by Debi Gliori
Was He losing it? He wondered, ushered down the dark corridors toward the Totally Toast studio by a chattering clutch of young BBC technicians, none of whom was paying Him the slightest bit of attention, not even when He tripped over a cable and let rip with an oath that caused one of the acoustic tiles in the ceiling to melt and curl up like a pretzel. Somehow He got through the next half hour of rehearsals, and when the camera finally broadcast His face live to the nation, it was the serene, squeaky-clean, oath-free Stan that the nation beheld. Stan, the best and funniest TV chef ever to grace the United Kingdom’s television sets. Totally Toast had achieved such stellar ratings that already there were plans for the Some Extra Slices of Totally Toast cookery book, another A Round of Totally Toast series, and a weekly “A Slice of Totally Toast” cookery column to be syndicated across the planet in its Sunday papers. On balance, His success was bizarre, freakish even, since on Totally Toast most of the food was burned, dropped on the floor, or had its moldy bits scraped off on camera. And despite the BBC makeup department’s best efforts, Stan always looked as if He’d been burned, been dropped on the floor, and had barely managed to scrape His moldy bits off before the spotlight turned on Him. In close-up, His hairy hands revealed the grime of ages stratified in black layers beneath His fingernails, and it was obvious to all but the color-blind that Stan was a cook with a seriously finger-staining, lung-furring, cancer-causing nicotine addiction. Miraculous, then, that anyone took Him seriously, far less endeavored to imitate His cooking style. There He would be, every Thursday lunchtime, leering out at His audience, one unsanitary fist wrapped around a knife, the other waving a toasting fork, on the end of which would be a black, charred, smoldering lump of something best described as carbon.
The nation loved Him: fan letters poured into the BBC, and admirers blocked the road outside the studios; the smell of charred meat drifted from tens of thousands of kitchen ventilating fans and outdoor barbecues every Thursday as the nation tried out Stan’s latest burnt offering. The current program was subtitled “Awesomely Offal,” and as Stan put the finishing touches to His Deviled Kidneys in a Gland Jus on a Blackened Pancake Stack, such was His professionalism that no one could have guessed that His mind was on other things entirely. The moment the program went off the air, S’tan barreled through the throng of producers, editors, cameramen, makeup artists, sound technicians, and fawning executives; fled down the darkened corridors of the BBC; and locked Himself behind the door of dressing room 2.
He pulled a mobile phone from His pocket, keyed in a number, and waited to be connected. He was losing it, He decided. Time was, He wouldn’t have needed the aid of man-made telecommunications to contact His demon underlings. When the Chronostone had been in His possession, all He had to do was think of a demon and wherever that demon was, it would know the Boss wanted a quick word. Moreover, back then, S’tan knew exactly what was going through the minds of each and every one of His subjects: knew where they were without the aid of GPS and knew that their loyalty to Him was absolute…. Now they had to use e-mail to alert Him to their plight. Hades freezing over? Less than a century ago, that would have been unthinkable. Back then, Hades was hot as…as…as Hell, actually. Come to think of it, S’tan reminded Himself, back then He was pretty hot as well.
Looking down to where His feet were hidden by the swell of His stomach, He saw himself all too clearly: a fat, pathetic lump of a demon; a figure bearing more resemblance to an aging heavyweight boxer than the onetime fearsome, awesome, terrifying, petrifying S’t—
“This mobile may be switched off. Please try later or send a text.”
S’tan swore: a single utterance, one word translated from the original Babylonian into an expletive so foul and repellent that in front of Him, the mirror turned black with shame and the toilet in His suite flushed itself repeatedly in an attempt to wash the word away. Laboriously, muttering to Himself, S’tan keyed in a text to Isagoth, His defense minister, His greasy, lard-coated fingers leaving opaque smears all over His phone, His thumbnails clattering on the tiny keys.
where r u? have u xtermin8ed that t d us mr borgia yet?
phone me @ 1ce.
S
There. Concise and to the point. If Isagoth didn’t get back to Him within, say, ten minutes, S’tan was going in. No more faffing around, waiting for a lesser demon to do his work for Him. If the job was to be done properly, He was going to have to do it Himself.
Several months ago, S’tan had made His first pact with a human since that unmentionable snake-and-apple fiasco back in the dawn of mankind. In return for being fast-tracked onto BBC TV and given His own cookery program, S’tan had promised to destroy His human benefactor’s half brother, Luciano. Trouble was, eight weeks on, the supposedly doomed Luciano was still alive and well. Consequently, S’tan’s notoriety as the Big Bad Beast had taken another hammering, and if He didn’t do something soon, His reputation was going to be so ruined that the only way humans would ever summon Him again would be by pouring a saucerful of milk and calling, “Heeeere, puss-puss pussy. Heeere, kitty kitty kitty.”
Suppressing a howl, S’tan glared at His phone, as if by eyeball energy alone He could force it to ring. Unsurprisingly, it remained mute, but on its screen, under a lardy smear, was a little envelope icon indicating that He had a text message waiting. Isagoth? Already? Deeply impressed despite Himself at His defense minister’s speedy reply, S’tan prodded a key and the text appeared.
Oh dear.
It was most emphatically not from Isagoth. Despite being the Fount of All Fear, the Prince of Darkness, the Emperor of Endless Evil, and other assorted scary titles, S’tan felt a tiny frisson of terror. The text message was from Don Lucifer di S’Embowelli Borgia, the rat-faced, insanely vengeful uncle of Titus, Pandora, and Damp, half brother of Luciano Strega-Borgia, and, most important, the summoner of S’tan. His text message was, like him, short and brutal. It read:
signore satan.
we no longer have a deal.
your concrete overshoes are ready for collection.
capisce?
With a squeak of dismay, S’tan dropped His phone on the floor, suddenly aware that, in common with all cell phones, it was broadcasting a signal that pinpointed exactly where He was every time He switched it on. And that meant that, at this very moment, Don Lucifer might be sending his henchmen round to BBC dressing room 2 for a personal, one-on-one concrete overshoe fitting….
After a moment’s reflection S’tan picked His phone up and removed it to his private bathroom, where He tried to flush it down the toilet; somewhat unsurprisingly, it failed to disappear. This was dreadful. As if being without His Chronostone wasn’t bad enough, He now had a Mafia contract out on Him. Could life hold any more?
Apparently it could: muffled weirdly by the water in the toilet bowl, His phone was ringing, its vibrating alert making it rattle as if it were trying to drill its way out through the porcelain. Completely unnerved, S’tan fled, bolting along corridors, pushing past security guards, skidding past the doorman and out into the snowstorm, nearly mowing down the throng of frozen Totally Toast fans before hailing a taxi and vanishing into its interior.
What Big Teeth You Have
In the low afternoon sunshine, the northwestern coast of Argyll resembled a Christmas card: snow capped the mountains of the Bengormless Range, dusted the Scotch pines, and graciously allowed the passage of a fleet of snowplows trailing long lines of delayed traffic in their wake. Twenty-three cars behind one of these snowplows was the Strega-Borgias’ Volvo sports wagon, its interior still bearing witness to the recent birth of their youngest child. Staring into the brake lights of the car ahead, Luciano forced himself to keep calm and concentrate on driving. Despite his best intentions, his thoughts kept running off down dark avenues of possibility, all of which terminated with the same awful question: What if Latch and Ludo could not defend StregaSchloss? The thought of Titus and his sisters alone, vulnerable, defenseless, with Mafia assassins closing in on them
—No, no, no. Think of something else, Luciano, he commanded himself. Sneaking a glance at Baci in the rear seat, he took a deep breath. She didn’t know. Miraculously, he’d managed to shield her from the truth. Baci had no idea what was really going on. As befitted a newly delivered mama, her thoughts were almost entirely focused on the small bundle strapped into the front passenger seat in a rear-facing baby carrier. Swaddled in a Shetland shawl of such gossamer delicacy that it could, in its entirety, be passed through the circle of a wedding ring was the changeling, eyes squinched shut, mouth wide open, and lungs in fine working order. Beside the wailing baby, Luciano gritted his teeth, clutched the steering wheel, and devoutly wished himself elsewhere.
“SHALL I JUST FEED HIM AGAIN?” Baci yelled from the rear, struggling to make herself heard over the infant’s din.
“YOU JUST DID,” Luciano roared, taking one hand off the wheel to stroke the baby’s tearstained and quivering cheek.
“MAYBE HE’S GOT COLIC?” Baci shrieked, worn down to a nubbin by the unceasing, never-ending, grinding racket of the baby’s displeasure. Being trapped in a car in a long line of slow-moving traffic was bad enough, but having also to endure the tortured screams coming from what looked like the product of a union between a purple goblin and a fat, woolly maggot was quite beyond human endurance.
Longingly, Luciano thought of the deep masculine silence of his study, a totally baby-free zone. He also briefly considered the child-exempt seclusion of his half-assembled home gymnasium before remembering exactly why it was that he needed a home gym in the first place. He had to get home. Had to gather his beloved family all together under one roof and…
…and what? What on earth was he going to do? All the sit-ups and workouts in the world weren’t going to make a blind bit of difference to a bullet with his name on it. As for protecting his family—Baci, the children—his eyes prickled, his mind beset by hideous, unwelcome images of their slaughtered bodies lying in pools of blood; their dead eyes, slack mouths—
With a sickening jolt, Luciano snatched his hand back from where he had been mindlessly stroking the howling baby’s face. He’d been bitten. The baby had bitten him. Uncomprehending and utterly aghast, he looked from his bleeding—bleeding—finger into the face of his youngest child. What he saw there was so shocking that for an instant he nearly lost control of the car. The baby stopped screaming as if it had been gagged. In the ensuing eerie silence, it opened blood-red eyes and hissed at him, its tiny mouth curled up in a sneer, its lips rolled back to expose a row of black needle-pointed teeth.
Unaware that his home was currently under siege by a ravening wolf pack, Nestor the baby dragon lay awake in his nest in the dungeons, wondering if it was worth the effort of going upstairs to the cloakroom as instructed by Minty, or whether to pretend he’d forgotten her advice and go for a quick poo somewhere dark and out of the way in the dungeons. As he gnawed thoughtfully on a stolen hiking boot, he decided, on balance, that the dungeons were the better option, toilet-wise. Riddled with blind tunnels, catacombs, crypts, fallen arches, vast caverns, and priest holes, the dungeon offered a huge variety of places where no one would ever think to go looking for one teeny-weeny little dragon dump.
Padding off down a tunnel, Nestor chewed meditatively and peered into the darkness in search of the perfect pit stop. There. Ideal. He swallowed the last morsel of boot leather and Gore-Tex, burped delicately, and reversed with some difficulty into a deep recess. Lifting his tail, he was just about to close his eyes and bear down when an unknown voice broke the silence.
“What the HELL—?”
And then came a flash and a loud bang as something hot and shiny whined past his head at such speed that Nestor let rip from both ends in terror.
With his night vision utterly destroyed by Nestor’s dazzling burst of dragon flame, Ludo Grabbit dived out of range of what he mistakenly assumed to be a rather underpowered flamethrower. Seconds later, the lawyer revised his assumptions downward. The stench now drifting toward him out of the darkness made him realize that whatever was out there was far more afraid of him than he was of it. Sighting down the barrel of his rifle and breathing through his mouth to avoid inhaling the dreadful smell, Ludo yelled, “Come on out with your hands in the air!”
Obediently, Nestor tiptoed forward, hoping that whoever this was shouting at him, he wouldn’t tell Minty about the temporary lapse in his toilet training.
Pressed with his back up against the china cupboard, Latch was trying to remember if he knew anything about wolf behavior. He suspected that paddling about in the blood of a dead wolf would not increase his popularity within the wolf pack. The wolves were spread out around him in a semicircle, tracking his every movement with their yellow eyes. At times they turned away to snap at each other, giving Latch an opportunity to see just what big teeth they had. Then a ripple seemed to go through the pack, as if their interest in Latch-as-lunch was eclipsed by the simultaneous arrival of two more edible parties: one, from the dungeons, was Mr. Grabbit, trailed by a disconsolate Nestor, and the other…
“FLORA! NO!” Latch howled, lunging forward in a heroic attempt to put himself between the wolves and his beloved Flora.
It could have all gone very badly wrong at this point: hackles up, the wolves were poised to attack; Ludo had his gun aimed and ready; and Latch suddenly realized that his future hung by a thread. There was a moment that lasted several lifetimes; then Flora crouched down among the wolves and, with an introductory growl, addressed them in a low, urgent voice.
“Down. Lie down while I sort out this confusion with my pack.”
In the absolute hush, Latch imagined he could hear his own heart thudding against his breastbone. What was this? At his feet, all around, the wolves were obeying; were lying down and ignoring him completely, all eyes on the small woman who unaccountably held them in thrall.
“F-F-Flora?” His voice was emerging as a boyish squeak. He took a deep shuddering breath and was about to try again when Ludo spoke.
“Just stand up very, very slowly and move away from them.” He smiled encouragingly at Mrs. McLachlan and continued, “Don’t, whatever you do, make any sudden movements. I think I can buy you both enough time to get you out of the door and down the corrid—”
“Mister Grabbit!” Mrs. McLachlan’s voice was sharp, but nothing like as pointed as the look with which she skewered the lawyer. “Please. Don’t presume to tell me how to behave with our allies here. D’you not think you’ve done quite enough damage for one day?”
At this, as if in complete understanding, the wolves pointed their muzzles toward the ceiling and howled. The volume was deafening, unbearably loud within the confines of the kitchen: waves of sound beating off the walls and floor, making any further human communication impossible. Nestor clung round-eyed with wonder to Ludo’s leg, and Latch stared at Flora in complete confusion as the wolf pack mourned their fallen members.
“Quite,” said Mrs. McLachlan after a suitably respectful length of time had passed. “Now, while Mr. Grabbit demonstrates his genuine remorsefulness by digging a grave for his victims, I shall require your help, dear, to prepare for the siege.”
Latch’s eyes goggled, but he wisely held his tongue; not so Ludo, whose legal training made him automatically challenge any command, no matter how just or unjust it might be.
“For God’s sake, woman,” he spluttered. “They’re wolves. So what if I shot a couple of them? What did you expect me to do when they burst into the house uninvited? Ask them to stay to tea?”
Mrs. McLachlan looked up at Ludo, her hand stroking the head of a giant brindled wolf. “That, Mr. Grabbit, would have been a very good start indeed.”
Bats Redux
They walked in single file through the monotonous, endless forest: Strega-Nonna, Titus, Pandora, and, some way behind, crashing through the trees, the hungry dragon.
“Are WEES no there yet?” it demanded, its voice, to Titus’s ears, growing ever more strident as the hours dragged by.
Not only was Strega-Nonna’s grip surprisingly strong for such an antique ancestor, Titus was stunned by her unstoppable energy as she dragged him behind her through the birchwood. Titus had lost track of time, but it felt as if they’d been walking for ages, and to his dismay he’d started stumbling and crashing into tree trunks, aware that the pain in his eye was growing worse. Not only that; it had spread to his other eye, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, his sight was fading. Pandora was following him, and he was behind Strega-Nonna, both of them relying on the old lady to find the portal or whatever it was and take them back to their own time. However, Titus noticed that little by little it was growing dark; there was less daylight filtering down through the birch leaves, and the shadows were merging together into an endless gray fog. Even then, it hadn’t occurred to him what was really happening until Pandora stopped and turned round; at least, that’s what he assumed she’d done—he couldn’t actually see her properly—but her voice sounded like she was facing him, and she moaned something about wishing she’d brought sunglasses because the sun was too bright. Sun? Bright? He’d thought night was falling. That was when he was overcome by such a wave of fear that he walked straight into a tree, just like he was…blind.