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She turned with a blue-shadowed flutter.
“Yes, sir. Fancy a cuppa?”
“No, thank you.”
The mini Mavis scowled.
“I mean, yes, shortly. But, you see, we’re here to meet someone.” He whispered a name into her ear and the waitress’s face blanched.
“Are you sure?”
“The name’s quite correct. We were told that he had something for us.”
“No, I mean are you sure you want to meet him?”
Ned’s parents both nodded.
“I see. You had better follow me then.”
Past a throng of mercenaries and several other Mavii, their waitress took them to a dark corridor leading away from the main hall.
“This is the VIP area. If you need anything, feel free to scream.”
She knocked on an unmarked door.
“Enterrr.”
“I’ll leave you to it. Remember, scream if you need me – one of us will hear.”
The mini Mavis moved back down the corridor as fast as she could, making no secret of her desire to leave them to it. As soon as she was out of earshot there was an audible “Unt” from Ned’s shadow. Ned’s familiar and trusted bodyguard, bound to him as a servant to do his bidding at whatever cost, made his feelings quite clear. “Unt” meant a lot of things, but in most cases it meant “No”. Gorrn would not be entering the room with them.
“Oh, fine,” sighed Ned. “If you must stay out here, at least try to blend in.”
The undulating mystery that was Gorrn did just that and merged with a shadow by the door.
A room full of tapestries and Persian rugs was waiting for them. At its centre was a low, round table surrounded by luxurious silk cushions. It was all very dimly lit except for a small sprite-light that was presently dancing on the table. The little creature looked quite unhappy about the VIP she was dancing for and it was only when the creature leant out of the shadows that Ned could see why.
Some Demons, even in their human form, are not pretty.
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The Demon in the Tea Room (#uc1f749b4-f233-588e-a487-0535e1c19130)
s the Demon’s face came out of the shadows, Ned caught his breath. He was wearing a red velvet suit with black collars. In one hand was a ceramic cup full to the brim with a tarry, burning liquid. It flamed gently as he sipped from its edge, but it was his face that made Ned wince.
The Demon’s hair was immaculately groomed, slicked back with oil that smelt like coal. Its skin in contrast was as frail as old parchment and stretched across high cheekbones and a deeply lined brow. Black veins crept across its pores as though the creature carried some terrible disease, yet even in its weakened state it brimmed with quiet power, like some deposed king unseated from its throne but still sure of its rightful place.
“You are late,” he breathed.
“There was some commotion in the bar,” began Ned’s dad.
The Demon responded with a smile that wasn’t a smile.
“There is some commotion everywhere.”
And the expression he wore was between sorrow and something else, some deep trouble that refused to reveal itself. The Armstrongs took their places at the table, Ned’s mum making sure that her son was furthest away from the creature that they had come to meet. The little sprite-light was clearly happy to have less frightening visitors and proceeded to glow with more of a spark. To Ned’s amazement, the perometer in his pocket was quite still but all the same he drew it out subtly and laid it on the floor under the table, its lid open. There was a rustling from his backpack, which he promptly thumped before sheepishly laying it to one side.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet us,” began Ned’s mum.
“Whether you thank Sur-jan later remains to be seen.”
The soft-spoken Demon they were talking to had never met Olivia Armstrong, which she was about to make quite clear.
“Demon, you are at a disadvantage. You see, I have come across your kind before yet this is the first time that you have come across me. I have always walked away in good health – those in my wake have been less fortunate. Do not mistake me or my family for cowering jossers. We know well how to deal with your kind.”
The hairs on Ned’s neck began to prickle uncomfortably. Picking a fight with a Demon was considered suicide no matter what his mum claimed. Coupled with the long arm of Mavis and her tea-stained fingers, a scrap of any kind at the tea room would not bode well.
The Demon’s eyes thinned and his cup rattled. Under the table the perometer’s needle turned briefly to Sur-jan before settling languidly again.
“I know well the Armstrong name wo-man. It is not I that would trouble you, but what I have to say.”
Terry Armstrong put his hand over his wife’s and she started to un-brittle.
“Sur-jan, many of your kind have fled the Demon strongholds at great risk, choosing to live amongst the jossers rather than remaining with their kin. If what I believe is true, you are not our enemy.”
The Demon’s face shifted angrily and Ned finally understood. In his eyes he saw something unique. It was fear. An emotion that Demons were supposedly unable to feel, yet there it was and Sur-jan did not wear it well. He sat at the table like a hot coal on ice, spitting and crackling, steaming and sparking with visible malcontent. All creatures, it seemed, no matter where they are from, become angry when frightened.
“I have risked much to be here. To be away from the earth in this nowhere-place. It has made me sick. But better to be sick than a slave.”
“I don’t understand – what are you saying?”
There was a rattling from under the table. Ned’s perometer had come alive quite suddenly, but not, as he had at first feared, because of the Demon. The needle was pointing away from the creature and towards the door.
“The Darkening King – it is not welcome by those of us that remember.”
And the more he spoke, the more the perometer’s needle twitched. First one way and then another, in quick jerks of frantic movement.
“If you feel this way then help us! Tell us where he is, how to defeat him.” Terry Armstrong was now more animated than Ned had seen him since they had started their mission, hope burning brightly in his eyes.
The needle spun now in all directions, faster and faster.
“Defeat him?”
“Dad?”
“Not now, son!” urged his father. “Go on, Sur-jan, what can you tell us?”
Down the corridor, Ned heard footsteps running at a pace and the needle was spinning so hard that the perometer started to rattle.
“DAD!”
“Ned, what’s got into you?” said his mum, and then her eyes fell to the floor and the Tinker’s device. “Oh, dear.”
Ned snatched it from the floor and slammed it on to the table, narrowly missing a now terrified sprite whose light crackled then dimmed. A spin of the perometer’s dial could mean any number of things. Barbarossa’s men? The BBB? What was left of the Twelve and its pinstripes was still after them too.
The Demon remained quite calm, his head turned to one side, and he closed his eyes as if listening to something that Ned couldn’t hear. Finally his skin began to glow a fiery red.
“Trouble is here – here for you.”
Ned and family were up on their feet in an instant.
“What trouble? What do you mean?!”
“Find the old one – he will give you what you seek. Now go. NOW. While there is still time.”
“The old …?” Ned began to ask, but a second later he was shoved out of the door by both Mum and Dad, with a fast-moving sprite at their heels, out into the corridor and back into the tea room, and that’s when Mavis made herself heard.
“HOW DARE YOU? THIS IS MY TEA ROOM!”
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Grey-suits (#ulink_e17843f7-8785-5a68-a41f-9aecd056c9a1)
avis’s tea room was eerily absent of any noise. But noise was clearly coming. The Armstrongs watched from the edge of the corridor they had just been led through. It was like looking at a stick of dynamite, its fuse lit and burning, waiting to explode.
The entire bar was still. Each and every one of its hardened criminal tea drinkers caught in mid sip. The reason stood at what was left of the entrance to Mavis’s Ye Olde Tea Shoppe. The carved door lay broken on the ground, its breakers two men in light grey suits standing to one side of the wreckage.
“I thought this place was supposed to be safe?!” whispered Ned’s mum.
“It was till we got here!” spat Ned in far less of a whisper.
Two more grey-suits walked quietly and confidently into the room. One was built like a giant square brick, with the kind of face that never smiled. In front of him was a slighter man who Ned assumed was their leader. He had red-blond hair and despite their surroundings could not have looked more at ease. Something in Ned’s chest pulled – he recognised this man! It was the very same man who’d fought Benissimo the last time Ned had seen him, at the circus, before At-lan and their battle in the sky.
“I assure you, you are in no danger. We mean you absolutely no harm. My name is Mr Fox and I am searching for two adults and a child. The child is an unremarkable-looking boy usually accompanied by a mouse.”
“Unremarkable?!” fumed Ned. With his powers failing as they were, the intruder had hit a nerve.
“Shh!” ordered his mum.
As the fox-haired man spoke, “big” Mavis was removing the teapots from her fingers and flexing her mighty hands before curling them into fists. Knowing full well what was coming next, some of the patrons nearer the bar began to edge away.
“Don’t want no trouble? Do you know how long it took for my gnomes to carve that door? How much I had to pay for the magic what was woven into its wood?”
“Madam, we will recover your expenses. Unfortunately the door was not willing to open.”
“If you had half a brain you’d know why. You see, my tea room has been a safe house since before you was born. It’s the one place between everywhere that doesn’t get bothered by lawmen, or politicians, or taxmen, or anyone else. Once you step inside these walls my guarantee is that you are safe from all the nonsense out there – to enjoy my home-brewed wonders at your leisure. To that effect, there’s only one law here: Mavis’s law. And rule number one is: IF MY RUDDY DOOR DOESN’T WANT YOU IN, THEN YOU DON’T GET IN!”
And that was when the lit fuse blew.
Mavis’s gigantic right arm tore across the ground-floor bar. The fox-haired grey-suit and his number two ducked but the two door breakers behind them were not so lucky. Her fist connected with them both and there was a sickening crunch of bone on bone. They were flung to the walls violently before slumping to the floor in unconscious heaps. Their commander remained completely calm and nodded to the brick, who in return whispered something into his sleeve. A second later every window on every floor erupted in a shower of breaking glass and then—
Clunk, clunk, clunk.
Smoking canisters were launched into the room, their great clouds of green gas instantly reducing those nearest to slumbering heaps. There were, however, some amongst the Darklings and Hidden who were immune to the effects, and for that lucky handful, the fox-haired man had soldiers. Heavily armoured men of a darker grey attire in riot gear and gas masks burst into the room. In place of sub-machine guns, they all carried long-poled electric batons and high-powered dart guns. This was nothing like the raid Ned had witnessed at the Circus of Marvels – the BBB worked the room with ease. With a jolt of their batons, a blast of their darts, one by one resistance was quashed. All, that was, except for Mavis, who launched blow after blow of her great arms at the mounting assault of grey.
One of the more heavily armoured intruders spotted Ned at the edge of the fighting and began to stride across the room towards him. Ned focused – focused with everything that he had – on the small band of ring at his finger. But just as before, the air shimmered in front of him as he tried to draw it together, then … nothing.
“Dad, over here!” he yelped.
Terry Armstrong, meanwhile, had no such problem when it came to his ring and was about to unleash a shower of hardened projectiles when one of the many Mavii reared up behind the man in grey and proceeded to break a teapot over his helmet. Reinforced alloys are lightweight and durable, the perfect material for special-forces armour. No match, however, for Mavis’s best china, and the man hit the floor hard.
“You lot – with me, before this gas gets the better of us!” she ordered and quickly led Ned and his family back down the corridor. “The door knew who you were the minute you knocked, it always does – the Lady de Laqua indeed!”
“I thought Mavis’s tea shop was neutral? Why are you helping us?” rasped an out-of-breath Ned.
“You have more friends than you know. From what I hear, what’s coming doesn’t care about neutral!”
“Thank you, Mavis – or what do I …?” started Terry.
“I’m Number Six, and you’re welcome.”
Heavy footsteps pounded after them and a quick glimpse over his shoulder had Ned witness the great ooze that was Gorrn surprise two of the dark-grey tanks by dropping on to them with a toothy and painful flup. The men screamed through their masks and the Armstrongs rounded the corner. Just as they did, they came face to face with Sur-jan, but not as they’d seen him before – reformed to his true flame-licked self. Sar-adin was the only Demon Ned had ever seen in his true Demonic form, but Sur-jan was quite different. His size and shape were similar, though his mouth was wider, and from it hung a snake-like tongue that forked at the end. A layer of fire crackled and spat over him like a sheet of armour and what little of the creature’s skin Ned could see through the flames was red and brittle, as though made of rough glass. Only his eyes remained as they were, and they were all the more unsettling for it, as though somehow through all that power and magic a part of him had remained human.
Sur-jan nodded to Number Six, who nodded back, and on the Armstrongs hurtled, down another corridor that ran behind the main tea room, Whiskers scurrying ahead like a wind-up rocket.
There were more screams behind them as the Demon dealt with the few men who had managed to get past Gorrn.
Finally Number Six ushered them into the last room in the corridor, inside which was a tall mirror framed by two high-backed chairs.
“Emergency exit. We’ve never had to use it before today – oh, the shame of it!”
She handed Terry a sliver of glass and the Armstrongs were just readying themselves to walk through when everything went a little bit wrong. From behind the wall they heard:
“YOU BRUTES! I’LL FEED YOU TO MY WYVERN FOR THIS!”
And in a last violent outburst, Mavis – the original and far larger Mavis – struck out at her assailants. Unfortunately for Ned and family, she struck out at the other side of the wall, on which hung the mirror, and instantly both wall and mirror were destroyed.
In a spray of plasterboard, splinters and mirrored glass, their emergency exit was turned to rubble. As the dust cleared, a dumbfounded Ned and family could only blink through the hole in the wall at the once again silent tea room.
Mavis lay sprawled over her counter. She’d been peppered with hundreds of darts and whatever liquid they’d carried to make her slumber had finally taken its hold. Every single one of her tea-drinking customers lay like Mavis, out cold on the floor, or sagging at their seats and tables.
Staring at Ned was the BBB’s fox-haired leader, behind him at least thirty armoured men, each and every one with a dart gun pointed at the Armstrongs. Tears of frustration began to well in Ned’s eyes even as he focused on his ring. Ned had no powers to call on, and his dad had no time as the grey-suits pulled their triggers.
Pfft, pfft, pfft.
A short blow of air, a sting at Ned’s neck and everything turned to black.
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