Chimera Book Three , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - Phil Gomm

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

75 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Things are looking desperate for Kyp Finnegan, as his adventure in Chimera reaches its thrilling conclusion; Madame Chartreuse's collection of lost children is in the hands of a murderous mannequin and a cult of human-hating metamorphs want to recruit Kyp to their cause! Even his friends aren't certain Kyp can be trusted to get them home. As ominous prophecies foretell disaster and old enemies converge, a last fateful confrontation awaits Kyp at the Sanctuary of Saint Anthony...

Informations

Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	15 octobre 2014
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781784628130
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0000€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Chimera Book Three
Phil Gomm

Copyright © 2014 Phil Gomm
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador ®
Unit 9 Priory Business Park
Kibworth Beauchamp
Leicester LE8 0RX, UK
Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299
Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277
Email: books@troubador.co.uk
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1784628 130
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador ® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB
Contents

Cover

Last time in Chimera

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty
Acknowledgements

For Aaron, with whom it began.
For Georgia W, who liked it first and said so.
For Phill, who drew it.
For Jules, who never doubted.
For Lorraine, who inspired me.
For Dog, without whom I d be as lost as Kyp.
for Mum Bill, for pretty much everything else.

***

Cover art by Phill Hosking
Find more of Phill s work at:
http://www.phillhosking.co.uk
Last time in Chimera

The zygopter gained on the airship.
‘What about the Panoply?’ worried Sprat. ‘What if you miss?’
‘Relax,’ said Brawn, a contraption comprising a clock-face, magnifying glass and a dartboard unfolding from the zygopter’s control panel. ‘Once I’ve got those thieving parasites in my sights, they’ll be falling from the sky like -.’
Bang!
The zygopter shook. Kyp and the others were thrown to the cabin floor. There was a squawking sound. A heron plummeted past the window in a spiral of smoke and coloured sparks.
‘What was that?’ cried Simula, hugging Joe to her body like a shield.
‘They’re firing on us,’ said Brawn.
Flying alongside them was large cast-iron bathtub suspended from a complex configuration of whirring ceiling fans. The bathtub was occupied by two metamorphs, a tall long-necked creature with a shock of green hair that might once have been a plastic palm-tree, and a knitted rabbit with an eye-patch. The former houseplant was at the controls of the flying bathtub, while the rabbit was stuffing an ignited firework into a length of guttering.
‘Evasive manoeuvres!’ shouted Brawn, as the rabbit shouldered the guttering. Brawn sent the zygopter into a nose-dive, but not before the rabbit’s missile picked off another heron in a flash of magnesium.
‘Hold onto something,’ said Brawn, as the zygopter went into a tailspin and clipped one of the city’s walkways. Grunting with effort, he got the zygopter back under control, the remaining herons squawking in raucous complaint. Brawn now sent the zygopter soaring upwards out of the smog, its sudden reappearance so surprising the two metamorphs in the flying bathtub they had no time to dodge the cruelly barbed harpoon Brawn let loose.
‘One down,’ Brawn said triumphantly.
The speaker in the cockpit crackled into life.
‘Brawn? Brawn? Can you hear me?’
Kyp froze. The Bean twins drew together protectively.
‘I’m here, your Greenness!’
‘Where are you? What’s happening? Are you still on board?’
‘I’m in the zygopter over Virid. We had to abandon ship. There was an explosion.’
‘Explosion?’
‘The Green Oubliette sank.’
‘No! My precious Panoply!’
‘The Panoply were not on board, your Greenness.’
‘ Not on aboard?’
‘ The mannequins have the Panoply, your Greenness. They’ve taken the airship, your Greenness, but it’s under attack.’
‘Under attack? By whom?’
‘Poachers, your Greenness. I’ve just shot one of their number down in flames.’
‘No, you fool! My collection, Brawn, no harm must come to it! Break off your pursuit and return to the chateau this instant!’
‘What about the Panoply, your Greenness? Nanny Golem is getting away.’
‘Let me worry about Nanny Golem. We’re at war, Brawn. My own agents have been plotting against me with the Crimson Cleave. You’re the only one I trust. I need you to organise what forces we have in preparation to invade Rebus. Hurry, and be on your guard for spies and traitors. We’re on our own.’
‘Good news, your Greenness. The boy and the knight survived. They’re with me now.’
There was a long, drawn out pause. The speaker hissed. Kyp felt his mouth go dry.
‘Kyp Finnegan and Sir Regulus Ferric are traitors, enemies of the Triumvirate! I want them dead!’
Brawn turned his big square head to look into the cabin, examining Kyp unblinkingly with his small black eyes.
Simula pushed her way past him to be closer to the hatch.
‘Help me!’ she said. ‘I’m their hostage!’
‘Why you –.’ said Kyp.
‘Your kind betrayed my mistress,’ said Brawn.
‘Not me. Madame Chartreuse trusts me. Why else would she have given me this?’
Simula produced the Clavis. She held it up to the hatch so Brawn could see it.
‘No, Simula!’ warned Kyp, but it was too late. Brawn reached through the hatch and snatched it out of her hand. He slammed the hatch shut.
A flurry of feathers flashed past the window, followed by a rattle of chains. The zygopter dropped and began to shake.
‘The herons,’ said Sir Regulus. ‘He’s released them.’
There was a loud whooshing sound and then the zygopter began to spin uncontrollably. Outside the window, Brawn’s polka-dot parachute opened out like a flower and was whipped away by the wind.
‘He left us,’ said Jamie.
For a moment, no one said anything.
More seconds passed with just the roar of the wind and the whine of the zygopter’s descent to convey the awful truth of their predicament.
‘ Somebody do something! ’ screamed Simula, but there was nothing anyone could do. The world blurred, and in the last few chaotic seconds before the zygopter crashed and everything became noise and heat and darkness, Kyp felt a hand find his own, and he saw that it was Sprat’s.
Chapter One

Kyp was sitting in the audience at Fatty Barnstorm’s Circus.
The striped tent was full of excited boys and girls, and mums and dads holding hands. The air was delicious with the smell of hotdogs and toffee apples. Kyp didn’t think he’d ever been happier.
The crowd gasped as Pinstripe leapt through a hoop of fire. The next moment, everyone was laughing as the Kickabout Clowns tumbled out of their collapsing car.
Drums rolled.
High above Kyp’s head, Petula Pellet prepared to astonish the crowd by diving headfirst into a bucket of water.
‘On your own tonight?’ Fatty Barnstorm asked Kyp, who was startled to find himself in the middle of the circus ring with no idea how he got there.
‘I came by myself,’ said Kyp.
‘Are you sure?’
The short, round man in the jodhpurs and gold-trimmed jacket examined Kyp with interest. His fingers stroked the badger-coloured droop of his enormous moustache.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, as Pinstripe loped towards them to sit at Kyp’s side. ‘He won’t harm you.’
‘What does he want?’
‘He can smell it on you. He knows where you’ve been.’
‘Where did everyone go?’ asked Kyp, seeing rows of empty seats.
‘You must have made them leave.’
‘Was it something I said?’
‘Something you didn’t say.’
The ringmaster took a watch from his pocket; only it wasn’t a watch suddenly, it was an old silver locket.
Fatty opened the locket and sighed.
‘You have to go now. You’re running out of time.’
‘That isn’t a watch.’
‘Sure it is. It has hands. It has faces. It’s keeping time.’
Fatty snapped the locket shut.
Kyp held out his hand.
‘Does it belong to you, Kyp?’
‘No.’
‘Then to whom does it belong?’
Kyp hesitated. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Then it can’t be time for you to have it back.’
‘You don’t understand,’ protested Kyp. ‘It’s priceless.’
‘Yes,’ said Fatty, ‘and no. You’ll understand the difference sooner or later.’
As Kyp watched, the locket transformed into a conker on a red shoelace, and then into an ornate brass key.
‘Why does it keep changing?’
‘Everything changes, Kyp. Can you feel it yet?’
‘Feel what?’
‘You’ll see.’
Kyp looked at Fatty Barnstorm quizzically.
‘Why are you even here?’ he asked.
‘Because one day soon you’re going to need me.’

*
‘Sir Regulus?’
‘Sprat? Is that you? Are you okay?’
‘I think so. Everything happened so fast.’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘I’m all right. A bit shaken, but I’m all right.’
‘And the others?’
‘Over here! We’re over here!’
‘Jamie?’
‘It’s Joe, actually, but, yeah, we’re both all right.’
‘I’m all right too, thanks for asking.’
‘Simula? Is that you?’
‘Not all of me.’
‘Where’s Kyp? He was beside me when we crashed. I was holding his hand.’
‘Jamie? Joe? Is Kyp with you?’
‘No. We thought he must be with you, we thought –.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Jamie? What’s wrong? What is it?
‘Over there. A body.’
‘Is it mine?’
‘It’s Kyp.’

*
Kyp, who was standing before the entrance to the Thrill-A-Minute Fairground, scratched his head. Seconds earlier he’d been talking with Fatty Barnstorm. Now he had the prickly stink of chip vinegar in his nos