Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series) (16 page)

Demarge flinched
slightly, then quickly regained his composure.

“Is that so?” he said. “Well
how about if I invite your friend along as well?”

“She’s got nothing to do
with this,” said Bede.

“How do
you
know,
Bede? What makes you think you know anything?” said Demarge.

“Just leave her alone,” said
Bede,

“Like this maybe?”

Demarge curled his
fingers into his palm before flicking them open as if there were spring-loaded.
A ragged spike of electrical light sprung from his fingertips and snaked
quickly under the rack. Bede could hear it sizzling like bacon on a burning hot
griddle.

“Calix, look out!” he
shouted, falling to his knees and scanning the underside of the racks. The glow
of the light led his eyes directly to her. Calix was huddled in the far corner,
her back slammed up against the wall and her arms clamped tightly over her
head. The light was just seconds away from finding its target.

“No!” screamed Bede.

Then, just as it was
about to strike, the light suddenly veered to the right and exploded into a
cluster of dolls’ heads. A sharp, chemical smell of burning plastic filled the
air as dozens of glass eyes rolled and rattled in their charred skulls.

“How did you do that?”
said Bede.

Demarge smiled, ignoring
the question.

“I’m a very generous
man,” he said. “As you can see, I just saved your girlfriend. I also believe in
choice, and right now the choice is all yours. Your first option is to come
with me now and I’ll let the girl go. Your second is to refuse and I’ll have to
turn her into a crunchy barbecue snack for one of my snakes. Then you
still
get to come with me. So what would you like to do?”

Bede looked defeated. “Calix,
if you can hear me, please get out of here,” he said. He turned to Demarge. “I’ll
come with you now, but this is not the end.”

“You’re quite right,”
said Demarge, “This is just the beginning.”

I almost wept when I
finally saw the door. It was a faded, wrecked thing with red paint peeling off
it like sunburnt skin. But it was still
the
door. The one that led back
to the outside world where there were no blood-sucking bats dive-bombing my
head.

“Not long now,” said Min,
turning to Thomas and me. She was pale and her eyelids sagged with tiredness.
How are you, Clare?” she said.

“Fine,” I lied. Truth was,
I was completely knackered. My boots had rubbed my heels raw and I had mental
pictures of the humungous blisters that had sprouted under my socks. Gross. But
there seemed little point in saying that. It would just make Min and Thomas
worry, and dwelling on it would only make me feel worse than I already did. The
main thing was just to get the heck out of there.

I glanced at the last
stretch of the ridge that lay between us and the magical door to freedom. There
was still about two hundred metres left to go and it was by far the steepest
part of the whole journey.

“Don’t worry Clare, we’ll
help you up,” I heard a voice behind me say. I turned to Thomas and smiled.

“You read my mind,” I
said.

 “Here, grab hold of
this,” said Min, handing me the frayed end of a thick, twisted piece of rope.
It felt heavy and solid in my hands, the coarse strands rough against my skin.
Tracing along the length of it with my eyes, I saw that it was part of a
banister, suspended above the ground by a series of rusty metal posts.

I took a deep breath,
clutched the rope as hard as I could, and began hauling myself up the rock
face. The scree was even looser here than it had been before and as I stepped
forward a mound of stones shifted sideways beneath me. The pebbles clattered
into the chasm like a volley of bullets. I lurched forwards violently,
realising with horror that I was now falling headlong into the void.

“Thomas!” I screamed.
Suddenly, I felt an arm whip around my waist and pull me back from the edge.
“Thanks,” I said weakly.

My legs were still
shaking, the muscles freaking out from the shock. I took a deep breath and
slowly, very slowly, began to inch my way towards the door. I arrived to find
Min wrestling with the brass knob, trying to prise it open.

“Thomas, it won’t move,”
she said.

They glanced at each
other then cupped their hands over the lock. A mix of blue and yellow light
trickled into the hole and there was a loud click. As the door swung open onto
the deepening blue-black of the night, a cold blast of fresh air hit my face. I
gulped it in greedily. We were now standing on a narrow cobblestone street lined
with small shops that were covered in white plaster and black criss-crossing
wooden beams. The glass in the window panes was so old and rippled that it
looked as though it was actually melting. Directly above us, hanging from a
wrought iron rail, a sign said
Bags since 1509
and I realised that we
must be on
Sumegmy Street
, not
far from the river.

Everything was still,
except for the odd fox nosing around a bag of rubbish or drinking from a puddle
of oily, black rainwater. I glanced at my watch:
3:03am
. No wonder I felt so tired. I was
just about to yawn when I suddenly noticed a van grind to a halt outside an
all-night deli a few doors away. A man got out and unloaded a stack of
newspapers from the back.

“’ere, Ted,” he called
out. “Got your papers, will leave ‘em by the door.” The man dumped the stack
down, climbed back into the van and drove away.

I was still staring
distractedly at the deli when the thought suddenly occurred to me that there
might be something in the paper about Dad. I ran across to the stack sitting
patiently outside the front door, hoping to get a look before the shopkeeper
took it inside. The front page chilled my blood.

“Clare!”

I could vaguely hear
Min’s voice over the confusion in my brain as I stared dumbly at the paper. The
entire front page was covered in a photo of Vince, with a headline that read
Schoolboy
dies in stabbing.

“That kid’s in my class,”
I said. Thomas put his hand on my arm.

“Are you all right?” he
said. I nodded as I began to read out the article.

Police this morning are
searching for the suspected killers of a teenage boy found stabbed to death in
a local park near the
Old Town Square
. Eye witnesses report that Vince Reynolds, a sixteen-year old pupil
at Wiltsdown High, was seen with a friend at approximately
10pm
on Friday night, before becoming
involved in a skirmish with a group of youths. Anyone with information that
could help the police with their inquiries should contact Wiltsdown police…
”

“Are you going to buy
that?” asked the shopkeeper, bending down to pick up the newspapers.

“Umm, no,” I said,
feeling slightly embarrassed and putting the paper back on the pile.

He scowled, shook his
head, and hauled the papers inside.

Min took my arm. “We must
leave,” she said.

I followed behind her in
a daze. “I can’t believe it,” I said. “One minute he was a guy at my school,
the next he’s been murdered. How does that happen? How can somebody so young
suddenly have their life cut short like that? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s
not fair.”

I was starting to get
hysterical when I felt Min’s hand on my arm.

“No, it’s not fair,” she
said quietly. “But fairness seldom has a role to play in matters of life and
death. It may not be easy to accept, but accept it we must.”

I searched Min’s face,
not wanting to let the subject drop, but she shook her head.

“There’s no time Clare,
we must get to the Slipworld before sunrise.”

I sighed and started
running alongside her and Thomas, trying to keep up as they glided effortlessly
down the pavement. As we approached the seething black ripples of the river I
caught Min and Thomas exchanging worried glances.

“What’s up?” I said. They
didn’t answer immediately and, for a second, I wasn’t sure they would.

“Something’s not right,”
said Thomas.

Min sighed. “I know. I
felt it as soon as we got onto the street.”

“What do you mean?” I
said.

“Demarge is here
somewhere,” said Thomas. “We can feel his presence.”

“You mean he’s following
us right now?” I said.

“I doubt if it’s him
personally,” said Min. “The presence isn’t strong enough, but yes, it’s
certainly one of his scouts or Archons.”

“Scouts?” I said. “Are
they different from the Archons then?”

“Yes,” said Thomas.
“Demarge’s scouts are mortals. They might be animals, such as Arius, or they
could be humans. Either way, they are creatures of this world, not ours.”

I had a sudden flashback
to the night that Bede and I had spent camping under the jetty. Suddenly things
were starting to make a bit more sense.

“Demarge doesn’t happen
to use eels as scouts, does he?” I asked.

Thomas smiled ruefully.
“Yes. They lie dormant in the river until he decides to call on them.”

“Snakes, eels. There’s
kind of a pattern,” I said.

“Demarge is particularly
fond of all snake-like creatures,” said Min. “It’s his own private joke on the
Aeons.”

“What do you mean?” I
asked, confused.

“Snakes didn’t always
have the frightening connotations that mortals associate them with today.
Rather, they was seen by the Aeons as a symbol of hope and knowledge. The image
of the snake eating its tail was a symbol of unity and renewal. That was, until
Demarge adopted it as his own personal symbol. He’s laughing in our faces,
Clare, driving the point home that in his world he is the one who is ultimately
in control.”

“Oh,” I said. There were
still a load more questions that I badly wanted to ask but it was becoming
harder and harder to talk and run at the same time.

“I sense the followers
are getting closer,” said Thomas. “Do we have time to throw them off the
scent?”

Min shook her head.

“The more light we use,
the weaker we’ll become. I’m worried that we may risk not getting back to the
Slipworld at all.”

We continued in silence,
each of us consumed by our own thoughts. There were so many things that didn’t
make sense, so many things I still needed to know. And right now, there was one
question in particular that was bothering me.

“Where
exactly
are
we going?” I said.

“Not far now. It’s just
on the other side of the river,” said Thomas.

I glanced up to see that
we were fast approaching
Beare
Bridge
, the last of the seven bridges connecting
the southern embankment to the north. The skyline in this part of the city belonged
completely to St Bartholomew’s Cathedral, one of the oldest and largest
buildings in the city. Even before we’d set foot on the bridge, I could see the
Cathedral’s white marble walls, as luminous as polished bone, rising up out of
the earth. Its eggshell-blue dome, patterned in leaf-shaped metal panels,
almost seemed to glow in the moonlight. I’d never seen the Cathedral look quite
so beautiful before. It was as if we’d been captured in a mirror image of the
universe, and the dome was a reflection of the moon. I was so caught up in my
thoughts I had no idea just how closely we were being followed.

***

The boy wrapped himself in
the shadows of the streets, his eyes fixed on the three figures ahead of him on
the bridge. Their outlines were grainy in the misty dark night, but he could
see enough to know that they were the same people Demarge had shown him on the
ridge. He pulled a box of cigarettes from his back pocket and offered one to
Ecoli.

“I don’t smoke,” he
replied, the sharpness of his words stabbing the still night air. It was first
time he’d actually acknowledged the boy’s existence since they’d left the warehouse.

“Suit yourself,” said the
boy, pulling a thin, white stick from the packet and lighting it, before sliding
the box back into his pocket. He sucked feverishly at the tar, trying to numb
the cold that was seeping steadily into his bones. It was good to have
something to focus on, other than the fact that Ecoli gave him the creeps and
that the wolfhound looked big enough to eat him. Every noise and every movement
made the boy twitch as if he was wired to an electric circuit board.

“They’d better not see
you,” said Ecoli.

The boy jumped at the
sudden sound of the voice, but recovered quickly.

“They won’t,” he replied
defensively. He couldn’t afford to lose his nerve, not now, not in front of
Ecoli.

 “They’re on the bridge,
we need to catch up with them,” said Ecoli.

The boy gave a quick nod,
but said nothing. He flicked his cigarette butt in the gutter and quickened his
pace to keep up with Ecoli. The three figures up ahead had now stepped off the
bridge and were walking down the path to their left. They were heading towards
the Cathedral.

“Let’s get them,” hissed
Ecoli.

The boy shot him a
confused glance. “But it’s not our job to get them,” he said. “Demarge just
wanted us to follow them and report back.”

“That’s what Demarge told
you
to do,” said Ecoli. “He told
me
to bring the girl to him, and
that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“When did he say that?” The
boy’s eyes narrowed sceptically.

Ecoli, snorted
derisively. “You weren’t there.”

The boy gritted his
teeth, determined not to let his face betray the fact that he was now way out
of his depth.

“Do what you like then,”
he said, pulling another cigarette from his pocket and lighting it quickly.
“I’m out of here.”

The wolfhound growled
threateningly.

“Not so fast,” said
Ecoli, grabbing the boy’s shoulder and holding him fast. He could feel the
boy’s flesh flinch between his fingers. “Remember, you and I are a team and
Demarge made me the leader. That means
I
say when you go home.”

“I don’t take orders from
you,” said the boy.

“Yes you do, if you know
what’s good for you,” said Ecoli, tightening his grip and steering the boy down
the path. It was only once they’d passed through the gates and into the
overgrown cemetery that he loosened his hold slightly. “Now we wait,” he said,
dragging the boy down among the gravestones of St Bartholomew’s.

***

We stood outside the
gates at the back of the Cathedral, the windows bulging out of the apse like
glittery teeth. I could see a huge pair of double doors to the side of the building,
each was at least the width of my outstretched arms and the height of our
family house. The dark, honey-coloured wood had an oak tree and a shepherd
standing with a flock of sheep carved into it. Linking the two doors was a
thick, black chain, joined by a padlock the size of my fist. Whoever looked
after the Cathedral was obviously serious about no one breaking in.