The Cloven Land Trilogy

4. Grimoire-1

“Wait here. Hold the lift. Make sure no one uses it,” said her gran once they"d creaked up to the ground floor. She slipped sideways through the reluctant doors when they were only half-open and walked briskly into the library.

Cait stood by the open lift, feeling that everyone was looking at her. She tried to breathe deeply, slowly, in, out. She"d read in a magazine that it calmed the nerves. It didn"t seem to be helping. A churning sickness filled her stomach. She waited, afraid, useless. Her gran and Jane were talking, their heads close. Her gran pointed toward the lift. They bustled over together.

“Who was that in the basement gran?” asked Cait. “Where did they come from?”

“We have to hurry,” said Jane, ignoring Cait. The urgency was clear in her voice despite her accent. “Cait can stay up here. You and I must do this.”

“Do you think she"ll be safer up here?” asked her gran. A stern look replaced her usual smile. It was unsettling, as if all her normal warmth was a front. “Tom recognized her. Others could, too.”

“She"s just a girl,” said Jane.

Her gran"s features were taut with tension. Underneath, Cait could tell she was weary. Sometimes, when she had been working too hard, or when she"d been ill, she did look old after all.

“Look, whatever"s going on here, I want to come with you,” said Cait. “I can"t just leave you.” She was speaking in a sort of whispered shout. Readers at nearby tables frowned at her. She stepped into the lift.

The two women exchanged glances then followed her inside. Her gran smiled, but the expression melted into anxiety almost immediately. Jane pressed the button to descend. Cait hooked her arm through her gran"s, as she had done so many times.

“Who is it down there, gran?” she asked. “What is going on?”

The lift began to shudder and clank. Her gran squeezed her arm. Her voice was thin as she spoke. “We only have a few moments, love. Listen carefully, all right? I"ll try to explain. And Cait, when we get to the basement, do what I say for once?”

Cait nodded.

“OK,” said her gran. “The truth is, there"s something down there. In the basement. Something that shouldn"t be there. Something that shouldn"t even be.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Cait, listen to me. This thing is extremely dangerous and, I"m not going to lie to you, extremely frightening. It"s come from another world in search of something. A book. And we must stop that from happening, at whatever cost. Do you understand?”

She didn"t in the least, but she nodded again.

“We thought, we"d hoped, this would never happen,” her gran continued. “But it has and there"s only us here to stop it. So that"s what we"re going to do.”

They were nearly at the bottom, the lift slowing as it reached the basement. Jane was breathing quickly, clearly afraid. Cait felt suddenly claustrophobic, enclosed in the tiny square lift. Her heart raced, surely too rapidly. She could do nothing but nod again, unable to think of anything to say. She had come to protect her gran, but really, what good would she be? She was useless. She couldn"t do anything.

They heard three great booms from outside, as if someone were striking a huge drum. The whole lift shook with each concussion.

“Were you able to tell what it is?” Jane asked quietly.

“Not really,” said her gran. “Just this great emptiness, sucking in the light. One of the higher nobility, maybe. Perhaps one of the Elder Dukes or even a Prince.”

Jane nodded. “Well. We must do what we can.”

Her gran put on her glasses. As they waited for the doors to jerk open, she turned to Cait. She tried to look reassuring despite the fear in her eyes.

“Stay close, love,” she said. “And … I"m sorry.”

The doors opened.

Cait"s first impression was of snow. It drifted in the air, thick as a winter"s storm. But it was black snow. She saw what it really was: charred scraps of paper. The air hung heavy with ash and smoke, sharp at the back of her throat.

Another great boom echoed down the corridor. Moments later, a great flurry of shredded, blackened tatters bloomed into the air, as though carried on a strong northern wind.

Jane and her gran strode forward. Cait followed, wading through mounds of ash and paper scraps like fallen leaves.

They reached the first metal fire-door. It bent inward as though struck by a huge force. It stood like a ship"s sail in a high wind, hanging on by its hinges. All around lay great drifts of tattered and burned pages. To Cait it seemed like someone had started with a chainsaw, then set the whole lot on fire. How was that possible? They"d only been gone for a minute or two. The ash in the air grew thicker, the smell of smouldering paper stronger, making Cait cough and retch. Why hadn"t the sprinklers and alarms come on? It wasn"t supposed to be possible for fires to just burn like this.

They continued down the corridor, stepping around larger piles of shredded paper, until sudden footsteps galloped toward them.

They stopped. Cait wanted to turn and run for the lift after all: get away, get up and out into the fresh air. She wanted to be back in that crowd on the streets of Manchester. She would have run, too, but her legs wouldn"t obey. Her whole body shook and it was all she could do to remain standing.

Something hurtled around the corner. It ran like a dog, but larger, perhaps as tall as Cait. Its hairless body was the colour of wax. Its head was completely featureless: a bone battering ram that it used to smash down the metal doors. It bound up to them and stopped. A mouth appeared, a great wide c***k full of needle teeth splitting its head.

“Three more witches,” it said, its voice strangely soft. “I will eat you alive.”

“No,” replied her gran. “You will not.”

The creature snarled, its mouth gaping as it did so. “You are powerless and you know it. Tell me where the Grimoire is. I grow impatient. It is here somewhere, I can smell it. Tell me!”

Jane stepped forward. She held her palm forward, as if that would be enough to stop the creature. “Yes, the book is here. But it is protected by many Forbidding Wards. You will have to kill me to remove them, undain.”

“Jane, no,” said her gran, alarm clear in her voice. “Don"t do this!”

“I must,” said Jane, not looking at her gran, not taking her eyes off the monster. “For Andar, or whatever is left of it. For this world. I must. There is no other way.”

“No!”

“I"m sorry.”

The creature snarled and leaped. It ran up one of the walls and slammed down onto Jane, taking her whole arm into its mouth. Jane screamed and staggered backward. But somehow she stayed upright. Through clenched teeth she spoke words in a language Cait didn"t recognize.

The creature roared and began to change shape. Its mouth shrank and lengthened. A tongue became an arm, Jane"s hand grasped in its fist. Cait could see something, an energy, flowing down Jane"s arm. The creature howled in agony, but didn"t let go. Perhaps it couldn"t. It fought back with a burning fire of its own.

Her gran stepped forward, her own hand outstretched. Seeing her, the creature grew another limb with astonishing speed. An arm ending in a great club lashed out and knocked her gran flying, slamming her against a wall. She sank to the floor, her eyes closed.

Cait found she could move then. Anger filled her, overcoming her terror. She charged at the creature. She still carried her school textbooks. Uselessly, not really knowing what she was doing, she tried to batter the monster with English Literature.

The creature swung its club arm at Cait, intending to swat her aside as it had her gran. Cait flinched. But as the blow was about to land, the creature stopped. Eyes swivelled on the side of its head, tiny like a whale"s, little flecks of red clear as if it burned on the inside. It seemed to be studying her.

“But …” it said.

At that moment Jane screamed, her voice a mixture of determined fury and pain. The creature"s whole arm glowed white. Jane"s arm also burned, brighter and brighter. Cait stepped backward. What was happening? She shaded her eyes, the heat alarming on her face. Jane and the creature became indistinct shapes in the gathering fury of the light.

The explosion hurled Cait down the corridor. She expected pain as she struck a wall or the floor. Instead, she landed in one of the drifts of tattered pages and disappeared.

For a moment, everything was quiet. She was tempted to lie there, hidden, out of sight. But she knew she couldn"t.

She pushed her way out, spitting dry paper from her mouth, and peered down the corridor. The monster, Jane and her gran lay unmoving on the floor, a neat triangle of bodies.

She went to her gran first. She was breathing, her limbs twisted at odd angles, like a broken doll. She opened her eyes as Cait stroked her face.

“Hello, love,” said her gran. She peered over at Jane and the monster. “Cait. You must hurry. Take Jane"s key. It"s around her neck. Go get the book. It"s in a cage like the ones you were asking about. Vault 42.”

“But, gran.”

“Please, Cait.”

“OK.”

Cait"s stomach heaved as she lifted the key from Jane"s neck. The smell of burning flesh made her retch. She expected the key to be burning hot but it was cold metal.

“Good,” her gran whispered. “Go now. Be quick.”

Cait ran. Vault 42 was nearby. The door had been smashed like the others and the books inside shredded. But the locked cage in the corner was intact, as if the monster hadn"t noticed it.

She waded through a sea of paper tatters, of scattered words, to get to the far corner of the vault. A single book waited inside the cage, its leather cover a rich, mottled red. She slipped the key into the large padlock. It turned with a series of gentle clicks.

She reached inside, expecting something to happen as she touched the book. Nothing did. Etched into the leather was the sketch of a skull and symbols or letters she didn"t recognize. A complete skeleton stretched the length of the book"s spine. Cait put the book under her arm, turned, and ran back to her gran.

“Well done, love. Now get out of here. Others will be coming. This evil thing has friends. Take the book and destroy it. Burn it. Burn every page. Not a word must survive. When you"ve burned it, shred the ashes, too.” She lay back, her eyes shut.

“Gran I … I can"t do this,” said Cait. “I can"t do any of this. I don"t know what"s going on, and I don"t want to.”

“I know, love,” said her gran, her eyes closed. “I know. But we do what must be done. And you … you always underestimate yourself.”

“But I can"t just leave you and Jane with this … this thing.”