The Bone Quill (21 page)

H
alf
an hour later, Jeannie marched into the kitchen in her blood-spattered dressing gown with Simon’s soiled T-shirt in her hands. She tossed the shirt into the laundry basket.

‘Your father will be fine, Zach,’ she signed, as Zach filled the kettle. ‘A cup of tea would be grand, son, but first let’s look at that injury of yours, Matt.’

Matt shifted off the corner of the couch to let Jeannie sit close to the hearth. The Abbey may have been updated and modernized down the years, but underneath all the caulk and central heating it was still a big draughty old castle in its bones. He held out his injured arm for Jeannie to examine.

‘That’s nasty,’ said Jeannie at last. ‘Burning saliva from a hellhound, I’ll warrant?’

Matt shrugged. Jeannie put her warm, calloused hand on his knee. ‘Son, I know you’re hurting, but your grandpa is right. None of you is in any condition tonight to charge back into the Middle Ages.’

After Matt’s wound was dressed, Jeannie took off her slippers, holding her thick-stockinged feet as close to the flames as she could without melting her toes.

‘How bad is Dad, Jeannie?’ signed Zach.

‘He’ll be fine. I’ve given him something to help him sleep, so he’ll be out for a while. I’ve stitched up the wound.’ She reached into her dressing gown pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. ‘But I thought you might like to have this.’

She handed a segment of a flint arrowhead to Zach.

‘Thanks.’ Looking sick, Zach stared at the thing that had come centimetres from stealing his dad from him. Then, putting it down on the table, he went to the cooker to silence the keening kettle.

Matt picked up the sharpened flint. ‘How can this have remained, if the arrows disappeared?’

‘I don’t know, Matt,’ Renard admitted. ‘I’ve never experienced anything like it.’

‘Maybe,’ said Jeannie, setting out the milk and sugar, ‘it’s the combination of being caught in Simon’s shoulder and the power of the weans’ time-travel abilities.’

Renard, Jeannie and Matt launched into a discussion of time-travel and its many unknowns. Zach was still dealing with the kettle. Matt switched off and thought about what might be happening to his mum and Em. The longer he sat in front of this cosy hearth in comfort and safety, the deeper his worries grew. He felt sick.

‘Calm yourself, my boy,’ said Renard softly.

Matt knew he was being inspirited but he was too tired to resist. Besides, his Guardian abilities did not yet equal his powers as an Animare. But before his rage had completely evaporated, he had one last thought.

If they wouldn’t help him save Em and his mum, he’d find someone who would.

M
uch
later that night, Matt lay awake in bed. The shadows on the ceiling were mocking him. No matter which way he looked, he could see Em in the shapes darting across his bedroom wall, and he could see his mum in the elongated figures folded in the swaying curtains. Pulling the duvet over his head, he squeezed his eyes closed.

It didn’t help.

His arm throbbed with every toss and turn. It was inevitable that the hellhounds had caught his mum and Em. Perhaps even torn them to pieces. Even if they had survived, the monks had them now. What would they do to them?

Matt kicked off the duvet. He was too hot. He was too tired. He was too tense. He dragged his hands through his hair, rubbing at the sharp pain behind his eyes. Then he climbed from his bed and pulled open the curtains.

The lawn was brightly lit by the security lights, while the pulsing light from the tower on Era Mina flashed across the rest of the island’s wind-blown landscape. The rain had stopped, but the wind was howling, battering the small island with waves.

Is it stormy where you are, Em?

His twin sister loved nights like this. She would listen to the crashing sea, imagining the waves rising up as beautiful sirens calling to her. Matt swiped his hand across his eyes. He would not cry.

He went over to the desk where he’d left his sketchpad and folder stuffed with a couple of the old maps and ancient prints that he’d been looking at in the library before they’d gone into the still-life.

Switching on his desk lamp, Matt sat and flipped through the folder with the maps and sketches. He noticed one that he hadn’t paid much attention to before. It looked like a set of plans for the construction of the monastery and its catacombs.

Dragging the light closer, he knocked over his parents’ wedding photograph, which he kept framed on his desk. He set it carefully upright again. Then he turned back to the drawing.

He traced his fingers along the smudged ink lines of the catacombs running beneath the monastery, noticing that the tunnels formed an Apostles’ cross with soft clover-leaf shapes at the end of each arm. Matt guessed that one of those clover-leaves had held the crypt where the Abbot had discovered the murdered monk and the loss of the quill.

The main tunnel started from the south wing of the Abbey, which had been converted in the last twenty years to a swimming pool. It passed under the lawn and the main part of the building, ending beneath Renard’s tower at another clover-leaf that today, Matt knew, held the art vault.

An idea began to form. He took the plans of the tunnels and climbed back into his bed to think it through. Suddenly, thoughts of rescuing his mother and sister changed from an abstract notion to a tangible plan.

The Monastery of Era Mina

Middle Ages

T
he
hellhound sat back on its massive haunches, taking the position it normally held on the monastery’s balustrade. Its steaming breath smelled of rotten eggs and burnt leaves, its inky black coat covered in a sticky tar-like substance. The hound bared both sets of sabre teeth at Em, a growl rising from deep in its body.

As soon as she felt in her mind that Matt had torn up the drawing, Em had thrown herself into a hollowed-out tree and shimmied her back up against the curving shell of the trunk, her knees pulled up to her chin. The hellhound made no attempt to reach its massive paw into the hole and drag her out.

‘Em! Can you hear me?’ called Sandie hysterically. She had scrambled free from the bracken that had cushioned her fall and was running back up the hill. ‘The others have gone! The hound that was chasing them has gone, too!’

‘I’m inside a tree,’ yelled Em, relieved that she was not alone. ‘But I can’t get out. The stupid hound has me trapped.’

She could hear loud rustling coming closer. It came into her mind that whoever had animated the hounds was coming down the hillside. She had to get out of here.

Digging into her tunic pocket, Em pulled out the pad and the pencil that Duncan had given her before they left his studio and began to draw.

As she sketched, a beam of light unrolled like a blind over the opening of the hollow in the tree and covered it completely. At the same time, a similar light rolled up the other side of the tree, creating a new opening for Em to crawl through. The hound remained immobile, as if it had already turned to stone, its black coat shimmering from the light of its animation and the harvest moon drifting from the storm clouds overhead.

Em’s animation had come at a price. A figure with a crossbow over his shoulders scrambled down the hill, heading straight for the light. Em felt trapped, unable to run. The only choice was to attack. It went against her nature, but with a strength and fury she didn’t know she had, she began to kick and scratch, taking the monk by surprise. But just as it looked as if Em might be managing to punch and squirm her way to freedom, the hound suddenly let out an earth-shaking howl and sprang on top of her, pinning her shoulders to the hillside.

‘Mum! Help! Help!’ But Sandie had vanished.

The heat from the hound’s wet breath was blistering the skin on Em’s neck, yet she couldn’t move no matter how hard she struggled. Fire burned in the beast’s eyes. Em could see her own reflection in the flames. Terror thickened her blood, tightening her muscles, making her head pound and her shoulders ache against the pressing weight of the slobbering monster.

‘Mum? Where are you?’ Em screamed.

How could this be happening?

The hound tipped its heads to the moon and howled. The more she fought against it, the more it appeared to solidify in front of her eyes. Em shivered with fear and pain, exhaustion and defeat.

Fear.

That’s it
, Em thought.
Let my fears loose
.

She forced herself to stare into the beast’s eyes, to allow her panic to build as the monster met her gaze. Her heart raced. Her mouth felt as if she had swallowed sand. She let go.

At first, nothing happened. Then a fireball the size of a melon shot from the top of a nearby pine tree, exploding at the feet of the monk. He screamed and leaped away from the burst of flames.

A volley of fireballs followed instantly from the first one, shooting from the trees like flaming hailstones. One hit the haunches of the hellhound, igniting a line of flames up its legs and along its spine to both its heads.

That one had been a bit too close.

Em tried to turn her head away from the crowns of flame now white-hot on the top of the hound’s heads, but she couldn’t. Her face was reddening from the heat, her skin burning, burning …

Control
,
Em
, she reminded herself hysterically.
Get your fears under control before this forest becomes an inferno
.

But the fireballs persisted. The trees lifted their branches into the darkness like limbs and lobbed fire in every shape and size, while the monk danced around the hound in a desperate attempt to stamp out the blaze. His efforts were in vain.

Em’s eyes were smarting from the smoke that had erupted from the thick, brambly undergrowth around them. The monk yelled as he batted a fireball back up into the trees like a cricket ball. Then he jumped on top of a crackling, spitting band of flames curling across the ground like a—

Python
, thought Em involuntarily.

At once, a fiery python’s head lunged from the blaze, its pink, fleshy mouth wide enough to swallow a man, its hooked fangs the size of a dragon’s claws. It hissed and sent flames sparking across the monk’s robes. Howling in a frenzy, the monk stripped off his robe, hopping in tattered and filthy long johns as he beat out the flames with his cassock.