The London Pride

by Charlie Fletcher

  But they were, of course, bigger than moths. They were bigger than soup plates, and they were not hungry for the light within the room, which was dim. They brought their own light. And as he stared at them, at the way the mosquitoes whirred their wings and jabbed at the glass, seeing how hard they could hit it before either it broke or they knocked themselves out, he realised that they were not just hungry. They were angry. He couldn’t have explained it rationally, but they gave off a wild and furious energy as they rattled at the glass.

  There was something extra unsettling about their malice, something insectile and alien and wrong. It did more than frighten him. It made his skin crawl, like he was itching from the inside and he couldn’t scratch the feeling away.

  Suddenly, opening the window seemed like the single very worst idea in the whole world.

  One of the giant mosquitoes flew backwards and hung in the air, three metres out, just like someone taking a run-up to barge open a door, and then flew forwards at speed, ramming the window.

  There was a harsh crack, but the window was made of toughened glass and it held. Will found he had instinctively raised the dragon shield to protect himself, which was strange because not only was it an entirely unconscious gesture but he also had no memory of having picked it up. The self-preservation autopilot seemed to be working overtime.

  He yanked the curtains shut.

  There was another sharp crack from behind them.

  ‘Jo,’ he said, voice crackling with worry. ‘Where are you?’

  13

  Up and out

  Jo was boosted up the stairs by such a surge of fear-fuelled adrenalin that her bad leg didn’t hurt at all. Or if it did, the pain had got pushed so far down the list of things to be paid attention to later that it made no difference. It was only when she hit the cross-bar that opened the exit to the roof, clunking it forwards and making the door spring open, that she felt her knee spasm and lock up as she jarred to a halt

  ‘Ouch,’ she winced, and bent to rub it. Then she remembered the mayhem that might at any moment come bounding up the stairs behind her, so she took a moment to slam the fire door shut, and leaned back on it, getting her breath.

  Her hot face was immediately cooled by the rain driving down out of the grey pre-dawn sky. She took a couple of deep breaths, and then checked the roof for any new threats: it was flat and empty, covered in rain-slick chips of gravel. There was a skeletal railing that ran around the perimeter, blocky air-conditioning units that looked like inside-out refrigerators, and some skylights.

  Thankfully there were no lions or dragons or cobras or rats, golden or otherwise. There was just wet grit and the unsightly working bits of buildings that get piled on the top of modern buildings, the stuff no one is meant to see from the street.

  Jo wrenched her mind into gear: she was, for the moment, safe: wet, shivering and definitely twinge-y in the leg, but temporarily safe. Temporarily was the problem: she knew she had to get back to Will, or get Will back to her, and there was only one way she could think of doing it.

  Selene.

  Selene was on the front of the building. She was meant to be guarding it. So that meant the lion and the snakes and the rats had crept in elsewhere, perhaps around the back. So Selene might, she realised, not even know what was going on.

  There was a thunderclap and a brutally swift flash of lightning, and then the rain just seemed to bunch up and redouble its efforts at drowning the city. Jo limped across the roof, feeling the fat raindrops beginning to pummel her head and shoulders, her feet dragging across the gravel.

  She got to the front of the building and gingerly looked down into the street.

  It was empty. Or rather it was full of unmoving people who glowed blue and ghostly in the gloom of the downpour, but there was no sign of Selene where she should be, on guard on her plinth overlooking the front entrance to the hotel. No Selene. No help. Just plinth.

  ‘Great,’ said Jo through gritted teeth. ‘Just gr—’

  The word died on her lips, unfinished. Below her she saw two large bronze lions prowl lazily round the corner, threading between the frozen people, low to the ground, their tails twitching sinuously – unmistakably hunting. They stopped at the front door to the hotel and leaned gently forwards, nostrils flaring. One of them jammed its muzzle to the gap beneath the glass door and worried at it, sniffing air in noisily, as if trying to inhale whatever was inside, like a giant feral vacuum cleaner.

  The second lion raised its head to look upwards. Jo wound her own head back so fast she heard bones click; she didn’t want to be seen. There was no way the lion could jump even a quarter of the way up to the roof, but she didn’t want it to spot her, nor did she trust herself to look into its eyes.

  Will. He was trapped in the room, unaware that there were lions in the building, and more than one by the look of it. She had to warn him.

  She scrabbled back and edged around the perimeter of the roof. There was no easy way off the building that she could see, but she didn’t want to retrace her steps down those stairs. Her heart was still thudding hard, trying to punch its way out of her ribcage, and she could hear herself panting hoarsely. She shut her mouth and tried to calm herself by breathing through the nose.

  She realised she might be able to shout down to Will and warn him. She quickly jogged across to the back of the building and looked gingerly over the edge, trying to remember how many floors she had run past so she could work out which window was his.

  She didn’t need to work it out. It was clear. The huge gold bugs fluttering around the window were the big giveaway. From outside she could hear a whirring and a high-pitched whine that Will – inside the room and muffled by the double glazing – had been spared. She saw the gilded mosquitoes, big as falcons, taking it in turns to bash themselves against the glass. Every time they hit, all the raindrops bounced off and fell outwards in a fine mist.

  She withdrew her head and took a deep breath to calm herself, because her mind really did feel like it was about to collapse into hopeless panic. She tried to find something to hold on to. The thing they’d said as they shook hands back on the stairs came back to her.

  ‘We stay together and we get through this together,’ she said out loud. She heard herself and suddenly knew she had a choice: she could be saying that to torture herself with how hollow the words now sounded. Or she could decide to live up to them. And living sounded better than torture.

  ‘OK,’ she said quietly, as she leaned on her stick. ‘Lions at the front, bugs at the back. Let’s see what happens at the side …’

  She was halfway across the width of the building when she found out. First there was a whomping sound, like helicopter rotors in slow motion.

  That stopped her in her tracks.

  Then, through the rain that was now pelting down like stair rods, she saw something rise into view from beneath the edge of the building.

  First a dark puff of steam, then wingtips that disappeared as the dragon beat downwards, raising its spiny head above the parapet. Then the full and dreadful span of wings as it clawed itself higher into the pelting downpour. The muscular tail that hung beneath it lashed into view and it bounced up and forwards over the railing and landed with a thunderous crack on top of a big skylight, whose raised plinth gave it even more height above her, and added to the theatrical horror of its appearance.

  It looked nastily pleased with itself, red tongue lolling out of a monstrously fanged smile. It was so busy enjoying the effects of its surprise appearance that it did not attack immediately, but stood there enjoying the moment.

  She gripped her stick in both hands, ready to swing it in self-defence; she was surprised to find she was determined to go down fighting, no matter how futile that might be.

  It didn’t feel like she was being brave. It didn’t feel like a choice at all. It was simpler than that: she had nowhere to run. She was done. All she could control was how she went. And getting all teary and blubbery would only add to the win for the d
ragon. And this dragon was not getting any more win from her. Giving it more win to gloat about would be … undignified.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said, voice gravelly with the fear she was trying not to show. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  The rain beat down. It rat-tailed her hair and plastered her clothes to her back. It made the hot metal of the dragon’s neck and chest steam and hiss, so that it had a kind of permanent ghostly ruff around its shoulders. It was in no hurry. It was wallowing in expectant gloat.

  She had more time to think, then. She knew she could move quite fast, especially if she ignored the pain in her knee, but she really didn’t think she could make it through the fire-escape door before the dragon snatched her with those savage talons, or crisped her with a blast of wildfire. But maybe if it leapt for her and she sidestepped it …

  Maybe, just maybe, in the very short interval it took to turn itself round she might buy enough time.

  So, in the extra moment the dragon’s gloating allowed her, that became her plan. After all, it was at least something, and something is always better than nothing, and there was just the one dragon.

  ‘Just the one dragon,’ she said bitterly, laughing at herself. She could hear the hysteria rising behind her voice. It was, however, like football. She’d been good at football before she fell through the roof and had her leg pinned back together. And one thing she knew was that to avoid someone’s tackle, you had to wait until they had committed themselves to it, and then you could move out of their way as their momentum worked in your favour and took them past you. She just had to make this thing move.

  She knew how hopeless and unrealistic this was, but no realistic plans were occurring to her right now. She must look pretty silly, standing braced like some kind of rain-sodden ninja-samurai wannabe, legs apart, flimsy stick held two-handed like a sword, dwarfed and soaking. Maybe that was why the dragon was giving her such a very nastily amused look.

  The situation was hopeless. But the nasty look was the last straw. It was unbearable. She felt anger spike through her fear, like a sudden explosion of heat needling behind the bridge of her nose. She knew this was her eyes getting red, and though the rain would likely hide any tears of frustration from the dragon, she was determined not to betray herself in front of it.

  ‘COME ON!’ she yelled, and stamped her leading foot closer. ‘COME ON! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!’

  Dragons probably don’t snigger, but the noise this one made definitely oozed quite a lot of smirk. As if to emphasise its power and to show it was in no particular hurry to barbecue her, it looked casually behind itself, and as her eyes were inexorably drawn after it, she saw precisely and terribly what it HAD been waiting for.

  Another dragon, its silver-painted twin, rose from below the lip of the building with the same ominous whomping wing-thud and, in a movement that matched the first one so exactly that you might have thought their motions were rehearsed, it bounded forwards and landed next door to it on the raised skylight, with a similarly percussive crack.

  The only difference between them was the shield it carried. It wasn’t metal. It was plywood. And instead of a proud red cross it shouted ‘GOLF SALE LAST CHANCE!!!’ at her, in foot-high neon lettering. She didn’t have the time to begin to wonder what that was about.

  Both dragons looked very pleased with each other indeed. For about half a second. Then they turned to look at her instead.

  One dragon was quite bad enough. Escaping one dragon was the wildest of wild long shots. But two dragons?

  ‘Last chance?’ she muttered to herself, looking at the plywood shield. ‘More like Game Over.’

  She needed a miracle.

  Perhaps if she could make them both attack at once she could dive between them and they might get tangled up as they tried to turn and chase her. Or maybe she should just get this thing started so it could all be over sooner.

  Her mouth was too dry to say anything brave or clever, so she hefted the stick and stamped forwards another six inches.

  The dragons looked at her. Then looked at each other. And then they definitely, DEFINITELY sniggered. Both of them.

  Then they turned and looked at her and did something even worse.

  The first dragon imitated her. It shuffled round so it was side-on, like she was, then it raised its stubby arms as if holding an imaginary sword, and then stamped its foot. Just like she’d done. The other one sniggered, wobbled its eyebrows and did exactly the same, adding a really demeaning wiggle of its bottom as it did so.

  The other dragon emitted a gleeful and wheezy ‘sheesh sheesh sheesh’ noise as it giggled at its friend’s antics, and stamped its foot again.

  Toughened glass can take a lot of punishment.

  But it isn’t indestructible.

  One minute there were two dragons mocking and mimicking her. Then there was a loud splintering noise.

  One of the dragons went ‘Ulp … ?’

  The other went ‘… Ook?’

  And then the glass beneath their feet splintered and gave way, and gravity took over as they dropped straight down the light well beneath them, plunging out of sight as abruptly as if a mysterious hand had just erased them from the planet.

  One hit its chin on the lip of the skylight with a surprised grunt of pain as it plummeted away, snapping its snout towards the sky and leaving a surprised puff of smoke hanging in the air, as a kind of exclamation mark.

  Jo and Will’s dad was a great believer in mulligans. Mulligans are do-overs. Playing table tennis, if you messed up your first serve, you were allowed one mulligan, which meant you started again. It was a family rule. And as a soldier he had expanded this rule to life in all its unpredictability, a large and unpleasant portion of which he had seen, and tried very hard not to bring home. All he did bring home was the positive lessons this hard side of his work had taught him. ‘Work hard, play hard, rest and eat when you can, don’t worry about failing, just fail better next time – and when fate offers you a mulligan?’ he would say. ‘Grab it with both hands.’

  The dragons falling through the skylight was the mulligan of mulligans and Jo grabbed it without thinking.

  She spun and sprinted for the door, feet kicking spurts of rain-soaked gravel as she ran.

  She leapt over the gaping skylight and caught a glimpse of the two dragons tangled together at the foot of a long and narrow light well. It hadn’t given them quite enough space to unfold their wings, but just enough to get thoroughly snarled up with each other. She landed on the other side with a sharp pain in her knee that made her stumble and gasp.

  Stumbling saved her because as she bent over, something gold buzzed over her head so close that she felt the whirr of its angry wings on the exposed back of her neck. She looked back and saw, with horror, that it was one of the golden mosquitoes.

  That wasn’t a real mulligan then.

  Or if it was, it was the shortest one in history, more like a very dispiriting out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire-flavoured-mulligan instead.

  The mosquito hummed into the rain and curved back on itself, returning to the attack.

  Jo raced for the door, running badly lopsided now, the pain pounding through her knee with each step. She heard the approaching high-pitched whine behind her and spun, whiffling her cane through the raindrops, missing the mosquito entirely. It passed her, looped back up into the sky and came back for the kill.

  ‘Girl!’ shouted a voice from behind her. ‘Run to me!’

  She snapped her head left.

  Selene was hovering by the edge of the building, beckoning her.

  Jo ran, hunched low, legs pounding, towards the open arms.

  ‘Keep running and jump!’ cried Selene, which confused Jo, but not nearly as much as the fact that as she heard the mosquito closing in on her again, Selene’s own dragonfly wings whirred and misted the raindrops as she flew straight at her.

  ‘Duck and then jump!’ she yelled as she overflew Jo, missing her entirely. Jo craned her neck backwards a
nd saw the goddess of sleep bring her hands together in a mighty double swat that sandwiched the mosquito and splatted it in a satisfying shower of gold.

  ‘Jump!’ shouted Selene.

  Jo caught the note of worry in her voice and realised she was still moving forwards, too close to the edge of the roof to stop, too powerless to make the leap across the chasm of the alley between her and the next-door building. Her legs became desperate and disjointed as despite all this her body tried to stop her, and then her foot caught the low wall and tried to brake her forward momentum—

  It was too little too late, and all she did was send herself into a flailing cartwheel out beyond the end of the roof, tumbling down into the rain-filled gulf of air beyond.

  14

  Dog gone

  Man’s Best Friend v. King of the Jungle is not even close to a fair match. Normally a dog would have no chance against a lion.

  Luckily for Will, Filax was a larger-than-life sculpture of an especially fierce kind of hound, bred to defend herds of sheep and cattle against wolves and bears, whereas the lion that had crept into the hotel on the trail of Will and Jo was a half-life-size sculpture of a heraldic lion whose day job was propping up one side of a coat of arms and trying to look more decorative than the unicorn that leaned against the other side of the shield. It wasn’t quite a wild lion: it was more of an indoor lion, carved for artistic effect, not built for speed and ferocity.

  Filax had rather enjoyed dispatching one of the golden cobras, and he had tossed the other out of harm’s way before engaging with the lion, so he was warmed up and ready for a scrap. Decorative though the lion might have been, it was still a lion, and the fight was quite evenly matched. The two animals turned into a whirling ball of marble and sandstone as they bit and slashed at each other. Filax’s advantage was that he managed to get a grip on the lion’s back, which meant that the lion’s main advantage – the cruel talons on its paws – could not get at him in any substantially disabling way. If they had been fighting face to face it would have been a shorter conflict, because a lion likes nothing more than getting a grip with its forepaws and then slashing away with its back claws in a horrible disembowelling movement. If they’d been head to head Filax would have been scooped open like the kind of soft toy whose stomach Jo used to unzip and store her pyjamas in.