Fleeced (15 page)

XVIII

A P
ATCH OF
G
REECE

Six-and-a-half elbow-jarring, rib-bruising,
teeth-rattling
minutes later, during which every rude word Aries and the children knew had been hurled into the air at least once in both Ancient Greek and English, the van screeched to a halt.

“Where are we?” muttered Aries, who now lay wedged under a collapsed shelf of Tootilicious Fruit Ices – Buy One Get One Free!

Alex sat up gingerly and rubbed his head. He had a bad feeling that’d begun when he’d been hoicked through the van’s window and had grown steadily worse. “I think I can guess.”

Rose, lying on the floor and still rolled in the crêpe de Chine, was furiously kicking her feet in the air making her look like a giant silkworm
spinning its cocoon. “Will someone please get me out!” she demanded. “I totally have to tell you about what I saw in the shop!”

Of course, what with the faun’s terrible driving, the droning of the van’s engine and the avalanches of cones and flakes and bottles of raspberry sauce as they sped round corners, Rose hadn’t been able to tell the others a single thing. If she had, things might have been different. I mean, she
might
have mentioned seeing Anne Boleyn’s portrait, and wondered why it seemed so familiar. And, that
might
have prompted Aries’ memory about the queen’s dress in the British Museum. And maybe between their three clever brains (all right, two clever brains and one ram’s brain) they might have worked out what Medea was up to. But since they didn’t it’s all academic
22
and no one was any the wiser.

Alex stepped over Rose to peer out of the window and gasped.

“What is it?” demanded Aries, drumming his hooves on the floor.

For a moment, Alex was too surprised to speak. He squinted sideways across a lawn dotted with orange trees to where an enormous whitewashed villa loomed three storeys high beneath a roof of terracotta tiles. The roof overhung a top floor balcony with an iron fretwork as intricate as a spider’s web, splashed with swags of purple bougainvillaea. Beneath it a row of tall windows stared out blindly across the garden, above a row of stone arches that encircled the villa’s ground floor as a veranda, made shadowy by jacaranda trees.

“A patch of Greece,” said Alex, recalling the Scroll’s words and feeling it shiver in the rucksack at his feet.

“Greece!” Aries squirmed free in a clatter of ice lollies. “Let me see!”

Together, Alex and Aries looked out across gardens dotted with creamy marble statues to a swimming pool, twinkling blue and silver in the
sunshine. Beyond it olive trees nodded in front of high garden walls. Extravagant and luxurious, it was just the sort of Mediterranean villa that you and I would imagine a movie magnate might own
23
.

“Olives!” Aries licked his lips. “Hey, didn’t the Scroll say something about olives?”

But before he could ask anything else, the back door of the van swung open and the Cyclops leaned in. Seizing Aries’ back legs he whipped them away like a magician pulling a cloth from a dinner table and flung Aries belly first onto the van’s floor before pitching him on to the pathway like a sack of common turnips.

Alex was horrified. “You don’t have to be so—”

At which the Cyclops finished his sentence for him, by reaching in again, this time grabbing Alex’s shoulders and throwing him out beside Aries. Too winded to speak, Alex lay beside Aries on the grass and stared up into the grey-green leaves above him. Each bough was laden with olives the size of plums, and Alex stared, dimly aware that such fruit needed a lot more sun that the cold grey skies of Britannia his uncle had told him about
24
.

Pushing himself up onto his elbows, Alex noticed another vehicle, long, gleaming and pink, parked alongside the villa. We’d have recognised it as a
stretch limousine. With windows made of rose-pink glass and headlights the colour of strawberry icing, it actually belonged to Hazel Praline, who at that very moment was standing inside the villa, twirling round and round in her sparkly rose-coloured dress for the premiere.

At the sudden slam of the ice-cream van door Alex jerked his head round to see the faun stepping neatly along the pathway towards him, stopping only when his highly polished shoes almost touched the tip of Alex’s nose.

“We haven’t been introduced,” he crooned, leaning over to take hold of Alex’s ear by which he pulled the boy up. “I’m Pandemic, or Sir to you.”

“Who’s that?” squealed Rose from inside the van.

“A faun,” replied Aries.

“A prawn?” said Rose.

“No,” muttered Aries. “He’s not that clever. A faun: half-man, half-furry bottom.”

Alex noticed the Cyclops start to chuckle before seeing Pandemic’s face and stopping abruptly. He turned away and looked down at the wriggling material, poking it with his finger.

“Get off!” squealed Rose.

The Cyclops began rolling the cloth to and fro. “Fred, play play!”

“No,” said Pandemic crisply, laying a hand on Fred’s shoulder. “Fred not play play. Fred work work. Remember?”

Fred growled low. “Fred like talkie-talkie cloth!”

“It’s the girl, you potato-brain!” muttered Pandemic. “Now be quick and take her to the mistress whilst I—”

Alex reached out for Pandemic’s arm. “No!”

“No?” said Pandemic, plucking Alex’s hand from his jacket sleeve and smoothing the crumpled material.

“Don’t take her to Medea,” said Alex, feeling fear rising behind his ribs. “She’s just some girl we met. We hardly even know her. She hasn’t done anything wrong!”

“No,” said Aries. “And neither have we. So, can we go now, too?”

Pandemic bent down to Aries and gave a polished smile. “Do you really want to leave us, Aries?”

“Yes, please,” said Aries, offering his best smile.

“Well, forget it!” snapped Pandemic and straightened up. “With what the mistress has planned for you, you’ll never see the Underworld again!”

“But—” protested Aries before Pandemic snapped his hand around Aries’ muzzle and spun round to listen to a noise from the house.

Above the sound of Aries’ furious snorting, there came the sound of footsteps on gravel. Alex followed the faun’s stare to see a girl with long blonde hair, wearing huge pink sunglasses and dressed in a pink jacket, pink jeans and pink sheepskin boots, jump down from the villa’s doorway and half-walk half-dance towards the limousine. She nodded her head in time to whatever was playing through her earphones.

“Hey!” Alex shouted desperately, waving at the girl. “Can you help—”

Fred threw a greasy hand over Alex’s mouth and dragged him behind the van, although he needn’t have bothered. The girl was too busy lunging across the path, kicking and sliding, practising what looked like a dance routine to notice them.

Aries twisted and squirmed before Pandemic silenced him with a peep of panpipes and slammed the ice-cream van doors shut on Rose with his foot.

Two men now stepped out of the house. They were dressed in black suits and scrunched along the gravel behind Hazel. One carried a huge Seamed Desires box, tied with gold cord and decorated with a corsage of fresh pink roses; the other talked into a tiny phone. Whilst the first man stashed the box in the boot, the second opened the back door of the
limousine and ushered the girl inside, walked to the driver’s side and got in.

A moment later the car glided past. Neither Hazel nor her bodyguards even glanced out from behind their rose-tinted windows. The men were too busy chatting to one another whilst Hazel was too busy being famous and glamorous, which as anyone knows, involves listening to songs on one’s iPod and examining one’s fingernails for chipped varnish. The car rolled towards the gates, which began creaking open.

Pandemic chuckled, a sound like a goat with hiccups, sort of
maah-hup maah-hup
, although I am a writer, not a professional faun impersonator, and so you will have to imagine it for yourself. Then he opened the van doors and slid the cloth out.

Alex squirmed against Fred’s vicelike grip. “Let her go!” he pleaded.

“Sorry,” smiled Pandemic, reaching in for Rose’s rucksack. “Apart from anything else this cloth’s enchanted. No one except the mistress can undo it.”

“No!” Alex jabbed his elbow back as hard as he could and caught Fred in the ribs. Wheezing for breath, Fred loosened his grip for a split second and, seizing his chance, Alex broke free. Dimly remembering how his father always taught him
to aim for his opponent’s weak spot, he smashed his shoulder into the faun’s stomach, sending him sprawling against the side of the van.

“Aries, run!” yelled Alex, straightening up to aim a kick at Pandemic’s ankles, knocking him off his feet.

The cloth bounced onto the ground with a yelp.

Aries charged after the car, which was now turning out onto the road.

Squealing, bleating, leaping, desperately trying to attract its attention, he slipped and skidded over the path. Now if you or I’d been in the limousine we’d have noticed him and probably recorded him on our mobile phones for YouTube and uploaded a film that’d score thousands of hits. And stepped out and helped, of course. But nobody noticed a thing and the car swept out onto the road.

“No!” squealed Aries as the gates clanged shut in front of him.

Bolts the size of sledgehammers flew across the gate’s wrought ironwork and clanged viciously. Padlocks snapped shut like crocodile jaws. Dumbstruck, Aries stepped back straight into Fred’s bulging knees.

“Can’t go that way way!” said Fred, chuckling, and taking hold of Aries’ tail he began dragging him, like a child’s pull-along toy.

I can’t begin to tell you how much Aries hated this and so I won’t.

Meanwhile, back on the lawn, Alex was clamped onto the faun’s back, flinging furious punches. Roaring, Pandemic charged across the lawn and ducked his head like a horse refusing a jump, sending Alex spiralling onto the grass. The boy landed, winded, his head spinning.

“Boys! Boys!” Icy as a steel knife kept in a freezer, a woman’s voice seemed to slice through the warm air and stop time.

Feeling his breath scouring his lungs, Alex blinked and tilted his head to see a pair of small feet wearing gold pumps standing in front of him. He lifted his eyes slowly.

Medea was standing in front of him, looking exactly like her Underworld painting: the angular face, the full lips, the seawater-grey eyes, all framed by long black hair and that single lock of violet, twisted into a rope over her shoulder. Wearing a long white dress with golden ribbons criss-crossing its bodice, she stood with her hands on her hips, her long sleeves trailing at her sides.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” she said. Turning, she walked over to Aries, who braced his shoulders and stuck his chin in the air. “And especially you,
Aries Khrysamallos.”

Aries’ ears twitched despite the bravery in his stance. It was the way she said
especially
that did it.

“What’s the matter?” said Medea. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Not cat,” said Alex. “Witch.”

“Witch?” squealed Rose from the cloth.

“Oh, Alex!” Medea scolded playfully.

Without looking, she snapped the fingers of her left hand. The cloth jerked taut, jackknifed in two and twisted into a tight knot, a knot that squealed.

“You’ll put my special guest off,” said Medea.

Special guest?

No, I didn’t like the sound of that either.

“Pandemic!” Medea turned to the faun, who stood brushing out the crease marks Alex had left in his jacket, leaning with Fred against a statue of a girl holding a basket of roses. “Take the girl inside! Then return the van to the park. We don’t want the police sniffing anywhere around here. Got it?”

Pandemic nodded, threw the cloth over his shoulder and strode towards the house. Alex stared after him, feeling hopeless, as Rose squirmed and shouted, trying to wriggle free. Even if he could overpower Fred, he reasoned, even if he could weave through Medea’s magical gates, even if he could
somehow get Aries over those two-metre-high walls, there was no way they could leave Rose behind in the sorceress’s house.

“Fred?” The Cyclops lumbered forwards, dribbling. “Rope the ram!”

They made a grim procession. Led by the sorceress turning circles on the sun-dappled path, Fred towed Aries, his hoofs squealing over the stones, whilst Pandemic strong-armed a silent, stony-faced Alex. This was because fear had tightened the boy’s throat like a scarf tied too tight, leaving him no voice to say things like, “It’s all right, Aries,” which it wasn’t, or, “I’ll get us out of here,” of which there seemed no chance. Making the whole scene far too horribly depressing for someone like me to dwell on. So, turn the page, would you?