Serializations of the Hitherby Dragons novels

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. . .

Posted by on Mar 28, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

Jane pulls out a deposit box full of grenades and they scatter across the floor. She takes one.

“Don’t shoot Linus yet,” she whispers. “Don’t shoot Linus yet. Don’t shoot Linus yet. Don’t shoot Linus yet —”

The black dog is standing there. It pants.

She puts the grenade in its mouth. Wincingly, she pulls the pin.

She closes her eyes.

The dog is gone.

. . .

Posted by on Mar 28, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

She looks around. She stares at the receptionist, who is cowering. She says, “Clean this up, would you?”

Then she scoops up a diamond or two, because you never know, and she dashes out.

Bertram places a call. One of his soldiers answers it. He nods. He hangs up. He unlimbers his holy water squirt-gun.

“Sorry, kid,” he says, to Linus.

“It’s just,” Linus says, because this kind of thing actually happen to him quite a lot, “that I’m the antichrist. Right?”

. . .

Posted by on Mar 28, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

“It’s not —”

The guy sags a little.

“Yeah, fine,” he admits. “We’re killing you because you’re the antichrist. But we’re getting paid, too!”

The black dog appears. The black dog pants. A grenade rolls across the floor to clink against the soldier’s boot.

Linus ducks away.

. . .

Posted by on Mar 29, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

“Jane!” yells Tom. “Come on! I can’t chase down Bertram’s jet without a trusty Doom Team Auxiliary as my copilot!”

“I am not an auxiliary!” Jane shrieks as she scrambles into the amazing Wellington rocket face first and the statue launches.

Tom tries to pacify her. “It’s because you don’t actually have a destiny to destroy the world,” he says.

“I’ll pancake you,” she mutters. She tries to wiggle herself around to get to the auxiliary controls while the plane’s in flight. Tom, in a spirit of high-spirited hijinx, takes a moment to juke and roll Jane this way and that in the rocket ship.

“I. Don’t. Have. My. Seatbelt. On,” Jane grates out.

“Fine,” Tom says. “Oh, hey, there’s his car. Maybe we won’t have to chase his jet after all —”

Bertram has a rocket launcher.

Tom stares down.

“That’s just not cricket,” he says.

Bertram fires.

“Jane!” Tom shouts. “Pump the position indeterminator!”

“Glargh!” yells Jane, in utter frustration, because she’s barely even got her elbow into usable position, much less a finger or a foot, and rams her nose into the position indeterminator button.

. . .

Posted by on Mar 29, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

“Great,” sighs Tom, as the forests of Venus spin by underneath them. Jane floats gently up to where she can position herself in her seat. “Just great.”

“Can you sight him from here?” Jane asks, but Tom just pounds his head into the dashboard and then rests it there.

“Stupid,” he says. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Worthless snake-DNA human-killing boy goddamn.”

“Tom,” she says.

“Why couldn’t it have been someone else, Jane?” he asks, and then, in almost complete contradiction to that: “I think I must deserve it. I must deserve to be alone.”

. . .

Posted by on Mar 29, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

Jane sighs.

“We’re probably going to get captured by Venusians,” she says.

“Fine,” he says.

“Remember the Doom Team motto,” she says.

“Fine!” Tom says.

And after a while, he turns the astounding Duke of Wellington back for home.

Posted by on Mar 29, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

Rock

– 10 –

Posted by on Mar 31, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

Time passes.

The space princess assassin Maria Souvante moves in to take care of Amelia’s abandoned children.

“It’s not that I need the money,” she informs them. “I’ve just always thought I’d be a dab hand as a nanny.”

“Who even hired you?” Jane asks.

Maria waves a hand airily.

. . .

Posted by on Apr 1, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

“You do understand that uncle Bertram took all our money and ran away to an uncharted island, right?” says Tom.

Maria nods. “It’s why I’m here,” she says.

“Pardon?”

“We’re playing a deadly game of cat and mouse,” Maria says. “But right now, he’s it. So where better to stay than the last place he’d ever visit?”

“Whatever,” says Tom. “Just, you’d better not be joking about that dab hand thing!”

“She’s not that bad,” says Jane, sizing her up.

. . .

Posted by on Apr 1, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

Maria wanders the house.

She pores over Amelia’s notes. She teaches the children glad songs of space. Once, when a lizard-alligator bursts in from the sewers, she subdues it and makes the children boots.

“I can’t help feeling like I’m betraying my cold-blooded kindred somehow,” says Tom, wiggling his toes and experimentally stomping around the house in his new boots. He isn’t saying it, but they’re extremely comfortable.

“Children, children,” says Maria. “You’re all animalistic Earth-beasts when seen from space.”

Tom grins at her. The sentiment appeals to him.

“Mine are shinier,” he teases Jane and Linus.

Linus sticks his tongue out at Tom. Jane can’t seem to get her feet in. Edmund shrugs and the black dog pants.

. . .

Posted by on Apr 2, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

Days pass.

. . .

Posted by on Apr 4, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

Weeks pass.

. . .

Posted by on Apr 5, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

A letter arrives. Jane opens the mailbox. She takes out the letter. She reads it. She reads it again. She reads it a third time.

Then she folds it back up and she tucks it into her pocket.

In the back yard of the house on Doom Lane there is a great tree. In that tree there is a tree-house. Before that tree-house there is a sign. It is carved into the wood, richly and carefully made, with painted red letters against burnt-black wood:

“Tom’s Secret Treehouse — Invisible to Girls!”

Jane chews on her lip for a while. Then she shrugs. She climbs up the ladder. She joins the rest of the Doom Team.

Tom is dumbstruck.

“Jane,” Tom says. “How — what —”

“I used my sense of smell and hearing to deduce its location,” Jane proposes.

“. . . I guess you can come in, then,” Tom admits.

“It’s a good thing, too,” Jane says. “I have an important letter — from Uncle Bertram!”

Tom sees the letter. He grabs for it. Jane grabs it first and holds it against her chest.

“It is addressed to me,” Jane says.

“But how?”

Jane displays it with a flourish. “Using letters!”

“. . . I think you meant to say, ‘but why?’” Linus, who will be Mr. Enemy, suggests.

. . .

Posted by on Apr 5, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

“That is in fact what I meant to ask,” concedes Tom.

“It is not just an ordinary letter,” says Jane. “It is a confession!”

“What could Bertram possibly have left to confess?” Edmund asks.

“Apparently,” says Jane, “Maria, our lovable space princess assassin nanny, is under orders to murder us all if Bertram has not forwarded a complete payment to certain interests by —”

She checks her watch.

“. . . Thirty-seven seconds ago.”

Linus reaches over to Mouser, who had treed himself several hours ago and accordingly become an impromptu part of the meeting of the Doom Team. He picks up the cat. He puts the cat on his lap. He strokes it.

“Oh, Mouser,” whispers Linus. “Place not your trust in humanity. It will betray you every time.”

“It explains further,” didacts Jane, “that originally he bankrupted us because he didn’t want them to kill —”

She looks apologetic.

“Well, three of us,” she says, and Linus’ lips tighten. “But then he decided that he’d really rather spend the money on fun times and fast women — I think he must mean cars — but he had pangs of guilt anyway. So he had to write this letter explaining how it was all our fault.”

“Really,” says Edmund Gulley.

“Truly,” answers Jane.

. . .

Posted by on Apr 6, 2013 in Stomping the World Round: Chapter 4 | 0 comments

“Apparently, we have brought this on ourselves by being unlovable scamps who won’t even steal priceless paintings from the future in order to help our half-metallic uncle pay his debts,” Jane explains.

Tom frowns.

“It was against Doom Team policy,” he says.

“I’m not complaining!” says Jane.

Tom makes a face.

“I’m really not,” Jane confirms.

“It wouldn’t matter,” says Linus gloomily. “You know he’d have just killed us off to get rid of the witnesses. Or stranded us in time.”