Coldbrook (Hammer)(132)

‘And this will be the trigger,’ Jonah said.

‘Might feel strange to you.’ Drake placed it in Jonah’s hand. ‘Squeeze hard, and the pod beside your heart will burst.’ Warm, the size of a peanut, flexible, still Jonah sensed a solid centre to the item. He nodded and placed it carefully in his jacket pocket.

Drake led him inside. Jonah had no sense of leaving anything behind, perhaps because everything he had was already a world away.

They passed through a series of doors – most of them locked – passageways and arches, working their way deep into a labyrinth of concrete and rock. Drake took a route that was clear only to himself, and here and there he held up a hand and went about making their way safe. Some traps were basic: tripwires firing spring blades and primed crossbows; false floors above deep, spiked pits; hidden triggers that anything unaware could activate and which would bring spikes or blades or crushing rocks down upon them. Other traps were more mysterious to Jonah: slow-flowing waterfalls that Drake had to divert, their effect unknown; openings haloed by weak light, the air within sparking softly. Jonah wanted to ask about every single one, his scientist’s mind alert. But there was no time for investigation.

As they went deeper, they came across the first trap that had been triggered.

‘From here, it might not be safe,’ Drake said. He aimed his light into a pit. Jonah looked and saw an old scarecrow-like thing down there. It was impaled on several long, thin spikes, and now it squirmed at their presence, clicking in its throat. Its face jutted out, leathery skin stretched over a bony forehead. Drake fired his crossbow and stilled it.

‘Here,’ Drake said. He delved into his bag and handed Jonah his pistol. ‘I’ll guide you to the breach, and protect you. Beyond there you might need this.’

‘How far?’ Jonah asked, still looking into the pit.

‘Three traps.’

A shadow closed on Jonah and pulled back again. His Inquisitor, letting him know it was there. He sensed no alarm radiating from it, no fear that Jonah was running away. He guessed that it could follow him to the ends of the Earths.

They went on, and each of the other three traps held the remains of a Neanderthal fury. Two were dead, their heads ruined. The third was pinned against a wooden frame that had sprung from the wall and been pushed back by those that had come after. It lifted its head at they approached and Drake destroyed it.

Jonah was amazed once more at the fury’s decayed state. It was over forty years dead, yet it had still had the ability to move and the will to spread its disease. He experienced a moment of panic that made his heart flutter and caused him to lean against the passage wall.

They walked on and soon passed through a final doorway in a thick stone wall. The wooden door had been pulled to one side, its top hinge pulled away from the crumbling rock.

‘I’ll reset them all on the way back out,’ Drake said.

‘I know,’ Jonah said. And I’ll be committed to this. But he hadn’t for a second thought about turning around. This might have been forced upon him, but, though he could never believe in fate or destiny, his mind was set.

‘This is it,’ Drake said, and for the first time Jonah heard a weakness in his voice. Awe did that, perhaps. And maybe fear.

The breach was in front of them, set into the original hillside like a black diamond. Light did not escape it: it neither shone nor glowed. It was simply a blackness in the shadows thrown by Drake’s torch.

Jonah held out his hand to Drake, and they shook.

‘They’ll write poems about you,’ Drake said.

‘Poems? Christ. I’m Welsh. Give me a good song any day.’

Drake laughed sadly, not quite understanding. ‘Good luck, Jonah.’

Without another word Jonah passed through, and his greatest journey began.





2


Jayne surfaced slowly from the churu coma, her senses coming alive as her pain grew. She felt as if she’d been torn apart and thrust back together again. The roar of the helicopter’s motor had stopped, replaced now with screaming and other, more terrible sounds. Something dripped. Someone cried, and it sounded like a little girl.

Jayne opened her eyes, and even that hurt. Groaning out loud, she lifted her hands and checked her body for wounds.

There was blood on the back of her head, but she didn’t think that it was hers.

‘Sean?’ she said, glancing to her left. Sean was gone. His safety straps were cut, and his absence seemed unnatural.