Freaks by Kieran Larwood Page B

crunches, and the huge model stopped. Monkeyboy’s head popped out of the puppet’s bottom.
    â€œOi, Lumpy!” he called to Gigantus. “You can turn it off inside!”
    Gigantus gave a nod, and then drove his fist through the cracked chestpiece of Gog and grabbed a handful of metal parts, ripping them free with a crunch. The puppet juddered and froze, a statue once more.
    Sister Moon descended from a double backflip to land squarely on the last spider’s back. It flew into pieces with a crunch.
    â€œNice move, Moonie,” Monkeyboy said.
    â€œRolling porcupine flip. I invent myself.”
    Breathing a sigh of relief, Sheba turned back to the lock. She could feel the tumbler beginning to spring. She levered it up, then stuck a second pin into the keyhole to shoot the bolt back. She was rewarded with a loud
clunk
, and the heavy door swung open a couple of inches.
    â€œOh no you-a don’t,” said a voice from inside.
    Farfellini’s hand shot out, grabbed Sheba’s shoulder, and pushed hard, flipping her head over heels.
    â€œSheba!” cried Mama Rat.
    Landing on all fours, Sheba turned on the puppet maker, as full of fierce anger as she had ever been. She saw the little man had pulled a strange-looking pistol from his jacket, and was raising it to point at her, but she was too furious to be frightened. This horrid puppeteer had just tried to hurt her friends, and could even have Till hidden away in his room. More than anything, she wanted to teach him a lesson. Her sharp teeth were bared in a snarl, her fingernails had squeezed themselves into sharp little claws, and she knew her eyes were flashing bright orange.
I’ve never changed this much before
, she thought.
What happens if I can’t change back?
    Behind her she heard a roar. It was Gigantus, stampeding toward the door. Farfellini switched aim to the lumbering giant and fired.
    There was a
twang
, and Gigantus halted, slapping a hand to his neck as if he’d been stung. A tiny dart with bright red fletchings jutted between his fingers.
    Farfellini frantically wound the mechanism on the side of the pistol, getting ready for another shot, just as Mama Rat was pouring powder into the muzzle of her pistol across the room. But Sister Moon was quicker than both. She pulled her sword scabbard from her back and flung it at the man, knocking the gun from his grip and sending it spinning across the floor toward Sheba.
    Even as Farfellini made a grab for it, Sheba snatched it up and pointed it straight at his head.
    â€œDon’t move or I’ll shoot,” she said. She was still in the grip of her wolfish anger, so the words came out as a kind of snarl.
    â€œDon’t-a shoot! Don’t-a shoot! Is poison, you silly girl. It kill me!” Farfellini put both hands in the air as the Peculiars surrounded him.
    â€œWhat kind of poison?” Sheba asked. “What have you done to our friend?”
    Farfellini looked over to where Gigantus was still clasping his neck, swaying to and fro and looking very pale. “Nothing bad,” he said, unconvincingly. “He be fine.”
    â€œNo, he pigging won’t,” said Monkeyboy.
    And they all watched as the big man let out a groan and collapsed to the floor like a felled redwood tree.

    While Mama Rat saw to Gigantus, and Sister Moon tied up Farfellini, Sheba went to investigate the room where Farfellini had been hiding. Behind her, she could hear Gigantus groaning and the puppeteer cursing in Italian as Monkeyboy interrogated him by using a pair of his pliers to pluck out his nose hairs one by one.
    Farfellini’s quarters were quite different from the workshop outside. There was carpet on the floor, pictures on the walls (mostly badly painted views of foreign cities that Sheba assumed were in Italy), a small cot, and a stove. There was also a drawing board by the window, and another workbench. Sheba saw several half-built clockwork spiders, just