Oracles of Delphi Keep (10 page)

“You may win,” Ian yelled, puffing his chest out at the
horrible creature in a show of bravado he certainly didn’t feel, “but I’ll not go down without a fight!”

The beast snorted, then tilted its snout in the air and sniffed a few times. Ian wondered what it could be sniffing for. He was right there in front of it, after all. So he was surprised when the beast ignored him and turned its ugly head toward the stack of desks and chairs that Theo, Carl, and Madam were hiding behind.

“Oi!” Ian yelled, trying to call the beast’s attention as he waved the axe handle above his head. “Over here, you smelly cur!”

But the creature continued to pay him no heed, turning away as if Ian were a pesky fly not worth bothering about, and taking a step toward the barricade.

Ian heard Theo gasp, and saw her blond hair through a crack in the pile of desks. The beast let out a howl that reverberated off the walls of the room and nearly made Ian drop his handle to cover his ears. The sound was terrifying. Theo screamed and the beast bent low, prepared to pounce directly onto the benches and desks.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Ian cried, racing forward with his handle raised above his head, and bringing it down as hard as he could on the beast’s left flank. There was a yelp before the beast whirled around with lightning speed, swiping at Ian, who was sent flying backward through the air and landed with a hard thud against the wall.

The air was knocked out of him, and he shook his head, trying to clear it from the smack he’d taken. He willed his eyes to focus as the beast turned its full attention on him,
loping over, ready to finish him off. Ian’s hands reflexively reached out to his sides, and amazingly, his left hand settled on the axe handle. He brought it up a second before the beast’s jaws were about to close on his throat, and it bit the handle instead. Ian was jerked up as the beast snarled and shook the wood back and forth, but somehow he managed to hold on. He knew that if he lost hold of the handle, he was dead for sure.

His arms felt like they were about to come out of their sockets as the beast shook him to and fro, and his head snapped back and forth, and he realized he couldn’t outlast the rabid creature. Just as his grip began to loosen, there was a loud
thwack
from behind the beast, and it instantly let go of Ian and the axe handle. He fell to the ground and rolled away from the mangy cur but managed to glimpse Carl holding the top of a small desk in his hands just before he brought it down again on the beast’s rear.

Quick as a flash the beast whirled and dove at Carl, who barely managed to get the wood up to cover his face in time. The monster pinned Carl to the floor while the poor boy desperately tried to hold the desktop up to protect himself. The giant creature bit at the wood, trying to gobble up the young lad underneath.

For a moment Ian watched in stunned horror, but he quickly realized that his new friend was moments away from a dreadful end. Gripping the axe handle tightly and springing to his feet, he charged the beast with a mighty battle cry. Funneling all his anger and fear into his attack, he struck the beast on the head hard enough to rattle his own bones. He
then ducked down and spun around, using all his momentum to hit the beast’s rear legs, his handle connecting with a mighty whack.

“Off him!” Ian roared, and spun yet again for another hard blow. “Get off him, you insufferable cur!”

A yelp and a snarl followed and again Ian was sent sailing through the air. His shoulder struck the stone wall with a nasty crunch that sent a sharp bolt of lightning straight up his spine. The axe handle clanked to the floor beside him, and he was helpless to pick it up. He looked up to see the beast charging toward him, lethal fury in its ugly red eyes.

Ian put his good arm up to shield his face—he couldn’t bear to look at the thing as it devoured him whole—but suddenly the room reverberated with the sound of an explosion, then another in rapid succession. There was a horrible squeal so loud and so high-pitched that it cracked one of the glass panes, and just as Ian lowered his arm, he caught sight of the beast flying through the air above him and crashing through the window.

He was showered with glass, and he winced as a few pieces nicked his head and face before he had the chance to duck his chin. In the next moment someone was crouching by his side, whispering his name. “Ian? Are you all right, lad?” Ian looked up to see Thatcher hovering above him, a hunting rifle in his hand, and the smell of gunpowder filled the room even more heavily than the foul scent of the beast.

“Yes, sir,” he said gratefully. “And I’m awfully glad to see you.”

“How’s the boy?” asked the earl as he stepped to where Ian sat against the wall.

“Seems all right,” said Thatcher, standing up to have a look out the broken window. “What the …?” he said, leaning his head far out the broken pane to peer at the ground below.

The earl edged closer to the window. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s gone,” said Thatcher, pulling his head back through to stare in disbelief at the faces in the room. “The beast is gone! By God, what devil’s work
is
this?”

“How could it be gone?” the earl said as he also leaned his head out the window. “Impossible!” he exclaimed.

“But we hit him square!” insisted Thatcher. “I know it! And that’s a three-story drop! No earthly creature could survive that!” But as Ian stared numbly up at their astonished faces, he knew better. That beast had been as unnatural a thing as ever he’d imagined, and he wasn’t surprised that it had survived to run away.

“And yet,” said Perry, crouching low in the center of the room, “our beast bleeds.” The earl and Thatcher turned to him. “See that?” he asked, pointing to a spot near his feet where a big splotch of dark liquid glistened in the moonlight. “That’s the beast’s blood.”

“If it bleeds, we can kill it,” said the earl gravely. “Come, gentlemen. Let’s check to make sure everyone is accounted for and safe, and then we’ll track that damnation down and finish it off.”

Ian was helped to his feet by Landis, but he yelped in
pain the moment the groundskeeper touched his shoulder. “It’s out of its socket, I’m afraid,” said Landis. “Ian, we’re going to have to pop it back into place, and it’s going to hurt something terrible.”

Ian felt dizzy. His head was pounding; his shoulder screamed in pain; and his knees felt ready to give way at any moment. “It’s all right, Landis,” he said wearily. “If it will stop the pain once it’s back in place, it’s worth it.”

As Ian was helped down the stairs by Landis, he heard Carl behind him say, “I’m fine, my lord, truly. Just a few scrapes is all.”

Once they reached the second floor, Ian let out a gasp as he looked at the hallway littered with debris. It was as if a great cyclone had been let loose within the walls of the keep and had vented its rage in every corner. Nothing was left untouched.

He and Landis picked their way slowly through the rubble until the groundskeeper found him a chair that had been toppled but had survived the wreckage. Ian sat down carefully and the groundskeeper came around to squat down behind him. “Turn your head away,” he said gently over Ian’s shoulder. “It’s better if you don’t know it’s coming.”

Ian turned his head to the side, bracing himself as best he could while Landis gripped his arm and the top of his shoulder firmly. The next second Landis jerked his arm up and back with a terrific yank. Ian heard a loud snap an instant before a searing pain rippled along his arm, shoulder, and neck and he blacked out.

I
an awoke to a flurry of noise and activity. He was lying flat on his back, nearly level with the floor, and when he turned his head, the first thing he saw was Theo hovering by his side, her face still pale and her eyes large and vivid green. “About time you woke up,” she said softly, forcing a smile. “We were beginning to think you were faking it to get out of the business of cleaning up.”

Ian sat up with a wince and looked around, blinking confusedly at the litter of wreckage surrounding him. It took him a moment to realize that he was on the main floor of the keep, in the parlor room, lying on a mattress with no bed frame underneath. His arm was tightly bound to his chest with a thick layer of gauze.

“Landis says you shouldn’t use that arm for the next few days. He also said you’d be very sore.”

Ian nodded dully and continued to look around. “This place is a mess,” he said as he watched children scurry around him, picking up the debris as best they could. Alarmed, he asked Theo, “Is anyone else hurt?”

“Carl has a few scratches. Other than that, everyone is fine. The beast never made it to the door of the west tower.”

Ian rubbed his forehead. He had a splitting headache to add to his other aches and pains. “Thank goodness,” he said.

“The earl is out with the new schoolmasters,” Theo continued. “They’re hunting the beast. Madam Dimbleby and Madam Scargill are doing their best to salvage what they can, but almost everything’s been destroyed.”

“Where’s Landis?”

“He’s standing guard at the front door, and two of the earl’s men have taken up posts with hunting rifles at the other two entrances. There was brief talk of evacuating the keep, but the adults agreed that until the beast is slain, it would be too dangerous to move us all in the dark. Most of the little ones have been safely tucked away upstairs, which only leaves a few of us down here. The earl feels quite confident that we’ll all be safe in here until first light.”

Just then, Carl appeared with a steaming cup of tea in his hands. “Here you go, mate,” he said as he approached. “I managed to find the kettle, and this one teacup survived in the wreckage.”

Ian smiled at the lad offering him the cup. He’d never had someone call him “mate” before, and found that he was suddenly very fond of Carl. “Thanks,” he said warmly, taking the cup. After sipping the hot liquid carefully, he glanced at the other boy. “You all right?” he asked him.

“Yes,” Carl said brightly. “A few bruises, but nothing like what’s happened to you.”

“You saved my life,” Ian said, forming a new appraisal of
the wiry young lad and realizing he was very glad Carl had come to live at Delphi Keep when he had.

“And you saved ours,” Carl replied simply. “If you hadn’t distracted that thing when it first came up the stairs, we would have been trapped behind that barricade, and I wouldn’t give a halfpence for our chances.”

Ian’s lips attempted a smile, but his head hurt too much to give it any life. He looked round again at the children scurrying about, picking up the mess. All except Searle, who was sullenly moving a broom back and forth across the floor without really sweeping anything up.

“I expect I can help some,” Ian said, not wanting to have Searle accuse him of being lazy again. But when he set the cup down and tried to get to his feet, the world spun and he sat back abruptly.

“There’ll be none of that,” said Madam Dimbleby, coming across the parlor room toward him. “You’re to rest, Master Wigby,” she insisted. “There’s a nasty bump on your head, and I suspect you might have a slight concussion.”

“How are you, ma’am?” he asked her. Although her complexion was back to normal, her eyes still held a frightened cast that Ian had never seen in them before.

“I’m fine,” she said with a smile that came nowhere near her eyes. “But I’ll feel much better the moment we hear that dreadful beast is dead and gone. Now, Carl, come with me and see if we can line up some of these mattresses. I want to get some sort of sleeping arrangement in place before you older lot start collapsing on your feet. Searle,” she called across the room, “you’re not fooling anyone with that broom in your hands. Come here and help Carl and me arrange
some mattresses.” Before leaving them, she added, “Theo, dear, you keep an eye on Ian and make sure he doesn’t do anything silly like try to get up.”

Carl leapt to his feet and followed Madam Dimbleby while Theo and Ian sat together and shared the cup of tea. When Carl and Madam Dimbleby were out of earshot, Theo whispered, “Ian, the beast didn’t track you and me back to the keep. It was after me and only me.”

Ian’s eyes widened. “What makes you say that?”

“I watched it when it came up the stairs,” she said. “It could’ve gone right for you, but it didn’t. It knew I was there behind the barrier and it only had eyes for me.”

“Maybe it just decided there was easier prey behind the barrier,” Ian suggested.

“No,” said Theo firmly. “Ian, you haven’t seen what the beast did to my bed and my clothes. All the other beds it just tore, or broke. My bed—or what’s left of it—was shredded beyond recognition. My clothing was torn to bits. Even my extra pair of shoes were completely in tatters. There’s nothing at all left of my belongings,” she said, her eyes watering a bit.

“Aw, Theo,” Ian said softly as he reached out and awkwardly patted her arm until she’d taken a few breaths and her teary moment had passed. “You’d best remember that the beast got a good whiff of your blood when we were in the cave.” He pointed to her bandaged hand. “Perhaps it was just angry and wanted to hunt down the person who’d disturbed its lair.”

Theo took a deep breath and gave a small nod. “Yes, I thought of that, but, Ian, you were in that cave too. And you
were the one the beast just missed killing when you got free of the hole. And yet, it turned away when it had you cornered. It was after me, Ian. I just know it.”

Ian knew it too, but he had no idea why the beast would be so intent on killing Theo. He didn’t want her to dwell on it, however, so he said, “Not to worry. The earl and the new schoolmasters will kill that terrible creature soon, and from then on we’ll never have to think about such things again.”

Theo looked into Ian’s eyes, fear and worry making her appear much older than she was. “I wish I agreed with you” was all she said.

Inwardly, Ian was terribly troubled about what it might mean if their fears were correct and the deadly beast prowling the Dover countryside was indeed after Theo, but he dared not frighten her further by going on about it, so he simply sipped his tea and sat quietly with her, periodically nudging her good-naturedly with his healthy shoulder to ensure that her thoughts didn’t become too dark.