Monster War
Page 18
Barakkas shook his head. “No. Pinch is on no one’s side but his own.”
Deep in the heart of the lair of the Fifth, the thing that used to be Edward Pinch walked alone.
“Kill them…all of them,” Monster Pinch muttered, his giant ant legs crumbling the blue lava rock beneath him. “They hate me…and I hate them. Every last one. Filthy creatures. Someone needs to lead the monsters of the Nether. Someone needs to destroy the humans. Destroy the boy!”
Pinch laughed - although it sounded more like an insane shriek as it echoed through the many hallways and chambers of the shell.
“I will lead them. Yes! And someday, I will rule the world and they will all bow to me!”
He laughed again as he anxiously paced back and forth across the deserted throne room - a hollow, empty shell of a man in a hollow, empty shell.
The air in the Inner Circle was chill and smelled vaguely of copper. It reminded Charlie of the smell of blood.
“Do you plan on killing me?” the boy asked, hands on his hips.
The great beast shook his head. “Not today. I have…mellowed.”
“Somehow I find that hard to believe.”
Barakkas shrugged as if to say ‘believe what you want’. Charlie turned back to the Monster Portal. It swirled and churned ominously.
“So…what’s on the other side?”
“Answers,” Barakkas replied. “Probably the very answers you seek. The Nether was not always this way - it was once bright and beautiful.” He looked up at the red, alien sky. “It can be that way again.”
Bright and beautiful.
The words reminded Charlie of the Slumber - but maybe the Slumber was just a pale reflection of what the Nether could once again become.
“How?” Charlie asked. “How can we make it like it used to be?”
“That you will have to discover on your own, Charlie Benjamin.”
“Through the Monster Portal?”
The Named Lord nodded.
“Then help me,” Charlie said finally. “Take me there.”
The great beast thought a moment, then lowered his right hand to the ground - the very hand that Charlie had cut off many months before. Charlie took a breath and stepped on to it. Barakkas lifted the boy up and gently deposited him on the platform beneath the glowing green portal, careful to avoid touching the Sword of Sacrifice, which hung at Charlie’s waist, shining brightly.
“Thank you,” the boy said.
“My pleasure.”
Charlie turned to the giant portal and tried to imagine what lay beyond. He couldn’t.
“Well, see you when I come back - if I come back.”
“Goodbye, Charlie Benjamin.”
“Goodbye, Barakkas.”
And then Charlie Benjamin - the youngest Director the Nightmare Division had ever known - drew the Sword of Sacrifice and, raising it high, stepped through the Monster Portal and was gone.
Copyright
First published in paperback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2009 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
The HarperCollins website address is:
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FIRST EDITION
Copyright © Dean Lorey 2009
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EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-35166-4
Dean Lorey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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