by Garth Nix
‘Mind control is what Dorrance thought he could get from it,’ Ripton said, interrupting him. He tapped his coat pocket. ‘I’ve got your diary here. Mind control through people’s dreams. And you just went along with whatever Dorrance wanted, you stupid sod.’
‘What’s actually happening?’ asked Nick. ‘Has it killed anyone?’
Lackridge choked out something unintelligible. ‘Anyone! It’s killed almost everyone down here, and by now it’s probably upstairs killing everyone there,’ said Ripton. ‘Guns don’t work up close to it, bullets fired farther back don’t do a thing, and the electric barrier grilles just went phhht when it walked up! As soon as I figured it was trying to get out, I doubled around behind it. Now I reckon we follow its path outside and then run like the clappers while it’s busy—’
‘We can’t do that,’ said Nick. ‘What about the guests? And the servants—even if they do work for D13, they can’t be abandoned.’
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ said Ripton. He no longer appeared so calm. ‘I don’t know what that thing is, but I do know that it has already killed a dozen highly trained and fully armed D13 operatives. Killed them and . . . and drunk their blood. Not . . . not something I ever want to see again . . .’ ‘I know what it is,’ said Nick. ‘Somewhat. It is a Free Magic creature from the Old Kingdom. A source of Free Magic itself, which is why guns and electricity don’t work near it. I would have thought that bullets coming in from farther away would at least hurt it, though . . .’
‘They bounced off. I saw the lead splashes on its hide . . . Here’s a flashlight. You go in front, Professor. Get your key ready.’
‘We have to try to save the people upstairs,’ Nick said firmly as they nervously entered the corridor, flashlight beams probing the darkness in both directions. ‘Has it definitely already got out of here?’
‘I don’t know! It was through the second guardroom. The library exit might slow it more. It’s basically a revolving reinforced concrete-and-steel slab, like a vault door. Supposed to be bombproof—’
‘Is there another way up?’
‘No,’ said Ripton.
‘Yes,’ said Lackridge. He stopped and turned, the bronze key gleaming in his hand. Ripton stepped back, and his finger whipped from resting outside the trigger guard to curl directly around the trigger. ‘The dumbwaiter!’ Lackridge blurted out. ‘Dorrance has a dumbwaiter from the wine cellar below us here, which goes up through his office to the pantry above.’
‘What time is it?’ asked Nick.
‘Half eight,’ said Ripton. ‘Or near enough.’
‘The guests will be at dinner,’ said Nick. ‘They won’t have heard what’s going on down here. If we can take the dumbwaiter to the pantry, we might be able to get everyone out of the house before the creature breaks through to the library.’
‘And then what?’ asked Ripton. ‘Talk as we go. Head for the office, Prof.’
‘It’s not a Dead thing, so running water won’t do much,’ said Nick as they broke into a jog. ‘Fire might, though . . . If we made a barrier of hay and set it alight, that could work. It would attract attention at least. Bring help.’
‘I don’t think the sort of help we need exists around here,’ said Ripton. ‘I’ve never been up north, but I know people in the NPRU, and this is right up their alley. Things like this just don’t happen down here.’
‘No, they don’t,’ said Nick. ‘They wouldn’t have happened this time, either, only Dorrance fed his creature the wrong blood.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Lackridge said, puffing after them. Now that they were heading for a possible exit, he had gotten more of a grip on himself. ‘I didn’t believe him . . . but . . . Dorrance thought the blood of one of you people with the Charter brand would rouse the creature a little, without danger. Then when we got you to come in for the Forwin Mill investigation, he saw you had a Charter Mark. The opportunity was too good to resist—’
‘Shut up!’ ordered Ripton. As Lackridge calmed down, the policeman got more tense.
‘Dorrance worships the creature, but I don’t think even he wanted it this active,’ snapped Nick. ‘I can’t explain the whole thing to you, but my blood is infused with Free Magic as well as the Charter. I guess the combination is what got the creature going so strongly . . . but it was too rich or something; that’s why it’s trying to dilute it with normal blood . . . I wonder if that means that the power it got from my blood will run out. Maybe it’ll just drop at some point . . .’
Lackridge shook his head, as if he still couldn’t believe what he was hearing, despite the evidence.
‘It might come back for a refill from you as well,’ said Ripton. ‘Here’s the office. You first, Professor.’
‘But what if the creature’s in there?’
‘That’s why you’re going first,’ said Ripton. He gestured with his revolver, and when Lackridge still didn’t move, he pushed him hard with his left hand. The bulky ex-boxer rebounded from the door and stood there, his eyes glazed and jowls shivering.
‘Oh, I’ll go first!’ said Nick. He pushed Lack-ridge aside a little more gently, turned the door handle, and went into Dorrance’s office. It was the room he’d been in before, with the big leather club chairs, the desk, and the liquor cabinet.
‘It’s empty—come on!’
Ripton locked the door after them as they entered the room, and then he slid the top and bottom bolts home.
‘Thought I heard something,’ he whispered. ‘Maybe it’s coming back. Keep your voices down.’
‘Where’s the dumbwaiter?’ asked Nick.
Lackridge crossed to a bookshelf and pressed a corner. The whole shelf swung out an inch, allowing Lackridge to get a grip and open it out completely. The beam of Nick’s flashlight revealed a square space behind it about three feet high and just as wide: a small goods elevator or dumbwaiter.
‘We’ll have to go one at a time,’ said Ripton. He slipped his revolver into his shoulder holster, laid his flashlight on the desk, and dragged one of the heavy studded leather chairs against the door. ‘You first, Mr Sayre. I think it must have heard us, or smelled us, or something; there’s definitely movement outside—’ ‘Let me go!’ Lackridge burst out, darting toward the elevator. He was brought up short as Ripton whirled around and kicked him behind the knee, bringing him crashing down, his fall rattling the bottles in the liquor cabinet.
Nick hesitated, then climbed into the dumbwaiter. There were two buttons on the outside frame of the elevator, one marked with an up arrow and one with a down; but as he expected, neither did anything. However, there was a hatch in the ceiling, which when pushed open revealed a vertical shaft and some heavily greased cables. The shaft was walled with old yellow bricks, and some had been removed every few feet to make irregular, but usable, hand and footholds.
Nick ducked his head out and said, ‘It’s electric, not working. We’ll have to climb the—’
His voice was drowned out as the metal office door suddenly rang like a bell and the middle of it bowed in, struck with tremendous force from the other side.
‘Fire!’ Nick shouted as he jumped out of the elevator. ‘Start a fire against the door!’
He rushed to the liquor cabinet and ripped it open as the creature struck the door again. This second blow sheared the top bolt and bent the top half of the door over, and a dark shape with glowing violet eyes could be seen beyond the doorway. At the same time, Ripton’s flashlight shone intensely bright for a second, then went out forever.
The remaining flashlight, left in the elevator, continued to shine erratically. Nick frantically threw whisky and gin bottles at the base of the door, and Ripton struck a match on the chair leg, swearing as it burst into splinters instead of flame. Then his second match flared and he flicked it across to the alcohol-soaked chair, and there was a blue flash and a ball of flame exploded around the door, searing off both Ripton’s and Nick’s eyebrows.
The creature made a horrid gargling, drowning sound and back
ed away. Nick and Ripton retreated to the wall and hunched down to try to get below the smoke, which was already filling the room. Lackridge was still slumped on the floor, not moving, the smoke twirling and curling over his back.
‘Go!’ Ripton coughed, gesturing with his thumb at the dumbwaiter.
‘What about . . . ridge?’
‘Leave him!’
‘You go!’
Ripton shook his head, but when Nick crawled across to Lackridge, Ripton climbed into the dumbwaiter. The professor was a dead weight, too heavy for Nick to move without standing up. As he tried again, an unopened bottle exploded behind him, showering the back of his neck with hot glass. The smoke was getting thicker with every second, and the heat more intense.
‘Get up!’ Nick coughed. ‘You’ll die here!’
Lackridge didn’t move.
Flames licked at Nick’s back and he smelled burning hair. He could do nothing more for the professor. He had only reduced his own chances of survival. Cradling his arms around his head, Nick dived into the dumbwaiter.
He had hoped for clean air there, but it was no better. The elevator shaft was acting as a chimney, sucking up the smoke. Nick felt his throat and lungs closing up and his arms and legs growing weaker. He thrust himself through the hatch, climbed onto the roof of the dumbwaiter, and felt about for the hatch cover, slapping it down in the hope that this might stop some of the smoke. Then, coughing and spitting, he found the first missing bricks and began to climb.
He could hear Ripton somewhere up above him, coughing and swearing. But Nick wasn’t listening for Ripton. All his senses were attuned to what might be happening lower down. Would the creature come through the fire and swarm up the shaft?
The smoke did begin to thin a little as Nick climbed, but it was still thick enough for him to smash his head into Ripton’s boots after he had climbed up about forty feet. The sudden shout it provoked confirmed that Ripton had been thinking about where the creature was as well.
‘Sorry!’ Nick gasped. ‘I don’t think it’s following us.’
‘There’s a door here. I’m standing on the edge of it, but I can’t slide the bloody thing— Got it!’
Light spilled into the shaft as smoke wafted out of it. Hard white gaslight. Ripton stepped through, then turned to help Nick pull himself up and over. They were in a long whitewashed room lined from floor to ceiling with shelves and shelves of packaged food of all varieties. Tins and boxes and packets and sacks and bottles and puncheons and jars.
There was a door at the other end. It was open, and a white-clad cook’s assistant was staring at them openmouthed.
‘Fire!’ shouted Nick, waving his arms to clear the smoke that was billowing out fast from behind him. He started to walk forward, continuing to half shout, his voice raspy and dulled by smoke. ‘Fire in the cellars! Everyone needs to get out, to the . . . Which field is closest, with hay?’
‘The home meadow,’ croaked Ripton. He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘The home meadow.’
‘Tell the staff to evacuate the house and assemble on the home meadow,’ Nick ordered in his most commanding manner. ‘I will tell the guests.’
‘Yes, sir!’ stammered the cook’s assistant. There was still a lot of smoke coming out, even though Ripton had managed to close the door to the dumbwaiter. ‘Cook will be angry!’
‘Hurry up!’ said Nick. He strode past the assistant and along a short corridor, to find himself in the main kitchen, where half-a-dozen immaculately white-clad men were engaged in an orderly but complex dance around a number of counters and stove tops, directed by the rapid snap of commands from a small, thin man with the tallest and whitest hat.
‘Fire!’ roared Nick. ‘Get out to the home meadow! Fire!’
He repeated this as he strode through the kitchen and out the swinging doors immediately after a waiter who showed the excellence of his training by hardly looking behind him for more than a second.
As Nick had thought, the dinner guests were making so much noise of their own that they would never have heard any kind of commotion deep in the earth under their feet. Even when he burst out of the servants’ corridor and jumped onto an empty chair that was probably his near the head of the table, only five or six of the forty guests looked around.
Then Ripton fired two rapid shots into the ceiling.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I do beg your pardon!’ shouted Nick. ‘There is a fire in the house! Please get up at once and follow Mr. Ripton here to the home meadow!’
Silence met this announcement for perhaps half a second; then Nick was assaulted with questions, comments, and laughter. It was such a babble that he could hardly make out any one coherent stream of words; but clearly half the guests thought this was some game of Dorrance’s; a quarter of them wanted to go and get their jewels, favorite coats, or lapdogs; and the last quarter intended to keep eating and drinking whether the house burned down around them or not.
‘This isn’t a joke!’ Nick screamed, his voice barely penetrating the hubbub. ‘If you don’t go now, you’ll be dead in fifteen minutes! Men have already died!’
Perhaps ten of the guests heard him. Six of them pushed their chairs back and stood. Their movement caused a momentary lull, and Nick tried again.
‘I’m Nicholas Sayre,’ he said, pointing at his burnt hair and blackened dress shirt, and his bloodied cuffs. ‘The Chief Minister’s nephew. I am not playing games for Dorrance. Look at me, will you! Get out now or you will die here!’
He jumped down as merry pandemonium turned into panic, and almost knocked down the butler, who had been standing by to either assist or restrain him; Nick couldn’t be sure which.
‘You’re D13, right?’ he asked the imposing figure. ‘There’s been an accident downstairs. There is a fire, but there’s an . . . animal . . . loose. Like a tiger, but much stronger, fiercer. No door can hold it. We need to get everyone out on the home meadow, and get them building a ring of hay. Make it about fifty yards in diameter, and we’ll gather in the middle and set it alight to keep the animal out. You understand?’
‘I believe I do, sir,’ said the butler, with a low bow and a slight glance at Ripton, who nodded. The butler then turned to look at the footmen, who stood impassively against the wall as guests ran past them, some of them screaming, some giggling, but most fearful and silent. He tuned his voice to a penetrating pitch and said, ‘James, Erik, Lancel, Benjamin! You will lead the guests to the home meadow. Lukas, Ned, Luther, Zekall! You will alert Mrs Krane, Mr Rowntree, Mr Gowing, and Miss Grayne, to have all their staff immediately go to the home meadow. You will accompany them. Patrick, go and ring the dinner gong for the next three minutes without stopping, then run to the home meadow.’
‘Good!’ snapped Nick. ‘Don’t let anyone stay behind, and if you can take any bottles of paraffin or white spirits out to the meadow, do so! Ripton, lead the way to the library.’
‘No, sir,’ said Ripton. ‘My job’s to get you out of here. Come on!’
‘We can bar the doors! What the—’
Nick felt himself suddenly restrained by a bear hug around his arms and chest. He tried to throw himself forward but couldn’t move whoever had picked him up. He kicked back but was held off the ground, his feet uselessly pounding the air.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Ripton, edging well back so he couldn’t be kicked. ‘Orders. Take him out to the meadow, Llew.’
Nick snapped his head back, hoping to strike his captor’s nose, but whoever held him was not only extremely big and strong but also a practiced wrestler. Nick craned around and saw he was in the grip of a very tall and broad footman, one he had noticed when he had first arrived, polishing a suit of armour in the entrance hall that, though man-size, came up only to his shoulder.
‘Nay, you shan’t escape my clutch, Master,’ said Llew, striding out of the dining room like a determined child with a doll. ‘Won the belt at Applethwick Fair seven times for the wrestling, I have. You get comfortable and rest. It baint far to the home
meadow.’
Nick pretended to relax as they joined the column of people going through the main doors and out across the graveled drive and lawn. It was still quite light, and a harvest moon was rising, big and kind and golden. Many of the people slowed down as the sudden hysteria of Nick’s warning ebbed. It was a beautiful night, and the home meadow looked rustic and inviting, with the haycocks still standing, the work of spreading the hay into a defensive ring not yet begun, though the butler was already directing servants to the task.
Halfway across the lawn, Nick suddenly arched his back and tried to twist sideways and out of Llew’s grip, but to no avail. The big man just laughed.
The lawn and the meadow were separated by a fence in a ditch, or ha-ha, so as not to spoil the view. Most of the guests and staff were crossing this on a narrow mathematical bridge that supposedly featured no nails or screws, but Llew simply climbed down. They were halfway up the other side when there was a sudden, awful screech behind them, a shrill howl that came from no human throat or any animal the Ancels-tierrans had ever heard.
‘Let me go!’ Nick ordered. He couldn’t see what was happening, save that the people in front had suddenly started running, many of them off in random directions, not to what he hoped would be safety. If they could get the hay spread quickly enough and get it alight . . .
‘Too late to go back now, sir,’ said Ripton. ‘Let him go, Llew! Run!’
Nick looked over his shoulder for a second as they ran the last hundred yards to the centre of the meadow. Smoke was pouring out of one wing of the house, forming a thick, puffy worm that reached up to the sky, black and horrid, with red light flickering at its base. But that was not what held his attention.
The creature was standing on the steps of the house, its head bent over a human victim it held carelessly under one arm. Even from a distance, Nick knew it was drinking blood.
There were people running behind Nick, but not many; and while they might have been dawdling seconds before, they were sprinting now. For a moment Nick hoped that everyone had gotten out of the house. Then he saw movement behind the creature. A man casually walked outside to stand next to it. The creature turned to him, and Nick felt the grip of horror as he expected to see it snatch the person up. But it didn’t. The creature returned to its current victim, and the man stood by its side.