Skulk (26 page)

“Dad’s in Dubai,” Jewel said sceptically.

“I know – but what better excuse, right? Can’t come to school, you’ll get sick, and you don’t want to stay home and get under Mark’s feet.”

“Ha!” Jewel chuckled. “You are an evil genius. How long did it take you to cook that one up? You amazing nerd. I’ll totally email you from the plane.”

“Gotta go,” I said. “
Bargain Hunt
’s on.”

“Love it. See you later.”

She hung up. I dropped the phone into my lap.

“She’s really going to get away with that? Just leaving the country for a week because there’s a bug going round?” Mo said.

“Yeah. Jewel’s just like that. Ameera is too, they can get away with… with anything…”

I tried to hold it in, to pull myself together. Then I pulled my hand away from Mo’s and bawled into my sleeves.

Susanne came back a few minutes later and found me snivelling into one of her cushions with Mo looking on helplessly, and convinced me to get some sleep. I didn’t need much convincing. She made up her own bed for me. I lay and stared at the ceiling for about ten seconds, imagining Jewel getting on a plane and flying a long, long way away from here, before I slid into the best sleep I’d had in days.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Willesden Junction at midnight was chilly and damp. Marcus and Aaron were both there waiting for us by the time we arrived, and I led them around the corner to the place where Addie had showed me the hole in the fence. I stared down the hill towards where I knew the Skulk clearing had to be, but I couldn’t see anything except the dark-on-dark shadows of scrubby plants.

One by one, the Rabble disappeared into a thicket of weeds and bushes, rustled about for a moment, and came out as butterflies.

Aaron went first: he fluttered past my head and landed, batting his intricately blotchy brown wings gently, on the fence. Marcus came out as a huge, swallow-tailed butterfly with vivid blue and white and black patterns and long fur all over his body. Then it was Mo’s turn. He fluttered out and settled in Susanne’s hair, waving his antennae at me, his big black bug eyes seeming kind of friendly, despite the inherent strangeness of looking into the eyes of an insect. His wings were bright yellow with black spots.

I went next, folding my clothes as neatly as I could beside the three other piles, shivering on the cold dirt for a second, and then curling into the change. I tasted a slight tang of blood as my skin rippled and shifted, but my fur was so much warmer than bare skin, my nose much more useful than my eyes in the dim light by the fence.

Mo landed on the bottom of the fence, at about eye-height to me. He smelled a little of Susanne’s cooking – I probably did, too. She’d cooked us up a feast of chicken and spiced sweet potatoes and insisted we ate the lot before we went running around all night doing God knew what. But Mo’s scent also had a startlingly familiar chemical tang that I recognised as the smell of aerosol paint, with an undertone of something more natural – green, growing things and cool shady places.

His legs were thin as a hair and the light fluff on his body caught the glow from the streetlamps and lit up like a halo.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I replied.

“Shall we?” said Marcus. I wouldn’t have thought butterflies would be all that expressive, but I could read the sardonic edge in the way his wings dipped. I led the way through the fence and down the slope, the Rabble flitting around my head.

The clearing was empty.

I raked my claws in the dirt and whined softly.

“Do you think they’ll come?” asked Mo.

I didn’t answer. It wasn’t the stubbornness of the Skulk I was worried about right then.

I trotted back and forth across the clearing, sniffing for any sign of Addie or the others, but the only scent was old and faint – it must have lingered from the last time we met.

Maybe I was wrong to send Addie off on her own. Maybe her bravado had made me overestimate her. She was only a kid. But, no, that wasn’t fair – the fog didn’t give a damn how old you were, and Susanne and Don probably thought I was just a kid.

But if Victoria had got to the Skulk first, if she was lying in wait for Addie, if she’d found James…

If she’s found James she has the Cluster stone already and all this is for nothing.

Suddenly, I scented something, coming closer… petrol, expensive perfume, soap. The Skulk was here. I raised my head, desperate to catch a sight or smell of Addie.

“Meg!” someone barked. I spun around just in time to see her bounding across the clearing before she hit me like a grinning cannonball, licking my ear. I rolled to my feet and head-butted her hard in the chest.

“You’re alive! Thank God,” I whined. “I thought I might’ve – she might have got to them already, and you’d...”

“What, me? Never.” Addie nipped playfully at my shoulders. I flinched as her teeth brushed one of the rat-wounds. Addie drew back. “You OK? What happened? Why’d you bring the Rabble?”

“Yes,” said Don, stalking out of the bushes with Randhir and Francesca at his heels. “What are they doing here?” He bore down on me, and I shook my head and met his eyes. He was actually a little bigger than I remembered. “How dare you bring another pack of shifters here without my permission?”

“They’re here to help,” I said, deciding to bypass the issue of whether he was in fact the boss of me.

“And you’re sure we need their help?” Fran asked.

“If you don’t want us here, we’ll go,” said Aaron, one antenna twitching irritably.

“All I’m saying is we should try not to get hysterical about this,” said Fran.

Addie pawed the ground. “Fran doesn’t believe me,” she snarled. “Tell her, Meg. Tell her about the school, and the blood.”

“It’s true. Something’s happened to cover it up, but we both saw it… someone’s willing to kill us all to get hold of the stone I found.”

“
You’ve
got the Skulk stone?” Don barked.

“No, I think I’ve got the Cluster stone,” I said, calmly. “That is…” I looked around, my heart sinking, as I realised for the first time that James wasn’t with them. I looked at Addie, and she swished her brush.

“He said he was coming,” she whispered.

“Well, I left the Cluster stone somewhere safe,”
I hope,
“and I went to look for them – and found them. They were dead. Have been for a while.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate, but I still fail to see what their failure could possibly have to do with us,” Don growled.

“How can you be so shortsighted?” Mo snapped.

Rand snarled agreement. “That’s cold, even for you.”

“Randhir didn’t mean that,” said Fran.

“Is your leader always this stupid?” Aaron said to me in an irritating fake-whisper, not even really bothering to lower his voice.

Don raked his claws through the dirt. “How
dare
you come here and–”

“She’s got my parents!” I howled. “She’s used our stone to turn them into monsters, doesn’t anyone care? I don’t even know how many people have died, but I know there will be more if we don’t try to
do
something. The stone we’ve got is the Cluster’s, we have to find a way to keep it safe until we can get ours back.”

There was a second’s pause, and my fur prickled as they all turned to stare at me.

Last time I was here, Don and Rand were bickering about their sisters. Things are a bit different now.

“Don,” I said, crouching back submissively, “You have the longest history with the Skulk – you said your father and grandfather were shifters, right?”

“That’s right,” said Don, sitting up straight.

“So you must have some knowledge of the stones,” I prompted. “We have the Cluster stone. Does that mean we can hide it, like we could with our own one?”

“I don’t think that’s the question we should be asking,” said Don.

Something about the way he said it made me almost want to laugh. I felt like I could see right inside his head.
What you mean is, you don’t know and you don’t want to admit it
.

“We have the Cluster stone,” Don mused. He squared his shoulders and bared his teeth. “And if they’re too weak to hold on to it, isn’t that our gain? The way I see it, these stones have power.” He paced up and down the clearing, looming over the Rabble for a second then turning to stare down the rest of the Skulk. “We can use that power, just like this sorceress. Why shouldn’t we?”

“We don’t even know what the Cluster stone does,” I said. “What would we use it
for
?”

“Well, how about fighting this woman and getting our stone back?” Randhir said. “I hate to admit it, but he’s not wrong. Maybe we shouldn’t hide this thing away if it can help us.”

“He’s got a point,” said Aaron.

“But would it be worth the risk?” Susanne asked. “It sounds to me as if the only way to beat Victoria for good is to make sure she can’t get any more of the stones. You may well say you can use them against her, but isn’t it better not to bring them anywhere near her?”

“Susanne and Marcus were both there when they last hid the Rabble stone,” I said quickly. “That’s why I brought the Rabble here. They know how to do it, they can show us and we can try to put the Cluster stone out of Victoria’s reach.”

“All you need is your stone and all six shifters,” Susanne said.

“But we don’t have either,” said Fran, her voice dripping with reasonableness. I sighed, raking my claws along the earth in front of me. Even more than Don, I was starting to dread her weighing in.

Don planted his paws firmly on the ground. “And we’re not likely to, with that thieving scum on the loose.”

“Well, if you don’t
want
your precious stone...”

There was a scrabbling of claws on earth as we all turned to look at James. He padded down the tunnel through the bushes, his little cloth bag hung around his neck, drooping with the weight of something inside.

He sniffed and his ears pricked up with amusement. “Guess who’s come to save the day?”

“Thief!” Don barked. “Traitor! Get out of here before I rip your throat out.”

“Oh hush,” James purred, strolling past Don – at a safe distance, out of pounce range – and heading for me. “I’m a thief but I’m no traitor. I’ve brought your sapphire back. And I can tell you where the Skulk stone is, too.”

“What?”

“I saw it in a jewellery shop I was robbing a couple of weeks ago. Recognised it at once, of course, and I was going to steal it back and post it through Mr Olaye’s door, with my deepest and most sarcastic compliments. Unfortunately, I was interrupted.”

“The fog?” I asked.

James nodded. “It crept in while I was working on the safe – scared the living daylights out of me when I turned around and saw this misty tentacle monster crawling in through the windows. It was between me and the stone and I wasn’t about to argue. I got the hell out of there. Some other shifter must have sold it to the shop in the first place. I have my theories,” he added, “but I wouldn’t want to
wrongly accuse
anybody.”

I pounced on James, knocking him to the floor, pinning him under my paws. I licked and nipped at his throat, not sure whether I loved him or wanted to give him the hardest bloody slap.

“Why didn’t you
tell
me when I turned up with the sapphire?” I yipped. “You knew there was something important going on!”

“Oof. Princess – let me…” I laid off a little and he rolled to his paws. “It wasn’t as if I had the thing to give you. I’d been accused of stealing it, darling,” he said, and cast a sharp look over my shoulder at Don, who was still bristling. “I saw it, but I didn’t take it – who’d believe that?”

“You – you…” I was trying to come up with a suitably affectionate insult when my gaze fell on Don, who was quivering with rage, his fur rippling like he was standing in the middle of an earthquake.

“I
don’t
believe it,” he growled. He bared his teeth, wolf-like and furious. He stalked forwards. His muscles bunched and I crouched to spring, to put myself between him and James – but then a fluttering burst of colour slammed into the air in front of him.

The Rabble flew around his head, forcing him back.

“Just stop it,” Susanne said. “I don’t know what your issue with this young man is, and right now I don’t care. You can accept our help and try to do what’s right for the Cluster and make their stone safe like any true shifter would, or we can go – but I won’t stay here and watch you tear each other apart, like
animals
.”

Don glowered at her. I stepped forward to accept their help and screw him for just assuming he had the authority after everything Addie and I had been through...

“Perhaps we should see if it works,” said Fran, gently. “If it does, wonderful. Meg’s sorceress won’t be able to touch it.”

She is not my sorceress
, I thought.
She’s not a figment of my imagination!

“And if not, we’ll decide how best to use it for the good of the Skulk, while Meg keeps looking for its rightful owners,” Fran finished.

“That sounds reasonable,” said Randhir. “I’m up for trying it if you are, Don.”

Don shook his head. “You trust these people? They’re
butterflies
. What are they good for except spouting pretty platitudes? I’m sure you’re all very nice people, but…”

Marcus threw his wings up behind him with a snap. The fur on his body puffed up like an angry cat’s.

“I’m not staying here to be insulted,” he said. “Not by someone so cowardly he doesn’t think he can take a bunch of butterflies.”

Don snapped his teeth. “I could take any one of you.”

“In human form?” said Marcus.

Ooh, Don.
I tried to stifle my urge to smile.
I dunno what you look like as a human but unless you’re secretly the Rock you might be in trouble…

“Marcus, don’t do this, you remember what happened last time,” said Susanne, fluttering with theatrical concern. “It’s humiliating for a man to be naked and concussed in front of his friends.”

My gaze flickered over to Mo and even though he was a butterfly, with no obvious eyes to glint or mouth to grin, I had to look away because I was pretty sure he was enjoying this even more than I was.