Project: Wolf World Read online

  Contents

  Tuesday 0944 hours: Private Jet, 15,000 Feet

  Wednesday 1728 hours: 10 Downing Street, London, UK

  Parliament Square, London

  Wednesday 1859 hours: MP1 Laboratories, London, UK

  Thursday 1740 hours: MP1 Private Yacht, Tyrrhenian Sea

  Thursday 2023 hours: Naples, Italy

  Thursday 2141 hours: 80 Via Francesco Cilea, Naples, Italy

  Time Unknown: Aeroplane Cargo Hold, Location Unknown

  Time Unknown: A Cave, Location Unknown

  Time Unknown: Location Unknown

  Friday 1735 hours: Wolf’s Lair, Below the Sea

  Friday 1804 hours: Wolf’s Lair, Below the Sea

  Friday 1837 hours: Wolf’s Lair, Below the Sea

  Friday 1954 hours: Nuclear Submarine, Irish Sea

  For Dad and Barbs

  MP1 Personnel

  Agent Fangs Enigma

  World’s greatest vampire spy

  Agent Puppy Brown

  Wily werewolf and Fangs’s super sidekick

  Phlem

  Head of MP1

  Miss Bile

  Phlem’s personal secretary

  Professor Hubert Cubit, aka Cube

  Head of MP1’s technical division

  Tuesday 0944 hours: Private Jet, 15,000 Feet

  Secret agent and werewolf Puppy Brown approached the aeroplane’s only passenger, a golem by the name of Clang. “Can I take that bag for you, sir?” she asked. “You’ll be more comfortable with it in the overhead locker.”

  The passenger clutched his canvas rucksack to his chest and shook his head. Puppy sighed. Still, on the plus side, Clang hadn’t seen through her air-hostess disguise.

  She returned to the cockpit and slumped into the co-pilot’s seat. Next to her, flying the specially chartered plane, was a vampire – Fangs Enigma. He too was a secret agent. They both worked for MP1, an organization sworn to protect the world from criminal monsterminds.

  “Any luck?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Puppy replied. “He’s not going to let go of that bag for anything.”

  “We’ll see about that…” Fangs said, adjusting the settings on the control panel. Alarms began to sound as the plane dived sharply.

  The curtain separating the cockpit from the cabin was flung open. “What’s going on?” demanded Clang, his terracotta-coloured eyes wide with terror. He was still clinging onto his precious rucksack.

  “We’ve lost both engines!” Fangs cried. “Please abandon all personal belongings and collect your parachute from under your seat.”

  The golem screamed and fled back into the jet’s cramped cabin – taking the rucksack with him.

  “It was worth a try,” said Fangs with a shrug. “Take the controls, Puppy. I’m going to show Clang the error of his ways.” With that he raced through the curtain and disappeared.

  Puppy switched to the pilot’s seat. The ground was rushing up to meet her and the needle on the altimeter was spinning like the blade of a fan. She tugged at the control stick as hard as she could and managed to pull the nose of the plane up just before it slammed into the dense forest below. The jet skimmed the tops of the trees, shearing off a handful of high branches and giving a pair of hibernating squirrels an early wake-up call they would never forget. Then – slowly – the plane began to climb again.

  1,000 feet … 3,000 feet … 6,000 feet…

  In the cabin, Fangs watched Clang desperately trying to get into his parachute. The time for disguises and pretence was over.

  “My name is Fangs Enigma,” said Fangs. “I’m an MP1 agent. Now, hand over the rucksack.”

  Clang gripped the bag tighter than ever. “I can’t,” he croaked. “You don’t know what my boss will do to me if I give it to you.”

  Fangs sneered. “You don’t know what I’ll do to you if you don’t.” The vampire rushed at him and the pair fell against the door, ripping it off its hinges. And then they were out of the plane and tumbling towards the ground.

  Clang was still struggling with the parachute as Fangs lunged for him, streamlining his body so that he could catch up with the clay henchman.

  The collision caused the hollow golem to ring like a bell: CLANG!

  “Well, at least we know where you got your name from,” said Fangs as he pulled the straps of the parachute over his shoulders.

  Clang kicked his legs in the air, spinning himself away from Fangs. The vampire grabbed his cape. If he could press the button hidden in the lining, the cape would stiffen and he’d be able to fly after the hollow henchmen and catch him.

  But Fangs wasn’t wearing his cape. He was in his pilot’s disguise – and the ground was approaching fast. Clang had got away.

  Cursing under his breath, Fangs pulled the ripcord on his parachute … and the sky above him was filled with dozens of pairs of underpants.

  Fangs stared in horror at the colourful boxer shorts. He hadn’t grabbed the parachute at all – he’d taken Clang’s rucksack! As pleased as he was to have finally retrieved the bag from his target, he knew his delight would be rather short-lived if he were to hit the ground at over 100 miles per hour. He heard a WHOOMPH! and looked down to see that Clang had opened the parachute.

  Fangs tapped one of his two long front teeth with his tongue. It turned blue. “I’m going to need a lift,” he said.

  Puppy’s voice replied via Fangs’s other tooth. “Already on my way, boss!”

  The plane swooped beneath Fangs, scooping him back through the door and into the cabin. As the plane levelled out, Fangs staggered into the cockpit and fell, exhausted, into the empty seat.

  Puppy eyed the rucksack in his hands. “You caught up with Clang, then?”

  Fangs pulled the one remaining pair of underpants from the bag. “Yep, but it was a brief encounter.”

  Wednesday 1728 hours: 10 Downing Street, London, UK

  Prime Minister Sir Hugh Jands held the pair of underpants up to the light. “What are these?” he asked.

  Fangs Enigma, sitting with me at the opposite side of the desk, took a sip of his drink. “Is that a trick question, sir?”

  Sir Hugh’s moustache quivered. “No, it is not a trick question, Agent Enigma,” he growled. “Our intelligence led us to believe that Clang was carrying something that could be a potential threat to this nation, if not the world – and you return with underpants.”

  “Then I suspect your intelligence was wrong, sir,” said Fangs.

  “We ARE the intelligence, Agent Enigma!” an angry voice gurgled. My laptop was sitting open on the prime minister’s desk and the face of Phlem – a swamp monster and the head of MP1 – glared at us from the screen. “We were the ones who sent you to find out what Clang was transporting. Are you suggesting I was incorrect to do that?”

  “Not at all, sir,” I said quickly. “But it’s true – all Clang had with him were pants.”

  “And not just one pair,” Fangs pointed out. “There were dozens of them.”

  Sir Hugh leaned across his desk. “And where are the rest of these underpants now?”

  “They floated away in the wind, sir,” said Fangs.

  “And the suspect?”

  “I’m afraid he floated away as well,” I said. “He had a parachute.”

  “We have a search team combing the area for him as we speak, Sir Hugh,” said Phlem from the computer.

  The prime minister sat back in his chair again. He stared at the pants once more. “I just don’t understand what’s so terrible about these things.”

  “Well, they’re not very flattering, sir,” said Fangs.

  “Don’t play games, Agent Enigma,” sneered Sir Hugh. “You know what I think? I think you’re trying to cover up for the fact that you
got the wrong bag. I think you snatched this chap’s laundry by mistake, and you’re too ashamed to admit it.”

  “Fangs definitely got the right bag, sir,” I said. “Clang didn’t let it out of his grasp from the moment he boarded the plane.”

  “Well, something has gone awry,” said Sir Hugh, “as these pants clearly aren’t a danger to our country. What do you have to say for yourself, Enigma?”

  Fangs calmly took another sip of his drink. “You don’t happen to have any blood to go with this milk, do you? It’s rather bland without it.”

  Sir Hugh’s face flushed purple. “I am the prime minister of Great Britain, Agent Enigma. Do you really think I’m likely to have a bottle of blood in my office?”

  “On the contrary, sir,” said Fangs. “I’d say you would be one of the few people who could demand a regular supply of blood. Your position of authority must stand for something.”

  “GET OUT!” Sir Hugh roared, hurling the pants at Fangs. “GET OUT RIGHT NOW!”

  He wasn’t the only one to lose his temper. “Enigma! Brown!” Phlem shouted. “My office – twenty minutes!” The screen went dead as the video link was severed. I grabbed my laptop and scurried out of the room behind Fangs.

  “The man is a fool!” Fangs said as we stepped out into the afternoon sunshine. The door to 10 Downing Street slammed shut behind us. “It’s not my fault Clang didn’t have anything more dangerous than underpants with him. How would Sir Hugh like it if we’d turned up with a bomb? I bet I’d get blood in my drink if I did that.”

  We made our way through the security gates that separated Downing Street from the rest of London and then turned in the direction of Parliament Square. It was early evening and all around us people were either on their way home from work or sightseeing. It was a very warm evening – the latest in what had been a heatwave in the UK. Ice-cream sales had gone through the roof, and one particular company, Furry Ices, was doing especially well. One of their vans was parked up outside Westminster Abbey. Fangs wanted to stop and get an ice cream, but the queue was round the block and Phlem would be angry if we kept him waiting any longer.

  Once upon a time, people might have been a little freaked out to find a vampire or a werewolf in the street, but everything has changed since the supernatural equality laws were passed. Nowadays, spotting a skeleton or a witch in public is nothing to be surprised about, and there are even a couple of zombies in Sir Hugh Jands’s government. The world has come a long way from the days of people attacking their spooky neighbours with pitchforks and flaming torches.

  Some things haven’t changed, however. Just like the human world, the supernatural one has its fair share of villains, and it’s the job of Monster Protection, 1st Unit, aka MP1, to track them down and catch them.

  “I don’t get it,” I admitted, dodging around a group of goblin tourists to catch up with Fangs. “If all Clang had with him was his laundry, why did he hang onto the bag so tightly?”

  Before Fangs could reply, a young blonde woman approached us. She was with a huge troll who was clutching a map in his thick fingers. “Could you tell me the way to Trafalgar Square?” she asked, taking a big lick of the ice cream in her hand.

  I pointed back down the street. “It’s just a few minutes in that direction. Go past Downing Street, and you’ll see Nelson’s Column right ahead of you.”

  “That is very kind,” the woman said with a smile. Then she raised her face to the sky. “Thank you-oooooow!” she howled and walked off.

  I froze. The woman had howled at me. Was she being rude about me being a werewolf? There are still some humans around who don’t like sharing the planet with supernatural beings. This woman didn’t look like the type to ridicule me, though, especially as her boyfriend was a troll. I watched the pair disappear into the crowds, still poring over their map.

  “What was that all about?” asked Fangs.

  “I’ve no idea,” I said. “But we’d better get a move on. We don’t want to keep Phlem waiting to give us our telling-off.”

  Ahead of us, we could see the statue of Winston Churchill, which hid the secret entrance to the underground monorail that would take us directly to MP1 headquarters. Fangs strode purposely towards it.

  “Evening Standard!” a newspaper-seller called to us as we passed. “Interest rates at an all-time looooooooowwwwww!”

  Fangs spun round to stare at the man. “What did you just say?”

  The newspaper-seller lowered his face from the sky and looked at Fangs blankly. For a moment, the only sounds were the passing buses and the singsong melody of the ice-cream van.

  “Tell me what you just said,” ordered Fangs.

  “It’s the … er… It’s the headlines, guv. Interest rates are at an all-time low.”

  “But that’s not how you said it before.”

  Then another howl rose up – this one came from a businessman on the opposite side of the street.

  Parliament Square, London

  “Hoooooooowwwllll!”

  Then another – from the driver of a passing car.

  “Hoooowwwll!”

  And a third – from a young schoolboy.

  “Hooooowwwlll!”

  “Come on,” said Fangs. “We’d better get to HQ. Something strange is going on.”

  A short monorail ride later and we were sitting opposite Phlem in his office.

  “Look,” Fangs said, “before we discuss Clang’s underpants…”

  “Quiet,” Phlem said, his slimy fingers working the buttons of a TV remote control. “Take a look at this…”

  He switched on a news channel where the anchorman was already part way through a breaking story. “… first of many people in London mysteriously howling at the sky. And we can now go live to our correspondent, Barry Hutchison, in central London. Barry…”

  The picture changed to show a reporter standing outside the Houses of Parliament. “Thank you, Simon. Members of the public are indeed howling tonight but no one is quite sure why or howooooooooooowwwwwlll…”

  The camera stayed on the reporter for a second. His face was turned up to the sky. Then there was a burst of static and the picture vanished.

  “What could possibly be causing this?” said Fangs.

  The TV hissed again and a new face filled the screen.

  It was a werewolf!

  “I am causing this.” The creature grinned.

  Wednesday 1859 hours: MP1 Laboratories, London, UK

  “His name is Lucien Claw,” said Professor Hubert Cubit, the head of MP1’s technical division.

  Fangs and I stared up at a bank of screens mounted on the wall of his laboratory. Each one showed an image of the werewolf who had appeared on the TV in Phlem’s office. He wore a sharp black suit, and had piercing yellow eyes.

  “Show me his message again,” said Fangs.

  “Again? You’ve just watched it through twice.”

  “Just do it.”

  The professor shook his perfectly square head. Early on in life, he had realized that facts and information only ever come in square things. “Books, computers, filing cabinets – all square and all filled with knowledge,” he told me during my first week of training. “Tennis balls, potatoes and scoops of ice cream – all round and hardly any knowledge in them at all.”

  Determined that he would also be stuffed with information, the young Hubert built a tight-fitting wooden box to wear like a hat at all times, so changing the shape of his head as it grew, from a useless sphere to a fact-filled square.

  It is for this reason that Hubert is now known as “Cube”. He earns his living as MP1’s top brain box – literally. The rumour is that he still sleeps with his head in the frame, just in case the corners round out at night.

  “OK,” he said. “Here we go…”

  Claw’s face sprang to life on the TV screen.

  “I am causing this,” he said. “But I couldn’t possibly say why – not without letting the wolf out of the bag.” Claw began to laugh manically, his
sharp teeth glinting in the light. Then the clip ended.

  “How did he do it?” I asked. “That clip wasn’t broadcast on national TV – just to us. But how did he break through the MP1 firewall and play it in Phlem’s office?”

  “With help from you and Agent Enigma, I’m afraid,” Cube replied. He led us to a workbench, where Clang’s rucksack was connected by wires to a laptop.

  “The clue was in what Lucien Claw said about letting the wolf out of the bag,” Cube added. “The bag is indeed the culprit here or, rather, its zip is. One side of it is a video receiver, while the other accepts audio signals. Fasten them together, and they work in perfect harmony to beam their combined signal to the nearest television or computer screen. It’s extremely clever.”

  I sighed. “So we carried Claw’s transmitter right into the heart of MP1 HQ.”

  “I’m afraid so, Agent Brown,” said Cube. “And it only gets worse. A tiny wi-fi chip sewn into the base of the bag began to steal information from the MP1 computer database the moment you arrived.”

  “What kind of information?” I asked.

  “The address of every vampire clan leader in Europe.”

  Fangs snarled. “Clang was nothing but bait. We were supposed to get that rucksack from him and bring it back here. Claw wanted us to know he was behind all those people howling and he wanted those addresses. But why?”

  “I can help you find that out,” said Cube, putting on a pair of square-framed glasses. “By reversing the polarity in the two receivers, I should be able to pinpoint the exact location of Claw’s transmission.”

  “I don’t understand it, boss,” I said to Fangs while Cube worked. “We know how Claw was able to send his message – but it doesn’t explain why all those people started howling.”