The Paella That Saved the World (The Paella Trilogy Book 1)

by Elle Simpson

  Kal.

  His hands clamped around my poor mangled wrists, hard enough that the bones ground together as he pulled my arms behind my back.

  “Ow!”

  But Kal didn’t let up. Held tighter. Moved to stand so close that I could feel the puff of his breath against my hair.

  “Oh dear,” Creepy Bob said, sounding anything but concerned, “do your wrists pain you, Hannah?”

  “Little bit, yeah,” I snapped, “because I’m not a psychopathic freakjob like you, Bob. Why did you even have to tie us all up in the first place? Not feeling confident in your abilities, is that it? Was it stage fright? Did you get creepy cold feet?”

  But Creepy Bob didn’t respond to my goading. Instead, weirdly calm, weirdly contemplative, she said, “I had to be certain that the compulsion had taken hold. So many minds…” Her eyes drifted to the window. “No Akanarin has ever done as I have done before. No Akanarin has ever been as powerful as I.”

  It took everything in me not to spit at her, ‘Except the poor kid you’re stealing the power from!’

  “But to compel so many,” Creepy Bob carried on, “so quickly, so thoroughly…” She looked back at me then with a sudden snap of her head. “It was you who gave me the idea, Hannah.”

  “What?” I said blankly. “What?”

  “All your bluster in attempting to hide your primitive communication device. It made me wonder. A voice, an image, an order, transmitted across the vast reaches of this world…and when my underling told me of how she altered her compulsion to allow it to be recorded, I thought – how simple it would be to do the same. To broadcast my will and my words to this entire pitiful planet. To lay down my dominion without taking a single step. All because of you, Hannah.”

  All I could do was blink. It wasn’t my patented ‘aliens are weird’ blink. It was just shock. Plain old, flat-out shock.

  My fault. Mine.

  “Was that some manner of diversion, I wonder,” Creepy Bob said, “your little dalliance with my underling. Your presence at the observatory. Perhaps to allow your mysterious, departed friend to retrieve the Watchkeeper’s mayday message? To send it to the Council? To beg for their benevolent aid?”

  I glared at her and didn’t answer.

  “No more words, Hannah? How surprising. But no matter. You should know that I have damaged the communications array beyond any hope of repair. And now your friend is dead and the message you worked so hard to retrieve is entirely useless.”

  The rage monster was rising. “You’re lying,” I spat out. “You are lying.”

  “If you say it often enough, does it become true?”

  I wasn’t sure what was true anymore. Colin should’ve been back – and he wasn’t. Still wasn’t. That was true. Creepy Bob was lying about some stuff, yeah. But about everything? I couldn’t be sure, and increasingly, I so totally wasn’t.

  “Not that it matters,” Creepy Bob said. “In fact, the only truth that does matter is that I have had enough of your petulant prevaricating.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ve had enough of your everything, you evil freaking—”

  “Be quiet.”

  I stopped. I had to, just to suck in a pained breath instead. Creepy Bob was pushing a compulsion suddenly – a strong one, and it was getting stronger by the second.

  “How did you resist my compulsion? Who helped you?”

  “Santa,” I forced out against the pulsing in my head. “The Tooth Fairy. The freaking Easter Bunny, you whackjob, psychopathic fu—”

  “Silence.”

  I shut my mouth with a click. Rocked back on my heels. Blinked – slowly.

  “Ah,” Creepy Bob said. “Finally. What a stubborn creature you are.”

  It was like being underwater with my eyes open. Everything wobbly and indistinct. This was High Compulsion, not a single fricking doubt about it, but worse than back at the car park. Worse than in the ballroom. Stronger.

  Closer.

  The sliding door behind Creepy Bob came ajar – just a crack. Someone was moving in the room beyond. A blur. I forced my eyes into another blink. And the blur unblurred.

  Deeke.

  She looked awful – her skin more grey than green, her eyes more grey than black. And now I understood: Deeke in the spaceship door, Deeke in the ballroom, Deeke, here, in the hotel room. The closer Deeke got, the more powerful the compulsion Creepy Bob could siphon off. And right then, right there, with Deeke just a few steps away, it couldn’t get any more powerful.

  “I am wearied by you,” Creepy Bob said carelessly. “And I find I care not about whatever meddlesome plan you attempted to enact. It failed. You failed. You are an insect, Hannah Stanton. And it is long past time that you were exterminated.”

  She turned, picked up something from a coffee table by the window, and held it out for me to see. “What is this?”

  I wanted to stay silent but my mouth wouldn’t cooperate. “It’s a knife,” I said.

  It was. One of those huge fancy ones with swirly patterns on the blade. The kind Toni used when he was feeling extra cheffy.

  “Is it sharp, do you think?”

  “Totally.” Incredibly, completely razor-sharp.

  “Deadly, would you say?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes,” Creepy Bob agreed, sounding delighted. “It is.” She held the knife out towards me, handle first. “I want you to take this knife, Hannah. And with it, I want you to slit your own throat.”

  Kal let go. My wrists were killing me, the tulle sticking to the dried-up blood, but I didn’t notice. Not properly. Not the way I should have. It was like I was reading it in a book instead. Or watching it on TV. It was happening – but distant from me.

  “Do it,” Creepy Bob said. “Now.”

  I took the knife. I touched the knife to the side of my neck. No pressure but the tip broke the skin anyway, so sharp I couldn’t really feel it, felt the dribble of blood down my neck instead.

  And through in the bedroom, Deeke’s face twitched.

  I noticed that. Even through the compulsion fog, I noticed that. Her face twitched like a flinch. I saw her eyes flick, her head cock so sharply it had to hurt, and then—

  The burn started in my forehead, strong and fierce; the High Compulsion dropped away, instantly and completely.

  Only Creepy Bob’s compulsion left, and I shrugged it off without trying.

  Then I jerked the knife away from my throat.

  “What—” Creepy Bob began. “How—”

  But I didn’t have to answer. Didn’t even have to think about what to say, because the universe had – finally, finally – decided to make it up to me.

  The tiniest, faintest fizzle sounded in my head. Then, “Hannah!”

  “Col!” I screamed. “Col, help me!”

  And I took the knife, and I threw it – straight at Creepy Bob.

  31

  Thing is, I’d forgotten about the whole ‘Akanarin skin is largely impenetrable’ nugget, so the knife mostly just bumped off Creepy Bob’s chest in a fizzle of sparks and clattered to the floor.

  A shocked, still second ticked past, where we all just stood there staring down at the knife.

  Then, “Seize her!” Creepy Bob roared.

  Kal lunged at me – but I was already tripping backwards. I landed hard on my bum, smacked my head against the window.

  “Colin!” I screamed. “Colin, help!”

  In the next second I was aware of only two things: the blinding pulse of Kal’s barcode gun firing straight at me, and the tug of the transportation beam pulling me upwards.

  I closed my eyes and—

  “Oh my god.”

  —I was still alive.

  I mean, as far as I could tell anyway. My heart was still beating. My lungs were still breathing. I gave myself an experimental pat. Everything important still felt functional and attached.

  “Oh, thank god.”

  I opened my eyes, totally expecting to have zipped straight up into the wonderful, saf
e, cranky, beepy, grumpy awesomeness of Colin’s shiny white, custardy spaceship.

  But I wasn’t. And I hadn’t. Unless Colin was having electricity issues. Because I was sat in total darkness instead.

  Total darkness that smelled very faintly like… “Air freshener?” I mouthed to no one at all.

  I clambered to my feet. Stuck out my hands and stumbled forward. A motion sensor ticked somewhere. Lights clicked on. An extractor fan started to whir.

  And I blinked. In front of me was a floor-to-ceiling wooden door, bolted firmly shut. Behind me? Was a toilet.

  “Oh my god.”

  I knew exactly where I was – in the ladies loos in The Snails Arms.

  (Seriously though, what is it with the universe, me, and loos?)

  I wrenched the bolt across, yanked open the stall door, the loo door, I went crashing out into the hall and skidded to a stop on the flagstones.

  “Mum! Toni! Oh my god, are you here?” No answer. “Col? Anybody? Hello?”

  Nothing. And no one, because no one was there.

  They’d left in a hurry, though. The front door was hanging half open, the bottom bolt dragging a little across the flagstones in the breeze. And the TV on the wall behind the bar was talking to itself – or, to be creepily precise, Creepy Bob was talking to herself. A recording of her speech from the gala was playing on a news channel.

  You will hear me. In this room and beyond.

  My forehead started tingling. “Oh, no you fricking don’t, you freaking psychopath!”

  I grabbed a water jug from on top of the bar and threw it straight at the wall. The TV slipped off its mount and smashed to the floor, all shattered plastic and a shower of sparks. And Creepy Bob’s voice faded away too, like an echo dying, but in my brain instead of my ears.

  I stared down at the mess, feeling sick. Everyone who’d seen the message on TV, who’d heard it, everyone who’d been in The Snail’s Arms that morning – they’d be compelled now too. Mum and Toni included.

  “Oh god.”

  A fizzle in my head, then a faint, crackly voice. “Hannah – can – hear me—”

  “Colin!” I ran back out into the hall and wrenched a window open. “Colin,” I shouted, “what is it? Where are you?”

  The fizzle started again “—signal – entered atmosphere – evade – cannot – must get – higher – get to – higher ground—”

  “Higher ground?” I repeated incredulously. “This is Cheshire, Col! There is no higher ground!”

  “—must – higher – have to – higher—”

  “Oh my god, I heard you the first time!”

  Frantically, I scanned the horizon. It wasn’t long past dawn but there was light enough to see. No mountains in Little Buckford. No hills. One half-demolished cottage. One wobbly barn.

  But – one tall thing. The tallest thing for miles and miles around…

  “Colin, if you can still hear me, I have an idea. A totally terrible, awful idea. But I’m running with it.”

  (Because don’t I always?)

  I spun on my heel and headed straight to the kitchen. I needed the back door. It was an emergency exit, the quickest, most direct way out. There didn’t seem to be any evil minions kicking around outside. But I wasn’t taking my chances with the front door and the car park and the main road.

  No one in the kitchen either when I skidded in, despite the faint smell of cooking still hanging in the air – paella cooking, to be Valencianly exact. I was in such a major hurry that I knocked against the oversized pan as I skedaddled past, and a little paella slopped to the floor. The rice was pretty raw-looking still, hardly any of the yellowy broth cooked away.

  But raw or not, Toni wouldn’t have started cooking breakfast for the supersoldiers if he’d known anything was wrong. So that had to mean Creepy Bob was being sneaky, rolling out the compulsion a little at a time. But still rolling it out fast. Because it had started in New York, spread to Cheshire – what, a five hour time difference? Who knew how far it had reached by now.

  Or how many people it had affected.

  “Oh god.”

  And if the compulsion worked on TV, then surely it would work on phones and iPads and anything with sound and video. God, wait – maybe even just sound. Or did it even need sound?

  (It did not, oh my god.)

  In a proper panic, I smacked to a stop against the back door, reached for the metal access bar, pushed it down – and the door didn’t open. It didn’t even budge.

  “What…”

  The thing about the back door? It was never locked. It didn’t lock. Not from the inside. That was the whole point.

  “Why are you locked?” I whispered frantically. “Oh god, why are you locked?”

  But then—

  “Oh my god.”

  —the slip-slap of big, bare, creepy feet on the flagstones, getting louder, getting closer, and stopping at the kitchen door.

  32

  I spun around. “Oh my god, are you freaking kidding me?”

  The Akanarin ducked through the doorway. He was huge – taller than Deeke, with muscles that actually looked like muscles instead of grey string beans.

  “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”

  I skedaddled left. The Akanarin got there first.

  Right. Same result.

  I flung myself over one of the prep stations, which put a nice, long, reassuring stainless steel expanse between me and the huge evil alien – but also between me and the only other way out.

  (Evil swings and psychopathic roundabouts, you know?)

  “You will submit to my dominion, pitiful human,” the Akanarin said, attempting to push a totally low-grade, bog-standard compulsion at me. But my brain was a pro at saying nah to those things by then, so it was all, ‘lol no.’

  “Yeah,” I said. “Not happening. So not happening.” I flailed about behind me on the worktop until my hand found something metal and potentially threatening. “Aha!” I said, wielding it. Then, “Oh,” when I saw what I was wielding.

  A fish slice.

  Creepy Bob was up in her penthouse with her designer knives, carving up some Hannah sashimi and all I could find in Toni’s actual working kitchen was a fish slice.

  “I command you,” the Akanarin roared, oddly not all that threatened by the fish slice.

  “Look, buddy. Give it up. It’s just not happening.” And then I took the fish slice and I threw it at a big black eyeball.

  Not much of a distraction, but it worked. The Akanarin swatted the fish slice away, and I made my move. Leapt over the counter. Tried to dart around the evil minion to the door. But—

  A huge creepily muscled body turned towards me. A huge four-knuckled hand snatched out to grab me. And a huge flat foot slipped on some spilled paella.

  “Oh my god!”

  The Akanarin’s eyes stretched wide, and for one full millisecond he seemed frozen, stalled right there at the top of his topple.

  Then – wham!

  Off he went, tipping backwards, his hands scrabbling in midair, desperately trying to break his fall. But all he managed to do instead was grab a handle and dump a huge pan of half-cooked paella all over himself.

  A huge pan – that whacked him on the head with an echoing clang.

  And then…

  He lay there, collapsed on the floor, limbs akimbo, staring blankly up at the ceiling with paella slopped all over him.

  And as if I was falling for that. “I’m not an idiot!” I shouted at him “You’re not unconscious. I know you’re faking!”

  Because legit, the second I tried to step over him, you know that was a one hundred percent horror movie ankle-grab in the making.

  I picked up my fish slice so I could throw it again. Then I threw it. Then I got a mixing bowl and threw that too. A handful of wooden spoons. The blue chopping board for fish. Then the green one for veg. The big egg-whipping thing from the mixer.

  And the Akanarin didn’t react at all. He didn’t so much as twitch.

 
; “Uh…what?”

  So okay, a human couldn’t hit an Akanarin – with a freaking razor sharp knife – hard enough to give them so much as a paper cut, but a paella pan could knock them out cold? Apparently?

  “Like, sounds false,” I whispered hysterically, “but okay?”

  (Evil alien gift horses, metaphorical non-existent mouths, not looking in them? That sort of stuff.)

  My extraterrestrial roid-rage friend had been pretty helpful with the whole ding-donging himself into comedy unconsciousness thing, but I didn’t know how long that would keep. And the last thing I needed was him coming after me if and when I finally managed to make my heroic, ingenious escape.

  (It takes a while yet, no lie. And it’s not exactly ingenious. Kinda heroic though, I guess, in a unhinged-type of way.)

  So I had to stop him. Tie him up or…lock him in a bedroom, maybe? No, but then I’d have to haul him upstairs somehow.

  How could I…?

  A thought struck, not totally unlike a flying fish slice – mostly vis-à-vis the evil, vindictive universe and its fascination with loos. And that thought?

  Medieval torture dungeon toilets.

  “Oh my god, actual, literal genius is what you are, Hannah.” I grabbed a bony ankle and started to haul. “Okay, surprisingly light.” Because yes, surprisingly light. “Uh, creepily so. But like, also helpfully so.”

  I dragged the evil minion across the hall to the loos. His head thumped and smacked about on the uneven flagstones, and let me tell you how much I did not care.

  (At all, is how much, just fyi.)

  I yanked and I hauled and I shoved and I pushed until my huge evil friend was all stuffed up and stuffed into one of the ladies loos’ stalls. If he woke up and wanted out, he’d totally get out. Nothing would stop that. But the wood was thick, the lock was decent. It would definitely hold him up for a while.

  I snagged the master key from the behind the bar, and then I took one last look: the Akanarin lying there, half on the floor but mostly on the loo, slumped over the bowl like the aftermath of some epic intergalactic pub crawl.

  “God,” I muttered, “how much do I wish I had my phone with me right now?”