Slawter

by Darren Shan

  The magic part of me whispers something. It’s been quiet all this time, even while I thought I was working magic. But now it breaks its silence and tells me what to say. Ignoring the chatterings of the figures around me, I bellow out loud, words of magic and power. Prae Athim’s face contorts with hatred. Demon eyes glare at me. She shrieks, as do all the scientists and guards — but it’s too late.

  The walls of the cells bubble. The human Lambs turn into demons, then fade. A red haze comes down around Dervish and the others. Magic phrases trip off my tongue. Pain washes over me. I fall to my knees but keep on shouting, ripping the vision to pieces. The redness thickens. Fills the room, blocking out everything, humans, demons, all.

  I utter the final words of the spell and wearily close my eyes.

  Everything goes silent.

  PART FOUR

  DEMONS-A-GO-GO

  Wakey Wakey

  DERVISH snoring. When I hear that, I know I’m back in the real world — there’s no mimicking a dreadful, pig-choking noise like that! I open my eyes and sit up, groggy, head pounding, utterly confused but no longer ensnared by the dream reality of the laboratory.

  I’m in a small, dark room, chinks of light sneaking in around the edges of a dusty old set of blinds. Propped up on a bare wooden floor. Dervish and Bill-E spread out next to me. Both asleep.

  “Dervish,” I mumble, shaking him hard. No answer. I shake him again, hissing his name in his ear, not too loud in case anybody’s on the other side of the door. Still no response. I roll up his eyelids with one hand and snap my fingers in front of his eyes with the other. He carries on snoring.

  You were all dreaming the same thing, the magic part of me whispers. In their minds, they’re in the Lambs’ lab. They can’t wake themselves. You’ll have to use magic to bring them back.

  It tells me the words to use. I murmur them softly, feeling magic flow out of me, into my uncle and brother. They stir. Bill-E moans. Dervish grunts something about an armadillo. Their eyelids flicker and they struggle awake.

  “What’s happening?” Bill-E groans.

  “Where are we?” Dervish asks. “Where’s Prae Athim? Sharmila? Shark? The —”

  “That was bull,” I cut in, steadying him as he tries to stand. “Easy. Don’t make any noise. We’re probably under guard.”

  “I don’t understand. What...?” He stares around, forehead creased.

  “It was a dream. The kidnapping, meeting up with the Disciples, the lab. None of that was real. It was all fantasy.”

  “Don’t be crazy!” Dervish snaps. “I know the difference between . . .” He stops. Thinks about it. His jaw drops. “Bloody hell. It had me fooled completely.”

  “Me too, for a while. But parts didn’t add up. There were mistakes.”

  “The lab,” Dervish says slowly. “It looked familiar. Now I know why — I got the image from Franz Kafka’s book, The Trial.”

  “Kafka?” I frown. “It looked like buildings from James Bond movies. And the cells were straight out of The Silence of the Lambs.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bill-E says. “The cells were like something in a sci-fi flick, all those control panels and lasers.”

  “We provided our own dream variations,” Dervish says wonderingly. He rises, panting, and leans against a wall until his legs support him. He staggers to the blinds and parts a few slats. Peers out. Then looks at us. “We’re still in Slawter. We never left. Grubbs is right — it was all an illusion.”

  Dervish walks around the room, giving his head time to clear, flexing his legs and arms. “I forgot how cunning the Demonata are. They’re masters of deception. They found out we were leaving, or they had a barrier in place to stop anyone getting out. Blocked us with magic. Created an insane scenario that seemed logical to us. Since our minds were active and focused on the dream — thinking that was reality — we couldn’t wake up.”

  “Why not simply drug us?” Bill-E asks.

  “They’re demons. They don’t work that way.” Dervish chuckles. “I can’t believe I fell for it. Walking onto the planes without tickets. Breezing through customs, nobody asking to see our passports.”

  “I didn’t spot that,” I wince.

  “What about you, Billy?” Dervish asks. “Notice anything out of place?”

  “No,” Bill-E says, scratching his head. “Although I did think it strange that some of the nurses weren’t wearing any . . .” He coughs and blushes.

  “They wanted us out of the way,” Dervish says, “so they subdued us. They could have killed us, but I guess they want us around for the finale. If Lord Loss is masterminding this, he won’t want to slaughter us while we’re sleeping. He’ll want to make us suffer first, so he can feast on our pain and gloat.”

  “We have to get out of here,” I pant, getting up, fighting off a wave of dizziness. “We have to stop them. Get everybody out. Call the Disciples.”

  “What about Juni?” Bill-E asks, and Dervish and I flinch, only now realizing that she isn’t with us.

  “They’re probably keeping her in another room,” Dervish says.

  “Why?” Bill-E frowns.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. There isn’t time to think about it.”

  He strides to the door and presses an ear against it. I can tell by Bill-E’s expression that he’s going to push Dervish about Juni. I slip up beside him and whisper, “Dervish didn’t say it, because he didn’t want to freak you out, but Juni’s probably dead. That’s why she isn’t here.”

  Bill-E stares at me, ashen-faced. “But she was in the laboratory...”

  “So were a lot of people. That doesn’t mean anything.” I squeeze his arm. “Dervish cares about Juni a lot, but he can’t think about her now. We can’t either. We can hope for the best, and if we’re lucky we’ll find her, sleeping like we were. But if she’s not...if the worst has happened . . . we have to overlook it for now. We have ourselves to worry about. And all the others.”

  Bill-E trembles, but nods reluctantly. I squeeze his arm again, then help him to his feet. When he’s able to walk, we edge up behind Dervish, who’s still listening intently at the door. “Anything?” I ask.

  “No. But that doesn’t mean there’s no one there. Or no thing.”

  “We can’t wait in here forever,” I note.

  “True.” Dervish looks over his shoulder at me. “Ready to fight?”

  I crack my knuckles. “Damn straight.”

  “Then let’s go for it.”

  He turns the handle and slams open the door.

  Nobody’s outside. We creep along a damp, musky corridor. We’re in one of the town’s original buildings. It hasn’t been renovated. Holes in the walls, rotting floorboards, broken windows.

  “How much of that dream world was real?” I ask Dervish, trying to calm my nerves by focusing on something other than the possibility that we might run into a team of demons any second. “Sharmila and Shark — do they really exist?”

  “Yes,” Dervish says. “And pretty much the way we saw them — or at least the way I saw them. From your view point, was Shark wearing army fatigues? Sharmila a sari?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that much we shared.” Dervish pauses and looks at me. “How did you know it wasn’t real? What tipped you off?”

  “Lots of little things. But it was when . . .” I glance at Bill-E. “What did you say to Dervish when we broke you out?”

  Bill-E thinks a moment. “I’m not sure. Something like, ‘Hey, neighbor, what took you so long?’”

  “I heard you say something else, something you shouldn’t have said. That let me fit the different pieces together.”

  “What did I say?” Bill-E asks.

  “It’s not important,” I lie, not wanting to tell him that in my version he knew Dervish was his uncle.

  “You were clever to break the illusion,” Dervish says. “Even if I’d twigged, I’m not sure I could have woken up. A spell like that will normally divert you down another pat
h when you start to suspect something, lead you into the middle of another dream.”

  “Maybe it has,” I laugh edgily. “Maybe this isn’t real and we’re still lying on a floor somewhere, asleep.”

  Dervish grunts dismissively. “I’m not that gullible. This is the real world. We’re awake. I’m sure of it.” But he looks around nervously all the same. Then his gaze settles on me again. “If we come through this, you and I need to have a talk.”

  “What about?”

  “Magic. You’re doing things you shouldn’t be able to. I want to know how.”

  “No big mystery,” I shrug. “I’m just drawing magic out of the air, putting it to good use, like when we fought Artery and Vein.”

  “Hmm,” Dervish says, unconvinced. He licks his lips and focuses. We’re almost at the back door. I can hear voices outside. But they’re human voices and they fade quickly — people walking past.

  “What now?” Bill-E asks. “Do we try driving out of town again?”

  “No,” Dervish says. “We have to alert the others. Tell people what they’re up against. They might not believe us, so we’ll have to be firm. Get them out of here, even if we have to force them. Fight if necessary — and I expect it will be. If we’re lucky, we’ll only have to worry about Chuda and his human accomplices.”

  “And if we’re unlucky?” I murmur.

  “Let’s not think about that,” he says, then opens the door and walks out to face whatever hell awaits.

  Assembly Call

  ON the outskirts of Slawter. Proceeding slowly, Dervish slightly ahead of Bill-E and me, one hand held palm up, trying to determine whether or not there’s a barrier in place. He said we should determine the lay of the land before raising the alarm. No point trying to herd dozens of people out of town if they’re going to be knocked out by a magically enforced shield.

  “Why aren’t we hungry?” Bill-E asks, checking the date on his watch. “We’ve been asleep for... hell on a Harley! Six days! We should be ravenous but I don’t even feel hungry.”

  “Trust you to be thinking about your stomach at a time like this!” I snort.

  Dervish laughs gently. “No, it’s a good question. The answer’s simple — magic. We were cocooned from the demands of the real world. Hunger and thirst will hit us later, if we make it out, but right now we’re still operating by the magical rules of Slawter.”

  “Is there anything magic can’t do?” Bill-E asks.

  “Not much,” Dervish says, then draws up short. His fingers are trembling. He moves his hand left, right, left again. “Can you feel it?”

  “No,” Bill-E frowns.

  “Yes.” I take a step forward, sniffing the air. It doesn’t smell different, but it feels wrong. I raise a hand like Dervish, slide it forward, sense power building against it.

  “No further,” Dervish says. “We don’t want to disturb the fabric of the barrier — it might tip off our enemies.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “In nontechnical terms, a bubble of magic. They’ve sealed off the town. Enclosed it within a magical sphere, like putting a giant glass bowl over everything.” He frowns. “No demon is powerful enough to create a barrier this size, not in our universe. They’re using the stone you saw in the D workshops. It must be a functioning lodestone, a reservoir of ancient power. There aren’t many left in the world. The magic drained from most of them centuries ago. Others were deliberately destroyed, to prevent them from falling into the hands of demonic mages.

  “This is worse than I thought. With the power of a lode-stone at their disposal, they can build a tunnel. Dozens of demons can cross and run riot within the barrier. Stay as long as they like. Nobody will be able to escape.”

  “We have to stop them!” Bill-E gasps. “We can, can’t we, Dervish?”

  “Of course,” Dervish says wearily, lowering his hand. “If we shatter the lodestone, the bubble will burst. But now that we know about it, the Demonata will have increased security around the warehouse. They’re not stupid.”

  “We have to try,” I say quietly. “We can’t stand by and let people die.”

  “You’re forgetting our earlier conversation,” Dervish says with a bitter smile. “The Disciples often let people die. In a situation like this, we’d normally sit back and let the Demonata run their course. We don’t have the power to stop them. Better to conserve our strength and fight them when we have a chance of winning.”

  “But this is different,” I growl. “We know these people.”

  “That’s not enough of a reason to get involved. I’ve had to sacrifice friends to demons before.”

  “Don’t tell me you mean to —” I start to explode.

  “Easy,” Dervish calms me. “We won’t stand by idly. We can’t. Because you’re right, this is different. We’re caught up in it. If we don’t find a way out, it’s not just the cast and crew of Slawter who’ll perish — we’ll die too.”

  Heading into the heart of town. Dervish says there might be another way out of this mess — burst through a small section of the bubble, creating a temporary gap through which we can flee. But we’re not powerful enough to do it ourselves. We need to pin a demon against the bubble, then explode it with magic. By focusing the energy generated, we should be able to blast a hole through the barrier, which we can keep open for a while, allowing people to slip out.

  Should. No guarantees.

  One of our main problems will be getting a demon in the right place, at the right time. We can’t just march into the D workshops and ask one of them to come to the barrier with us.

  But before that, we have to figure a way to convince the rest of the crew and cast that we’re not crazy, their lives are in danger, demons are real, they have to trust us if they want to live. To that end, we’re heading for Davida Haym’s offices. If she’s innocent — bloody unlikely — Dervish hopes to recruit her and use her to issue a general alarm. If, as we suspect, she’s in league with the Demonata, he plans to make her confess in public, to persuade the others.

  It’s hair-raising stuff, sneaking through town, ducking down side alleys, keeping out of sight. We don’t know who our enemies are. Dervish doesn’t think many humans will be working for the demons, that most of the people here are innocent. But we can’t be sure who to trust. We know a few of the traitors — Chuda Sool and Tump Kooniart, the guards who were with Kuk and his father when they disappeared, probably Davida. But there will be more. We can’t expose ourselves and risk raising the alarm.

  I suggest making ourselves invisible. Dervish vetoes the idea. “Powerful demons can sense magic being used. We’ve been lucky so far, but every time one of us draws on the power in the air, we risk pinpointing our position.”

  So we steal through town unassisted by magic. Luckily, although it’s afternoon, Slawter is quiet, not many people about. We make it to Davida’s offices unnoticed and let ourselves in. One of her secretaries is usually stationed at the front desk, but our luck holds — the chair is vacant. We slip past and into the main office, the hub of operations, from which all orders flow.

  Davida isn’t here. The office is empty. Lots of papers, small demon models, a miniature set of the town, maps on the walls with scores of dates, names, times, schedules. But no Davida Haym.

  “Go through the drawers,” Dervish says, hurrying to one of the many file cabinets in the room. “Look for anything that might give us an advantage — plans, a list of demons, spells, whatever.”

  “You think she’ll keep details like that in unlocked cabinets?” Bill-E asks.

  “No,” Dervish sighs. “But it’ll keep us busy. And you never know — we might get lucky.”

  Rooting through drawers, pulling out folders, glancing through the pages, then discarding them, scattering them across the floor, not caring about the mess we’re making.

  I’m halfway through a drawer when Bill-E makes a shushing sound and hurries to the door. He listens for a second, then nods — people are coming. Dervish and I move up ne
xt to him, taking cover behind the door, crouching low so as not to be visible through the upper panels of glass in the office wall.

  Footsteps. Two people talking. The door opens.

  “— have to get it right,” Davida Haym says, stepping into the office. “This is a one-time deal. If we blow it, we won’t . . .” She spots the mess and stops.

  “What the hell?” Chuda Sool says, stepping up beside her.

  Dervish springs to his feet. His right hand comes flying up, fingers curled into a fist. He punches Chuda’s jaw like a professional boxer. Chuda grunts and spins aside, smacking hard into the glass of the upper wall, cracking it. Bill-E and I leap on Davida as she screams. We pull her down and cover her mouth with our hands. She tries to bite but we jam our hands down more firmly.

  Dervish closes in on Chuda, who’s dazed but still on his feet. Chuda tries to block Dervish’s next punch, but it penetrates, grazing the side of his head, not connecting as firmly as the first blow, but knocking Chuda back a few more inches. I always knew Dervish was stronger than he looked, but I’ve never seen him in this sort of kick-ass mode before. It’s cool!

  Chuda grabs a paperweight from Davida’s desk and swings it around, but Dervish blocks his arm and knocks it aside. Chuda roars and gets the fingers of one hand on Dervish’s throat. Dervish lets him squeeze, cool as ice, sizing him up. Then he pummels a fist into Chuda’s stomach. Chuda