“I’m not coming!” Scarlett shouted back. “I need a Zodiac.”
“There are no Zodiacs! And you can’t stay here, miss. We’re pulling out.”
“You don’t understand. I’m with Matt. I have to go to Skua Bay. Please, can you help me…!”
“You have to come with me,” the marine insisted. “This is my last run. If I leave you behind, you’re on your own.”
“Get in the boat, girl!” one of the passengers called out. It was a woman who had been hurt in the fighting. Her face was streaked with blood and she was shivering. Scarlett was keeping them waiting.
“Where can I find a Zodiac?” she cried.
“You can’t. Are you coming?”
“No.”
“Then – good luck!” The marine pressed down on the throttle. The water foamed behind the boat and then it was away, rapidly dwindling into the distance.
Scarlett looked around her. In a few minutes, she would be alone on the beach. Already, the cliff face, with its twisting ice columns and pathways, was empty. With a feeling of complete misery, she realized that Lohan had been right. For all her fine words, there was nothing she could do. There were no spare boats. If she tried to swim to Skua Bay, she would freeze to death before she had completed a dozen strokes. She couldn’t walk across the ice shelf. She had no choice but to abandon Matt. She couldn’t help him. It was time to go.
And then she saw a boat – a Zodiac – skimming across the surface towards her. It had appeared from nowhere and, unlike all the other vessels, it was empty, with just a single driver hunched over the outboard motor. She couldn’t recognize him – like everyone else, he was wrapped up in weatherproof clothes – but as he pulled in he looked up and she saw (she had already guessed … at least, she had hoped she had guessed) that it was Lohan. He must have found a faster way down the cliff, somehow arriving well ahead of her. She had no idea where he had got the Zodiac from. Knowing Lohan, it was probably better not to ask.
He brought the boat up onto the shingle and for a moment the two of them stood facing each other.
“I have behaved dishonourably,” he said. “Always, from the earliest age, it was my father’s teaching that I should consider myself and my own safety to be of paramount importance. But that is not the same thing as acting like a coward. I tried to leave Matt at Serra Morte. It was a bad thing to do. And I almost did the same thing with you today. I will take you to Skua Bay and we will go together to the fortress. I am certain we will die there. But better that than to die like a rat, hiding in Australia.”
“Thank you, Lohan,” Scarlett said. “I was about to give up. I didn’t think there was any way.”
“We must hurry. I think we have very little time.”
Scarlett climbed into the Zodiac and the two of them pulled away.
Scott was ashamed of himself.
No. It was worse than that. He felt himself being sucked into a pool of guilt and self-hatred like nothing he’d ever known. He remembered the day following the death of his foster father. Scott had blamed himself – and rightly – for the man’s death. He had actually ordered him to kill himself and he had been horrified and sickened by what he had done. It was true that Ed had been an alcoholic, violent and abusive, but even so Scott hadn’t meant to do him harm. But in the end he had lived through it. Part of him had even been glad that things had turned out the way they did.
This was different. He must have been mad, throwing in his lot with the Old Ones. He thought of Pedro in the Castel Nuovo. He saw now that he had taken out all his anger on the Peruvian boy just because the two of them had been left behind in Peru. Pedro was smaller and weaker than him but he had never complained, he had never shown any fear. In his own way, he had tried to help. It was true that Jonas Mortlake had played tricks on Scott’s mind, using drugs, magic, hallucinations to break down his defences. But he had stood back and cold-bloodedly decided that Pedro could have one of his fingers broken simply so that he, Scott, could have a decent night’s sleep.
And what he had done with Matt had been far, far worse. Matt was the first of the Gatekeepers, their leader. He was also the only one of them who had stood, single-handed, against Chaos. He had become their target and Scott had delivered him to them. How could he have done that? What would Jamie say? When Jonas had told him what he had to do, Scott hadn’t even tried to argue. He hadn’t wanted to lose what he had here. A comfortable room. Warmth. A sense of safety. And what would they have done to him if he had turned against them? He had been too scared even to think about it.
But once he had handed Matt over, from the moment he had seen him taken by the fly-soldiers, Scott had begun to wonder exactly what he had gained. It was true that he was still alive. But the fortress, his suite of rooms, the food he was given, even the people around him, seemed to be changing. It was like a broken television with a flickering image. One moment there would be a fire blazing in the hearth. Then it would go out and he would realize that he was freezing and that the walls around him were dripping with some sort of oil or slime. He had spent the night tucked under the fur covers on his bed only to wake up and see – for just a few seconds – that they were filthy and matted in blood. Just a few minutes ago, he had been eating his lunch, a steak cooked specially for him. But even as he raised the fork to his mouth, the meat had changed and suddenly it was cold and green and crawling with maggots. It had changed back again just before he swallowed it.
And everything stank. It was a smell like nothing Scott had ever encountered … dead and rotting and utterly filthy. He wanted to be sick all the time. It was like having some horrible disease inside his nostrils, reaching all the way to his lungs.
The Old Ones were tricking him just as they had done with the World Army by making it appear that the fortress had been destroyed. They had lied to him. He knew that now. And Matt had never doubted what would happen if he came to Skua Bay. Scott thought back to their last moments together. He hadn’t even tried to fight back as the fly-soldiers closed in. He had been expecting them.
“It was never my role to save the world.”
“Then whose was it?”
“Yours.”
Scott hadn’t done anything. His brother, Jamie, had gone with Matt to London and to Hong Kong. He had always thought of Jamie as the younger of the two of them – but it was Jamie who had escaped from prison, who had travelled back in time and fought against the Old Ones ten thousand years ago. For his part, Scott had just allowed himself to be used. He wondered what was happening to Matt right now. He had a good idea. Almost everyone in the fortress had been summoned into the conference hall that he had visited in the opposite tower. For the last six hours, Scott had been hearing laughter, shouting applause. Part of him wanted to go there and see for himself. But he knew that he couldn’t … that if he did, he would never sleep again.
Jamie.
The thought came to him quite suddenly. He didn’t care any more if he lived or died but the one last thing that he wanted was to see his brother again. He and Jamie had been through so much together, in Salt Lake City, in Carson City, in Reno. Yet somehow they had survived. More than that. They had often been happy together, before the agents of Nightrise had come searching for them. Scott had looked after Jamie. That had been his role in life. And they had always said that no matter what happened, the two of them would never be apart.
Right now, there were thousands of kilometres between them. Jamie was in London, outside the church of St Meredith’s. Matt had warned him it would turn out this way when they had all met outside the library, in the dreamworld. But the twenty-five doors, their passageways across the world, were locked. Scott remembered the cave he had seen – at the back of the courtyard. The twenty-fifth doorway. There was a chain running across it and two ivory hands clasped together in a lock. The chairman of Nightrise had warned him that if he touched the chain, it would kill him.
But what did that matter? If he could just separate the hands, open the door, then he would
go to London, to Jamie. The two of them would be together again. They might only have a few minutes. Maybe less. But it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?
Scott had been stretched out on his bed, alone in his room. Looking up, he saw that the ceiling was full of cobwebs. Spiders were crawling all around him. The pillows behind his head seemed to have been whipped away and replaced with filthy straw. He himself was covered in dirt. He looked as if he had been lying in his own grave.
Jamie.
It was the only thought in his mind. With something between a sob and a grunt of determination, Scott rolled off the bed and went out to do whatever was necessary to see his brother one last time.
Scarlett was right.
They discovered it soon after they had landed. Although the cliffs in front of them seemed to be solid, there was actually a crack, a tiny fissure just wide enough for two people to squeeze through. It had been hidden from the sea because of a fold in the rock, but once they had walked to the very top of the beach, they were able to see into it. There was a path snaking into the distance and the footprints the fly-soldiers had made were still visible in the snow. The walls rose up on either side, so close that they seemed to touch, blocking out the light and any sign of the sky. It was not so much a pathway as a tunnel. They had no idea how far it went but there was no reason why it shouldn’t open out in the fortress itself.
“There’ll be guards,” Lohan whispered.
“I can deal with that,” Scarlett said.
They continued forward, leaving the beach and the Zodiac behind. The thick layer of snow absorbed the sound of their feet and they didn’t speak a word to each other. Both of them were fairly certain that they were going to die. In a way, with millions of tonnes of stone pressing down on them, they felt they were already dead.
Shape-changers had been positioned on rocky ledges above them, standing watch over the passageway just as Lohan had warned. It was a miserable posting. They were out on their own, in the freezing cold. They carried rusting spears in their human hands and looked about them with pig, snake and falcon eyes.
But even as they stood there, a strange fog sprang up, filling the crevice beneath them. The fog helped to muffle any sound. And so they saw and heard nothing, quite unaware of the two figures creeping past, following the twisty path far below.
FIFTY-THREE
LONDON
Jamie Tyler woke up very suddenly, with the knowledge – even before he opened his eyes – that something terrible had happened.
Matt had said he would send him a signal and it had come, as he had expected, from the dreamworld. But the strange thing was that, this time, Jamie had no memory of being there. For once there had been no library or hill, no island or sea. Indeed, he couldn’t even remember seeing Matt and had no idea exactly what he had said. But as he opened his eyes and took in his surroundings, the echo of Matt’s voice was still there and Jamie knew that he had to move at once, that there couldn’t be a minute’s delay.
Quickly, he threw back the covers and got to his feet. He had no need to dress – he slept in his clothes. Holly was stretched out on the mattress on the other side of the room with its striped wallpaper, carpet and fireplace. Her hair, tangled and dirty, was sprawled over the pillow. He shook her awake and left the room, searching for the Traveller and his brother, who slept next door. In fact, they were already out of bed. Jamie wasn’t surprised. The two of them got up well before sunrise every day.
“What is it?” Will Fletcher asked. He had seen the look on Jamie’s face and knew at once that something had changed.
“We have to go,” Jamie said.
“You’ve seen Matt?”
“No. But I heard him.” He tried to explain what had happened. “He didn’t say anything but I think he’s been hurt and he wants me to come. That’s all I can tell you. We have to move right away.”
Graham and Will exchanged a glance but they didn’t argue. They had served the Nexus for almost ten years and the Nexus existed only to help the Gatekeepers. The Traveller might have been in charge when they were in the village and on board the Lady Jane, but it was inconceivable that he would question anything Jamie said here in London. By the time Holly appeared in the doorway, rubbing her eyes, he was already moving past her, on his way downstairs.
“I’ll tell the others,” he said. “We’ll be ready in less than a minute.”
“What’s happening?” Holly asked.
“We’re leaving.”
Jamie was aware that his heart was beating more rapidly than usual and that he had left sleep far behind him. He had arrived at the end. If they could fight their way into St Meredith’s, if the door finally worked, he might be in Antarctica in just a few minutes’ time. He would see Scott again. And the others: Matt, Scarlett, Pedro. To be together to finally confront the Old Ones and finish them once and for all … it was what he wanted above all else.
They couldn’t leave it any longer anyway. Only the evening before, Simon – one of the men who had come with them from the survival pod – had been taking readings with the complicated equipment that had been waiting for them in the house, testing the air and the atmosphere as he did every day.
“It’s suddenly got worse,” he had muttered. “One more night. Maybe the morning. But we can’t stay here any longer than that. By midday, we’re going to have to be on our way.”
Jamie didn’t know what the “it” referred to. Radioactivity? Viral infection? It didn’t matter. He would have stayed behind anyway. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t leave until Matt contacted him, even if he became ill.
Will Fletcher had gone back into his room and when he re-emerged he was carrying the array of weapons that he had brought with him; a miniature machine gun, grenades and pistols. Dressed in his grey and brown camouflage gear, he looked like an urban soldier from a hundred news reports. Jamie and Holly followed him downstairs. The other four men were already gathered in the hall with the Traveller, clustered together in the narrow space beneath the chandelier. They looked up as Jamie descended and he knew what they were thinking. Why now? It was broad daylight, half past seven in the morning. It would have been much less dangerous if they had waited for night and the cover of darkness. For just a moment, Jamie doubted himself. Suppose he had been wrong! He could be leading them all to their death. But he remembered waking up. Matt had called him. Like everyone else, he had been given no choice.
“Jamie…?” Will checked one last time.
Jamie nodded. He had decided.
“We’re going into St Meredith’s,” Will explained to the others. “We have to move fast. Once we step outside this door, we don’t know what might hit us. We’ve seen the spider. There may be shape-changers. And there’s always the possibility of police or other human forces. The main thing is to get Jamie into the church and through the door, which is on the right of the main aisle, close to the nave. Look out for the five-pointed star.” He turned to Jamie. “Assuming we make it, do you want one of us to go through with you?”
It was something Jamie had never considered. He could take one person with him to Antarctica. That was how the doors worked. But which one of them? He knew he had to make an instant decision. It might be sensible to have an adult with him, particularly one that was fully armed. But did he have any right to ask any of them to make such a journey?
He caught the Traveller’s eye and saw him nod slightly. “The Traveller,” he said.
“Right.” If Will was upset that he was about to be separated from his brother a second time, he didn’t show it. “Graham will stay close to you the whole time and we’ll keep the two of you covered. Holly—”
“I’m coming too,” Holly said. She was certain that Will was going to ask her to stay behind. “I know I may not be much use but I’m not leaving Jamie. Not after all we’ve been through.”
To her surprise, Will didn’t argue. “OK. Good luck, everyone. Maybe this is going to work out all right. Graham – try not to leave it seven years this
time. You’ll come back as an old man.” Very briefly, the two of them embraced. “And good luck to you, Jamie. I hope the others are waiting for you in Antarctica. I hope this is the end.”
He took a breath. Then they went out.
ROME
The two priests were late for morning mass. They hurried across the Cortile Borgia, passing a cleaner who was sweeping the cobblestones. They smiled and nodded at him.
“Buongiorno, Tasso.”
“Buongiorno, padri …”
The two of them disappeared round the corner. Neither of them had seen the boy, skulking in the shadows.
Pedro wondered what he must look like. He had been kept on starvation rations during his time at the Castel Nuovo and when had that ended? More than a week ago for sure but he had lost all track of time. There had been the eruption of the volcano. He had nearly drowned on the Medusa. The flight across Rome had been exhausting, draining all his strength. And finally, just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, there had been his encounter with Silvio Rivera … Cardinal Silvio Rivera. A priest who had tried to murder him.
The poison had come close to killing him. Rivera himself had been dead in minutes. Pedro knew that he had only survived because of a vase of slimy water – he could still taste the foul liquid on his lips. In the minutes that remained to him, he had done the impossible. He had used his power to save himself. Even so, the inside of his body felt not just empty but wrung dry. As he stood there, breathing in the fresh morning air, he knew he was lucky to be alive.
It sometimes seemed to Pedro that he had been alone all his life – and never more so than now. He wondered why it was that many children around the world had parents, brothers and sisters, and friends, but not him. He had been fighting from the day he had been born … for food, for friendship, for shelter, simply for survival. Why was that? It was strange that the thought had never occurred to him before. What was it that made him different from everyone else?