Pure Dead Trouble Page 10

  “Yeah, I've got a clear signal,” Zander said, his voice breaking the breathless silence of the woods. “Took me a while, huh? Right, let's keep this brief, before anyone can get my coordinates off the phone. I'm in, the hosts don't suspect a thing, and I can probably stay at least a month, which gives us more than enough time to set up…. What?…You're never going to believe this. A butler…Yeah, OK, very funny… No—I don't iron…. Look, just shut up and listen.”

  Pandora noticed that Zander's English accent had slipped somewhat, developing a pronounced American twang the more he spoke. Puzzled, she tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

  “Take the boat to the dilapidated old jetty twelve miles up the loch from the target. You can't miss it, since there's the most over-the-top bloated monstrosity of a house right behind it…. No, that's not the target, but, yeah, if we'd more time, I'd blow it up as well…. ”

  Pandora felt her heart stop. Now just wait a minute, she thought. That's my house you're talking about. But unable to tear herself away, she listened with a sinking feeling as Zander continued.

  “Look for something with about fifty chimneys and you can't go wrong. It's tied to the jetty, right?…No, not the chimneys, you moron, the package of plastique that's going to blow the target out of existence. Right?…Yeah, exactly the same way we did it in Panama, then in Angola, and that freezing dump in—what was it called? Uh…Archangel. Except this time, they won't be expecting us. They've only got minimal security at this factory. I tell you, they're so confident, they're not even bothering to cover their tracks. The beach is awash in dead mice. I guess they must think the locals are too stupid to notice. Anyway, I say we do it sooner, rather than later. Listen carefully: if I haven't heard from you by midday tomorrow, I'll assume it's set up to rock and roll for, say, two p.m.? Are we clear on that?… Good. One last thing—don't, for God's sake, attempt to land at the jetty and go walkabout. The hosts have got all manner of things guarding the house; compared to these guys, the target's a complete cakewalk—”

  As Pandora reached out to scratch a gnat bite on her leg, her balance shifted from one hip to the other. To her utter horror, something tiny beneath her feet gave way with a loud crack out of all proportion to its size. Across the clearing, Zander spun around, snapping his cell phone shut and staring in her direction. Oh no, no, no, she thought. What do I do now ?

  Run, her mind informed her, just as Zander broke into a sprint up ahead.

  A Brush with Greatness

  n the nursery, moonlight shone through a gap in the curtains, illuminating Damp's bed in a pool of silver. The little girl had woken to the sound of footsteps on the rosequartz drive outside, and now, with her thumb jammed firmly in her mouth, she lay wide awake in the darkness wishing she had someone to play with. Hanging above the chest of drawers was a framed reproduction of La Giaconda — Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Mona Lisa—which had graced the nursery wall for the past thirteen years, ever since Luciano Strega-Borgia had banished it from his study, claiming he couldn't stand looking at that enigmatic smirk for one moment longer. The fact that Baci Strega-Borgia was heavily pregnant with Titus at the time and had taken to wearing an identically enigmatic smile as she approached Titus's birth might have had something to do with Luciano's loathing of the Leonardo. In truth, unsettled by the prospect of his approaching fatherhood, terrified that his slender wife would be unable to withstand the rigors of childbirth, and praying that he wouldn't faint dead away on the day itself, Luciano felt that the last thing he needed to be surrounded with was enigmatically grinning women. Hence, the picture ended up in the nursery, where it hung, for the most part unobserved, in the shadows of Damp's room.

  Damp gazed at it, her eyelids flickering as sleep stole across the bed to claim her. The quilt settled its feathers around her, the air hung still and quiet, and Damp was just on the point of blissful surrender, when…

  … an unfamiliar female voice rang out.

  “Leo, for God's sake, where did that child spring from?” The woman shifted impatiently on her seat, her limbs cramped from attempting to hold the same pose since daybreak. Sancte Spiritus, she thought, but he's a right slave driver, this one. No coffee breaks, no pauses for a little vin santo and panforte…no conversation, nada. Just the swish-swish splot of brushes on canvas…

  “I said, Maestro, there's a child in your studio. One of yours? Or not, since you appear immune to a woman's charms…”

  Across the dusty studio, the painter gave an exasperated pfff and looked up from a table where he'd been trying to mix a color similar to the ochre of his sitter's skin.

  “In the name of the Redeemer!” he shrieked. “What are you prattling on about now, woman? At daybreak it was “Oh, Leo, I'm sooo tired, can't we just go for a little lie-down?” and then we had, “Leo, wasn't that the bells of the Angelus? Elevenses? I'm so famished I could eat a wild boar panino,and now you tell me there's a child…. ”

  Damp gazed up at the wildly gesticulating figure and risked a smile. “Hello, Man,” she said, unsure if this was indeed the case, since Signor Leonardo da Vinci was sporting a rather abbreviated dress, tights, and pointy shoes in fetching shades of rose madder. The long pointy beard was a bit of a giveaway, though. So, too, was his deep male voice, raised in anger. Sounds like Dada, Damp decided, her bottom lip automatically wobbling in a learned response to Italianate hysterics.

  “What? Are they now sending me babies as apprentices?” Leonardo glared at Damp and, correctly assessing that this one was on the verge of tears, relented somewhat. Passing her a tiny sable paintbrush, he said, “Here, bambina, take this little brush. You can start by stirring together two parts of burnt umber to one part of ultramarine. Surely even a complete beginner can manage to mix me a decent black?”

  “Not like black,” Damp stated firmly. “Want pink.”

  “PINK?” Leonardo shrieked. “Are you insinuating I'm some kind of painter of fluffy bunnies? An illustrattoria ?”

  “Suddenly I'm absolutely starving,” Mona complained. “Must've been the mention of trattoria that did it. C'mon, Leo, it must be lunchtime by now.”

  “Why am I so plagued with imbeciles?” Leonardo roared, hurling his brushes aside with such force that they bounced across the dirt floor. “If it's not the postman ringing twice on my doorbell, it's the infernal din from the bells of the cathedral; if it's not the putta wanting pizza in the piazza, it's the infant apprentice demanding access to my most precious pigments…. How am I, Leonardo da Vinci, supposed to be able to hear my Muse when she whispers her inspirations in my ear? Surrounded by the din from a thousand bells and lungs, will my Muse need a megaphone to make herself understood?” He stopped abruptly in mid-flow, slapped himself on the forehead, and grabbed a stick of charcoal in one hand. Scribbling feverishly on a fresh canvas, Leonardo began to outline the first sketch of a device to magnify sound: da Vinci's magna voce, or megaphone. The Muse had spoken, and for the time being at least, the painter was deaf to all but her voice.

  Waving the tiny sable brush in the air, Damp seized this as an opportunity to make a couple of magical adjustments to the halffinished portrait on the easel. Pretty pink, she decided, absurdly pleased with herself and wondering if the Man in the Dress would admire her efforts. So absorbed was Leonardo in his outline of the megaphone that he didn't notice Damp's interventions; nor did he spot his sitter sneaking outdoors in search of a decent roast lark ciabatta, an item that would prove impossible for her to chew, given the parlous condition of what lay beneath her lips. When La Giaconda smiled in farewell to Damp, the little girl recoiled in horror, unaccustomed as she was to being grinned at by ladies with brown rotting stumps in place of pearly-white twenty-first-century teeth.

  “Go 'wayyyy,” she wept, stepping backward with a howl of terror and falling…

  … into the embrace of something soft, warm, and, to her relief, intensely familiar.

  “Och, wee pet,” Mrs. McLachlan whispered. “What are you doing out of your bed? It's
past midnight—time you were tucked up and fast asleep. …” Scooping the little girl into her arms, the nanny carried her off to the comforts of cot, pillow, and feather quilt, unaware that in one chubby fist Damp was clutching a souvenir. Attracted to anything remotely resembling a wand, Damp had hung on to her battered antique sable brush, given to her courtesy of Signor Leonardo da Vinci, who, across the canyons of Time, was standing in a studio in sixteenth-century Florence, wondering what angel had guided his newest apprentice's hand. No answer was forthcoming from the finished portrait in front of him; for, still wet, the freshly applied pigment smiled back at him, silent, knowing, and utterly enigmatic. The Mona Lisa's mouth was painted shut; there would be no telling… and no teeth, either.

  Assault and Battery

  head of Pandora, the path divided in two. The right-hand track led back home, twisting and winding down Mhoire Ochone, and, ultimately, to StregaSchloss. To the left was an overgrown footpath, wound about with rampant honeysuckle, following the flow of a series of waterfalls and streams and culminating in a deep pool cut into the middle of a coire that defied all but crampons to scale its steep sides. However, next to the pool was a hidden cave that might afford her the perfect sanctuary in which to hide from Zander.

  Twenty minutes later, Pandora wasn't so sure that she'd made the right choice. Lying on the ground and rolling into the darkness, she'd discovered that a recent rockfall had almost entirely filled her hideaway; there was just enough space for her to lie flat inside the mouth of the cave and pray that Zander wouldn't look down. Grabbing handfuls of last autumn's leaves, Pandora tried to camouflage herself, her ears tuned for his approaching footsteps, her heart hammering with terror.

  She knew now that she should never have followed Zander into the woods. What had started out as a game, a joke, really, had turned deadly serious. That's the problem with adults, she thought miserably, no sense of humor whatsoever. … She'd never seen anyone quite that angry before. Zander had been incoherent with rage, swearing and shrieking like a madman. To her immense relief, he appeared not to know who exactly he was threatening to tear limb from limb and baste in sump oil, and in his fury he'd tripped and fallen, which had allowed her to put a considerable distance between them; but judging by his approaching footsteps, she'd failed to lose him entirely. Lying in the darkness, Pandora didn't want to imagine what would happen when he found out that it had been her following him. Or what her parents would say when he told them. Oh. My. God, she thought. I'll be grounded for …months.

  Suddenly such homely concerns fell away. Parental disapproval was infinitely preferable to what lay ahead. He'd turned his flashlight on again, and its beam came closer and closer now, sweeping the path over by the pool, its light dancing across the swirling water.

  “You may as well show yourself!” Zander yelled, his voice echoing weirdly off the walls of the coire. “I know you're here, because there's nowhere else to go, is there ?”

  Pandora swallowed, the sound her throat made so loud, she was sure he could hear her.

  “You're finished, d'you know that?” Zander continued, his voice closer now as he turned to face the cave, his back to the rock pool. The flashlight beam was dazzling, searing her eyes, destroying her night vision, and pinning her in place like a rabbit caught in headlights.

  “I've followed the trail your company has left across the planet. Yes, it was me. In Archangel. Me in Angola and Panama, too. Just little old me destroying your factories, putting out your lights, one by one. Did you really think you could hide from me ? Surely you must know by now that nothing will stop me?”

  He's insane, Pandora told herself. Who on earth does he think I am?

  “I can't let you go back now, can I?” Zander added conversationally, his voice tinged with faint regret. “You know too much.”

  I'm going to die, Pandora realized, a glacial calm settling over her entire body. Here, now, in a dirty cave in Coire Chone…

  “It's ‘Crone,' actually,” a whispery voice informed her. Whatever, she thought. It doesn't matter. It could be in a bed of roses in the middle of a moonlit loch for all I care—

  “Nice imagery,” the voice said encouragingly. “Do go on. Can't tell you how much we've all been looking forward to meeting you. What took you so long, child?”

  “I'm getting a little impatient out here!” Zander shrieked. “I'm going to count to ten and then—”

  “Oh, ignore him,” the voice snapped. “Ssso tedious, these little tin-pot terrorists; what the world needs is less of them and more storytellers like you, m'dear.”

  Huh? Pandora's mind stalled, crashed, and then rebooted rapidly. I beg your pardon?

  “No, no, don't beg. Just get on with the story. The moonlit loch— tell me more. Were there stars in the sky? A crescent moon? We love crescent moons, don't we, sisters? We call them the Luminous Toenail Clippings of the Divine…. ”

  Pandora heard a sound like thousands of leaves beginning to stir. Her skin broke out in gooseflesh. She'd been so sure the cave was empty, but now …

  “Three…four…”

  “Don't worry about him,” the voice insisted. “We'll deal with him in due course.”

  Pandora froze. Was it her imagination, or were there dim shapes moving in the darkness? The voice sounded closer, as if its source was creeping nearer.

  “There's nothing to fear, child. We would never harm a witch, or her kin.”

  “Five…six…”

  “Your ancestors offered sanctuary to my kin. In return, we gave you the gift of our loyalty. We've been your familiars for hundreds of years—”

  “Seven, eight… ”

  Something infinitely soft brushed Pandora's arm so gently, it felt like a breath. The sound of rustling grew louder still, but Pandora could clearly hear the voice whispering, “When you need us, we will come…. ”

  I'm sorry, Pandora thought. You've lost me….

  “On the contrary, you've found us, but you need to lose him.

  ” “Nine, ten … Don't say I didn't warn you!” Zander's sneaker-clad feet appeared outside the mouth of the cave, but far, far worse was the appearance of the glinting, steely head of the ax he was swinging from one hand.

  “Oh, puhleeease,” the voice sighed. “How he does go on. If there's anything worse than ax-toting psychos, it's morons who insist on interrupting the first decent conversation I've had in years. Excuse me, I'd love to stay and chat, but, regrettably, I have business to attend to—”

  And in front of Pandora's astonished eyes, the image of Zander, feet, ax, and all, was obscured by a blanket of fluttering fragments of black. Masses of crumpled wings beat a whispery tattoo as, in their hundreds, the bats of Coire Crone rose out of the cave in a synchronized exodus of rabid outrage.

  “Get off me! Aughhh! No! Get back—ugh. Filthy creatures. Help—help, my eyes. Mff fff, Hell. Nooooaaarghhhh —”

  Pandora's view of events was severely limited, which was probably just as well since the image of Zander smothered in demented bats would have fueled her nightmares for the rest of her life. Mercifully, all she could see was his feet kicking and flailing as he attempted to hold his ground against the onslaught of claws and teeth. Then he was gone, fleeing for his life, roaring and crashing along the overgrown path; in his wake, the insistent beat of bat wings rose and fell as they circled their prey.

  Zander's shrieks grew fainter and more distant until, finally, silence fell in Coire Crone. Pandora rolled back out of the cave and slowly climbed to her feet. On the path ahead lay an abandoned ax, its handle pointed accusingly to where, far off in the moonlit distance, a black tornado of bats spiraled behind Zander, marking his frantic retreat to StregaSchloss. Bending down to pick up the ax, Pandora found herself shaking so badly she almost fell over. She felt as if she were about to suffocate out of sheer terror, her eyes riveted to the ax head, which had been meant to close her mouth forever…. She realized the squeaky voice repeating “Helphelphelp” was hers and, gasping for air, she commanded her
self to get a grip. Close your eyes, Pandora, she ordered herself. Don't look. Now, stand up—no wonder you can't breathe curled up like a pretzel. She straightened up, forced herself to take several deep breaths …

  … and wished with all her heart that Mrs. McLachlan were beside her in Coire Crone, dressed in sensible tweeds and stout shoes and effortlessly taking charge of the situation….

  “Och, you poor wee soul,” would be her introduction, swiftly followed by a hail of tsk ing sounds when she caught sight of the weapon lying glinting on the path. “The things people leave lying around the countryside. Really. Someone could do themselves an injury with that thing…. ”

  Mrs. McLachlan was very good at being tactful, too—so good that she'd pretend to ignore the fact that Pandora was now sobbing hysterically, and would simply take her by the arm and lead her gently back home, all the while maintaining a flow of light, nonthreatening conversation.

  “Isn't that honeysuckle a bonny flower? Such a lovely perfume.

  Reminds me of my wedding day … Mind your step here, pet. We're coming up to a very boggy patch…. No, don't open your eyes just yet; not far now, and we'll make a nice cup of hot chocolate and send you straight to bed…. Heavens, I simply must remind Tock not to trail mud across the hall floor and into the kitchen—would you just look at the state of that rug…. Och, lassie, you're asleep on your feet. Drink up now, and off to bed with you…. ”

  Pandora's eyes sprang open. In front of her, Mrs. McLachlan's face swam into focus.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” the nanny said firmly, her eyes fixed on Pandora as Zander crashed into the kitchen, hair awry and face covered in tiny red bite-marks. Mrs. McLachlan glided across to stand directly between Pandora and Zander, keeping him at bay while guiding Pandora out of the kitchen, tutting mildly as she took in the butler's disheveled appearance.

  “You'll find the antihistamine cream in the middle drawer of the china cupboard. Those gnats are quite brutal after dark, but you weren't to know, were you, Mr. Imlach? Fishing, were we? My husband used to go night fishing, too. Up at Ballachulish. Or was it Altnaharrie? Och, no, wait a minute, Mr. Imlach, it's coming back to me now—it was the wee lochin by Castle Clachan at Strathlachlan. Silly me, I get so mixed up—it was that long ago…. He'd come home with so many fish, my heart would sink. Not the salmon again, I'd say. Did you have any luck, tonight, Mr. Imlach? Catch anything?”