by T C Shelley
‘I’m not a shifter, and I’m not a ’thrope.’ Sam studied Woermann. His eyes were golden. ‘What kind of ’thrope are you?’
‘Why don’t you guess?’
‘You’re getting hairier. Your eyebrows, and I guess you’re wearing the coat to cover up how much your body is changing. You’re getting bigger, not smaller. A werewolf?’
‘You were doing so well until the end.’ Woermann chuckled. ‘Try again.’
Sam took a deep sniff. The smell of the dogs was on Woermann, but he wasn’t a dog. ‘You’re a cat? But aren’t cats small?’
‘You don’t know much about animals, Sam. Some species of cat are very large. Most don’t go in the water. Do you?’ He peered at the pool. ‘How about a swim? Don’t like it myself, but I’m happy to lock you in here. You play ball, and we’ll have a nice time.’
Sam stared at Woermann. He wanted to play ball now?
Woermann clapped and grinned as if Sam should get as excited as he. Sam found the grinning Woermann scarier than the scowling one. ‘The things she’ll give you, if you help her. You could just rake it in.’ Woermann gave his speech to the glittering water, gesturing with wide arms to the humid air as if a crowd had gathered, as if he could feel money already gathering before him. Sam thought he couldn’t get any crazier. ‘Are you sure you’re not a cuckoo? Are you in my head, in my nose, making me bond with you? I’m going to have to watch you.’ Woermann guffawed.
Sam couldn’t imagine Woermann bonding with anyone. The light stink of fear in the house drowning under the heavy stink of fairy dust told him that. Maggie was a monster queen and monsters had no hearts. If Woermann kept company with monsters, he was heartless too.
Woermann walked them back to the first foyer. Sam noticed a solid wooden door in the corridor on the way. It looked as sturdy as a church door and had an old-fashioned lock.
‘What’s in there?’ Sam asked. ‘It smells awful.’
‘The ballroom,’ Woermann replied. ‘I use it when I’m not feeling myself. It’s my safe room for when I turn. If I went hunting outside, I could get shot.’
Woermann pulled at a bunch of keys on his waist. Sam noted his room key, the brass one with the red ribbon. Woermann opened the door. It was thick and solid and slammed wide.
The room inside may have been beautiful once, but the wooden floor was scratched and dusty and the walls had been grooved with claw marks. Security screens were installed over the inside of the windows. The smell was wretched. Sam turned away.
Woermann locked the room and said nothing, but watched Sam with a smirk. ‘Let’s see the kitchen, then.’
Woermann opened the door on to a dazzlingly white kitchen, and the stink was pungent and acrid; terror and misery caked the walls and floors. Sam wondered how anyone could eat in this room, maybe someone with a more human nose who had no sense of the meanings of smell.
Woermann marched Sam past tall modern French doors overlooking a threadbare garden outside. The doors were ceiling to floor and, though the cold did not dare breach the thick glass, outside it had stripped away the flowers and the green. Sam noticed the flip locks on the doors. If he didn’t need to save his friends, he could just open one of those and be outside in the fresh air. Maybe he could run all the way home.
Sam found himself distracted by the white pantry door at the other end of the room. From behind that, the muffled noise of dogs rose. No, he had to stay. Woermann’s gaze followed Sam’s to the door. ‘They’re all right.’
‘They’re crying,’ Sam said.
‘You can hear that? I knew you had a good sense of smell … but even I can’t hear that. Amazing.’ Woermann opened the fridge door. ‘Chicken or steak?’
CHAPTER 13
Bladder knew he had to get on. The gargoyles had spent half the night trying to figure out how to get to Sam quicker, but walking by night and hiding by day would take too long. At the rate they were going he was still a week away; it was midnight and they’d hardly got past the marina. Sam was … he couldn’t make out the smell, it was confused, but a heavy pong of fairy dust hung over Sam’s scent.
‘I don’t like it,’ Wheedle said. ‘Does it mean Sam’s in danger?’
‘Maggie wouldn’t dust Sam, it don’t work on him,’ Bladder said. He was impressed with how rock sure his voice sounded. ‘It’s Woermann spraying it around, that’s all.’
The other two nodded, taking Bladder’s words as truth, but his innards churned. Fairy dust meant Maggie was on the loose, and if Sam wasn’t at home in the house with the wardings, anything could find him. Bladder felt it in every part of him, solid and hollow: the smell of dust meant Maggie was close to Sam.
And where was that blasted angel? It almost seemed like he was summoned away the moment he could be even half useful.
‘Hey! What’s that?’ a voice called.
‘Oh no. Assume positions,’ Wheedle said, and the gargoyles froze, Wheedle and Spigot still on the footpath, Bladder further out of the street light, half covered by a hedge.
A group of partygoers raced towards them, giggling and waving their jumpers. Wheedle groaned.
They had to stop while they got decorated in scarves and had cans of drink propped on their heads.
‘Not another selfie,’ Bladder heard Wheedle mutter before a boy grabbed him around the neck and pointed the camera at himself and the stone bull.
The loud humans fussed over Wheedle and Spigot, so while they weren’t looking Bladder sidled further and further away. A young woman pointed at him and lobbed a red woollen scarf around his head while he froze, but then a young man grabbed her and kissed her and she forgot about Bladder and the scarf. Bladder retreated a few more steps.
Bladder stared at Spigot’s and Wheedle’s solidified faces. They sat like stone ornaments, staring at the road. They were immoveable in the full circle of a street lamp, while Bladder was covered in shadows, and by the time the young woman looked again, he was completely hidden behind the hedge. She stared around, confused, but her boyfriend grabbed her hand and led her back to Wheedle.
Bladder ran to the side road, the human voices fading, and found the dark gap he sought alongside the footpath. His stomach hurt.
Spigot had suggested the quicker way, entrance to entrance, no stopping, although they knew it could mean an almost certain smashing. Also, distances were closer down in The Hole. They could visit Paris if they liked, as long as they found the right drain. Bladder had put the dampeners on Spigot’s suggestion, but he’d stewed over it. Spigot and Wheedle sat solid stone behind him, unable to move until the party people left.
He chalked ‘DONT FOLOW!’ on the pavement.
No chance he would risk Wheedle and Spigot too.
Bladder looked back in their direction. They were on the other side of the hedge. The humans’ giggles lessened, getting bored, but they had gained him a little time in which he could lose his pack. He didn’t want ’em with him, wouldn’t tell ’em his plan. He needed to find Sam quick before the banshee did. He felt it deep in the empty space in his chest that housed his … housed the empty space in the middle of him. It felt so much emptier now that Sam wasn’t where he wanted to be, and Bladder’s innards twinged with something other than wind.
Yes, he was willing to risk everything of himself for Sam, but he wasn’t going to risk Wheedle and Spigot. They were too young, had never been broken inside or out. It wasn’t right to expect it of ’em.
No other human came thumping along the footpath. He scanned the street.
In for a penny, in for a pound, Bladder thought.
The grate at the edge of the road smelt dank and rank, rubbish and rotting leaves collected in its bars, something decomposed between it and the footpath; even the water washing into it smelt like petrol. Under that, under the human stink of it all was a faint, stale monster scent.
Bladder stood at its edge, staring down into the moving darkness below, grey washed into black flowed into shadow.
He heard the crack of moving ston
e behind him.
‘What are you doin’?’ Wheedle said. The stone bull scurried across the footpath and stood on the kerb.
Bladder studied the winged bull. ‘You’re wearing eyeliner and lipstick. I don’t think it’s your colour.’
Spigot’s shriek made them both jump. The eagle scratched a claw at the footpath where Bladder had written his message. Wheedle looked down at it. ‘Ho ho, thought you’d go without us, did you?’
‘No. You’re not coming!’ Bladder replied. ‘It’s dangerous. You remember how much it hurt your leg when that ogre snapped it off on Hatching Day, don’t you, Spigot? An’ that’s when the ogres were in a good mood. Think about what they’ll be like now. Every gargoyle what goes there they’ll turn to concrete powder.’
Spigot gave a high, strangled chirp.
‘Imagine that, your whole body, all in pieces. I’m leaving you behind because we shouldn’t all risk it.’
Spigot fluffed his brittle feathers and chirruped low in his throat. Wheedle took another step forward. ‘But if she’s got him, and we keep travelling at the rate we’re going, we’ll all be too late. She could hurt him, or worse …’
‘… make him turn his back on us,’ Bladder finished.
‘Bladder, he’d never do that.’
‘I saw him in The Hole, Wheedle, I saw how she works on him. He wouldn’t do it on purpose, but a little bit of his heart, it will always belong to her, even if he don’t admit it to himself. Enough for him to do something stupid, and if he crossed a line, he might not be able to forgive himself. Humans run from the very ones that are good for them when that happens.’
Spigot’s feathers bristled.
‘Where were you going?’ Wheedle asked.
Bladder sighed. ‘The drain up to the Channel Ferry.’
‘Near the boat? I like boats.’
‘That’s the one. His smell suggests he’s not far beyond that. Quick in, quick through, that was my plan.’
They were quiet then, all three, as they stared at the grate.
Bladder didn’t say anything as the two other gargoyles walked towards him.
‘We’re really going to do this, aren’t we?’ Wheedle said.
‘You don’t have to,’ Bladder replied.
Spigot gave a confident shriek, his eagle demeanour restored.
‘Yeah. Yeah, we do,’ Wheedle agreed.
They slid into the grate, slipping between Earth and the unearthly place beneath them, using monster magic. Bladder found himself in the sewer, up to his belly in dirty water. A plastic bottle floated by him. Behind, Wheedle and Spigot coughed and spluttered as the gurgling wind in the tunnel blew soggy leaves and chocolate wrappers into their faces. Bladder knew they just had to follow the flow. It would show him to a passageway which would lead on to the Great Cavern.
‘Most likely get smashed,’ he said, but if they didn’t find Sam soon … A sound like winds in a drain echoed in his belly. What did the great white albatross always hanging around his neck call it? Instinct? That’s right. Bladder didn’t know where the inside tickle came from, but he had to move fast. He splashed forward.
They came to an opening after fifteen minutes of splashing and oofing. It was a dark hole, no more than a boy-sized brownie burrow, but it stank of monsters. Bladder pushed his head into it and dirt collapsed behind him, swirling off with the other rubbish. It was snug all right, but just rough dirt, no rocks. When it became too tight, he dug it out, listening to the others snuffling and raking dirt behind him. It did not take long to reach a conduit full of the smell of ogre paddies and bad breath, but those smells were stale and Bladder put his eyes to an opening; his whole head wouldn’t fit, but he could make out a little movement, an imp or two. Don’t get too confident, he told himself. Probably the quiet end of the cavern.
Still, quiet was good. He pushed his head through the dirt. A pixie squealed and took off in the direction of the lights. There didn’t seem as many imps around as normal, even for the quiet end. Bladder couldn’t see well, a hillock blocked his view. He couldn’t remember any end of the Great Cavern having a hillock.
Bladder pushed his shoulders and wings out of the hole. There didn’t seem anyone else about. Maybe he’d come out in the wrong place. Did it smell like the Great Cavern? He took a whiff. Nah. The smells were too old. If he was being honest with himself, it was like the Succubi’s Cavern, old and forgotten, although there’d been no little hills in that cavern neither. Bladder wondered where they had managed to get themselves. They’d have to find their way to the Great Cavern before they could locate an exit to Sam.
He couldn’t even turn his head to talk to the others, so he just pushed through, hoping Spigot and Wheedle knew enough to be quiet.
Bladder stepped into the silence and peered back. Wheedle put out his head and gazed around. Bladder put a single talon to his lips. The bull nodded. A hush of imps moved somewhere to their left as Spigot stepped through. No more than two or three. A tribe of pixies would happily smash gargoyles, but a gargoyle could easily take on half a dozen. Bladder looked up to the ceiling. It was certainly high enough for the Great Cavern, and when he studied the walls, yes, there was the cluster of burrows like the ones gargoyles had once used for their visits downstairs.
Bladder took to the side, climbing deftly. The others followed as soundless as they’d ever been. A wide-eyed bunyip stared at them from a burrow, but it shrieked and ran inside. A bit of a surprise, bunyips were rare, but they were ogre-large. Bladder wouldn’t have expected to scare one. What was this place? They loped up a couple of tiers, ran the distance till they came to the constellation of holes the shape of the gargoyle sanctuary and peered into the one that would have been where their pack’s old cubby had been. It was dusty, a thin layer of grey covered everything, but when he breathed in, the aromatic echo of Sam’s blood filled the place.
Bladder put his paw to his chest, remembering how Sam had put him together. Not just fixing his stone body but his … you know?
‘This is our old place,’ Wheedle whispered. He turned and stepped outside again and surveyed the space below, Bladder close behind. ‘So, is this the Great Cavern?’
Spigot stared around, his eyes bug big.
If it was the Great Cavern, and Bladder had to agree it was, it was close to empty, and the geography was slightly different. Where Thunderguts would once have had a throne, a large hill stood. It was the largest in the space, but a few smaller mounds encircled it. A thin waspish whine hung over one at the edge and pebbles clattered down on it.
Most of the violence Bladder remembered had taken place in the Ogres’ Cavern – the sword Sam broke had released souls and turned ogres to dust – but maybe a few souls had got here and dusted some of the bigger beasts. That huge hill, it could have been a monster of an ogre, or a giant maybe, or some sea monster Bladder hadn’t seen before. It was big. Maybe it was a few monsters fallen together.
Thin, scratching sounds filled the space above as nameless, faceless things hid in the walls. Not many though, not armies, not legions.
The quiet gnawed at Bladder, and the few monsters they’d seen were more scared of them than the other way around. Of gargoyles!
‘Where is everyone?’ Wheedle asked.
‘Upstairs, I guess. The sword’s no longer keeping them down here – they’re free, aren’t they? Free to do what they like?’
‘Then what are all those piles?’
‘You two stay here,’ Bladder said. ‘I’m gonna look at them. I have an idea what they might be.’
‘What happened to “quick in and quick through”?’
‘I was expecting the place to be full,’ Bladder said. Wheedle opened his mouth to speak, but Bladder used a forepaw to snap it shut. ‘I promise, I’ll be back in less than a minute.’
Bladder descended the wall and trotted to the centre of the huge space. The silence was breathtaking, eerie, in its way more frightening than the roars, bellows and clamouring of various monster breeds which had sounde
d when the cavern was full.
His stone feet sent echoes.
He looked back. Two pale gargoyles stared silently down at him.
Bladder drew closer to the little mountain, and on closer inspection could see it wasn’t just one huge lump but a collection of smaller lumps. Some the size of boulders, some the size of …
… eggs.
Bladder sniffed. It smelt like them.
Unhatched monsters, nuggets, beans, pea-sized ones that would hatch a brownie, rock-sized ones that a troll might spring from, ones as big as your paw that’d produce a leprechaun. On Hatching Day each of these would be an explosion of life as they cracked open and filled packs and tribes with new, young monsters. He remembered the day Wheedle had arrived. He’d known he had to claim the little gargoyle. Most gargoyles were hybrids, face of a monkey, back end of a dog, wings of an owl, grotesques, but Bladder was a winged lion, not common, and the grotesques always tended to look at gargoyles who were singular animals with one eye squinted. A winged lion and a winged bull? Oddities. He remembered Wheedle’s first word when a pixie tried to drag the baby bull away.
‘Moron,’ Wheedle had repeated after Bladder.
He was having a reaction to the dirt probably. For some reason his eyeballs felt damp.
Then there was Spigot. Even more singular than Wheedle. A marble eagle. No words out of him, but he was such a sweetie.
There would be no more ogres, which wasn’t a bad thing, but there’d be no more Wheedles or Spigots either.
Bladder touched his eye. Sewer water had got inside his pipes, he was leaking. How annoying.
He searched in the darkness, for a nugget the size of a Malteser, a soft-grey colour. A titbit from which a gargoyle would have hatched.
As Bladder circled the hill and Thunderguts’s throne came into sight, he could no longer see Wheedle and Spigot. The mound also overshadowed the lamps on the circling pathways, as it sat dark and brooding, a childless lump. The pile of eggs he studied had assembled over the Hatching ground, days and weeks and months of potential monsters building up, unhatched. Dormant.
