Nightrise (17 page)

Eventually, almost reluctantly, he crawled onto the bunk and fell asleep, his knees close to his chin, his arms loosely folded around his legs. And that was when he had the second dream.

He knew where he was immediately, and he was almost grateful for it even though this world — this dream world or whatever it was — was as alien to him as Silent Creek. There was the sea in front of him, the island once again, the sky as empty and as dead as ever. Jamie didn't know what it all meant or why he should find himself here again, but somehow he understood that it was important. He remembered the two boys in the straw boat and searched for them, hoping they would come into sight.

Maybe, at the very least, they could tell him where he could find Scott.

Something moved close to the water's edge and Jamie's heart sank. It was the man he had encountered the last time he had been here. He was already straightening up — all seven feet of him — moving across the shingle, the hollow eyes staring out of the gray, puttylike face. The man was holding his bowl.

This time there was no sign of the knife.

"He's gonna kill him," the man said.

Despite everything, Jamie felt a spurt of anger. "That's what you said last time," he called out. "But I can't stop them from killing Scott unless you tell me where he is."

"No, boy. You don't understand…"

The man was about to go on but he never got the chance. There was a lightning strike. No — it was more than that. It was as if two giant hands had seized hold of the universe and ripped it apart like paper.

The whole world — the sea and the sky — was torn in two. Jamie felt the ground convulse underneath him — an earthquake more powerful than anything the world had ever known. Everything was shuddering. He could feel his teeth rattling in his head. He was thrown off his feet and as he fell he tried to catch sight of the man, but he had already gone. At the same time, an earsplitting scream echoed all around him. He would have said it was a shout of triumph except that there was nothing remotely human about it. Jamie was deafened. He was clinging to the ground, which was twisting in turmoil beneath him.

In the next few seconds, a series of shapes suddenly appeared, plummeting through the sky — flying or falling…he couldn't tell. It was as if a great hole had opened up on the other side of the universe and flames were bursting out. The whole sky was on fire. He thought he saw a gigantic spider, another animal like an ape or a monkey, something that looked like a huge bird…it was impossible to tell.

Thousands of tiny specks followed them, a great dark swarm of them, twisting and cartwheeling in the air.

And there was something else. Jamie was aware only of an approaching blackness, a sense of something so terrifying that he could no longer bear to look. He closed his eyes and hugged the ground. The sea had gone, the water rushing away from the coastline. The wind was howling all around him.

It seemed to go on forever. But there was no real time here and it could have been all over in a minute.

As the storm died down and the waves returned, he lay where he was, completely exhausted.

Jamie knew nothing of the Old Ones, the five

Gatekeepers, the struggle that had been going on for thousands of years, and the part that he had been chosen to play. He knew nothing about a stone circle called Raven's Gate or the second gate that had been built in the Nazca Desert in Peru. Nor did he know that it was now midnight on June 24th — the day known as Inti Raymi.

The second gate had just opened.

ELEVEN

June 25th

Nazca,

Peru

The jeep seemed to be on fire. As it tore across the plain, it trailed a cloud of dust and sand which, in the moonlight, could have been smoke. The headlights were on but they were almost ineffectual in the great emptiness of the Nazca Desert, and the moon itself was a better guide. It was three o'clock in the morning on the twenty-fifth of June, the day after Inti Raymi. The night was unusually cold, even in a desert where the temperature could drop ten degrees with the setting of the sun. And there was something strange about the light. It had a hard, almost unnatural quality — as if there had just been a terrible storm.

A woman was driving. Her name was Joanna Chambers and she was a professor of anthropology, a world expert on the wonder known as the Nazca Lines. She was large and slightly eccentric in appearance. She enjoyed playing the mad professor and she could be outspoken, even rude at times. But right now she was tight-lipped, her hands clutching the steering wheel. She was gazing ahead with a real dread of what she might find.

She was not alone. There was an Englishman in the passenger seat next to her. He was Richard Cole, the journalist who had been with Matt Freeman — the first of the Five — when he had discovered the secret of Raven's Gate in Yorkshire and who had then chosen to travel with Matt to Peru. He was looking exhausted, more gaunt and bedraggled than ever. Richard had come a long way — in more than one sense — since he and Matt had met in a run-down newspaper office in Greater Mailing. At the time, Richard's work had mainly involved writing about weddings and funerals…and he wasn't sure which he found more depressing. But Matt had introduced him to a world of impossibilities: dinosaur skeletons that came to life, witches, and demons, lost civilizations and cities hidden in the mountains of Peru. And now this. It seemed that their adventures had come to a sudden and sour end. Matt might be dead. This time, they hadn't won.

"We're almost there," Professor Chambers said. She glanced briefly at Richard, who didn't even seem to have heard her. "I feel this is my fault," she went on. "If only I'd been able to work it all out sooner, maybe we'd have had more time…"

"It's not your fault. It's mine." Richard took a deep breath. "I should never have let them go into the desert alone. Matt and Pedro. They're just kids, for heaven's sake!"

"It was a two-seater helicopter and there were three of them in it anyway. There wasn't room for anyone else."

"I shouldn't have let them go. The Incas warned us. They said that one of them would be killed…''

"They said one of them might be killed. And you know that Matt is no ordinary child. He's one of the Five. Pedro too. I think you should have more faith in them."

But as they drove on, it became clear that something terrible had happened. The ground had been torn up, the entire landscape broken apart. An earthquake had already been reported on Peruvian radio but both Richard Cole and Professor Chambers knew that was only part of the truth. Matt had taken off to intercept Diego Salamanda at his mobile laboratory in the desert…but it seemed that he hadn't arrived in time. The second gate had opened. Richard would have known it even without looking at the upturned desert floor. He could sense it in the air. There was a sheet of lightning pulsating in the far distance, behind the mountains. It burned into his eyes. He was beginning to feel sick.

"There!" Professor Chambers exclaimed and swung the wheel.

The jeep's headlights had picked up the wreckage of a helicopter, half buried in the desert floor. Two of the rotors were missing and the other two were buckled and broken. The tail had snapped in half and the cockpit was a mess of shattered glass and dangling wires. Now that they were closer, they could smell fuel in the air. Professor Chambers slammed on the brakes but Richard was already out and running before the jeep had come to a halt. He had seen a boy, lying with his back against the wreckage, his legs stretched out in front of him. One of them was bent at an impossible angle.

It was Pedro.

"What happened? Where's Matt?" Richard shouted out the questions before he remembered that Pedro didn't speak a word of English. Pedro looked at him quizzically and Richard felt ashamed of himself. He had been so worried about his friend, he hadn't stopped to consider how the other boy must be feeling.

He crouched down and laid a hand on Pedro's shoulder. "Are you okay?" he asked.

A moment later, Professor Chambers arrived. She had thought to bring a bottle of water with her and she handed it to Pedro, who drank.

"Como está?" she asked.

How are you?

Quickly, Pedro explained what had happened. The helicopter had been hit by a bullet. They had lost control and crashed. Richard looked into the cockpit and saw the young pilot — Atoc. He was belted into his seat, his hands resting on the controls. He was obviously dead. Pedro was still talking. His leg had been broken and he was unable to move. Matt had gone on his own to find Salamanda.

''You must leave me," he said, speaking in Spanish. 'You have to find Matteo. The gate opened. I saw…"

He faltered and stopped.

"What did you see?" Professor Chambers asked.

"I can't talk about it. Just find Matteo."

Richard had understood the gist of what Pedro was saying. He reached out and touched Professor Chambers on the arm. 'You stay here. I'll go on," he said.

The professor nodded. Pedro pointed.

"Allá…" Over there.

Richard didn't take the jeep. He was afraid he would miss Matt if he drove too quickly. He was sure that he couldn't be far from the helicopter, but even so, it took him twenty minutes to find him, and when he did, it looked as if he had arrived too late. Matt was lying on his back and Richard had never seen anyone more broken or more still. The boy had wept blood. His face was completely white.

He was dead. He had to be. There was no sign of any breathing, not the slightest movement in his chest.

Richard had to blink back tears…not just of sadness but of anger. What had been the point? Had they come all the way from Britain just for this? The gate had opened. Pedro was wounded. And Matt was dead. Briefly, he wondered what had happened to Salamanda. He could see the wreckage of the mobile laboratory in the distance, but there was no sign of the man himself. Had he been responsible for this?

But examining Matt, he could see no sign of any external injury. He hadn't been shot. It was more as if the life force had somehow been sucked out of him.

Richard reached forward and took Matt's wrist in his hands. Matt's flesh was cold. But that was when he felt it — tiny, irregular, but definitely there. His pulse. Richard wondered if he was imagining it.

Quickly, he rested his fingers against Matt's neck. There was a pulse there too. And although it was so faint as to be almost imperceptible, there was still some breath reaching his lips.

But he needed help. He had to get to hospital — fast.

Richard straightened up and set off, running back to get the jeep.

***

Kong

The chairman of Nightrise was standing in his office on the sixty-sixth floor of The Nail, just down the corridor from the conference room where he regularly addressed his executives. He was watching the boats in the harbor and holding a glass of the most expensive cognac in the world.

It was almost a hundred years old and came in a crystal bottle. It had cost five thousand American dollars. How much of the golden-colored liquid was he cradling in his palm? It seemed to him a strange thought, and a very satisfying one, that outside the window — in Kowloon — there were people who could barely afford to eat, women and children stuck in factories all day and much of the night, working for pennies simply to survive, while he could enjoy this vintage brandy at perhaps two hundred dollars a sip. That was how the world should be, he reflected. And very soon the gap between those who had and those who had not was going to be greater than ever. How fortunate he was to be on the right side.

A sleek cruise liner slid past the window far below and the chairman turned away. He didn't like boats.

More than that, he had a fear of them — and with good cause. He went back to his desk and sat down. It was time to consider the events of the night before.

The Old Ones were back. That was all that really mattered. His agents in Peru had reported that the stars had aligned exactly as predicted ten thousand years before, and that the great gate, hidden in the Nazca Desert, had unlocked. He wished he could have been there. He had heard it said that you could be struck blind, looking into the eyes of the King of the Old Ones — but even so, it would have been worthwhile.

Not all the news was good. At their last telephone conference, his colleague, the South American industrialist Diego Salamanda, had said that one of the children who called themselves the Gatekeepers was coming to Peru.

He had said he would have no trouble tracking him down. But now it seemed that Salamanda himself had been killed and the boy was still at liberty. The chairman didn't care about Salamanda. That was one less pair of hands to share in the rewards. But the fact that the boy might have survived…that was unsatisfactory. That was a loose end. In his part of the organization, it wouldn't have been allowed.

The private telephone on his desk suddenly rang. Very few people in the world had the number that connected to it. Any call that came through on this line had to be worth taking. He set the brandy glass down on his desk and picked up the phone.

"Good evening, Mr. Chairman." It was Susan Mortlake. She was calling him from Los Angeles.

"Mrs. Mortlake." As ever, the chairman sounded neither happy nor sad to be hearing from her.

"My congratulations, sir." Of course she had heard what had happened in Peru. "It's wonderful news."

"What have you got to report, Mrs. Mortlake?" Even at a time like this, business came first. The executives of Nightrise didn't telephone each other simply to scratch each other's backs.

"I've been thinking about Charles Baker," Susan Mortlake replied. "The presidential campaign. In view of what's happened, it's even more critical that he should win."

'Yes." The single word showed that the chairman was getting impatient.

'You've seen the latest figures…"

John Trelawny was edging farther ahead in the polls.

"Of course I've seen them, Mrs. Mortlake."

"And our agent in New York has been unable to come up with a strategy?"

"I'm afraid Mr. Simms has resigned."