The Dark Giants (7 page)

What now?
Amelia thought, but Foxy was already skipping ahead, calling, ‘Well done!
Such quick think–’

He stopped abruptly and gulped.

Amelia stood up. ‘Charlie?’

‘All good,’ came his cheerful reply.

She didn’t bother with words then, but ran to stand beside Foxy. There, on the path
beyond the blind corner, was Charlie. He was grinning with Spike’s colossal plasma
gun in both hands. Spike was on the ground, his hands raised to shield his face,
and had clearly been petrified too. Standing guard over him was Grawk, and Grawk
was now staring at the shivering Foxy.

Amelia clapped. ‘Charlie! You did this?’

‘It was Grawk, mostly,’ he said modestly. ‘He’s not the Hulk, Amelia – he’s Batman:
silent, brilliant, and out for revenge. He ambushed Spike by himself, and when I
came round, all I had to
do was get his gun and shoot him while Grawk pretended he
was about to eat him. At least,’ he looked at Grawk, ‘I
think
he was only pretending.’

‘Thanks, Grawk,’ said Amelia, feeling oddly shy. Grawk wagged his tail slightly,
though his gaze never wavered from Foxy. ‘And thanks, Charlie. I wasn’t sure what
you were up to at first.’

‘Neither was I,’ he admitted. ‘Hey, but where’s Sophie T?’

‘I’m here,’ said a tiny voice.

‘Oh, hey, Soph!’ Charlie said happily. ‘Glad you’re all right. And look – we found
Grawk!’

‘Excuse me,’ said Foxy, hardly daring to move his lips. ‘What about me?’

‘Right,’ said Amelia, stepping back to Beard’s petrified body and pulling his gun
from his hand. ‘Well, why don’t you explain to Grawk how you were only trying to
help him. We’ll let him decide if he agrees. And while you’re doing that, I’m going
to shoot these two guys with the binding gun.’

Sophie T made a small noise of distress and put her hand on Amelia’s arm.

‘Oh, sorry, Soph,’ said Amelia, immediately contrite. ‘I’m being so rude.
You’re
the guest – would you like to shoot the bad guys instead?’

Walking back onto the hotel grounds, the moon was bright and indifferent above them
as Charlie tried to help Sophie T look on the bright side.

‘I know the last part was a bit rough,’ he said, ‘but at least you were totally unconscious
for most of it.’

‘No, I wasn’t,’ she retorted.

‘Yeah, with the petrifying ray and stuff. You weren’t aware of anything then.’

‘I was paralysed, Charles, not asleep.’

‘You mean –?’

‘I saw and heard and felt
every
thing. And it was the worst experience in the world.’

‘Oh, no …’ Charlie groaned.

‘Yes, that’s awful,’ said Amelia. ‘You must have been so frightened.’

‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘Not that – but, Tom saw me look under his eye-patch!’

‘Ugh, Charlie,’ Amelia scolded, and shoved him in the shoulder.

‘So, what do we do now?’ Sophie T asked, a little cautiously. ‘I mean, what do we
say to your parents?’

‘Ah,’ Amelia grimaced. ‘About that … you see, they sort of …’ There was no way around
it. ‘They know everything. About aliens and stuff.’

Sophie T goggled at them both, then turned to stare back at Foxy behind them, and
Grawk who was walking very closely behind him, escorting the miserable scientist
as his prisoner. ‘So,’ she
said slowly, ‘this isn’t the first time this sort of thing
has happened to you.’

‘No,’ said Charlie.

‘You knew there were aliens all this time?’

‘Yes,’ said Amelia.

‘And you still invited me for a sleepover!’

‘Well,’ Amelia didn’t know the right answer to that. ‘It was my birthday … and I
really like you … and …’

‘Plus, we had no idea this was going to happen,’ Charlie finished. ‘Amelia only planned
the cake, pizza, and movie parts.’

Sophie T shuddered and crossed her arms tightly.

‘Sophie?’ Amelia said gently.

Sophie T didn’t answer.

‘Well, she asked the right question, anyway,’ said Charlie. ‘What do we do now? Go
back to the hotel?’

Amelia looked up the hill and imagined her bed still warm and waiting for her. ‘No,’
she sighed. ‘We’d better go down to Tom’s with Grawk and Foxy.’

‘But what about
_–
’ He nodded at Sophie T.

Amelia shrugged. ‘It’s a bit late to worry about secrets now.’

To their relief, all the lights were on in Tom’s cottage when they arrived, and it
was full of people. Tom was sitting up with a mug of black tea between his hands,
the crocheted blanket still around his shoulders, and glowering. Mum was on the phone
(the cord clumsily repaired with electrical tape) and asking impatient questions,
and James was poring over a stack of re-organised charts. Mary was in the kitchen,
closest to the front door, and so the first person to see them
arrive. ‘They’re alive!’
she gasped, waving across the room to get the others’ attention.

‘As usual,’ said Charlie, squirming to get away as his mum swooped in to try to kiss
him.

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ cried Mum, ignoring the muffled voice coming out of the phone.
‘If only there was some way to let Dad and Lady Naomi know you’re safe.’

‘Guess what?’ said Amelia. ‘We’ve got Grawk back. He saved us again.’

‘Where is he?’ James asked.

‘Grawk?’ Amelia called.

Foxy came in first, cowering a bit.

‘You!’ said Mum, slamming down the phone.

Grawk padded in after him, and everyone sucked in a breath, shocked.

‘Did you do this to him?’ Mum asked Foxy.

‘No!’

‘It’s true,’ said Amelia. ‘Grawk was like this
when we first saw him. It’s because
he’s growing up on Earth, or something.’

Mum and Tom swapped anxious looks.

‘Amelia …’

‘It’s not his fault,’ she said, and without thinking she stepped close to him and
laid a protective hand on his neck. As her fingers sank into his velvety fur, she
realised this was the first time she’d touched him since before he’d disappeared.
And from the looks on everyone’s faces, they were just as uncertain of Grawk as she
was. True, he’d defended them from harm, and she was sure he was still basically
good, but did that mean he was
safe
? Maybe not.

She felt him vibrating under her hand, and when she heard the deep grinding noise,
she nearly snatched it away. Then she recognised that this was his purr, not his
growl, and she dared to scratch him behind the jaw.

‘See?’ she said, trying to sound more positive than she felt. ‘It’s still Grawk.
He’s just bigger.’

‘We’re going to have to tell Ms Rosby,’ said Mum.

‘Oh, but –’

‘She’s already on her way,’ Mum spoke over her. ‘As soon as we saw your beds were
empty, Dad called Tom. And then, with his line being cut, we knew there was trouble.
Lady Naomi had heard a scream, and she and Dad went out to see if they could find
where you’d gone. That just left me and Mary in the hotel, so of course we called
Control. At the very least,’ she smiled sadly at Sophie T, ‘we have to own up to
letting one more person into the gateway club.’

Sophie T looked warily at all the faces suddenly turned to her. Amelia felt thoroughly
bad for her. Sophie T had been so worried about being laughed at, but they’d done
worse than that – they’d lied
to her. And for all her fears of being left out, now
she was stuck on the inside of a secret she’d never wanted to know.

James seemed to recognise what Sophie T was going through. ‘Come on,’ he said, getting
up from the charts and coming over to put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll make you
some really sweet tea and you can ask me anything you like until this starts to make
sense to you.’

Sophie T nodded forlornly and followed him to Tom’s kitchen. ‘I don’t think this
will ever make sense.’

‘Maybe not,’ James admitted. ‘But after a while, your brain will sort of stretch
enough to fit it in. You’ll see.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Sophie T, tiptoeing past Grawk with a little shudder. But when
she got to the kitchen, Mary wrapped her up in a huge motherly hug, and fussed over
her.

‘Oh, you poor child, oh,
manari mou
, come and tell me all about it.’

Charlie rolled his eyes in sympathy, but Amelia saw Sophie T snuggle deeper into
Mary’s arms, and thought Sophie T was in just the right place.

‘As for you,’ Mum said to Foxy, ‘you’re under house arrest until Ms Rosby gets here.’

Foxy huffed at the news, but didn’t look too sorry to be taken out of Grawk’s custody.

She handcuffed Foxy’s wrist to the leg of Tom’s desk, and then turned to Amelia.
‘We really are going to have to do something about Grawk, cookie.’

Amelia stood closer still to the warm black body, amazed at both his familiarity
(his smell, the softness of his fur) and his newness (he sat down, and his head was
now level with Amelia’s), but determined not to let her doubts show.

‘Mum, without Grawk we all would have been
killed, captured or lost in a repeating
time bubble about six times already. We don’t need to do anything about him. We should
just be glad we’ve got him.’

‘I am,’ said Mum. ‘I’m grateful to him every day, and I know he’s kept us safe ever
since he got here. But how long can we keep
him
safe? How big will he eventually
grow? And how will we – no, don’t worry about keeping him secret – how will we even
keep him
fed
?’

‘I don’t know.’ Amelia had never felt so miserable so soon after surviving an adventure.

‘Yes!’ said Mary, at the mention of feeding. ‘These children have been out all night
– they must be starving. Let’s take them back to the hotel so I can get something
warm into this little bird.’ She gave Sophie T a protective squeeze, and Sophie T
smiled shyly.

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said Charlie. ‘What about
Amelia and me? Aren’t we little birds,
too?’

Mary grumbled at him in Greek, and Charlie laughed in reply.

‘Hang on,’ said James. ‘Aren’t we forgetting something? Was this guy,’ he pointed
at Foxy, ‘the only alien out there tonight?’

Sophie T shivered, and Amelia said, ‘No, there were some other guys, but trust us:
they’re not going anywhere.’

‘Stunned and netted,’ Charlie nodded. ‘And Foxy was nice enough to show us how to
turn the guns up to maximum, so we know they won’t escape.’

‘OK,’ said Mum, looking a little stunned herself at the answer, but happy enough
to accept it. ‘Mary’s right. Tom, if you’re OK baby-sitting this fellow, we’ll take
the kids back up to bed. And –’ she added quickly, as Charlie opened his mouth to
protest, ‘– get them something to eat.’

Heading out of the cottage, Amelia and Charlie walked with Sophie T, one on either
side of her, just in case she still felt bothered by the dark, even with Grawk, James
and two mums with them.

‘I really am sorry,’ Amelia said again. ‘I promise you, tonight wasn’t on purpose.’

‘And I’m sorry about my mum,’ said Charlie. ‘She can be such a pain.’

To Amelia’s surprise, Sophie T giggled. ‘You should have heard what she said about
you
, Charles.’

‘Huh?’

‘In the kitchen,’ Sophie T went on, sounding quite pleased with herself. ‘She told
me you were the naughtiest, most disobedient, reckless boy she’d ever met in her
life, and it would serve you right if you ended up eaten by space monsters one day.’

‘That traitor!’ Charlie yelped. ‘My own mother! Well, I suppose you loved hearing
that even my mum agrees with you that I’m an idiot.’

‘But I don’t agree with her,’ said Sophie T.

Charlie’s jaw dropped.

Sophie T went on, ‘I told her you were very smart and very brave and it wasn’t just
Grawk who saved us. You did too, Charlie.’

He gaped at her. Amelia couldn’t believe what she was hearing either.

‘Seriously?’ he asked. ‘I thought you thought I was stupid.’

Sophie T snorted and tossed back her hair. ‘Oh, Charles, you really don’t know anything,
do you?’