Pure Dead Frozen (10 page)

“Wolves?” The old lady smiled. “I haven't seen a wolf at StregaSchloss for hundreds of years. I hadn't thought to see them ever again….”

“I like WOLFIES,” the dragon said thoughtfully. “Providing they haven't suffered too lean a winter before I sling them in ma casserole.”

Titus gazed up at the giant beast with revolted admiration. “You…you
eat
wolves?” he managed at length.

“Not raw yins,” the dragon snorted. “PERSONALITY, I like them spit-roasted. Not like your sister, who seems tae prefer them drippin' wi' gore.”

Pandora closed her eyes and swallowed. The smell of wolf blood rose up from her clothes and nearly made her gag as she remembered the wolf Ludo had shot—She turned to Titus and gasped, “Mr. Grabbit! What happened to
him
? Oh God, Titus, we left him behind, on his own, with the wolves…. We have to go back.”

A View of the Island

I
ntent on rescuing Damp, neither Mrs. McLachlan nor Minty was aware that Titus and Pandora were in immediate danger as well. Oblivious to the wolves closing in on StregaSchloss, Minty ushered Mrs. McLachlan and Latch into her bedroom and closed the door behind them. Over the months she'd been employed at StregaSchloss, Minty had grown accustomed to the weirdness of using the Ancestors' Room as her bedroom. In turn, the ancestors had learned to live with Minty in their midst. After a month, their painted heads barely turned when she entered the room. Chivalrously, all eyes in the portraits would simultaneously snap shut when she disrobed at bedtime. Minty no longer awoke feeling unaccountably ravenous in the middle of nights when the long-dead ancestors decided to throw a party and roast a boar, and her sleep was untroubled by nightmares, even when men in armor reached out of their frames to switch her bedside light on and off, simply because such electrical wonders hadn't existed in their lifetimes. Therefore she was perfectly at ease as she stood in front of the portrait of Malvolio di S'Enchantedino Borgia, Strega-Nonna's long-dead grandson; and Malvolio, in turn, responded to Minty's attentions by bestowing on her, Latch, and Mrs. McLachlan a smile that would have been dazzling had twenty-first-century cosmetic dentistry been available in the sixteen hundreds. As it was, Latch shuddered at the sight of the ancestor's dreadful brown teeth, shuddered at the impossibility of witnessing an oil painting come to life, and shuddered at the sure and certain knowledge that he was hearing a dead man speak.

Behind Malvolio's grinning head lay a window framing a birchwood beyond. In the painting, even though the window was barely the size of a hardcover novel, the painter had captured every detail of the view beyond: the pale green of the first leaves of spring, the dazzling shimmer of sunshine glinting off the loch behind the trees, and the crisp silhouette of the little island set in the distant water. It was, Mrs. McLachlan decided, too far away to see whether the island was currently inhabited by a pregnant dragon in the company of a little girl, but she had her suspicions. Taking a deep breath and knowing that Latch was going to be severely ticked off at her, Mrs. McLachlan stepped forward.

There was a sensation like spiderwebs brushing across her face; then she found her way blocked by a heavy oak table. She looked down at a pewter plate, on which lay the remains of lunch, seventeenth-century style.

“Very nice, dear,” she managed. “Roast swan, was it? You must get your cook to give me the recipe sometime….”

         

Latch stood on the other side of the painting, his expression unreadable. What was she
thinking
of? She was supposed to be recuperating, not off gadding about with people who shouldn't,
couldn't
exist. Hitching up her skirts and climbing into paintings was just one of the many things he'd never suspected the outwardly respectable Flora McLachlan might be capable of doing. He'd hoped their life together would be less…unpredictable. He'd even allowed himself to fantasize that one day they might retire together to a wee cottage somewhere on the StregaSchloss estate; raise chickens and roses; plant a vegetable garden; sit of a summer's evening in their garden, shelling peas and planning…planning
what
? Which painting to invade next? Bleakly, Latch imagined the sheer impossibility of ever visiting an art gallery with Flora McLachlan. Ever. It simply didn't bear thinking about. He turned to share this thought with Miss Araminta, only to discover that
she'd
gone too. Into a different picture—stepping into the huge battle scene that hung over the fireplace, her blond hair like a burning candle in the middle of the smoke-blackened gloom of
The Battle for Mhoire Ochone, 1675.

Unwilling to be outdone by the two women, Latch steeled himself to follow Flora into her painting—follow her and try to persuade her to return to the land of the living. Then came the sound of gunfire from downstairs, followed by a scream of terror. Torn between love and duty, he spun round and caught sight of movement outside, in the real world beyond the real windows—the dark shadows of wolves coursing across the snowy lawn toward StregaSchloss. From downstairs came more gunfire and, with a single backward glance—

Flora and Malvolio at the window; Miss Araminta talking intently to a mounted man in armor—

Latch ran to help.

S'tan's Deepest Fear

From: dutydemon@deeppit
To: S'[email protected]/totallytoast

Hi Boss

Sorry 2 interrupt yr prog o igenous One but things are getting realie bad here. The furrnaces have all gone out, there are rumurs of angels ice-skating on the Hades Orbital, and the volcanic slopes of Mount Heinous are 100s of feet deep under snow. At this rate we're going to have 2 use fossle fules by the weekend if we want to keep on toasting sinners as per u.

Note: do we
have
any fossle fules?

Qestions are being asked at meetings of the Hadean Execyutiv——questions like what the H**ven is happening to Hades? Has S'tan lost it? (Begging your pardon, Your Gastly Gruesomeness, this is them, not me.) Should we elect another First Minster? Is the Boss groing soft? O Your Imperial Inflammablness, I beg U, come home. Your Empire needs U.

Grovle, grovle,
D. Demon 666

“Ready in five, Stan baby.”

The Devil's head snapped upright and He spun round to face the young assistant producer, unfortunately forgetting to compose His features beforehand.

“Oh my God!” she shrieked, covering her eyes in horror. “We need to get makeup in here right now. What
have
you been up to, my darling?” Without waiting for a reply, she spoke into her headset, her voice urgent, her expression remarkably calm considering the monstrous vision in front of her: S'tan unmasked, His yellow teeth bared in a frozen snarl, His awful eyes—

“You've been painting the town red again, haven't you, you naughty boy?” Clucking, the makeup artist grasped S'tan's chin in her hand, turning His face this way and that under her critical eye before pronouncing, “You're a mess, me old duck, but no matter—that's why I'm here with me powders and paints at the ready: to repair the damage and plaster over the rest….” As she talked, she was already smearing pale green gloop across S'tan's face, spreading every inch of His outraged red skin with the color-corrective paste, hardly pausing to draw breath before inviting the Arch-Fiend to pop a pair of green contacts into His crimson eyes and simultaneously persuading Him to tuck His tail into His chef's trousers.

Was He losing it? He wondered, ushered down the dark corridors toward the
Totally Toast
studio by a chattering clutch of young BBC technicians, none of whom was paying Him the slightest bit of attention, not even when He tripped over a cable and let rip with an oath that caused one of the acoustic tiles in the ceiling to melt and curl up like a pretzel. Somehow He got through the next half hour of rehearsals, and when the camera finally broadcast His face live to the nation, it was the serene, squeaky-clean, oath-free Stan that the nation beheld. Stan, the best and funniest TV chef ever to grace the United Kingdom's television sets.
Totally Toast
had achieved such stellar ratings that already there were plans for the
Some Extra Slices of Totally Toast
cookery book, another
A Round of Totally Toast
series, and a weekly “A Slice of Totally Toast” cookery column to be syndicated across the planet in its Sunday papers. On balance, His success was bizarre, freakish even, since on
Totally Toast
most of the food was burned, dropped on the floor, or had its moldy bits scraped off on camera. And despite the BBC makeup department's best efforts, Stan always looked as if
He'd
been burned, been dropped on the floor, and had barely managed to scrape His moldy bits off before the spotlight turned on Him. In close-up, His hairy hands revealed the grime of ages stratified in black layers beneath His fingernails, and it was obvious to all but the color-blind that Stan was a cook with a seriously finger-staining, lung-furring, cancer-causing nicotine addiction. Miraculous, then, that
anyone
took Him seriously, far less endeavored to imitate His cooking style. There He would be, every Thursday lunchtime, leering out at His audience, one unsanitary fist wrapped around a knife, the other waving a toasting fork, on the end of which would be a black, charred, smoldering lump of something best described as carbon.

The nation loved Him: fan letters poured into the BBC, and admirers blocked the road outside the studios; the smell of charred meat drifted from tens of thousands of kitchen ventilating fans and outdoor barbecues every Thursday as the nation tried out Stan's latest burnt offering. The current program was subtitled “Awesomely Offal,” and as Stan put the finishing touches to His Deviled Kidneys in a Gland
Jus
on a Blackened Pancake Stack, such was His professionalism that no one could have guessed that His mind was on other things entirely. The moment the program went off the air, S'tan barreled through the throng of producers, editors, cameramen, makeup artists, sound technicians, and fawning executives; fled down the darkened corridors of the BBC; and locked Himself behind the door of dressing room 2.

He pulled a mobile phone from His pocket, keyed in a number, and waited to be connected. He
was
losing it, He decided. Time was, He wouldn't have needed the aid of man-made telecommunications to contact His demon underlings. When the Chronostone had been in His possession, all He had to do was
think
of a demon and wherever that demon was, it would know the Boss wanted a quick word. Moreover, back then, S'tan knew exactly what was going through the minds of each and every one of His subjects: knew where they were without the aid of GPS and knew that their loyalty to Him was absolute…. Now they had to use
e-mail
to alert Him to their plight. Hades freezing over? Less than a century ago, that would have been unthinkable. Back then, Hades was hot as…as…as Hell, actually. Come to think of it, S'tan reminded Himself, back then He was pretty hot as well.

Looking down to where His feet were hidden by the swell of His stomach, He saw himself all too clearly: a fat, pathetic lump of a demon; a figure bearing more resemblance to an aging heavyweight boxer than the onetime fearsome, awesome, terrifying, petrifying S't—

“This mobile may be switched off. Please try later or send a text.”

S'tan swore: a single utterance, one word translated from the original Babylonian into an expletive so foul and repellent that in front of Him, the mirror turned black with shame and the toilet in His suite flushed itself repeatedly in an attempt to wash the word away. Laboriously, muttering to Himself, S'tan keyed in a text to Isagoth, His defense minister, His greasy, lard-coated fingers leaving opaque smears all over His phone, His thumbnails clattering on the tiny keys.

where r u? have u xtermin8ed that t d us mr borgia yet?

phone me @ 1ce.

S

There. Concise and to the point. If Isagoth didn't get back to Him within, say, ten minutes, S'tan was going in. No more faffing around, waiting for a lesser demon to do his work for Him. If the job was to be done properly, He was going to have to do it Himself.

Several months ago, S'tan had made His first pact with a human since that unmentionable snake-and-apple fiasco back in the dawn of mankind. In return for being fast-tracked onto BBC TV and given His own cookery program, S'tan had promised to destroy His human benefactor's half brother, Luciano. Trouble was, eight weeks on, the supposedly doomed Luciano was still alive and well. Consequently, S'tan's notoriety as the Big Bad Beast had taken another hammering, and if He didn't do something soon, His reputation was going to be so ruined that the only way humans would ever summon Him again would be by pouring a saucerful of milk and calling, “Heeeere, puss-puss pussy. Heeere, kitty kitty kitty.”

Suppressing a howl, S'tan glared at His phone, as if by eyeball energy alone He could force it to ring. Unsurprisingly, it remained mute, but on its screen, under a lardy smear, was a little envelope icon indicating that He had a text message waiting. Isagoth? Already? Deeply impressed despite Himself at His defense minister's speedy reply, S'tan prodded a key and the text appeared.

Oh dear.

It was most emphatically not from Isagoth. Despite being the Fount of All Fear, the Prince of Darkness, the Emperor of Endless Evil, and other assorted scary titles, S'tan felt a tiny frisson of terror. The text message was from Don Lucifer di S'Embowelli Borgia, the rat-faced, insanely vengeful uncle of Titus, Pandora, and Damp, half brother of Luciano Strega-Borgia, and, most important, the summoner of S'tan. His text message was, like him, short and brutal. It read:

signore satan.

we no longer have a deal.

your concrete overshoes are ready for collection.

capisce?

With a squeak of dismay, S'tan dropped His phone on the floor, suddenly aware that, in common with all cell phones, it was broadcasting a signal that pinpointed exactly where He was every time He switched it on. And
that
meant that, at this very moment, Don Lucifer might be sending his henchmen round to BBC dressing room 2 for a personal, one-on-one concrete overshoe fitting….

After a moment's reflection S'tan picked His phone up and removed it to his private bathroom, where He tried to flush it down the toilet; somewhat unsurprisingly, it failed to disappear. This was
dreadful
. As if being without His Chronostone wasn't bad enough, He now had a Mafia contract out on Him. Could life hold any more?

Apparently it could: muffled weirdly by the water in the toilet bowl, His phone was ringing, its vibrating alert making it rattle as if it were trying to drill its way out through the porcelain. Completely unnerved, S'tan fled, bolting along corridors, pushing past security guards, skidding past the doorman and out into the snowstorm, nearly mowing down the throng of frozen
Totally Toast
fans before hailing a taxi and vanishing into its interior.