City of Magic: The Complete Series by Helen Harper (book club recommendations TXT) 📕

last thing I wanted was to be flattened. When the others saw what I was doing, they finally decided to follow suit.

I scanned the street, judging its breadth and depth with a practised eye. It should be okay. ‘Stay where you are,’ I said, ‘and don’t do anything stupid.’

The sound of steady thuds reached my ears, growing louder and louder by the second. One of the more vocal of the guards was next to me, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. His hazmat visor was steaming up and I could only just make out his eyes darting wildly from side to side. He really was scared. He knelt down and placed his hand flat on the ground; I knew that he could feel the small tremors, even through his tightly bound hazmat gloves.

‘What is it?’ Fab asked, considerably calmer than his men. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Shhh,’ I said. ‘It’s almost here.’

‘What?’ His voice rose with little more than piqued curiosity. ‘What’s almost here?’

I didn’t get the chance to answer him. From the crossroads ahead, and preceded only by its own shadow, a massive pink trunk appeared. No-one moved. The crouching guy looked too scared to twitch.

‘It won’t attack us,’ I told them. ‘It doesn’t care about us. But if we get in its way, it will trample us down.’

‘But what…’ Fab swallowed his words.

The pink trunk was followed by a pink head with large flapping ears. The mammoth, if that’s what it was, was so large these days that those ears scraped the facades of the buildings on either side. It was taller than the fully grown shadow beasts and I had no doubt that it could move a lot faster if it wanted to. Instead, it always clumped along at ponderous speeds, as if it were contemplating the meaning of life while out for a wander rather than walking with a specific destination in mind. Its gentle brown eyes, with curling eyelashes that Coco Chanel would probably have killed for, blinked slowly.

Inside my backpack, Lucy squeaked. ‘Stay down,’ I whispered to her. ‘This isn’t for you.’

From the corner of my eye, I spotted the taller bodyguards reach into their backpacks with clumsy, gloved hands. They pulled out handguns. So much for leaving all of their weapons at the wall.

‘They won’t work,’ I said calmly. ‘Your guns didn’t work on Lucy and they won’t work on that beast either. In fact, all that will happen is the noise of the shooting will enrage it and make it charge. You’ll end up very squished. And very dead.’

‘I thought you said that you’d had very few deaths,’ Fab whispered.

‘We have,’ I answered. ‘And that creature hasn’t caused any of them.’ I bared my teeth in a smile. ‘But we also respect the wildlife. It doesn’t look like you lot are doing the same.’

They stared at me, their eyes dark and shadowed from beneath their daft suits.

‘Hold back,’ Fab said to the others, still watching me. ‘For now.’

The huge animal swung round and veered towards us. It rounded the corner with surprising grace. I knew it had seen us; its eyes had flicked in our direction and its tail had begun to swing in response. Other than that, however, it didn’t acknowledge our presence. It lifted up its heavy feet, one after the other, and plodded past us.

Fab craned his neck upwards, his astonishment palpable. This close, it was impossible not to appreciate the size of the damn thing, not to mention how pink it truly was. It wasn’t a baby pink or a soft rosy hue; no, this creature was more of a lurid, coral colour. I supposed that when you were the size of a blimp, there was no point in concerning yourself with camouflage.

I allowed myself a moment of sadness as my bike was crushed into a mess of twisted metal under one heavy foot. It was a calculated loss – we had plenty more bicycles – but it was still a shame to lose this one.

None of the men moved until the creature was at least fifty meters past us.

‘I saw that on television,’ the man next to me breathed. ‘Or something like it. Back when the Plague was only just beginning.’

‘I saw that too but it wasn’t anywhere nearly as large as that. Look at that bike! There’s nothing left of it. If any of us were trampled…’ His voice trailed off, his expression a mixture of both wonder and fear.

‘How many of them are there?’ another one asked nervously, his eyes shifting around on the off chance that an entire herd of pink mammoth monsters was about to appear.

‘Oh,’ I said airily, ‘there’s only one. And yes, that’s the same one you saw on television. We call her Cuddles.’

Fab said, ‘It’s a miracle that the walls around the city are still standing. That thing could break down any of them in seconds if it wanted to.’

I smiled at him. ‘Yes, but want is the operative word, isn’t it? It doesn’t want to break down the walls because it doesn’t want to leave.’ What I didn’t add was that Cuddles preferred a diet of green leaves and we had those in abundance. He wasn’t going to go hungry, no matter how much the rest of us struggled. He’d never need to leave. ‘Come on. It’s safe now. We can continue on our way.’

Four of the five bodyguards glanced at their fifth companion. He, in turn, looked at Fab then he drew in a breath. I only just suppressed my grin. Wait for it.

‘Mr Barrett,’ he said stiffly, ‘given what we have already learned, and the fact that our own weapons don’t work, I must advise that we abandon this mission for now and re-group on the other side of the wall. We cannot keep you safe against these sorts of threats. We are not prepared.’

Fab shook his head. ‘That … elephant monster…’ he began.

‘Cuddles,’ I said helpfully.

He grimaced. ‘Cuddles,’ he amended awkwardly. ‘It didn’t try to hurt us. It