“What is it, Cordelia?” Gregory said.
“Don’t tell me it’s a spider,” Elizabeth said. “I haven’t eaten anything for hours, and I don’t want to be tempted.”
“Cordelia had the last pretzel,” Gregory said. “But she might let you lick the salt. . . .”
“It’s not a spider,” Cordelia said wonderingly. “It’s a fossil.” She flipped the small panel of metal into her hand and saw it take on the color and shape of her hand again. “It’s a morpheus fossil. My mother had it all along.”
“I thought you said—” Gregory began.
Cordelia interrupted him. “I don’t understand it, either,” she said. “But I’m sure. And look. See how it changes? See how it fills in the shape of whatever it touches? Water relaxes the morpheus’s shape. I must have soaked it while I was crying. And my hand was hot. . . .”
“Cordelia.” Elizabeth’s voice was suddenly high with excitement. “What about a key?”
Cordelia looked over at her, confused. “What about a key?”
Elizabeth was on her knees, gripping the bars of her cage. “Will it take on the shape of a key? A key fitted exactly to a very complicated lock?”
Suddenly, Cordelia understood.
With trembling fingers, she stretched an arm through the bars of the cage and tried to reach for the lock on the cage door. The angle was so awkward, she could barely get the fossil up to the keyhole.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Come on.”
Gregory and Elizabeth were watching her intently. Cordelia held her breath. The fossil had taken on the shape of a finger. She nudged it a little closer. . . .
And nearly lost her grip, as one end of the fossil narrowed into the keyhole, and twisted around the bolts, and hardened into shape.
Cordelia barely had to turn before she heard a click, and was free.
Both Gregory and Elizabeth shouted when Cordelia tumbled out into the open. Cabal began to bark, and Icky to whine, until Cordelia hushed both of them.
“Hurry, Cordelia,” Elizabeth said. As if she needed to be told.
She rubbed the fossil in her palms to warm it and ran to Gregory’s cage. But just as soon as she’d fed it into the lock, she heard the swish of curtains behind her.
Then a familiar voice called to her. “Cordelia?”
She barely had time to turn around before her father was in front of her, sweeping her into his arms. “Thank God I found you,” he said, his voice choked up with feeling. “Everything’s okay now. You’re okay now.”
He set her down. As her tears started falling again—a sudden release of fear and relief and love—he found her cheek with one rough hand. His beard was untrimmed and his fingernails ragged, but he smelled exactly the same, like pipe smoke and bergamot.
“Don’t cry. You’re safe. I’m here now.”
Just as quickly, Cordelia’s relief turned to horror. Her father was here. This was what Newton-Plancke had wanted all along. It was what he’d counted on.
She pulled away, swiping at her cheeks with both hands. “You can’t stay here,” she said, panic cresting suddenly inside her.
“Sounds like a great plan.” Gregory, impatient, reached out to maneuver the cage door open. “All in favor of a quick exit . . . ?” He wriggled free and rolled to his feet.
Cordelia was still trying to push her father toward the curtains. “You don’t understand. Plancke is waiting for you. It’s a trap. He was only using me as bait. He knows you’re here, you’re not safe, you have to—”
She didn’t get any further. The room was suddenly flooded with light, and Plancke, wearing a dressing gown and slippers and holding a very large, very sharp knife, was illumined.
“Cornelius,” he said pleasantly. “I was very much hoping you’d show up.”
Chapter 33
Cornelius pivoted slowly to face Plancke. His face grew hard, as if it had been recast in stone. “Byron,” he said. His voice, too, was stony. “And I was hoping never to see you again.”
“Don’t say that,” Plancke said cheerfully. He had a tasseled stool tucked under one arm, and in the slippers and dressing gown, he looked like the madcap host of a weekend party. “Old friends are so important. Come, have a seat.” He flipped the stool to the ground and patted the seat cushion. “Let’s chat. Catch up on old times.” Cornelius didn’t move, and Newton-Plancke grinned, displaying his long teeth. “Come, come, Cornelius. Don’t be stubborn. It’s very impolite to refuse your host.”
Still, Cornelius didn’t move.
“Now.” Newton-Plancke dropped all pretense of cordiality. His voice was suddenly full of venom, and he advanced a step forward. “And no one gets hurt. Otherwise . . .” He twirled the knife in one hand.
Slowly, never taking his eyes off Newton-Plancke, Cornelius moved toward the stool. Plancke tracked his movements with the knife, until Cornelius was seated in front of him. Only then did Plancke lower the knife, though Cordelia noted that he was still gripping the handle tightly.
“Let’s get right to it, shall we?” he said. “Where are the monsters, Cornelius?”
Cordelia could see beads of sweat on her father’s face. But when Cornelius spoke, his voice was steady.
“You know I’ll never tell you,” Cornelius said.
Cordelia felt a rush of love for him, so strong it nearly doubled her over. He looked thinner than she remembered him—his cheekbones seemed to be whittled out of ancient wood, and his eyes were sunk deeply in his weather-beaten face—but his expression was still one of determined strength. This was the man who had pinned full-grown growrks to the floor to extract splinters from their massive paws; the man who had stayed up all night to save a bleeding cockatrice, which had become impaled on an old fence and lost several quarts of blood; the man who still found time to make Cordelia chicken soup from scratch when she was sick, to tickle her and tell her stories before bed.
Newton-Plancke’s mouth thinned to a smile. In one step he had pressed the blade to Cornelius’s throat. “You know what I’m capable of, I think. Don’t make Elizabeth’s mistake.”
“Let go of him!” Cordelia cried out. She was so full of anger, so full of fury, that her feet moved all on their own. She was charging Newton-Plancke, ignoring the ricochet of shouting, ignoring the knife, ignoring the danger, ignoring everything but the fire of rage in her chest. She saw Plancke look up in surprise—
“Cordelia, no!” Her father flung out his arm before she could leap at Plancke, and caught her in the chest. She tumbled backward, landing hard on the marble floor. “Stay away! Do you hear me? Stay away!”
“Listen to your father, girl,” Newton-Plancke said casually. “Don’t worry. I won’t cut his throat. How would he talk then? No, no.” He turned back to Cornelius, seizing him by the hair. He ran the blade lightly down from Cornelius’s throat all the way to his right hand, which was gripping the stool. “We’ll save your throat for dessert. But a finger,” he said, “will serve quite nicely as an appetizer.”
He raised the blade. Time seemed to freeze. Cordelia wanted to cry, “Stop!” but the word gummed in her throat.
“Don’t hurt him!” Elizabeth shouted suddenly. “I know where the monsters are! Just don’t hurt him!”
Newton-Plancke paused, knife raised above his head. Cordelia was so stunned, it took her a moment to speak.
“Don’t be stupid, Elizabeth,” she said, her voice quivering. Then, in a louder voice: “She knows nothing.”
“Cordelia’s telling the truth,” Cornelius said. “Leave the girl alone.”
But it was too late. Plancke had already turned to Elizabeth. Elizabeth shrank backward, as if she wished to press herself into nonexistence.
“Don’t play with me, girl.” Sensing movement behind him, Plancke cupped a hand to his face. To Cordelia’s horror, he pursed his lips and exhaled, and his left eyeball popped out into his outstretched palm. When he set it down, it promptly slithered over the marble until it reached Cornelius’s feet.
&n
bsp; “Just in case you have any ideas of escape,” Plancke said with a nasty chuckle, without taking his remaining eye off Elizabeth. “Remember I have eyes in the back of my head. Or anywhere, really, I need them to be.”
In two strides, Plancke had crossed the room to Elizabeth’s cage. He produced a set of keys from his dressing gown and unlatched the cage that contained Elizabeth. Then he reached inside and grabbed her by her blond curls. Elizabeth kicked, aiming for his face, but Plancke merely tightened his grip on her and dragged her out into the open.
“Get off her, you slimy lug!” Gregory yelled.
Before Cornelius could start from his chair, Plancke spoke sharply to him: “Don’t move, or I’ll cut off the little girl’s ears.” Cornelius stared at the eyeball at his feet with distaste as it oozed a little closer to his toes.
“You’re a monster.” The words were in Cordelia’s throat, on her tongue, before she could stop them.
“We’ve been over this already,” he snapped, holding the knife close to Elizabeth’s throat. “I’m a morpheus, remember? The only living member of a prehistoric species—”
“Lucky for you.” Suddenly the fog of anger and fear lifted, and Cordelia understood. “That’s the only part that even gets close to being human. You’re a morpheus, sure. And you’re a monster.”
Plancke froze. He let go of Elizabeth. She fell to her knees, whimpering.
Cornelius’s face had gone totally white. “Hush, Cordelia,” he said. “Hold your tongue.”
Still, Cordelia didn’t stop. “I feel bad for you, really. You’ve been wrong all these years. You think if you find cages for all the monsters in the world, then the monster inside of you will finally be defeated.” The current of understanding was still bearing her forward, holding her up, protecting her. “That’s why you hate monsters,” she said. “That’s why you want to show everybody how much you hate them. That’s why you want to point your finger at other people and say, you. It isn’t even that you’re afraid to be discovered. It’s so that the mirror might stop pointing back at you. It’s so that your sickness and hatred can stop whispering, me.”
“Shut up.” Newton-Plancke’s voice was a whisper, but those two syllables contained the force and venom of all his hatred. “Just shut up.”
“You’ve been feeding the wrong monster all this time,” Cordelia said. “And now you’ll never be free. You can turn into as many shapes as you want, but you’ll never find one that isn’t a horror.”
He lunged at her, roaring with fury. Elizabeth shot out a leg and caught him in the shin, and he lost his balance, taking her down at the knees. Cordelia scurried backward as Plancke reached for her again—
—just as Cornelius landed on top of him.
“Help!” Plancke screeched, as he struggled to buck Cornelius from his back. “Someone! Anyone! Help!”
Almost immediately, Cordelia heard the drumming of quick footsteps from Plancke’s living quarters. “The door, Elizabeth!” she cried. “Latch the door!”
Elizabeth scrambled to her feet and threw herself against the door, latching it just as a fist began pounding on it from the other side. Cordelia could just make out muffled shouting.
Plancke and Cornelius were still wrestling, struggling for control of the knife, grunting and sweating. Plancke had the advantage; then Cornelius; then Plancke again. Plancke raised the knife, roaring with fury, and struck. But Cornelius deflected him, grabbing Plancke by the throat. The knife thudded to the floor and skated across the marble.
Pinning Plancke to the ground, Cornelius plunged a hand inside Plancke’s robe and found his key ring.
Boom. The door shuddered as though someone was taking a battering ram to it from the other side. Elizabeth yelped. She had thrown her back against the door, but now her feet were slipping on the marble.
“Catch!” Cornelius lobbed the keys to Gregory, who hurried to the dragon’s cage. It only took him moments to open the cage door and free the dragon of his muzzle. He started next on the dragon’s wing clips.
The momentary distraction had cost Cornelius the advantage. Plancke got an elbow free and clocked Cornelius in the chin.
“That,” he said, shoving Cornelius off him, “is for old times’ sake.” Then, as he stood, he aimed a kick at Cornelius’s head.
Cordelia screamed as Cornelius slumped, dazed, to the ground. She saw Plancke turn for the knife. As Plancke’s eyeball rolled in her direction, bare and accusatory, she punted it toward the corner. Plancke screamed.
And Cordelia ran.
She was fifteen feet from the knife . . . then ten . . .
Plancke was closer, but half-blind, and still breathless from the fight. Still, he was going to reach it before her. . . .
Then the dragon swooped, screaming, in front of him, and aimed a blast of flame that Plancke ducked only at the last minute.
“Stupid beast.” He swung a fist hard, catching the dragon mid-belly, and knocking him from the air.
Cordelia snatched up the knife and saw the dragon, dazed, trying to stand up. Icky was free now. . . . Gregory was at Cabal’s cage. . . . But he was shaking so badly, he kept dropping the keys. . . .
Plancke was advancing on Cordelia, one eye a red wound, and the other gleaming with hatred. He was smiling.
“Stay where you are,” Cordelia said, gripping the knife in two sweaty palms.
Another gigantic boom sounded, vibrating the door on its hinges, rattling the flimsy lock. “Gregory,” Elizabeth gasped out. Even with most of her goblin showing, and her shoulders thickened with scales, she was no match for the force on the other side of the door. “Help me.”
Gregory finally got the key in the lock and twisted. Cabal bounded out, barking, and followed Gregory as he dashed across the room. When Gregory hurled himself against the door next to Elizabeth, Cabal nudged up next to him.
And still, Plancke came. He seemed to stretch with every step, carving into the sickle shape of a crescent moon, until he almost reached the ceiling.
“Stay where you are, I said!” Cordelia was practically screaming. “Not another inch!”
“You remind me more and more of your mother,” Plancke said. “You have the same scream. . . .”
Cordelia lunged for him without thinking. She slashed with the knife and struck him in the arm. Still, he managed to get hold of her jacket collar, and for a second she was pinioned in his grip.
“Gotcha!” he cried.
She managed to get her arms free of the sleeves. But before she could run, he swept a leg behind her knees and flipped her backward. She lost her hold on the knife. When she grabbed for it, he planted his slipper on the handle—and kicked it down the length of the exhibit hall. Her jacket, he simply cast aside into a corner.
“Perhaps you’re right, about what makes me a monster.” It wasn’t blood that welled from the wound, but a dark green slime. Plancke hardly seemed to notice. “But you know what makes me a morpheus?”
There was a split second when his image seemed to shimmer, like hot air over a distant road.
“The shape of other lives. Other people. Other creatures.” Then he wasn’t Plancke anymore, but a Plancke mask made of wax, dripping onto the floor. When he spoke again, his voice was horribly distorted. “Even dragons.”
Then he was a Plancke puddle, still bearing traces of the man’s reflection. Finally he was nothing but a dark pool of evil-smelling slime, sliding out of the crumpled dressing gown and abandoned slippers, gathering together like a grounded cloud.
Gathering, and growing. And growing.
And growing.
Chapter 34
Where there had once been a man, there was now a vast dragon with black-tipped scales; enormous, curved fangs; and a tail ridged with heavy spikes. Cordelia and her father huddled next to Elizabeth and Gregory near the door. Cabal and Icky cowered at their feet. The baby dragon shrank back as the shadow of its enormous double swallowed up the corners of the room, exhaling hot, stinking air from nostrils the size of tree
trunks. The only indication that the dragon wasn’t natural—that it was Plancke in a different form—was the blank mass of scarred skin stretching across the space where his left eye should have been.
“Everyone stay calm,” Cornelius said, herding Elizabeth, Gregory, and Cordelia behind him, as if he could shield them from Plancke’s wrath. “Stick close to me.”
No sooner had he finished speaking than the dragon-that-was-Plancke curled his lips back over his fangs and spat out a rushing stream of flame. The morpheus might have weakened in the heat, but his choice of shape more than compensated: it would take an oven the size of the whole museum to melt him down now.
“Down, down! Get down!” Cornelius cried.
Everyone was screaming. Elizabeth and Gregory scattered, and Cordelia felt her father push her to her knees. She rolled a few feet, blinking smoke from her eyes. The air stank of ash and sulfur. Fire had engulfed the door and a portion of the ceiling; there were more distant shouts, and the banging from the hallway went temporarily silent.
Cordelia had landed underneath the dragon’s swollen stomach. She could see the diamond pattern of his hide, his squat, powerful legs, and his thick tail lashing across the room, splintering plaster from the walls and crashing cages to the floor. She could feel the heat from his massive body, the whoosh of air every time the dragon swiveled his head or adjusted his position.
They were all trapped. They needed a weapon.
The knife.
Cordelia, still on her hands and knees, pivoted in every direction, ducking to avoid getting clobbered by the dragon’s tail. The smoke made it hard to see.
She swiped at her eyes carelessly, pushing back her sweaty strands of hair. Whoosh. She spotted the knife lying only a few feet away on the floor. As the dragon once again reared back and aimed a burst of fire at Cornelius—who escaped only by ducking behind the center mural—Cordelia lunged for the knife. Gripping the handle with both hands, she rolled onto her back and thrust the knife upward, as hard as she could, into the exposed belly of the beast.
The Magnificent Monsters of Cedar Street Page 23