped that it, whatever it was, would simply vanish. Overhead, Mrs. McLachlan talked about threads and Strega-Nonna and losing the way home and the trail of breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel—
“Not like it, that one,” Damp interrupted loudly. “Horbil, horbil story. Not like it ginga bread either.” Her bottom lip gave a warning quiver and her voice grew louder. “Not like it when you’re cross with Damp. Not like it here. Horbil rocks. Nasty yuck water. Damp want to go home. Please?”
“Er”—Vesper cleared his throat—“didn’t you hear what the lady said? We can’t go home now. You’ve got the thread. All of it. You were supposed to follow it from StregaSchloss to here, not roll it up and bring it with you. Your Miz Clachlan’s right. It’s like Hansel eating the trail of breadcrumbs. We’re lost, girl. You blew it. We’ll never find our way home nowww … Aaaaa—” With a stifled shriek, the tiny bat flung himself down Damp’s fleecy top, clinging on to its zipper with his thumbs and squeaking with terror as he tried to shelter from the deepening chill. “Return to your seats and adopt the b-b-brace position,” he managed. “Do not p-p-panic, the trained cabin crew will assist you in the event of an emergen—Aaaargh, this is an emergency. Abandon ship, women and bats first. Mayday, Mayday …”
The little bat was still issuing this piercing distress call when help came from a most unexpected quarter.
A wave of blackness swept overhead, bringing with it an invisible and choking ammoniac stench. Clutching Damp to her, Mrs. McLachlan stared up into a sky so full of ragged black shapes that it was as if night had fallen. From the comparative safety of Damp’s fleece, Vesper peered short-sightedly at the sky and gave a small sob of relief. Thank goodness. That ought to do it, he decided, stuffing both thumbs into his mouth and blinking rapidly. On the horizon, clouds the color of a deep bruise came rushing across the darkening sky, crowding round the island like ghouls at an accident.
The ammoniac reek of bat-pee intensified, and now, above the howl of the wind, Vesper could hear the leathery flapping of thousands of tiny wings; all of them chittering and squeaking in obedient response to his distress call; all of them at his command; all of them alarmingly vocal, thousands of bat voices raised in a deafening tumult of sound …
… not one word of which Vesper could understand.
“To me!” he shrieked as, unheeding, the bats circled the humans, weaving ragged black loops and figures of eight in the air around them.
“Er, guys? Like, hello?” Vesper bawled as the bats screamed overhead. “Listen to me, wouldya? Pay attention.”
By the loch a bedraggled figure dragged itself onto the rocks and vomited up a mouthful of seawater before staggering across the beach to where Mrs. McLachlan and Damp clung to each other.
“Tell me,” the demon gasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and waving at the sky. “These creatures. They yours? You summon them?”
Mrs. McLachlan ignored him, watching as the bats circled overhead. A faint echo of something important was sounding at the edge of her consciousness. Bats. There were bats around the house. Around StregaSchloss. Something connected bats to one of the members of the family. What was it?
“Like, if you’ve brought them here,” Isagoth persisted, “then that’s tickety-boo. No problemski. On the other hand, if my boss sent them to scope out what I was up to—well, pffff, then it’s off to the Eternal BBQ for all of us, and just pray that S’tan likes his humans underdone.…”
Barbecue? Mrs. McLachlan thought distractedly. She loathed barbecued food; it reminded her all too vividly of a dark age when it was considered acceptable to burn witches at the stake. Consequently she refused to cook barbecued anything, much to Titus and Pandora’s disgust. Her breath caught in her throat. Titus. Pandora. The names. And it was Pandora—she was the connection with the bats. It all came flooding back on a returning tide of memory: how the child had been out wandering the hills the previous summer and had stumbled across a colony of rabid bats living in a high coire. According to Pandora, these bats had a long-standing affinity with StregaSchloss and with witches in particular; if the family had need of their assistance, the bats would come.…
“That’s right,” a voice whispered. “You needed, we came.”
Flora felt her skin prickle. Beside her, Damp was trying to soothe Vesper, who was having hysterics at his own inability to communicate with the bat hordes.
“Lordy—he does go on and on, doesn’t he?” the voice demanded in the same dry whisper as Vesper’s squeaks grew ever more frenzied. “Look. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?” A shape dropped down and landed with a soft thump on Flora’s shoulder. “We can’t stay.” The voice sounded far closer now, cozy and intimate as its owner wrapped its wings round itself like a leather cloak. “The rip in time between our coire and this island is only temporary. We must leave, and leave now. Are you with us?”
Isagoth was staring at Flora as bats settled on his outstretched arms. “You think you can leave me behind? Think again,” he sneered, his voice almost inaudible in the din of beating wings. “These mindless mammals may well answer to you and your kin, but I can bend most creatures of the night to my will as easily as this.”
And to Flora’s horror, the demon grasped a bat in each fist and squeezed. Almost immediately, he disappeared beneath a mantle of fluttering blackness as some of the bats of Coire Chrone obeyed his command and bore him up into the storm.
Here Comes the Don
Two heavyset bodyguards stood outside the double doors to the Hotel Bagliadi’s most exclusive suite, the Maledictine.
“Eh. Fabbrizio.”
“Si?”
“Whaddya think he’s doing in there?”
“Cosa? With the goat?”
“Si. And the candles.”
The bodyguards stared at each other and shrugged.
“Pfffff,” Fabbrizio opined, flicking an invisible speck of dust off the lapel of his suit before hissing, “Enzo—’f you know what’s good for you, shutta your face. We’re not paid to think.”
Both men scowled massively and returned to playing five-aside football on their mobile phones.
“Eh. Fabbrizio.”
“Si?”
“Why a goat and candles? If I had the boss’s money, I’d splash out. Have a—a leopard and a—a lava lamp—”
“What are you on about?”
“The boss. Goats and candles. Bit downmarket, eh?”
“Enzo?”
“Cosa?”
“Maybe the boss is fed up with alla the fancy eats in this hotel. Maybe he wants to singe a bitta goat’s meat. How the hella should I know?”
Once more the men stared at each other and shrugged.
“Maybe he’s summoning a d-d-demon,” Enzo ventured at length.
“Nahhh. Don’ta be ridiculous. I think he’s having a candlelit dinner.”
“With a goat? Now you’re being ridiculous.”
Behind locked doors, Don Lucifer di S’Embowelli Borgia stared in unalloyed dismay at the disemboweled goat lying on the hotel’s charred silk carpet. Such an infernal nuisance. Why on earth the Devil couldn’t use a cell phone like everyone else was quite beyond his understanding. Every single time he—the most fearsome Mafioso in all of Italy, Don Lucifer di S’Embowelli Borgia—had to go through this ludicrous rigmarole of pentagrams, candles, goat’s blood, and
incantations—when a simple country code followed by a ten-figure number would have been faster, easier, and far less disastrous from the goat’s point of view. With a disgruntled squeak, the Don slumped backward onto an ottoman and waited for S’tan to respond to the summoning.
The Don’s baleful meditations were interrupted by the arrival of a cloud of greasy black smoke that spiraled up from the gaping belly of the goat. The smoke thickened and spread out to form a wide column reaching from the floor to the ceiling as the temperature in the room plummeted to zero. The Don sighed and made a point of ignoring the curtains (billowing), his bed (levitating), and the water in his Jacuzzi, which was turning a bilious green and giving off sulfurous gases. Then came an angry hiss and a vast puff of scalding steam, followed immediately by the appearance of a corpulent man who stood astride the goat with a cleaver in one hand and a cook’s blowtorch in the other.
Utterly confused, Don Lucifer slowly got to his feet. At first he hardly recognized Him, so vast had S’tan become. He was twice the fiend He’d been before, with dimpled arms folded across a belly which flowed up and over His cook’s apron and overhung enormous thighs encased in black-and-white checked trousers. Don Lucifer frowned. Who was this lard-ball? Had they dared send him some overweight underling? Him? Don Lucifer di S’Embowelli Borgia, Italy’s most wanted gangster? Like, who was this bloated specter anyway? If he’d wanted a cook he would’ve dialed down to the hotel kitchens and demanded one, not wasted hours disemboweling a goat by candlelight—
“WHAT,” the demon roared, “IS IT. NOW? I’VE GOT A HOLLANDAISE ABOUT TO TURN INTO SCRAMBLED EGGS AND MY ROQUEFORT SOUFFLÉS NEED TAKING OUT IN A MINUTE. WHADDYA WANT?”
Don Lucifer peered at this apparition. It did, admittedly, sound a little bit like S’tan, but … but …
“OH, DO HURRY UP, ONE HASN’T GOT ALL DAY, YOU KNOW,” the demon continued peevishly. “AND I CAN TELL YOU, PAL, YOU’RE SKATING ON THIN ICE. WHAT D’YOU MEAN BY KILLING ONE OF MY POOR INNOCENT GOATS TO DEMAND AN AUDIENCE WITH MOI? HMMMM?”
It was S’tan, Don Lucifer realized. Shrouded in lard, considerably less frightening, but still the unmistakable First Minister of the Hadean Executive. But—Don Lucifer reeled in astonishment—but what on earth had happened to Him? It was like opening the hood of a Ferrari and discovering a lawn mower engine idling within. Like ordering a steak and being served a tofu burger. Now he noticed the smell—all around him, everywhere, every expensive square centimeter of Bagliadi airspace was filled with the stink of goats, making this oh-so-exclusive suite reek like a barnyard. At this rate he’d probably have to fumigate the top floor of the hotel when S’tan left. If He left.
“Yeek,” he managed, his voice squeaking pitifully, his hands groping in his trouser pockets for the notebook and pen he had carried ever since the bungled episode of plastic surgery had mangled his vocal cords and ruined his face forever. “Yeek squee ik ik yeep?”
“YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS,” S’tan gasped. “YOU STILL HAVEN’T MANAGED TO PUT YOUR HALF BROTHER OUT OF ACTION? AFTER ALL THIS TIME? I HAVE TO MEET THIS CHAP—HE REALLY MUST BE QUITE A GUY, HUH?” Hugely amused by this, S’tan’s belly wobbled and jiggled as He laughed in Don Lucifer’s face, releasing a wave of garlic on His breath that caused the Don to reel backward. Garlic? In Don Lucifer’s dim understanding, weren’t demons supposed to hate garlic? What on earth was going on? Still, Don Lucifer had an important favor to ask and it wouldn’t do to offend his benefactor. He hunted for the right words and finally found the perfect way to phrase his request. “Squee ee eekeee squee? Ee squee ik yeep? Eese?”
“OH, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!” S’tan roared. “MY HOLLANDAISE. LOOK, I’LL SEE WHAT I CAN DO ABOUT YOUR LITTLE PROBLEM. LUCIANO, WASN’T IT? HE DOES APPEAR TO HAVE THE LUCK OF THE GODS, HMMM? CONSIDER IT DONE. OR—CONSIDER IT WILL BE DONE, BUT ONLY AFTER YOU DO SOMETHING FOR ME FIRST.”
“Eeek?”
“YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED THAT I HAVE HAD A MIDLIFE CAREER CHANGE, HMMM? DON’T PANIC, I AM STILL THE SAME OLD NICK YOU KNOW AND HATE, BUT RECENTLY I FELT THAT I WAS GROWING SOMEWHAT STALE. BORED. AFTER ALL, I HAVE BEEN IN THE BUSINESS FOR SEVERAL THOUSAND EONS, SO I DECIDED TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW. SOMETHING, DARE I SAY, CREATIVE? I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN SECRETLY ENVIOUS OF MY OPPOSITE NUMBER WITH HIS LITTLE PROJECTS LIKE, YOU KNOW—CREATING MANKIND AND THE UNIVERSE AND THE PERFECT ROQUEFORT SOUFFLÉ—ANYWAY, ONE DIGRESSES FROM THE POINT. I WANTED TO DO SOMETHING I ENJOY, AND FRANKLY, WHAT WITH ONE THING AND ANOTHER, THE ONLY THING I’VE BEEN ENJOYING LATELY IS FOOD. AND IN HADES, WELL, BETWEEN YOU AND ME, THE FOOD THERE IS PRETTY HELLISH. BURNT TO A CRISP. EVERYTHING STINKS OF SMOKE—EVEN BREAKFAST—AND THAT’S WHEN IT OCCURRED TO ME. LEARN TO COOK PROPERLY. SO I DID. I TAUGHT MYSELF TO READ, I BOUGHT ALL THE BOOKS, I BOUGHT THE BEST EQUIPMENT, I WATCHED THE DEMOS ON TV, I WENT TO SEVERAL COOKERY COURSES AND NOW … WELL, NOW, I TELL YOU—I’M HOT, I’M HIP, I’M HAPPENING AND I WANT MY OWN COOKERY SHOW.”
S’tan’s yellow eyes skewered Don Lucifer in place, giving the mortal a timely reminder that overweight and outwardly transformed He might be; inside He was still the Arch-Fiend, S’tan the Earl of Earwax, His S’tainless S’teeliness, Beelzebub the Boss of Hades, First Minister of the Hadean Executive, and Lord of Misrule.
“Eeek ik? Ike ek eep.”
“NO.” S’tan rolled the word around his mouth, managing somehow to invest this single syllable with not only marrow-tingling menace, but also several syllables unknown to humankind, so that the whole emerged as a vast swelling, breaking wave of sound that crashed over Lucifer’s head like a sonic tide. “NOAAOUGHEII,” S’tan repeated, then added, “NOT A RADIO SHOW, YOU CRETIN. I WANT MY OWN TELEVISION PROGRAM. DEVILED FOOD. HOT AS HELL. FUN WITH FLAMBÉ. TOTALLY TOAST—I DON’T CARE WHAT IT’S CALLED AS LONG AS I GET TO COOK ON CAMERA.”
“Eeek,” Don Lucifer whispered. “Eek ike onk eek ee-ee ike eep.”
“I DON’T CARE,” S’tan roared. “USE YOUR INFLUENCE. USE YOUR MONEY—YOU’VE GOT ENOUGH OF IT. SO SPEND IT ON SOMETHING MORE INTERESTING THAN GOATS AND CANDLES. BUY A TV STATION. WHATEVER. JUST DO IT.”
“Eep.”
“EXCELLENT,” S’tan hissed. “RECORDING TO BEGIN IN, SAY, TWO WEEKS? THAT’LL GIVE US TIME TO FIT IT INTO TRANSMISSION SCHEDULES IN THE RUNUP TO SAMHAID—”
“Ike?”
“CHRISTMAS, YOU CRETIN. EUGHHHHH. THAT WORD. NOW I’LL HAVE TO GO RINSE MY MOUTH WITH NEAT GIN TO REMOVE THE TAINT OF SANCTITY. RIGHT, SCUM, WE HAVE A DEAL. YOU GET ME ON AIR AND I’LL SERVE UP THAT BROTHER OF YOURS ANY WAY YOU WANT. ROASTED, TOASTED, OR FLAMBÉD À LA MODE. TALKING OF WHICH, MY SOUFFLÉS ARE BURNING. TIME TO GO. BYEEEEEE …”
And in a cloud of sulphur so weak it smelled faintly of boiled cabbage, S’tan vanished from sight.
Jailhouse Blues
Prisoner 3/10/GLA/MURD peered at the console in front of him and sighed. He felt awful: sick as a dog; stomach awash in acid; head throbbing; and as for his kidneys, they felt as if they’d been ground zero for a major battle between demons in hobnail boots and hippos in high heels. Luciano felt like death, and this, he reminded himself, was before he’d even begun to exercise in the prison gym. Whatever it had been that Malky and Big Bog-brains had encouraged him to drink, it had performed like a highly effective sledgehammer, laying him out cold and making sure that he felt completely flattened when he came to.
Unfairly, his cell-mates appeared to be immune to the drink’s ill-effects, heaping their breakfast trays with mounds of congealed porridge and a stack of leathery toast which, to Luciano’s hungover nasal sensitivities, smelled overwhelmingly of rancid margarine. The two criminals had proceeded to dispatch this unappetizing repast at top speed, chasing it down with several cigarettes thriftily recycled from butts found in the previous evening’s ashtrays. Luciano felt like a kipper when they finally left the smoke-filled cell and coughed along the corridors to the echoing, dazzling, testosterone-impregnated spaces of the prison gymnasium, where smoking was outlawed, unlike sweating, which was actively encouraged.
“Haw, youse,” roared a voice behind Luciano. “Get a move on, there’s a line, eh no?”
Luciano spun round to see that this was the truth: standing cracking their knuckles in a line of muscle-bound menace were several prisoners, some with extensive tattoos, some with few remaining teeth and all engaging in warm-ups and stretches carefully chosen to remind a wuss like Luciano of his lowly weedlike status.
“Ah. Yeees,” he managed, turning back to the console and attempting to look knowledgeable.
select a program
prompted the machine, scrolling automatically through a tersely worded array of choices, none of which gave any indication of the true horrors in store for the novice treadmiller.
fat burner
total fitness
body attack
flab combat
Luciano’s heart sank, and then he spotted something that sounded at least do-able: ROLLING HILLS. That didn’t sound too painful. Right. He pressed a button and up came:
thank you
body attack engaged
select speed
Luciano frowned. He didn’t want “body attack,” for heaven’s sake. His body felt like it had recently undergone an aerial bombardment with major infantry action on the attack front. More of that he didn’t need. He pressed the “select program” button several times. From under his feet came an ominous whine. To his horror, the console now read:
thank you
level 19 engaged
select speed
Stifling a scream of dismay, he saw that the treadmill’s levels of exertion only went up to level 20. And he still hadn’t keyed in a speed. Maybe he could survive the rigors of level 19 if he chose a slug’s pace? Hoping that he was unobserved, he repeatedly pressed the minus key under the speed button.
There. That ought to do it.
thank you