hat’s it,” said Ned. “That’s the only way out, Lucy. We’re trapped.”
And as he said it, both Mo and Meanie started to break from Lucy’s hold. Whiskers was standing mournfully over a passed-out Great-uncle Faisal while Gorrn had slithered his way back to Ned, his great form bellowing and wobbling like a nervous jellyfish. Gorrn was frightened of few things, but metal did not feel teeth, at least not his teeth – that much the familiar knew.
“Dum-dum,” came Mo’s bass-bellied drawl. “We nots here for catchy, we’s here for crush an’ smush. No more jossy-boy, no more girlie-girl.”
The eyes of the Guardians turned red and the automatons paced towards Ned, gears whirring and sharpened claws at the ready. Defenceless, he backed up against the wall behind him, now desperately trying to fire his ring. He thought of metal, of fire and stone – anything that he could use. The air spat and crackled in front of him … and then just as quickly fizzled to nothing.
The clowns pushed their way to the front.
“Smush an’ crush, frik an’ frak,” grimaced Meanie, with Mo snarling beside him.
The clowns had just raised their clubs to strike when there was a rumbling from behind Ned, on the other side of the wall.
CRASH!
Something burst through the old brickwork like a furred bulldozer. Bricks were flung out in a violent spray to Ned’s side, striking the clowns hard.
“George!” Ned and Lucy shouted in unison.
“ROARGHH!” George bellowed, leaping into the centre of the room.
As the brick dust settled, George took in the situation – the Tinker and his uncle on the floor, Lucy and Ned backed against the broken wall. His eyes met Ned’s and for a moment they softened, before all semblance of Ned’s kind friend vanished.
Their great ape protector beat at his chest wildly, his nostrils snorting with rage, biceps bulging and back arched. To anyone else, the sight of the enraged beast would have turned them as white as sheets. But the Guardians weren’t anyone, and they had no skin to do the turning.
George was too angry to see how outnumbered he was, too lost in protective fury. As the Guardians moved closer, George pounced. In the scream of fist on metal, two of the Guardians were knocked sideways, only to regain their balance and strike back at the ape.
“GO, BOY! TAKE LUCY AND GET OUT OF HERE,” roared George.
But Ned couldn’t leave him. Two of the Guardians now held his great protector’s arms, and a third struck at his chest. George kicked hard and the Guardian was knocked back, but only for a moment, then it was on him again. Red eyes blazing, its arm shot out and clutched George’s throat violently. George kicked and roared as more of the metal monstrosities pinned down his arms and legs.
The clowns were regaining themselves too – bruised and battered as they were, their clubs were ready to swing.
“Ned!” gasped Lucy. “What do we do?”
Lucy’s control over her gifts had clearly grown, but against the Guardians and their metal minds she had no power.
And something in Ned’s mind snapped, just as it had in the taiga. Something close to anger, but more focused and controlled. And at the same moment, his ring fired, without him trying to make it, almost as though it was acting on its own. A blur of physical pain shot from his ring up his arm, to his head and back down again.
The room filled with static as every hair on each of the bodies there stood on end. What came next was a blast of finely focused energy, an unravelling of sorts. In less time than it took to breathe a lungful of air, the Guardians, every last one of them, came apart. The welding of bolts were undone, screws unwound themselves, and piece by meticulous piece the Guardians stopped being machines or robots, and became a sum of disbanded, floating parts. Countless components hung in the air – the separate glass lenses of their eyes, the housing to their skulls, the ribs of their chests, the wiring, the cogs, the pistons and fuel chambers – then all clattered to the floor in heaps.
The clowns, like their butcher master, did not like the “odds”, and were out through the hole that George had punched in the wall before Ned could refocus his eyes.
The first thing he saw when he did was that, to his relief, Whiskers had miraculously remained untouched by Ned’s disassembly.
The second thing he saw was that Great-uncle Faisal had not.