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• Extract

Demons from the Dark Dimension pour through a portal in the wall of Pittingham Manor, the mid-point for an attack on high. They’re planning an assault.

Into this chaos stumble 12-year-old ghost-busting psychic Alannah Malarra and burglar Wortley Flint. Up until now they’ve only ever faced tame treasure-hoarding ghosts, but this is something else. Their only hope is a plucky angel police patrol on a routine earth-monitoring mission. Enter Inspectre Flhi Swift and officers Yell and Gloom.

The book also features a fabulous lenticular cover: see the demon strike for yourself!

Demon Strike is filled with fabulous comic characters, including psychic ghost-busting 12-year-old adventurers Allanah Mallara and Wortley Flint, together with rookie A.N.G.E.L police-officers, Flhi Swift and troopers, Yell and Gloom – and some unspeakably villainous demons from the dark-side.

This is the first adventure in a new, all-action, spooktacular comic fantasy series about battling angels and demons.

          Alannah Malarra’s mobile phone buzzed in her hand like an angry wasp. The twelve-year-old had disabled the ring tone hours earlier but its electronic spasms still pierced the night’s silence. She quickly flicked her wrist to open the handset, killing the noise instantly.

          ‘You’re late,’ Alannah hissed into the phone. ‘You were scheduled to call two minutes ago. Do we have a problem, Wortley?’

          Two hundred metres away, clinging desperately to the lowest branch of an age-twisted oak tree, Wortley Flint struggled to suck air into his lungs. With both arms occupied he’d had to rely on voice-activated Bluetooth technology to speed-dial his business partner. His leg muscles burned as if they’d been set alight and his heart was pounding against his chest like a jabbing boxer. Beneath him, two sets of bone-crushing jaws rose in tandem to snap hungrily in the air just below his blood-soaked backpack. The word ‘problem’ hardly seemed to do the eleven-year-old’s predicament justice.

           ‘Bring ... me ... more ... bait!’ Wortley spluttered.

          ‘Why do you need more bait?’ Alannah demanded to know. ‘I gave you enough to knock out two large dogs.’

          The smell of raw meat invaded Wortley’s nostrils as the jaws snapped shut beneath him, this time only millimetres away.

          ‘They’re ... not ... dogs,’ he gasped, arching his back to avoid another ferocious lunge. ‘They’re hyenas!’

          Wortley’s earpiece stayed silent for three long seconds until Alannah spoke again.

          ‘Say that again,’ she ordered. ‘For one ridiculous moment I thought you said hyenas.’

          Alannah had been meditating. She always liked to top up her psychic energy before a ghost hunt, and had found a nice secluded spot at the base of a mature beech tree. She had been in the middle of a particularly restful trance when Wortley had disturbed her, and she was far from happy.

          Wortley’s job was a simple one. All he had to do was break into the manor house undetected. He was a burglar, one of the best too, and it should have taken him no more than a few minutes. But things weren’t going to plan.

          ‘I did,’ Wortley snapped. ‘Look!’

          The young burglar waited until his two attackers had launched another air-bound assault. Then, as they tumbled back to earth like falling boulders, he swung his head to the right and pointed the Bluetooth video camera, lightly attached to one of his large stick-out ears, straight at them.

          Alannah gawked at her phone’s tiny screen. The image flickered with interference whenever Wortley moved his head, but she could clearly see that two bear-sized wild animals were prowling the ground beneath him. 

          ‘Fool!’ she hissed, scolding herself for not casing out the old manor house first. It was the kind of mistake a professional ghost-hunter should never make. Alannah was getting sloppy!

          Yet it had sounded like such an easy job. The Earl of Pittingham’s email had dropped into Alannah’s Hotmail inbox three days earlier. Like numerous clients before him, the desperate Earl had found the young ghost-hunter’s website – goawayghosts.com – at the very top of the first Google search page. Alannah paid a lot of good money to a lot of shady people to make sure she always appeared at the top of any ghost-related Google search. And her guarantee to rid any house of any ghost meant that her site always attracted a lot of traffic.

          Typically, Alannah’s inbox would receive thirty new emails every day. The majority were from time wasters, like neurotic new mums who thought their babies were possessed, or over-imaginative children who believed that monsters really did live under their beds. But occasionally, an email would appear that Alannah would take seriously. The Earl’s was one of them:

Please help us!

We are under attack and need your services. Ghosts are surrounding us. They’re in the cellar, behind the walls, under the floorboards. They’re everywhere!!! And more are coming every night. They cackle and scream, one even growls. I’m sure that they want to kill us.

I’ll pay you extra! Come quickly!! Yours desperately, The Seventh Earl of Pittingham.