Matt scrambled for the door handle and tried to open it, but it was locked. He turned to Sir Michael just as a fist with a gold signet ring on one finger crashed into the side of his head, throwing him against the window and stunning him. The old man was unbelievably strong. Now Matt remembered seeing the car before a at Hive Hall.
"Please don"t try to move," Sir Michael said. "The doors are locked and there"s nowhere you can go. I don"t enjoy hitting children and I don"t want to do it again, but I will if you try anything."
There was nothing Matt could try. Every last ounce of his strength had deserted him.
"We"ll be there very soon. It won"t take long. And you needn"t be concerned. It will all be over very quickly and it won"t hurt as much as you think."
The car left the road. The wheels b.u.mped over a muddy, stony track. They plunged into the pine forest. Ahead of them the lights of Omega One shimmered in the rain. Matthew tried to throw himself at Sir Michael Marsh but the old man easily pushed him back.
They reached the gates of the power station and stopped. The night was suddenly cut apart by an immense guillotine blade of lightning. The villagers were there, with Mrs Deverill standing in front of them, Asmodeus curled around her leg. They were all waiting for him.
"No!" Matt shouted, the single word echoing all around.
Sir Michael got out of the car. "Take him!" he ordered.
The door was pulled open. Grey, dripping hands reached in and clamped down on him. Matt lashed out but it was too late. He was dragged out of the car and lifted into the air. A huge spotlight cut through the rain, blinding him. There was a crowd of people ... the entire village. This was the moment they had been waiting for and now they had him.
Squirming and shouting, Matt was carried above their shoulders and into the heart of Omega One.
DARK POWERS.
It was like being in a nightmarish technological circus.
The reactor chamber was a great circle with silver walls and a domed ceiling at least thirty metres high. Instead of sawdust, the floor was covered with black and white squares, and the roof was made of steel rather than canvas, with red and blue gantries criss-crossing high above the ground. There was an observation window in front of what must have been a control room and a wide balcony that ran the whole way round. Seating for an audience?
Across the centre of the chamber two railway tracks ran parallel with each other and there was a ma.s.sive tower a all platforms, railings, ladders and dials a mounted on wheels so that it could move backwards and forwards. The tower dominated the chamber. For the moment, it was still. A single wide corridor led out of the ring. If it had been a circus, this would have been the path along which the animals and the clown"s cars would have entered.
The arena was lit by brilliant floodlights attached to brackets. Everything was spotlessly clean and even the air had a metallic, sterile taste to it as hidden ventilators filtered it with a constant hum.
This was the heart of Omega One. Matt knew that under the floor, protected by ten metres of reinforced concrete and steel, a dragon lay sleeping. Its every breath trembled with pent-up anger. When it awoke, its roar would have the force of an exploding sun. Such was the power contained in the fragile cage of the nuclear reactor.
Watched by the silent villagers, Matt examined his surroundings. For all its technology, the power station was not so different from any modern factory. What made it so fantastic was that, in stark contrast to the machinery, it had been filled with the trappings of an almost forgotten age. The twenty-first century forced into an unholy marriage with the Dark Ages. Inside the nuclear power station the ground had been prepared for a witches" sabbath a for the celebration of black ma.s.s.
Despite the electric lights, the chamber was decorated with thousands of flickering candles, all of them black, their wicks spluttering. Smoke twisted up and was whisked away into the ventilation system. The candles surrounded a circle that had been painted on the chessboard floor with a series of words, written in capital letters, going all the way round. HEL + HELOYM + SOTHER... They were foreign words that meant nothing to Matt and he gave up trying to read them. Inside the circle there were various symbols a arrows, eyes, five-pointed stars and spirals a that could have been the doodles of some demented child, except that they had been marked out in gold paint, seemingly with care.
His eyes were drawn to a slab of black marble in the very centre of the circle. The stone was the size of a coffin, with a single design engraved in gold at the foot: A wooden cross hung from above. But it was upside down. Directly beneath it, on the stone, lay a knife, its blade a twisted tongue of dull silver, its handle fashioned from the horn of a goat.
Matt shuddered. He knew what all the preparations were for. This was where his life was meant to end. The knife was for him.
The villagers closed in around him. More of them looked down on him from the window of the observation box. Mrs Deverill and her sister were standing next to each other. Matt recognized the butcher, the chemist, the woman with the pram... Even the children had joined in the ring, their faces pale, their eyes hungry. n.o.body spoke. Nor did they force him on to the slab. They knew he had no choice but to surrender. He had given them a run for their money. But he had lost and now it was time to pay.
"Matt..."
Somebody had called out to him. Matt looked past the villagers and saw a man standing outside the circle, his hands tied behind him to a metal railing. Matt ran over to him, everything else forgotten for a moment. It was the last thing he had expected. Richard Cole was still alive. His clothes were ragged, his face smeared with blood. He was helpless, a prisoner. But somehow he had survived the destruction of the museum and had been brought here too.
"Tell me I"m dreaming," Richard gasped as Matt reached him.
"I"m afraid not," Matt said. He was so surprised, he didn"t know what to say. "I thought you were dead."
"Not quite." Richard managed a ghost of a smile. "It looks like Sir Michael Marsh is part of all this."
"I know. He brought me here."
"Never trust anyone who works for the government." Then Richard leant forward and whispered, "My left hand is almost free. Hang in there!" And Matt felt a surge of hope.
"So here we all are together!" The voice came from the one open door. The villagers turned towards Sir Michael Marsh as he entered the arena. "Shall we take our places? The end of the world is about to begin."
Two of the villagers had crept up behind Matt, and before he could react they had pulled him away. He struggled, but it was hopeless. The two men were huge and handled him as if he were a sack of potatoes. They dragged him over to the sacrificial slab, threw him on to his back and tied thick leather bands around his wrists and ankles. When they stepped back, he couldn"t move. So this was where it ended. This was what it had all been for.
Richard was shouting. "Leave him alone! Why hurt him? He"s just a kid. Let him go..."
Sir Michael held up a hand for silence. "Matthew is not *just a kid"," he replied. "He is a very special child. A child we have been watching for almost half his life."
Mrs Deverill pushed her way forward. She was dressed in the same clothes she had worn in London, together with the lizard brooch, her eyes filled with hatred. "I want to be the one who cuts his throat," she rasped.
"You will do as you"re told," Sir Michael replied. "I have to say, Jayne, you"ve disappointed me. You very nearly let him get away. A second time!"
"We should have locked him up from the start!"
"You"re the ones who should be locked up," Richard cried. "You"re all mad..."
"We"re not mad." Sir Michael turned to him. "You know nothing. You live in your own cosy, mediocre world. You"re completely blind to the greater things that are happening around you, like so many of your kind. But that will all change.
"I have dedicated my entire life to this moment. The preparations alone have taken more than twenty years, working night and day. Did Professor Dravid tell you about us? Did he tell you about the Old Ones?" Sir Michael paused but Richard said nothing. "I will a.s.sume that he did, and you probably thought that he was mad too.
"Let me a.s.sure you, the Old Ones exist. They were the first great force of evil. At one time they ruled the world until they were defeated a by a trick a and banished. Ever since then they have been waiting to return. That is what you are about to witness. Your friend Matthew is tied down on the very mouth of Raven"s Gate." Sir Michael spread his hands. "That is where we are now. And the gate is about to open."
The villagers shivered with pleasure. Even Mrs Deverill forced a thin smile.
"The forces that created Raven"s Gate knew what they were doing," Sir Michael continued. "The gate is unbreakable. Unopenable. Unmovable. Or so it seemed for centuries. Our ancestors tried as long ago as the Middle Ages. For hundreds of years from generation to generation they pa.s.sed on their acc.u.mulated knowledge, their spells and rituals. But nothing worked until now. We are the chosen generation.
"Because we live in the twenty-first century. We have new technology. And there is a power that we can harness. The same power existed the day the world was created, but it only became available to us a short time ago. Nuclear power. The power of the atom."
He walked over to Matt, who strained upwards, trying to break the leather bands. He forced his shoulders off the sacrificial block a but there was nothing he could do. As Sir Michael approached, he slumped back.
"Do you really think it"s so crazy to draw parallels between the power of the nuclear bomb and the power of black magic?" Sir Michael asked. "Do you really believe that a weapon capable of destroying cities and killing millions of people in a few seconds is so far removed from the Devil"s work? To me it was obvious. I saw that the two different powers could be brought together and that, together, they could do what nothing had ever been able to do before.
"When Omega One was built I used my influence to ensure that it was built here, on the very spot where the ring of stones a Raven"s Gate a had stood. The ancient stone circle would be contained right here, in this reactor room, if it hadn"t been destroyed. Beneath us, the reactor has almost reached critical ma.s.s. It is as if a gigantic bomb has been buried in the heart of the gate, waiting to blow it apart and allow the Old Ones through.
"I built Omega One. I was also in charge of closing it down once the government had finished with it. I managed to dissuade them from actually razing it to the ground, and as soon as everyone had gone away, I set to work, quietly rebuilding it again. It took me more than twenty years, working with the villagers, the children of the children of the warlocks and witches who have inhabited Lesser Malling for centuries."
"But how did you get the uranium?" Richard shouted. "It"s impossible! You told us so yourself. You"d never get the uranium."
"There was a time when it would have been impossible," Sir Michael agreed. "And it was still extremely difficult. But the world has changed. The collapse of the Soviet Union. Events in Serbia and Yugoslavia. Wars in the Middle East. There are mercenaries and terrorists crawling all over the planet, and finding ones we could do business with was only a matter of time. They too serve the Old Ones in their own way. We"re all on the same side.
"For six months now we have kept the station going, feeding the reactor, priming it for tonight. Believe me when I tell you, the reactor works. Soon I will give the order for the last control rods to be lifted. This will raise the heat to critical levels. And the gate will melt and open."
"You"ll all be killed!" Richard said.
"Only you will be killed. Because only you are outside the circle."
"That"s what you think..."
"That"s what I know." Sir Michael pointed to the symbols painted on the floor. "For centuries magicians have painted circles like this for protection. And they will protect us right now. If the radiation leaks, we won"t be touched by it. The heat, no matter how fantastic, won"t burn us. Only you will die."
"What about Matt?" Richard demanded.
"Professor Dravid didn"t tell you?" Sir Michael smiled. "The three ingredients of the black sabbath. Ritual, fire and blood. We have inherited the rituals. We have created the fire. Now Matthew will supply us with the blood."
He picked up the knife and ran a finger along the blade.
"Blood," he continued, "is the most powerful form of energy on the planet. It is the very life force itself. Sacrifice has always been part of magical ritual because it represents a release of that power. There, once again, is the connection. The medieval witch splits throats. The twenty-first century witch splits atoms. Tonight we shall do both."
"But it doesn"t have to be him!" Richard insisted. "Why Matt?"
"Because of who he is."
"But he"s n.o.body... He"s just a child!"
"That"s what he thinks. But it has to be his blood. This is the moment that he was born for."
"That"s enough!" Mrs Deverill hissed. "Let"s get on with it."
Sir Michael looked at his watch. "You"re right. It"s time."
Matt couldn"t move. The slab was cold against his back. The leather bands held him tight.
Inside the observation room a switch was activated. Far beneath the ground, electromagnets gripped the control rods and began to pull them upwards, centimetre by centimetre. The villagers joined hands, eyes closed. Slowly, the nuclear rods were sucked out of the nuclear pile. Sir Michael walked to the middle of the circle and stood above Matt, the knife in his hands.
It was twelve o"clock on the night of Roodmas. It was time to open the gate.
RAVEN"S GATE.
So it came to this.
Matt was tied down, surrounded, helpless. In a few moments he would be killed. The ferocious heat of the nuclear reactor would weaken the gate, bringing it to the point when it could be finally smashed. And then the knife would plunge into his heart. Somehow his blood hitting the floor would be enough. At that moment Raven"s Gate would open.
Richard couldn"t do anything. Even if he managed to break free, he would never reach Matt in time.
But there was still the power.
Twice Matt had tried to find it inside himself. Twice he had failed to make it work. He had one more chance. But how...?
The villagers had begun to chant. It was a sound that Matt had heard before. They began with the same words that had haunted him when he had been alone at Hive Hall: "NODEB ... TEMOCMOD ... EMANY ... NEVAEH ... NITRA."
But now that he was so close to them, Matt could make out what they were saying. And suddenly he understood. He had a.s.sumed they were speaking in Latin or Greek but it was much simpler than that. It was an old witches" ritual. They were reciting the Lord"s Prayer backwards.
Matt tried to ignore them. He was aware of the growing energy beneath him as the nuclear reactor reached critical ma.s.s. He knew he had to close his mind to all of it. Why hadn"t he been able to break the vase in Richard"s flat? Why couldn"t he open the door when he was Mrs Deverill"s prisoner? What was he doing wrong?
The murmuring filled the room, rising above the soft hum of the ventilation system. Sir Michael held the knife tightly in both hands, waiting for the moment when he would bring it down. Despite all his efforts, Matt found himself transfixed by the silver blade. This whole business had begun with a knife a the one that Kelvin had used to wound the security guard. It seemed that it would end with one too.
Think about the knife. Concentrate on it. Make it stop. Lying on his back, Matt tried to unlock the power that he knew was inside him. But it was no good. Sir Michael was in control. He was smiling to himself as he whispered the words of the invocation. Matt could see the sweat on his upper lip. He was going to enjoy this. His whole life had built up to it.
Far underneath the ground the control rods moved slowly upwards. As they left the core of the reactor, the neutrons rushed around the enclosed container, travelling at hundreds of miles per second, smashing into each other, releasing incredible heat.
And as the control rods rose, so did Raven"s Gate.
Richard had managed to free one hand but the other was still trapped and he was fighting desperately with the rope. But seeing what was happening, he stopped, totally shocked.
The great stones, destroyed centuries ago, were rising out of the floor like monstrous plants. There were eighteen control rods. And there were eighteen stones, each one sliding up in the exact position that it had once occupied. They were ghosts, pa.s.sing through the floor without touching it. But even as Richard watched, they shimmered, becoming more solid as they grew taller. Already they were towering above the villagers, forming a new circle behind them. In a few seconds they would be exactly as they had been. And Richard knew with a terrible certainty that it would be then that the knife would fall. The Old Ones would break free.
Matt saw all this and closed his eyes. The more he was drawn into the events around him, the less control he would have. Was there nothing he could do? He had smashed the jug of water. It hadn"t been a dream. He had done it. But how? Desperately he tried to remember how he had felt when he was in the detention centre. What had made him different? Why had it worked then?
The whispers grew louder. Now something even more incredible was happening. The colour of the floor inside the circle had changed. The black and white checks had been washed away by a glow of red that seemed to be shining through, from underneath. The glow became brighter, the colour more vivid, until it was like a vast pool of blood. Suddenly a crack, deep and black, cut a jagged path across the reactor cap. The gate was breaking up.
Matt opened his eyes one last time. There was Richard, standing outside the circle, still struggling with the rope. There were Jayne and Claire Deverill, watching with something close to ecstasy. The ceiling a harsh, industrial lamps and silver pipes. The observation room with the villagers pressed forward, watching through the gla.s.s. The flames of the black candles, flickering and swaying. And the floor...
A speck of darkness had appeared in the red. Matt craned his neck so that he was looking down the length of his body and beyond. The floor had become transparent. He was looking through it, into another world. The speck moved. It was climbing, flying, swimming upwards, moving at an incredible speed. For a second he could make out a shape, some sort of creature. But it was too fast. The blackness welled up, blotting out the red, thrusting it aside in a chaos of swirling bubbles. A brilliant white streak seared across the surface of the pool. The black thing brushed it away and with a shudder Matt saw what it was: a huge hand. The monster that owned it must have been as big as the reactor itself. He could see its finger-nails, sharp and scaly, and he could make out the wrinkled skin of its webbed fingers. It had placed its fist against the barrier and the crimson bubbles were exploding around it as it searched for the strength to punch its way through.
Matt closed his eyes. And suddenly, out of nowhere, the answer came.
The smell of burning.
That was what had triggered his power. He had smelled burning when he was sinking into the bog. The same smell had been there in the detention centre when he broke the jug. And even before that ... long before that. Now he remembered. His mother had burnt the toast on the morning of the accident that had killed her. Somehow that tiny incident had become the trigger. He had smelled burnt toast the moment before the security guard had appeared in the warehouse. He had known what was about to happen.
He stopped trying to influence the knife. He stopped trying to turn something on inside himself. Instead he thought back to six years ago. He was eight years old again, sitting in a kitchen in a south London suburb. For just a second, a single frame in a film, he saw the yellow painted walls. There was the kitchen cupboard. The teapot shaped like a teddy bear.
And his mother.
"Come on, Matthew. We"re going to be late."
He heard her voice and smelled it once again. The toast burning...