Read the book: «The Gold Thief»
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2017
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Text copyright © Justin Fisher 2017
Cover illustration © Marcus Šumberac
Justin Fisher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008124557
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008124564
Version: 2017-03-06
For M and D
Forever
x
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
1. Christmas
2. Training
3. “TheeRe yoU arRe.”
4. Holiday
5. Blinking Mice
6. Home
7. Barking Dogs
8. One-way Ticket
9. Hide Park
10. New Recruit
11. Farewell
12. A World of Trouble
13. Madame O
14. Project Mercury
15. Under the Same Sky
16. The Guardian
17. Darklings
18. A Trip to the Museum
19. The Shadow
20. Breaking and Entering
21. Vault X
22. The Mirror in the Museum
23. City of Iron
24. The Central Intelligence
25. Barbarossa
26. All is Forgiven
27. He’s Back!
28. The Circus Travels
29. The Lady Beaumont
30. The Voice
31. A Search for Answers
32. City of Paper
33. The Secret in the Stone
34. The Darkening King
35. The Book of Aatol
36. Sleep Tight
37. Little Devils
38. At-lan
39. Find the Way
40. Eyes and Ears
41. “Tele-pot”
42. Control
43. Anger in the Big Top
44. Whispers from the Iron City
45. Cat Fight
46. Ding! Ding! Round Two
47. Happy Christmas
48. Tick, Tick, Tick …
49. … Tick, Tick, Tick
50. Drip, Drip, Drip
51. Healing
52. A Night of Terrors
53. The Viceroy of St Albertsburg
54. City of Glass
55. Friendly Talks?
56. Cups and Saucers
57. Allies and Enemies
58. Most Wanted
59. Escape
60. Out of the Frying Pan
61. Concentrate
62. An Unlikely Pair
63. And Into the Fire
64. Suits
65. Carrion
66. George the Mighty
67. True Potential
68. All Wrong
69. Old Friends, New Nightmares
70. Help
71. Mum and Dad
72. Into the Breach
73. Charge!
74. The Engine
75. After
76. Turning the Dial to 10
77. The Voice
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Books by Justin Fisher
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
United States Bullion Depository, Fort Knox, Kentucky
3.32am
eavy boots pound the tarmac, as officers bark their orders and sniffer dogs whine, blinded by the rows of steaming halogen floodlights. More and more arrive by the second. A never-ending procession of armoured cars and trucks loaded with soldiers. Above them, a dozen gunships, with their ground-shaking propellers, scan for signs. But there is nothing, only the appalling certainty that this is not a drill.
Beyond their fences and walls and barricades, a president is being woken, and powerful men in charge of a nation’s currency, its digits and its dollar bills are meeting and shouting and blaming.
Far below the chaos and the panic of the search, Shwartz and Greer sit in a bare grey cement room. It has no windows and no discernible features of any kind, except for the small surveillance camera in the far corner and its pulsating amber light.
Private Marvin L. Shwartz, slumped in one of the room’s two plastic bucket-chairs, is in considerable trouble and the man he reports to, Staff Sergeant Greer, on the other side of the bare metal table, is losing his patience.
“No, sir, I don’t remember. I have no idea how the vault was opened. I was walkin’ and then I wasn’t and the next thang I knew I was here, sir, with you, sir.”
“Shwartz, you are in an inordinate amount of doo-doo and there ain’t a damn thing I can do to help you, till you start explaining how half of this nation’s gold reserve just up and vanishes in less than an hour!”
The Bullion Depository at Fort Knox was protected not only by the United States Mint Police, but also by the 16th Cavalry Regiment, the 19th Engineer Battalion and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry, along with their tanks, attack helicopters and artillery. A force totalling well over thirty thousand men. The actual gold, all four and a half thousand metric tonnes, lay behind a one-of-a-kind, twenty-one-inch thick door, proofed against drills, lasers and explosions, designed by the Mosler Safe Company. It was monitored by twenty-four-hour orbital satellite and ground-sweeping radar. Automated machine guns covered every possible entry point, and it was rumoured that the entire surrounding grasslands were carpeted with land mines, a rumour Greer had been careful to encourage.
It was, to all intents and purposes, completely impregnable. That was, of course, until today – and on Private Shwartz’s watch.
Greer’s earpiece crackled.
He listened for a moment.
“They’re here! Already? Are you serious?”
It was at this point that Private Shwartz started to perspire.
“Son, I’ve known you a long time and I think I know the answer but I gotta ask anyway: do you love your country?”
“Sir, yessir!” puffed Shwartz, as eagerly as he knew how and all the more heartbreakingly because of it.
Staff Sergeant Greer was quite certain that if the Private had had a tail, he would have wagged it.
“I believe you do, son. The men you are about to meet …” His eyes dropped. “Just tell ’em the truth, Shwartz, like you told me.”
The door behind Greer slid open quietly and two men dressed in light grey suits entered the room. One had dark red-blond hair and introduced himself as Mr Fox. His greying accomplice, a Mr Badger, was built like a house and stood by the door without uttering a word. Handcuffed to his wrist was a small metallic briefcase.
The Staff Sergeant was excused, leaving Shwartz alone with the two men in grey.
The first thing Shwartz noticed was that Mr Fox did not sound remotely American. He was a young man, with kind eyes and a soft, vaguely British accent.
“Marvin, I represent the BBB. I hope you don’t mind me using your first name, Marvin, I find it helps enormously in these situations.”
“No, sir.” Shwartz paused. “Sir – the BBB, I’m sorry, is that a part of Homeland Security? Am I going to prison?”
“No. And … maybe. ‘Bagshot Bingley and Burke’, colloquially known as the BBB, are not connected to the US or any other government body. We are insurance underwriters, and the United States gold reserve is one of our contracts. As I’m sure you can appreciate, a claim of this magnitude presents logistical problems, even for an outfit with as much reach as ours. When something of this value goes missing, it is my job to get it back – and rest assured, Marvin, I will get it back.”
Fox raised his hand casually and Badger produced a document from the briefcase, which was when Shwartz noticed something else about Mr Fox. It wasn’t arrogance, or even a particular aura of confidence. Fox was, in fact, a rather unassuming sort of a man, but he had something, an air of … certainty. Slow, measured certainty. When he raised his hand, he knew Badger would have the items he needed, and when he slid them across the table towards Shwartz and handed him a pen, he knew that Shwartz would sign them for him. He was simply certain.
“Sir, what did I just sign, sir?”
“There’s no need to call me ‘sir’, Marvin. Fox will do. The paper is a non-disclosure agreement. In the interest of the world’s financial security and ‘what-not’, if you ever speak of this to anyone, you and your entire family will be placed under lock and key, for the rest of your lives. I know it sounds heavy-handed, Marvin. According to our files, Debbie is not the kind of mother-in-law anyone would want to be locked up with. But please try to understand: when all of America’s gold vanishes in less than seventy-two hours, the implications for the world’s markets … their very viability is placed in jeopardy.”
“All the gold, sir?” said an increasingly sweaty and ashen-faced Shwartz. “But we only had half here, the rest is …”
“I’m afraid the other half was taken earlier this week. Now please, Marvin, if you wouldn’t mind, let’s start with the issue of ‘access’. Not one of the guards within these walls can tell me anything, only that they ‘fell asleep’ for no apparent reason. You were the last guard, Marvin, between the intruder and the vault. Is there anything you can tell me?”
“No, sir, I mean Mr Fox. Like I told Staff Sergeant Greer, one minute I’m walkin’ my route, and I hear these footsteps. Well the next thang I know, I’m on my back, and the vault doors are wide open.”
“Marvin, there are over a dozen retinal eye-scanners between the entrance to this facility and the vault doors. Over twelve hundred security cameras, and countless laser tripwires. If your statement is true, then the intruder, or intruders, managed to waltz through the entire compound undetected. Which is almost as unlikely as the removal of thousands of tons of gold … in less than an hour. Do you have any idea who could have done that?”
“No, no, I don’t, Mr Fox.”
“Neither do we.”
Badger opened his briefcase and pulled out a small glass vial.
“Marvin,” said Mr Fox, indicating the vial. “We found this substance, rather a lot of it, by one of the vault walls. It looks like liquid mercury, but I’ve been told that it isn’t. Do you know what it is, Marvin?”
“No, Mr Fox, I do not.”
“Is there anything you do know, Marvin?”
“There is … one thang, kinda weird. Just after I heard the footsteps, there was this music playin’, only it wasn’t playin’ no notes. And then I just wound up real peaceful, or asleep, or both, till I was found by Staff Sergeant Greer.”
Fox leant in a little closer and smiled.
“Music with no notes. That sounds … familiar.”
Before he had even raised his hand, Badger produced a phone from his briefcase – only it wasn’t a model that Private Shwartz had ever seen. Fox put it to his ear.
“Owl? Yes, it’s Fox. I’m afraid there’s been a development. It’s happened again. No, I don’t think it would be wise to inform Bear at this stage, he may … overreact. Yes, I think that would be prudent.”
Fox handed the phone back to Badger and started to hum a tune of sorts. What made Shwartz nervous was the unsettling look of sympathy on his face.
“Marvin, you’re going to have to come with me. Your family are already en route. Don’t worry. We’ll protect you.”
Badger looked over to the camera in the corner of the room and a moment later the door slid open. To Private Marvin L. Shwartz’s amazement, the long subterranean corridor running beneath Fort Knox was lined with well over a hundred insurance men. Each of them was wearing a light grey suit.
Christmas
t was dark up on the rooftops, dark and cold. He could see his breath in the December air but little else. The streetlights below were unable to reach his perch, high up on the chimney stack. Bitter as it was, at least the cold was keeping his wits sharp.
Ned had to think quickly; what time he had was running out. Which would be the safer route? To continue along the rooftops, or to risk the gardens below with their noisy dogs and fences? His assailant was experienced, extremely so, but uncomfortable off the ground.
“Concealment,” he whispered bitterly, repeating the first of his training’s many golden rules.
He’d stick to the rooftops for now. Ned needed every advantage against the man following him if he was going to make it. He’d learnt to make little noise on the lead-lined tiles beneath him, and now he scampered quietly to the edge. He closed his eyes and the ring on his finger hummed. A beat later and the tiles from number 37 started to move. A year ago it would have taken all of his concentration. But Ned was more powerful now, the Amplifications his dad had taught him came as easily as breathing, and “Seeing” had been the very first form of Engineering that he’d learnt to master.
He focused on the squares of slate in front of him. Atom by atom they bent to his will, as though the roof itself had come alive. Light, strong aluminium started to form up from the grey stone in layers of interlocking pieces, each one forming over the other in precise ordered segments. To anyone else watching it would have been a moving marvel, but to Ned it was the beginnings of a walkway between two roofs.
Something stirred in the shadows below. Even when focused he’d learnt to listen, to hear the difference between background noise and the rustling of a hidden assailant. The man below was waiting. If he knew Ned’s location, he was no doubt making ready to strike. Ned blinked and the aluminium clattered back to a row of lifeless tiles. He’d cross the old-fashioned way. His lungs filled, one pace, two – and Ned let his muscles throw him across the gap. The timing was perfect.
The corners of his mouth turned towards a smile as his foot made contact with the next rooftop. And then it happened – the temperature around him plummeted, the tiles beneath his feet suddenly turning to ice.
“Urgh!”
His feet skidded along the now-frozen rooftop and his belly hit the tiles hard; he was starting to slide. “Breathe,” he whispered, and a year and a half of physical and mental training took over. Ned’s eyes closed and his hands shot out beside him. As his body flew over the edge of the roof he grabbed at the gutter, his hand like a steel vice. But there was give, too much give.
“Plastic,” he groaned.
The gutter tore from the wall and a second later he was two floors below with the wind knocked out of him and frost-covered garden grass beneath his back.
“Oww,” he managed.
Using the ice had been clever, but the man in the shadows had not finished. There was a loud voom, and from somewhere in the darkness a ball of fire raced towards Ned. He rolled and the flames changed, sputtering into raindrops before they could singe the grass below. The family at number 42 were too engrossed with the news on their television to notice the scene beyond their sliding patio doors. Ned caught a glimpse of the rolling headline.
ANOTHER KIDNAPPING REPORTED. POLICE SAY—
But he needed to focus.
Ned could think of a dozen ways to escape. An impenetrable shield of rock or iron could be yanked up from the lawn. He could disassemble the atoms of every wooden fence and brick wall between where he now stood and the safety of his home. But Ned wasn’t allowed to think for himself – rules were rules and he would have to find a quieter way. A way of escaping without his neighbours knowing he’d been there, and more importantly without them learning what Ned could do.
A smoke screen – straight out of the Engineer’s manual and, as such, allowed. Begrudgingly he thought about wood, he thought about it in every detail, the grain, the texture, the smell, till he could see the atoms in his mind’s eye. And then he speeded them up, faster and faster, heating them all the time, till the ring on his finger crackled with life and the air in the garden folded in on itself. But the Engine on his finger responded violently this time, Amplifying his frustration to make a cloud of burning black smoke, too much for his needs, and in seconds he could barely see in front of his nose, let alone breathe.
Ned’s eyes stung and he ran to where he hoped the garden fence was, before stumbling headfirst into a rosebush.
“Ow!”
The mistake had cost him, as two feet padded across the lawn, closing the gap between Ned and his assailant. He fumbled frantically on, his hands and feet found a wall, and he was over and gaining ground in a moment, the cloud of noxious smoke now blissfully behind him.
Another wall, this time lined with high fencing, another family glued to their screens. Ned wished he could be more like them, seeing the world through the safety of a telly. But the man behind him would never let go, never let him forget who he was, who he had been behind the Veil. One more wall and he was home, one more and the chase would come to an end. He made ready to leap when he saw it forming in front of him: a complex array of iron spikes, sharp and cruel, growing out of the bricks and mortar.
The work was unmistakable: only a true master could have crafted them with such precise and intricate detail.
A voice in the darkness called out to him. A voice that had watched his every move.
“What is the family motto?”
“Look before you leap,” said Ned wearily.
“And I’m glad you did, son, the guard-spikes would have been sore as hell, and your mum’s fed up with having to mend your clothes.”
“It’s not great for me, either, Dad,” said Ned. “She’s rubbish with a sewing machine.”
“Good session, though,” said Ned’s dad. “You’re improving all the time. You really slowed me down with that smoke.”
“Not enough.”
“No,” said his dad. “But you’ll get there. It’s just a matter of time.”
Ned thought of the nights stretching ahead of him, nights of training, of climbing and jumping and falling, when everyone else was watching TV.
“Great,” he mumbled.
Training
raining might have been over but there was still the matter of a small wager. “Dad?” said Ned to the darkness.
“Yes, son?”
“Our bet; last one home has to eat seconds, right?”
“Right – so?”
“You’re still on this side of the wall, aren’t you?”
If his dad had spoken, Ned would have sensed the alarm in his voice. Actually eating Olivia Armstrong’s cooking was a fate that neither of them relished, but “seconds” were out of the question. The guard-spikes at the top of their garden wall turned to mist and were carried harmlessly away by the wind.
Ned’s dad nearly always won their bouts of training. But then his dad set the rules. Even so, there were some things Terrence Armstrong couldn’t control – Ned was younger and faster, and over the wall whilst his dad was still scrambling to find a foothold.
He landed on the other side as quietly as a cat. But even as he righted himself, he sensed that something was wrong, just before the shadow beside him moved. “How?” he mouthed, as a foot connected with his chest and he flew, arms flailing, into the family’s plastic wheelie bins.
“What is the family motto?” asked a grinning Olivia Armstrong.
“How about, ‘Social Services are going to take your son away for his own protection’,” said Ned grumpily.
“I love you too, dear,” replied his mother, before kissing him on the cheek. “And I heard every word about the sewing and the wager.”
Ned and his dad entered their home like two naughty schoolboys. It was their family’s inner sanctum and a picture postcard of pre-Christmas excitement. Presents sat lovingly wrapped under the tree, home-made decorations covered the walls and if there was hanging space, there was mistletoe. His mum even had a constant supply of Christmas carols murmuring from the radio in the kitchen. It was a cosy contrast to the bachelor lives the two Armstrong men had lived before Ned’s mum had been returned to them. Olivia Armstrong had worked tirelessly to make up for lost time and lost Christmases. Twelve years’ worth.
Ned had always wanted a “normal” life, and though they were all trying, there was one rather unavoidable issue. The Armstrongs, despite outward appearances, were not even remotely normal.
And therein lay the problem. Ned had exactly what he’d always wanted right in front of him, but, as wonderful as it was, deep down inside he knew it was a lie. Ned had seen the magic of another world and, once seen, it could never be forgotten. The more they pushed him to blend in with his old world, to go unseen, to go unnoticed – the more he realised that he couldn’t.
“You know he made me fall off a roof?” said Ned, who’d taken his throbbing back to the comfort of their sofa.
“I was going to cushion the fall, son, would have done too if you hadn’t fallen quite so well. The gutter was inspired by the way – got your mum’s training to thank for that.”
“You’ve got to be prepared for anything, dear,” cooed Olivia from the kitchen.
As always in regard to training, his mum and dad were a united front.
“And you need to work on your smoke screens,” warned Terrence as he set the table for dinner. “Very effective, but too much power—”
“—brings attention, I know, I know, but what’s the point in learning how to evade danger if all we do is hide away from it?”
Olivia pretended not to hear and busied herself with preparing their supper, whilst humming to an awful version of “White Christmas” on the radio.
“Don’t you miss it, Dad, the Hidden, the Circus – our friends?”
“Course I do, Ned, but not nearly as much as I missed or worried about your mum. Or you, whilst we’re on the subject, after you crossed the Veil. I will never let us be apart again, Ned, not now, not ever.”
“But Barbarossa’s dead, Dad, all that’s behind us.”
His dad shook his head. “Do you know what they call you behind the Veil? ‘The hero of Annapurna.’ Everyone knows what you did, what you’re capable of, but you’re still just a boy, my boy – and there are plenty of creatures on the other side as bad as he was and with as much to gain by getting their hands on you.” His dad paused. “Nowhere is as safe as you think, Ned, not for people like us.”
“Oh, Dad, really? We used to live in the dullest suburb in England, and now we live next door to it. Nothing happens here.”
“Which is precisely why our powers need to stay a secret. If jossers found out about us, we’d have to move, and quickly. Besides which, ‘nothing’ much was happening before Mo and his cronies came looking for me in Grittlesby. Trouble could just as easily come looking for us here.”
“Then teach me how to fight, really fight, not hide.”
His dad’s face darkened. The truth was that Ned could do any number of the training exercises asked of him, with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back. Ned knew it and so did his dad. What he was really asking was for permission to work outside the limitations of the Engineer’s Manual.
“You know I can’t do that, son.”
“I’d be careful, Dad.”
“It’s not about that. What you did at St Clotilde’s, that level of power, it’s simply never been done. Not by a single Engineer before you. We have no idea of the dangers.”
“What if it has, though? The missing pages from the Manual, maybe that’s what they’re about? You could help me, we could work it out together.”
His dad’s expression looked somewhere between anger and concern, before finally settling on kind.
“The pages are gone and there’s no way of knowing what was on them. Ned, any Engineer could have made a smoke screen without choking themselves half to death and you’re better than all of the ones that came before you, better than me. Remember last week, when you got angry? The power grid for half the suburb went out and not for the first time. We’ve gone through three blown microwaves in less than a month and every time you do homework, car alarms start sounding off all over Clucton. I can’t do that, son, none of it.”
“Then help me control it, Dad, please?”
And this was where the conversation always wound up.
“Your powers have changed since Annapurna, since you connected to the Source, that much we know. But there’s something else, something troubling you that you’re not telling us. I can’t help you if you don’t let me know what it is.”
For a glimmer of a moment, Ned looked into his father’s kindly eyes and prepared himself to say something. About what happened at night, when he let himself fall asleep.
About the voice.
But this time – like all the others – he found that he couldn’t do it. Because if he talked about it now … it would live outside his dreams and nightmares. It would become … real.
“Tomorrow, Dad, I’ll tell you both. I promise.” And a part of him believed that he actually might.
Suddenly there was a shriek from the kitchen, followed by an unusually panicked Olivia Armstrong, flapping her arms.
“Oh dear Lord, it’s ruined!” she gasped. “And the Johnstons will be here any minute! Will you two stop dribbling on about ‘Amplification’ and set the table. Terry, I need a spatula, and fast!”
Sometimes, Ned found it hard to believe this was the same woman who, mere months ago, had fought off countless gor-balin assassins, to protect her “wards” at the battle of St Clotilde’s. Ned’s mum could happily face off against a mountain troll if the mood took her, but the mystery of weighed ingredients and a timed oven were not a warrior’s domain.
As the aroma of burnt “something” hit their noses, the kitchen radio blared.
“The third kidnapping from the capital in less than a week—”
Terrence’s face whitened and his eyes flitted to Olivia for a moment, before he started rifling through a kitchen drawer for implements. But Ned had seen it.
All his dad’s talk of dark forces that might be interested in Ned. All the training he was making him do. There was something he was worried about – something specific – and it had to do with the kidnappings on the news.
“TheeRe yoU arRe.”
ater that night, when the Johnstons had gone and the last of his mum’s burnt offerings had been cleared away, Ned went to bed. It was his least favourite part to any day. Not because he wanted to stay up, but because of what happened when he didn’t.
Sleep.
For weeks now he had been plagued by the same horrifying nightmare. The hot metal walls. The sense of being trapped, and then the walls blowing open and …
Just thinking about it made him shudder.
But it was not the nightmare itself or the part Ned’s ring always played in it that he could not tell his parents about. It was the voice that lay waiting whenever it began. A voice both familiar and ancient – like a call of trumpets over the grinding of rock.
“TheeRe yoU arRe,” said the voice, when Ned finally succumbed to his exhaustion.
Deeply asleep and trapped in his dream, Ned shuddered.
Downstairs, the TV blew its fuse. A light bulb in the kitchen popped. And all down the street, car alarms began to wail.
Holiday
hen Ned woke up, the awful dream and the voice that lurked in its shadow hung over him like a great dark blanket. He was used to the feeling by now and had worked out a series of tricks to get away from its greedy clutches. But today was different: by the time he’d brushed his teeth and made his way downstairs, help was already on offer in the guise of two lovebirds and a Christmassy jingle on the radio. Terry and Olivia Armstrong were dancing very slowly together under a sprig of mistletoe in their kitchen.
“Err, guys, do you have to do that? It’s going to put me off my toast.”
Terry Armstrong continued without flinching. It was his mum who answered.
“Ned, your father and I have waited twelve years to celebrate Christmas together and this is only our second. No amount of teenage grumpiness is going to stop us dancing, cooing, hugging or anything else for the rest of our days.”
And as Ned smiled in blissful defeat, his dad finally spoke without taking his chin from the top of his mum’s shoulder.
“You know what they say, son? If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
“Don’t be daft!” wailed Ned.
But his dad’s ring finger crackled wildly and Ned found himself being pushed by its invisible power to the arms of his mum and dad.
Ned’s hair was ruffled, his cheeks pinched and what followed was the most clumsy six-legged waltz the small suburb of Clucton had ever seen, except of course that they couldn’t actually see it. In that moment Ned forgot that he was fourteen years old, and a teenager who from time to time tried to let the rest of the world think he might be cool – because he wasn’t, but mostly because, just like his parents, he’d waited and hoped and dreamed for twelve long years that he could celebrate Christmas with his mum and dad. Now that he actually could, a six-legged waltz in the family kitchen felt like just the right thing to do.
***
Hours later, Carrion Slight sat in his Silver Shadow Rolls-Royce and tended to his bag of tricks, a bag containing two special items. This job had been awkward even for a thief with his unique set of skills. His targets had covered their tracks well and their scent had eluded him for an unusually long time.
“I really don’t get the point of children. They always smell rather off to me, especially the boys. Still, a contract is a contract and my nose never lies, does it, Mange?” said Carrion.
There was no answer.
“It reminds me of that job in Prague, her perfume was so sickly sweet – yet another aroma I wish I could forget. I don’t expect you’ve ever been to Prague, have you?” continued Carrion.
From the outside of the car it looked very much as though he was talking to himself.
“Nothing smells worse than bad perfume – nothing, that is, except for boys. Her necklace, on the other hand: so shiny, and such perfectly cut diamonds.” For a moment Carrion shut his eyes, lost now in the shimmer of “jobs” gone by. “It broke my greedy heart to sell it.” Still no answer. Carrion started to fume. “You’re never actually going to talk, are you, Mange? What I wouldn’t do for some intelligent conversation. Instead I have a bargeist; a demon-hearted, Darkling mutt with only one impulse.”
Carrion unwrapped a full leg of lamb and threw it into the back of his car. The invisible creature behind him snarled loudly, before opening its gullet wide. The car shook just once and the lamb was gone.
“Ungrateful hound.”
Yesterday Carrion had pretended to be a health inspector from the school board; today he’d be a door-to-door salesman. One way or another he always found a way in. His little box took care of the rest and if that didn’t work, he always had Mange.
“Come, we’ve work to do. Do not make yourself known unless they resist. You’re not allowed to kill these ones; though, to be fair, they said nothing about the causing of pain.”
Sliding from the car, Carrion opened its rear door and the invisible creature stepped on to the pavement, with its heavy padded feet. A grinning Carrion approached the house and rang the doorbell. He did so love his job.
Olivia Armstrong opened the door, her expression one of mild irritation at being disturbed by a cold-caller.
“Good morning, madam,” said Carrion. “Is the family at home; I do hope so? I’m selling trinkets, music boxes to be precise, and this one is almost free.”
Blinking Mice
ed sat in a half-broken deck chair in Mr Johnston’s shed. It was the perfect place to hang out and, as George’s dad never did any actual gardening, it was always free of grown-up ears. Term had ended and his two pals, George Johnston and Archie Hinks, were in high spirits. Ever since his time at the circus Ned had developed a problem with calling his friend “George” – it just reminded him too much of the lovable ape he’d left behind – and had forced him to go by “Gummy” on account of his large teeth, though he’d never, obviously, told him the real reason for the nickname. Either way, both his friends loved teasing Ned about his parents and “Gummy Johnston” was busy describing his evening at Ned’s house and the frightening mess that was Olivia’s cooking.
“You should have seen it, Arch! Unrecognisable!” exclaimed Gummy, clutching at his throat. “Oh and the smell, like rotting pigeon in old vinegar.”
“A Waddlesworth special?” asked Archie.
“A Waddlesworth super-special, if you ask me,” grinned back his friend.
“She is bad, isn’t she?” Ned said in agreement.
At this point, the walls of Mr Johnston’s garden shed rattled with their combined laughter.
Yet another layer of lies that had become Ned’s life. No one on this side of the Veil knew about Ned’s powers, let alone what his real name was, not even his two best friends. But that was what he really loved about Gummy and Arch. He could be the “Waddlesworth” Ned with them, the old one he had been before the Hidden had come knocking. There were moments, when the three of them were together, when the laughter flowed freely enough, that he let himself forget about Amplification and training. And sometimes, if he really tried, Ned even forgot about the voice.
Whiskers, Ned’s pet mouse, remained perfectly still on his favourite seed bag, knowing full well that Gummy and Arch wouldn’t be nearly as chirpy if they’d seen what Ned’s mum could really do with a carving knife, or sword for that matter.
“All right, Whiskers?” asked Gummy.
But Ned’s mouse remained completely motionless, because unbeknown to Gummy, Whiskers was not really a mouse. At least not a real one.
“Ned?” asked George.
“Yep?”
“You do know Whiskers is a bit weird, right?”
“Yes. Actually, he’s about as weird a mouse as it gets, but he’s my weird mouse and I wouldn’t have him any other way,” replied Ned rather proudly, at which point Whiskers deigned to give him an acknowledging twitch of the nose.
“Talking of weird, did George tell you about the bloke who turned up at our school?” asked Arch.
“No.”
“Well,” started Arch. “So this is even weirder than your mouse and your mum’s cooking. This inspector from the school board comes into class, says he’s there to do a spot inspection, looking for nits. And he has this nose, all long and pointy.”
“Nits?”
“Nits,” agreed Gummy, with a knowing nod.
“Yeah,” said Arch. “Nits on the last day of school, and he said he only needed two candidates, me and Gummy.”
Ned’s ears pricked up, closely followed by the ears of his pet rodent. There were several things that his two pals had in common. They were Ned’s only close friends outside the Circus of Marvels, and they had both lived on the same street as Ned, until the Waddlesworths (or Armstrongs – depending on which side of the Veil you lived) had decided to move to the neighbouring suburb.
“Only you two, out of the whole class?”
“Yup. He kept asking questions about how long we’d lived on our street; he had a really oily voice, sort of creepy. He said there was a very rare type of nit he was trying to track down and that he thought it had come from Oak Tree Lane.”
“That is weird,” said Ned, who did not like where the story was going at all.
“It gets weirder. So Gummy’s waiting outside and I’m sat on a chair in the school’s old meeting room. The inspector guy takes these plugs out of his nose and then shoves said nose right into my hair. Finally he pulls away, staggers backwards and looks like he’s going to be sick.”
“Well, who wouldn’t?” grinned Gummy.
“Then he looks at me and starts blathering on about the awful smell of children and how he finally has a lead. A second later he’s flying out the door past me, then Gummy, and clutching his nose like it’s been stabbed.”
Behind the Veil, there were many creatures, with many “gifts”. Ned had read about Folk with a sense of smell so acute they could follow a target, any target, for miles and once they had a scent, they never forgot it. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
“So after that, you went home and you and your mum and dad came over to mine, right?”
“Yeah. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You’ve led him straight to us, Gummy!”
At that moment, something inside Ned changed. The mistletoe and wrapping paper, the thin veneer of an ordinary life with its ordinary joys and its run-up to Christmas, all, suddenly, faded away.
Behind Ned’s friend, the two bulbs in his extraordinary mouse’s eyes started to flash a brilliant white. Cold fear ran up and down Ned’s back. His mouse, a Debussy Mark Twelve, had been top-of-the-range spy gear in its time, a mechanical marvel of spinning cogs and winding gears. It would never blink like that on this side of the Veil, not in front of “jossers” who did not know about the Hidden. Not, of course, unless it was a serious emergency.
The mouse had been adjusted by the Circus of Marvels’ resident boffin and could now communicate with Ned, albeit in simple Morse code. Longer flashes of the eyes were a dash, shorter blinks a dot.
Ned wondered who was sending him a message. Only a few people knew the correct frequency to contact Whiskers: Ned’s parents, the Circus of Marvels and the Olswangs at number 24. His dad had insisted that if they were to return to a “normal” life, they would have to have friendly agents to watch over their son. “Fair-folk” used glamours outside the Hidden’s territory to remain human in appearance, but Mr Olswang clearly had dwarven blood in his veins and “Mrs” had to have been elven to be anywhere near as tall as she was. Either way, neither Ned’s parents nor the Olswangs had ever had cause to use the system until today, in Mr Johnston’s shed.
Ned’s friends looked at Whiskers in complete and utter horror.
“What in the name of everything is your mouse doing?” marvelled Archie.
“Shh, it’s blinking,” said Ned.
“DON’T GO, H, O, M,” he translated.
A single dot.
“E.”
There are few things less likely to make a boy stay where he is, than telling him not to go home. Especially when it means that his parents might be in danger.
“Y-y-you need to do some explaining,” stammered Gummy. “I mean, that’s just not right, not a bit! Your … your blinking mouse, Ned, what on earth is it?”
Archie leapt to his feet.
“It’s magic, innit?” said Archie. “You’ve got some weird magical rodent, you’re like blooming Gandalf or something. O,M,G, that is AWESOME!”
But when Ned spoke it was in a whisper. A whisper so cold that it stilled his friends to their cores.
“Say nothing, not to anyone. Promise?”
Whether because of Whiskers’ flashing eyes, or the look on Ned’s face, both of his friends remained silent.
“PROMISE!” forced Ned with a shout.
“Promise,” they murmured back sheepishly.
And with that, Ned was on his bicycle and pedalling away from the Johnstons’ as fast as its wheels would carry him.
“Ned, wait! You forgot your bag,” called Gummy, but Ned was already gone.
Home
he bike’s metal frame rattled noisily as it careered through the streets of Grittlesby and on to neighbouring Clucton. Three thirty and it was already getting dark. Pedestrians yelled at the blur of speeding metal, cars honked their horns and Ned’s mind became a whirlwind of all-encompassing panic.
Where his dad had trained Ned with the ring at his finger, his mum had taught him circus skills. High-wire, tumbling, fencing, juggling (either knives or flames) and all-round acrobatics. Everyone who worked the borders of the Veil had to know them, to be able to fight, or get out of danger, and there was no better teacher than Olivia Armstrong.
She had not taught him how to ride a bike – that much he had already known – but she had honed his reflexes and kept him fit. Even so, he thought his lungs were going to explode by the time he finally made it to his house, though not as surely as his heart. Training only works, no matter how thorough, when you remember it. Ned could barely remember how to breathe.
He didn’t notice the blaring car alarms, or that the lawnmower from number 39 was floating several feet off the ground. His powers were spiking again. He approached the front door and let out a sigh of relief. The lights were on and everything looked quite normal from the outside. He even heard “White Christmas” playing on their kitchen radio again.
“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas …”
It was only when he pulled out his keys that he noticed the front door hanging very slightly ajar. That, in and of itself, would have been more than enough to make Ned worry, but it was the movement in his own shadow that made his hair stand on end. It spilt out across the ground, oozing with a will of its own. The shadow became a shape and then the shape rose up to greet him. Within it were two minuscule eyes, like a pair of stars on flowing black velvet.
Ned’s undulating familiar, the shadow-dwelling Gorrn, was a difficult creature, prone to taking offence over the smallest issue and also uncommonly lazy. Gorrn usually only came to Ned if he was summoned. The only time he showed himself without being asked was if there was very clear and very present danger nearby.
“Gorrn, is something wrong?”
“Arr,” groaned back the shadow.
Gorrn was a familiar of few words. “Roo” was either a question or a “don’t know”, “Unt” a flat refusal to help, but “Arr”?
“Arr” nearly always meant yes.
Barking Dogs
rmed with nothing more than his mouse and his shadow, Ned stepped through the door of his house.
The inside looked normal enough, at least to begin with. There was no sign of trouble, and Ned could see that one of the gas rings in the kitchen had been lit, though the pan next to it was still waiting to go on. As if someone had been interrupted. Or taken by surprise.
“Mum! Dad?”
There was no answer.
Where were they, and why would they leave the front door open and the gas on?
“Kidnap,” blared the radio suddenly. “Tonight’s story focuses on how people are being taken from their homes, but also asks the big question – why?”
“Taken?” murmured a horrified Ned. “Whiskers – that Morse message, was it from the Olswangs?”
The Debussy Mark Twelve gave an affirmative bob of its head.
Ned peered through the living-room window, out across the street and on to the Olswangs’. Even as the day drew darker, he could see that there was something very wrong with their door. It appeared to have been broken off its hinges. Panic, clear and bright, made its unwelcome return. Surely this couldn’t be happening? The Veil, Barbarossa, it was all behind them but Terrence and Olivia Armstrong were gone – apparently – and the decorated home they’d left in their wake was lifeless and bleak, like a once-busy shop after a sale, when the lights were out and all the people had gone home.
“Protocol,” he breathed. His parents had lain out concise plans should this very situation arise. Search the premises for clues, carefully and methodically. Anything he found would prove vital if he was to get them back. If intruders were still present, he was to leave immediately.
“Boys, look around, will you? Gorrn, would you kindly search the bedrooms? Whiskers, look for anything out of the ordinary.”
“Arr,” said Gorrn, and the ominous creature was in the shadows and oozing up the stairs.
“Move, Gorrn!” hissed Ned.
His slovenly familiar gave an undulating shrug of what might have been shoulders, and began moving at two miles per hour instead of one.
The second third of his mostly mute search party promptly gave a squeak from behind the sitting-room’s sofa. His keen clockwork eyes had indeed found something “out of the ordinary” on the carpet. It had collected by the far wall and looked almost exactly like liquid mercury. Ned got down on his knees and took a closer look. The sudden absence of his parents must have something to do with the odd-looking liquid, but what?
“Blimey, Whiskers, what is this stuff and what’s it doing on our carpet?”
His trusty mouse, as wonderful as it was, had no answer.
“Take a sample, our friends on the other side will want to have a look at this.”
Whiskers did as he was told, using his tiny metal tongue as a syringe. The mercurial liquid was now Ned’s only clue and whatever it might mean, he was quite sure it had originated from the other side of the Veil – the side he would have to go to for answers.
To his left was the family Christmas tree. It sagged under the weight of lights and baubles and the promise of happier days. He looked at the pile of presents beneath it and his chest tightened. In a few days he would have been opening them with his mum and dad. But today and now, everything had changed. He would have to leave shortly and had no way of knowing when he’d come back. There were two presents that he’d been particularly excited about. As daft as it was, he couldn’t bear to leave without them, and scooped them up into his arms.
“Yes, Chief Inspector, but why, why are they being taken?” blared the radio.
Ned thought of his parents’ smiling faces and willed the interview to stop. As he did so, there was an angry bang! from the kitchen and his mum’s radio exploded. His powers had spiked again, loudly enough for something upstairs to take notice.
From the ceiling directly above Ned’s head came a low growl and it was one that he didn’t recognise. It was followed by a wailing sound from Gorrn, who Ned guessed had found an intruder!
“Gorrn? Gorrn, what’s going on up there?”
Silence.
If Ned’s training had taught him anything, it was that Terry and Olivia Armstrong were the best of the best. They wouldn’t have gone down without a fight and yet there were no signs of a scuffle, at least downstairs. He prayed that whatever Gorrn had come across had made them flee, and that if they’d done so, they’d escaped without getting hurt.
“Please be OK,” he whispered.
CRASH!
There was a loud tinkling of broken glass and another of Gorrn’s wails, at which point Whiskers responded with a highly agitated flashing of his eyes.
Two dots and a dash; “U”, followed by an “S”, then an “E”.
“USE, O, N, E,” translated Ned, “W, A, Y.”
“One way?” he mouthed.
“H, E, L, P – I, S – I, N – T, H, E – P, A, R, K.”
Ned froze. The One-Way! The Glimmerman had given it to him before he’d left the circus. His dad never let him leave the house without it, never. In an emergency it could be used to travel by mirror, any mirror, to a Hidden-run safe house. There were several problems with Whiskers’ frantic blinking message. Parks in general did not contain safe houses, at least not as far as Ned knew, and any clue to finding out what had happened to his parents was not going to be found in a bush, but upstairs, where Gorrn was fighting with … something.
As Ned cursed himself for not thinking ahead, the largest and most immovable problem presented itself.
He had left his bag containing the One-Way Key in Mr Johnston’s shed.
That decided it.
There had been moments in Ned’s life where one might think he’d acted bravely. In truth he had acted out of necessity. Today, here and now, was one such moment. No matter what the protocol was, if he was going to find his parents, he had to see what was upstairs. He placed the two Christmas presents by the front door and turned to his mouse.
“Right, Whiskers, you lead the way upstairs – I’ll be right behind you. On my count; three, two, one – GO!” he spat.
And Whiskers did go, right up his trouser leg.
“Coward.”
The Debussy Mark Twelve answered with a nip at his ankle. Heart now racing, Ned crept forward. On the landing outside his bedroom he saw Gorrn, rushing towards him at a decidedly faster pace than the last time he’d seen him. Whatever was behind the now-fleeing creature had clearly spooked him, and Gorrn did not spook easily. There was no sign of an intruder of any kind – which was how Ned guessed it was a bargeist.
He had come across one before. Completely invisible, unless you were scared, and the perfect hunter. Gorrn had dispatched one for him at the Circus of Marvels. If Gorrn was having trouble with this creature, it must be old – maybe even an alpha?
“Gru,” mumbled an out-of-breath Gorrn, which in this instance meant sorry.
“Gorrn? Gorrn, you’re supposed to protect me, you big lump!”
His familiar gave him an oozy, deflated shrug, before shrinking into Ned’s shadow.
“You two are useless!” grimaced Ned, before trying to focus on the problem at hand. All of his training told him to remain calm, yet the only way he was going to actually see the creature was if he let it frighten him, which as it turned out would be no problem at all.
High-level bargeists were not only particularly violent but had also developed the ability to grow in size. Ned swallowed as a shiver of genuine fear trickled down his spine. As he did so, the first part of the blood-hound started to show. Two smouldering eyes, under heavy furred lids, stared at him down the corridor. Two eyes that were growing bigger.
That was the thing about a bargeist, the more frightened you became, the more you saw of it and, in turn … the more you got frightened.
This was not going to be like sparring with his dad. Somewhere in the partly visible creature was a wolfish dog, with the bulk of a crocodile. Add jet-black fur as hard as nails and teeth as sharp as razors, sprinkle in a demon’s evil heart, and what you had was a bargeist.
Wasn’t this what Ned had wanted? A fight without rules? No manual to hand, no overprotective parents.
Yes and no.
His freedom had lost its lustre, along with his mum and dad.
From somewhere within him something flared, a spark of anger, a snap of rage. Ned didn’t care how frightening a creature the bargeist was. It had done something to his parents and it would pay. He only had to think it, and his ring crackled like electric fire – carpet and plasterboard came tearing from the walls and floor. A great angry mess of swirling debris formed beside him, and quickly he turned their atoms to hardened stone, using nothing more than raw willpower and a good dose of malice.
“What have you done with them?” he yelled, his hand raised in a threat and his weapons ready to let fly.
But even as he blustered, more of the creature showed itself. No matter how loudly you beat your chest, you can never lie to a bargeist. Ned saw it lowering its head and its great jaws widening to something of a … grin.
“Hra, hra, hra,” came a sound like wet gravel.
“Tell me that isn’t a laugh?”
It paced forward suddenly and Ned “told” his barrage to fly, but he’d been too eager, pushed them with too much force and the projectiles missed their mark, splintering the far wall with a violent crash. Even now, with the creature pushing towards him, he could hear his dad telling him to focus.
Ned backed down the stairs, the bargeist following but its pace slowing. Why wasn’t it attacking?
“Think!” breathed Ned.
There was a horrible scraping of iron-hard hair along the wall as the bargeist turned down the stairwell.
“Nice doggy,” whimpered Ned.
And the “doggy” gave him another canine grin, though there was nothing nice about it. Without even trying, Ned’s mind flicked to the memorised pages of the Engineer’s Manual. The very same pages he’d asked to abandon only the night before.
“Page one hundred and thirty-seven, ‘C-containment’,” he stammered.
But before he could focus, two things happened and in no particular order.
First, a now completely visible bargeist sat down at the top of the stairs.
And second, Ned’s friends burst in through the front door and slammed it shut behind them.
The free sample has ended.
