Rampage! (3 page)

‘What’s happening?’ he cried, staring up into the boy’s astonished face.

Alex shook his head as Hex threw himself off the statue and wrapped his long grey body around the boy’s neck, closing his eyes tight shut as the ground began to tremble with the pounding of hoofs.

Seconds later, Aries’ view of the sky vanished completely behind a wall of snorting black horses. Rearing up, they spattered Aries with frothy dribble, their hooves pummelling the air above his head before each clanged down onto the ground in a frenzy of whinnying.

The driver, a stocky man with a cloud of wild grey hair, wiped his brow with the back of his hand, straightened the bugle hanging across his bull-like chest and stared down at them.

‘Alex Knossos?’

Alex nodded, pointing to Aries. ‘And this is ––’

‘I know about the livestock,’ grunted the driver. ‘Queen wants to see you both. Castle
Hades
. Now.’

III

A R
AM
, A M
A'AM
, A D
ING
-D
ONG

Rams don't make good charioteers.

This is because they can only cling on by their mouths, leaving their hooves to clatter madly in all directions beneath them like bad flamenco dancers that no Spanish frock or fancy fan-flapping will improve. Now, as the chariot sped around yet another bend, Aries' belly lurched, dragging his copious rump sideways, to flatten Alex and the driver in a double-ram-whammy against the front of the vehicle, resulting in a cacophony of splutters (Alex) and extremely rude words (the driver). Meaning that everyone was very relieved when Castle Hades, crouching like a disgruntled crow amidst the Mountains of Despair, finally hove into view.

Built from marble as black as squid's ink, the royal residence comprised a cluster of buildings, flat-roofed and blank-walled, each built around a courtyard and graced by a first-storey colonnade. Once, the king had greeted the newly arrived ghosts from these lofty corridors, nodding as they wailed around the walkways, sobbing into their shrouds, trailing their grief like toilet paper stuck to the soles of their shoes. In those days, the palace
had rumbled with the snoring of bats, which hung about the place like forgotten Christmas decorations, their fuzzy bodies glistening with damp from the fog of eternal doom that billowed endlessly around the Underworld.

But not any more.

‘Are we there yet?' yowled Aries, out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Nearly,' yelled Alex, noticing the festoons of pink and yellow flags, cheerful as Battenberg cake, flapping against the dark walls.

Because you see, when King Hades had kidnapped Persephone from Earth and made her his queen, she'd found herself the only living person in a drab, drippy Land of the Lost. All that snuffling, snivelling and gloom had quickly depressed her and she'd turned her mind to brightening things up, transforming the palace (and the Underworld with it) from grave to groovy.

Out went the mist and the soggy bats.

Out went the stench-swamps, where the speckled frogs of insult abused the newly dead between fruity burps.

Out went the petrified forests and fountains draped with stone skeletons.

And in came the fragrant rose gardens and trilling nightingales, the crystal-clear pools skirted by butterflies of joy, and orange trees scenting the air around fountains carved with bouncing bunny rabbits.

And bunting.

Lots and lots of bunting.

But Alex didn't have time to admire the décor. Quite
apart from being squashed, winded and bruised, he was overwhelmed with worry about why she should summon them there in the first place.

Worry, and something else.

Excitement.

That's right.

Because what Aries would've been astonished to learn was that far from being content to return to his zoo job, Alex had felt horribly restless ever since they'd left London. Lately, he'd felt only flashes of frustration when Scylla soared from her tank to spatter the crowds with a watery mash of mackerel, when it used to make him laugh. And his new feelings upset him. After all, working in the zoo had always been his dream job and he still loved caring for the monsters more than anything. But, even so, he couldn't escape the fact that finding slippers to fit the Minotaur's hooves or settling the
Centaurs
' squabbles was nothing like going on a quest, not nearly as thrilling as fighting an army of Medea's enchanted mannequins or lying strapped to a tomb and using his last scrap of imagination to stop Hex from killing him.

Not that we have time to talk about that now.

Not with the chariot flying in beneath the castle's iron gateway, a fretwork of black skulls now interlaced with pink ribbons and into the palace grounds. There was a furious squeal of wheels as the chariot screeched to a stop, followed by two matching yells of pain as Aries crashed into Alex and then the driver for the last time.

‘Sorry about that,' muttered Aries.

Giving himself a brisk shake, he clopped down on to the stone-flagged courtyard and glanced longingly at the olive trees dotted around.

‘East wing,' growled the driver, scowling at Aries. ‘Follow the path. Queen's quarters, top of the steps.'

Aries glowered at the man as he limped away, muttering loudly about not being paid enough to transport overweight sheep.

‘Well, what a delightful man,' said Aries. ‘Topping off a charming day. First my statue's used for target practice, then I'm bundled on to a boneshaker by a man with the manners of a windy bull, before being deposited like a sack of last week's turnips to meet royalty. I've got hoof-rub. Bruised buttocks. And as for my voice ––'

‘Will you be losing it soon?' teased Alex and gave Aries' ear a reassuring rub before setting Hex down gently on the ground. ‘Come on. Why don't we find out why we're here?'

Following the marble path, they soon reached a large black door set beneath a columned porch decorated with carved skeletons wearing pink ribbons. Alex rapped loudly with the brass-skull knocker and a few seconds later one of the queen's handmaidens peeped out. Willowy and prettily dressed in a green chiton, her smile vanished as she caught sight of Aries snorting impatiently, with Hex wrapped around his horns.

‘We're here to see Her Majesty,' said Alex, noticing the pink carnations woven into the handmaiden's plait
and musing briefly whether the staff always dressed as though they were attending a party.

Snatching a glance over his shoulder at the palace path behind them, the maid showed them into an airy entrance hall and through an archway into a long corridor. Lined by a row of columns on the left, it bordered a sunny courtyard. In the middle of its lawn Cerberus, Hades' three-headed hellhound, lolled like an overfilled suitcase, chewing a ball in one mouth, a bone in the second and panting with the third. All of which, thought Alex with relief, meant that he was too busy to notice, smell or, worse, chase the gigantic ram clopping past with a juicy side-order of snake garnishing his horns.

A sudden burst of giggles made Alex jump and, looking up, he noticed three more handmaidens scanning the horizon from the flat roof of the opposite building. Something special was certainly happening today.

But what?

Unfortunately, before he could ask the young woman leading the way, she stopped in front of a heavy door edged by two sword-shaped hinges and tapped twice.

‘The throne room,' she said, pushing the door open to reveal a cavernous hall lit by flickering torches and dominated at the far end by two enormous stone thrones. Alex and Aries stepped inside, blinking in the sudden gloom after the sunshine of outside.

‘About time too!' squealed Queen Persephone, who was perched precariously on top of a pile of cushions stuffed on one of the thrones. Slight, golden-skinned
and freckle-faced, she was the same bubbly young woman the king had married all those years ago. She stuck out her small feet and admired her sparkling green flip-flops. (Yes, flip-flops. And we'll come to how she happened to be wearing those in a moment.)

Beside her, on the second throne, the goddess Athena was reading, her owl snoozing on her shoulder and her aegis,
12
spear and helmet tucked at her feet. Glancing up for a moment, her grey eyes met Alex's and he felt a spark of excitement behind his ribs. For Athena to be here, he knew that something very important must be happening. After all, even though Athena was Persephone's aunt, everyone in the Underworld knew that the goddess was far too serious and stuffy for her niece to invite her over for a girly chat.

‘Ma'am,' said Alex, bowing to the queen before turning to Athena. ‘Goddess.'

Beside him, Aries touched his muzzle to his knee-caps.

‘Approach!' said the queen, flinging her long russet-coloured plait over her shoulder.

Alex and Aries walked across the huge room, the blue and gold mosaic of its floor twinkling beneath their feet and hoofs. On their left the king's tapestries hung, depicting blood-soaked battles and funeral processions.
On the right hung Persephone's, pastel pink and blue and bursting with lovebirds.

‘Not the ever-hungry ram!' shrilled a small frantic voice in a chaotic crumpling of paper. ‘Quick! Roll me up, someone!'

There was a flash of cream vellum and, craning his neck, Alex caught a glimpse of the All-Knowing Scroll as it shot from its cushion, bounced off the floor and somersaulted like a maiden's baton in the
Panathenea
to land behind a nearby stack of travelling cases. A moment later, it peeped out from what appeared to Alex to be a soft toy lizard, button-eyed and made from shiny blue silk, curled around the biggest trunk.

Intrigued by the curious-looking creature, he turned back to the queen. ‘Have you been to Earth again, ma'am?'

She nodded brightly. ‘Ibiza!'

Which brings me back to those flip-flops.

You see, for the last three thousand years or so, Persephone had been popping up to Earth like a piece of Underworld toast. The only inhabitant of the Underworld ever allowed to return, her holidays had started soon after King Hades snatched her, when her mother, Demeter, goddess of the harvest, had stomped down to the Underworld and jabbed her new son-in-law over and over again with her pitchfork, until he let Persephone visit her back home for six months a year. Nowadays, even though Demeter, like all the other Ancient Greeks, resided in the Underworld too, her daughter refused to give up her holidays. (Not that you could blame her, what with King
Hades spending most of his time in the royal shed, polishing his collection of bashed ribs, hips and crumpled helmets, which he grandly called his Museum of Messy Deaths.)

She sighed wistfully. ‘Oh, it was wonderful! Swimming by moonlight, sangria on the beach, dancing until ––'

‘Never mind all that,' snapped Athena. She slid off her throne and regarded Alex, Aries and Hex sternly. ‘Look at this!'

She held out the magazine she'd been looking at to Alex. He felt his heart tighten, recognising it as one just like Rose had shown them – an Earth parchment full of pictures and stories about famous people.

‘The queen brought it back from Earth. Page thirty-one!' barked the goddess.

‘I didn't know what to do!' said Persephone, as Alex flicked quickly through the pages. She jumped off her chair and slip-slapped across the room to stand beneath the most recent portrait of King Hades waving his Sword of Calamity. ‘Of course, there'd be no point talking to him!' She nodded up at the picture showing the king frowning over his enormous beard, crumpling his face into his best doomladen expression, which unfortunately only made him look like a bad-tempered sultana. ‘He'd only tell me not to worry my little head. It was the same when I warned him about that little minx,
Helen of Troy
. I told him her flirting would start a fight! Do you know what he said?'

‘No, ma'am,' said Alex hurrying past page twenty, page twenty-one …

‘That the roses could do with a pruning!' exclaimed Persephone.

Page twenty-two …

‘Three thousand Greeks about to be wiped out, and Hades is talking to me about gardening! That's why I had to call Aunt Athena.'

Page thirty-one.

Alex felt his jaw drop.

‘What is it?' demanded Aries, batting down the edge of the magazine with his muzzle. ‘“Fashion designer turns over a tropical new leaf”?' he read. Yes, read, because Aries, like Alex, still owned the gift of tongues that Athena had bestowed upon them earlier in the summer, the ability to read, speak and understand any language on Earth, including the Spanish in the magazine that the queen had brought back.

‘
Tropical
leaf?' He looked up at Alex. ‘I thought the police in Britain were dealing with her.'

Which was charmingly optimistic, really.

Don't get me wrong, London's police force is famous the world over, but even the capital's finest is up against two major problems with Medea. One, she's a crafty lying sorceress. And two, well, like I said, she's a crafty lying sorceress.

Which Alex might have pointed out, had the photograph not frozen him speechless.

In it, Medea stood at the centre of a group of men and women with black hair, cut high over their brows, and golden-brown skin. Like everyone else, she was
wearing a printed sarong and a necklace strung with yellow and blue feathers. Silvery-eyed, she smiled out from beneath a spectacular headdress of black feathers, each of their tips splashed with white whilst her face was painted with ochre-red stripes that ran in lines over her nose and cheeks, making her look like a cat. A scratchy, spiteful one.

Seeing the sorceress's icy face again, Alex felt his heart start to hammer and, taking a second look at the wide paddle-shaped leaves behind her, he was grimly certain that their feathery fronds and the fire-red flowers cupped in them were nothing like the spindly trees he remembered seeing on London's streets.