The Trap. Michael Grant

      A second jab caught him in the right butt cheek.

      Mack spotted a small woman hauling a large wheeled suitcase. He snatched the bag, yelled, “Sorry!” then executed a running pivot and flung the suitcase at the charging Lepercons.

      Three of them went down like bowling pins and let out howls of outrage.

      “Agara! Agara! Agara!” Which is probably the traditional Lepercon howl of outrage.

      But the others leaped clear of the bag and were all over Mack in a heartbeat.

      Knitting needles jabbed at jeans and T-shirt without much effect, but one caught him in the palm of his left hand, and that drew blood.

      A particularly persistent Lepercon climbed on to Mack’s shoulders from behind. He felt the tip of the needle enter his ear. He jerked away, but the needle jabbed, jabbed, jabbed again.

      “Hey! That hurts!”

      Mack reached around, grabbed a handful of spotted fur, and yanked the creature up over his head. He held him by one leg and swung the little monster like a club, beating at the others.

      Thumpf!

      Mack nailed one of the Lepercons pretty well, but then the leg he was holding came off – just detached. He stared stupidly at it. There was no blood, no hanging arteries or gore.

      In fact, the detached end of the leg looked like a piece of well-aged blue cheese. Possibly Stilton.

      Although it may have been Gorgonzola.

      Mack wanted to throw up. It wasn’t a good thing to see. Or smell. And if it was blue cheese… No. No, it couldn’t be! He hated blue cheese. Worse yet: he had a deep and awful terror of blue cheese.

      “Jasnafar’s been legged!” one of the Lepercons screeched.

      “Avenge Jasnafar!”

      “Agara! Agara!” the now one-legged Jasnafar cried. He hopped on his remaining leg, oozing gooey blue cheeselike product from his stump, and stabbed busily at Mack’s foot.

      “Get off me, get off me!” Mack cried. “Noooo, nooooo! Get it off me! Nooooo, it’s Roquefort!”

      Jarrah and Stefan were both busy with their own Lepercon problems. Mack caught a flash of Jarrah tossing a Lepercon so hard it went spinning across the floor and smacked into a Chinese boy, who kicked it away with a reflexive soccer kick.

      Stefan had one of the Lepercons in his teeth. He chomped down hard and spat out a Lepercon hand. Stefan also had a knitting needle either stuck into his head or his hair – hopefully his hair – and was too busy to run to Mack’s rescue.

      “You fools!” Nine Iron cried. “Go for the boy! The boy!”

      The old man had to sit down after that and inhale more oxygen from the tube. He sat on the carousel and was swept slowly away, wedged in between a large black garment bag and a grey duffel bag.

      Mack punched one of the Lepercons. Right in the face.

      Pumpf!

      Blue cheese product shot from the creature’s nose, mouth and ears.

      Mack felt a sharp pain. The knitting needle just sat there, sticking out of his neck. “Hey!” he yelled.

      He snatched the needle out and stared at the single drop of his own blood.

      Now Mack was mad as well as terrified. “OK, that’s enough!”

      In one fluid movement he jammed the needle into the nearest Lepercon. It went easily all the way through. Goo squeezed out around the puncture.

      Mack kicked, punched and generally flailed away like a panicky kid in the midst of a phobia meltdown – although it was all very Mortal Kombat in his head. But flailing didn’t help much, and now more of the Lepercons were heeding Nine Iron’s fading, wheezing shouts and leaving Jarrah and Stefan in order to come after Mack. They were all over him. The sheer weight of them made him stagger.

      But worse was the morbid terror of the goo oozing from the Lepercons’ many wounds.

      Mack suffered from twenty-one known phobias – unreasonable fears. We don’t have time to list them all, but they ran the gamut from fear of puppets to a fear of fear itself, which is called phobophobia.

      The thing with phobias is that they aren’t reasonable fears, such as a fear of clowns or brussels sprouts or reality shows. Phobias are at a whole different level. The phobia panic builds and builds until pretty soon a person just loses it altogether.

      And that’s what was happening to Mack. The grossness of the blue cheese goo – the unbelievable disgustingness of it, the football player’s armpit smell of it – was working on the scared little monkey brain buried deep down inside Mack’s otherwise pretty cool human brain.

      Of course the phobia thing wouldn’t be a problem if he were dead. In minutes, if not seconds, one of the needles would hit an artery or an eyeball or go in through Mack’s ear. He realised then that this wasn’t just a fight: it was life and death.

      There were words Mack could use, Vargran words, that could freeze time and let him escape. But it was hard to think of them when a dozen evil midgets were jabbing you with needles and when a sick fear was dumping all sorts of panic chemicals into your system.

      Then it came to him! He knew the Vargran command. It was ret click-ur.

      Not that hard to say, except that just as he was forming the words, a needle jabbed him in the gum. It wasn’t that hard a hit; it just scraped his gum. It didn’t knock out a tooth or anything, but the Lepercon wasn’t backing away. He had hold of Mack’s shirt with one hand and had hauled himself up on to Mack’s chest, and with his free hand he was trying to shove the knitting needle right down Mack’s throat.

      Mack bit down hard on the needle. He held it tight with his going-to-need-braces-in-a-few-years teeth.

      He tried to pull the Lepercon away, but the thing was swarming him. At least six of the things were on his body, hauling at him, grabbing handfuls of shirt and hair, using belt, nose and ears as climbing grips.

      And smelling like a hobo’s sneakers.

      The needle scraped against Mack’s teeth. If he opened his mouth to say the spell, he would die.

      “Esk-ma belast!”

      But it wasn’t Mack who said this; it was Jarrah.

      She was a mess, hair all askew, and somewhat covered in Lepercon goo. She looked scared, wild and furious.

      Stefan stomped a heel on to one of the Lepercons, which popped like a noxious water balloon. He yanked the needle out of his hair, laughed happily – this was Stefan’s idea of a party – and ran (finally!) to help Mack.

      But Mack didn’t need as much help any more. The Lepercon on his shoulder fell heavily to the ground. The one on his chest – the one trying to jab a knitting needle down his throat – was changing. The small, wrinkled ShamWow face was becoming smoother, bigger, fuller. The wrinkles were filling in. Plumping.

      Mack felt the weight of the creature grow. He felt his shirt stretch further and further until the Lepercon lost his grip and slid, moaning (“Agara… agara…”), to the floor.

      Mack glanced wildly around. All the Lepercons were growing. Larger. Heavier. They were no longer the size of fat cats; they were the size of moderately full garbage bags. And still growing.

      They were not moving much.

      The needles looked tiny now in their bratwurst-sized fingers.

      Mack spat the needle out of his mouth and said, “Whoa.”

      “Huh,” Stefan remarked. He seemed disappointed.

      Jarrah, looking shell-shocked, came to them. The Lepercons were now the size of cows. Stunned bystanders stared in awe and horror. Some took pictures with their cell