Rich and Alex. Darwen spun around. His friends were about to run right into the caryatid at the top of the stairs.
He dashed to the doorway and called over the armed statue’s shoulder. “Rich? Alex? Don’t come up any higher. There’s something waiting for you!”
“Like a big stone something with a sword?” Alex’s voice countered.
“Yes,” Darwen shouted back. “How did you know?”
“’Cause we got two more behind us,” she shouted. “Two behind, one ahead. You do the math.”
“No!” Darwen shouted, but he could hear them coming up. With no other choices to pick from, he prepared to grab the caryatid when it attacked them.
Fat lot of good that will do, he thought.
But before he could devise an alternate plan, he saw Alex’s anxious face peer around the corner. The stone of the caryatid seemed to ripple, and it came to life, the sword blade sweeping wide. Alex ran right at the door, Rich stomping up in her wake, and Darwen got a glimpse of the other caryatids that pursued them. He grabbed at the one in the doorway, trying to stay its sword arm, but the statue was impossibly strong, the flesh as cold and hard as granite. The caryatid didn’t even bother shrugging him off, but it did step to the side, leaving the doorway wide open. Alex and Rich threw themselves into the room, and the three caryatids immediately turned their backs on them and became still.
“I don’t think they can come in here,” said Darwen.
Rich, who looked sweaty and alarmed, stared at what were now three stone sentries and shook his head.
“I don’t think it’s that they can’t come in,” he said. “I think they wanted us in here.”
“Like it’s a prison?” asked Alex.
“Maybe,” said Rich. “But I’m not sure they were really trying to hurt us.”
“What?” Alex demanded. “Are you forgetting the whole chasing-us-with-giant-swords thing?”
“I’m saying they kind of herded us up here,” said Rich. “Like dogs moving sheep.”
“You calling me a sheep?” Alex said warningly.
“Hold it,” said Darwen. “Rich may be right. I think those things are like guards, but I don’t know that they mean us harm. In fact, they brought us to the one place that seems like it really has a connection to Mr. P. Look,” he said, nodding at the unmade bed.
“But even if this was his room,” said Alex, “how does putting us in here help us or him?”
“Not sure yet,” said Darwen, “but check out these mirrors. I don’t think they’re portals, just sort of viewing points. We can see and hear through them, but I don’t think there’s a way for us to pass through.”
“You’re right,” said Rich. “This must be a surveillance room. Or, better yet, a watchtower. I’m guessing this was where Mr. P kept an eye on things in other places.”
“Why these?” said Darwen. “I can’t tell what I’m looking at. This looks like some kind of lab with scrobblers in it.”
Rich peered over his shoulder and they both stared into the glass and the dimly lit chamber beyond. Each of the windows had a brass plate inscribed with a four-digit number, but there seemed to be no connection among the various codes.
“Guys,” said Alex from the other side of the room. “I think you’re gonna want to see this.”
As they crossed to her, she did not take her eyes off the mirror she was gazing into, the plate above which read 8449. “There,” she said, pointing.
It was, Darwen supposed, another kind of laboratory, though it was quite different from the one they had just been looking at. There was movement inside: two men, one in a white coat, the other in greasy overalls. Not the headless gnashers with their shark-mouth chests and snake tongues. Not the brutal scrobblers that were Greyling’s soldiers: ordinary men.
“You think they can see us?” Darwen whispered.
Alex and Rich just stared in silence.
The man in the lab coat had a clipboard and was making notes while the other lugged a coil of heavy wire to a set of tanks filled with green fluid in which odd shapes floated.
“Not that one,” said the man in the lab coat, pointing. “That one.”
Darwen winced at the sound, but neither man showed any sign of awareness that they were being watched.
“What difference does it make?” said the other gruffly, plugging the wire into one of the pods.
“Trust me,” said the one in the lab coat, his voice lilting with a curiously musical accent that Darwen found vaguely familiar, “it makes a difference, look you. Just do as you’re told, for once.”
“Or what?” said the bigger man. “You think the odd bods will take your word over mine if you go whining about my work? Fat chance.”
Only then did Darwen process the tanks of liquid that Alex had been staring at. They were the size of Darwen’s bedroom and, had they been at the Georgia Aquarium, would have been large enough to hold a dazzling array of colorful fish and even a couple of small sharks. But they weren’t full of fish.
Floating motionless inside, his face slightly flattened against the glass, was Mr. Peregrine.
It was too awful. The shopkeeper looked impossibly old, haggard, faded somehow. He was naked except for a series of straps and a metal contraption fitted about his head, half tiny cage, half bridle—from which wires ran to equipment outside the tank. His usually bright eyes were closed, and his wispy hair drifted back and forth in the currents of the bubbling tank. It was, Darwen thought, the saddest thing he had ever seen.
“He’s dead,” said Darwen.
Alex silently took his hand and squeezed it, but Darwen couldn’t look away.
“He’s not,” said Rich. “That makes no sense.”
“Doesn’t have to make sense,” said Alex. “Look at him.”
“If he was dead, why would they keep him in there?” Rich persisted. “He’s not dead. He’s in some kind of stasis.”
Darwen wrenched his gaze from Mr. Peregrine’s lifeless face and looked into Rich’s eyes, searching for any sign that this was just wishful thinking. Rich stared back at him and his gaze was level, determined. He believed he was right.
“Alex?” asked Darwen. “What do you think?”
“Makes a kind of Silbrican sciencey sense,” she said. “Can’t say I like it, but it’s better than the alternative.”
“So we just have to get there,” said Darwen, considering the two men. The one in the lab coat was studying his clipboard while the other paced silently, occasionally tapping on the glass of the tank like a kid in the zoo. Why were there people—humans—monitoring Mr. Peregrine?
“Where is it, though?” asked Alex, as if reading his mind. “I mean, is it Silbrica or our world?”
Darwen was forced to shrug. He suddenly felt tired and defeated. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s right there. If we could just step through . . .”
“What was that?” asked Rich. He had straightened up and his head was cocked on one side, listening intently.
“What was what?” asked Alex.
“Shh,” hissed Rich.
“Excuse me?” said Alex, putting her hands on her hips.
“Alex,” said Rich, eyes squeezed closed, “for once in your life, shut up.”
Alex’s eyebrows just about climbed off her head, but she said nothing, and at that very moment, the house shook with a deafening animal bellow from below. It was as if an impossibly oversized grizzly had roared immediately below them. Darwen put his hands to his ears and winced, as if the whole place was exploding, but the noise stopped as quickly as it had come.
“Oh, that,” said Alex. “Yeah, I heard that.”
Rich took a step toward the door. All but one of the caryatids had gone.
“Something’s coming,” said Rich.
And now they could all hear it, a dragging groan of a sound, like something
huge pulling itself slowly through the house. There were footfalls within the noise, vast and heavy and slow, like the steps of an elephant, but there was also a strange scraping that didn’t stop, as if the sides of the creature—whatever it was—were rubbing against the walls as it moved. They heard the creak and snap of breaking furniture, the shattering of falling pictures and crockery as it shambled inexorably through the house. Darwen was sure the sound was getting louder.
“Whatever it is,” said Rich, “it’s big.”
Then there was another earthshaking roar, followed by a terrible wailing scream that lit the air for a moment, and then was gone.
“The caryatids,” said Rich and Darwen at the same moment.
“Can statues die?” asked Alex, her face pale. “Because I think one of them just did.”
Instinctively they edged away from the door.
“What do we do?” asked Rich. “Anything that can take down one of those statues . . .” He looked at Darwen and the fear in his eyes was infectious. Darwen shook his head. He had no idea. There was no way out of the room but down a confining stairway right into the path of whatever was coming. They had no weapons of any kind.
“What’s through there?” asked Rich, indicating the only other door, the one beside the long case clock, which Darwen had assumed opened onto the balcony outside and the widow’s walk.
He rushed to it and threw it open.
“A bathroom,” he groaned.
“Windows?” asked Rich, hurrying over.
“No,” said Darwen. The room was tiny, barely larger than a broom cupboard. There was an ancient sink and a toilet. Nothing else. Certainly no way out onto the roof.
“Maybe it—whatever it is—won’t come up,” said Alex.
Darwen turned to her to answer but saw that she had her eyes shut tight, fists clenched till the knuckles blanched.
“Maybe the staircase is too narrow,” said Rich.
Darwen nodded desperately. “It won’t be able to get up,” he agreed.
But the dragging scrape and slow, heavy tread that made the house creak was getting louder.
“We should go down,” said Rich. “Try to slip past it and out. If it traps us up here . . .”
“But Mr. Peregrine,” Darwen began, throwing a hopeless look at the mirror that showed the awful laboratory with its tanks of colored liquid.
“We can’t get to him from here,” said Alex, whose eyes were open again. “Rich is right. We should go.”
Darwen looked at each of them, knowing they felt the same anguish he did, then nodded. “Go,” he said.
Rich went first, gingerly stepping out onto the stairs, Alex right behind him. The lone caryatid moved, or rather Darwen assumed it moved, though it happened so fast he didn’t actually see it. One moment it was standing beside the door, the next it was barring their path.
“We have to go,” Rich said to the stone, expressionless face. “You have to let us get down.”
But then there was another roar from below, followed by two more of the dreadful, keening screams, and suddenly the caryatid blocking the stairs wasn’t there anymore.
“It’s gone to help the others,” said Darwen. “Now’s our chance.”
They rushed down the stairs unimpeded, but when they reached the bottom, Rich paused. He was looking at what appeared to be a slightly misshapen soccer ball that had rolled to the foot of the stairs, but as Darwen examined it closer, he realized it was the shattered remains of one of the caryatids’ heads, now just a hunk of carved rock. As they hesitated, there was a crash from down the hall and more stone fragments came flying out, pelting them where they stood.
Darwen blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, wiping the grit from his face, there were two caryatids in the hall, their backs to him, their swords drawn. One of them leapt around the corner with impossible speed, and there was another bellow of rage from their massive adversary, but he could not see what happened.
Then two things happened at once. First, Darwen heard hurried footfalls and grunts coming through the house: scrobblers. Naturally. Whatever the monster around the corner was, it wasn’t alone. Getting out was going to be a lot harder than they had thought.
Second, and almost worse, was that the last remaining caryatid turned to them, its head moving slowly. Its eyes opened, showing the same amber fire, and with its sword arm it motioned them deliberately back up the stairs.
“It wants us to go back to the watchtower,” said Darwen. “It’s going to try to hold them off by itself.”
“There’s no way,” said Rich.
But before they could debate the matter further, the thing with the voice like thunder came around the corner, and they no longer needed persuading to run back upstairs.
Chapter Eight
Under Attack
Darwen had known it would be big, but he was unprepared for the way the thing filled the hallway. Its face was reptilian, eyes small and black, snout turning into a long, cruel beak that gaped, showing a cavernous, pink throat. The creature looked like some colossal snapping turtle, though its shell was segmented, skin hanging in leathery folds between hard panels the size of car doors. Walking on its back two legs, dragging a squat tail that ended in sharp spikes as it moved, the monster hunched around the corner before resting on the elbows of its forelimbs as it considered the remaining caryatid. It unfurled its massive front fists, and the nails that flashed into view looked like foot-long fishhooks. Then it looked past the caryatid with hard, deliberate eyes and saw the three of them huddled behind it. Lowering its head and opening that terrible mouth so wide that its eyes disappeared, it bellowed.
The volume was almost physical. Darwen could feel it in his chest like a shock wave. He clasped his hands to his ears again and took an involuntary step backward. In the same instant, the caryatid lunged forward with its sword and stabbed the monster just beneath its armored shoulder. The stone blade found a space between the shell plates, sliding in deep. But though the strike had been impossibly fast, the caryatid seemed to linger in its victory, and one of those dreadful claws swept across its sword arm, shattering it.
With its remaining hand, the caryatid lashed its splayed fingers toward the creature’s face, but the huge maw snapped, severing the stone hand just below the elbow. The caryatid hesitated, but the battle was clearly lost, and anything it did now was only to buy them time.
But time for what?
The monster filled the corridor. There was no way to go but back up the stairs. The others came to the same realization as soon as he did, but Darwen stalled as they began to climb up to the tower, watching as the caryatid was flung with unimaginable force against the wall, where its body broke apart. The amber eyes found him on the steps for the briefest moment, and then they were just stone again. As the monster roared its triumph and came surging down the hall, crushing the stone fragments beneath its massive feet, Darwen, Rich, and Alex fled.
They took the stairs two at a time, feeling the rumbling vibration of the tower as the creature surged after them. Darwen risked only one look back as he rounded the second story, hoping against hope that the staircase was indeed too narrow for it to get up. But the narrowness of the hall barely slowed the monster down. Its skin was like elastic, and it was able to squeeze up the stairwell, as if the very sockets of its bones were dislocating so that the beast became almost formless. As Darwen ran wildly up the stairs, he remembered Rich saying something about snakes that could eat prey larger than they were by unhinging their jaws. . . .
He was the last into the watchtower. Rich was flat against the furthest wall while Alex had thrown open the door to the tiny bathroom and was now staring desperately around, as if there might be something—anything—that would help. There wasn’t. She slammed the door shut and turned to the others just as they got their first glimpse of those reptile claws dragging the beast up around the corner and into
view. The head peered into the room, hard black eyes shining, and then it roared again so that the room shook.
Alex, Rich, and Darwen shrank back against the wall, clutching each other, but there was nothing to be done. With sudden and astonishing clarity, Darwen saw that he was about to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Sorry, Mr. P,” he muttered, his head sinking to his chest. “We tried.”
For a moment his eyes closed, and when they opened again, that serpentine head was pushing itself into the room, its clawed hands holding onto the doorjamb as it pulled its massive bulk inside. The room seemed to halve in size as the monster came in, pushing aside Mr. Peregrine’s bed like it was a toy. The beak mouth gaped one last time, but it did not roar, and the only sound was a satisfied hiss, which might have been a laugh. The eyes locked onto them and the claws swung back to strike.
There was a sudden flash of light, a bang, and a whiff of electricity in the air.
The monster stood motionless for a long second, then its eyes rolled back in its head, and it fell heavily forward, crashing to the floor so that Darwen had to leap to the side to avoid being crushed.
There could be no doubt that the creature was dead.
But that was nothing to what they saw behind it.
Standing in the doorway straddling the monster’s scaly tail was a figure in a pink halter top and bright green shorts, with a rhinestone studded purse slung over her shoulder. She had sunglasses pushed back on her head, and her eyes were still focused down the barrel of the oversized blaster she had been aiming with both hands.
It was Eileen.
Chapter Nine
Eileen
“She’s one of those suit things, like the Jenkins insects!” shouted Darwen, reaching for the glass of water on the nightstand and flinging its contents at the thing that had taken the shape of his babysitter.
The water hit her in the face and splashed all over her cheery pink top. For a split second, she just stood there, then she considered her shirt and stared at Darwen. Rich pointed out the obvious.
Darwen Arkwright and the School of Shadows Page 7
