Slawter

by Darren Shan

  mad plan, she should have her head examined. But the magic unnerved her. She’s confused, not in complete control. I should give her a day to think things over and clear her head. But she might not play ball if I did. She might start rationalizing and analyzing, and decide nobody in her position should break into a building. Worse — she might tell Davida what I believe and tip our enemies off. So I rush her along, allowing her no time to think.

  It’s impossible to sneak up on the D warehouse, no matter what time you come. Large, powerful lights are trained on all sides of the building at night. You can’t approach it without your shadow preceding you, growing like a giant’s the closer you get.

  But I’ve got magic on my side. I could have performed any number of miracles in our room to convince Juni of my power. I didn’t randomly choose to experiment on the lightbulb. Studying the lights from the shelter of the closest building to the warehouse. Juni and Bill-E are quiet behind me. I can’t see all the lights from here, but I can imagine them.

  Not sure if I have the strength to do this. Just have to try and hope for the best. Focusing, I close my eyes, keeping the picture of the lights vivid in my thoughts. I visualize the lights flaring and going out, all at once, like a flashbulb on a camera. Call on the magic. Try to extend it to the lights. Doubting if I can really —

  Bill-E gasps. Then a chuckle. “Coolio!”

  I open my eyes to darkness. “Let’s go,” I hiss, starting forward, not sure how much time we’ll have.

  “Oh my,” Juni says breathlessly. But she runs after me with Bill-E, along for the ride even if she doesn’t truly want to be.

  The guards come out of their hut with strong flashlights. We drop to our stomachs as their beams sweep the surrounding area. I think about quenching the flashlights, but that would really stir up their suspicions.

  Lying on the cool ground, head down. I hear one of the guards on his walkie-talkie, checking if the lights are out all over. He doesn’t sound worried. The guards sweep the area a few more times with their flashlights, then return to the hut. One keeps his flashlight trained on the door of the D. There’s no way we could get in through it without being seen. So it’s just as well that I didn’t plan on entering that way.

  Rising, I hurry forward, trying not to make any noise, heading for a point about three-quarters of the way along the side of the warehouse, where it’s nice and dark, where we can’t be easily seen by the guards.

  I rest when I get to the wall, panting heavily, more from fear than the run. Juni and Bill-E arrive moments later. Bill-E’s puffing hard — he’s not as in shape as me. I can see their faces in the light of the moon and stars. Bill-E looks scared but excited. Juni’s just scared. Funny, but I feel like the adult here.

  “What now?” Bill-E asks when he gets his breath back.

  “The Indian rope trick,” I grin, then try to make a length of rope appear, dangling from the roof. Nothing happens. I try again, this time demanding the rope to simply appear on the ground. Nothing.

  I frown, wondering if I used up all my magic quenching the lights. But then I recall my fight with Artery and Vein. Dervish supplied the weapons, laid them on the floor of the secret cellar, axes, swords, and so on. He wouldn’t have gone to all that effort if we could have simply made weapons appear. Maybe magic doesn’t work that way and objects can’t be created out of thin air.

  So the roof’s out. Fine. Time for Plan B.

  I focus on the wall. Bare blocks, cemented tightly together. No chinks. Can’t tell how thick they are, but I imagine the wall’s more than a single block deep. I place my left hand on the nearest block and concentrate. Not sure if I can melt stone like metal, but I give it a go.

  The block doesn’t melt. I try again but still it holds. I sigh — looks like I’ve run out of ideas. But as I lean forward, trying to think of some other way in, my fingers gouge into the stone. It’s like putting my hand in mud. I make a half-fist and scoop out a handful of mushy material. I smile at the muck, then at Juni and Bill-E. “You two clear the mess away,” I tell them. “I’ll get to work on the rest of the blocks.”

  “Be careful,” Bill-E whispers. “We don’t want the wall collapsing.”

  “No worries,” I snort. “Grubbs Grady’s on top of the situation!”

  “This is madness,” Juni mutters, but digs her fingers into the semi-melted block and begins scooping it out.

  It takes fifteen minutes to gouge a hole big enough for us to fit through. It feels like hours. All the time I’m aware of the threat of the lights snapping back on, the guards sighting us, everything coming undone.

  But the darkness holds and at last I melt through the third and final layer of blocks. I poke my head through the gap and switch on the flashlight I brought with me. This looks like an ordinary props room — puppets and molds lying around, tools, mannequins, bits of material, tubes of glue. I switch off the flashlight and slide forward. Juni follows, then Bill-E.

  Bill-E’s frowning when he steps in. He looks back at the hole. “What are we going to do about that?” he asks. “If they see it when the lights come on...”

  “We just have to hope they don’t.”

  “And when we leave?” he persists. “They’ll know we’ve been here.”

  “I’ll try to make the stones solid again and put them back,” I tell him. “But if I can’t, don’t worry. If I’m right, and we’re dealing with demons, we’re not going to hang around like horror movie victims, waiting for them to get wise to us.”

  “And if you’re wrong?” Juni asks. “If there aren’t any demons?”

  “Then we’ll wind up in a heap of trouble,” I chuckle. “But it’ll be trouble of the butt-kicking, job-losing kind, and trouble like that I don’t mind so much.”

  “So what now?” Bill-E asks, glancing around.

  “We wander. Explore as much of the building as we can. Keep going until we find something strange or run out of rooms.”

  “Perhaps one of us should remain here, to alert the others if the guards find the hole,” Bill-E suggests.

  “How?” I grunt.

  “Phone.” He roots out his mobile, flicks it on, frowns, shakes it, then scowls. “No signal. Damn.”

  “It’s probably better if we stay together anyway,” Juni says, then lets out an uneasy breath. “I’ve never done anything like this. I never even stole candy from a store when I was a child. I’ve always respected the law.”

  “Welcome to the underworld, baby!” Bill-E chortles, trying to sound like a 1930s gangster.

  “No more talking,” I whisper.

  We advance.

  Fresh Meat

  WE don’t spot any security cameras. I guess Chuda Sool or his superiors thought the armed guards outside would provide enough protection. Or there are hidden cameras we can’t see. Or they didn’t think anyone who found their way in would be able to get out.

  Winding through the building, one ordinary room giving way to another. Lots of weird, demon-shaped puppets on display, but the work of human hands. Cleverly constructed, but hardly hewn in the fires of hell. Plastic, metal, rubber — not flesh, bone, blood.

  I try not to lose confidence as we push further into the warehouse. It’s logical that they’d have an outer ring of genuine workshops. While this place is off-limits, some of the crew — like Dervish — have been allowed into parts of it. This is camouflage. Things will be different further in.

  I hope.

  I fear.

  We come to a massive steel door unlike any of the others we’ve encountered. The full height of the ceiling and ten feet wide. There’s a small digital screen on the right-hand side, the outline of a hand printed on it.

  “Fingerprint controlled,” Bill-E notes, rapping the door with his knuckles. He reaches out to press his hand on the screen.

  “Wait,” I stop him. “It might sound an alarm if an intruder touches it.”

  Bill-E lowers his hand. “We gonna melt our way through the wall, boss?”

  “Reck
on so, kemosabe.”

  I lay my fingers on the blocks to the right of the door. Focus my magic and tell the stone to melt. Push forward to scoop out the first handful of molten rock.

  It’s solid.

  I try again — no luck. Rubbing my fingers together, trying to figure it out. It can’t be that I’m running low on juice — there’s more magic in the air here than outside. I can feel it practically crackling around me. Just to be sure, I make myself rise a foot and a half off the ground. No problem.

  “Something wrong?” Juni asks, eyeing me nervously as I float in the air.

  “The wall’s protected,” I tell her, smoothly descending. “It’s been charged with magic, or there’s magic pushing out from within. I can’t melt it.”

  “We could try somewhere else,” Bill-E says. “There might be another door or a part of the wall that isn’t . . .”

  I shake my head. “It’s going to be like this all the way round. I can sense it — literally. There’s an inner structure, a building within the warehouse. If there are other doors, they’ll be like this. The wall will be the same everywhere too. And the roof.”

  “Then we can’t go on,” Juni notes with relief. “Let’s get out, plug up the hole we made, and discuss a new —”

  “No,” I cut her short. “I’m not stopping. Not until I’ve convinced you.”

  “But if we can’t get through . . .” she protests gently.

  “I didn’t say that. We just have to be a bit smarter.”

  I move back to the screen and study the outline of the hand. My magic’s not strong enough to combat the magic of the wall, but maybe I can outfox the technology of the door.

  I place my right hand on the screen, tensing in case alarms sound. But there’s no noisy alarm. Lights don’t flash. Breathing softly, thinking hard, trying to direct magic into the screen. It’s set up to recognize certain fingerprints. I want to tell it that my prints are among those it accepts. But how do you talk to a computer that only understands binary code?

  I ignore the complications. Send a simple message, over and over, letting magic flow all the time. “You know me. My prints are in your database. Open.”

  Nothing happens. Bill-E and Juni keep quiet, but I sense their lack of belief. Ignoring them, I keep talking to the computer, trying to trick it. I don’t ackowledge the possibility of failure. Change tack. Start telling it I’m Chuda Sool. “You will open — I’m Chuda Sool. You must open — I’m Chuda Sool.” Picturing his long, thin face, his browless eyes and cold gaze.

  There’s a click. Another. A whole series of clickings and whirrings.

  The door opens inwards, silent as you please.

  I remove my hand and glance back smugly at the astonished faces of Juni and Bill-E. “Oh ye of little faith,” I murmur.

  We enter.

  Darkness. The other rooms were dark too, but I was able to light them with my flashlight. This room’s too big. The beam of light is like a pin, showing us almost nothing of the space around us. We can tell that it’s huge, but no more than that.

  “This feels wrong,” Juni says as we stand a few yards from the open doorway, reluctant to press ahead any further.

  “It’s like we’re surrounded,” Bill-E agrees, squinting into the darkness.

  I sweep the flashlight left, then right. We can’t see anyone. But that doesn’t mean that people — or other creatures — aren’t there. Or that they can’t see us.

  “Maybe we should come back with stronger flashlights,” Juni says.

  “If we quit now, we’ll never come back,” I mutter.

  “But we can’t see anything.”

  “Give me a minute. Let me think.”

  I can’t make objects appear out of nothing. But magic is a form of energy. Maybe I can convert that energy into a different form.

  Concentrating. Speaking to the magic within me. In a weird way it feels like I’m two people — the one I’ve always been, and Grubbs Grady: magician.

  “I want to make light,” I tell my magical half. “I’d like a big ball of light to appear just above my head. Is that possible?”

  In response, I feel energy stream from my hands. It gathers overhead, pulses a couple of times, then transforms into a ball of blinding white light. I gasp with pain, covering my eyes with an arm. “Not so bright!” I hiss, then squint with one eye over the top of my arm. The light has dimmed slightly, but is still painful to look at. “Keep dimming. More... more... Stop.”

  I remove my arm. Bill-E and Juni have both covered their eyes. “It’s OK,” I tell them. “You can look now.”

  Their eyes are watering when they lower their hands. Juni looks like she’s going to be sick. “How did you do that?” she whispers.

  “Easy-peasy,” I grin.

  “You’re a freak,” Bill-E says. “But a useful one to have around.”

  “Thanks. Now let’s see what we’ve walked into...”

  I send the ball of light forward, letting it brighten the farther away from us it moves, until it lights up the entire room. Only it’s not really a room. It’s a huge, single, cavernous chamber. A bare earth floor. Brick walls that rise up the full height of the building, all three stories of it. No props, furniture, nothing... except a tall stone in the center...and lots of shapes around it.

  Bodies.

  “This isn’t good,” Bill-E says nervously.

  “Those look like . . .” Juni croaks, then starts forward.

  “Wait!” I cry.

  Juni shakes her head. “I have to be sure. They could be old bags or mannequins. I have to check.”

  “We don’t know what’s in here with us,” I say, losing my nerve slightly.

  Juni pauses, looks around, then shrugs. “There’s nothing. We’re alone. Except for them.”

  She moves on. Bill-E and I glance at each other. We can’t be outdone by a woman. The shame would be too much to bear. So we set off after her, away from the door and the possibility of a quick retreat.

  Juni sinks to her knees a few yards from the bodies, staring hopelessly, jaw slack, disbelief in her pinkish eyes. There are twenty or twenty-five of them encircling the stone, the head of one body lying on or under the feet of the next. Emmet’s one of the dead. His mother. Kik and Kuk Kane. Their father. Others I don’t recognize.

  Some of the bodies have chunks ripped out of them or limbs torn loose. Others have cut throats. A few look like they’re asleep, but I’m sure, if we turned them over, we’d discover fatal wounds.

  Bill-E reels away and vomits, groaning over the mess, shaking his head, trying to deny the reality of this dreadful scene. This is the first time my brother’s seen anything like this. It’s hard. Not like what you see in the movies. On the silver screen, corpses mean nothing. You know they’re not real, just models or actors faking death. You can admire the staging, the special effects, the pools of blood. The grosser it is, the cooler.

  But in real life it’s sickening. The most distressing sight in the world. Death’s always hard to take, but murder... slaughter... people killed in the name of some disgusting demonic cause... spread out like sacks of meat and bone . . .

  Juni’s taking deep breaths. I’m sure she wants to vomit too, but she’s keeping the bile down. Just.

  Me, I’m a veteran of atrocity. As bad as this is, as much as it hurts seeing Emmet lying there with his throat and stomach slit open, it’s nowhere near as bad as when I walked in on my parents and sister and found them torn to shreds. I’m not saying I’m cool with this, or it’s water off a duck’s back. I’m just better prepared to deal with it than Bill-E or Juni.

  I turn my attention away from the bodies, not wanting to dwell on the pain they must have suffered, the tragedy of dying in this callous manner. I study the stone, the focal point of the room. It looks like a Stonehenge monolith. A big chunk of rock jutting out of the ground, mostly smooth, but with a few jagged knobs poking out of it in various places. No writing, at least not on this side. But several gouges run across the middle a
nd near the top, different lengths and depths.

  “Some of the bodies have been here a long time,” Juni says. She points to a couple of corpses in an especially bad state. Flesh rotting, inner organs dried up, bones jutting through the dry and brittle skin. “This hasn’t all happened in the last few weeks.”

  “No,” I agree. “I think this goes back months, maybe longer.”

  Juni looks around at me. “What the hell’s happening?” she sobs. “Why?”

  Before I can think of an answer, there’s a scratching noise behind the rock. Then a sniffing sound, followed by raspy chuckling. Something sticks its head out. Studies us. Then steps into view.

  It’s a demon. Five long, spindly legs. The body of a giant ant. A long neck and the head of some sort of rabid monkey. No arms, but several small mouths in addition to its main one, sticking out of its body, set on mushroom-like stalks. The mouths are filled with blood-red, dagger-sharp teeth.

  The demon gurgles at us. I can read its thoughts — “Fresh meat!”

  Juni and Bill-E scream. I scream too, but there’s magic in my cry. It hits the demon like a cannonball, knocks it backwards, clear of the stone and bodies. Sends it tumbling across the floor.

  “Run!” I roar.

  Bill-E and Juni don’t need to be told twice. They race for the door, howling, terror overriding their other senses. I want to run too. I try to. But the magic stops me. Not yet, a voice within me whispers. You can’t let it attack from behind. You’ll die if you turn your back on it.