Pure Dead Magic (10 page)

Signor Strega-Borgia keyed in a row of X’s and sat back, trembling. Onscreen a dialogue box appeared:
SEND
?

Signor Strega-Borgia hit the
ENTER
key with such force that
the plastic cracked and it divided in two, becoming the
ENT
and
ER
keys. Onscreen the dialogue box read:
MESSAGE SENT
>
BUT YOU DIDN
 … 
T HAVE TO BE QUITE SO NEANDERTHAL
<

Signor Strega-Borgia ignored this and began to chew his fingernails. On a nearby screen, twenty-six rat eyes glared pinkly out at him. They were assessing his food value (minimal), his general value to ratkind (zilch), and his intelligence (nonexistent since he hadn’t brought any bacon rinds). Bored, the rats turned away and began to gnaw pixels by the dozen.

Damp on the Web

M
rs. McLachlan’s raspberry muffins were good, thought Titus, rather too good, in fact. After eating more than his fair share (eight out of twelve), he headed upstairs to his computer. When the screen flickered into life, a dialogue box appeared with
YOU HAVE MAIL
on it.

“Spam,” muttered Titus, under his breath, ignoring the announcement and loading
Death & Destruction II
into the CD-ROM.

The dialogue box politely made itself scarce, waiting until Titus had assembled his armies onscreen, equipped them with a bristling array of weaponry, and was just about to begin the assault on the peaceful kingdom of computer-generated Nettlefold. Titus paused, fingers hovering above the keyboard. There was that annoying dialogue box getting in the way again. All unknowing, the innocent citizens of the kingdom of Nettlefold slept on into oblivion. They remained unaware that
the agent of their destruction was a large box hanging in the sky that bore the legend:

Titus groaned. Not again.
Death & Destruction II
was always pulling this kind of stunt. The trouble was that it was such an aggressive game. Every time he loaded it, it tried to pick a fight with everything in its way—first the CD-ROM, then the RAM, then the processor. Maybe he’d try it again, later. In the meantime, out with
Death & Destruction II
and check the mailbox.

Titus sat back and waited. The dialogue box disappeared again, muttering darkly to itself. After a lot of whirring fans and little clicky noises from deep within the computer, a message appeared onscreen.

“OK, OK. Chill out, would you?” groaned Titus, pressing
ENTER
. His eyes grew wide. “WHAT?” he yelled. “Dad? What is this rubbish?”

His fingers a blur on the keyboard, Titus replied:

He pressed
ENTER
, wiped a tear off the keyboard, and reloaded
Death & Destruction II.
Nettlefold didn’t stand a chance.

Signor Strega-Borgia burst into dramatic tears when Titus’s message arrived onscreen. Immediately he responded:

There … done. He’d struck the right balance between giving a clear warning and not throwing Titus into a terrorstricken panic. And he hadn’t once mentioned police, so his message wouldn’t alert Lucifer’s alarm system. Feeling faintly smug, Signor Strega-Borgia carefully pressed ENT and ER simultaneously, and sent his message winging out across the Web. He sat back in his chair, wiping his streaming face with his sleeve. For some reason, the air conditioning in the computer room appeared to be malfunctioning, but thankfully, the pervasive smell of gasoline-based floor polish had gone.

Above the smoking remains of Nettlefold, a giant box hung in the sky.

Titus sniffed as he typed in a message:

It was at this tender moment that Pandora threw open the door to her brother’s bedroom and announced that Titus, too, was going the same way as the computer-generated kingdom of Nettlefold.

“Titus, you’re toast. You’re history. You’re about to be an ex-Titus …,” she gloated, waving a disposable wand for emphasis.

“Go
away,
Pandora,” muttered Titus, his eyes not leaving the screen. “I know where your rats went, and believe me, they’re
not
coming back.”

Wearing a brand-new diaper, and modeling a dazzlingly pink pair of overalls, Damp crawled into Titus’s bedroom to check if the face was still hungry. Titus and Pandora were too engrossed in mutual slander to notice her crawling purposefully toward the computer. Damp gazed upward at the CD-ROM drawer in adoration. With an inaudible shriek from the hard disk,
Death & Destruction II
crashed again, causing the CD drawer to spring open and eject the quarrelsome disk. Damp crawled closer for a good look. At this point, time appeared to speed up and everything began to happen rather quickly.

Upon hearing the CD-ROM drawer open, and curious as to whether the bacon rinds were still inside, Multitudina made a run for the computer. Behind Titus’s back, Pandora began to draw circles with her wand. Faster and faster until, just before the final thrust, she stepped forward, tripped over the running Multitudina, and aimed her final blast not at Titus but at Damp.

Titus, fingers poised over the keyboard, about to send his letter to [email protected], gave an enormous sneeze that launched his miniaturized baby sister into orbit. Currently about the size of a small thumbnail, Damp was blown into the open CD drawer and spun upward into the modem.

As the sneeze left Titus’s nose, his fingers reflexively pressed
ENTER
. Onscreen a dialogue box informed him:
MESSAGES SENT
. It was Pandora’s terrible scream that told him what he had really sent.

Pronto Gets Help

F
lying from Italian sunshine into Scottish drizzle had done nothing to improve Pronto’s mood. Dressed for a kinder climate, he was soaked to the skin by the time he arrived at the dingy dockside offices of the Edinburgh branch of Rent-a-Thug. His shoes squelched, his suit dripped black dye, and his cell phone was suspiciously soggy. Across the desk from him, a fat man in a pinstripe suit rolled his eyes heavenward, and wheezed into a telephone receiver buried under his many chins. “Danny the Fox is doing a six-to-ten stretch, huh? What about Sid the Slash?”

A polite knock at the door, and the fat man’s secretary poked her head round. “There’s a Mr. Machiavelli from Garrotes R Us in reception for you, boss,” she trilled.

The fat man gave her the thumbs-up sign.

“And that consignment of Uzi nine millimeters has just arrived—shall I unpack them now?”

The fat man nodded and waved her away with an impatient hand. ‘Too bad,” he murmured down the telephone. “He should have stuck to his knives, our Sid. Plastic explosives are such unforgiving stuff.…” He paused and scratched his armpit in a thoughtful kind of way. “So what can you do for me? What’ve you got left? Yeah, I need one more for this very special client.” He grinned an unpleasant gold-capped grin across the desk at Pronto. “Yeah, the usual arrangement, yeah, that’s right. Half up front, the remainder when the job’s done. So … who have you come up with? Attila? Attila what? What sort of a name is that? Hang on, I’ll ask my client.”

The fat man gagged the telephone with one vast paw and leaned across the desk to Pronto. “My friend says he’s got a real nutter for you. Guy by the name of Attila the Bun.”

Pronto raised one eyebrow.

“Yeah, I know, but it gets better. Apparently, he wears a full rabbit suit all the time—hence the nickname, but my friend says he’s one of the best in the business.”

Pronto raked the fat man with a disbelieving stare.

The fat man oozed back across the desk and slumped in his chair. “Look, pal, you can take it or leave it. S’up to you. All I know is you want four professional personnel-terminators for a job up in the Highlands, no questions asked,
and
you want them
now,
ASAP, pronto, toot sweet.…”

“How did you get my name?” interrupted Pronto.

“Look, Toots, or whatever you call yourself, get this—I can’t find you four expert terminators at such short notice. Three I can do, four, no can do. Either you take this Tillybun bloke and we’ve got a deal, or you’re stuck with the three we got.”

Pronto decided.

“Right, squire, we’ve got a deal,” said the fat man, retrieving the receiver from his clammy fist and replacing it under his chins. “OK, we cut the rabbit in. Usual place, give my client an hour to find himself a motor. Yeah, yeah, he knows the form. Unmarked bills, in the left luggage at the station. Yeah. You too. Bye.” Sweating copiously, the fat man replaced the receiver and collapsed in his chair. Mopping his face with a lace-trimmed handkerchief, he began to draw a map for Pronto.

Exactly one hour later, Pronto arrived in a rented van at the agreed rendezvous. Edinburgh was in the grip of festival fever, and the chosen location was thronged with tourists, street performers, jugglers, acrobats, and, regrettably, more than one fully dressed rabbit.

Pronto had no trouble spotting his three experts. They stood in a group, wearing sunglasses, black suits, and deep scowls. They were far more conspicuous in the crowd of brightly dressed, happy festival-goers than their companion in his rabbit costume. As instructed by the fat man, Pronto stuck his head out of the van window, pretending to ask directions from passersby. “Anyone know where I can find a theater group called Terminator Four?” he yelled.

Three large guys began to move in his direction. Nearby, a well-dressed rabbit detached himself from an audience of small children and began to hop toward the van. One small boy appeared to be reluctant to say goodbye. He clung determinedly to the rabbit’s leg, his face crumpling with the effort.

The three large men climbed into the rear of the van, holding the door open for their lopsidedly hopping companion.

“Get OFF,” the rabbit growled at the leechlike child. “Leggo, or I’ll …”