The Grotesques

by Tia Reed

  “Genord’s seat of power appears to be the church so it’s logical he would keep it there.” Rob gently drew them back to the dilemma. “Is there anywhere a dragon head of considerable proportion might be hidden?”

  Ella nodded. “The gargoyle. It’s in plain view.”

  Adam looked incredulous. “It couldn’t be that obvious.”

  “The police have searched the entire building three times. It has to be. It was, in Rouen, in my last vision,” she said.

  “Can Romain destroy the dragon head?” Rob asked.

  Ella shook her head. “I don’t think so, or else why would he keep the girls as grotesques?”

  “I’d like to hazard a few guesses,” Roan muttered.

  Ella ignored him. “His magic is protective. It’s the difference between him and Genord.” The comment drew even more grumbling from the Chief Inspector.

  “So we need a way to remove the concrete and destroy whatever’s under it while evading Genord and his lethal magic bolts,” Rob said.

  Doer looped his thumbs around his belt. “You deal with Genord. Concrete removal is part and parcel of the construction business.”

  “How soon can you organise the equipment?” Rob asked.

  “You all look like you could do with some rest. It’ll be waiting by the time you’re up.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  30th October. Late Afternoon.

  ROB LOOKED AT her as they crossed the road to the Church of the Resurrection. The police had herded the other journalists back into the Old Port Canal Park. The agapanthus and lantana bushes on their raised garden beds obscured their view but she nodded to a couple of colleagues to rub in her privilege. Trouble was, she wished she was incognito behind the cordon until she knew how this thing was going to play out. The public was likely to have a selective memory where living gargoyles and resurrected dragons were concerned.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Rob asked.

  A few hours of rest had done wonders to restore her sense of balance. “I have the easy role. Just keep Genord occupied until Adam gets away.” She wasn’t happy about the part he and Rob had to play. It seemed to her, with Romain fretting away at Doer’s place, Genord was free to make sacrifices of the people she loved.

  Rob looked back at the journalists. “You have a lot of witnesses.”

  What he meant was she should be safe. “Please don’t take any chances.”

  “I’ve got my own squad.”

  A glimpse of yellow among the sheoaks set her heart thumping.

  “He’ll be fine,” Rob said.

  Her reluctant nod didn’t convince her any. She took a deep breath as Roan walked up with all the police he could muster and gestured the forensics team over. She wondered how long they would have to wait. A couple of minutes later her mobile rang.

  “Move,” Doer said and hung up. Rob took the quick snap of the phone cover as a go and walked up to the church door. Genord admitted him, Roan, and the police officers with bad grace but the psychopath would need to cooperate to avoid arrest, and if they were right, he would do everything he could to avoid detainment until tomorrow. She sure hoped they found some evidence around that underwater passage—blood, hair, anything that would incriminate him. She wandered over so she could get a better look at the dragon head gargoyle, caught herself straying too far from the road, and wandered back.

  An engine revved. An unmarked white van with dark windows screeched to a halt beside her and executed a three point turn. She started to cross the road when a black BMW turned into The Minories. The side door of the van scraped opened and a large pair of hands grabbed her arms. Ella screamed as she was hauled inside. One leg hit the side. Her sneaker scraped off her foot and tumbled to the back wheel. Her assailant twisted her around, and she knocked her knee against a stone grotesque. She cringed, recovered her senses, yelled for help. She tried to get up but the balaclava clad heavy knocked her down, poked a gun out the door, and fired on the police officers who were running from crowd control to attempt a rescue. They ducked. The van door slammed shut on the stunned crowd of reporters. The driver gunned the engine and sped past the BMW.

  “Okay, they’re following,” the driver said. He looked back and grinned.

  “Can you lose them?” The heavy tore off his balaclava. His red face suggested he was out of shape.

  “No sweat,” Ace said as the van bounced over the curb.

  “You okay?” The heavy eased himself onto the carpeted floor of the empty van.

  “If he keeps his eyes on the road.” Ella rubbed her bruised leg.

  “Name’s Jake,” the heavy said. “You made it real convincing. Should be able to lure those pigs away long enough to get the job done.”

  She had been convinced she was about to come to harm the way he had pulled her in, but that was probably for the best. Osborne could not afford to ignore her disappearance. As for the stone grotesque, it was a nice touch no one had mentioned that should have the army guys wondering. The work was too crude to be Romain’s. Definitely not a missing girl, but they couldn’t know this one would never come to life. She swallowed as Jake checked his gun.

  “Bullets weren’t part of the plan.”

  “Relax, they were blanks. Should add to the authenticity.” Jake winked, patted the grotesque, and squeezed his way into the front.

  Ace took a corner way too fast. One side of the van lifted. Ella placed her hands down beside her to steady herself. She wondered if she was as pale as she felt.

  “That’s one of ours,” Ace called as a green car turned in behind them to help increase the distance between them and their pursuers.

  When they finally lost their tail with the help of Doer’s team of vehicle barricades, Ace drove into the shed Matt Hayes had rented. Climbing out, Ella felt as rattled as the roll-a-door Doer was pulling down.

  “Let’s go.” The smuggler waved her to hurry.

  She turned as she ducked under the door. Ace was already slapping coffee shop logo magnets on the truck while Jake was squatting to change the plates. She hurried after Doer and into the black van parked around the corner. They drove back to the church in silence, bar her quick call to Rob to let him know they were on their way. She brushed the air vents closed as they pulled up and peered into the vapour cloud around the dragon head gargoyle. Doer honked the horn. A gust thinned the vapour enough for her to see Adam, clad in full protective coverall and respirator, spraying the dragon head gargoyle with hydrochloric acid. A second honk brought him over to them. Ella climbed into the back, grabbed the nozzle of the sodium hydroxide sprayer, and hosed him down.

  “Better let them see you,” Doer said with a nod at the few remaining journalists who had ignored the big sign warning of hazardous spray two of his men had dragged over. Their fake council uniforms had allayed any suspicions. Ella stuck her head out long enough for them to report she had not been abducted after all.

  “Time to go,” Doer said as a black car approached from the far end of the street.

  Adam pulled off the respirator. “The wildlife,” he began.

  Doer started the engine. “My men will neutralise any spills.”

  “Wait for Rob.” She stuck her head out and looked down the side of the church as she dialled him again. She spotted him swing out of the low window to avoid the vaporised acid cloud hanging over the front door.

  The BMW’s engine roared as it accelerated toward them.

  “We go now.” Doer burned rubber, drove over the curb and onto the grass, throwing them about the back. Adam grabbed her as she bounced toward the open doors. They slowed long enough for Rob to jump in. The car was flattening the grass before they shut the door. Ella slid open the side window and looked back as they rounded the bell tower. Roan had climbed out of the window and was overseeing the police evacuation, conveniently directing people into the path of the honking BMW.

  “Where’s Genord?” she asked, sliding to the floor.

  Rob pursed his lips. “T
he trapdoor was clean. We were about to detain him when he dived in. The diver we sent after him never made it back.”

  She counted three breaths. “Is he still down there?”

  Rob shook his head.

  She supposed it was too much to ask for Genord to have shared the diver’s gruesome fate.

  “Where to?” Doer called. He was driving down the walkway past the houses.

  “The girls,” Adam said.

  “I need to check on Tilly.” Ella bit her lip as she looked at Adam. “Brendan can meet us with Romain but do you mind if an underworld boss knows where you live?”

  They careened off the pavement into Formby Crescent. Adam swung over so he was sitting beside her. “In present circumstances I’d go so far as to say it would make me feel safe.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  31st October. 2am.

  THE HOUSE WAS utterly dark when Ella woke. The bed was empty next to her. If it had not been for the muted sound of the television, she might have panicked. Gently rolling the purring Tilly off her neck, she pulled her jeans on under Adam’s baggy tee-shirt. Then she slid the fragment of cross she had picked off Joanne Travellian’s bust into her pocket. Under the circumstances, keeping a religious relic close to her person was a sensible precaution. Sleeping with it under her pillow had certainly made for an easier night. Her little cat kept pawing at her leg, so Ella picked her up and carried her into the living room, nuzzling into the affectionate head butts. Romain was still at the living room window, his palms flat against the pane as he gazed into the drizzly night. Their attempts to settle him into the spare room had ended in distress.

  “No. Dragon,” had been his only answer to their repeated requests he return the girls to human form.

  It had been a long evening. News footage had shown the dragon head gargoyle, its broken mouth missing teeth, its mottled snout potted from the hydrochloric acid. It was the body beneath it, covered from head to toe, that had first sobered them. Piecing together the uninformed reports, they had surmised it was one of Doer’s men. His ladder toppled as he took a chainsaw to the crumbling gargoyle, the overexcited reporter had paraphrased at least three times. A chunk of masonry fell and crushed his skull. A blue light hovered over his body for several seconds before it darted into the church. Adam had swallowed at the speculation that the unknown species spotted by the river might have been responsible. With Romain remaining stubborn about the girls, no one had felt like celebrating.

  “Tomorrow is Samhain,” she had told Adam. “Perhaps he just needs to see the day out.”

  As exhausted and despondent as she, he had nodded and allowed her to lead him to bed and some much needed rest.

  Sitting in the armchair, eyes glued to the images of the Port where news crews crowded for a glimpse of the grotesques, he did not look like he had got much sleep. The flickering light of the television illuminated the hands on the jarrah wall clock. Tomorrow had arrived. She sat on the sofa and let Tilly jump from her arms.

  “Any sign?” she asked, trying to ignore a replayed interview which hailed Debbie Esperto as an expert on the unexplained. Her creative colleague was spouting nonsense about basilisks and Medusa.

  He shook his head. She went into the kitchen and made some tea. A distant roar had Tilly dashing past her legs with enough speed to slosh some of the steaming liquid onto the floorboards. She started to reassure the cat it was only someone wheeling out their bin when the sound clicked with a foggy recollection of her dream. That noise had woken her. She eased the mugs onto the mallee root coffee table.

  “Ella.” Adam was sitting forward. He pressed jittery hands onto his knees.

  She turned to the television. A foolish reporter had ducked the cordon. She was talking into her mike, unaware a wooden neck was poking above the rocky bank of the canal. The muted voice of the cameraman stopped her mid-sentence. The picture zoomed into the collage of dark shadows but Ella knew the blue horror she must be facing as she turned.

  “But the head,” she said, a shiver rippling down her spine.

  “Look at it. It’s destroyed,” Adam said as the camera panned across the church. “I doused it.”

  “Adam.”

  Genord was walking out of the arched doors. The reporter approached with a request for his opinion, holding out the mike, oblivious to the gun he was raising until it was pointed at her chest. An avian shriek drowned out her pleas. The picture jolted onto the beaked grotesque. Its wings battered Genord. A shot rang out. The grotesque crashed to the grass. The footage wobbled and the ground tilted as cameraman and reporter bolted. Gunfire rapped in quick succession. The camera swung back to centre on Genord even as they continued to run. The lagging reporter fell. She never got up. A tongue of fire flared out of thin air. The camera toppled. Blood splattered across the screen. Ella found herself biting a nail as Caroline shrieked.

  “Ay-et. Ay-et,” Romain said.

  “I am Lord of Samhain.” Ella shuddered as Genord’s voice boomed out of the television. “The world will pay homage.”

  Static burst onto the screen prior to the anchor at the studio assuming hysterical control.

  “How?” Ella breathed. Overwhelmed by everything that had taken place, she started to weep. Adam came and put his arms around her. “Caroline.”

  “Hurt. Hurt. Ay-et.”

  “Does he mean ‘eat’ or the number?” Adam asked.

  “That’s nine,” she said, adding Doer’s lackey, the drophole diver, and the journalist to the tally of victims. “We’ve lost.”

  “Ay-et,” Romain insisted. He held up eight stubby fingers.

  She shook her head in defeat. He jerked his hands. She bit her lip. She didn’t dare believe Rob’s man had survived but was it possible he had escaped Genord’s grasp? He had never reappeared but neither had Genord been present to capture his soul.

  “Ay-et,” Romain said again. She nodded.

  “What now?”

  Adam took a shaky breath. “We find the real head. Before Genord claims the last sacrifice.”

  It felt like minutes later that the doorbell rang, though the clock hand had swung a half hour. When Adam remained entrenched by the television hoping for a glimpse of Cecily, Ella answered the impatient pounding.

  “This isn’t over,” Rob said. She looked past him to Osbourne, dour as ever.

  “I don’t suppose we have a choice?”

  GENORD STARED AT the flat water of the canal. Samhain had broken too soon, thanks to the interference of the wench. He could see the phosphorescent water elementals undulating through the murky depths, those of air swirling across his skin. Not a single person in this age was blessed with the magic to observe them, let alone command their might. It made no difference. There was no one here for him to impress. No one for him to sacrifice. The meddlesome bitch had seen to that. She would suffer a thousand times over before he fed her to La Gargouille. Because Genord would not be foiled again.

  He sat cross-legged upon the rocky shore and willed the dragon to emerge onto the bank in all her sapphire glory. Her head was a perfect, insubstantial clone of his original creation, crafted out of the energy of sacrifice. Her body was a flesh vessel, hungering for her spirit. He would suffer no duplicate. And so he had desisted teasing her precious spirit from her head, delayed tying her majestic mind to her new born body. Not a scrap of her spirit must diminish in turning wood to flesh.

  Herein lay the dilemma. Perhaps a single feat of magic was left to him when he offered the final spirit. Else, he could not restrict the sacrifices to the sacred nine that would secure the elementals within the beast of flesh, and bind the dragon to his will.

  It mattered not. With a dragon beneath him, a last sacrifice could not hope to escape. He would chance endowing his beloved with the properties of the elementals ere his control was complete. And so, dragging a finger through the water, he beckoned the water elementals to seal her scales and ruffle her gills. With a puff of breath, he coaxed the air elementals to lighten her wings. And wit
h the strike of a match, he drew the fire elementals to light the flame in her throat.

  THE POLICE VEHICLES screeched their urgency all the way to Parliament House. It had been a while since Ella had walked up the steps between the gigantic marble columns. This visit might have braced her self-esteem had a terrifying roar not startled her into tripping in front of everyone. Adam steadied her, but the whoosh of wings battered them back. They ducked as a dragon swooped along North Terrace. Caught by the cunning glint in its eye, she froze. The dragon turned its head and belched fire. The flames reflected off the wet road, casting a red glow on its sapphire scales. Adam pushed her down and rolled as the orange tongues seared the large wooden doors. The dragon soared on and curved into the sky.

  “It was real,” was the only stupid thing she could say before realising Osborne was shouting them through the charred outer doors and a security screening which made no concession to the threat.

  Once through the metal detector, Osborne led them down black and white tiled corridors with ornate cornices and corbels to an office with the word Premier stencilled in gold on the door. The state’s top man himself greeted them with curt formality in the outer office. He lifted a copy of the Informer from his desk, laid it back down, and asked for a concise explanation of the chaos at the Port. Rob cleared his throat and looked discomfited. Adam fidgeted. Romain clutched his hair, rocked, and moaned. Ella took a deep breath. For better or worse, her understanding of events was already in print, her reputation resting at rock bottom. She told him almost everything. The Premier perched on the edge of a desk while he listened. She had a clear view of the various shades of red, white, and purple that coloured his face but she faltered only when an aide entered with photographic evidence of the dragon that preyed outside. The only detail that caught her attention was a wooden hind foot. It meant they might yet stand a chance.