The London Pride (16 page)

‘Hold on!’ shouted Jo as she let go and found herself swinging like a wild pendulum.

‘Get yourself steady,’ Ariel yelled back.

All Jo could see was streaks of hungry blue eyes whipping back and forth beneath her. She managed to slow her swings by grabbing onto the passing scaffolding and braking herself, and then she nodded.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Lower me.’

Ariel carefully manoeuvred her closer and closer to the supervisor and his pointing hand. Jo put out her own hand and balanced herself against his hard hat, but she was still swinging with enough momentum to knock it off instead. She tried again and grabbed hold of his hair instead.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

The tumbling hat alerted the rats to her target. And as Ariel had said, rats are tenacious and resourceful and not a bit stupid. They catch on fast.

By the time Jo had got her hands on the key ring and was beginning to twist it out of his hand, they had not only caught on but had started to use the supervisor’s body as a ladder to get to Jo.

By the time she had managed to twist the key ring free, they had reached his waist.

By the time she shouted ‘UP’, the lead rat had swarmed onto his shoulder.

And by the time Jo felt the strap begin to pull her skywards it was too late. The rat had launched itself high into the air, straight at her face.

Jo’s world seemed to go into slow motion at the incoming horror of it all.

She saw the rat’s open mouth, the long yellow teeth and the pink gaping maw beyond.

She wrenched her head back on reflex.

The rat’s eyes came into view, angry blue and blazing.

Its claws reached for her face.

Impact was unavoidable. But not, she realised in a strange timeless flash of a microsecond, uncontrollable.

She snapped her neck forwards and nutted the rat, dead centre on her forehead.

The perfect headbutt.

It didn’t hurt her a bit, but the rat dropped like a stone as Ariel pulled her swiftly in the other direction.

It was like being yanked home by a skyhook, and nothing had felt so good for days.

‘Good job,’ said Ariel as she watched Jo try the keys until she found the right one, and the door opened on the morning light beyond.

‘Just a matter of trying them until I found the right one,’ said Jo, breathing in the clean air and stepping out into the light.

‘Not that. Nutting the rat,’ said Ariel. ‘At least, I think it’s called nutting. I’m sure I’ve heard Little Tragedy use the word. Anyway, no one could possibly have done it better. Or more gracefully. Not even me.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jo. ‘From you that’s real praise.’

‘I know,’ said Ariel. Airily. Then she grinned. ‘Shall we go to Coram’s Fields?’ She held out a hand.

‘Thought you’d never ask,’ said Jo, allowing Ariel to wrap a golden arm round her and lift her into the air. And as they lofted up and over the rooftops of the city she allowed herself the luxury of believing that not only would Will be there waiting, but that they might get the third scarab and revive their mother, and then – for the first time – have a new card to put down in the strange game that the Mighty Bast was playing with the city.

Will and Jo’s mum was going to be exactly where they’d had to leave her, at Coram’s Fields, just across the railings from the giant bobbly-trunked trees that overhung the street, frozen in place like all the other people in the city. She would be there, and the third scarab bead would be with her, tucked into her wallet where Will had left it before they had realised the scarabs were a protection against Bast’s magic. He looked down at the one on his wrist as they jogged through the street in the pale light of the early morning, Tragedy on one side, Filax behind him, the two cheetahs scouting ahead and, perhaps best of all, the reassuring mass of the huge gorilla rumbling along on his other side.

He knew they were getting close. They were running through one of those split-personality London streets, with an older cream-coloured terrace of Georgian buildings running up one side, facing a long bastion of modernist flats that were stepped back from the street in ascending tiers, like a ziggurat. The neon sign for a cinema still glowed halfway along the concrete structure, and he recognised it as the Brunswick Centre. It was not far from here to Coram’s Fields. He picked up the pace.

There was a gaggle of about eight house cats standing on a corner ahead of them, but one hiss from the cheetahs sent them streaking away in all directions, leaping under cars and over walls. It was like being in a running motorcade with the cheetahs as outriders clearing their path. He momentarily wondered what would happen if the cheetahs came face to face with the bigger cats of the London Pride, but then they turned the corner, and there they were.

Coram’s Fields. He saw the trees and the railings and the blue glowing frozen people. He recognised their car in its parking space with a jolt of happy recognition, and then he looked across the street to where they had left their mother and saw the space where she should have been. He stumbled and looked wildly around.

She was gone.

He stopped and rested his hands on his knees and suddenly felt the ache of all the running in his legs and lungs. And under that he felt a much worse pain in his heart, because there was an answering void in there that matched the empty space on the street.

‘She’s gone,’ said Tragedy. ‘Your mum. She’s done a bunk!’ He sounded shocked. ‘How did that happen then?’

Will stumbled across to the place in the street where by every law of fairness and decency his mother should have been. It wasn’t quite a void. There was something there.

There was a funny-shaped slab of plywood, with a stick running up the back, and beside it was a shoe.

He knew the shoe.

He knew the foot that normally filled it.

It was his mother’s.

‘Oh,’ said Tragedy.

‘She wouldn’t have done a bunk without one of her shoes,’ said Will, his voice thick and hesitant, as if saying the obvious conjured the truth of it into being. ‘Something took her.’

Tragedy picked up the plywood. It spun in his hands.

‘Who took her, I wonder?’ he said.

Will looked at the front of the plywood. It was shield-shaped. He read the neon writing.

‘GOLF SALE LAST CHANCE!!!’

‘No idea,’ he said.

‘A dragon,’ said Jo.

Will’s head snapped up and for a moment everything was all right, because there was his sister, gently and silently dropping out of the sky, carried by Ariel, who was, he was delighted to see, whole again.

‘Where—’ he began, and then she landed and they were hugging and words weren’t necessary, or even possible because the hug was a really fierce and tight one. Then he felt her go stiff and push him back. He looked into her face. It was grim and looking at the shield and the void that had contained, that
should
have contained, their mother.

‘How d’you know it was a dragon?’ he said.

‘Because I saw one using that stupid sign like a shield.’ She looked at the dragon’s shield looped over his shoulder. ‘It didn’t have one of its own.’

‘Oh,’ he said, unlooping the shield and looking at it. ‘
That
dragon …’

And before he could finish the sentence, ‘that’ dragon turned into ‘the’ dragon, the one that had been hiding in the trees waiting for them, the one that was perhaps too provoked by the sight of the boy hefting his own shield as if it belonged to him to stay still.

The dragon attacked. He burst out of the leaf canopy and swooped at Will and Jo.

If Will had not just taken the shield off his shoulder they would have been toast – literally. The dragon shrieked a twisting rope of blazing wildfire at them, but Will got it up just in time. Flame splashed and lapped round the shield, as if the flickering fingers of fire had a mind of their own and were trying to get a grip on it and wrench it from his grasp.

There was a brief relaxation of pressure as the dragon took a breath, and then he charged forwards, stubby arms and scimitar-like talons reaching for his prize as he ran in down the jet of fire.

‘Will!’ cried Jo as a tendril of flame caught the bottom of her jeans and lit them.

He reached down with his free hand and smacked the flame out, burning his hand.

Her face looked at his, nose to nose behind the shield wall.

‘I can’t—’ she began.

The cheetahs blurred past her and bowled the dragon’s legs out from under him by their sheer velocity. He face-planted and the fire-stream choked off with a heavy and undignified clunk.

He wrenched himself to his feet and took a huge, whooping inhale of breath. This was going to be the fireblast to end it all.

Guy the Gorilla leapt clean over Will, Jo and the shield, and landed with a ground-shaking thump like a two-ton anvil dropping out of the sky, right in front of the shocked dragon as he opened his mouth to spit fire …

The gorilla reached up with one massive hand and clamped the dragon’s mouth tight shut.

The dragon scrabbled at the immovable primate with his short front talons while Guy held him at safely at arm’s length. Way out of the dragon’s reach.

Will and Jo peered out from behind the shield and saw the fire-crop in the dragon’s chest beginning to glow redder and redder and then to pale as it reached white heat.

The dragon clearly had no safety valve. His expression became wildly distressed as he tried to escape the muzzle the gorilla had effectively clamped over his jaws.

‘Uh-oh,’ said Tragedy, coming to stand next to them. He was grinning.

The dragon thrashed frantically.

Guy was immovable.

The dragon’s blazing blue eyes pulsed and then he crossed.

And then he went, ‘Ulp.’

And then he went very, very still. His eyes now looked panicked and more than a little sickly.

‘What?’ said Jo, looking at Tragedy, who was now sniggering with glee. He nudged Ariel, who was also smiling.

‘What?’ said Will.

‘He swallowed his wildfire,’ said Ariel.

‘What does that mean?’ said Jo.

Guy let the dragon go. He staggered back and held his belly. His ears were flat to his head. He cowered. They could hear the rumbling from inside his guts. Like a locomotive boiler about to blow.

‘Er …’ said Ariel.

‘Put it this way,’ said Tragedy. ‘Probably best not to stand behind it for a while …’

The resultant blast not only took out a generous and entirely innocent section of park hedge, incinerating it, but also seemed to take the fight out of the dragon. He yowled and hopped and tried to pat out the lingering smoulder coming from his bottom, and then he saw a deep puddle and plopped himself down in it. Steam hissed up and obscured the creature for a second and when it cleared, the dragon’s face was slack and dopey with happy relief.

Guy knuckled over and stood in front of it again, leaning ominously on his hands. The dragon’s ears remained back and submissive. He even managed a sickly attempt at an ingratiating grin.

‘Don’t see that every day,’ said Will.

Jo was looking at something in the gutter.

‘Mum’s wallet,’ she said, scooting forwards and picking it up. She opened it and handed him the scarab on the key ring.

She nodded at the dragon cooling his backside in the puddle.

‘Want to try your theory?’

Will didn’t need a second invitation. He walked past Guy and steeled himself to touch the dragon. His blue eyes looked at Will in consternation, and he raised a claw as if to ward him off. As if he, the boy, was the stronger one.

Guy growled. The dragon didn’t move any more.

Will put the looped key ring carefully over the dragon’s talon.

He shuddered. And blinked. And sneezed. And scrunched his eyes shut. And when his eyes opened they were red.

Normal for dragons.

Not blue.

He looked puzzled.

‘Guy,’ said Will. ‘If it moves, punch it, please.’

This was the scariest bit. The scarab kept you safe from Bast’s spells. For humans, as he knew from painful experience, it only worked while you were wearing it. He wanted to see if it worked the same way for the statues. Or if it lifted the curse. After all, the magic that froze people was different to the magic that enslaved the statues. Maybe the rules were different.

He removed the scarab and stepped back.

The dragon blinked.

His eyes stayed red.

‘Jo,’ said Will. ‘We just got a break.’

‘We just lost our mum,’ she replied. She was holding the shoe and the wallet.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But like Soho Sal said, the universe likes to even things out. So we got a break too.’

He looked at Ariel. ‘Can you speak to it?’

She nodded.

‘Ask if it took our mother.’

The dragon nodded.

‘Where?’

The dragon coughed something at Ariel.

‘The museum,’ she said.

Will nodded slowly. Then he raised his head and stared into the dragon’s eyes.

The dragon coughed and rasped some more.

‘He’s sorry,’ said Ariel.

‘That’s because he’s frightened of the gorilla,’ said Jo. ‘I don’t trust him.’