“Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble with this get-up,” Oz muttered. He didn’t really want to touch any part of this thing, but he knew he had to. Ellie knelt next to him and reached for the mask while Oz grabbed hold of the clawed hands, just in case it woke up.
“Ready?” She undid the buckle of the straps under the Beast’s chin that held the mask in place. Quickly, she yanked it off and let out a horrified gasp. What was revealed was a very human face. Red from exertion, hair plastered and clinging to the head from sweat, the eyes shut firmly in unconsciousness. Oz stared at it in dumb surprise. It was Ruff who finally whispered, “Wow. The Beast of Seabourne looks just like Niko Piotrowski.”
It was several seconds before anyone spoke. The shock of seeing Niko dressed in his murderous garb seemed finally to have tipped the balance in what had been a very weird twenty-four hours. A dull anger was growing inside Oz. He clenched and unclenched his fists. Someone had done this to Niko, and Oz read the exact same realisation in the others’ faces.
“Doesn’t look so good, does he?” Ruff observed.
“We’d better think about getting him back to camp,” Ellie said finally.
“Yeah.I mean, no point hanging about here. We got what we came for,” Oz said.
“And more,” Ellie added darkly.
“But Niko,” protested Ruff. “I mean, he’s the last person…”
“Probably why they chose him,” Oz muttered. “Come on, give us a hand.” Oz looked up at Ruff. “He won’t bite.”
“You sure about that?” Ruff said, with a wary glance.
Together, Oz and Ruff managed to lift Niko between them, but even as they manhandled the groggy boy through the narrow passage, light bulbs began popping in Oz’s head.
“Niko’s the real victim in all of this,” he said, as suddenly it all made a mad kind of sense.
The others paused to look at him, and they leaned Niko against the damp stone wall.
“This all stinks of artefact technology, and it’s been a set-up right from the word go.” Oz blew out air and shook his head. “How could I have I been so stupid? The idea for Niko’s transducer thingy? Sabotaging our water cycle project? It’s got Heeps and Gerber written all over it.”
“What’s that got to do with him dressing up like a maniac raccoon?” Ruff said.
Oz had the ceramic ring on his finger linking him to Soph, and she answered Ruff’s question instantly.
“I believe his costume is more typical of a honey badger, Ruff.”
“Honey badger?”
Soph explained. “Known as one of nature’s most vicious predators, it has a liking for honey but is carnivorous, with specialised claws for disembowelling its prey.”
Ruff stared at her, blinking. “Now she tells us.”
“Okay,” Ellie said. “But why did he attack Skinner and Pheeps?”
“Because Niko thought he was attacking me. Don’t you see?” Oz said.
“Umm, no, not really,” Ruff said.
Oz was shaking his head. It was a plan of such intricate construction, he was hardly able to believe it himself.
“Go back to visiting Mr Eldred. The JG Telecom van and the boy that looked like a bear? Remember what the woman said to it.’Can you smell his stink?’ They weren’t trying to attack me; they just wanted my scent so that they could program it into Niko the honey badger’s head.”
Now both Ellie and Ruff were staring at Oz with deep frowns on their foreheads, as if the words he was saying etched lines of incredulity there as he spoke.
“So, Skinner had your scent…because of the hat,” Ellie said.
“Exactly.” It was all there now. He could see it all developing like a photograph in front of his eyes. “Heeps used the word ‘accident’ when he talked about Phillipa being attacked in the hall. It was weird at the time, but now…” He snorted out a disbelieving laugh. “He said accident because the Beast ‘accidentally’ attacked the wrong person. I’d left my hoody under a stool by the drum kit. I bet Pheeps picked it up. Probably wanted to hide it or something stupid like that, just to annoy me. Then Niko turns up as the Beast.
They were expecting me to be there. I’m the drummer; I have the most kit to set up. But I was late.” He shook his head. “I thought Pheeps had torn the hoody to pieces, but it must have been Niko, trying to get at her under the stage.”
“But what about last night?” Ellie said. “Why did Niko attack my tent?”
“Last night you borrowed my rugby shirt, remember?”
“Oh, sugar,” Ellie said before glancing at the unconscious boy. “Poor old Niko.”
“Exactly. If they had to choose someone to get at me, why not the slightly weird foreign kid? Like I said, it stinks.”
Ruff turned to Niko. “Well, he’s okay now. Let’s get him outside into some fresh air.”
They grabbed Niko and hauled him up and out onto the side of the mountain, where a glorious dawn greeted them. An orange sun had risen, and after the dimness of the cave, they all squinted while their eyes adjusted to the brightness.
“What now?” Ruff asked. “Don’t fancy carrying him all the way back.”
“You heard what Soph said,” Ellie reminded them. “He’ll be coming round soon. Why don’t we wait a few minutes?”
They perched precariously on the slope, Niko wedged between the two boys as they pondered how best to get him down.
Ellie saw the figure first. She pointed to the escarpment above them and cried out. “There’s someone up there; look.”
A solitary figure stood silhouetted against the ochre sky.
“Hey,” yelled Ellie, “over here.”
The figure turned, waved back, and hurried towards them. The terrain was clearly easier to navigate on the higher ground.
“Think it’s a search party?” Ruff asked as they watched it approach.
“Ellie Messenger, is that you?” The figure’s voice came to them with crystal clarity through the frozen air.
“It’s Skelton,” Ruff said in a surprised whisper.
A few moments later, the science teacher stood above them, a bloody gauze protruding from under his woolly hat where the gash on his temple still oozed, relief and confusion in equal measure in his face.
“Well, well. Ellie, Rufus, and Oscar. And is that Niko you have with you?”
“Yes, sir,” Ellie said.
“But how? What on earth are you doing here?”
“We, uhh…sort of followed you,” Ruff mumbled. “We saw you leave the campsite last night and…”
Skelton frowned. “You shouldn’t have done that. Miss Arkwright will be worried sick.”
It was exactly what Oz would expect Skelton to say. There were going to be tough questions to answer.
“But lucky we did, sir,” Ellie said, trying to sugar the pill. “You were unconscious when we found you.”
The science teacher pressed his fingers to the gauze under his hat and laughed. “So you were the good Samaritans that wrapped me up, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” Ellie said.
“Well, thank you for that. But it still doesn’t explain what you’re doing up here.”
Ruff and Ellie sent Oz a couple of desperate glances. If they were hoping to find inspiration in Oz’s expression, they were disappointed. Ruff had half-turned so that Skelton could neither see nor hear him as he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “Let’s say we followed Niko’s trail again after wrapping him up in the blanket,” Ruff said. “It’s sort of true. Unless you want to tell him all about Soph?”
Oz looked at him but didn’t answer immediately. Telling Skelton about Soph was the last thing he wanted to do, and Ruff knew that. But Oz was only half-listening. His brain was too busy putting two and two together and coming up with a number that simply did not compute.
“How come you’re up here, sir?” Oz asked.
“Me? Oh, I’ve been wandering around for an hour or more, hopelessly lost. I was trying to get my bearings and made for higher ground. Now th
at it’s light, I’m sure we can find our way back. I suggest we get the lot of you up these last few metres. The going is much easier up here.” Skelton unslung his backpack and took out a slender nylon rope, which he threw down to them.
Ellie and Ruff immediately reached for it until Oz turned to them and said, in a cracked voice, “Don’t.”
“Oscar, this is no time for games,” Skelton warned.
Oz ignored him and spoke directly to his friends. He was thinking about the garages at Sussex Street. Thinking and sending Soph questions as quickly as he could think them. Suddenly, he said, “Remember the bear auramal? He had a handler.”
“Shut up, Oz,” whispered Ellie, eyebrows raised. “He’ll hear you.”
“It doesn’t matter, Ellie,” Oz said with a sickly smile. “Soph says that there’s a GPS tracking signal coming from somewhere on Niko. She says the receiver is twenty yards northeast.”
“Where?” Ruff asked.
Oz turned and pointed towards where Skelton was standing. “There.” He almost lost his balance as Ellie grabbed at him roughly.
“Oz, are you mad? That’s Mr Skelton…” her words trailed off as she cocked her head to listen to a high-pitched zinging noise.
The explosion, when it came, was crashingly loud. It startled Ruff so badly, it almost sent him tumbling down the scree slope. Ten yards away, a boulder the size of a microwave blew up in a cloud of dust and smoke. Everyone flinched except for Niko.
“My, my. Quite the little detectives, aren’t we?” Skelton said.
As one, they all turned to look. His face, bathed in orange dawn light, was devoid of all its usual good cheer. In its place was cold malice. In his hand was the source of the noise, a small dark gun that was pointed directly at them.
“Particle beam weapon invented by Professor Aikman. We call it the Aikman gun. One of only four in the world. Nikola Tesla would have been so proud of us at JG Industries. Oh, and did I say thank you for finding my little friend, the Beast, too?” he added coldly before looking up at the desolate landscape. “Lovely spot, eh? The ideal hideyhole for a few bodies we might not want found for a while.”
“You?” Ellie said in a voice tainted with disbelief. “You did this to Niko?”
Suddenly, Skelton stumbled and struggled to right himself on the ridge. For a second, Oz thought he might fall and wondered how long it would take to scramble up and try and get the gun away. Instead, he steadied himself on a boulder and sat down, the gun trained unerringly on Oz’s chest. He regarded the slumped, unconscious form of Niko callously.
“I see you’ve managed to knock him out.” He smiled coldly. “Impressive. But beware. When he wakes up, he might be the bogeyman again.”
“What did you do to him?” Ellie demanded.
Skelton shook his head. “Just in case you haven’t noticed, it’s me that has the gun, and by the way, I do know how to use it. Next time, it will be aimed at you, not a piece of rock. You can’t imagine what it can do to flesh and bone.” He smiled unpleasantly. “The way it works is this: I ask the questions and you give me the answers, okay? And what I need to know now is how you managed to fool me and everyone else on that bus that we were on the way to Cornwall last night when all the while we were heading for this godforsaken hellhole.”
The trio exchanged glances. Oz could still feel Soph inside his head and he wasn’t even touching the pebble. Thank God for the ring.
When no one answered, Skelton shook his head again, still wearing his superior little smile. “It was artefact technology, wasn’t it?” he said, and there was something in the way Oz reacted that made him smile more widely still. When Skelton spoke next, they could all hear the ripple of excitement in his voice. “Oh, this is good. This is very good.” He threw his head back to laugh. “And this place must be artefact-linked too, then, mustn’t it?” He was half-muttering to himself now. But then his face changed just as if he’d found an answer to a puzzle that had been tormenting him. “We’re in the Black Mountains, aren’t we? Of course.” He almost cackled this time. It was an ugly sound. “Oh, this is priceless. No one would give me details because that’s how he works. Need-to-know basis for security, but I heard rumours that some of our lot had broken into a mountain rescue centre for details of a missing hiker. This is the very place, isn’t it?”
He glared at Oz.
Ruff attempted a sneer. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you, Rufus? Really?” Skelton said softly. “Well, you soon will. Soon you’ll remember it all and be very, very happy to tell me everything you know, believe you me. Nice little spot in that cave for a chat, I expect. Just you, the darkness, and me. Oh, and some little instruments I carry with me. Stuff they normally use in operating theatres, you know? And afterwards, they may find what’s left of you and they may not. And who gives a monkey’s anyway, because I’ll be long gone with all sorts of nice little prezzies.”
Next to him, Oz felt Ruff shiver. High above them, a few birds circled, early-morning hunters looking for food. Oz heard their keening as they called to one another. It was an eerie, lonely sound. Skelton heard it, too.
“Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Red kites have a very distinctive call. Human, almost. Listen hard, because you’re never going to hear them again.”
“They’ll be out looking for us,” Ruff blurted out, but his voice sounded hollow and desperate.
“Really.” Skelton sneered. “Miss Arkwright? Striding the hills in search of her missing flock? I don’t think so, somehow. I wanted her along because she’s half the size of Ladrop, just in case our friend Niko here had to take her on, too.” He shook his head and again a little self-satisfied smile played on his lips. “And there I was thinking I’d drawn the short straw as Piotrowski’s handler.’
“Bit too much for you to handle, though, wasn’t he.” Though Skelton had the upper hand, Oz was determined not to let him forget his accident.
“I had him all right. If it hadn’t been for the slippery grass and a very inconveniently placed rock…” Skelton snarled and put his hand to his bandaged head.
“He could have done some real damage with those claws,” Ruff protested.
“That was the idea, you idiot. The wrath of the Beast of Seabourne. Likes a bit of drama, does JG. Something very Victorian about that, monsters and rippers. But then, when the Bane arrives, everyone will know about monsters, all right.”
“The Bane? What are you talking about?” Oz said, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer.
Skelton laughed. “Chaos is what I’m talking about. Madness, fear, terror. It’s coming, and JG is the architect. It’s genius. You’ve seen what he can do. Your little friend Piotrowski is just a tiny example. Neural programming controlled and triggered by UHF signals that no one can hear. All from a box in my pocket.” Skelton slapped his thigh. He wore a nauseatingly smug expression. “Imagine armies who think they’re tigers. Imagine criminals as vicious as wolverines.”
“But Niko…” Oz said.
“All we wanted was for him to cause some damage, that’s all. Bit of disembowelling. Not enough to kill you. That way we could get you alone. Indirectly, of course. You’d need specialists and care, and Gerber would have made sure they were his doctors and his nurses. What better way to get at you? See, you’re the key, Oscar. The riddle of why the artefacts are here. The answer to what ties them to that mausoleum of a house of yours.”
“Penwurt?” Oz said.
Skelton’s smile became suddenly ugly. “We tried to get it out of your father, but he didn’t know anything. That’s why he was expendable.”
Oz’s heart stuttered. When he tried to speak, his lips were stuck to his dry teeth. “What do you mean, expendable?” he croaked.
“Oh, dear,” Skelton said in mock concern, the nasty smile still distorting his mouth. “But surely you didn’t believe that rubbish about suicide, did you? Nice touch, the whiskey bottle on the passenger seat, though, wasn’t it? Enough to inst
il a little bit of doubt in everyone’s minds. Oh, no, the truth is far worse than that, Oscar. Far worse.”
Oz wanted to throw himself at Skelton. Scream at him. Tear the truth from his throat. He felt Ellie’s hand grab his arm.
“Don’t, Oz. Don’t rise to the bait,” she whispered, while Skelton grinned at them.
At their feet, Niko stirred. Ellie shivered again and moved her hand down to support Niko and make sure he didn’t roll over and slide down the mountain. Niko looked very pale, dressed as he was only in jeans and a pyjama top, now that they’d stripped off his devilish fancy dress.
“Looks the worse for wear, doesn’t he,” Skelton observed. “Given me a headache, the little sod.” He touched the cut on his temple and winced. “Slashed his way out of his own tent. Attacked the wrong kid. Lashed out at me. Still, he’s served his purpose. Time to retire him permanently, I think.” He waved the gun at Ruff. “Right, come on, tie the rope around his chest. Then Messenger and Adams can get him to his feet and we’ll drag him up here. Easier to dump his body down through the hole from above, I think.”
“No,” Oz said.
“Or what?” Skelton snapped with brutish triumph. “Look around you, you idiot.” He swept his arm wide. “There is no cavalry coming. No pathetic Obex. The most that your friends here can hope for is that I do this quickly and cleanly. Because if they don’t do as I say, I’ll cut them off at the knees with this thing and let them slowly die after dumping them down that hole. Would you prefer that?” Without warning, Skelton raised the gun and destroyed another boulder. The explosion cracked through the frosty morning air, sounding impossibly loud, causing them all to flinch and almost lose their footing.
Oz threw Ellie and Ruff an edgy glare. He’d never seen them look so scared. And he had never felt so useless and impotent in all his life, either. Anger was like a white-hot sun in his head. He guessed that if Skelton shot at him, the tutamenzon field would kick in and he’d be fine, but it wouldn’t help Ellie, or Ruff, or Niko. He felt the little tickle of Soph’s presence in his head and knew she was reading his racing thoughts. Yet what could either of them do? Above him, uncaring, bent to its own wild task, a red kite let out another keening call, like a bugler blowing the last post.
The Beast of Seabourne Page 34
