alm down, Ned!”
“Calm down? How can I calm down?!” yelled Ned.
Just a couple of feet away, a nightmonger stood completely frozen in a block of hastily made ice. The ice had been made by Armstrong Senior. The junior of the two had, and not for the first time, come unstuck at the last minute while trying to use his Engine. The nightmonger’s claws had unfortunately found Terry Armstrong’s arm before he was able to entrap the Darkling in ice, but luckily it was only a small wound and he was bleeding only very slightly on to his shirt.
Ned and his dad were standing in an empty hangar that would normally house a pair of Chinook helicopters. For the last twelve hours, it had only housed the Armstrongs and whatever beast his dad could come up with to test his son’s skills.
Ned looked at the encased nightmonger. The Darkling’s eyes were turning this way and that, its face a picture of surprise and menace. It was almost amusing, the way his bitter bloodshot eyes darted back and forth. But only almost.
“It’s looking at us again, Dad. You sure the ice will hold?”
Ned could only watch enviously while his dad blinked, then raised his hand to let the Engine at his finger fire. Around the ice block the air shimmered and turned till a newly formed layer of frost almost doubled its thickness.
“That’ll keep him till George arrives with our lunch.”
Terry Armstrong was many things to many people. On the josser side of the Veil he was a kind, unassuming salesman with a soft spot for charity shop jumpers. Behind the Veil, his actions as a young Engineer had been a thing of legend. To Ned, he was all of those things but first and foremost he was his dad. The scissor-like claw of a nightmonger was famously sharp and irritating to the skin, but you’d never know it from the patient expression on his father’s face.
“Are you OK, Dad?”
“Never better.”
“Liar.”
His dad’s face creased into a smile. It was the same smile he had given him when Ned set the toaster on fire aged seven. The same smile he’d given him every time he’d opened a school report and his grades were a never-ending C. It was the same smile Ned knew he’d get for the rest of his days, if there were to be any, so long as Ned managed to regain his powers.
“How do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make me feel better.”
“It’s kind of my job. I won’t lie, yesterday’s band of gor-balins gave me a bit of a beating. But your ring almost fired then – it’s only a matter of time now.”
Ned remembered the hopeless puddle he’d made on the floor.
“I’m not going to beat the Darkening King with puddles.”
“No, you’re not, but it’s a start. That wyvern had you going, and I’m sure your wall would have stopped him if—”
“If it had been more than three inches high?”
At the thought of it, Ned began rocking back and forth on his aluminium stool, his eyes two sinkholes of tiredness and worry.
“Son, I know you think the world of her, we all do, but do you still think Lucy’s right?”
Lucy was sure that Ned’s powers would return if people he cared about were in danger. After all, his ring had sparked to save Lucy in the taiga, and again to save George in Amsterdam. Yet here and now, to save his dad – who he loved as much as anyone or anything in the world – nothing seemed to be working.
“I wish I knew, Dad. It worked to save Lucy and George, but I don’t understand why it’s not working now. I teleported into a giant blooming weapon of mass destruction just to get you and Mum out – well, to stop Barbarossa too, but mostly to save you and Mum. But every time you unleash a Darkling and it tries to rip your head off, my Engine just fizzles. Dad, we can’t win a war with fizzling, or puddles, or three-inch walls, and I can’t work the Heart Stone if I can’t use my powers!”
Terry Armstrong gave him that smile again, and again it melted Ned’s heart. “Then we’d better get cracking. Perhaps we need to up the ante a bit …”
He motioned to a bunch of grey-suits at the edge of the hangar. These men had been carefully selected amongst the BBB for their size. They wore specially altered riot gear, thick protective armour, reinforced helmets and each carried long, high-powered Tasers. It was said that their weapons could stop a charging bull elephant. Just as well then, because Terry Armstrong was about to make things noticeably more dangerous.
“Open up the big one.”
One of the agents scratched his helmet and looked to the others.
“The big one? You sure, sir?”
Ned’s dad looked to his son, then back to the agent.
“Not really,” he said, “but after you’ve opened it, I suggest you find yourselves somewhere safe to hide and stay there.”
A bead of sweat was beginning to form on his father’s temple.
“Dad, what’s the big one?”
“Benissimo wouldn’t tell me,” said his dad, “but I do know it’s big.”
“DAD?!”
Terry Armstrong smiled at his son and helped him off his chair.
“Let’s hope Lucy’s right, eh?”