The London Pride by Charlie Fletcher

Author:Charlie Fletcher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Children's eBooks, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Children's Books, Fantasy & Magic, Science Fiction, Fantasy & Scary Stories
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
Published: 2015-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

The dragons falling through the skylight was the mulligan of mulligans and Jo grabbed it without thinking.

She spun and sprinted for the door, feet kicking spurts of rain-soaked gravel as she ran.

She leapt over the gaping skylight and caught a glimpse of the two dragons tangled together at the foot of a long and narrow light well. It hadn’t given them quite enough space to unfold their wings, but just enough to get thoroughly snarled up with each other. She landed on the other side with a sharp pain in her knee that made her stumble and gasp.

Stumbling saved her because as she bent over, something gold buzzed over her head so close that she felt the whirr of its angry wings on the exposed back of her neck. She looked back and saw, with horror, that it was one of the golden mosquitoes.

That wasn’t a real mulligan then.

Or if it was, it was the shortest one in history, more like a very dispiriting out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire-flavoured-mulligan instead.

The mosquito hummed into the rain and curved back on itself, returning to the attack.

Jo raced for the door, running badly lopsided now, the pain pounding through her knee with each step. She heard the approaching high-pitched whine behind her and spun, whiffling her cane through the raindrops, missing the mosquito entirely. It passed her, looped back up into the sky and came back for the kill.

‘Girl!’ shouted a voice from behind her. ‘Run to me!’

She snapped her head left.

Selene was hovering by the edge of the building, beckoning her.

Jo ran, hunched low, legs pounding, towards the open arms.

‘Keep running and jump!’ cried Selene, which confused Jo, but not nearly as much as the fact that as she heard the mosquito closing in on her again, Selene’s own dragonfly wings whirred and misted the raindrops as she flew straight at her.

‘Duck and then jump!’ she yelled as she overflew Jo, missing her entirely. Jo craned her neck backwards and saw the goddess of sleep bring her hands together in a mighty double swat that sandwiched the mosquito and splatted it in a satisfying shower of gold.

‘Jump!’ shouted Selene.

Jo caught the note of worry in her voice and realised she was still moving forwards, too close to the edge of the roof to stop, too powerless to make the leap across the chasm of the alley between her and the next-door building. Her legs became desperate and disjointed as despite all this her body tried to stop her, and then her foot caught the low wall and tried to brake her forward momentum—

It was too little too late, and all she did was send herself into a flailing cartwheel out beyond the end of the roof, tumbling down into the rain-filled gulf of air beyond.

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