Thank you to my two guest reviewers. I am glad you are both enjoying the story so far and I do appreciate your reviews. I'm not letting anything slip though about whose fate awaits.


Episode 1: History's Greatest Monster, Chapter 2

Cassandra followed Jenkins back into the office still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "This better be good, Jones," she growled.

"Sorry," apologised the younger man. "Don't know about 'good', as such. All I've got is one or more rare magical creatures that will probably want to eat us and need shoving through some magical door we need you to open. Well, you and Jenkins. Will that do?"

"I guess it'll have to," she sighed. "What it is? Another wendigo?"

"It's Australian, not American," Jenkins informed her. "What's more, our resident Aussie has encountered these bloodthirsty beasts before. Before he even got his first letter, he tells me."

Cassandra was fully awake now. She looked at Ezekiel with wide eyes. "What?"

"Bear in mind I'm from Australia, please," shrugged Ezekiel. "We have a higher background level of death by nature. Weird critters after my blood were not all that out of the realms of natural possibilities when I was that age."

"What age were you, exactly?" Cassandra blinked.

Jones handed her a mug of coffee and steered her into a chair. Jenkins leant back against the desk with folded arms and turned an expectant gaze on the young man. The thief helped himself to a second mug of coffee and sat opposite them. Wrapping both hands around the warm ceramic, he stared at the dark liquid for a moment, then began.

"It started a month or two after my eighth birthday. As a birthday present, the government had decided to switch my foster home yet again, so I'd only been there a few weeks. It was a home in Perth. I'd never lived there before. This time I'd been shipped right the way across country. No idea why. Maybe they'd run out of places that hadn't heard of me. I was a terror back then. Never spoke to anyone, not even at meals. Only ever really showed up for meals, spent the rest of the time hiding. It was the only thing I was any good at back then. Always skipping school, sneaking into places that didn't know me, that I could hide in. Anyway. We'd been having quakes, just small ones, since early September. They were focused about a hundred miles away, but we still felt them in Perth. It made me consider more carefully my choices of hiding place. Well, one day, I had tagged along with this school trip I saw heading into a museum. Might have been my school, I was never there long enough to know what trips were going on or to recognise any faces. Well, except the principal and my own teacher of course. Anyhow, I tagged along, listening in while the guide explained stuff and told stories. One of the kids asked if the exhibits came to life when we all went home and the guide told him they did. She said the guards were only there at night to make sure none of them escaped. Well, that made my mind up, of course. Right there and then, I decided I was staying, and I was staying all night if I could. I snuck away from the group and found a good spot to hide in. It would mean skipping dinner, so I went and stocked up on juice and sarnies from the cafeteria and took them back to my little den. I wandered around the rest of the museum until near closing time, then went and hid. Once I was sure the guards and everyone else had gone, I brought out my stash and had a right little picnic. I was dropping the rubbish in the bin when I heard the noise. At first I thought it was a guard, so I dropped down behind the bin and hid. I kept watching though, just in case anything came to life of course. Eventually, a man appeared. He wasn't a guard though. He was tall, dark haired, square jawed. He moved like a cat, all dressed in black but for the satchel he was carrying. When he was sure there were no guards, he straightened. I saw him read a few exhibit cards and shake his head, as if they were so wrong he couldn't even begin to start correcting them."

"Sounds like Edward Wilde," murmured Jenkins. "He was the Librarian before Flynn. Had a bad habit of sneering at anyone he deemed less blessed with intelligence than himself. I do hate arrogant people."

Both Cassandra and Ezekiel threw him a look.

"What?" Jenkins shifted uncomfortably. "It's not arrogance if you actually are more intelligent than everyone around you. Wilde had a genius for history and the ability to comprehend deep time in a way that very few people can. He had doctorates in archaeology, palaeontology and cryptozoology. When it came to general intelligence, though, he was as average as any other Librarian."

"Well, there's a new definition of 'average'," breathed Cassandra.

"Remind me one day to sneak that Greek Apple into your pocket," said Jones. "Anyway, this Wilde dude was bending over a tray of exhibits in the Katta Djinoong section. I watched him take something out of the satchel and attach it to his hand, then I watched him put his hand through the glass. At first I thought I was seeing an illusion of some kind, like he was just putting his hand between the cases, or the top of the case was open somehow. Then he brought his hand out again. This time he was holding something, I never did find out what, and this time I saw the glass bend up with him! It dropped back into place like it was made of water, or maybe some kind of transparent treacle. That's when he noticed me. I guess I cried out or made some kind of noise, I don't know, but he turned and spotted me immediately. I was frozen. If he could do that to glass, who knew what he could do to me. He walked over and introduced himself. He said he was Professor Wilde and he was just collecting a few items for research. I think I nodded. I know I didn't say anything. He told me to go back to my hiding place and go to sleep. The exhibits wouldn't be waking up tonight."

"He left a child alone in a museum?" Cassandra cut in.

"Hey! I was already there!" Ezekiel returned. "I wasn't planning on burning the place down you know!"

"It doesn't surprise me," muttered Jenkins. "From what little I remember of him he always did seem rather... Single-minded."

"He was the one that faked his own death and joined the bad guys, right?" Cassandra hissed.

"Indeed," nodded Jenkins. "Took over as head of the organisation, I believe. Instructed them on how to get into the Library. That was before access required someone inside as well as out."

"You mean before I did exactly the same thing?" Cassandra quipped.

"Oh no," Jenkins shook his head. "Wilde knew exactly what he was doing and who he was joining and he still chose to leave. He chose to switch sides knowing exactly what those sides were. You just got caught in a battle you did not then understand between sides you had never heard of. How were you supposed to know who was right and who was wrong?"

"They always say, if something sounds to good to be true, it usually is," she shrugged.

"Meanwhile, back in my story," cried Jones, with some alacrity. "So Wilde stows me away and disappears with the relic. I stay awake all night, just in case, then sneak out with the first wave of visitors in the morning. I got back to the house in time for breakfast. Skipping dinner gets me a smack or two and I'm sent up to my room with a plate of dry toast and told to be thankful for it. I get up there and dig out the little disposable camera I'd bought on the trip over. I was going back to the museum that night too, but this time I'd go prepared. I rolled up a bath towel and shoved it in the bottom of my rucksack to use as a blanket. Grabbed some paper and pencils too. I finished the toast and made my escape. Nothing happened that night, or the next, or for a long time after it, but from then on my little rucksack was always stuffed with that big towel, a camera, water, chocolate, and something to write and draw on."

"What were you staking out, though?" Cassandra asked, a smile on her face. "The exhibits or Wilde?"

"Eh, a bit of both really," shrugged Ezekiel. "I got to know the inside of the museum really well. It was more like home to me than the foster home. In a couple of months I knew all the nooks and crannies to hide in. I knew which doors were alarmed and which weren't, and how to tell. I even knew where the best place to hide during an earthquake was. I found my way into the archives and the research areas. I learnt the entire inventory and where everything was kept. Worked out a few of the keypad codes for the more secure areas. Believe it or not, it was the first time I'd broken in anywhere when I finally managed that. That let me in to the research areas of course, and that meant free food from the staff fridges. Just as well, since the life savings I'd taken with me were starting to dry up and I hadn't dared try stealing from the cafeteria, yet. I wondered about trying to pick some of the more conventional locks, but I didn't even know where to start. It was months later and I was exploring one of the large research areas when I saw him again. He was trying to get into one of the private work areas. It was a keypad lock. I didn't even stop to think if it was a good idea or not, I just walked right up and asked him if he needed a hand. He said he had to pick up something for a friend who worked there, which I, of course, believed, and he'd forgotten his friend's key code. I opened the door for him. There were a lot of things out on the desk in the work area, but he walked straight by them and up to an office door. This one had a normal lock. He looked at me, but I shrugged and said I didn't know how to open those locks. It was probably the most I had said to any single person since arriving in Perth. He beckoned for me to join him at the door and said that maybe now he could repay the favour. He had a set of lock picks, the first I'd ever seen, and he showed me how to use them. Together we unlocked the door and then the desk we found on the other side of it. It was one of those big old solid wood things, with drawers that locked and hid secret drawers within the locked ones. He showed me how to get into both, then took a small, white, cardboard box out of the secret drawer. He was going to go, but I followed him and begged him to take me with him. We got out through the ventilation system. It's strange, you didn't think twice about disappearing with a stranger back then. Nowadays, you'd be running in the opposite direction. At least: if you had any sense you would. Anyway, we found his car and started driving. We headed out of town and towards the desert. Towards the epicentre of the tremors. I'd never seen the land around there before, but I was tired, so I curled up and slept for most of the trip. I woke up in a car surrounded by monsters."

"The monsters we're going after now?" Cassandra asked.

Jones nodded. "I think so: they sound the same, although their appearance has just about as many descriptions as there are sightings."

"So what are they?" Cassandra frowned. "How did Wilde kill them?"

"I don't know that he did," shrugged Jones. "All I saw was Wilde in the middle of this press of animals, then he raises a hand and white light comes streaming out of it. For a while I couldn't see anything. Then I see car's lights go on and feel the engine start. I must have fallen asleep again, because, when I woke up, I was in the foster home's garden shed. I got told off again at breakfast for skipping dinner, but those rants had long since stopped meaning anything to me. I ate quietly, went to my room when told, and generally stayed out of trouble all day. It was Saturday, so I just hid in my room and slept until nightfall."

"But what are they?" Cassandra repeated. "What are we up against?"

"Beware the monstrous bunyip's nips,
it will catch you if it can.
Your flesh it eats, your blood it sips..." Ezekiel stopped with a groan and a frown.

"What's wrong?" Jenkins frowned.

"I can't remember the rest," sighed Jones. "It's just a little poem he taught me. I'm sure it's not important, but he taught me the rest anyway."

"It'll come back to you," shrugged Jenkins.

Cassandra raised her hand tentatively. "Excuse me," she said. "What's a bunyip?"