by Anne Cameron
DEDICATION
To Paul, Dad, Mum, Jude, Chris, and Teazle
CONTENTS
Dedication
Prologue: Edwin Larkspur’s Discovery
1. A Christmas Podding
2. Jeremius
3. Dirigible Arrival
4. Feaver Street
5. The S-Snowball Test
6. The Research Department
7. The Rotundra
8. Testing Tunnels
9. Ice Diamond Storm
10. Grit and Steam
11. Angus Observed
12. Storm in a Teacup
13. Crispin Pinny-Pencher
14. The Unexpected Message
15. The Wrong Footprints
16. The Lightning Heart
17. The Last Projectogram
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
If you have ever been on a midnight tour of London, you will know by now that it has more spooky mysteries per square inch than any other city on the planet, from the Invisible Grave of Gustav the Gruesome to the Rattling Tower of Bones. You will have heard nothing on your tour, however, of the dangerous secret that lurks just beyond the ruins of a peeling paint factory in a grimy part of old London Town . . . a secret so deadly it has been squashed flat under a hundred years of concrete and stone, under three long centuries of discarded, yellowing newspapers, false teeth, and mouse droppings. And there it would have stayed but for an inquisitive archaeologist by the name of Edwin Larkspur.
Edwin Larkspur walked hurriedly through the silent streets of London on a frozen Sunday morning, scratching his left buttock, thinking of the old paint factory where he and his team had first made their incredible discovery. It was being knocked down to make way for a brand-new row of shops, and there, beneath the crumbling foundations, they had unearthed the burned remains of an enormous tower. Hundreds of years old, this mysterious, puzzling structure had clearly been destroyed by a ferocious fire. A few charred bones had been discovered within the ruins, along with two baffling words etched into a twisted scrap of metal: LIGHTNING TOWER.
Edwin shivered as he skidded across a frostbitten parking lot and let himself in through a side gate at the Museum of Ancient Archaeology, where he worked. The whole of London had been gripped by news of his thrilling find. There had been TV interviews and guest appearances on Archaeology Hour; he’d even been nominated for a prestigious Ruin of the Year award. There had also been some ludicrous headlines in the newspapers.
MYSTERY REMAINS MAY BE CRASHED ALIEN SPACESHIP!
That had been the most outrageous so far. Along with: RARE ROMAN TELEVISION ANTENNA DISCOVERED!
But the truth was that weeks after they’d first uncovered the ruins, neither Edwin nor his team (who were far more used to finding Victorian toilet seats and medieval lice combs) was any closer to working out what they had once been.
No official records, maps, or paintings could identify what had stood on this plot of land in the days before the factory. It was almost as if the very existence of the strange tower had been snuffed from the pages of history. The team had also discovered something extremely odd. The mangled remnants were warm, smoldering with an impossibly ancient heat that was hot enough to toast bread and scorch eyebrows. Just the thought of it made Edwin feel queasy. It was as if the whole thing were somehow alive. And he’d secretly started to wish that they’d unearthed a stash of Roman coins instead.
And then, just yesterday afternoon, a week after they had finally dug up the remains and removed them to the Museum of Ancient Archaeology, something even more peculiar had happened. Edwin had returned to his office from the museum library to find a complete stranger rummaging through his private notes. The man had been dressed in a long green coat, with the hood pulled down so low over his face that all Edwin could see of it was a flash of darkly dangerous eyes and the tip of a goatee.
“E-excuse me, sir, but this is a private office,” he’d eventually managed to splutter. “Members of the general public are forbidden from entering this part of the museum, and unless you leave this instant—”
Before Edwin could threaten to call the museum security guards, however, the man had pushed past him roughly, knocking Edwin sideways, and disappeared down a long hallway without a backward glance.
Edwin shuddered as he remembered the unsettling incident. From now on, he’d definitely keep his door locked at all times, just to be on the safe side. The museum was closed to the public at this early hour of the morning, of course; in fact, it had been shut for several days now, over the Christmas holidays. But if lunatics in great flapping coats were wandering around . . .
As he finally reached his office, he turned on the lights, checked behind the door for intruders, then set about making a hot cup of tea—unaware that a man wearing a long green coat had just slipped into the deserted museum and was now treading softly up the stairs behind him.
Hundreds of miles away, in a windmill on the outskirts of Budleigh Otterstone in Devon, more trouble was quietly brewing. It was the kind of trouble that lurked behind closed doors, skulked under rotten floorboards, and hid in dark, dingy corners, just waiting to pounce. And at that moment, it was getting ready to pounce on an eleven-year-old boy named Angus McFangus.
Angus had just crept downstairs in his pajamas for an early-morning bowl of his uncle’s chocolate turkey pudding. He was standing with his head deep inside the fridge when he heard it.
Click, click, click.
Angus froze, a shiver of fear running all the way down to the soles of his feet. He glanced over his shoulder as a solitary silver pod, the size of a tennis ball, suddenly appeared in the doorway behind him.
It looked exactly like a mechanical crab with a hard metal shell, eight legs, and two vicious pincers. Angus gulped. He was in big trouble. There was no time to make a run for it. He’d have to stand and fight.
He darted across the kitchen and grabbed a baseball bat he’d hidden in the pantry for just such an emergency. The pod edged its way into the room toward him. Angus clutched the bat high above his head, taking careful aim, waiting until he could see the whites of its mechanical eyes, then—THWACK!
He swung the bat wildly, smashing a leg clean off one of the kitchen chairs by accident.
CRASH!
He took another swing at it, this time breaking a whole stack of dirty plates on the drainboard, sending shards of shattered crockery flying across the kitchen. The pod ducked, clicking its pincers angrily, then scuttled back into the hallway. Angus flung himself after it, deciding the time had definitely come to call for reinforcements.
“UNCLE MAX!” he yelled. “COME QUICKLY!”
A door swung open at the far end of the hallway, and a head covered in bushy white hair appeared. Maximilian Fidget, a brilliant inventor, was responsible for making some of the world’s most volatile and alarming machines, including the hailstone hurler, the Arctic ice smasher, and the cloud-busting rocket launcher. He was also the owner of some equally startling facial hair, which sprouted in great tufts from both his nostrils and eyebrows and the inside of his ears. Thankfully, Angus’s own eyebrows were completely tuft free and sat in a perfectly normal manner just above his pale gray eyes.
“Ah, Angus,” Uncle Max said, beaming happily at his nephew. “Good gracious, is it lunchtime already?”
“No! It isn’t even breakfast yet. The pods are on the loose again,” Angus explained swiftly, pointing toward the spiral stairs in the middle of the hall. “I think they went that way!”
“In that case, we must trap them at once, my dear Angus, before they can sever the telephone lines and leave us without the aid of the emergency services.” Uncle Max g
rinned, looking as if Christmas had come again.
Christmas had never been exactly normal at the Devonshire Windmill, but this year’s festivities had been positively dangerous. This was due to Uncle Max’s latest invention. The pocket-size silver-plated silic-o-pods had been designed to bury themselves deep among the sand dunes of any hot, sunny desert, to collect valuable information about sandstorms and boiling midday temperatures.
Unfortunately, due to a slight technical problem, the pods had escaped from Uncle Max’s workshop on Christmas Day and had been roaming around the Windmill in large, thuggish gangs ever since. Electrical wires, bedroom curtains, and Angus’s earlobes had all been viciously attacked by the pods, which had also decapitated several innocent garden gnomes sitting on the front doorstep.
“I think it might be best if we take the pods by surprise,” Uncle Max suggested, arming himself quickly with a fishing net and a sturdy pair of gardening gloves. “I shall proceed upstairs, if you would be good enough to search the living room, young Angus. If either of us gets into trouble, might I suggest a hearty yell to attract attention?”
“Er, right,” Angus said. “So if I get into trouble, you want me to yell my head off?”
“Precisely! If I can tempt the pods into some nice deep buckets of sand, we’ll have them safely locked away in my workshop by lunchtime.”
Angus couldn’t help feeling skeptical. Up until now the pods had stubbornly resisted every temptation put before them, ignoring drawers full of fluffy socks and boxes of used wrapping paper. But as his uncle crept up the spiral staircase, Angus set off back down the hall, wondering where to start his search.
The pods had managed to squeeze themselves into some very unlikely hiding places over the past few days, including a small gap behind the bath taps and the inside of a teapot.
Luckily, Angus knew the Windmill like the back of his hand, because he’d always lived there while his mum and dad worked away in London. Although, as he’d discovered just a few months ago, his parents didn’t actually work for some boring government department, as he had always believed. Instead, they were part of a top secret organization of highly skilled lightning catchers, who were frequently sent out to the farthest reaches of the globe to tackle tornadoes, capture hurricanes, and disperse angry thunderstorms, in an attempt to protect mankind from the cruelest weather.
His parents spent the rest of their time at the Perilous Exploratorium for Violent Weather and Vicious Storms, on the secret Isle of Imbur, which was supposed to have sunk into the sea after a terrible storm, hundreds of years ago.
Late last summer Angus had suddenly found himself enrolled as a lightning cub at the very same Exploratorium, where he’d been battered by high winds and ferocious blizzards inside the weather tunnel; had a nasty encounter with some ball lightning in the Lightnarium; and almost gotten himself killed on a deadly fog field trip. And he’d loved every minute of it! He hadn’t been quite so thrilled to learn that some strange dreams he’d been having about a fire dragon meant he was a storm prophet, capable of predicting when dangerous weather was about to strike.
Click . . . click . . . BANG!
Angus stopped dead in his tracks as the unmistakable sounds of a scuffle broke out upstairs, directly above his head.
“Uncle Max?” he called as loudly as he dared. “Is everything all right?”
There was no answer, except for some extremely muffled swearing, followed by a thick silence.
Angus hesitated, hoping that his uncle hadn’t walked straight into an ambush. He continued into the living room, which was still strewn with the remnants of Christmas. A large tree sat wilting in the corner, along with half a box of chocolates. There was a fresh smoke stain on the ceiling, above the spot where Uncle Max had accidentally knocked over a candle, setting fire to a number of Christmas cards. Angus had hastily rescued the ones he’d received from his two best friends at Perilous, Dougal Dewsnap and Indigo Midnight. They were so badly singed, however, that instead of wishing him a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS, they now offered him only a VERY RY CHRIS and a HA NEW EAR.
A far less welcome communication had arrived just before the holidays, from the head of the lightning catchers, Principal Delphinia Dark-Angel, who was still considering if Angus should be allowed to continue his training at Perilous. After he, Dougal, and Indigo had uncovered the fabled lightning vaults, Angus had come face-to-face with the most devious villain on Imbur, Scabious Dankhart (who possessed a sinister black diamond eye and who also had a fondness for flinging vicious weather about). Angus had been forced to use his storm prophet skills to stop Dankhart from stealing a lethal never-ending storm and to save his own life.
For some strange reason, this had sent Principal Dark-Angel into a towering rage, and she’d packed him straight off back to the Windmill until she could decide what to do with him.
Angus sighed, deciding for the hundredth time that he’d rather be thrust back into the lightning vaults with a dozen never-ending storms than be banished from Perilous, and his friends, forever.
Click . . . click . . . click.
A solitary pod shot across the floor straight in front of him, pincers gleaming in the Christmas lights, and wedged itself under the sofa. Angus gripped his baseball bat nervously and tiptoed toward it, trying hard not to step on one of the noisy carol-singing slippers that his uncle had made him for Christmas.
There had been no presents or cards from his parents, but Angus hadn’t been expecting anything. This was due to the fact that they’d both been kidnapped by Scabious Dankhart and were now trapped in a dungeon beneath his castle. Uncle Max had tried to put Angus in a festive mood, with Christmas puddings, mince pies, and sprigs of holly. Angus had done his best to join in the celebrations, but Christmas felt all wrong without his dad singing carols at the top of his voice or his mum clattering about the kitchen making special yuletide cookies. And he’d missed them both terribly.
Click . . . click . . . click.
He paused in front of the sofa, holding his breath as one long claw emerged from beneath it. The pod was getting ready to make a run for it. It was now or never. Angus carefully laid his baseball bat to one side, waiting for the right moment to pounce, then—
Flumpf!
“Gotcha!” He flung himself on top of the malicious pod, squashing it flat. “Uncle Max, I’ve caught one!” he yelled as it squirmed desperately beneath him, trying to break free. “Uncle Max?”
“Oooo! NO! ARGHHHH!”
Sounds of a violent skirmish suddenly reached Angus from the room above. Uncle Max was in big trouble this time.
Angus stood up swiftly, dangling the pod at arm’s length, well away from all major body parts. With his other hand he grabbed a large, empty cookie tin, wrestled the pod inside it, and tied it securely with a length of tinsel from the Christmas tree.
“ANGUS!”
“Hang on, Uncle Max! I’m coming!”
Angus snatched up the bat again and ran full pelt toward the door, hoping he wasn’t already too late. It was only when he crashed straight into something solid that he realized somebody was blocking his path.
“Ooof!” Angus fell over backward. He stared up at the tall figure now looming over him and almost choked. A very familiar face was gazing back at him, with the same pale gray eyes, the same soft brown hair skimming the tops of his small bear-shaped ears as both Angus and—
“WOW! D-DAD?” Angus spluttered, clambering hastily to his feet. “Oh . . .”
He realized his mistake almost instantly and his face flushed with disappointment. For one delirious moment, he’d been convinced that his parents had somehow escaped from Castle Dankhart and found their way home for a belated Christmas after all. But the man in the doorway definitely wasn’t his dad.
“I’m sorry I startled you, Angus.” The stranger smiled, leading him back into the living room. “I’m Jeremius McFangus, your dad’s older brother. I’ve heard a great deal about you from your parents.”
“You—you have?�
� Angus asked, stunned, wishing he could say the same thing in return. He was positive, however, that nobody had ever mentioned anything to him before about having an uncle Jeremius.
And yet there was something unmistakably McFangus about him, Angus decided quickly. It was like looking at a slightly thicker, fuller version of his dad, with some deliberate mistakes thrown in. Jeremius had a longer nose, for a start, and broader shoulders; his face was rugged and weatherworn, with a deep, jagged scar across his chin. He was also wearing some thick furs and a heavy coat that made him look as if he’d arrived straight from an Arctic expedition to capture wayward blizzards.
“It appears I’ve arrived at a bad time.” Jeremius frowned, glancing down at the baseball bat that Angus was still clutching. “I also found this trying to escape through the front door.” He pulled a struggling pod from his pocket. “One of Maximilian’s creations, I assume?”
“Oh, no!” Angus gasped, remembering that his other uncle was still in terrible danger upstairs. “Uncle Max, I almost forgot!”
Before he could explain anything to Jeremius, however, there was another loud thump from the ceiling directly above their heads. Heavy footsteps thundered across it, then—
CRASH!
“Look out!” Angus yelled.
He flung himself behind the sofa, his hands pressed tightly over his ears, as the ceiling suddenly gave way with a loud crack and collapsed, showering the entire room in choking clouds of dust and plaster.
Angus opened one eye warily and peered through the haze. Uncle Max had come crashing straight through a gaping hole in the ceiling. Luckily, the Christmas tree had broken his fall, and he was now sitting on top of it like an overgrown fairy, a length of purple tinsel draped around his ears. Several large chunks of hair were missing from his bushy head, and both his shoes, which looked as if they’d been savaged by a can opener, were flapping about like leathery castanets.
“Uncle Max!” Angus dashed across the room. “Are you all right?”