Pure Dead Frozen (11 page)

What Big Teeth You Have

I
n the low afternoon sunshine, the northwestern coast of Argyll resembled a Christmas card: snow capped the mountains of the Bengormless Range, dusted the Scotch pines, and graciously allowed the passage of a fleet of snowplows trailing long lines of delayed traffic in their wake. Twenty-three cars behind one of these snowplows was the Strega-Borgias' Volvo sports wagon, its interior still bearing witness to the recent birth of their youngest child. Staring into the brake lights of the car ahead, Luciano forced himself to keep calm and concentrate on driving. Despite his best intentions, his thoughts kept running off down dark avenues of possibility, all of which terminated with the same awful question: What if Latch and Ludo could not defend StregaSchloss? The thought of Titus and his sisters alone, vulnerable, defenseless, with Mafia assassins closing in on them—
No, no, no. Think of something else, Luciano,
he commanded himself. Sneaking a glance at Baci in the rear seat, he took a deep breath. She didn't know. Miraculously, he'd managed to shield her from the truth. Baci had no idea what was really going on. As befitted a newly delivered
mama,
her thoughts were almost entirely focused on the small bundle strapped into the front passenger seat in a rear-facing baby carrier. Swaddled in a Shetland shawl of such gossamer delicacy that it could, in its entirety, be passed through the circle of a wedding ring was the changeling, eyes squinched shut, mouth wide open, and lungs in fine working order. Beside the wailing baby, Luciano gritted his teeth, clutched the steering wheel, and devoutly wished himself elsewhere.

“SHALL I JUST FEED HIM AGAIN?” Baci yelled from the rear, struggling to make herself heard over the infant's din.

“YOU JUST DID,” Luciano roared, taking one hand off the wheel to stroke the baby's tearstained and quivering cheek.

“MAYBE HE'S GOT COLIC?” Baci shrieked, worn down to a nubbin by the unceasing, never-ending, grinding racket of the baby's displeasure. Being trapped in a car in a long line of slow-moving traffic was bad enough, but having also to endure the tortured screams coming from what looked like the product of a union between a purple goblin and a fat, woolly maggot was quite beyond human endurance.

Longingly, Luciano thought of the deep masculine silence of his study, a totally baby-free zone. He also briefly considered the child-exempt seclusion of his half-assembled home gymnasium before remembering exactly why it was that he needed a home gym in the first place. He had to get home. Had to gather his beloved family all together under one roof and…

…and what? What on earth was he going to do? All the sit-ups and workouts in the world weren't going to make a blind bit of difference to a bullet with his name on it. As for protecting his family—Baci, the children—his eyes prickled, his mind beset by hideous, unwelcome images of their slaughtered bodies lying in pools of blood; their dead eyes, slack mouths—

With a sickening jolt, Luciano snatched his hand back from where he had been mindlessly stroking the howling baby's face. He'd been
bitten
. The baby had
bitten
him. Uncomprehending and utterly aghast, he looked from his bleeding—
bleeding
—finger into the face of his youngest child. What he saw there was so shocking that for an instant he nearly lost control of the car. The baby stopped screaming as if it had been gagged. In the ensuing eerie silence, it opened blood-red eyes and hissed at him, its tiny mouth curled up in a sneer, its lips rolled back to expose a row of black needle-pointed teeth.

         

Unaware that his home was currently under siege by a ravening wolf pack, Nestor the baby dragon lay awake in his nest in the dungeons, wondering if it was worth the effort of going upstairs to the cloakroom as instructed by Minty, or whether to pretend he'd forgotten her advice and go for a quick poo somewhere dark and out of the way in the dungeons. As he gnawed thoughtfully on a stolen hiking boot, he decided, on balance, that the dungeons were the better option, toilet-wise. Riddled with blind tunnels, catacombs, crypts, fallen arches, vast caverns, and priest holes, the dungeon offered a huge variety of places where no one would ever think to go looking for one teeny-weeny little dragon dump.

Padding off down a tunnel, Nestor chewed meditatively and peered into the darkness in search of the perfect pit stop. There. Ideal. He swallowed the last morsel of boot leather and Gore-Tex, burped delicately, and reversed with some difficulty into a deep recess. Lifting his tail, he was just about to close his eyes and bear down when an unknown voice broke the silence.

“
What
the HELL—?”

And then came a flash and a loud bang as something hot and shiny whined past his head at such speed that Nestor let rip from both ends in terror.

With his night vision utterly destroyed by Nestor's dazzling burst of dragon flame, Ludo Grabbit dived out of range of what he mistakenly assumed to be a rather underpowered flamethrower. Seconds later, the lawyer revised his assumptions downward. The stench now drifting toward him out of the darkness made him realize that whatever was out there was far more afraid of him than he was of it. Sighting down the barrel of his rifle and breathing through his mouth to avoid inhaling the dreadful smell, Ludo yelled, “Come on out with your hands in the air!”

Obediently, Nestor tiptoed forward, hoping that whoever this was shouting at him, he wouldn't tell Minty about the temporary lapse in his toilet training.

         

Pressed with his back up against the china cupboard, Latch was trying to remember if he knew anything about wolf behavior. He suspected that paddling about in the blood of a dead wolf would not increase his popularity within the wolf pack. The wolves were spread out around him in a semicircle, tracking his every movement with their yellow eyes. At times they turned away to snap at each other, giving Latch an opportunity to see just what big teeth they had. Then a ripple seemed to go through the pack, as if their interest in Latch-as-lunch was eclipsed by the simultaneous arrival of two more edible parties: one, from the dungeons, was Mr. Grabbit, trailed by a disconsolate Nestor, and the other…

“FLORA! NO!” Latch howled, lunging forward in a heroic attempt to put himself between the wolves and his beloved Flora.

It could have all gone very badly wrong at this point: hackles up, the wolves were poised to attack; Ludo had his gun aimed and ready; and Latch suddenly realized that his future hung by a thread. There was a moment that lasted several lifetimes; then Flora crouched down among the wolves and, with an introductory growl, addressed them in a low, urgent voice.

“Down. Lie down while I sort out this confusion with my pack.”

In the absolute hush, Latch imagined he could hear his own heart thudding against his breastbone. What
was
this? At his feet, all around, the wolves were obeying; were lying down and ignoring him completely, all eyes on the small woman who unaccountably held them in thrall.

“F-F-Flora?” His voice was emerging as a boyish squeak. He took a deep shuddering breath and was about to try again when Ludo spoke.

“Just stand up very, very slowly and move away from them.” He smiled encouragingly at Mrs. McLachlan and continued, “Don't, whatever you do, make any sudden movements. I think I can buy you both enough time to get you out of the door and down the corrid—”

“
Mister
Grabbit!” Mrs. McLachlan's voice was sharp, but nothing like as pointed as the look with which she skewered the lawyer. “Please.
Don't
presume to tell me how to behave with our allies here. D'you not think you've done quite enough damage for one day?”

At this, as if in complete understanding, the wolves pointed their muzzles toward the ceiling and howled. The volume was deafening, unbearably loud within the confines of the kitchen: waves of sound beating off the walls and floor, making any further human communication impossible. Nestor clung round-eyed with wonder to Ludo's leg, and Latch stared at Flora in complete confusion as the wolf pack mourned their fallen members.

“Quite,” said Mrs. McLachlan after a suitably respectful length of time had passed. “Now, while Mr. Grabbit demonstrates his genuine remorsefulness by digging a grave for his victims, I shall require your help, dear, to prepare for the siege.”

Latch's eyes goggled, but he wisely held his tongue; not so Ludo, whose legal training made him automatically challenge any command, no matter how just or unjust it might be.

“For God's sake, woman,” he spluttered. “They're
wolves
. So
what
if I shot a couple of them? What did you expect me to do when they burst into the house uninvited? Ask them to stay to tea?”

Mrs. McLachlan looked up at Ludo, her hand stroking the head of a giant brindled wolf. “That, Mr. Grabbit, would have been a very good start indeed.”

Bats Redux

T
hey walked in single file through the monotonous, endless forest: Strega-Nonna, Titus, Pandora, and, some way behind, crashing through the trees, the hungry dragon.

“Are WEES no there yet?” it demanded, its voice, to Titus's ears, growing ever more strident as the hours dragged by.

Not only was Strega-Nonna's grip surprisingly strong for such an antique ancestor, Titus was stunned by her unstoppable energy as she dragged him behind her through the birchwood. Titus had lost track of time, but it felt as if they'd been walking for ages, and to his dismay he'd started stumbling and crashing into tree trunks, aware that the pain in his eye was growing worse. Not only that; it had spread to his other eye, and, if he wasn't mistaken, his sight was fading. Pandora was following him, and he was behind Strega-Nonna, both of them relying on the old lady to find the portal or whatever it was and take them back to their own time. However, Titus noticed that little by little it was growing dark; there was less daylight filtering down through the birch leaves, and the shadows were merging together into an endless gray fog. Even then, it hadn't occurred to him what was really happening until Pandora stopped and turned round; at least, that's what he assumed she'd done—he couldn't actually
see
her properly—but her voice sounded like she was facing him, and she moaned something about wishing she'd brought sunglasses because the sun was too bright. Sun? Bright? He'd thought
night
was falling. That was when he was overcome by such a wave of fear that he walked straight into a tree, just like he was…blind.

At this point, the giant dragon bringing up the rear of their little portal-seeking procession nearly stood on him, and for a moment chaos ruled, during which time Titus learned a few very choice oaths he never thought to hear, especially not from the mouth of his sweet little great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. Then Strega-Nonna seized him by the hand and forced him to half run, half walk beside her, all the time talking nonstop and filling Titus's terrible darkness with words. Three-quarters of what she said sounded like complete nonsense, but now and then would come a phrase or an idea that would take Titus's breath away.

“…Of course, most of this is your younger sister's doing. She was born with the Gift, as you know, but the Gift is a terrible thing to be given to one so young. It puts so much raw power into such a tiny, untried vessel. Like the ginger beer your great-great-grandfather tried to make when he was a boy. Decanted it into earthenware jars and sealed them up tight with corks and beeswax…two weeks later they blew apart—too much fizz in too small a space. That's what I mean about the Gift. Is that dragon still behind us? Good. Useful creatures, dragons. We'll be needing all our beasts about us, boy. Mark my words. Now. Back to your sister…where was I? Ah, yes. Yes. Her spells. Have you noticed that she weaves her spells out of what she knows and loves? Like a little magpie, taking shiny things to make its own. Just as
she
does, collecting shiny, sparkly things to weave her spells with. Except your little sister collects stories, not things. Heaven knows which story we're in just now—in this wood, the wolves beyond, and you, with your poor frozen eyes…. It's a mix of fairy tales, all stirred together. I think it's ‘Red Riding Hood' combined with ‘The Snow Queen,' for which we must give thanks, because last summer, if you recall, thanks to her, we had ‘Thumbelina' mixed up with ‘Sleeping Beauty,' and
that
was a trial. Keep up, laddie, you've much to do before you rest; miles to go and promises to keep. Did I mention that you're the spitting image of my son? It's miraculous how the centuries can pass, the sands of time sifting over the graves of those we loved, shifting and settling until our dead become part of the land in which they lie, with their cities crumbled and forgotten, their names vanished from the Earth, and then, as if pre-ordained, a child will come, bearing the face of one whom we never thought to see…ever again.”

Strega-Nonna stopped and turned round and placed her quivering hand on Titus's chest. Titus felt his heart leap, as if the old woman had sent a bolt of electricity through him. Abruptly, she grabbed his hands and put them on either side of her face.

“See? Or since you cannot
see,
feel,” she demanded. “And you took me for a dried and withered crone. Yet even from this desiccated twig comes some sap. Feel this water, Titus, son of Luciano. Know that you are the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Raphael di Clemente Borgia, and you not only carry him in your blood, you also bear his features as your birthright. Feel my old woman's tears and, with them, melt the ice that binds your heart and mind. You are not blind, but frozen.”

Titus would have fallen then, collapsed on the forest floor, had it not been for Strega-Nonna's clasping his shoulders and forcing him to stay upright to feel the full force of her words.

“Aaah,” he groaned, hit by a wave of the most unbearable sorrow, finding himself helpless to resist as he was dragged under by a riptide of grief that, in all his sheltered thirteen years on the planet, he hadn't known existed. He was swept up in the agony suffered by countless parents who had watched their children die, the pain of lovers torn apart by death, the endless mourning of Strega-Nonna's centuries of loneliness as, time and time again, she defied Death and, in doing so, lost everything she had ever held dear. His hands wet with her tears, her face growing wet with his own, Titus stood weeping, blinded, and dumbfounded as feelings he couldn't even begin to define washed through him.

“What?”
he managed, his voice unrecognizable.

“Don't be ashamed of your tears, child,” Strega-Nonna whispered. “Be proud. Even the best of grown men weep. With your tears you melt the icy enchantment that binds your heart and soul.”

Titus blinked at the old lady, trying to bring her into focus through the shimmering dazzle of tears that clung to his lashes. If ever he'd wished for the privacy afforded by sunglasses, now was the time. Unaccustomed to crying, his eyes felt as if they'd shriveled up like raisins. And it was
bright
. Overhead, sunshine was beating down through the tree canopy, spangling him with lozenges of light, of—

“NONNA!” he roared, so loudly that the dragon tiptoeing behind him gave a startled snort and set a tree alight with its nasal flamethrowers. “Nonna! IcanseeIcanseeIcansee!” And to everyone's surprise, especially his own, Titus wrapped his arms around Strega-Nonna and spun her round in a circle, yelling, “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!” before planting a smacking kiss on her pleated brow and gently returning her to the ground.

“What was all
that
about?” Pandora hissed as they raced through the woods after the now remarkably sprightly Strega-Nonna.

“I, um—can I explain later?” Titus gasped, his chest heaving with the effort of keeping up with the old woman's accelerated pace. “I'm not—I'm, ah…I don't think I understand…yet.”

The light grew brighter as the forest thinned out; then suddenly they emerged from the trees, out onto a stony path cut into the side of a hill. To their right, the land fell away, down to where a stream wound through rocks and clumps of grass and heather. Ahead, the path was intimidatingly steep, a narrow deer track, well-defined but so awash with water that it appeared to be more of a waterfall than a footpath. Undeterred, Strega-Nonna struck off up the hillside, her feet splashing through puddles and sending small rocks bouncing downhill to where the others labored breathlessly behind. Higher and higher they climbed, until they reached a coire scooped into the hillside where, mercifully, Strega-Nonna stopped, and moments later, red-faced and breathless, Titus, Pandora, and the dragon caught up. Tarantella emerged, blinking, from the depths of Pandora's shirt and scanned her surroundings.

“Dear me,” she said, eyes swiveling disconcertingly in several directions at once.

“What now?” Pandora glared at her.

“Oh…nothing.” Tarantella sighed. “Just…well…Oh, come
on,
team. Is this
it
? This godforsaken spot is the reason we've been running flat out for what feels like several lifet—”

“We? Running?” Titus interrupted. “Spider, the only thing about you that's been running are your mouthparts.”

“It's not a godforsaken spot either, spider,”
said a scratchy little voice.
“It's our blessed, heaven-sent home, actually.”

Pandora gasped out loud. Suddenly, several things fell into place. She knew where she was. Exactly where she was. Last time she'd been here, in Coire Crone—
“—was last summer, when you were hiding from that dreadful little terrorist. Welcome back, child.”

“Pandora?” Titus's voice vibrated, pitched high as if strung too tightly. “Who
is
that? Who's speaking? What
is
this place?”

“Relative of yours, I take it?”
the voice continued.
“Better hope he's not afraid of bats, hmm?”
And with no warning, the sky above their heads darkened as thousands of ragged black shapes took to the air.