Darren Shan - The Lake Of Souls

I was getting a fix on the dragon when an idea struck me. Hurling the globe out on to the water in front of the approaching beast, I grabbed a nearby pebble, took careful aim, and sent it flying at the globe. It struck just as the dragon was nearing the globe, showering the creature's face with a seething funnel of water.

The dragon pulled out of its attack and arced away into the air, screeching its frustration. The females almost sneaked in while I was dealing with the male, but I spotted them just in time and scattered them with another blast. While the dragons regrouped overhead, I did a quick globe count eight remained, plus the vial.

I wanted to tell Harkat to hurry, but his face was knitted together fiercely as he bent over the net, whispering softly to the souls in the Lake, searching for the soul of the person he used to be. To disturb him would be to delay him.

The dragons attacked again, in the same formation as before, and once again I successfully repelled them, leaving myself with five lonely-looking globes. As I picked up three more, I considered aiming to kill after these three, I'd be down to my final pair but as I studied the dragons circling in the air, I was again struck by their awesome majesty. This was their world, not ours. We had no right to kill them. What if these were the only living dragons, and we wiped out an entire species just to save our own necks?

As the dragons attacked once more, I still wasn't sure what I intended to do with the explosive globes. Clearing my mind, I allowed my self-defence mechanism to kick in and make the choice for me. When I found my hands pitching the globes short of the dragons, scaring them off but not killing them, I nodded grimly. "So be it," I sighed, then called to Harkat, "I can't kill them. After the next attack, we're done for. Do you want to take the globes and"

"I have it!" Harkat shouted, hauling ferociously on the net, the strings of which tightened and creaked alarmingly. "A few more seconds! Buy me just a … few more seconds!"

"I'll do what I can," I grimaced, then faced the dragons, which were homing in on us as before, patiently repeating their previous manoeuvre. For the final time I sent the females packing, then pulled out the vial, tossed it on to the surface of the Lake, and smashed it with a pebble. Some glass must have struck the male dragon when the vial exploded, because he roared with pain as he peeled away.

Now that there was nothing else to do, I hurried to Harkat and grabbed hold of the net. "It's heavy!" I grunted, feeling the resistance as we tugged.

"A whopper!" Harkat agreed, grinning crazily.

"Are you OK?" I roared.

"I don't know!" he shouted. "I'm excited but terrified! I've waited so long … for this moment, and I still … don't know what to expect!"

We couldn't see the face of the figure caught in the strands of the net it was turned away from us but it was a man, light of build, with what looked to be dirty blond hair. As we pulled the spirit out of the Lake, its form glittered, then became solid, a bit at a time, first a hand, then an arm, followed by its other hand, its head, chest …

We had the rescued soul almost all the way out when I caught sight of the male dragon zooming towards us, his snout bleeding, pain and fury in his large yellow eyes. "Harkat!" I screamed. "We're out of time!"

Glancing up, Harkat spotted the dragon and grunted harshly. He gave the net one last desperate tug. The body in the net shot forward, its left foot solidifying and clearing the water with a pop similar to a gun's retort. As the dragon swooped down on us, its mouth closed, nostrils flaring, working on a fireball, Harkat spun the body over on to its back, revealing a pale, confused, horrified face.

"What the?" I gasped.

"It can't be!" Harkat croaked, as the man in the net impossibly familiar stared at us with terror-filled eyes.

"Harkat!" I roared. "That can't be who you were!" My gaze flicked to the Little Person. "Can it?"

"I don't know," Harkat said, bewildered. He stared at the dragon now almost upon us then down at the man lying shivering on the shore. "Yes!" he shouted suddenly. "That's me! I'm him! I know who I was! I…"

As the dragon opened its mouth and blew fire at us with all the force it could muster, Harkat threw his head back and bellowed at the top of his voice, "I was the vampire traitor Kurda Smahlt!"

Then the dragon's fire washed over us and the world turned red.

IFELLto the ground, clamping my lips and eyes shut. Clambering to my knees, I tried to crawl out of the ball of fire before I was consumed to the bone

then paused when I realized that although I was surrounded by the dragon's flames, there wasn't any heat! I opened my left eyelid a fraction, ready to shut it again quick. What I saw caused both my eyes to snap open and my jaw to drop with astonishment.

The world around me had stopped. The dragon hung frozen over the Lake, a long line of fire extending from its mouth. The fire covered not just me, but Harkat and the naked man Kurda Smahlt! on the ground. But none of us was burnt. The static flames hadn't harmed us.

"What's going on?" Harkat asked, his words echoing hollowly.

"I haven't a clue," I said, running a hand through the frozen fire around me it felt like warm fog.

"Over … there!" the man on the ground croaked, pointing to his left.

Harkat and I followed the direction of the finger and saw a short, tubby man striding towards us, beaming broadly, playing with a heart-shaped watch.

"Mr Tiny!" we shouted together, then cut through the harmless flames Harkat grabbed Kurda under the arms and dragged him out and hurried to meet the mysterious little man.

"Tight timing, boys!" Mr Tiny boomed as we came within earshot. "I didn't expect it to go that close to the wire. A thrilling finale! Most satisfying."

I stopped and stared at Mr Tiny. "You didn't know how it would turn out?" I asked.

"Of course not," he smirked. "That's what made it so much fun. A few more seconds and you'd have been toast!"

Mr Tiny stepped past me and held out a cloak to Harkat and his naked companion. "Cover the poor soul," Mr Tiny punned.

Harkat took the cloak and draped it around Kurda's shoulders. Kurda said nothing, just stared at the three of us, his blue eyes wide with suspicion and fear, trembling like a newborn baby.

"What's going on?" I snapped at Mr Tiny. "Harkat can't have been Kurda he was around long before Kurda died!"

"What do you think, Harkat?" Mr Tiny asked the Little Person.

"It's me," Harkat whispered, studying Kurda intensely. "I don't know how … but it is."

"But it can't" I began, only for Mr Tiny to interrupt curtly.

"We'll discuss it later," he said. "The dragons won't stay like this indefinitely. Let's not be here when they unfreeze. I can control them normally, but they're in quite an agitated state and it would be safer not to press our luck. They couldn't harm me, but it would be a shame to lose all of you to their fury at this late stage."

I was anxious for answers, but the thought of facing the dragons again enabled me to hold my tongue and follow quietly as Mr Tiny led us out of the valley, whistling chirpily, away from the lost remains of Spits Abrams and the other dead spirits held captive in the Lake of Souls.

Night. Sitting by a crackling fire, finishing off a meal which two of Mr Tiny's Little People had prepared. We were no more than a kilometre from the valley, out in the open, but Mr Tiny assured us that we wouldn't be disturbed by dragons. On the far side of the fire stood a tall, arched doorway, like the one we'd entered this world by. I longed to throw myself through it, but there were questions which needed to be answered first.

My eyes returned to Kurda Smahlt, as they had so often since we'd pulled him out of the Lake. He was extremely pale and thin, his hair untidy, his eyes dark with fear and pain. But otherwise he looked exactly as he had the last time I saw him, when I'd foiled his plans to betray the vampires to the vampaneze. He'd been executed shortly afterwards, dropped into a pit of stakes until he was dead, then cut into pieces and cremated.