he drunk?’ Heloise giggled.
He did seem sort of drunk, but not, Morrigan thought, in a remotely funny way. As he came closer, she noticed the line of thick white drool all around his muzzle, and the strange way he kept sniffing the air. Every now and then he lashed out at a letterbox or thumped erratically on the bonnet of a parked motorcar.
Morrigan felt sick for thinking it, but … he looked like a rabid unnimal.
She thought suddenly of Christmas Eve. Of Juvela De Flimsé, the leopardwun on the Wunderground. The way she’d prowled the length of the carriage, sniffing the air just like Brutilus was now, and how she’d lunged for Baby Dave with that vacant, vicious look in her eyes.
‘We have to get out of here,’ she whispered. ‘He’s going to attack us.’
‘What?’ said Heloise, snorting. ‘No, he’s not. He might be drunk, but he’s still a teacher.’
At that moment, as if to prove Morrigan’s point, a stray cat crossed the bearwun’s path and he batted it violently out of his way, letting out a thunderous roar. The cat zoomed off and disappeared up a tree, yowling.
Heloise gasped and covered her mouth.
Morrigan looked for a way to get out of his path, perhaps some shadows that would cloak them while they slipped down a side street, but it was no good. This was a Wunderground station, so of course the whole place was lit up like a night match in the Trollosseum. They were standing in the only shadow around.
‘We need to cause a distraction,’ she said.
Heloise was breathing heavily, having suddenly realised the gravity of their situation. ‘And then what?’
‘We just need to make him look somewhere else so we can make a run for it.’
‘Easy.’ Heloise aimed one of her stars at a letterbox diagonally across the road, and it hit its target with a loud ping. The noise distracted Brutilus long enough for them to sprint fifty or so metres away from the station, stopping to duck down behind an overflowing rubbish bin.
‘What next?’ Heloise whispered, having apparently decided Morrigan was in charge, despite being three years older.
‘I … I don’t know, just let me think.’
Morrigan had hoped the bearwun would move towards the sound, but he’d already spotted the still-smouldering street sign where she and Heloise had been standing moments earlier. He gazed at it, transfixed, and sniffed the air. His nose quivered. His face registered confusion, then anger, and he let loose a furious roar that filled the whole street.
The noise was so close, so loud and so sudden that it made both Morrigan and Heloise jump again. Whether one of them knocked it, or the vibrations caused it to move, the lid began to slide off the bin, clattering loudly to the ground.
Brutilus turned at the sound, a low growl reverberating from deep in his chest. Morrigan’s mouth was dry. She could feel the ancient, primal fear of a hunted unnimal coiling in her stomach.
He sniffed the air again. Then he stood up on his hind legs, bellowing, and – Morrigan was absolutely certain – his eyes flashed a bright, glowing green.
Tossing his enormous head back and forth wildly, as if he had some creature in his jaws and was trying to snap its neck, Brutilus ran straight at Morrigan and Heloise, bounding down the street on all fours.
‘RUN!’ said Morrigan.
They ran, right down the centre of the empty road. Morrigan’s chest burned with the effort of it and her ears filled with the clash of their boots on the cobblestones and it wasn’t until she heard her name being cried out some ways back that she realised Heloise was no longer running beside her.
She turned around and her eyes landed on the green-haired girl, crumpled on the ground, while the enormous bearwun barrelled towards her. She must have fallen and hurt herself, or else she was frozen with fear.
Brutilus was almost upon her. Morrigan hummed a few notes and felt her fingers start to tingle with gathering Wunder, trying to come up with a plan, but panicking – Get up, Heloise, she thought desperately. Move!
But improbably, unbelievably, Brutilus ran straight past the girl on the ground, as if he didn’t even see her. He was coming for Morrigan.
So Morrigan did the only thing she could think of. She turned and kept running, and hoped that Heloise would be all right, that maybe she would even be able to go for help.
She ran as fast and as far as possible, for streets