Post by Sally P (limebirdsally) on Jan 26, 2012 14:38:03 GMT
Hi again. I recently posted the first chapter of the YA paranormal I'm currently working on. As it would be the first three chapters in an agent submission, I'd be immensely grateful for all feedback on the next two chapters.
I know this is asking for a bit of reading, so please don't feel under any obligation to do this! If you have any current work that you'd like me to look at I'd be happy to reciprocate if you point me in the right direction (although I'm afraid I'm absolutely no use on poetry).
-2-
I desperately looked around for something I could use to defend myself. Where was a baseball bat when you needed one? Scrap that; a machine gun would have been a bit more useful. Most of the jawlers were running towards the house, but we'd definitely caught the interest of at least a dozen, if not more. Their little furry bodies seemed to fall off balance as they scuttled along the floor, making them run in a rolling side-to-side motion as they constantly corrected themselves. Take away the head full of teeth and demonic yellow eyes, and they might have actually been quite cute.
"Get in the car, all of you, drive away from here," said Mitya. Now she'd got over her initial shock, her voice was sounding much more like normal again. In fact, she seemed surprisingly un-phased by our present predicament.
Well you could see her point - it was just a hoard of feral beasts creeping towards us with teeth bared and deathly intent flaring through their eyes. Nothing to worry about here then...
"Aren't you coming with us?" I asked. Obviously we had another year before we'd be legally old enough to drive, but Mitya knew me, Dylan and Rob had a habit of borrowing her car and teaching ourselves whenever she was accommodating enough to leave the keys in the hall. It was probably a bit of a giveaway that we always had to leave the car up the road because none of us had managed to master parallel parking yet.
"No, I'll stay here."
Well if she was staying, so was I. I pushed the key away and met her firm gaze with a determined look of my own.
"Ow, this stupid tugging in my back," complained Mel, as if she hadn't even noticed the creatures attacking us.
One of the jawlers came to a halt a couple of feet away from us and squeezed down into a little ball. It looked up and fixed its yellow eyes on Mel.
"Watch out," I cried as it suddenly sprang up from the floor towards her.
Mel jumped out of the way and looked at it in disgust as it landed on the roof of the car.
"What on earth is that?" she cried, grabbing it by its wiry tail and hurling it across the square. It hit a tree and fell to the ground. It was motionless for a couple of seconds, but then got up and started to clamber up the tree unsteadily.
"They're running up the side of the house," cried Rob.
I ran over and picked up a large branch that had broken off from a tree during the storm, snapping off some of the twigs and holding it at shoulder height like a bat.
"Come on then," I shouted as a jawler stopped, bared its teeth at me and curled up just like the other one had before it lunged at Mel. I swung the branch with all my strength as it leapt towards me, but instead of going flying like I'd hoped, it clamped its jaws around the branch. There seemed to be a gap in its teeth at the back of its mouth that allowed it to grip without biting straight through.
"Get off," I cried, starting to panic as I tried to shake it off. Another jawler had fixed its eyes on me and was doing that weird lolloping crawl towards me. It stopped and crouched, poised to pounce but I ran towards it before it could spring up. I swept the branch along the ground and whacked it with the jawler clenching the branch with its teeth so their heads clashed. Careful to avoid their teeth, I stamped down on them in my sopping wet socks again and again until they'd both stopped moving.
"Gross," I muttered, pulling the filthy socks off my feet and throwing them on top of the jawlers.
Mitya shrugged. "Well if you won't get in the car, at least defend yourself properly."
Pausing to calmly whip herself round in devastating kick that sent an attacking jawler straight into a rubbish bin, she unbuttoned her cardigan to reveal a bullet vest loaded with weapons.
I looked at her in amazement. Where had Mitya learnt how to do that?
"This is a stun gun. You're looking quite stunned right now, so maybe you take that Effy. Just make contact with the prongs and squeeze the trigger. Just like this in fact." She pushed Rob to one side, reached past him and shocked one of the creatures. It seemed to vibrate for a second before falling lifelessly to the floor.
I grabbed the gun and wielded it at one of the creatures as it pounced at me. I shoved it into its fur and squeezed the trigger.
"Cool," I exclaimed as it dropped down unconscious. I ran towards the house, eager to get more of them, but Mitya grabbed my arm and dragged me back.
"I'm giving you this to defend yourself not to...there, get that one," she said, spinning me round."
I instinctively held up the stun gun and pulled the trigger as a jawler sprang at me. It went tumbling to the floor.
"Good. Stay by the car and defend yourself. Don't go chasing them."
More jawlers were starting to circle us, narrowing their yellow eyes to a glint as they identified us as a target. Okay, so maybe we already had more than enough to deal with here.
"Okay," I said, my voice sounding a bit shaky. I took a deep breath to steady myself and thrust the stun gun at another of the monsters. I didn't have time to stop and think about the insanity of all this - we were being attacked and we needed to defend ourselves - that was all I could allow myself to think.
"Get away from me," screamed Mel behind me.
I quickly turned around to see two jawlers crouched into attacking pose just in front of her. I shocked one of them with the stun gun while she kicked the other one, sending it thudding into the lamppost.
"Thanks," she gasped.
"Truncheon for Rob." Mitya shook out a metal truncheon to its full length and handed it to him. "You want to get them in the centre of their forehead about a centimetre above their eyes. That's where they're most vulnerable."
He nodded and took the truncheon, a look of determination in his eyes.
She pulled out another metal object and looked up at Dylan then back at the weapon as if she was trying to decide whether to give it to him, but then shook her head and dropped it into the car. She pulled out a gun instead.
"I need you to be responsible with this, Dylan. Aim away from the houses."
Dylan had gone to army cadets for a couple of years when he was younger, so he'd shot guns before. He tapped the gun on his palm as if he was gauging his weight, then took aim at one of the creatures, flipped off the safety catch and shot it.
It exploded in a mess of blood and fur but I didn't have time to feel squeamish. I jumped forward and stunned one of the creatures, then another. My arm had already gone completely numb right the way up to my shoulder from the vibrations, but I fixed my finger on the trigger and continued to force it to squeeze.
Mitya pulled out another gun and ran towards the house.
"Hey, what about me?" cried Mel.
"You should probably wait in the car," called Mitya over her shoulder, before taking out six of the creatures with six shots fired in quick succession.
"Why do I need to wait in the car?" asked Mel. "It's these things that bit Grandma Weir isn't it?" She staggered and reached out towards the car to steady herself. "I feel so dizzy."
A jawler was sitting on the hood of the car, its mouth wide open, ready to take her hand off. She was about to put her hand straight onto it.
I screamed her name as I threw myself towards the car, the stun gun outstretched in front of me to fry the jawler, but I was too far away to reach it. Dylan shoved me out of the way and I watched him raise his gun as I went tumbling to the curb.
"Watch out," I cried, terrified he was going to hit Mel.
"Effy, behind you," shouted Rob as Dylan shot the jawler and it erupted.
I span round to see a mouth full of pointy teeth hurtling towards my face, but Rob ran over and whacked it away from me with the metal truncheon.
"Thanks!" I grabbed his hand and he pulled me up.
I chocked back a cry as I realised Mel wasn't standing up at the side of the car anymore.
"Mel," I screamed, running around the car to her. She was sitting on the floor, clutching her head.
"Have you been shot? Bitten?"
I ran forward and stunned a couching jawler. I picked it up by the tail and threw it away from us before grabbing her hand and pulling it away from her head.
There was no gunshot wound, thank goodness.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm..," she swayed but then grabbed the side of the car to pull herself up to standing. "No, I feel terrible, but I'm not just sitting in the car."
I hesitated. There was clearly something wrong with her; she must be coming down with the flu something, but I could understand her not being able to just hide in the car.
"Okay, you take this," I gave her the stun gun.
"Thanks Effy." She turned round and immediately zapped a couple of jawlers.
I reached into the car and pulled out the weapon that Mitya had been debating giving to Dylan before. Okay, so how did I use this then? It was a small metal cylinder, about the size of a tube of smarties. There was a button at one end. I shrugged and holding it away from me, clicked it on.
"Wow," I cried, as a two-foot laser blade shot out from the tube, narrowly missing completely cutting off Mel's arm.
"Watch it, Effy."
"Sorry!" I ran forward and gleefully sliced the laser blade in front of me, cutting straight through three pouncing jawlers. This was so cool!
"Hey, that's not fair," cried Rob immediately. "How come I get this stupid metal stick when she gets that?"
"You could have taken it!"
"Mitya gave me this. My turn with it next."
"Yeah, right, you can have it if you can get it!"
He took a step towards me, but I waved the laser sword at him and he jumped back, giving me a dirty look as he focused his outrage into hitting a jawler as hard as he could, right where Mitya had told him to aim. Its brain exploded all over his sweatshirt.
"Gross!" he cried.
Laughing, I turned away to slice through another jawler. I could see that Mitya had discarded her gun in favour of another of these laser swords. There were pieces of jawler flying everywhere. She noticed me holding the laser sword and frowned, but then shrugged and gave me a curt nod as if to say she realised it was too late to stop me now anyway.
Well if we didn't fight these monsters they were going to kill us, so what choice did we have? The horrible thought of Grandma Morgan trying to fight them flashed through my mind and I choked down a feeling of sick at the mental image of how she must have died.
Taking care to avoid stepping on any of the jawlers in my bare feet I ran forward where I'd be completely clear of the others and swung myself round in a circle, holding the laser sword towards the floor in front of me. I laughed as it sliced through jawler after jawler. There were body parts everywhere.
"So unfair," complained Rob again.
I noticed little purple sparks shooting out of the library window and stopped in surprise. Rowan was leaning out of the window, sending out sparks from his hand. The second each spark hit a jawler it dissolved into nothing with a small pop.
"Forget your stupid laser sword, I want one of those," said Rob.
"But it's coming from his hand!"
"Rob, duck," shouted Dylan.
For a second it looked as if he was going to be typical Rob and argue, but fortunately he thought better of it and bent down out the way. Dylan shot a jawler lunging towards him.
"Thanks bro," said Rob, his face grimacing in disgust when he realised he'd been sprayed with dead jawler again.
"And another," I said, striking another jawler to his left.
"Watch it," cried Rob, melodramatically jumping away as if he'd barely escaped with his life.
"What, I was miles away from you."
"Try a couple of centimetres. I'm going over there."
"Surely that should have been, thanks for saving my life, Effy - hey, you're welcome, Rob."
I laughed as I turned round to face more of the jawlers, but there were none there. I noticed one of them scuttling a few feet away from me and I jumped over some dead jawler body parts and sliced off its head with the laser blade.
Was that the last one?
"I think we got them all," said Dylan.
"What were those things?" cried Rob.
Mitya walked over to us. "Switch that off please, Effy."
I looked at her stupidly for a moment before realising she meant the laser sword.
"Oh, right." I pressed the button at the top of the handle and the blade immediately disappeared, leaving just the innocuous-looking metal tube.
She held out her hand and I reluctantly placed it on her palm. But as the adrenaline started to wear off and I looked at the dead jawler parts lying around me, I suddenly felt sick. I'd never hurt a living creature in my life...well apart from wasps, but they were pure evil so that didn't count.
Had I really just stood here with a laser sword - a laser sword - and slaughtered all these creatures? With their eyes shut I couldn't see those disturbing yellow glints. Okay, so the sharp teeth served as an obvious reminder of exactly what they were capable of, but had they really deserved death?
And it had come so instinctively. I'd always assumed I was just all mouth. I could talk a good fight but I'd never really had to substantiate it before, well aside from giving a pretty mean dead-arm.
"You have no idea how much trouble I'm going to be in for this," said Mitya, looking at the laser sword she'd just taken from me and shaking her head. "Come on, you should get back inside the house."
She noticed my expression and squeezed me on the shoulder.
"Sometimes you don't have a choice, Effy. Jawlers are aggressive incognisants. When you're attacked by a jawler shoal there's only one way to neutralise them. Are you okay Mel?"
Mel nodded without speaking, although her face suggested she was anything but okay.
"What are we going to do about all...this?" I indicated the mess of body parts around us. The idea of having to go round with a pair of marigolds and few dozen bin bags was not an appealing one, but the rule in our house had always been, if you make the mess, you clear it up. Did the same follow for dead jawlers?
"Don't worry about that. Right now I need to deal with her," said Mitya. She indicated the woman from down the road. She was sitting on a bench in the square singing to herself. I don't think she'd even noticed the fight that had just gone on around her.
"Her baby," I cried, taking a step towards her.
Mitya pushed me back. "Just go into the house please."
"But,-"
"Are you seriously going to give me your usual crap? Get into the house now," exclaimed Mitya.
"Yes, okay," I said, holding my hands up in surrender. Sheesh!
What did she mean - my usual crap, anyway?
"Give me that, Rob," snapped Mitya. He was swiping the metal truncheon across the air as if it was a samurai sword. She grabbed it out of his hand. "Is it possible for you to not act like children even just for a few minutes?"
I rolled my eyes. Mitya was only ten years older than us so she could lay off on the kids bit.
Dylan double-checked the safety was on and handed her the gun.
"What were those things?" he said.
"There was nothing here."
"You what? There's mutant body parts all over the floor!" exclaimed Rob.
"I mean it, all of you, this is serious. There was never anything here."
I laughed as Rob caught my eye and pulled a funny face, but Mitya rounded on me furiously.
"Do you think this is funny?"
"What, no, of course not! I,-"
"Get into the house, now."
"Fine, I'm going. Give me a break."
I honestly didn't think this was funny. In fact it was the complete opposite of funny, but laughing was just how I dealt with stuff. Like that summer me Dylan and Rob went through a list of top ten scariest horror films. I'd sat there giggling through most of them even though they'd left me so terrified I had to sleep with the light on for weeks afterwards (in my defence we were only eleven at the time).
Or when I fell out of the study window and broke my arm. I was in complete agony with my arm sticking out at some crazy angle, but by the time the others had run downstairs to the back garden I was lying on my back laughing my head off.
What had just happened was definitely not funny.
I gingerly stepped over a jaw full of sharp teeth that I'd neatly separated from the rest of its body a minute earlier.
"Where are your shoes?" asked Dylan, noticing my blood and I-really-don't-want-to-think-about-what-else splattered feet. "Here, let me."
Before I could stop him, he lifted me up over his shoulder. Ha, Dylan sweeping me off my feet, swoon.
If only I was joking.
Mel was still swaying unsteadily. I noticed Rob give her a look that seemed to suggest he was contemplating picking her up in a similar manner. She gave him one of her finest, don't-even-think-about-it looks.
"Are you okay?" he said.
"I'm fine," she snapped, rubbing her forehead.
"Put me down, Dyls!" I cried.
He immediately loosened his grip and I slid down to the floor, landing in a pile of blood and matted demon fur.
"Didn't need to be quite so abrupt!"
I suddenly registered the look of horror on his face. He was looking up at the library.
Okay, I really didn't want to see this, did I.
"They've broken through," yelled Rowan through the window. "Run."
I took a deep breath and turned my head. I felt my entire body go numb as hundreds of jawlers swarmed out of the library window and started to surge down the side of the house towards us.
***
-3-
"Give me the laser sword back," I screamed.
"There's too many of them. The key's in the ignition. Drive away," cried Mitya, flaring up both swords and taking up a fighting stance.
"Just give me the sword. I'll help."
"Don't argue with me," yelled Mitya. "Oh for goodness sake, Effy." She clicked the blades off and shoved us away up the pavement, before jumping back and switching the laser blades back on.
As I stepped back I managed to slice my foot open on the sharp teeth of a dead jawler lying on the ground.
"Ow," I cried, jumping on my other foot. I could see the blood start to trickle through the dirt on my skin. Dylan chivalrously lifted me back up over his shoulder and started to run along the pavement. I could hear the splats of jawler body parts squelching under his feet as he ran.
I was briefly distracted as I watched Mitya draw both swords round in a graceful arc and swipe them through at least a couple of dozen jawlers.
Who would have thought Mitya could kick arse like that?
But I quickly remembered the indignity of my present situation. And there were clearly far too many jawlers for her to fight alone.
I thumped Dylan on the back. "Put me down. I'm not an invalid."
"What kind of an idiot goes out to a monster fight in bare feet," taunted Rob breathlessly as he ran behind us.
I reached out and punched him on the arm. "You're the one who put my shoes on the top of the bookcase!"
"Stop messing about, this is serious," snapped Mel.
"Quit wriggling, will you Effy, it's sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip......" Dylan's voice escalated into a shout as his foot caught on some kind of jawler internal organ and he slid along the ground. Fortunately we skidded clear of the dead jawler parts and ended up in a heap on the curb by Mitya's car.
"Oh, my hero," I said dryly.
"There's just too many of them," cried Mel, her voice coming out in a sob.
"Don't say that, Mel," I said angrily, even though she was just stating a fact.
Mitya - sweet, gentle Mitya - was fighting with far more skill than I ever could have imagined, but there was no way she could hope to defeat the shoal of jawlers. I could see she'd already taken a bite to her leg, and I was sure that was blood flowing down the side of her face too. I prayed it was from one of jawlers and not her own.
"What are we going to do?" I whispered.
Dylan was holding tightly onto my arm to stop me running back to help her, but none of us made any effort to climb into the car. I knew it was suicidal to go back even with weapons so what could we hope to achieve without them? But we couldn't just leave her.
I heard Grandpa's furious voice come from the library, "I am quite capable of defending myself."
That was my grandpa - a fighter.
I felt Dylan's hand loosen on my arm and saw the look of determination in Mel's eyes; Rob swallowed heavily as he stretched himself to his full height. We were all fighters.
I indulged myself in a moment of nostalgia for all the memories we were never going to get the chance to create: We were never going to open that bar on the beach (with an adjoining bookshop and cafe for Mel) in an as yet undefined lively but not dance club holiday zone.
I was never going to feel that exhilaration when Dylan realised he completely fancied me too and against my better judgement, managed to convince me to give things a go; to feel my eyes close as his lips moved closer to mine...
...Not that that either of these things would have ever happened anyway, but there must have been at least some great stuff waiting for me in my life.
I felt like I should make a speech or something, but instead I silently pulled myself up from the floor. I watched as Rob ran over to the house with the cool stainless glass windows and picked up a load of stones from their rockery. I'd always thought that rockery was stupid. What was the point in piling up a load of stones in your tiny front patio? But apparently it might actually be useful for something.
"They're really sensitive on their foreheads just above their eyes. I reckon if we hit them there," said Rob.
He lobbed a stone at the jawlers. It hit one of them, but instead of falling dead to the ground, it just got angry and crouched into its pre-attack position as it turned to face us, bringing a crowd of its jawler mates with it.
I nearly said something, but I stopped myself. I didn't want my last words to be making fun of Rob...even if it was kind of fitting. I nearly said something ridiculously corny like, 'I love you guys' instead, but I managed to just keep quiet as I grabbed a handful of rocks and started to fling them at the jawlers. We all knew how we felt about each other without having to say it... well maybe Dylan didn't know quite how much I loved him, but I doubt I would have ever told him anyway.
I gave a sideways glance at my best friends as the four of us stood in a pitiful-looking row making our last stand against these crazy monsters. There was no way in the world I could have imagined our friendship would end like this.
But suddenly everything went into slow motion. My arm seemed to stick in the air mid-throw. I strained to keep it moving but it felt like I was trying to push it through thick sludge.
Everyone says your life flashes before your eyes when you drown, but I hadn't heard so much about what happened when you were about to be ripped to pieces by a mob of huge-teethed furry jawlers.
I guess I'd just found out.
A jawler had sprung up into attack right in front me. It was moving straight towards me, painstakingly slowly. The slow-motion horror in my expression must have looked comical as I tried to keep my arm moving forwards to defend myself. The jawler edged through the air closer towards me, its teeth wide open. Okay I was really starting to panic now.
I could hear someone chanting behind me and I desperately wanted to turn round to see what was going on. I even wasted a couple of valuable seconds stupidly trying to twist my head as if I could take a quick glance and when I gave up and turned my attention back to the jawler, it terrifyingly close.
It was coming right at my face. Okay, so maybe I wasn't the prettiest person in the world - my brutally honest friends may have accused me of having an 'obscenely' small face (try finding a pair of sunglasses that fit without having to resort to kids ones), with a little dolls nose. But I had lovely full lips and my milk chocolate-coloured brown eyes were cool. The overall effect was actually all right. Pretty or not, this was my face and I didn't want to have it bitten off by a demonic ball of fur.
I gave up on trying to throw the rock at it and instead tried to invoke gravity by throwing myself out of the way. But gravity was clearly working in slow motion too. I wasn't going anywhere.
Suddenly a purple spark shot over my shoulder and the jawler disappeared with a small pop.
A blond woman walked past, holding up her hands and sending out purple sparks at the hundreds of slow-moving jawlers. She'd walked past me before I could see her face, but her hair was scrapped back in a tight ponytail that swished from side-to-side as she walked. In the night light I thought she was wearing some kind of cat suit at first, but I realised it was just a pair of black leggings with a figure-hugging black top. You had to have a good body to get away with an outfit like that!
She'd teamed the outfit with a pair of sturdy boots that crunched down on the jawlers lining the pavement as she walked, shattering their teeth as if they were made of nothing more than ice.
Slightly more effective than my bare feet.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. A jawler instantly disappeared with every spark.
As she turned her head I caught a glimpse of her profile. Maybe her no-nonsense expression wasn't doing much for her, but her features looked really masculine, like she'd probably taken more after her dad than her mum. Just as I had that bitchy thought, she turned and looked directly at me and I felt a second of fear that maybe they could read our minds as well.
Unfreeze me, right now! I projected out, but she didn't react.
She glanced up at the stones we were holding mid-throw in the air and gave us an incredulous look as if to make a point of saying of how stupid we were for even thinking we could defend ourselves from a shoal of jawlers with a handful of stones.
Yeah, well you should have seen me with the laser sword a few minutes ago, I defended myself angrily.
A ginger-haired man walked beside her. At least I thought his hair was ginger, but maybe the streetlight was making it look more orange than it really was. He was the source of the chanting - that was clearly what was making everything go in slow motion. I could see Rowan sending down more sparks from the library. He'd said Ariella and Phil were on their way - this had to be them. Okay, so maybe Rowan hadn't been the friendliest person in the world, but he and his friends had just saved our arses.
Obviously that was assuming it wasn't them that brought the jawlers here in the first place though. Exactly who were these people?
I noticed that Mitya was trying to battle against the slow motion chant to shake off a jawler that had managed to get past the laser blades and clamp itself onto her thigh with its teeth. Had Ariella and Phil noticed?
"Get a move on, will you," I hissed through my throat, unable to move my lips quickly enough to speak properly.
I could see its teeth squeezing tighter and tighter into her skin as Mitya clenched her jaw in pain. I remembered Grandpa's missing fingers - could these things bite straight through bone? The prospect of having to watch, practically frozen while Mitya had her leg bitten off made me feel physically sick.
Although the thought of throwing up in slow motion was actually pretty funny and it distracted me enough to swallow down the feeling of nausea.
The ginger-haired man - Phil? - turned to face us. Even though he looked just as no-messing as Ariella and Rowan, his face was much kinder. He wasn't good looking by any stretch of the imagination, but he had one of those friendly faces that you instantly like. It probably helped that he actually smiled at us. His eyes fell on Dylan and Rob and his forehead seemed to furrow slightly as if he was trying to work something out.
He probably knew they were twins. Most people were confused by how different they looked. No offense to Rob, but he just wasn't in Dylan's realms of gorgeousness. He'd tried going for the cool messy-haired look before, but whenever he let his pale, almost colourless brown hair grow out it just hung limply down the side of his head looking as if he was in dire need of a haircut. Most of the time he just gave up and kept it boringly short. His light brown eyes were perfectly nice, but they lacked the gorgeous intensity of Dylan's deep blue eyes.
Poor Rob, he'd always had a complex about being the, "inferior twin" (his words not mine).
It was just a shame he had to be such a stroppy pain in the arse about it all the time.
I tried to signal to Phil to help Mitya with my eyes, which were the only part of me I could get to move with any kind of speed, but he probably couldn't see clearly enough in the dark. I tried sending the thought screaming from my mind on the off chance they could read my mind. Just as I thought I was going to explode with the frustration of having to watch that thing gnaw through Mitya's leg, Ariella finally noticed and removed the jawler with a purple spark.
Eventually all the jawlers were gone. Phil stopped chanting and we were able to move normally again. I shook out my arm, feeling the pins and needles shoot up from my fingertips. It had already been numb from shooting that stun gun and having to hold it in the air for so long really hadn't helped.
Ariella had cleared all the dead bodies with the purple sparks as she'd gone along and the street looked completely clear again. You would have had to have seen what just happened to believe it.
I walked over and picked up my filthy socks. "That did just happen, didn't it?" I said to Rob.
He just made a face and pointed to the jawler blood and guts covering his sweatshirt.
"Hey, I'm Phil," said the ginger-haired man, holding out his hand.
"Effy," I said, putting out my hand to return the handshake, but he looked down at the blood and grime covering it and pulled his hand away with a laugh.
"Maybe once you've cleaned up!"
"Come on Phil," said Ariella curtly.
He shrugged and gave me a sheepish grin. "Duty calls. I'll catch you later."
I desperately wanted to ask him what all this was about, but Ariella's determined expression told me now really wasn't the best time. Feeling intimidated, I didn't try and stop them going inside the house.
"Are you okay?" I said, running over to Mitya.
She winced as she pulled a tooth out of the gash on her leg. "It's nothing."
A purple spark hit the tooth, making it disappear and I looked up to see Rowan leaning out of the library window. He gave Mitya a brisk nod before disappearing back inside.
"Here, use this as a bandage." Dylan pulled off his school shirt and helped her tie it around the bite.
"Thanks. Now please all of you go into front room and wait there. I need to go and look after her."
Without waiting for any arguments, Mitya walked quickly across the square to the woman from down the road. She seemed to have come out of her daze now and was looking around in confusion. I felt my stomach clench as she looked down at the empty baby carrier and started screaming.
Those things wouldn't have hurt her baby would they? But Mitya had called them incognisants. Would they have even realised it was just a baby?
Mitya said something to the woman that seemed to calm her down. They both started walking down the street towards her house.
"I'm going to see if I can get into the library again," said Dylan, running into the house after Ariella and Phil.
"I've never been so scared in my life," exclaimed Rob.
You knew things were bad if Rob was admitting fear. I dug him in the side, forcing a joke as if I could somehow trick myself into believing none of what had just happened was even remotely terrifying. "Yeah right, what about that time you wet yourself watching the Exorcist?"
"You know Dylan deliberately spilt water in my lap!"
I laughed. "Off course he did. Hey Mel, do you remember that?" I turned round, expecting her to be just behind me but she was walking away down the street, completely hunched over and clutching her back.
"Mel. Where are you going?"
"I just need some air," she called back, breaking into a run.
"Don't be stupid!" I started to run after her, but I stepped on one of the stones from the rockery right where I'd sliced my foot open. As I jumped onto my other foot, swearing, I lost my balance and fell into a puddle. I swore again. I must have been covered in bruises by now.
Rob held out his hand to pull me up, but I pushed him towards Mel. "Go after her."
I ran into the house to get my shoes while he chased after Mel. Dylan was coming back down the stairs.
"They're in the library and surprise, surprise, the door's locked again. I heard them in there though. I think the grandparents are fine, well apart from..." He trailed off.
I shook my head. "We can't think about that right now. Mel's run off. Chuck my shoes down, will you?"
"Where's she gone?" He jumped up and pulled my trainers off the top of the bookcase. I winced at the pain in my foot as I pulled them on, but I couldn't mess around with that now.
I grabbed my phone from the sofa and tried to call Mel, but it just made a strange beeping noise. I looked at it in surprise. I didn't have any reception. "Have you got a signal?"
Dylan checked is phone. "No, nothing."
"I can't believe Mel's just run off with those things out there."
"They're all gone, I heard that man, Rowan say the danger's over. They're putting the protection back on the house, whatever that means."
We sprinted up the road after Rob and Mel but we still hadn't found her after half an hour of looking, so we returned to the house. Mitya and Rob were waiting for us in the hall.
"Is Mel back? That woman's baby?" I cried, knowing I couldn't take it if anything had happened to either of them.
"The baby's absolutely fine, she was in the house," replied Mitya.
I breathed out deeply and actually had to grab the doorframe to steady myself. The baby was okay. Rob gently punched me on the arm and gave me a small smile by way of comfort.
"What was wrong with that woman? Did the jawlers make her act like that or something?"
"I'm not sure. I think she must have seen them and gone into shock or something. We're looking into it."
What did, we're looking into it mean? But now I knew the baby was okay I had more important things to worry about. "Mel, is she back?"
"No, but I’d like you to stay in now.”
“But Mitya-,”
“In.”
I stood on the doormat trying to decide what to do. Obviously if Mel wanted us with her she wouldn’t have run out like that. But considering what had just happened and the fact she wasn't feeling well when she went, how could we leave her wandering around outside?
My stupid phone still didn't have reception. I held it up at Mitya. "Does this have something to do with those jawlers? Did they bite through a phone mast or something?"
Mitya sighed and glanced over her shoulder. "I'm not really supposed to say anything, but considering I need to talk to you anyway. We've scrambled the signal while we do a bit of damage control in the neighbourhood - make sure we contain any visuals."
I shook my head in confusion. "What does that mean?"
"Keep anyone who might have seen anything from telling people?" suggested Dylan. "How do you make sure they never tell?"
Mitya checked behind her again and spoke in an even quieter tone. "That's top secret, but don't worry, there's no lasting damage."
She channelled us into the front room. "Sit down...Effy, for once in your life just do as you're told."
I looked at her defiantly before perching on the arm of the sofa. "Well fine if you want me to get blood all over the sofa," I muttered.
"This is vitally important. You must not tell anyone what happened here tonight. You don’t need to worry about Mel,-"
Me, Dylan and Rob all spoke at once, but Mitya held up her hand to silence us.
"We've neutralised the jawler threat and you're completely safe."
"Where did they come from? How do you know they're not coming back?" said Rob.
"They're not coming back," replied Mitya, choosing to ignore his first question. "Listen to me. I will trust you if you promise me you won't say anything about what happened tonight to anyone but I need you to make that promise and mean it or..," she trailed off.
I glanced at Dylan and Rob before answering, but I realised this was important. The look of desperation in Mitya's face was telling enough. We'd seen things tonight that we clearly weren't supposed to know about.
"Yes, I promise I won't say anything."
"Thanks, Effy."
Rob and Dylan repeated the promise.
"Good," said Mitya. She stood up as Rowan, Phil and Ariella came into the room and nodded at them.
Phil was the only one with the manners to give us a smile and friendly hello. Ariella looked at us as if we were no better than the jawlers she'd just obliterated (eek, those purple sparks wouldn't work on us would they?) and Rowan barely even looked at us.
"They're sixteen," Ariella said to Mitya in a scathing tone.
"She's forty-three," I retorted, deliberately over-estimating her age to insult her.
"They're immature," she added.
Okay, so if you were going to make an assessment based on my previous comment alone I guess that was fair, but it's not as if she knew me well enough to make that kind of judgement.
To my surprise Rowan spoke up in our defence, even if his tone was completely cold and it was still far too much effort for him to do us the courtesy of actually looking at us. "They fought the jawlers well. Mitya tried to make them run but they refused."
"So you noticed that," I said snidely.
"Of course they fought," exclaimed Phil, giving us a warm smile.
"But they're so young," said Ariella.
Wow, she really seemed to have a problem with our age.
"Yes," agreed Rowan.
"Hello, we are actually here you know," said Rob.
He stepped back uncomfortably as all three of them turned to look at him. Ariella walked over to him and took his chin in her hands. She looked at him intently before moving on to do the same with Dylan.
"Incredible they could have been so stupid," she murmured.
"Hey," cried Rob, as Phil walked over and surveyed them just as closely. Even Rowan moved forwards for a closer look.
Phil turned to the others with a shrug. "They're right, I can't tell at all."
"Well they're clearly far too young," said Ariella dismissively. She turned to Mitya. "The house is safe. We'll cover the area until they've decided what they're going to do about this...mess. They're waiting for you upstairs."
With a cheery, "See ya," from Phil and nothing more than a rude look from Rowan and Ariella, they left the house.
"Please stay here while I look after your grandparents. I don't want you going outside again," said Mitya turning to leave the room.
"Hey, where are you going?" I cried. "You haven't told us anything about what's going on."
"I've told you all you need to know."
"Mitya!"
"Just stay here, please." She shot me a warning look before walking out of the room.
"Can I at least leave the room to have a shower?" I called after her to make a point.
"Yes, Effy, you can have a shower," she called back over her shoulder, exasperated.
I looked at Dylan and Rob and shook my head in disbelief. I really didn't know what to say.
Eventually Dylan shrugged. "Well I don't know about you, but I really felt a connection there. I think we may have just found our new BFFs."
***
I know this is asking for a bit of reading, so please don't feel under any obligation to do this! If you have any current work that you'd like me to look at I'd be happy to reciprocate if you point me in the right direction (although I'm afraid I'm absolutely no use on poetry).
-2-
I desperately looked around for something I could use to defend myself. Where was a baseball bat when you needed one? Scrap that; a machine gun would have been a bit more useful. Most of the jawlers were running towards the house, but we'd definitely caught the interest of at least a dozen, if not more. Their little furry bodies seemed to fall off balance as they scuttled along the floor, making them run in a rolling side-to-side motion as they constantly corrected themselves. Take away the head full of teeth and demonic yellow eyes, and they might have actually been quite cute.
"Get in the car, all of you, drive away from here," said Mitya. Now she'd got over her initial shock, her voice was sounding much more like normal again. In fact, she seemed surprisingly un-phased by our present predicament.
Well you could see her point - it was just a hoard of feral beasts creeping towards us with teeth bared and deathly intent flaring through their eyes. Nothing to worry about here then...
"Aren't you coming with us?" I asked. Obviously we had another year before we'd be legally old enough to drive, but Mitya knew me, Dylan and Rob had a habit of borrowing her car and teaching ourselves whenever she was accommodating enough to leave the keys in the hall. It was probably a bit of a giveaway that we always had to leave the car up the road because none of us had managed to master parallel parking yet.
"No, I'll stay here."
Well if she was staying, so was I. I pushed the key away and met her firm gaze with a determined look of my own.
"Ow, this stupid tugging in my back," complained Mel, as if she hadn't even noticed the creatures attacking us.
One of the jawlers came to a halt a couple of feet away from us and squeezed down into a little ball. It looked up and fixed its yellow eyes on Mel.
"Watch out," I cried as it suddenly sprang up from the floor towards her.
Mel jumped out of the way and looked at it in disgust as it landed on the roof of the car.
"What on earth is that?" she cried, grabbing it by its wiry tail and hurling it across the square. It hit a tree and fell to the ground. It was motionless for a couple of seconds, but then got up and started to clamber up the tree unsteadily.
"They're running up the side of the house," cried Rob.
I ran over and picked up a large branch that had broken off from a tree during the storm, snapping off some of the twigs and holding it at shoulder height like a bat.
"Come on then," I shouted as a jawler stopped, bared its teeth at me and curled up just like the other one had before it lunged at Mel. I swung the branch with all my strength as it leapt towards me, but instead of going flying like I'd hoped, it clamped its jaws around the branch. There seemed to be a gap in its teeth at the back of its mouth that allowed it to grip without biting straight through.
"Get off," I cried, starting to panic as I tried to shake it off. Another jawler had fixed its eyes on me and was doing that weird lolloping crawl towards me. It stopped and crouched, poised to pounce but I ran towards it before it could spring up. I swept the branch along the ground and whacked it with the jawler clenching the branch with its teeth so their heads clashed. Careful to avoid their teeth, I stamped down on them in my sopping wet socks again and again until they'd both stopped moving.
"Gross," I muttered, pulling the filthy socks off my feet and throwing them on top of the jawlers.
Mitya shrugged. "Well if you won't get in the car, at least defend yourself properly."
Pausing to calmly whip herself round in devastating kick that sent an attacking jawler straight into a rubbish bin, she unbuttoned her cardigan to reveal a bullet vest loaded with weapons.
I looked at her in amazement. Where had Mitya learnt how to do that?
"This is a stun gun. You're looking quite stunned right now, so maybe you take that Effy. Just make contact with the prongs and squeeze the trigger. Just like this in fact." She pushed Rob to one side, reached past him and shocked one of the creatures. It seemed to vibrate for a second before falling lifelessly to the floor.
I grabbed the gun and wielded it at one of the creatures as it pounced at me. I shoved it into its fur and squeezed the trigger.
"Cool," I exclaimed as it dropped down unconscious. I ran towards the house, eager to get more of them, but Mitya grabbed my arm and dragged me back.
"I'm giving you this to defend yourself not to...there, get that one," she said, spinning me round."
I instinctively held up the stun gun and pulled the trigger as a jawler sprang at me. It went tumbling to the floor.
"Good. Stay by the car and defend yourself. Don't go chasing them."
More jawlers were starting to circle us, narrowing their yellow eyes to a glint as they identified us as a target. Okay, so maybe we already had more than enough to deal with here.
"Okay," I said, my voice sounding a bit shaky. I took a deep breath to steady myself and thrust the stun gun at another of the monsters. I didn't have time to stop and think about the insanity of all this - we were being attacked and we needed to defend ourselves - that was all I could allow myself to think.
"Get away from me," screamed Mel behind me.
I quickly turned around to see two jawlers crouched into attacking pose just in front of her. I shocked one of them with the stun gun while she kicked the other one, sending it thudding into the lamppost.
"Thanks," she gasped.
"Truncheon for Rob." Mitya shook out a metal truncheon to its full length and handed it to him. "You want to get them in the centre of their forehead about a centimetre above their eyes. That's where they're most vulnerable."
He nodded and took the truncheon, a look of determination in his eyes.
She pulled out another metal object and looked up at Dylan then back at the weapon as if she was trying to decide whether to give it to him, but then shook her head and dropped it into the car. She pulled out a gun instead.
"I need you to be responsible with this, Dylan. Aim away from the houses."
Dylan had gone to army cadets for a couple of years when he was younger, so he'd shot guns before. He tapped the gun on his palm as if he was gauging his weight, then took aim at one of the creatures, flipped off the safety catch and shot it.
It exploded in a mess of blood and fur but I didn't have time to feel squeamish. I jumped forward and stunned one of the creatures, then another. My arm had already gone completely numb right the way up to my shoulder from the vibrations, but I fixed my finger on the trigger and continued to force it to squeeze.
Mitya pulled out another gun and ran towards the house.
"Hey, what about me?" cried Mel.
"You should probably wait in the car," called Mitya over her shoulder, before taking out six of the creatures with six shots fired in quick succession.
"Why do I need to wait in the car?" asked Mel. "It's these things that bit Grandma Weir isn't it?" She staggered and reached out towards the car to steady herself. "I feel so dizzy."
A jawler was sitting on the hood of the car, its mouth wide open, ready to take her hand off. She was about to put her hand straight onto it.
I screamed her name as I threw myself towards the car, the stun gun outstretched in front of me to fry the jawler, but I was too far away to reach it. Dylan shoved me out of the way and I watched him raise his gun as I went tumbling to the curb.
"Watch out," I cried, terrified he was going to hit Mel.
"Effy, behind you," shouted Rob as Dylan shot the jawler and it erupted.
I span round to see a mouth full of pointy teeth hurtling towards my face, but Rob ran over and whacked it away from me with the metal truncheon.
"Thanks!" I grabbed his hand and he pulled me up.
I chocked back a cry as I realised Mel wasn't standing up at the side of the car anymore.
"Mel," I screamed, running around the car to her. She was sitting on the floor, clutching her head.
"Have you been shot? Bitten?"
I ran forward and stunned a couching jawler. I picked it up by the tail and threw it away from us before grabbing her hand and pulling it away from her head.
There was no gunshot wound, thank goodness.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm..," she swayed but then grabbed the side of the car to pull herself up to standing. "No, I feel terrible, but I'm not just sitting in the car."
I hesitated. There was clearly something wrong with her; she must be coming down with the flu something, but I could understand her not being able to just hide in the car.
"Okay, you take this," I gave her the stun gun.
"Thanks Effy." She turned round and immediately zapped a couple of jawlers.
I reached into the car and pulled out the weapon that Mitya had been debating giving to Dylan before. Okay, so how did I use this then? It was a small metal cylinder, about the size of a tube of smarties. There was a button at one end. I shrugged and holding it away from me, clicked it on.
"Wow," I cried, as a two-foot laser blade shot out from the tube, narrowly missing completely cutting off Mel's arm.
"Watch it, Effy."
"Sorry!" I ran forward and gleefully sliced the laser blade in front of me, cutting straight through three pouncing jawlers. This was so cool!
"Hey, that's not fair," cried Rob immediately. "How come I get this stupid metal stick when she gets that?"
"You could have taken it!"
"Mitya gave me this. My turn with it next."
"Yeah, right, you can have it if you can get it!"
He took a step towards me, but I waved the laser sword at him and he jumped back, giving me a dirty look as he focused his outrage into hitting a jawler as hard as he could, right where Mitya had told him to aim. Its brain exploded all over his sweatshirt.
"Gross!" he cried.
Laughing, I turned away to slice through another jawler. I could see that Mitya had discarded her gun in favour of another of these laser swords. There were pieces of jawler flying everywhere. She noticed me holding the laser sword and frowned, but then shrugged and gave me a curt nod as if to say she realised it was too late to stop me now anyway.
Well if we didn't fight these monsters they were going to kill us, so what choice did we have? The horrible thought of Grandma Morgan trying to fight them flashed through my mind and I choked down a feeling of sick at the mental image of how she must have died.
Taking care to avoid stepping on any of the jawlers in my bare feet I ran forward where I'd be completely clear of the others and swung myself round in a circle, holding the laser sword towards the floor in front of me. I laughed as it sliced through jawler after jawler. There were body parts everywhere.
"So unfair," complained Rob again.
I noticed little purple sparks shooting out of the library window and stopped in surprise. Rowan was leaning out of the window, sending out sparks from his hand. The second each spark hit a jawler it dissolved into nothing with a small pop.
"Forget your stupid laser sword, I want one of those," said Rob.
"But it's coming from his hand!"
"Rob, duck," shouted Dylan.
For a second it looked as if he was going to be typical Rob and argue, but fortunately he thought better of it and bent down out the way. Dylan shot a jawler lunging towards him.
"Thanks bro," said Rob, his face grimacing in disgust when he realised he'd been sprayed with dead jawler again.
"And another," I said, striking another jawler to his left.
"Watch it," cried Rob, melodramatically jumping away as if he'd barely escaped with his life.
"What, I was miles away from you."
"Try a couple of centimetres. I'm going over there."
"Surely that should have been, thanks for saving my life, Effy - hey, you're welcome, Rob."
I laughed as I turned round to face more of the jawlers, but there were none there. I noticed one of them scuttling a few feet away from me and I jumped over some dead jawler body parts and sliced off its head with the laser blade.
Was that the last one?
"I think we got them all," said Dylan.
"What were those things?" cried Rob.
Mitya walked over to us. "Switch that off please, Effy."
I looked at her stupidly for a moment before realising she meant the laser sword.
"Oh, right." I pressed the button at the top of the handle and the blade immediately disappeared, leaving just the innocuous-looking metal tube.
She held out her hand and I reluctantly placed it on her palm. But as the adrenaline started to wear off and I looked at the dead jawler parts lying around me, I suddenly felt sick. I'd never hurt a living creature in my life...well apart from wasps, but they were pure evil so that didn't count.
Had I really just stood here with a laser sword - a laser sword - and slaughtered all these creatures? With their eyes shut I couldn't see those disturbing yellow glints. Okay, so the sharp teeth served as an obvious reminder of exactly what they were capable of, but had they really deserved death?
And it had come so instinctively. I'd always assumed I was just all mouth. I could talk a good fight but I'd never really had to substantiate it before, well aside from giving a pretty mean dead-arm.
"You have no idea how much trouble I'm going to be in for this," said Mitya, looking at the laser sword she'd just taken from me and shaking her head. "Come on, you should get back inside the house."
She noticed my expression and squeezed me on the shoulder.
"Sometimes you don't have a choice, Effy. Jawlers are aggressive incognisants. When you're attacked by a jawler shoal there's only one way to neutralise them. Are you okay Mel?"
Mel nodded without speaking, although her face suggested she was anything but okay.
"What are we going to do about all...this?" I indicated the mess of body parts around us. The idea of having to go round with a pair of marigolds and few dozen bin bags was not an appealing one, but the rule in our house had always been, if you make the mess, you clear it up. Did the same follow for dead jawlers?
"Don't worry about that. Right now I need to deal with her," said Mitya. She indicated the woman from down the road. She was sitting on a bench in the square singing to herself. I don't think she'd even noticed the fight that had just gone on around her.
"Her baby," I cried, taking a step towards her.
Mitya pushed me back. "Just go into the house please."
"But,-"
"Are you seriously going to give me your usual crap? Get into the house now," exclaimed Mitya.
"Yes, okay," I said, holding my hands up in surrender. Sheesh!
What did she mean - my usual crap, anyway?
"Give me that, Rob," snapped Mitya. He was swiping the metal truncheon across the air as if it was a samurai sword. She grabbed it out of his hand. "Is it possible for you to not act like children even just for a few minutes?"
I rolled my eyes. Mitya was only ten years older than us so she could lay off on the kids bit.
Dylan double-checked the safety was on and handed her the gun.
"What were those things?" he said.
"There was nothing here."
"You what? There's mutant body parts all over the floor!" exclaimed Rob.
"I mean it, all of you, this is serious. There was never anything here."
I laughed as Rob caught my eye and pulled a funny face, but Mitya rounded on me furiously.
"Do you think this is funny?"
"What, no, of course not! I,-"
"Get into the house, now."
"Fine, I'm going. Give me a break."
I honestly didn't think this was funny. In fact it was the complete opposite of funny, but laughing was just how I dealt with stuff. Like that summer me Dylan and Rob went through a list of top ten scariest horror films. I'd sat there giggling through most of them even though they'd left me so terrified I had to sleep with the light on for weeks afterwards (in my defence we were only eleven at the time).
Or when I fell out of the study window and broke my arm. I was in complete agony with my arm sticking out at some crazy angle, but by the time the others had run downstairs to the back garden I was lying on my back laughing my head off.
What had just happened was definitely not funny.
I gingerly stepped over a jaw full of sharp teeth that I'd neatly separated from the rest of its body a minute earlier.
"Where are your shoes?" asked Dylan, noticing my blood and I-really-don't-want-to-think-about-what-else splattered feet. "Here, let me."
Before I could stop him, he lifted me up over his shoulder. Ha, Dylan sweeping me off my feet, swoon.
If only I was joking.
Mel was still swaying unsteadily. I noticed Rob give her a look that seemed to suggest he was contemplating picking her up in a similar manner. She gave him one of her finest, don't-even-think-about-it looks.
"Are you okay?" he said.
"I'm fine," she snapped, rubbing her forehead.
"Put me down, Dyls!" I cried.
He immediately loosened his grip and I slid down to the floor, landing in a pile of blood and matted demon fur.
"Didn't need to be quite so abrupt!"
I suddenly registered the look of horror on his face. He was looking up at the library.
Okay, I really didn't want to see this, did I.
"They've broken through," yelled Rowan through the window. "Run."
I took a deep breath and turned my head. I felt my entire body go numb as hundreds of jawlers swarmed out of the library window and started to surge down the side of the house towards us.
***
-3-
"Give me the laser sword back," I screamed.
"There's too many of them. The key's in the ignition. Drive away," cried Mitya, flaring up both swords and taking up a fighting stance.
"Just give me the sword. I'll help."
"Don't argue with me," yelled Mitya. "Oh for goodness sake, Effy." She clicked the blades off and shoved us away up the pavement, before jumping back and switching the laser blades back on.
As I stepped back I managed to slice my foot open on the sharp teeth of a dead jawler lying on the ground.
"Ow," I cried, jumping on my other foot. I could see the blood start to trickle through the dirt on my skin. Dylan chivalrously lifted me back up over his shoulder and started to run along the pavement. I could hear the splats of jawler body parts squelching under his feet as he ran.
I was briefly distracted as I watched Mitya draw both swords round in a graceful arc and swipe them through at least a couple of dozen jawlers.
Who would have thought Mitya could kick arse like that?
But I quickly remembered the indignity of my present situation. And there were clearly far too many jawlers for her to fight alone.
I thumped Dylan on the back. "Put me down. I'm not an invalid."
"What kind of an idiot goes out to a monster fight in bare feet," taunted Rob breathlessly as he ran behind us.
I reached out and punched him on the arm. "You're the one who put my shoes on the top of the bookcase!"
"Stop messing about, this is serious," snapped Mel.
"Quit wriggling, will you Effy, it's sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip......" Dylan's voice escalated into a shout as his foot caught on some kind of jawler internal organ and he slid along the ground. Fortunately we skidded clear of the dead jawler parts and ended up in a heap on the curb by Mitya's car.
"Oh, my hero," I said dryly.
"There's just too many of them," cried Mel, her voice coming out in a sob.
"Don't say that, Mel," I said angrily, even though she was just stating a fact.
Mitya - sweet, gentle Mitya - was fighting with far more skill than I ever could have imagined, but there was no way she could hope to defeat the shoal of jawlers. I could see she'd already taken a bite to her leg, and I was sure that was blood flowing down the side of her face too. I prayed it was from one of jawlers and not her own.
"What are we going to do?" I whispered.
Dylan was holding tightly onto my arm to stop me running back to help her, but none of us made any effort to climb into the car. I knew it was suicidal to go back even with weapons so what could we hope to achieve without them? But we couldn't just leave her.
I heard Grandpa's furious voice come from the library, "I am quite capable of defending myself."
That was my grandpa - a fighter.
I felt Dylan's hand loosen on my arm and saw the look of determination in Mel's eyes; Rob swallowed heavily as he stretched himself to his full height. We were all fighters.
I indulged myself in a moment of nostalgia for all the memories we were never going to get the chance to create: We were never going to open that bar on the beach (with an adjoining bookshop and cafe for Mel) in an as yet undefined lively but not dance club holiday zone.
I was never going to feel that exhilaration when Dylan realised he completely fancied me too and against my better judgement, managed to convince me to give things a go; to feel my eyes close as his lips moved closer to mine...
...Not that that either of these things would have ever happened anyway, but there must have been at least some great stuff waiting for me in my life.
I felt like I should make a speech or something, but instead I silently pulled myself up from the floor. I watched as Rob ran over to the house with the cool stainless glass windows and picked up a load of stones from their rockery. I'd always thought that rockery was stupid. What was the point in piling up a load of stones in your tiny front patio? But apparently it might actually be useful for something.
"They're really sensitive on their foreheads just above their eyes. I reckon if we hit them there," said Rob.
He lobbed a stone at the jawlers. It hit one of them, but instead of falling dead to the ground, it just got angry and crouched into its pre-attack position as it turned to face us, bringing a crowd of its jawler mates with it.
I nearly said something, but I stopped myself. I didn't want my last words to be making fun of Rob...even if it was kind of fitting. I nearly said something ridiculously corny like, 'I love you guys' instead, but I managed to just keep quiet as I grabbed a handful of rocks and started to fling them at the jawlers. We all knew how we felt about each other without having to say it... well maybe Dylan didn't know quite how much I loved him, but I doubt I would have ever told him anyway.
I gave a sideways glance at my best friends as the four of us stood in a pitiful-looking row making our last stand against these crazy monsters. There was no way in the world I could have imagined our friendship would end like this.
But suddenly everything went into slow motion. My arm seemed to stick in the air mid-throw. I strained to keep it moving but it felt like I was trying to push it through thick sludge.
Everyone says your life flashes before your eyes when you drown, but I hadn't heard so much about what happened when you were about to be ripped to pieces by a mob of huge-teethed furry jawlers.
I guess I'd just found out.
A jawler had sprung up into attack right in front me. It was moving straight towards me, painstakingly slowly. The slow-motion horror in my expression must have looked comical as I tried to keep my arm moving forwards to defend myself. The jawler edged through the air closer towards me, its teeth wide open. Okay I was really starting to panic now.
I could hear someone chanting behind me and I desperately wanted to turn round to see what was going on. I even wasted a couple of valuable seconds stupidly trying to twist my head as if I could take a quick glance and when I gave up and turned my attention back to the jawler, it terrifyingly close.
It was coming right at my face. Okay, so maybe I wasn't the prettiest person in the world - my brutally honest friends may have accused me of having an 'obscenely' small face (try finding a pair of sunglasses that fit without having to resort to kids ones), with a little dolls nose. But I had lovely full lips and my milk chocolate-coloured brown eyes were cool. The overall effect was actually all right. Pretty or not, this was my face and I didn't want to have it bitten off by a demonic ball of fur.
I gave up on trying to throw the rock at it and instead tried to invoke gravity by throwing myself out of the way. But gravity was clearly working in slow motion too. I wasn't going anywhere.
Suddenly a purple spark shot over my shoulder and the jawler disappeared with a small pop.
A blond woman walked past, holding up her hands and sending out purple sparks at the hundreds of slow-moving jawlers. She'd walked past me before I could see her face, but her hair was scrapped back in a tight ponytail that swished from side-to-side as she walked. In the night light I thought she was wearing some kind of cat suit at first, but I realised it was just a pair of black leggings with a figure-hugging black top. You had to have a good body to get away with an outfit like that!
She'd teamed the outfit with a pair of sturdy boots that crunched down on the jawlers lining the pavement as she walked, shattering their teeth as if they were made of nothing more than ice.
Slightly more effective than my bare feet.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. A jawler instantly disappeared with every spark.
As she turned her head I caught a glimpse of her profile. Maybe her no-nonsense expression wasn't doing much for her, but her features looked really masculine, like she'd probably taken more after her dad than her mum. Just as I had that bitchy thought, she turned and looked directly at me and I felt a second of fear that maybe they could read our minds as well.
Unfreeze me, right now! I projected out, but she didn't react.
She glanced up at the stones we were holding mid-throw in the air and gave us an incredulous look as if to make a point of saying of how stupid we were for even thinking we could defend ourselves from a shoal of jawlers with a handful of stones.
Yeah, well you should have seen me with the laser sword a few minutes ago, I defended myself angrily.
A ginger-haired man walked beside her. At least I thought his hair was ginger, but maybe the streetlight was making it look more orange than it really was. He was the source of the chanting - that was clearly what was making everything go in slow motion. I could see Rowan sending down more sparks from the library. He'd said Ariella and Phil were on their way - this had to be them. Okay, so maybe Rowan hadn't been the friendliest person in the world, but he and his friends had just saved our arses.
Obviously that was assuming it wasn't them that brought the jawlers here in the first place though. Exactly who were these people?
I noticed that Mitya was trying to battle against the slow motion chant to shake off a jawler that had managed to get past the laser blades and clamp itself onto her thigh with its teeth. Had Ariella and Phil noticed?
"Get a move on, will you," I hissed through my throat, unable to move my lips quickly enough to speak properly.
I could see its teeth squeezing tighter and tighter into her skin as Mitya clenched her jaw in pain. I remembered Grandpa's missing fingers - could these things bite straight through bone? The prospect of having to watch, practically frozen while Mitya had her leg bitten off made me feel physically sick.
Although the thought of throwing up in slow motion was actually pretty funny and it distracted me enough to swallow down the feeling of nausea.
The ginger-haired man - Phil? - turned to face us. Even though he looked just as no-messing as Ariella and Rowan, his face was much kinder. He wasn't good looking by any stretch of the imagination, but he had one of those friendly faces that you instantly like. It probably helped that he actually smiled at us. His eyes fell on Dylan and Rob and his forehead seemed to furrow slightly as if he was trying to work something out.
He probably knew they were twins. Most people were confused by how different they looked. No offense to Rob, but he just wasn't in Dylan's realms of gorgeousness. He'd tried going for the cool messy-haired look before, but whenever he let his pale, almost colourless brown hair grow out it just hung limply down the side of his head looking as if he was in dire need of a haircut. Most of the time he just gave up and kept it boringly short. His light brown eyes were perfectly nice, but they lacked the gorgeous intensity of Dylan's deep blue eyes.
Poor Rob, he'd always had a complex about being the, "inferior twin" (his words not mine).
It was just a shame he had to be such a stroppy pain in the arse about it all the time.
I tried to signal to Phil to help Mitya with my eyes, which were the only part of me I could get to move with any kind of speed, but he probably couldn't see clearly enough in the dark. I tried sending the thought screaming from my mind on the off chance they could read my mind. Just as I thought I was going to explode with the frustration of having to watch that thing gnaw through Mitya's leg, Ariella finally noticed and removed the jawler with a purple spark.
Eventually all the jawlers were gone. Phil stopped chanting and we were able to move normally again. I shook out my arm, feeling the pins and needles shoot up from my fingertips. It had already been numb from shooting that stun gun and having to hold it in the air for so long really hadn't helped.
Ariella had cleared all the dead bodies with the purple sparks as she'd gone along and the street looked completely clear again. You would have had to have seen what just happened to believe it.
I walked over and picked up my filthy socks. "That did just happen, didn't it?" I said to Rob.
He just made a face and pointed to the jawler blood and guts covering his sweatshirt.
"Hey, I'm Phil," said the ginger-haired man, holding out his hand.
"Effy," I said, putting out my hand to return the handshake, but he looked down at the blood and grime covering it and pulled his hand away with a laugh.
"Maybe once you've cleaned up!"
"Come on Phil," said Ariella curtly.
He shrugged and gave me a sheepish grin. "Duty calls. I'll catch you later."
I desperately wanted to ask him what all this was about, but Ariella's determined expression told me now really wasn't the best time. Feeling intimidated, I didn't try and stop them going inside the house.
"Are you okay?" I said, running over to Mitya.
She winced as she pulled a tooth out of the gash on her leg. "It's nothing."
A purple spark hit the tooth, making it disappear and I looked up to see Rowan leaning out of the library window. He gave Mitya a brisk nod before disappearing back inside.
"Here, use this as a bandage." Dylan pulled off his school shirt and helped her tie it around the bite.
"Thanks. Now please all of you go into front room and wait there. I need to go and look after her."
Without waiting for any arguments, Mitya walked quickly across the square to the woman from down the road. She seemed to have come out of her daze now and was looking around in confusion. I felt my stomach clench as she looked down at the empty baby carrier and started screaming.
Those things wouldn't have hurt her baby would they? But Mitya had called them incognisants. Would they have even realised it was just a baby?
Mitya said something to the woman that seemed to calm her down. They both started walking down the street towards her house.
"I'm going to see if I can get into the library again," said Dylan, running into the house after Ariella and Phil.
"I've never been so scared in my life," exclaimed Rob.
You knew things were bad if Rob was admitting fear. I dug him in the side, forcing a joke as if I could somehow trick myself into believing none of what had just happened was even remotely terrifying. "Yeah right, what about that time you wet yourself watching the Exorcist?"
"You know Dylan deliberately spilt water in my lap!"
I laughed. "Off course he did. Hey Mel, do you remember that?" I turned round, expecting her to be just behind me but she was walking away down the street, completely hunched over and clutching her back.
"Mel. Where are you going?"
"I just need some air," she called back, breaking into a run.
"Don't be stupid!" I started to run after her, but I stepped on one of the stones from the rockery right where I'd sliced my foot open. As I jumped onto my other foot, swearing, I lost my balance and fell into a puddle. I swore again. I must have been covered in bruises by now.
Rob held out his hand to pull me up, but I pushed him towards Mel. "Go after her."
I ran into the house to get my shoes while he chased after Mel. Dylan was coming back down the stairs.
"They're in the library and surprise, surprise, the door's locked again. I heard them in there though. I think the grandparents are fine, well apart from..." He trailed off.
I shook my head. "We can't think about that right now. Mel's run off. Chuck my shoes down, will you?"
"Where's she gone?" He jumped up and pulled my trainers off the top of the bookcase. I winced at the pain in my foot as I pulled them on, but I couldn't mess around with that now.
I grabbed my phone from the sofa and tried to call Mel, but it just made a strange beeping noise. I looked at it in surprise. I didn't have any reception. "Have you got a signal?"
Dylan checked is phone. "No, nothing."
"I can't believe Mel's just run off with those things out there."
"They're all gone, I heard that man, Rowan say the danger's over. They're putting the protection back on the house, whatever that means."
We sprinted up the road after Rob and Mel but we still hadn't found her after half an hour of looking, so we returned to the house. Mitya and Rob were waiting for us in the hall.
"Is Mel back? That woman's baby?" I cried, knowing I couldn't take it if anything had happened to either of them.
"The baby's absolutely fine, she was in the house," replied Mitya.
I breathed out deeply and actually had to grab the doorframe to steady myself. The baby was okay. Rob gently punched me on the arm and gave me a small smile by way of comfort.
"What was wrong with that woman? Did the jawlers make her act like that or something?"
"I'm not sure. I think she must have seen them and gone into shock or something. We're looking into it."
What did, we're looking into it mean? But now I knew the baby was okay I had more important things to worry about. "Mel, is she back?"
"No, but I’d like you to stay in now.”
“But Mitya-,”
“In.”
I stood on the doormat trying to decide what to do. Obviously if Mel wanted us with her she wouldn’t have run out like that. But considering what had just happened and the fact she wasn't feeling well when she went, how could we leave her wandering around outside?
My stupid phone still didn't have reception. I held it up at Mitya. "Does this have something to do with those jawlers? Did they bite through a phone mast or something?"
Mitya sighed and glanced over her shoulder. "I'm not really supposed to say anything, but considering I need to talk to you anyway. We've scrambled the signal while we do a bit of damage control in the neighbourhood - make sure we contain any visuals."
I shook my head in confusion. "What does that mean?"
"Keep anyone who might have seen anything from telling people?" suggested Dylan. "How do you make sure they never tell?"
Mitya checked behind her again and spoke in an even quieter tone. "That's top secret, but don't worry, there's no lasting damage."
She channelled us into the front room. "Sit down...Effy, for once in your life just do as you're told."
I looked at her defiantly before perching on the arm of the sofa. "Well fine if you want me to get blood all over the sofa," I muttered.
"This is vitally important. You must not tell anyone what happened here tonight. You don’t need to worry about Mel,-"
Me, Dylan and Rob all spoke at once, but Mitya held up her hand to silence us.
"We've neutralised the jawler threat and you're completely safe."
"Where did they come from? How do you know they're not coming back?" said Rob.
"They're not coming back," replied Mitya, choosing to ignore his first question. "Listen to me. I will trust you if you promise me you won't say anything about what happened tonight to anyone but I need you to make that promise and mean it or..," she trailed off.
I glanced at Dylan and Rob before answering, but I realised this was important. The look of desperation in Mitya's face was telling enough. We'd seen things tonight that we clearly weren't supposed to know about.
"Yes, I promise I won't say anything."
"Thanks, Effy."
Rob and Dylan repeated the promise.
"Good," said Mitya. She stood up as Rowan, Phil and Ariella came into the room and nodded at them.
Phil was the only one with the manners to give us a smile and friendly hello. Ariella looked at us as if we were no better than the jawlers she'd just obliterated (eek, those purple sparks wouldn't work on us would they?) and Rowan barely even looked at us.
"They're sixteen," Ariella said to Mitya in a scathing tone.
"She's forty-three," I retorted, deliberately over-estimating her age to insult her.
"They're immature," she added.
Okay, so if you were going to make an assessment based on my previous comment alone I guess that was fair, but it's not as if she knew me well enough to make that kind of judgement.
To my surprise Rowan spoke up in our defence, even if his tone was completely cold and it was still far too much effort for him to do us the courtesy of actually looking at us. "They fought the jawlers well. Mitya tried to make them run but they refused."
"So you noticed that," I said snidely.
"Of course they fought," exclaimed Phil, giving us a warm smile.
"But they're so young," said Ariella.
Wow, she really seemed to have a problem with our age.
"Yes," agreed Rowan.
"Hello, we are actually here you know," said Rob.
He stepped back uncomfortably as all three of them turned to look at him. Ariella walked over to him and took his chin in her hands. She looked at him intently before moving on to do the same with Dylan.
"Incredible they could have been so stupid," she murmured.
"Hey," cried Rob, as Phil walked over and surveyed them just as closely. Even Rowan moved forwards for a closer look.
Phil turned to the others with a shrug. "They're right, I can't tell at all."
"Well they're clearly far too young," said Ariella dismissively. She turned to Mitya. "The house is safe. We'll cover the area until they've decided what they're going to do about this...mess. They're waiting for you upstairs."
With a cheery, "See ya," from Phil and nothing more than a rude look from Rowan and Ariella, they left the house.
"Please stay here while I look after your grandparents. I don't want you going outside again," said Mitya turning to leave the room.
"Hey, where are you going?" I cried. "You haven't told us anything about what's going on."
"I've told you all you need to know."
"Mitya!"
"Just stay here, please." She shot me a warning look before walking out of the room.
"Can I at least leave the room to have a shower?" I called after her to make a point.
"Yes, Effy, you can have a shower," she called back over her shoulder, exasperated.
I looked at Dylan and Rob and shook my head in disbelief. I really didn't know what to say.
Eventually Dylan shrugged. "Well I don't know about you, but I really felt a connection there. I think we may have just found our new BFFs."
***
Thank you so much for taking the time to read all this Kate, I really appreciate it.
