Hollow Earth (11 page)

Solon loosened the straps on a leather portfolio that he’d left leaning against the wall the night before. He placed the final two pages for
The Book of Beasts
into the portfolio, separating the sheets of vellum with squares of silk.

Solon looked down at the rough image of the final beast, the last one to be illuminated and the most horrible of all. He shivered and clamped his mind shut. Even the old monk had been resisting this page. The beast was a nightmarish one, perhaps the most feared of all the beasts in this part of the world: the Grendel.

The Grendel was known in songs and poems all over the kingdom as the ‘corpse-demon’ or the ‘death-prowler’, the ‘mud-monster’ or the ‘serf of hell’ – a monster damned for eternity to crawl in the netherworld, the hollow in the earth between heaven and hell, feasting on the dead. The Grendel was the reason most villages in the kingdom would place freshly butchered animals around the site of a recent grave, hoping the Grendel would take the animal corpses, leaving their loved one’s body safe in the earth and thus their soul free to rise to the heavens.

The old monk admitted to Solon that he feared if his power to control his imagination failed while illuminating the Grendel, there would be no stopping the monster from slipping away from the pages and digging itself deep into the island. Even the Abbot, the old monk’s Guardian, had tried to convince him to leave the page blank.

Solon slung the portfolio over his shoulder and was about to leave the scriptorium when the monastery’s warning bell rang out from the roof of the south tower.

‘Invaders! Invaders!’

Solon froze, listening in horror as the distinctive whistle of an arrow felled the monk sounding the alarm. For a second, there was nothing, and then the monastery erupted in screams and flames.

EIGHTEEN

London

Present Day

I
nside a private suite at the Royal Academy, Sir Charles Wren was studying an ancient map of Scotland. The tapestry of the Grendel rustled on the wall behind him as the door opened, and Tanan and Blake entered the room. Gesturing them to sit, Sir Charles pushed the map aside with his bandaged right hand.

‘I know you’re anxious to get on with your task for me,’ said Sir Charles, ‘but I felt it important that we meet before you leave for Scotland.’

‘We know what must be done, Sir Charles,’ said Blake.

Dressed in skinny jeans and a cropped jacket, Blake Williams looked more prepared to take on the paparazzi than a powerful Guardian. But Sir Charles knew better. He trusted Blake implicitly. She had worked for Wren for a long time, coming under the protection of the Guardians as a young teenager when her father, a brilliant graphic artist in New York and an old friend of Wren’s, had found it increasingly difficult to control his powers and had been bound by the American Council of Guardians. Since Blake had not inherited her father’s powers, she had been given the choice of remaining in America with a distant aunt or committing herself to Wren’s care and authority. She’d chosen the latter.

Tanan, on the other hand, was a recent find, whose talents Sir Charles had quickly found useful. The man was photogenic and personable: important traits when dealing with the media. Since Arthur’s murder, Tanan had skilfully controlled the press, helping create and perpetuate the story that the painting,
Witch with Changeling Child
, had been stolen and that Arthur’s death was a tragic consequence of the art theft.

‘Sit, Tanan. Please.’

‘I’m fine, Sir Charles,’ replied Tanan, twisting the ring on his little finger. ‘I’ll be sitting on the plane for long enough.’

‘Very well. Let’s get started.’ Wren used his left hand to operate a remote. The lights dimmed, and a flat screen emerged from the centre of the table.

A recent image of Matt, Em and Zach fishing off the jetty at the Abbey appeared on the screen. They had been with Renard for a month now, and seemed oblivious to the camera focused on them from a fishing boat across the bay. They appeared comfortable in their surroundings, looking like typical soon-to-be teenagers passing time on a late summer afternoon. Even in the short time since they had left London, Matt had grown. He and Zach were easily a few inches taller than Em, whose hair in the photograph was cut in a chunky chin-length style that made Sir Charles think of a Japanese cartoon character’s hair. Matt’s hair was still shaggy and unkempt, his love of scruffy old T-shirts still intact.

‘We know now, unequivocally,’ said Sir Charles, zooming in on Matt and Em’s faces, ‘that each twin is developing the imaginative powers of both an Animare and a Guardian. According to one of my Guardian contacts in Glasgow, the girl currently seems to be the stronger at sensing emotions, and her abilities to read people’s feelings are emerging faster than her brother’s. The boy, I hear, still has a temper.’

Sir Charles’s wrapped fingers twitched, the recent memory of what the twins had done to him the day they fled their flat and trapped his arm in the wall still fresh in his mind.

‘We may have lost the vote to bind the children, but I will not lose what Sandie Calder stole from me. That said, it is imperative that the twins are not hurt when you capture them and persuade Sandie to release the contents of the satchel in exchange for their lives.’

With another click of the remote, Sir Charles changed the image on the screen. This time the photograph showed the twins on their bikes, waiting at the island’s ferry dock. In quick succession, Sir Charles flashed up three photos of the twins and Zach leading a group of tourists into an island cave on the beach.

‘It seems the twins and Simon’s son have found a way to … “entertain” the tourists in order to supplement their pocket money.’

Tanan stood, clearly impatient to leave. Ignoring him, Sir Charles continued to speak.

‘The twins have learned well from Renard these past weeks. They know something about who they are and what they are becoming. Do not let your guard down, and do not fail to bring me back what I’ve waited for so patiently.’

Sir Charles walked across the room and stood in front of the tapestry. He spoke with his back to the table.

‘Tanan, you’ve served me well these past months, but don’t mistake my trust for weakness. I need the contents of that satchel. And the Council must hear about none of this. Do you understand?’

‘Perfectly.’

Vaughn entered the room, carrying a small first-aid pack.

‘Are you sure you want them to use this, Sir Charles?’ he asked, opening the lid to display two vials of clear liquid and two syringes inside.

Sir Charles took the kit and passed it to Tanan. ‘We can’t have those twins doing something clever again,’ he said, dismissing Vaughn, Tanan and Blake with a wave of his damaged hand.

NINETEEN

Auchinmurn Isle

One Week Later

E
m was dreaming. It was the kind of dream where she was aware she was dreaming, but she couldn’t scramble her mind out of it. Her dreams were always so much more powerful now than they had been when she was younger.

She was clinging to the face of a high cliff during a storm, an angry sea pummelling the jagged rocks beneath her. Soaking wet and shivering with fear, Em looked up to the dry tip of the mountain. Beneath her, furious waves were swallowing up men and women and animals, tossing their bodies against the rocks. Em tried again to wake herself up, but her thoughts felt heavy in her head. She tried to climb up the mountain, away from the vengeful water, but her arms and legs were numb.

Em knew the story of Noah’s Ark, about how God had sent a flood to cleanse the earth of all its wickedness, and she knew that for centuries artists had been using the Bible as inspiration. She had somehow dreamed herself into a painting called
The Deluge
, which she’d seen with her mum on one of their trips to the National Gallery.

Averting her gaze from the bodies thrashing in the water beneath her, Em made herself focus on what she thought had to be the edge of the painting, where a young girl had been dashed against a flat rock. A shimmering white angel floated above the girl, weeping.

Em felt so sad for the drowned girl that she too began to sob. Losing her grip on the rocks, she tumbled into the darkness.

And then Em
was
the girl on the rock, looking up at the shimmering angel.

The angel leaned close to Em’s cheek and whispered, ‘You are a freak of nature.’ Then the angel morphed into a demon, and Em realized she wasn’t dreaming any more.

She could feel something pressing against her chest, trying to suffocate her. Gasping for breath, Em forced her eyes open, only to face a deformed dwarf-like creature with small, beady yellow eyes sitting on her chest, slobbering and snapping its needle-like teeth close to her cheek. She thumped the side of the demon’s head with her fist, but the dwarf grinned even wider. Its tiny hand reached over and covered her mouth. In her head, Em screamed as loud as she knew how.

Seconds later, Matt burst into her bedroom. Em appeared to be in a violent wrestling match with a creature that Matt could barely make out in the dark. It shimmered above her like a demonic puppet. Em, eyes wide in terror, was scratching and pummelling the creature’s face and head. He grabbed a tennis racket from behind the door. But before he could swing at the creature’s head, Em sat bolt upright, gasping for breath, and the creature was gone.

Matt sat on the edge of the bed and held Em’s shoulders. ‘It’s okay. You’re okay. Just breathe. Big air. Big air.’

When Em’s breathing had steadied, Matt went into the bathroom that separated their rooms and poured a glass of water. He handed her the drink.

Em could feel her pulse slowing. She took a sip of the water and lay back against her pillows.

‘Was it the same dream?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘We should tell Mum.’

‘She’s got enough going on right now, getting ready for her exhibition in Glasgow. I don’t want her to worry. I can handle it.’ Em put her hand on her chest. Her ribs ached. Maybe she
should
tell an adult. Maybe she wasn’t handling ‘it’ as well as she thought.

‘We should at least tell Simon or Grandpa. They warned us our imaginations might get a bit out of control when we approached our thirteenth birthdays.’

Em nodded and gulped down the rest of the water. When she turned to put the empty glass on her nightstand, the creature was perched there, grinning at her.

Frantic, Em scrambled out of her tangled duvet, pushing Matt on to the floor as she struggled to stand up. She looked again, and the creature was gone.

‘What the—’ Matt looked up at Em’s bed. The horror was now sitting on top of Em’s pillows, grinning at
him
.

‘Em!’

With an audible scream this time, Em threw herself across the bed, pounding the place where the creature sat. This time it exploded into sharp fragments of white light that went flying across the room, hitting the walls like tiny bolts of lightning and then fizzling to flashes of nothing.

Lying on the bed, Em began to sob from exhaustion, frustration, but most of all from fear.

‘Come on, Em … Em!’ Matt soothed helplessly. ‘You’ve imagined worse things. You’ve experienced night terrors since we arrived on the island. Grandpa said they’d stop when you got older and could control your imagination better—’

Em cut him off. ‘Don’t you think I know that? I’m not upset because of that, you idiot.’

‘I don’t get it then. What’s wrong?’

‘I’m not imagining this night terror, Matt. It isn’t mine. Someone else is animating it.’