The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next 3)

He did not look at me again. He just walked towards the cupboard with the broken jars and slowly closed the door, his hands melting into glands as he touched the raw power of the vyrus. I ran outside, casting off the now useless hat and attempting to clip on the chin strap of Snell's. It wasn't easy. I caught my foot on a piece of half-buried masonry and fell headlong – to land within three paces of two large cloven hoofs.

I looked up. The minotaur was semi-crouched on his muscular haunches, ready to jump. His bull's head was large and sat heavily on his body – what neck he had was hidden beneath taut muscle. Within his mouth two rows of fine pointed teeth were shiny with saliva, and his sharpened horns pointed forward, ready to attack. Five years eating nothing but yogurt. You might as well feed a tiger on custard creams.

'Nice minotaur,' I said soothingly, slowly reaching for my automatic which had fallen on the grass beside me, 'good minotaur.'

He took a step closer, his hoofs making deep impressions in the grass. He stared at me and breathed out heavily through his nostrils, blowing tendrils of mucus into the air. He took another step, his deep-set yellow eyes staring into mine with an expression of loathing. My hand closed around the butt of my automatic as the minotaur bent closer and put out a large clawed hand. I moved the gun slowly back towards me as the minotaur reached down and … picked up Snell's hat. He turned it over in his claws and licked the brim with a tongue the size of my forearm. I had seen enough. I levelled my automatic

and pulled the trigger at the same time as the minotaur's hand caught in the toggle and activated the Eject-O-Hat. The mythological man-beast vanished with a loud detonation as my gun went off, the shot whistling harmlessly through the air.

I breathed a sigh of relief but quickly rolled aside because, with a loud whooshing noise, a packing case fell from the heavens and landed with a crash right where I had lain. The case had 'Property of Jurisfiction' stencilled on it and had split open to reveal … dictionaries.

Another case landed close by, then a third and a fourth. Before I had time to even begin to figure out what was happening, Bradshaw had reappeared.

'Why didn't you jump, you little fool?'

'My hat failed!'

'And Snell?'

'Inside.'

Bradshaw pulled on his MV mask and rushed off into the building as I took refuge from the packing cases of dictionaries which were falling with increased rapidity. Harris Tweed appeared and barked orders at the small army of Mrs Danvers that had materialised with him. They were all wearing identical black dresses high-buttoned to the collar, which only served to make their pale skin seem even whiter, their hollow eyes more sinister. They moved slowly, but purposefully, and began to stack, one by one, the dictionaries against the castle keep.

'Where's the minotaur?' asked Havisham, who suddenly appeared close by.

I told her he had ejected with Snell's fedora and she vanished without another word.

Bradshaw reappeared from the keep, dragging Snell behind him. The rubber on Akrid's MV mask had turned to blubber, his suit to soot. Bradshaw removed him from Sword of the Zenobians to the Jurisfiction sickbay just as Miss Havisham returned. We watched together as the stacked dictionaries rose around the remains of Perkins' laboratory, twenty foot thick at the base, rising to a dome like a sugarloaf over the castle keep. It might have taken a long time but there were many Mrs Danvers, they were highly organised, and they had an inexhaustible supply of dictionaries.

'Find the minotaur?' I asked Havisham.

'Long gone,' she replied. 'There will be hell to pay about this, I assure you!'

When our carrots had returned to being crunchy vegetables, and the last vestiges of parrotness had been removed, Havisham and I pulled off our vyrus masks and tossed them in a heap – the dictionary filters were almost worn out.

'What happens now?' I asked.

'It is torched,' replied Tweed, who was close by. 'It is the only way to destroy the vyrus.'

'What about the evidence?' I asked.

'Evidence?' echoed Tweed. 'Evidence of what?'

'Perkins,' I replied. 'We don't know the full details of his death.'

'I think we can safely say he was killed and eaten by the minotaur,' said Tweed pointedly. 'It's too dangerous to go back in, even if we wanted to. I'd rather torch this now than risk spreading the vyrus and having to demolish the whole book and everything in it – do you know how many creatures live in here?'

He lit a flare.

'You'd better stand clear.'

The DanverClones were leaving now, vanishing with a faint pop, back to wherever they had been pulled from. Bradshaw and I withdrew as Tweed threw the flare on the pile of dictionaries. They burst into flames and were soon so hot that we had to withdraw to the gatehouse, the black smoke that billowed into the sky taking with it the remnants of the vyrus – and the evidence of Perkins' murder. Because I was sure it was murder. When we walked into the vault I had noticed that the key was missing from its hook. Someone had let the minotaur out.

18

Snell Rest in Peece and Lucy Deane

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