by Darren Shan
"What's he talking about?" I croaked.
"I think I understand," Harkat whispered, then spoke to Spits. "How many of the people that you fished from the sea did youkill?"
"Most of 'em," Spits giggled. "In the heat o' battle, nobody took any notice of them what jumped overboard. I kept the occasional one alive, t' show off t' the cap'n and crew. But I slit the throats o' most and hid the bodies in the galley."
"And then you carved them up, cooked them and served them to the pirates," Harkat said hollowly, and I felt my stomach churn.
"What?" I gasped.
"That's Spits's big secret," Harkat said sickly. "He was a cannibal and he turned his crewmates into cannibals too!"
"They loved it!" Spits howled. "They'd've gone on eating Spits's grub fer ever and said nowt if that new lad hadn't walked in on me while I was carving up a nice fat vicar and his wife! After that, they acted disgusted and treated me like a monster."
"I've eaten human flesh," Harkat said quietly. "Little People will eat anything. When I first came back from the dead, my thoughts weren't my own, and I ate with the rest. But we only ate the flesh of those who'd died naturally. We didn't kill. And we didn't take pleasure from it. Youare a monster, even to someone like me."
Spits sneered. "Come off it, imp! I know why ye're really here t' feast yer chops on Spits's stew! Shan boy too!" His eyes fixed on me and he winked crookedly. "Ye thought I didn't know what ye was, but Spits ain't as dumb as he lets on. Ye're a bloodsucker! Ye fed from me when ye thought I was asleep. So don't play the innocents, lads 'twon't work!"
"You're wrong, Spits," I said. "I drink blood to survive, and Harkat's done things in the past that he's ashamed of. But we aren't killers or cannibals. We don't want any part of your unholy feast."
"We'll see if ye think that way when ye smell the cooking," Spits cackled. "When yer lips are drooling and yer bellies growling, yell come running, plates out, begging fer a thick, juicy slice o' thigh."
"He's completely out of his mind," I whispered to Harkat, then called aloud to Spits. "Have you forgotten the dragons?We'll get roasted and eaten if we stand around gabbing!"
"They won't bother us," Spits said confidently. "The Tiny man told me. He said as long as I stayed within eight feet o' the Lake, the dragons couldn't harm me they can't come this close. There's a spell on the Lake. Unless a living person jumps or falls in, the dragons can't come near."
Spits stopped dragging on his net and gazed at us calmly. "Don't ye see, lads? We don't ever need t' leave. We can stay here the rest of our lives, fishing fer dinner each day, all the water we can drink. Tiny said he'd drop by if we made it, and promised t' provide me with pots and material t' build fires. We'll have t' eat our catch raw till then, but I've ate humans raw before not as tasty as when cooked, but ye won't have cause fer complaint."
"That'syour dream!" Harkat hissed. "Not to return to our world, but to stay here for ever, fishing for the souls of the dead!"
"Aaarrr!" Spits laughed. "Tiny told me all about it. The souls don't have bodies in the water them's just ghosts that we see. But once they're dragged on to dry land, they become real, the way they was before they died. I'll be able t' kill 'em again and carve 'em up any way I like. An unending supply including the souls o' the cap'n and most o' the others on thePrince o' Pariahs! I can have revenge on top of a full stomach!"
There was a heavy thud behind us the male dragon had returned and set down close to where we were standing. I raised a globe to throw at him, but then I saw that he wasn't coming any closer. Spits was right about the dragons not being able to approach the Lake.
"We can't let you do it," I said. Focusing on Spits, I started walking towards him.
"Ye can't stop me," he sniffed. "If ye don't want t' stay, ye can leave. I'll fish up the imp's soul and ye can take yer chances with the dragons. But there's nowt ye can do t' make me go with ye. I'm staying."
"No," I said. "We won't let you."
"Stay back!" Spits warned, lowering his net and drawing a knife. "I like ye both ye're decent sorts fer a vampire and an imp! but I'll slice the skin clean off yer bones if I have t'!"
"Don't try, Spits," Harkat said, stepping up behind me. "You've seen us in action. You know we're stronger and faster than you. Don't make us hurt you."
"I ain't scared o' ye!" Spits shouted, backing away, waving his knife at us. "Ye need me more than I need ye! Unless ye back off, I won't fish yer soul out, and this'll all have been fer nowt!"
"I don't care," Harkat said softly. "I'd rather blow my chance and die, than leave you here to torment the souls of the dead and feed upon them."
"But they're bad 'uns!" Spits howled. "These ain't the souls o' good people they're the souls o' the lost and damned, who couldn't get int' heaven."
"It doesn't matter," Harkat said. "We won't let you eat them."
"Crazy pair o' landlubbers," Spits snarled, coming to a halt. "Ye think ye can rob me o' the one thing that's kept me going all these years alone in this hellhole? 'Twasn't enough fer ye t' rob me o' me whisky now ye wants t' take me meat away too! Well damn ye, demons o' the dark damn ye both t' hell!"
With that shrill cry, Spits attacked, slicing wildly with his knife. We had to leap back quickly to avoid being gutted by the raging ex-pirate. Spits raced after us, whooping gleefully, chopping with his knife. "Gonna slice ye up and cook ye!" he howled. "The dead can wait I'll feast onyer flesh tonight! I'm gonna see what ye're made of inside. I never ate a vampire or imp before 'twill make fer an interesting comparison!"
"Spits!" I roared, ducking out of the way of his knife. "Stop now and we'll let you live! Otherwise we'll have to kill you!"
"Only one man'll be doing any killing today!" Spits retorted. "Spits Abrams, scourge o' the seas, lord o' the Lake, sultan o' chefs, king o'"
Before Spits got any further, Harkat slid inside his stabbing range and grabbed his knife arm. Spits screamed at the Little Person and punched him with his free fist. When that didn't have any effect, he pulled a whisky bottle out of his sack and prepared to break it over Harkat's head.
"No you don't!" I grunted, seizing Spits's forearm. I squeezed tightly, until I heard bones cracking. Spits screeched painfully, dropped the bottle and spun away from me. I released him and he retreated sharply, breaking free of Harkat's grip, collapsing on the ground a couple of metres away. "Quit it!" I yelled as Spits staggered to his feet and drew another bottle, cradling his injured arm across his chest.
"Never!" he cried. "I've still got one good hand. That'll be enough t'" He stopped when he saw us freeze, our eyes widening. "What're ye up t' now?" he asked suspiciously. We couldn't answer, only gaze wordlessly at the space behind him. Spits sensed that we weren't trying to trick him, and whipped around to see what we were staring at. He found himself gazing up into the fierce cold eyes of the male dragon.
"Is that all that's bothering ye?" Spits hooted. "Didn't I tell ye they couldn't come next nor near us as long as we stayed "
He trailed off into silence. He looked down at his feet, then at us, then at the Lake which was about four or five metres away from where he was standing!
Spits could have made a run for it, but didn't. With a bitter smile, he shook his head, spat into the grass, and muttered, "Aaarrr!" The dragon opened its mouth wide when Spits said that as though he'd been awaiting an order and blew a huge ball of fire over the stranded ex-pirate. Spits disappeared in flames and Harkat and I had to cover our eyes and turn aside from the heat.
When we looked again, a fiery Spits was stumbling towards us, arms thrashing, face invisible beneath a mask of red flames. If he was screaming, we couldn't hear him over the crackle of his burning hair and clothes. We lunged out of his way as Spits staggered closer. He continued past us, oblivious to our presence, and didn't stop until he reached the edge of the Lake of Souls and toppled in.
Snapping out of our daze, we raced to the Lake in case there was anything we could do to help Spits. But we were too late. He was already deep under wat
er, arms still moving, but weakly. As we watched, the shimmering shades of the dead surrounded the pirates body, as though guiding it on its way. Spits's arms gradually stopped waving, then his body sunk deeper into the water, until it vanished from sight in the murky gloom of the soul-filled depths.
"Poor Spits," Harkat croaked. "That was awful."
"He probably deserved it," I sighed, "but I wish it could have happened some other way. If only he'd"
A roar stopped the words dead in my throat. My head shot around and I spotted the male dragon, hovering in the air close above us, eyes gleaming. "Don't worry," Harkat said. "We're close to the Lake. It can't " The words died on his lips and he stared at me, his green eyes filling with fear.
"The spell!" I moaned. "Spits said it would only last until a living person fell into the Lake! And he was still alive when "
As we stood trembling, the dragon no longer bound by the spell opened his jaws wide and coughed a ball of fire straight at us meaning to finish us off the same way he'd killed Spits!
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
IREACTEDquicker to the flames than Harkat I'd been badly burnt many years earlier, and had no wish to suffer the same fate again. I hurled myself into the Little Person, knocked him clear of the blast and rolled after him. As the flames zipped past us, out over the water of the Lake momentarily illuminating the faces of the dead trapped within I reached for a globe and hurled it at the ground beneath the dragon. There was a large explosion and the dragon peeled away, roaring this was his first exposure to our explosives.
"Hurry!" I shouted at Harkat. "Give me your globes, grab the net and fish your soul out!"
"I don't know how to fish!" Harkat howled.
"There's no better time to learn!" I bellowed, then threw another globe as one of the females swooped upon us.
Harkat swiftly unloaded his globes and laid them on the ground by my feet. Then, grabbing Spits's abandoned net, he pulled it out of the Lake, paused a moment to clear his thoughts, and slowly fed the net in. As he did, he muttered softly, "I seek my soul, spirits of the dead. I seek my soul, spirits of the dead. I seek my"
"Don't talk!" I yelled. "Fish!"
"Quiet!" Harkat hissed. "This is the way. I sense it. I must call upon my soul to lure it into the net."
I wanted to ask how he'd figured that out, but there was no time the male and both females were attacking, the females from the left and right, the male floating out over the Lake, in front of us. Scaring off the females with two hastily thrown globes, I studied the dragon angling down towards the surface of the Lake. If I threw a globe at the Lake, it wouldn't burst. That meant I'd have to aim for the dragon itself, and possibly kill him. It seemed a shame, but there were no other options.
I was getting a fix on the dragon when an idea struck me. Hurling the globe out on to the water in front of the approaching beast, I grabbed a nearby pebble, took careful aim, and sent it flying at the globe. It struck just as the dragon was nearing the globe, showering the creature's face with a seething funnel of water.
The dragon pulled out of its attack and arced away into the air, screeching its frustration. The females almost sneaked in while I was dealing with the male, but I spotted them just in time and scattered them with another blast. While the dragons regrouped overhead, I did a quick globe count eight remained, plus the vial.
I wanted to tell Harkat to hurry, but his face was knitted together fiercely as he bent over the net, whispering softly to the souls in the Lake, searching for the soul of the person he used to be. To disturb him would be to delay him.
The dragons attacked again, in the same formation as before, and once again I successfully repelled them, leaving myself with five lonely-looking globes. As I picked up three more, I considered aiming to kill after these three, I'd be down to my final pair but as I studied the dragons circling in the air, I was again struck by their awesome majesty. This was their world, not ours. We had no right to kill them. What if these were the only living dragons, and we wiped out an entire species just to save our own necks?
As the dragons attacked once more, I still wasn't sure what I intended to do with the explosive globes. Clearing my mind, I allowed my self-defence mechanism to kick in and make the choice for me. When I found my hands pitching the globes short of the dragons, scaring them off but not killing them, I nodded grimly. "So be it," I sighed, then called to Harkat, "I can't kill them. After the next attack, we're done for. Do you want to take the globes and"
"I have it!" Harkat shouted, hauling ferociously on the net, the strings of which tightened and creaked alarmingly. "A few more seconds! Buy me just a few more seconds!"
"I'll do what I can," I grimaced, then faced the dragons, which were homing in on us as before, patiently repeating their previous manoeuvre. For the final time I sent the females packing, then pulled out the vial, tossed it on to the surface of the Lake, and smashed it with a pebble. Some glass must have struck the male dragon when the vial exploded, because he roared with pain as he peeled away.
Now that there was nothing else to do, I hurried to Harkat and grabbed hold of the net. "It's heavy!" I grunted, feeling the resistance as we tugged.
"A whopper!" Harkat agreed, grinning crazily.
"Are you OK?" I roared.
"I don't know!" he shouted. "I'm excited but terrified! I've waited so long for this moment, and I still don't know what to expect!"
We couldn't see the face of the figure caught in the strands of the net it was turned away from us but it was a man, light of build, with what looked to be dirty blond hair. As we pulled the spirit out of the Lake, its form glittered, then became solid, a bit at a time, first a hand, then an arm, followed by its other hand, its head, chest
We had the rescued soul almost all the way out when I caught sight of the male dragon zooming towards us, his snout bleeding, pain and fury in his large yellow eyes. "Harkat!" I screamed. "We're out of time!"
Glancing up, Harkat spotted the dragon and grunted harshly. He gave the net one last desperate tug. The body in the net shot forward, its left foot solidifying and clearing the water with a pop similar to a gun's retort. As the dragon swooped down on us, its mouth closed, nostrils flaring, working on a fireball, Harkat spun the body over on to its back, revealing a pale, confused, horrified face.
"What the?" I gasped.
"It can't be!" Harkat croaked, as the man in the net impossibly familiar stared at us with terror-filled eyes.
"Harkat!" I roared. "That can't be who you were!" My gaze flicked to the Little Person. "Can it?"
"I don't know," Harkat said, bewildered. He stared at the dragon now almost upon us then down at the man lying shivering on the shore. "Yes!" he shouted suddenly. "That's me! I'm him! I know who I was! I "
As the dragon opened its mouth and blew fire at us with all the force it could muster, Harkat threw his head back and bellowed at the top of his voice, "I was the vampire traitor Kurda Smahlt!"
Then the dragon's fire washed over us and the world turned red.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IFELLto the ground, clamping my lips and eyes shut. Clambering to my knees, I tried to crawl out of the ball of fire before I was consumed to the bone
then paused when I realized that although I was surrounded by the dragon's flames, there wasn't any heat! I opened my left eyelid a fraction, ready to shut it again quick. What I saw caused both my eyes to snap open and my jaw to drop with astonishment.
The world around me had stopped. The dragon hung frozen over the Lake, a long line of fire extending from its mouth. The fire covered not just me, but Harkat and the naked man Kurda Smahlt! on the ground. But none of us was burnt. The static flames hadn't harmed us.
"What's going on?" Harkat asked, his words echoing hollowly.
"I haven't a clue," I said, running a hand through the frozen fire around me it felt like warm fog.
"Over there!" the man on the ground croaked, pointing to his left.
Harkat and I followed the direction of the fi
nger and saw a short, tubby man striding towards us, beaming broadly, playing with a heart-shaped watch.
"Mr Tiny!" we shouted together, then cut through the harmless flames Harkat grabbed Kurda under the arms and dragged him out and hurried to meet the mysterious little man.
"Tight timing, boys!" Mr Tiny boomed as we came within earshot. "I didn't expect it to go that close to the wire. A thrilling finale! Most satisfying."
I stopped and stared at Mr Tiny. "You didn't know how it would turn out?" I asked.
"Of course not," he smirked. "That's what made it so much fun. A few more seconds and you'd have been toast!"
Mr Tiny stepped past me and held out a cloak to Harkat and his naked companion. "Cover the poor soul," Mr Tiny punned.
Harkat took the cloak and draped it around Kurda's shoulders. Kurda said nothing, just stared at the three of us, his blue eyes wide with suspicion and fear, trembling like a newborn baby.
