Dragon Shield (7 page)

11

Under the Blue Light

Jo’s eyes blinked and she woke up. She was lying on the bottom of something with steep black sides. A couple of feet above her was a ceiling, not quite solid, like a layer of smoke with light rippling slowly across it, through which she could make out shapes bending over and looking down at her.

She had the terrifying thought that she was under water, but realized that couldn’t be because she didn’t feel wet and could breathe.

She did not feel strong enough to move much more than her hand, however, which reached up and touched the blue plane of light, making ripples as her fingers poked through it.

‘Where am I?’ she said.

The voice that answered her seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, like a voice that bypassed her ears and spoke right inside her head.

‘WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE.’

‘Hospital’ she answered, without thinking.

She saw a hand reach down through the light and feel the brace on her knee. She was pleased that it was not aching. Maybe they’d given her something for the pain. Whoever they were. Wherever this was . . .

YOU HAVE BEEN HURT.

‘Yes.’

‘TELL US WHAT WE ASK AND WE WILL HURT THOSE WHO HURT YOU.’

Jo’s heart bumped out of rhythm. Something was wrong with a voice that said things like that.

‘This isn’t a hospital.’ She said.

‘IT IS A PLACE OF SAFETY.’

‘No it’s not.’

‘IT CAN’T BE.’

‘Where’s Will?’

She could feel fear welling up inside her.

‘WHO IS WILL?’

‘My—’

Jo tried to crush the fear by stopping talking and trying to think. She didn’t want to give this voice anything. Not until she knew what was happening.

‘AH.’

‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘WILL IS THE BOY.’

‘Who are you?’

‘DID WILL HURT YOU?’

‘No.’

The voice was like a purr. Gentle. Comforting, even.

‘HE BETRAYED YOU.’

Dangerously soft. Like a cat with claws hidden but ready . . .

‘No.’

‘IF HE DID NOT BETRAY YOU, HOW DID YOU COME HERE?’

‘You said this was a place of safety.’

The voice said nothing.

‘So how can he have betrayed me by bringing me here, if this is somewhere safe?’

‘SHARP GIRL. DON’T CUT YOURSELF ON YOUR CLEVERNESS.’

There they were. The claws.

‘Who are you?’ she asked carefully.

12

The Dark City

The sun had set. Will hadn’t noticed exactly when, but as The Fusilier led them at a fast trot away from the gardens he realized the city had got much darker.

On reflex he pulled his phone and checked the time. It was stuck. The clock had not moved on from the moment he’d first seen the dragon back in the hospital window.

‘What you doing, slowcoach?’ said Tragedy. ‘Keep up.’

‘Checking the time,’ he said.

‘Only one thing you need to know about that,’ said The Fusilier as he jinked round a corner in a controlled slide, the hobnails on his boots skating noisily sideways on the pavement. ‘If the dragons are attacking you, it’s already too late.’

‘So what’s this big secret you know?’ said Little Tragedy. ‘Why aren’t you froze like the other Regulars?’

The Fusilier looked back over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

Will felt Jo’s bracelet in his pocket. He pulled it out and showed it to them. Then he shot his wrist out of his cuffs and showed his own bracelet.

‘Bracelet?’ said The Fusilier. ‘I think it’s more than jewellery, mate.’

‘No,’ said Will. ‘It makes sense . . . When we were both wearing them, we weren’t frozen. Then Jo’s got torn off and she did freeze.’

He looked at them both. They didn’t look convinced.

‘It makes sense,’ he repeated, hearing how weak that sounded second time round. Maybe he was just wanting it to be so because he needed
something
to make sense in the midst of all this scary craziness he was trapped in.

‘OK then,’ said The Fusilier. ‘Take your bracelet off. See if you freeze.’

Will shook his head.

‘I’ll put it back on you,’ smiled Little Tragedy encouragingly. ‘Go on, give it a go!’

Maybe it was because his hair was pushed back revealing his little horns that made Will shake his head. He didn’t seem quite trustworthy. Something that the Victory had said that stuck in his head: Tragedy often meant well but wasn’t quite reliable.

‘What you scared of?’ said The Fusilier.

‘That it might
not
work.’ said Will.

The Fusilier exhaled in frustration and shook his head.

‘So why do you want to find your sister and put hers back on?’

‘Because it
might
work,’ said Will. ‘Sorry. It makes sense to me.’

And it did. If there was a tiny chance he’d go to sleep on his feet like all these people in the street around him, the frozen taxi drivers and people on buses and bicycles and the crowd on the pavements they were moving through, he couldn’t afford to take it. But if there was a tiny chance he could get Jo back and awake, he had to take it.

He slipped her bracelet back in his pocket and zipped it up. The Fusilier shrugged and led on. Tragedy tutted and shook his head at Will.

‘You don’t trust me,’ he said. ‘We’re meant to be mates. I brought him back to save you!’

‘Sorry,’ said Will. He wasn’t going to be guilted into doing it. Maybe he was too scared to try taking off his scarab bracelet in case it
didn’t
work. Maybe he just needed the possibility he was right: maybe he was clinging to that straw because otherwise he would have nothing, and drown.

As they carried on he realized what was so extra creepy now that evening was on them: normally street lamps come on when it gets dark. Normally cars turn on their headlights and people in buildings turn on the lamps when the sun goes down. Normally it’s so automatic that you don’t even notice it. None of that had happened.

The buildings were taller now as they got closer to the centre of the City, big purpose-built office blocks replacing the two- or three-storey houses they had been passing. There were
some
lights on – traffic lights, some windows and a few cars that had the kind of lights that were on all the time, but that meant there was just enough light to throw deep shadows that made the darkness seem all the weirder and more threatening, and the road felt less like a street than a deep dark canyon.

The falling darkness sucked colour out of the world, and without colour the unmoving pedestrians looked all the more like statues and less like real people. And now they stopped looking like actual people who might spring back into action at any moment, it was like they were even more absent. Because of that Will suddenly felt very alone indeed.

He looked sideways into the murky interior of a supermarket as he passed. People were black silhouettes standing at the till waiting to pay, backlit by the dim light of big fridges full of soft drinks and frozen produce. He had the nasty thought that maybe they’d be there forever, money in hands, queuing for eternity.

It also made him realize how dry his mouth was.

Then he had the slightly better thought that he could just go into a shop and take a can, and that thought led to the next, which was that, in other circumstances – circumstances that didn’t include dragons or his sister and mother getting frozen in time – this should be fun. He could go into any shop and take anything. The city could, in those other circumstances, be the best game ever. Instead of the worst nightmare—

He ran straight into the back of The Fusilier. Which was painful. Partly because The Fusilier was made of bronze, mainly because he hit him with the arm that had been burned by the wildfire.

‘Ouch,’ he said, stumbling backwards, clutching it.

‘Shhh,’ said Tragedy as the Fusilier dropped to one knee behind a rubbish bin and motioned for Will and Tragedy to get behind him.

He quickly unslung the rifle from his shoulder and aimed it over the top of the bin. Will watched him very quietly work the lever on the gun to put a bullet in the chamber, ready for firing. Tragedy flinched his eyes shut and stuck his fingers in his ears.

If Will’s mouth had felt a little bit dry before, it now felt parched as a desert. He breathed shallowly and squinted in the direction the gun was pointed at. At first he couldn’t see anything in the darkness and occasional slashes of light ahead, but then it shifted.

It was a shadow, and it was being thrown by something moving towards them from a side street on their left. It prowled forward silently with the ease of a predator, a big four-legged hunter, unmistakably feline and deadly.

‘What is it?’ whispered Will, very aware that something at the base of his brain was trying to tell his legs to get the rest of him as far from this corner as it could, as fast as possible.

‘Tiger, I reckon,’ said Tragedy. ‘Looks like a tiger anyway.’

The Fusilier nodded.

‘There’s a big statue of a tiger out West, Victoria way. Must be that one. Can’t think of any others. Nasty blighter it is when it’s riled.’

The shadow stopped and tensed, the long tail slowly curling over its back as it dropped its chest to the ground, back legs ready to spring.

‘Heard us,’ said The Fusilier. ‘That’s not good.’

He looked behind him and pointed to the open door of the shop with the queue in it.

‘Back up slow,’ he whispered.

‘Can’t you just shoot it?’ breathed Will.

‘I can shoot
at
it. And I can miss it, like as hit it,’ hissed The Fusilier, easing back from the bin and waving him to do the same. ‘Tiger moves faster than you can think and it’ll need more than one round to put it down even if I get lucky. Step quiet now . . .’

They inched backwards, pace by silent pace.

They were halfway between the safety of the bin and the open door when the tiger moved – its shadow getting bigger and bigger as it neared the corner. Will forgot to breathe. His legs forgot not to start shaking.

The Fusilier risked a quick look behind to see how close they were and then snapped his head back to aim at the corner.

‘Run,’ he said. ‘I’ll nail it.’

Will’s legs didn’t need telling twice, but he and Tragedy were in such a hurry to be elsewhere that they somehow got in each other’s way as he turned to run, and they both stumbled and fell instead.

Pain jagged up his arm as he slapped the pavement with his hand, trying to stop himself, and then he was spread-eagled on the ground with no protection as the tiger leapt round the corner.

BLAM

The Fusilier’s shot went high and missed.

Partly this was because he jerked the muzzle towards the sky at the last minute.

Partly it was because the big tiger wasn’t either big, nor in fact a tiger.

It was a small house cat.

Not a real cat, true: a statue of a cat, but life-sized.

It stood there blinking at them in surprise.

‘Hodge!’ said The Fusilier. ‘I nearly punched your ticket, you mug!’

‘You know it?’ said Will.

‘Course I know it. Everyone knows it,’ giggled Tragedy in relief. ‘Most famous cat in London is that. It’s Dictionary’s cat.’

He uncocked his rifle and slung it over his shoulder as he walked towards the waiting cat.

‘Here kitty—’

‘Dictionary?’ said Will. ‘Who’s he?’

‘Dictionary Johnson,’ said the Fusilier. ‘Splendid old buffer, lives on a plinth down Aldwych way, but his cat’s normally on a different plinth down Fleet—’

Little Tragedy grinned and bent down to pet the cat.

The cat leapt at his face and slashed its claws across it so powerfully that Tragedy dropped the mask he carried and shrieked in pain.

The shock of the sudden and unprovoked attack triggered a stream of angry and disbelieving profanities that The Fusilier hurled after the cat as it streaked across the road and was lost in the shadows beyond.

The Fusilier felt Little Tragedy’s cheek and the three gouges that were now scratched across it. Tragedy was trying not to sob, but was clearly in shock.

‘What the blinking blink was that for?’ he said. ‘Me and that cat’s old friends. It’s a right old softie normally. It’s gone mad.’

‘I should say,’ said The Fusilier, looking over his head at Will as he retrieved his helmet. ‘Homicidal maniac. Should have shot the ruddy thing.’

Tragedy sniffed and felt his wounded cheek.

‘I don’t like this.’ He sniffed. ‘I don’t like any of this.’

The Fusilier nodded.

‘Yep. World’s gone to the dogs when even the cats go mad,’ he said.

13

Above the Blue Light

The feline voice repeated the question.

Jo did not know the answer. She almost did, but her brain was not working properly. The voice was dangerously mesmerizing and insistent, as if it was also using tones and frequencies too deep for normal ears, but strong enough to make her heart begin to bump out of rhythm.

‘WHY COULD YOU MOVE?’

‘What?’

‘WHY COULD YOU MOVE WHEN OTHERS IN THE CITY COULDN’T?’

It all came back to her.

Not in bits and bobs, but all at once, like a great slump of wet snow falling of a steep roof high above her. The weight of memory hit her and buried her, smothering her and cutting her off from everything, and for a long time she just fought wildly against it, thrashing in panic, trying to flail her mind free of the images that were trapping her and making it harder and harder to breathe, let alone think.

It was remembering to breathe that calmed her down.

She remembered the pain, the earlier pain from the operations on her knee, and she remembered her mum telling her how to calm her breathing and that everything else would follow, that the pain wouldn’t go, not all at once, but if she thought that every time she exhaled a little bit of it would disappear then that would be how to control it and not let it be the boss.

Jo decided not to let the panic be the boss either, and breathed it out, breath by breath. It took concentration, but it worked.

She felt the voice waiting for her to surface.

‘AH.’

‘This isn’t a safe place.’

‘TELL ME YOUR NAME, AND I WILL TELL YOU MINE.’

Jo paused for a moment.

‘Joanna.’

Only people she didn’t know, or people she didn’t much like called her Joanna. She wasn’t going to give this voice her real name.

‘JOANNA. AND WHO IS THIS JOANNA? WHY ARE YOU SPECIAL?’

‘I’m just a girl,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

Two hands reached down through the surface and sat her up. Only when her head broke clear and emerged into the air did she realize with horror that she had been lying under water. It cascaded off her face and hair as she fishmouthed and stared about her. The four lion-women knelt on the edge of what she now realized was some kind of stone mummy’s coffin. Their faces were cold and intense and focused on hers. A small cat with earrings stood on the back of a frozen museum worker who was bent in front of the sarcophagus.

This was the moment when Jo could have let the panic take her and sweep her off in its dark undertow.

She concentrated on breathing. She saw the blue light rippling shadows across the roof, and she caught glimpses of other statues and unmoving people all round her. It was somewhere she’d been before.

‘NOW YOU KNOW US!’

The voice was an exulting growl.

Jo shook her head.

‘No. I mean you’re frightening, and you’re statues and you’re moving and everything. And I think this is the museum. But . . . I don’t know you.’

The lion-women growled and looked at each other. The cat came forward and put its paws on the edge of the stone, looking up at them. As one, they all turned their faces to Jo’s and leant in. She pushed back against the stone tub until she couldn’t get any further from them.

The voice dripped with disgust.

‘WHEN WE WERE BETRAYED WE WERE RULERS OF THE WORLD. WE WERE TRICKED INTO STONE AND PENNED THERE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. AND NOW WE ARE FORGOTTEN SHARDS IN SOME BARBARIANS’ TREASURE HOUSE.’

She felt the deep growl of rage as much as heard it.

‘I AM BAST, WE ARE SEKHMET. LOOK UPON ME IN ALL MY SHAPES AND TREMBLE!’

‘What do you want?’ she said, after a long enough pause had made it clear that something was expected from her, and she had had enough time to batten down that rising panic again.

‘WHAT WE HAD. WHAT WAS TAKEN FROM US. THE HOT SUN ON OUR BACKS AS WE HUNT. THE FEAR. THE GRATITUDE OF THOSE WE FEED AND THOSE WE SUFFER TO LIVE ANOTHER DAY. THE WORSHIP. WE WOULD BE GODS AGAIN!’

Jo swallowed. She spoke hesitantly.

‘Er. That’s not really gong to happen. The world just isn’t like that any more . . .’

‘THE WORLD IS AS WE CHOOSE TO MAKE IT! WE HAVE WOKEN AND OUR ANCIENT MAGIC IS WAKENING TOO. LOOK AROUND YOU. YOU SIT IN THE VERY SOURCE. FEEL THE POWER. IT GROWS WITH EVERY HOUR.’

‘But you can’t just stop people moving. You can’t just—’

One of the lion-women lunged forward, muzzle to nose with her, eyes wide in anger. Her mouth didn’t move but the words echoed in Jo’s skull.

‘WE HAVE FROZEN PEOPLE JUST AS PEOPLE TRAPPED US INTO THE STONE THAT HELD US FOR SO LONG, SEEING BUT UNMOVING! TIME HAS BEEN OUR JAILER, AND NOW WE CONTROL TIME. DO NOT THINK TO TELL US WHAT IS POSSIBLE!’

‘You can’t just . . . stop people. It’s like killing, I mean it
is
killing.’

‘WHAT OF IT? DO YOU THINK WE ARE STRANGERS TO THE DEATH OF MULTITUDES? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHY THEY WORSHIPPED US? NO. YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN, YOU COLD BARBARIANS OF THE NORTH, BANISHED SO FAR FROM THE REAL WORLD OF SUN AND LIGHT THAT YOU THINK THE PALTRY LION IS KING OF ALL ANIMALS.’