Grindhelm's Key Page 21

  ‘Enough, Handel,’ snapped the older henchman. ‘Don’t get angry with him for your own piss-poor performance. You’re lucky I don’t kick you in the bollocks myself.’

  Handel cuffed Trev’s hands behind his back and dragged him to the van. Trev managed to struggle into a seat and slumped there trying not to retch. Granddad sat down beside him, his expression apologetic. The swordsman retrieved a small metal cage from a locker in the van and went to the Honda. He returned with a very annoyed Oscar in the cage. The kitten sounded like he was going through his entire repertoire of insults and swear-words, which was extensive.

  ‘Try and do a better job of watching them than you did fighting them,’ said the leader. ‘Beethoven, are you listening to me?’

  The swordsman looked up, startled. He’d been mesmerised by Oscar’s tirade. ‘Got it.’

  He closed the side door and sat down next to his colleague on a rearward-facing seat. Trev and Granddad were facing forwards, so the four men were staring at each other. The van’s interior was cramped, with bulky equipment lockers taking up a lot of space. The van set off. With no windows, Trev had no idea where they were going.

  ‘So, Beethoven and Handel?’ he said, deciding to make conversation now he’d got his voice back. ‘Not your real names, right?’

  ‘Wow, nothing gets past you,’ said Beethoven.

  ‘So how come your mate got the name of a famous composer and you got the name of a St. Bernard?’

  ‘Do you want to get punched again?’

  ‘I’ll give it a miss. So what’s your leader’s name?’

  ‘Liszt,’ said Beethoven. ‘And no, there isn’t a Brahms.’

  ‘Shame,’ said Trev.

  The conversation faltered after that. When Oscar finally stopped his outraged muttering the rest of the journey passed in silence. The van drove for maybe half an hour, though from the number of turns it made Trev wondered whether they were going in circles to stretch out the journey and confuse any attempt by the captives to memorise the route. Finally they came to a halt and Trev and Granddad were bundled out of the van and through a metal door. Trev had no chance to get a look at their surroundings.

  By Trev’s guess the room they entered was – or had been – a workshop of some sort. It was windowless with a cracked concrete floor and flaking green paint on the walls. The only furniture consisted of two folding tables. One held some computer and communications equipment, while the other was bare. Beethoven placed Oscar’s cage on the bare table before taking up a sentry position by the wall. Handel went to the opposite wall.

  The room’s other door opened and Liszt walked in. He held the door open for a slender Siamese cat, which leapt up onto the table and stared at Oscar. Trev noticed that the Siamese had one blue eye and one green eye.

  ‘Good evening, gents,’ the cat said, in a rich, amused female voice. It peered into the cage. ‘And nice to see you again, your majesty.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Oscar.

  Twenty-Six

  ‘OK, what the hell is going on?’ asked a bewildered Trev. ‘And did you just call Oscar “your majesty”?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t he tell you?’ asked the Siamese. ‘This little bundle of cuteness is the King of the Cats.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Oscar.

  Trev was surprised – and a little pleased – by Oscar’s discomfort. He was used to the kitten having an answer for everything. It was almost worth being beaten up and abducted just to see him at a loss for words.

  ‘King of the Cats?’ Trev repeated, his eyebrows rising of their own accord.

  The Siamese grinned at him. ‘Oh yes. And the rest of us believed it, at least for a while.’

  ‘And who are you?’ Trev replied. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘You can call me Nona,’ said the Siamese.

  ‘This keeps getting worse,’ groaned Oscar. ‘You’re bloody Nona?’

  ‘She of the many Eyes, yes,’ said Nona.

  ‘Ah,’ said Trev.

  He was very worried. The Eyes of Nona had existed for centuries with barely a record of them in the Custodians’ archives, which meant they weren’t exactly advertising themselves. And that meant they probably had a zero-tolerance attitude to outsiders who knew about them. Trev estimated his chances of leaving the room alive were slimmer than a supermodel on a crash diet.

  ‘You went to a lot of effort to get us here,’ said Granddad, stepping in while Trev was lost in panicked thought. ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘You may.’ Nona stepped away from the cage and sat down. ‘I think we might be able to do each other a favour.’

  Granddad folded his arms. ‘I doubt it, but go on.’

  ‘My life in this dump of a dimension has been long and mostly boring,’ said Nona. ‘I’ve spent the majority of it trying to find a way to get home, and I’m finally pretty close. I just need to take that last step.’

  ‘We can’t get home, unless you’ve found some Ancient Egyptian crib notes that tell us how to reverse their summoning ritual,’ said Oscar. He paused. ‘Er. You haven’t, have you?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Nona gave him a pitying look. ‘The Romans wiped out the Bastet cultists and destroyed every last trace of them.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘But reversing the summoning ritual isn’t what I’m talking about. There are other means.’

  Oscar suddenly sounded cagey. ‘Such as?’

  ‘For one thing my research suggests that being caught in a massive release of psychic energy might be enough to break our bond to this dimension,’ replied Nona. ‘Though there’s no guarantee of where you’d end up. I did wonder if being caught in that explosion at Spectre’s Rest might’ve sent you on your way, but here you are.’

  ‘It nearly did,’ said Oscar. ‘I felt it. When my last body died the pull to return was almost gone. Almost.’ He sighed. ‘Unfortunately it doesn’t look like “almost” quite cuts it.’

  Trev now understood why Oscar’s mood had been bleaker than usual. He’d come very close to escaping the earthly realm after being trapped for over two thousand years; having that snatched away would be enough to depress even the sunniest personality. And Oscar had never been a sunny personality.

  ‘How do you know what happened at Spectre’s Rest?’ asked Granddad.

  ‘Oh come on, Bernard,’ said Nona. ‘Even the Titanic wasn’t as leaky as the Custodians. Getting information out of that organisation isn’t difficult.’

  Granddad frowned and didn’t reply.

  ‘So what are you planning?’ Oscar asked. ‘You’re going to try and replicate what happened at Spectre’s Rest? Good luck.’

  Nona shook her head. ‘Of course not. Even if I could replicate those unique circumstances, I’d still have no idea where I’d end up. It might turn out to be a very complicated, expensive and labour-intensive way of committing suicide.’

  ‘So what then?’ said Oscar. ‘I can’t see how you think me and my two sidekicks can help you.’

  ‘You’re my sidekick, mate,’ said Trev.

  Oscar smirked. ‘It’s quite endearing how you’ve so utterly misread our relationship,’ he said. The shock of meeting Nona hadn’t lasted long. His typical sardonic tone was back.

  ‘Well yes, on the face of it I might as well pop down to the zoo and ask the chimps,’ said Nona. She cocked her head. ‘It’s possible that’s the only thing I haven’t tried over the years. But it isn’t so much a case of what your friends know, as who they know.’

  Trev had a flash of insight. ‘Grindhelm’s Key. You sent Sarah to get it.’

  ‘You got there in the end.’ Nona smiled at him. It was the sort of smile a teacher gives a student when they produce the correct answer to a question, but only after ten minutes of patient prompting.

  ‘That thing?’ said Oscar. ‘You think it’ll get you home?’

  ‘I’m not one hundred percent sure,’ said Nona. ‘However I think there’s a very good chance. This isn’t guesswork. I’ve done a lot of r
esearch. That artefact is powerful. It might be the most powerful psychic object on this planet.’

  ‘I thought it only opened portals to two dimensions besides this one.’ Trev thought back to his conversation with Ruby and Franz. ‘Dark Limbo, and some void or other.’

  Nona shook her head. ‘I believe it’s much more powerful than that. In fact, I believe it can open a portal between any two dimensions, given enough energy.’

  ‘Really?’ The cynicism was gone from Oscar’s voice. Instead there was something Trev had never heard from him before: hope. ‘This thing could get us home?’

  Nona rounded on him. ‘Us? Us?! There isn’t an “us” in this equation, your majesty. You know how long I’ve spent working on this, don’t you? And yet you still have the bloody arrogance to just assume it includes you somehow?’

  Her face was almost touching the cage. Oscar shrank back from her anger, ears back, head down. He looked so pathetic it blunted some of Trev’s enjoyment of the kitten’s comeuppance.

  ‘What’s the story between you two?’ he asked Nona. ‘Why do you hate him so much?’

  ‘Why do you need to ask?’ she snapped. ‘You’ve met him, haven’t you?’

  Trev shrugged. ‘Well yeah, he’s annoying. But there has to be more to it than that.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Oscar. ‘Wait a min–’

  ‘Be quiet, for once,’ said Nona. Although she’d recovered her composure, one glance was enough to silence Oscar. She looked at Trev. ‘He was the first. Those stupid cultists summoned him here as a test, I suppose. Proof that their ritual worked. But he wasn’t what they expected. So they tried again. And again.’

  ‘And Oscar became your King?’

  ‘He appointed himself King,’ said Nona. ‘He had a head start on us. By the time the cultists started summoning more spirits, he’d had a chance to learn how to function in a living body. The rest of us could barely talk. “Oscar” told us he was the ruler of this dimension, and we were his subjects. If we served him, perhaps he would send us home eventually.’

  ‘Seriously?’ said Trev, staring at the bundle of orange fluff in the cage. ‘Wow.’

  ‘It wasn’t my finest hour, OK?’ said Oscar. In another world first, he actually sounded ashamed of himself. ‘I didn’t realise we’d be stuck here! I thought the cultists would send us back once they realised we weren’t of any use to them, so I thought I’d have some fun first.’ He sighed. ‘Then the bloody Romans turned up.’

  ‘And they destroyed our chance of going back,’ said Nona. ‘But you didn’t give up the lies, did you?’

  ‘How could I?’ Oscar growled. ‘You expected me to say “Sorry everyone, not only am I unable to send you back, now nobody can send you back”? You’d have torn me limb from limb.’

  ‘We did tear you limb from limb when we finally found out,’ said Nona. ‘I’m surprised you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘I hadn’t,’ said Oscar quietly.

  ‘So then what happened?’ asked Trev.

  ‘The group broke up,’ said Nona. ‘Some of us tried to pool our resources and find a way home. Others wandered off to make the most of their new existence. Your pal Oscar, on the other hand, decided to found an organisation that spent quite a lot of its time hunting us as demons.’

  ‘Now that’s unfair,’ said Oscar, sitting up. ‘I never told the Custodians to hunt my own kind. Never.’

  ‘Didn’t stop it though, did you?’

  ‘By the time I realised it was happening, I didn’t have enough influence left in the organisation to stop it,’ Oscar said.

  ‘You really aren’t suited to a leadership role, are you?’ said Trev. ‘That’s why you’re my sidekick.’

  ‘Oh stick it up your arse, you half-witted ape,’ said Oscar.

  ‘I feel we’ve strayed off topic,’ said Granddad. As usual when he was with Trev and Oscar, he’d slipped into the role of lone voice of reason. ‘With respect, Nona, I don’t understand how you think we can help you get Grindhelm’s Key.’

  ‘Don’t be coy, Bernard,’ said Nona. ‘I think you know very well. Ezekiel Barker has it, Sarah is with him, and you’ve been trying to track them down. I’m going to offer you a simple deal. You help me get Grindhelm’s Key, and I won’t punish Sarah for betraying me.’

  ‘Punish her?’ said Trev. ‘You mean kill her, am I right?’

  ‘In many ways I’m a pretty accommodating boss,’ said Nona, ‘but I’m inflexible on the subject of betrayal.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes, then.’ Trev dug his hands into his pockets. ‘How come anyone bothers to work for these secret societies when they just off you if you mess up?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Trev,’ said Nona. ‘If I killed employees just for making mistakes I’d spend most of my time training new staff. Those two would be gone, for a start.’ She nodded at Handel and Beethoven, who switched looking bored for looking nervous.

  ‘You know, the number of employees I’ve had to dispose of over the years is actually quite small,’ Nona continued. ‘I find that if you bring in the right people in the first place, you don’t end up having to discipline them.’

  ‘So what did Sarah do wrong?’

  ‘She had a straightforward task. Keeping an eye on you. Not only did she fail at that, she tried to run away. I gave her another chance. She failed again. Not only that, she’s now working with the man I sent her to steal from.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Trev. ‘Barker’s holding her hostage.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Nona held his gaze with her mismatched eyes. ‘I don’t think you do, either.’

  Trev decided to side-step the question. ‘How come you had her watching me, anyway?’

  ‘Because the opposition was taking an interest in you.’

  ‘The opposition?’

  ‘There’s another group after Grindhelm’s Key. Surely you know that.’

  Granddad, who’d been silent for a while, spoke up. ‘Prescott Ewart’s group. The people behind the Brackenford bridge disaster.’

  ‘I think your friend Agatha was responsible for that,’ said Nona. ‘But yes, they’re the group I’m talking about.’

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Trev.

  ‘There isn’t much I can tell you,’ said Nona. ‘Not because I’m being tight-lipped, just because I don’t know all that much. They’re called The Invocation of Peace.’

  ‘Weird name. What does it mean?’

  ‘No idea. All I know is that they’ve been looking for the Key as long as I have, maybe longer.’

  ‘And how did you know they’d “taken an interest” in me?’

  ‘How does anyone know anything? I spoke to Dorothy Walcott, of course.’

  ‘What?’ said Granddad.

  Nona rolled her eyes. ‘Just because the Custodians gave up using her as a resource it doesn’t mean everyone else did.’

  ‘You’re saying she gives you usable information?’ Granddad pressed.

  ‘Occasionally, and only on her own terms.’ Nona shrugged. ‘She doesn’t hate most of us like she hates the Custodians, but there’s no doubt she’s playing her own game. What she’s working towards, who knows?’

  ‘I think she simply enjoys seeing us all suffer,’ said Granddad. ‘She’s toying with us.’

  ‘But one thing’s for sure,’ Nona replied. ‘When she makes a prediction of the future, she changes the future. Every time she hands out a little titbit of information, no matter how vague, she’s manipulating the recipient, changing their behaviour.’

  Trev thought about his own experience with Dorothy Walcott and couldn’t argue. She’d admitted, more or less, to playing Trev and the traitor in the Custodians against each other, giving both of them advice. He’d felt uneasy about it at the time; now, even more so.

  ‘The Invocation of Peace, then,’ said Granddad. ‘Do you know anything at all?’

  ‘Other than the name?’ Nona replied. ‘Not really. And that rather bothers me. Information is my business.’

  ‘But t
hem getting the Key would be bad?’ asked Trev.

  Nona swished her tail. ‘All we can do is guess. That said, the little we know doesn’t exactly paint them as a bunch of philanthropists. Prescott Ewart committed suicide rather than let the Key end up in the Custodians’ hands.’

  ‘He committed murder,’ Granddad corrected her.

  Nona didn’t argue the point. ‘I’ve been open with you about why I want the Key. The Invocation are obviously the bad guys in this scenario and the Custodians will just lock the thing away somewhere if they get it.’

  ‘And we should trust you because..?’ said Trev.

  ‘Because, presumably, you’d like to see your friend Sarah alive and well,’ Nona shot back, her jovial tone turning cold.

  ‘Right.’ Trev frowned. ‘That’s another thing I don’t get. Why did you send her after Barker in the first place?’

  ‘Everyone has a weakness, even Ezekiel Barker,’ Nona replied.

  For the second time in the conversation, Trev was struck with the inspiration hammer. He remembered Sarah’s hair, now blonde and curly. He also remembered a waxwork in a fake cryogenic chamber, and Barker’s anger and grief.

  ‘You made her look like his dead fiancée,’ he said. ‘Bloody hell, that’s evil.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Nona mildly. ‘I’d need an army to take him by force, and I don’t have one. This way nobody needs to die. Well, that was the plan, anyway.’

  ‘Last time I saw him he was a very short step away from a psychotic breakdown,’ Trev pointed out. ‘If he snaps because of you trying to manipulate him, people will die.’

  ‘Hasn’t happened yet.’ Nona seemed unconcerned by Trev’s warning. ‘In any case, all I want is the Key. After I’ve left this stinking armpit of a dimension, Barker can kill the whole lot of you for all I care.’

  ‘Stinking armpit?’ said Granddad, bemused.

  ‘She’s right on that one,’ Oscar said. ‘In the summer, armpits are about all you can smell.’

  ‘As enjoyable as this conversation’s been, I’m going to have to press you for an answer,’ said Nona. ‘Do we have a deal or not?’

  Trev sighed. ‘Just to be clear: you’re offering us a choice but there isn’t really a choice, is there?’