She collided with Jemini in midair, and the pair slammed together so hard that they actually turned over several times and seemed to spin away toward the trees. There was a brief cheer of support from Max and the werewolves, and then the fighting intensified.
Disappointed that their mistress was now preoccupied, the demons set to work on shredding me once again, this time dragging me even further into the frosty sky.
I screamed as a new wave of pain hit my arms and legs, and it was then I realized that the pain wasn’t evenly balanced.
My arm—the arm—hadn’t been touched. I glanced along the limb, still writhing in pain, only to see that three demons were supporting it with tremendous care, while the other arm was practically being sawn off.
They don’t want to upset it, I thought, trying to work things out through each fresh new bite of agony. They don’t want to . . . disturb it.
“Wake up, darn you!” I screamed, trying to flail the limb around so that I could use it. “Why won’t you do anything for me, you stupid, useless, cursed-up arm!”
Nothing.
Then a thought struck me.
I twisted around in the air, using all my strength to crouch into a fetal position so that the dozen demons crawling over my extremities were all drawn together.
Then I started thrashing around.
The unexpected move caused a grim panic among the demons, who—as I had anticipated—went into a mad frenzy of biting and clawing . . .
. . . and one of them bit my hand.
The bad hand.
To this day, I still don’t know what happened. One second I was being held in the air and the next I was falling. All I do know was the hand immediately reared up and crushed several demonic heads into a squishy pulp as if it was squashing a bug between two fingers. Others were slashed open, ripped apart, or thrown away like boomerangs . . . and this all happened in midair.
I hit the ground with an almighty thud and winced as my bad hand flipped me away from the ground and propelled me onto my feet.
Before I could even cough or cry out, the hand snatched two more demons from the air and slammed them together like a pair of coconuts.
Now I saw something emerging through the sea of red mist.
The cavalry was arriving. I felt a surge of relief flood through my exhausted body, but my hands and legs wouldn’t stop shaking. Moving my limbs was fast becoming a skill: I was like some mad puppet master controlling a dummy with only half the strings.
I shook my head and peered at the mist once again.
Help was at hand.
A truck cab, one of the largest I’d ever seen on the front of an eighteen-wheeler, slammed through the wall of flapping demons and rolled on up the hill, emitting a loud blast from its horn as it screeched to a halt.
Evil Clive sprang from the driver’s seat and hit a button on the side of the truck. The trailer began to unfold like a flower and revealed the immense bulk of Ten Tow Tom.
A loud and fearful chittering rang through the cloud of demons, and the front line broke rank and began to disperse. Their desire to snatch and shred me was slightly outweighed by a determination not to get devoured.
Evil Clive’s arrival also triggered Forgoth’s escape from the protective clutches of Mrs. Looker. The little phantom erupted from the front door of the house and threw Mumps onto the ground, birthing a wave of low ground rumbles as the free-roaming demonic entity took form. Great furry arms and legs sprouted from either side of the teddy bear as its massive and shaggy body caught up with the rest of its mutated growth. The head seemed to inflate like a giant balloon, sprouting random tufts of stuffing and a set of teeth that made it look more like an ogre than a child’s toy. Roaring loudly, it tore toward the quivering army of red.
To my surprise, the demons didn’t retreat. They simply flew to a greater distance, regrouped, and came back in a fresh new wave.
The sea of gleaming critters swarmed and massed like a million tiny insects converging on a cow pie, their leathery little wings flapping madly in the breeze.
They broke over the giant, hairy body of Mumps, catching in the creature’s tangled fur and biting, clawing, and scratching with all their might as it began to peel them off in twos and threes, hurling the little critters in every direction. A few landed within reach of Ten Tow Tom, who simply snatched them out of the air and ate them, chomping happily on demon skulls as if he was enjoying a night out at a really high-class restaurant.
Evil Clive was evidently adept at killing demons and had adopted the very curious method of using his own femur bone as a baseball bat. It was working surprisingly well, and he was definitely scoring: a few even disappeared over the roof of the house.
The battle ended, quite simply, with a scream of rage.
Jessica Stein reappeared over the edge of Mortlake Wood and flew toward Prospect Hill like some sort of twisted superhero, a trail of dark energy seeping out behind her.
As the horrible, drawn features and sewn-up eye loomed into view, the freakish hag continued on her flight and vanished into the distance. The sea of demons quickly broke off the battle and followed her, just as the sun broke through the clouds and bathed the hilltop in late afternoon light.
The demons were gone, and it was just as well: despite the appearance of Evil Clive and Mortlake’s admittedly terrifying eater, I didn’t actually think we were winning.
As it turned out . . . I was right.
SIXTH MISTAKE:
I collapsed. I actually collapsed.
I’ve seen people do it in movies—fold up as if all the energy had drained out of them—but I’ve never hit the ground as hard as I hit it after the demon fight on Prospect Hill. I practically bounced.
Max was at my side in seconds.
“Ed, you okay? You look terrible.”
I felt terrible, but somehow I managed a weak thumbs-up. In the background, I was vaguely aware of a cleanup operation in progress, though Evil Clive had taken Ten Tow Tom back to whatever dark pit passed as his daily dwelling place.
Again, Max’s voice shook me from my semi-conscious state.
“Can you move, buddy?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know if I can, but I know I don’t want to. Max—you’re my Dead Buddy, right?”
“Of course.”
“So tell me—is it true?”
The werewolf looked at me with a blank expression. “Huh? Is what true?”
“Is Evil Clive a zombie? Am I going to end up just like him?”
To my surprise, Max grinned.
“You’ve just been in a sky fight with an army of demons and a screaming voodoo girl, and the only thing you’re worried about is whether or not you’re going to lose more weight? Unbelievable.”
I tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage it. The thought of becoming a skeleton was more terrifying to me than any fight: Clive seemed so . . . well, empty.
When I looked up again, Max had a strange, faraway look in his eyes. He was glancing around the hillside, a slight panic surfacing in his voice.
“Where’s Jemini?” he said. “Anyone seen her?”
There was no reply from the others; everyone else was either tending to their wounds or, in the case of the werewolves, trying to return to human form. Max always changed very quickly. I guess it was because he pretty much looked like a werewolf even in his human form.
“Jemini?” he asked again. “Did anyone see where she went?”
I glanced around the hillside, a sick feeling growing in my stomach. I forced myself up from the ground and began to scan the area. The truth was, I hadn’t seen Jemini since she’d collided with Stein and they’d bot
h whizzed off toward the forest.
I pointed vaguely in what I thought was the right direction.
“She tried to take on that demented Jessica Stein when she came for me,” I explained, feeling really guilty. “They flew over those trees.”
Max didn’t hesitate, he simply took off. I followed him as closely as I could manage.
Mortlake was surrounded on three sides by forest, which became a thick wood on the downward slopes that ran to the sea.
By the time I puffed and panted my way to the first line of trees, Max had already dropped onto all fours and was enthusiastically sniffing the ground. If he’d still been in wolf form, this would have looked perfectly normal. As it was, he reminded me a bit of a crazy uncle my family had had committed just before we moved to Mortlake. I never did find out what was wrong with the guy.
“Picking anything up?” I ventured, limping over to stand beside him. “I can’t see how you would. They flew out here.”
“I’m not tracking for scent,” Max explained, getting to his feet and pointing at a sight that literally made my stomach turn. “I’m tracking blood.”
I guessed it could have been worse, but the single splash of red liquid filled me with unspeakable dread. Of all the people I’d met in the underworld of Mortlake, Jemini was probably the one I found most difficult to get along with: she was miserable, bossy, and overemotional, and she dwelled on her own death to the point of insanity. But I did like her, and the thought of anything horrible happening to her simply because she’d tried to protect me was just . . . well, horrible.
“It might not be her blood,” I hazarded, as Max and I both began to move into the wood. “I mean, she is a vampire, and she’s pretty tough.”
“She’s no demon,” Max growled, and for the first time I could see how worried he was. “Besides, I saw Stein fly away with the rest of her army.”
We proceeded, stopping several times when Max smelled further drops of blood. It was a strange and terrible trail, one neither of us really wanted to get to the end of.
Unfortunately, we did.
We found Jemini lying in a clearing, her body bathed in sunlight.
She looked bad.
“Should we get her out of the light?” I asked, feeling stupid when Max simply shook his head and crouched down beside her.
“Vampires don’t burn in direct sunlight,” he growled. “It’s a myth, like werewolves needing the moon to transform. Breathers love making stuff up.”
Jemini was shaking. Tears streamed from her eyes, her clothes were ripped in places, and blue veins stood out on her neck and face. A strange, mottled pattern was visible beneath her skin, and a line of purplish liquid ran from her neck onto the forest floor.
“What happened?” Max said, putting one hand under the vampire girl’s neck and lifting her head slightly.
“Shbtme,” came the croaked, garbled reply. I winced as I noticed some blood caked around her teeth. “Sbtmee, Shebitme.”
Max turned Jemini’s head, and we saw that the horrible plethora of colors on her flesh all stemmed from a vicious wound in her neck. To say it looked infected was an understatement: it was literally bulging with poison.
“What do we do?” I asked, helping Max lift her off the ground. “She looks like she’s dying!”
“We need to get her to Clive,” Max snapped.
“Can he heal her?”
The werewolf shook his head. “No, but he might be able to tell us what sort of venom she’s been hit with: I’m guessing Stein isn’t your everyday sort of demonic witch.”
Jemini lost consciousness as we carried her back out of the wood and up the lower slopes of Prospect Hill. It was just as well: she’d obviously been in a world of agony.
“Max,” I said, as I noticed my right arm beginning to rip away from my shoulder socket. “I think you better support her by yourself—I’m coming apart at the seams, here.”
The werewolf nodded and took the full weight of Jemini, holding her with extreme care, and we climbed the hill.
I felt my eyes begin to fill with tears and quickly wiped them with one stinking, half-rotted hand.
“I’m sorry, friend,” I muttered, my lips trembling. “This is all my fault.”
Max merely shrugged, and his mouth tightened in a grim smile.
“We’ve all got enemies, Ed,” he muttered.
“It just so happens that yours are worse than most.”
I smiled, but the anger inside me was practically boiling over. It really was all my fault, and now a poor vampire girl with a mountain of her own problems was going to experience a world of grim agony just for trying to help me . . . just for being my friend. How was that fair? Well, if Cheapteeth’s plan was to isolate me from my friends by killing them all or turning them against me, or even making me such a dangerous companion that no one in their right mind would stand beside me, then he had another think coming.
I was going to take the war to Cheapteeth—and I hoped his own sick friends would be standing right where I could get at them.
But I was going to save Jemini first, and I was going to do it at any cost. After all, apart from my friends, what else did I really have to lose?
SEVENTH MISTAKE:
The bed in Mrs. Looker’s spare room was thin and narrow but seemed enormous when compared with the frail figure now lying in it.
Mrs. Looker and Evil Clive spent what felt like an age just staring at Jemini, neither of them giving a single opinion or word of helpful advice on the vampire girl’s condition. Then they both retreated to another room amid a mutter of hushed conversation, while little Forgoth fetched a glass of water and tried to at least trickle some of the liquid into her mouth.
“Why aren’t they helping?” I whispered to Max, trying not to sound as angry as I felt.
Max sighed. “Maybe they can’t,” he said. “I know I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“But I thought you said that Clive—”
“Look, Ed. I don’t know everything. I’m completely in the dark, and I’m guessing here as much as you are.”
So we just waited while the clock on the wall ticked away some seemingly endless minutes, my flesh peeling off in small strips and Max slowly starting to stink the room out with his wet-doggy smell.
Eventually, Mrs. Looker emerged from the little room behind Evil Clive, who clicked across the floor to make another, more careful inspection of the wound on Jemini’s neck. This time he picked at the puffy flesh around the bite, peered back at Mrs. Looker, and simply nodded.
Max and I glanced from one to the other, our fear mixing with anger as we patiently waited for some answers.
“It’s a Liquid Curse,” said the old gaunt, folding her arms. “Very old, very powerful, and practically impossible to remove.”
“No way!” I felt my jaw drop open, but it wasn’t a voluntary movement, so I snatched hold of my chin before it hit the floor. “That Stein woman’s bites are cursed? How the heck—”
“No.” Mrs Looker shook her head. “The bite simply ripped an opening in her neck: the curse was prepared beforehand in some sort of ritual and probably poured from a vial or injected with a syringe.”
“A ritual?” I repeated. I risked a sideways glance at Max, who looked shocked and equally appalled. “In that case, maybe we—”
“Liquid Curses can’t be reversed or lifted by any normal means,” Clive interjected, his teeth clicking together as he talked. “The only way to shift a Liquid Curse is to destroy the one who created it . . . and I’m guessing that the most likely suspect is your nemesis: the clown. Remove him, and Jemini’s recovery would be practically instantaneous.”
I felt my jaw tighten, which came as a pleasant surprise.
This was all down to Cheapteeth.
“She’s not dying be
cause of me,” I snarled, “and I mean that . . . even if I have to crash the freaky circus and take on that sick clown single-handedly.”
I wasn’t joking. I would gladly have taken my own personal war to Midden Field, but the look on Max’s face told me I wasn’t going to have that choice . . . and even I’m not stupid enough to argue with an angry werewolf.
“Ed.” The word had come from Evil Clive, and something about the skeleton’s icy tone made both Max and me freeze to the spot. “You need to understand something. It’s really not a good idea for you to be around Cheapteeth, whether you’re intending to fight him . . . or not.”
I frowned and shared a worried glance with Max. It seemed like a very odd thing to say. Clive must have thought so too because he put a bony hand on my shoulder and sighed. “I believe you are cursed in a way that might potentially make you as dangerous as Cheapteeth himself.”
At first, the skeletal fingers distracted me from what Clive was saying. I wondered if this truly was my future—no skin, no muscle, no organs—just shiny white bone. It was only when his words echoed inside my head for a second time that I understood what he was talking about.
“You mean this, don’t you?” We both looked down at my nine-fingered hand.
“Yes, Ed. I mean that.” Evil Clive glanced back at Mrs. Looker, who was practically biting her nails with worry. “Let’s just say that it’s highly suspicious that the hand came back to you in the way it did . . . and we’ll leave it at that. Be careful, Ed. Just make sure that you are always in control.”
Undead Ed and the Demon Freakshow Page 3