The Book of Beasts (30 page)

‘No!' yelled Em.
Zach, the griffin will get you! Stay back against the wall!

Vaughn launched himself at Zach, bringing him to the ground as the griffin swept overhead, its sharp-edged wing slicing the front of Sandie's jacket and its heavy lion's tail thrashing across Vaughn's back.

‘We can't stay on this ledge for much longer,' said Sandie as Vaughn and Zach struggled to their feet. Zach was clutching the sketchbook. ‘How are we supposed to fight a griffin?'

‘Griffins are guardians of treasure,' blurted Em, suddenly remembering. She felt in her pockets for a pencil. ‘If I draw some, we might distract its attention.'

‘Do it,' said Vaughn. ‘Fast.'

Em pulled the sketchpad from Zach's hands and scribbled, fingers flying.

In a burst of yellow light, a treasure chest overflowing with gold and silver doubloons appeared on the ledge.

At once, the griffin swooped down from a great height, its eyes blazing, and landed on the ledge, a few paces from Em and Zach, snapping its hooked beak. Then it pounced.

Sandie screamed, reaching for Zach and Em.

‘Wait,' Vaughn said, pulling her back. ‘Look!'

The griffin had climbed on top of the treasure chest and was wrapping its wings protectively over the doubloons, knocking a cache of them over the ledge into the chaos below.

Zach and Em pressed their backs against the rock face and sidled behind the griffin to join the others. The beast watched them, its tail sweeping back and forth along the ledge, gathering loose coins beneath its rump.

‘Where now?' said Sandie.

Em gazed down into the abyss. The arches around the periphery of the amphitheatre-like pit looked familiar.

‘I painted one of those in the left-hand panel of my triptych,' she said, pointing at the arches. ‘If my painting is right, Matt – maybe Jeannie too – will come through one of those tunnels. They'll run right into that hell. We have to be there for them.'

‘But how do we get down there?' said Sandie helplessly. ‘We must be at least a hundred metres up! And how do we survive when we reach the ground?'

‘One thing at a time,' said Vaughn. He gazed over the rim of the ledge, assessing the rock face. ‘The gorge walls are rough; there are plenty of foot- and hand-holds. If we start now, we can be at the bottom in half an hour.'

Zach raised his hand. ‘I don't think we have that kind of time,' he signed. ‘Something monstrous is coming. And I feel like it's bringing Matt and Jeannie with it.'

Em sensed something much worse than fear from Zach. She felt terror.

‘Are they OK?' she signed back at once. ‘How do you know they're with this thing?'

Zach pressed a shaky hand to his chest.
I feel it here.

Sandie was staring over the edge. ‘I think the beasts agree with Zach,' she said.

The pit was emptying in a violent stampede. Beasts galloped, grunted and gored their way into the various tunnels, leaving a tide of blood in their wake that flowed into the crevices and crannies in the ground. Em watched a yale – an odd bovine-like beast that could have been an ancestor to a Highland cow – skewer a wild boar with one of its arm-like horns and toss it into the air in a desperate bid for freedom. The air swarmed with cockatrices, manticores and firebirds; gargoyles and rocs fought with orcs and owlmen, trolls with valkyries… Everything was desperate to leave.

To put as much space between themselves and whatever was coming.

‘We need a fast way down,' said Vaughn as the tornado in the air and stampede on the ground reached a crescendo. ‘Think!'

‘A giant airbag?' said Sandie. ‘The kind of thing you see stunt men jump on to from tall buildings?'

‘Too unpredictable,' said Vaughn. ‘What if one of us lands badly and breaks a leg, or worse? What if one of these flying beasts swoops past in mid-jump and picks us off as lunch?'

Em stared up at the spires and towers, the nooks and crannies of the gruesome gorge. They couldn't stay up here.

Em suddenly remembered a construction site at one of the old mansions in Kensington Gardens.

‘A slide!' she said. ‘Like those long tubes they use on demolition sites to get rid of rubbish and debris.'

A million sets of eyes stared down at the four of them, the beasts of the air watching them as if they were field mice. Em grabbed Vaughn's sketchpad and animated a tubular slide, fusing it on to a thick root jutting out of the rock face. The tube extended like a telescope, one section expanding from another in whirling cracks of light, until the last tube hit the distant ground with a hollow clang.

‘Sandie, you go first down the chute,' said Vaughn, sketching at the same time as Em. ‘As soon as you reach the bottom, clear out of the way and get inside that for safety.'

He pointed to a cage on wheels that he'd animated round the airy cushion at the bottom of Em's slide.

Sandie wriggled into the tube first. She disappeared almost at once. Em followed.

The ride was breathtakingly fast. Em rocketed in a wide spiral down to the bottom of the gorge, slewing from side to side, the tube walls a blur. She emerged with a gasp in the cage Vaughn had created, bouncing next to her mother on the cushion. Zach and then Vaughn exploded from the tube behind her, almost cartwheeling into the cage bars.

Way above them, a dragon shot out of a crevice, spewing fire at the very spot where they had been standing moments earlier. The edge of the tube caught fire.

‘What the—'

Vaughn gave an exclamation as the paper in his hand burst into flames. They could only watch as the tube, their protective cage and the drawing flared away to nothing, leaving them alone and defenceless on the rocky, bloodied ground.

The ground trembled. An overwhelming stench of rotting flesh and sewage gusted down the nearest tunnel, causing all four of them to gag and cover their noses.

Through the gloom, a hulking shape was moving slowly towards them.

We have got to move from here fast, Zach.
Something really bad is coming. I can feel it.

And then Em heard a familiar shout, deep in her mind.

OH… MY… GOD… EM! Am I hallucinating, or is that your obnoxious voice I can hear?

‘MATT!' Em screamed, out loud. ‘Mum, Zach, Vaughn – I can hear Matt!'

Sandie's face flooded with colour as her eyes darted in every direction, landing on the entrance to the foul-smelling tunnel.

Matt was still yelling in Em's head, making it impossible to hear herself think. But it was the best distraction ever. Despite their circumstances, she found herself laughing and crying at the same time, tears spilling down her cheeks. She threw herself into Zach's arms and danced a jig with him.

We came to find you, Matt. We opened this place to come and find you! Are you OK?

‘Is Mattie hurt?' Sandie begged. ‘Tell me, Em, is he OK?'

At the thought of Matt wounded as she had painted him in her triptych, Em found that he was gone from her mind. She grasped blindly, trying to find him again.

Matt! Can you hear me?

Nothing.

Zach saw and felt Em's panic rising.
What's wrong? Have you lost him?

Em nodded in anguish.

The Grendel lurched out of the tunnel in front of her.

At first Em thought its body was made of soft, wet clay. Then she saw it more clearly. Layers and layers of mud were peppered with hundreds of pulsing holes, like empty eyes blinking in the darkness. The creature oozed through the tunnel into the great pit in front of them, red eyes flaming, the stench of decay hanging over it like a shroud. Em stumbled back in disgust and horror.

Matt! Can you hear me?

Had they found Matt, just to lose him again?

Sandie yelped as she crunched across a nest of bones that was sinking into the ground. Vaughn reached over and lifted her off.

‘Pick a tunnel,' said Vaughn as the Grendel advanced, inhaling the air around it, creating a death draft that sucked the bones on the ground towards it with a hideous clattering sound. ‘We have to get out of here.'

But every tunnel Em could see was full of countless monsters, stopping and turning and shifting forward in an ugly kind of unison. Their fear and stench was overwhelming. Suffocating.

Em felt her mother's hand grip her own. ‘We need weapons.'

‘A tank?' signed Zach. ‘We could use it to charge our way into one of those tunnels.'

The watching, waiting creatures of Hollow Earth moved more quickly than Em would have dreamed possible. In moments they were utterly surrounded: the Grendel before them, the nightmarish beasts behind.

Trapped.

Em wondered wildly if the beasts had tricked them, cleared the pit to lure them from the ledge to their doom. It was as if they were thinking as one.

Where was her brother? Why couldn't she hear him any more?

Matt! Matt!

An enormous serpent creature with the crested head and spindly legs of a cockerel bounded towards Sandie. Vaughn was drawing, but not fast enough. The beast whipped its thick snake's tail and knocked the pad from his hand.

‘It's a basilisk, Mum,' screamed Em in blind panic. ‘Don't let it breathe on you! Its breath is poisonous! Vaughn, draw us weapons – anything!
Hurry!
'

Vaughn scrambled for his pad. In seconds they were armed with glittering, sparking swords. As the basilisk went for Sandie, she dropped to her knees, ducked beneath its toxic beak and slid her sword into its feathered breast.

The serpent gave an unearthly scream. Sandie only just rolled out of the way before the monster collapsed to the ground. The Grendel was across the pit in a blur, sucking out the basilisk's heart and stripping its feathers and flesh. It lifted its enormous ape-like head and bayed, bringing more creatures out of the tunnels, darkening the air above and the ground below with their writhing, fluttering, flexing bodies.

Em was filled with awe at the sight of her mother, dripping sword in hand, like the warriors Em loved to draw. The sight filled her with resolve. If her mother could be brave, she could too. The fear of this place wouldn't defeat her.

Em ran to her mum's side, ready for whatever horror was coming.

And then Matt and Jeannie stumbled out of the shadows.

Matt and Jeannie were holding each other upright. Jeannie was still dressed in her orange safety vest, although it was tattered and torn from one shoulder and Matt's clothes were in shreds. Both were hobbling. Matt was wounded, just as Em had painted him. But thankfully, the bone quill was clutched in his hand and no longer deep in his flesh.

Despite her mum's warnings, Em sprinted across the bone-filled gorge and wrapped herself in her brother's arms.

You took your time.

Matt's face blazed with relief and delight.
I'm happy to see you too Em, but maybe we can do this whole reunion thing when we get out of the hellhole?