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"Push down on it and use another shield against theceiling!" Min was alreadyattempting to put his words into action, but it was definitely something easiersaid than done. With a startled shout,he ended up bouncing sideways, and water began spraying from the firesprinklers.
Not trusting herself with such a difficult manoeuvre,Madeleine ran for Nash, barely beating the glow-monster's attempt to run rightover him. With no time for explanations,she simply spun and shield-punched the thing toward the car with the Pan-sizeddint in its side, the impact catapulting her backward.
"Pin it! Pinit!" Pan ran forward, and theothers joined him, holding the creature against the car so Nash could riskapproaching. Madeleine ran to join them,keeping it still as it frantically tried to escape Nash's touch.
It collapsed.
The transition was so swift that most of them went down withit, falling to puffing heaps around a thing which now glowed no more than apaper lantern. A lantern the size of asmall car.
"Is – is it properly dead?" Emily whispered.
"I think so." Nash, stars bright, pressed his hand against the thing's neck, then startedback when his fingers sank into the glowing surface. "It doesn't have – it's like it's turnedto mud. Less than that. Fog."
"It looks like a dead jellyfish," Pan said. "Which is a step down from the 'mermaidcalled Rover' thing it started with." He grimaced, and wiped at the water ru
"We don't even know what this is," Min pointedout. "Our problem is theMoths. Whole different ball game."
"It's familiar in an odd way," Madeleine said. "I know I've never seen it before, but Ifelt like I had."
"The balls with ears from the first challenge," Noisaid, using Pan's shoulder to lever herself to her feet. "Come on, we can't just sit here in apuddle. Nash, go see if you can spotanyone coming down the wharf. Everyoneelse, there have to be controls to shut these sprinklers off."
Fisher, next to his feet, held a hand down for Madeleine, andwaited to check she could stay up. Then theypaused to stare at the thing they'd just killed. It did remind Madeleine a little of thetargets from the Manila challenge, but a car-sized doggy mermaid was a long wayfrom a soccer ball with ears and paws. Related species? Parent? She puzzled over it while they hunted for away to shut down the broken sprinkler system without cutting off water to theentire building.
"No sign of any movement on either side," Nashsaid, jogging back to the garage entrance just as they succeeded in stoppingthe flow. "Why alone? It seemed to know where we were."
"Maybe it's some kind of Blue tracker," Minsuggested. "Able to smell us orhear us or something."
"Doesn't explain why they'd let it gallop off to leap onus alone," Noi said, then shivered and shook her head, a few drops ofwater spraying from damp curls. "Speculate later. Right nowwe have a big glowing corpse, no obvious Moths, and a huge decision."
"Stay or leave." Fisher said.
"At sunset, while cold and wet. When the only one of us not exhausted isNash." Noi ticked the obstaclesoff. "Not necessarilyinsurmountable. We've talked about GoatIsland as a possibility. We have boatsand have downloaded harbour charts, and it's a straightforward enoughtrip. We could probably get there in thedark without ru
"The gamble is whether they have another Rover,"Min said. "If, that is, the thingreally could track us. They obviouslyhaven't been able to before now, or our pyjama party would have been over daysago. If we're to believe the internetchatter, the Moths don't know when Blues are hiding nearby. This building has been cleared already, andthe hidden room and webcams are seriously hard to give up, so long as we thinkthis Rover is the only Rover. Theproblem with staying is that." Henodded at the corpse, large and obvious in the fading light. "We could risk using the garage becauseit's dim and sheltered and there's little chance anyone will go in it to noticeany damage. The glow from that thing isa neon sign marking the start point of any hunt."
"Staying or leaving, we need to get rid of it,"Fisher said.
"True enough." Noi's stomach growled, a
The yielding, insubstantial mass would only shift whenthumped with a shield, and by the time they had knocked it out of the garageand then chivvied it to the navy base side of the wharf, all Madeleine couldthink of was food and rest.
The lantern glow of monster sank below the surface, and theywent inside to eat and decide what next.
Chapter Fourteen
A chorus of breathing in a room lit only by the flicker ofcomputer screens. Madeleine shifted,warm beneath a blanket, bracketed by sleeping people. Her back hurt.
With no sign of Moths following Rover, and everyone but Nashclose to dropping where they stood, the decision to stay or leave had been aforgone conclusion. As a precaution theywere all spending the night in the hidden study. While his fellow Musketeers filled theirstomachs, Nash had shifted the computer to the top of the filing cabinet andremoved the simple desk, creating a little more room. Then he'd been stuck with a lot of cleaningup, as everyone else focused on getting warm and dry before curling up to sleepand digest. The extremes of the Blue metabolism.
Madeleine had gone to sleep propped between Noi and Emily,but, drifting awake, she could see Nash sitting beneath the window with alaptop, and Noi curled next to the sprawling pile which was Min and Pan. The shoulder she was tucked against belongedto Fisher.
Noi had most likely contrived the swap during a bathroom excursion,and Madeleine decided to be grateful, to enjoy the moment. Fisher had continued to provide a fascinatedaudience during the portrait sittings, helping her clean up afterwards. Today – yesterday – they'd spent all of thetime between the sitting and late afternoon training chatting. He'd avoided talking about himself, insteaddrawing her out on what still needed to be done on the new portrait, and thechances of a young unknown wi
The question was whether his interest was in her, or herart. And if he was pretending to beinterested in her painting as a way to get closer to her. She wasn't sure she would be able to forgivethat.
But she still filled a small secret sketchpad with images ofhim, and worried about how little sleep he got, and wondered whether it wouldbe stupid to suggest they surely had enough time for him to restoccasionally. Her private challenge wasto capture how he would pause sometimes to be amused at himself, and itdiscomforted her, in reviewing these attempts, to see just how much of her ownemotions the pictures revealed.
Nash had noticed she was awake, and was smiling at her, atthe way she was trying to look at Fisher's face without moving from hisshoulder. Her sketchbooks really weren'tgoing to tell anybody anything they didn't already know.