Pure Dead Brilliant Read online

  “Right, spider. Eavesdropping on Executive business is a crime punishable by death. Lipping off to a Minister, ditto. Ignorance is no excuse. In short, you're legless, clueless, and about to be lifeless—”

  “And you're hairless, toothless, and, it has to be said, charmless,” observed a voice, close to where Tarantella lay.

  “Yeah,” agreed another voice. “Bog off, baldy. Pick on something your own size.”

  Just before a pink mist settled over Tarantella's vision and bore her off to oblivion, she recognized the voices of StregaSchloss's free-range rodents, the Illiterat Multitudina and her educated daughter, Terminus. Before Fiamma could make good her threat to kill Tarantella, the rats hoisted the unconscious tarantula onto a stretcher improvised from a sheet of toilet paper and carried her away out of danger through a gap in the baseboard.

  Thwarted, Fiamma's face contorted into something resembling a malignant walnut. Behind her, the bathroom mirror cracked from side to side, sending a lethal shower of glass cascading onto the floor. In the bath, water bubbled and hissed, turning a bilious yellow and emitting a feral stench. Underfoot, the floorboards rippled and bowed as if the wood had turned into a liquid that allowed a glimpse of something swimming below its surface. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, Fiamma's rage vanished. The floor stilled its tidal motion, the bathwater returned to post-ablution grunginess, the mirror shards re-formed into an unbroken looking glass, and Fiamma looked within and found her reflection pleasing. Reabsorbing her tail, and replacing her makeup, hair, teeth, and feet, she strained to hear the sound that had caused her flash of temper to evaporate. The sound came again and she smiled. There it was: Damp in the distant nursery, her infant voice raised in song, greeting the day, with each note ringing pure and true.

  “Such untapped potential,” Fiamma confided to her reflection. “Such latent power.” The demon licked its lips and gazed into the mirror, its foul mind looking out at the world through eyes that had changed shape and color countless times as Astoroth reincarnated himself for the express purpose of harvesting souls down through the centuries. The Borgia Inheritance was, thankfully, his final task as Second Minister for the Hadean Executive. Second Minister? The demon spat on the floor. Frankly, the Boss's dominion over Hades was way past its sell-by date. With the Chronostone plus the power of the baby magus's soul, well . . .

  “Just watchhh me now,” Fiamma hissed, snatching up her toiletry kit and striding out of the bathroom, leaving the faintest whiff of sulfur in her wake.

  The Illegitimate Dragon

  It had long been Damp's habit to greet each new day with a song to her pajamas. The infant had only recently discovered that she could undo the snaps on her nightwear with one sharp tug, and since then it had been her pleasure to strip herself of both pj's and diaper and hurl these over the bars of her crib. This was invariably accompanied by an enthusiastic rendition of “There Was a Princess Long Ago,” punctuated by gales of infant mirth as each layer of clothing sailed out of Damp's crib and onto the nursery floor.

  Damp had just reached the verse where she was describing the princess's accommodation:

  and she lived in a big high towel,

  big high towel,

  big high—

  THUD . . . and Mrs. McLachlan woke to the sound of Damp's diaper landing wetly on the floor. This morning there was also a heavy slapping from the other side of the nursery door, accompanied by a determined scratching, as if something were attempting to claw its way in.

  “NESTOR!” roared the nanny. “Stop that at once. You know you're not allowed up here. . . .”

  Silence from behind the nursery door. Mrs. McLachlan groaned as she hoisted herself out of bed. This was becoming all too wearisome, she decided, padding across the floorboards to open the door and ascertain whether the baby dragon had obeyed her dictates. He hadn't, but pity moved Mrs. McLachlan to step aside and allow the little beast access to the warmth of the nursery. Nestor crept across the floor and curled up in a woebegone ball at the foot of Damp's crib, with his head pillowed on her discarded pajamas.

  “This is ridiculous,” muttered the nanny, pulling a purple woollen dressing gown around herself and carrying Damp off to the bathroom. Moments later, with Damp washed and dressed, Mrs. McLachlan shepherded both infants downstairs for breakfast.

  The kitchen table bore witness to the hasty satisfaction of several appetites: cereal bowls lay abandoned, an almost empty milk bottle sat unhygienically on the warming plate of the range, an empty glass coffeepot floated in the scum of last night's dirty dishwater, and the butter was pockmarked with specks of charred toast. The door to the kitchen garden was ajar, and from outside Mrs. McLachlan could hear the distant groans and shrieks that indicated the morning yoga class was in session. As she washed cereal bowls, the nanny noted with disgust that Ffup was outside, practicing yoga with no thought for her infant's welfare.

  “Selfish beast,” she muttered, crashing crockery onto the draining board with uncharacteristic force. Ever since Nestor had hatched at StregaSchloss last Hogmanay, Mrs. McLachlan had hoped that Ffup would knuckle down to the responsibilities of single parenthood and attempt to raise her baby son in a manner befitting a dragon. Regrettably, this had not been the case. . . . While there was no doubt that Ffup adored her child, it was also true that she worshiped herself in equal measure; the teenage dragon spent many more hours preening her wings, painting her talons, improving her waistline, and gazing in the mirror than she spent nurturing Nestor. Moreover, Mrs. McLachlan thought, as she stirred a pot of porridge at the range, it was perfectly obvious that Nestor was never going to grow up to be a pedigree dragon. The Strega-Borgias appeared to be united in a conspiracy of silence on the subject of who, exactly, Nestor's absent father might have been, but one look at the baby—with his redundant wings (too small), deep blue scales (should really have been muddy green), occasional lack of fire-breathing ability (even as an infant, he should have been lighting candles with one hiccup), and—most significantly of all—his vast, overgrown tail that the family all affected to ignore . . . well, really! Mrs. McLachlan dropped a large pinch of salt in the porridge pot and snorted loudly.

  As she decanted the steaming oats into three bowls and sat down to have breakfast with Damp and Nestor, she was suddenly struck by a distant memory from countless decades ago, long before she became nanny to the Strega-Borgias. . . .

  . . . a vast, frozen loch, across which she fled with a group of women, all escaping some nameless horror. The turning year brought the coldest winter in living memory. The ice that formed a skin over every loch in Scotland had been measured in finger-widths at Hallows Eve—hand-spans by midwinter—and by Candlemas, no spade or pick could penetrate the iron-hard cover on every body of water from Roxburgh to Sutherland. Without fish to supplement their meager winter diet, whole communities of loch-dwellers found themselves facing starvation. Far from celebrating Candlemas, the hitherto God-fearing congregations plundered their churches and ate the candles. Rumors abounded of desecrated graves, gutted crypts, and other horrors too hideous to mention. In the perceived absence of divine mercy, the lochside people turned to old religions and darker practices.

  The fugitive women had sought shelter in a tiny hamlet on the shores of a frozen loch. Huts and houses huddled next to a sheet of ice beneath which, it was rumored, swam enough fish to feed the entire population of Scotland for centuries to come. In gratitude for the hospitality shown to her by the people of the hamlet, Flora McLachlan had resolved to rescue them from starvation. At first light she had slipped away from the press of sleeping bodies huddled round the ashy fire and walked out onto the ice. . . .

  Near the shore the wind had scoured rutted circles in the ice, but farther out all was still, save her breath rising in misty clouds above her head. Faced with the impossibility of breaking the ice herself, she resolved to awaken the Sleeper, even though she would, in all probability, perish in the attempt. But how to make the creature rise from a sleep of several c
enturies past? Should she weave a spell of warmer waters, fish-full salty southern seas, to melt the frozen skies of the Sleeper's underwater world? Murmur a lullaby of rocking rivers to bear the lonely beast in its tidal ebb and flow? Tempt him awake with tales of the mackerel mountain and the herring hill that rims the salmon stream? Cruel to wake this creature, who slept to heal a broken heart, who created the loch from tears, and who closed his eyes believing that this world held no love for him—the Sleeper, whose kin had long crumbled to dust. Flora knew, even as she whispered the words that would awaken him, that with his dawning consciousness would come the knowledge of all that he had lost and all the loneliness to come. . . . She almost faltered in her resolve, but beneath her feet, from fathoms below, came a faint cry like a rabbit in a snare. Slipping on the ice, Flora began to run, her frozen feet betraying her as she skidded and stumbled toward the far-off shore. Behind her, the cry rose to a desolate keening that hurt the ears of all who heard. The sound rose in pitch as, with a deafening crack, dark lines zigzagged across the ice. Still the sound of some creature in mortal agony grew and swelled to fill the air. The ice suddenly fractured along the cracks and Flora leapt from floe to floe, trying to find her way back to solid ground.

  Only once did she turn back to look, to catch a glimpse of that lonely, awful shape—mouth agape, as it howled its outrage at a world that had broken its centuries of mindless, forgetful slumber for no better reason than the survival of a handful of loch-dwellers with a desperate need for fish.

  A handful of loch-dwellers, thought Mrs. McLachlan as she raised a spoonful of porridge to her mouth, whose idea of grateful thanks to their savior was to attempt to burn her at the stake for witchcraft. . . .

  “HOT, HOT BURRRRNY!” wailed Damp, hurling her porridge spoon across the breakfast table. Beside her, Nestor's mouth dropped open in a howl of outrage at the singular lack of hot, hot burrrny in his bowl. Abruptly hauled back to the present, Mrs. McLachlan found herself giving silent thanks for the good fortune that had brought her here to StregaSchloss, where being accused of practicing witchcraft was a sincere compliment. . . .

  Time Out

  On her way downstairs for breakfast, Pandora paused outside her parents' bedroom, crossing her fingers in the hope that they had settled their differences over the vexed question of the houseguests, and were even now sitting up in bed, planning the day ahead and admiring the view through their bedroom window over coffee and croissants. A wail and a crash from behind their door told a different story. Signor Strega-Borgia, unpredictable of temperament and with a fondness for yelling matched only by a habit of hurling china around to underline his point, was in full operatic flow. Approaching footsteps and an increase in volume signaled to Pandora that he was about to storm through the door in front of her, and if she didn't want to be accused of eavesdropping, she'd better make herself scarce.

  She fled down the corridor, leaping over several pairs of pointy lace-up boots that had been placed outside bedroom doors by a few of the more demanding houseguests on the mistaken assumption that Latch would attend to their polishing. Reaching the nursery, Pandora slipped behind its open door and hid, chewing her fingernails as she heard her father stamp past, muttering to himself in unintelligible Italian. Pandora slumped on the floor beside Mrs. McLachlan's bed and laid her head wearily on the quilt. Downstairs the front door slammed shut and footsteps crunched across the rose-quartz drive. Minutes later, Pandora heard the car starting up and correctly deduced that Signor Strega-Borgia was off to inflict his bad mood on the nearby village of Auchenlochtermuchty. The sound of running water and clanking plumbing meant that Signora Strega-Borgia had taken refuge in the shower. Not for the first time, Pandora wished her parents would get a grip on themselves and stop fighting. Their battles were always about such stupid things, and this latest skirmish over the appearance of rodent droppings in the coffee was just so childish and immature that Pandora would have felt embarrassed for them had it not been for her own current war with her sibling. . . . She debated whether to go and wake Titus and put Tarantella's plan into action by bringing him breakfast in bed. Brilliant plan, Pan, she congratulated herself, checking the bedside clock to make sure that it wasn't too early to rouse the slug-a-bed. The digital display read 20:02, which by Pandora's calculations was about twelve hours fast, since she had a rough idea of the time from the light filtering in from outside, the amount of birdsong audible from the garden, and the sound of activity coming from downst—

  The alarm clock vanished. Pandora blinked, and there it was, back again, still reading 20:02. She hardly had time to draw a breath before it vanished again.

  “What?” she gasped as it reappeared, its palindromic numerals still visible on its face. Pandora sat up and reached out to touch it as it disappeared once more, reappearing one heartbeat later, reassuringly solid under her fingertips. However, the time remained unchanged and Pandora watched and waited to see what would happen when the numerals advanced to 20:03. The clock blinked in and out of existence for several minutes, but according to its own mysterious internal reckoning, time stood still.

  Wondering if it was broken, Pandora picked it up and turned it over in her hands. For such a small artifact it was ridiculously heavy, and being made of metal, it felt cool to the touch. On the rear of the clock were two small knobs: one was pretty obviously the ON/OFF switch. But the function of the other knob was less clear, since the only clues to what it did were two opposing arrows and letters embossed into the metal thus:

  P < > F

  Wondering what language was being used, Pandora assumed that this must be the knob to turn in order to reset the display on the clock face. At first the knob resisted any attempt to turn it, until Pandora pulled it toward her, whereupon with a small click it rotated easily under her fingers as the display ran backward. Reaching 08:02, Pandora clicked the knob back into place and immediately wished she hadn't bothered.

  The floor underneath her vanished and the walls of StregaSchloss fell away. Still reflexively clutching the clock, Pandora found herself spinning sickeningly in midair. No sooner had she registered this fact than she crash-landed on something hard and extremely unfriendly to human flesh.

  “AOWWWW!” she wailed, trying to work out which bit of her hurt most. Attempting not to move too much, she looked around and found that she was inside what appeared to be a gigantic pit made from twigs and branches. Overhead she could see daylight through a filigree of leaves, but all around and underneath her were mud, dirt, and woven twigs. It was not unlike being at the bottom of a vast hedge. Pandora stood up carefully, tucked the clock in the back pocket of her jeans, and looked around properly. The floor at her feet was littered with bones—and when she caught sight of the hedge-pit's one inhabitant, an egg the size of a rugby ball, she realized that not only was she in all probability unwelcome, but she was also trespassing.

  It's a nest, she thought, gazing in horror at the egg, and whatever laid that isn't going to be too thrilled to find me here when it gets home. The nest was far too well constructed to allow her to force an escape through its walls or floor, so Pandora began to climb up and out, hanging on to the twigs and branches and wedging her feet into the mud and dirt that had been used as a primitive form of insulation. Bark and dirt rained down on her head as she scrabbled for handholds, and jamming her feet into the walls caused a continual fall of debris to patter down onto the floor of the nest and its sole occupant. After what felt like a lifetime, Pandora pulled herself over the rim of the nest and, dreading what she was about to see, peered over the edge.

  “Whaaaat?” she groaned, stunned by the bizarre familiarity of the view below her. There was Lochnagargoyle up ahead, and there behind her were the peaks of Bengormless. “But . . . but—” squeaked Pandora, clinging to the dusty rim of the nest—but what on earth was she doing six hundred feet above ground, perched in what appeared to be an ancient Scots pine—and where had StregaSchloss gone?

  Steeling herself to look down, she saw a thin
spiral of smoke coiling up from the floor of what appeared to be virgin forest. Gone too were the gardens, the meadow, the icehouse, and the road to Auchenlochtermuchty. Below lay an almost unbroken canopy of leafy green, dotted here and there with little patches of dun-colored earth. It was as if StregaSchloss had never existed. Pandora trembled as she clung to the nest, her thoughts in disarray, but with a vague fear beginning to take shape in a corner of her mind. This isn't exactly a nest, she thought, watching the smoke drift up from below; the correct name for what I'm currently gate-crashing is a “roost.” A dragon's roost, she reminded herself, trying not to scream. She peered again at the source of the smoke, leaning out over the edge in order to obtain a better view down through the treetops. On the forest floor were two figures; the smaller of the two reassuringly human, the other, with its telltale wings and spiny tail, unmistakably a dragon. Despite the Strega-Borgias' long and happy association with dragon-kind, the presence of gnawed bones on the floor of the roost tended to indicate that this particular dragon might not regard eating humans as a breach of etiquette.

  This is ridiculous, Pandora thought. It's just not possible to be in the nursery one moment and in the blink of an eye to find myself . . . She closed her eyes and opened them again. Wide. Blinked twice and then, reaching carefully behind her, pulled Mrs. McLachlan's alarm clock out of her back pocket. There it is, she told herself, and . . . there it isn't. The time was still 08:02, but in one of those flashes of understanding when whole new synaptic pathways open up and one's brain undergoes a crash and rapid reboot, Pandora understood. It's not two minutes past eight, you numpty, she thought, it's eight hundred and two, as in the year, not the time, and to get back home, all you have to do is reset the numbers. . . . A shadow fell over her and, looking up, Pandora realized that time was about to run out. She pulled out the knob on the back of the clock and began frantically turning it clockwise. A blast of hot air singed her eyelashes as she looked up into the eyes of the builder of the roost and, in all probability, the mother of the egg.