Volumes 5 and 6 - Blood Beast/Demon Apocalypse. Darren Shan

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СКАЧАТЬ too busy wrestling with lunk-heads,” Bill-E says sourly, but Loch lets the remark pass.

      “I’ve never searched for treasure,” Loch says. “How do you do it—with a metal detector?”

      “No,” Bill-E says. “We walk around with shovels looking for likely spots. Then we make trial holes. If nothing turns up, we fill in the holes and move on.”

      “Sounds amateurish,” Loch says dubiously.

      Bill-E laughs. “Like Grubitsch said, the searching is fun. You’d need proper, expensive equipment to go after it seriously. For us it’s always been a game.”

      “What about it?” Loch asks, casting an eye at me.

      “You want to go on a treasure hunt?” I groan, wishing I could just go back to bed for a few hours.

      “It’d beat sitting around here doing nothing,” Loch says.

      “But it’s raining,” I protest.

      “A light drizzle. It’ll clear soon. C’mon, it’s something different.”

      “Not for Bill-E and me.”

      “But it is for me,” Loch presses.

      “Why don’t you and Bill-E go by yourselves?” I suggest.

      “No way!” they both exclaim at the same time, then share a look and laugh, temporary (very temporary!) allies.

      “I’ll let him tag along if you come,” Bill-E says. “Otherwise I’ll go home. I still have some homework to finish.”

      “C’mon,” Loch huffs again. “Don’t be a bloody bore, Grubbs.”

      “OK,” I groan, rising reluctantly. “Give me a few mintues to change. Loch, you and Bill-E go get some shovels. Bill-E knows where to find them.”

      “Cool!” Loch grins, slapping Bill-E on the back. “You leave it to the Spleenster and me—we know what we’re doing.”

      “Just one thing,” Bill-E says stiffly. “On the very off chance that we find any treasure, it’s ours. You don’t have any rights to it, understand? I don’t want you going all Treasure of the Sierra Madre on us.”

      “Treasure of where?” Loch frowns.

      “It’s a black-and-white movie,” Bill-E explains as he leads Loch away. “I’ll fill you in on the plot while we’re fetching the shovels. It’s all about treasure hunters and the destructive nature of paranoid greed…”

      →The fresh air clears my head a bit, but after an hour of aimless walking and digging I’d still rather be in bed. Loch’s loving it though, digging wildly, accidentally hitting Bill-E with clods of earth every so often to break the monotony. Bill-E doesn’t mind too much. He’s just glad I’m out scouring the forest with him again, even if we do have an extra (unwanted) passenger in tow.

      “We’ve found a few bits and pieces over the years,” Bill-E explains as we give up on our third trial dig and refill the hole. “Old coins, scraps of clothes, half a knife.”

      “Anything worth money?” Loch asks.

      “Not really,” Bill-E says. “One of the coins would have been valuable if it had been in better condition, but it was very worn and part of it was missing. Dervish let me keep it.”

      “Why were they buried if they were worthless?” Loch asks.

      “They weren’t,” Bill-E says. “The level of the ground’s constantly changing. Things fall or are thrown away. Grass and weeds grow over them. They sink when the ground’s wet. New earth blows over them. In no time at all they’re half a metre underground… a metre… more. The world’s always burying cast-offs and stuff that’s been forgotten. Heck, even the giant Sphinx in Egypt was half-buried once and almost lost forever.”

      “Nonsense,” Loch snorts.

      “It’s true,” Bill-E says. “We did it in history. And there are loads of important places in Egypt today – burial chambers and the like – which are covered up. In some towns they know where they are, but people have built houses over them, so they can’t excavate.”

      “I never learnt any of that in history,” Loch says suspiciously.

      “Well,” Bill-E replies smugly, “maybe if you were in the upper set…”

      →Loch’s starting to tire of the wandering and digging. I’m glad. Apart from the fact that I’m weary and grumpy, it’s late afternoon and it won’t be much longer before the sun starts to set and an even fuller moon than last night’s rises over the earth like a plum dipped in cream. Maybe Dervish is back already. If so, I want to sit down with him and have a long talk about what’s going on in my life and what we need to do about it.

      “This studying,” Loch grumbles, studying his hand where he cut it on the last dig.

      “One more try,” Bill-E says. “We’ll quit after that.”

      “Why not now?” Loch says. “This is stupid. We’ll never find anything.”

      “It’s an old superstition of ours. When we decide we’ve had enough, we always dig one last hole. Right, Grubbs?”

      “Yeah,” I mutter. “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”

      “And look where it’s got you,” Loch snorts, but goes along with the plan, not wanting to be the one who quits first.

      Bill-E leads us further into the wild bushes of the forest, trying to pick a good spot for the final dig of the day. Briars catch on my trousers and jacket, and one scratches deep into my neck, drawing a few drops of blood and a loud curse. I’m about to call an end to the farce and demand we go home immediately, regardless of superstitions, when something about the landscape makes me pause.

      We’re in the middle of a thicket, lots of natural shrubs and bushes. It looks much the same as any other part of the forest to the untrained eye, but when you’ve spent a few years exploring a particular area, you see things differently. You get to know the various types of trees, flowers and weeds. You make mental pointers so you can find your way around easily and quickly. I’ve been here before, I’m sure of it, but I can’t remember when…

      The memory clicks into place. It was shortly before Bill-E turned into a werewolf, before Dervish told me about the Demonata and Lord Loss. Bill-E and I were on one of our treasure hunts. We’d started to dig around here when Bill-E spotted Dervish and went all mysterious. He made me hide, so Dervish didn’t see us, then we followed him. That was the day Bill-E hit me with his theory about werewolves. The day my destiny fell into place and I started on a collision course with Lord Loss and his vile familiars.

      “Let’s dig here.”

      “I’m not sure,” Bill-E frowns, studying the ground. “The earth looks hard.”

      “No,” I say, casting around. “There’s a soft patch somewhere, between a couple of stones. At least there used to be…”

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