The Spook’s Revenge: Book 13 (Spooks) Read Online Free Page B

turned, bowed his head and started to walk slowly away. He’d almost reached the gate at the far end of the field before he stopped and began to pace back towards me.
    ‘This seems to be a day for truths,’ he said quietly. ‘Let’s get ourselves back to the library.’
    I stood up, allowing my master to climb over the stile first, then picked up our bags and followed him miserably back to the Chipenden house.
    Once there, he led the way up to the library and pointed to my usual chair at the table. I took a seat while he went to get a book from the almost empty shelves. I knew which book it would be.
    The Bestiary.
    There was an entry that the Spook had made in this book, which was the only one that had survived the fire. I knew it almost word for word because it was so important and painful to me personally. He set the book down in front of me, open at the page I’d predicted. The heading was:
    Lamia Witches
    ‘Read the full entry – not out loud, because I remember what I wrote. I just want to be sure you know what you’re saying about your mam.’
    Feeling more and more despondent, I read the account silently.
    The first Lamia was a powerful enchantress of great beauty. She loved Zeus, the leader of the Old Gods, who was already married to the goddess Hera. Unwisely, Lamia then bore Zeus children. On discovering this, the jealous Hera slew all but one of these unfortunate infants. Driven insane by grief, Lamia began to kill children wherever she found them, so that streams and rivers ran red with their blood and the air trembled with the cries of distraught parents. At last the gods punished her by shifting her shape so that her lower body became sinuous and scaled like that of a serpent.
    Thus changed, she now turned her attentions to young men. She would call to them from a forest glade, only her beautiful head and shoulders visible above the undergrowth. Once she had lured her victim close, she wrapped her lower body around him tightly, squeezing the breath from his helpless body as her mouth fastened upon his neck until the very last drop of blood was drained.
    Lamia later had a lover called Chaemog, a spider-thing that dwelt in the deepest caverns of the earth. She bore him triplets, all female, and these were the first lamia witches. On their thirteenth birthday they quarrelled with their mother and, after a terrible fight, tore off her limbs and ripped her body to pieces. They fed every bit of her, including her heart, to a herd of wild boar.
    The three lamia witches reached adulthood and became feared throughout the land. They were long-lived creatures and, by the process of parthenogenesis (needing no father), each gave birth to several children. Over centuries the race of lamia witches began to evolve and breeding patterns—
    ‘Are you past the third paragraph?’ the Spook interrupted.
    I nodded.
    ‘Then that’s enough,’ he said. ‘It’s a terrible tale. But according to that, Lamia was slain by her own children.’
    ‘The information is wrong. Yes, she did quarrel with her children, but they did her no physical harm. You once told me that not everything in your Bestiary can be verified, and that some things are definitely wrong. And we make notes and corrections as we find out more, don’t we?’
    ‘That’s true enough,’ said the Spook, nodding. ‘Well, how did you find this out, lad?’
    ‘Mam told me herself when we were in Greece. It’s true. After the terrible things she did, Mam repented and started to fight against the dark. Her greatest wish is to destroy the Fiend, but you have to realize that she isn’t just the woman you met at the farm. She has spent most of her long life as Lamia, and she is ruthless. She sacrificed herself to destroy the Ordeen. She loves me – but would ask me to sacrifice myself if it proved necessary. She is also willing to sacrifice Alice. She’ll do anything to destroy the Fiend. She really does want me to carry out that terrible ritual.’
    As I