Spook’s: I Am Grimalkin by Joseph Delaney Page B

of our presence all along.
    Slake bowed to us, though not as deeply as she had before the gibbet. The front of her dress was saturated with blood that had spilled from the bucket. Strangely, her face looked less human than when I had last seen her on the battlements. The eyes were savage, the mouth like a red wound that her own sharp teeth might have devoured from within.
    ‘I’m sorry to bring you bad news,’ I said softly, ‘but your sister died bravely fighting the kretch. Then the merciless creature ate her heart.’
    Not even a flicker of emotion passed across the lamia’s face. ‘I already know,’ she replied. ‘I sensed the moment of her death. That is why I was praying.’
    ‘To whom do you pray?’ I asked. ‘Which god is it?’
    ‘It is the god of all lamias, of course.’
    I frowned. ‘I do not know of this god.’
    ‘We call her Zenobia. She was the first – the ancestor of us all. You were with her in Greece. She is the mother of Thomas Ward, the Spook’s apprentice.’
    ‘But she was destroyed fighting the Ordeen.’
    Although I was not witness to the event, Tom Ward had told me how his mother, in her winged form, had held the Ordeen in a death grip. But as they fought, her citadel had been consumed by a pillar of fire and carried back into the dark.
    ‘Not destroyed – her spirit lives on. She has spoken to us. She gave me instructions just then as I prayed.’
    I remembered how close Tom Ward had been to his mother. If she had spoken to this lamia, surely she must have communicated with him too?
    ‘Instructions … concerning what?’ I asked.
    ‘She commanded me to stay here without my sister and defend the tower against our enemies. Above all, I must protect the trunk, which contains information that might aid her son in his attempts to destroy the Fiend.’
    ‘You’ve already searched that trunk and read the books. What did you learn? Tell me and I will pass it on.’
    ‘It is not straightforward – far from it. Many ages ago Zenobia was in conflict with the Fiend. She tried in vain to destroy him – though she did manage to “hobble” him by means of dark magic, thus placing a limit on his power. These are the terms of that hobble: if he kills Thomas Ward himself, then he’ll reign on in our world for a hundred years before he’s forced to retreat back to where he came from. But if he enlists the services of one of his children to do the deed – the son or daughter of a witch – then the Fiend can rule on in the world indefinitely. Then there is a third way: if he can convert the boy to the dark, his dominion will also last until the end of the world.
    ‘If we study the manner in which the hobble was imposed we may get an idea of how we can move forward – how the Fiend might finally be destroyed,’ Slake continued. ‘Zenobia believes that her son might glimpse something that she has missed. There could well be some loophole, a gap into which something new and efficacious may be added.’
    I had heard about the hobbles before from Alice Deane. This was the first confirmation that Tom’s mother had been responsible. That limitation on the Fiend’s power had been vital – otherwise he would have slain Tom Ward years ago. I suspected that the Fiend still hoped to convert the boy to the dark. The apprentice had certainly been moving slowly in that direction, being forced to compromise his beliefs by using a blood jar and allying himself with witches. But I suspected that the Fiend’s hatred for Tom and his need for vengeance would drive him to slay the boy the moment he was freed from the binding.
    ‘If you stay here in this tower, how will you survive without food?’ Thorne asked.
    ‘I will go hunting for it,’ the lamia replied. ‘My sister and I hoped to learn what was required and then escape from this refuge in human form and carry the knowledge to the apprentice. Now all has changed. What we seek is beyond our powers of understanding. Very soon the boy must