The Armageddon Conspiracy (56 page)

‘
Be careful,’ Sinclair
said.

For a moment, the sound of the
cardinal’s voice startled Lucy.
Why was he the one to speak, and
not James or Gresnick?

She made her way along the strange
white, solid river, holding her arms in front of her in case she
had to grab hold of something to stop herself falling.
Everything
was covered with a thin film of water, sparkling under the electric
lights.
When she reached a miniature waterfall at the rear of the
river, she stopped.
Her whole body was electrified.
She imagined
that if the lights were turned off, she’d shine like a spectre.
Was
that what she’d become?
– an unearthly presence, an anti-person.
She haunted people, made them miserable.

Crouching down, she put
her hand in a space behind the frozen waterfall.
Her fingers
stretched out, groping, and soon she touched cold metal.
Instantly,
a carousel of images spun in her mind.
So much pain.
Blood
.
A great arc of red.
Pain.
Darkness.
Death
.
Calling to her through time.

She pulled out a spectacular, glinting
gold dish, studded with rubies and emeralds: a platter fit to serve
a king.
John the Baptist’s severed head, she didn’t doubt, once
rested on this, his hair matted with sweat and blood, his eyes
still open, crusted with his last tears.
It was presented to
Herodias, Herod’s wife, as the most perverse of gifts, following
Salome’s deadliest of dances.

Lucy sensed the dish’s
other use, something dark and strange.
It was from this same dish
that Jesus served bread to his disciples at the Last Supper.
Why
that
dish?
How
did Jesus get hold of it in the first place?
Joseph of Arimathea
bought it from Herod, didn’t he?
The whole thing was a conspiracy
against John the Baptist by Jesus and his followers.
That was
certainly what the Johannites believed.
The dish, they considered,
was the proof: a mockery of John’s death, a sign of the
conspirators’ triumph.
But it didn’t save Jesus in the end.
The
Johannites struck back and avenged their leader.

Lucy found Sinclair standing behind
her.

‘
Does it speak to you?’
he asked.

‘
What?’

‘
The past reaches out
to you, doesn’t it?
History whispers to you.
You’re so
privileged.’

There was something odd about
Sinclair’s tone.
Also, the way his eyes gleamed as he gazed at the
dish...

‘
I’ll take that off
your hands, if you wish.’
Sinclair gestured towards the
dish.

Lucy shook her head.
‘No, I’ll hang
onto it.’

She and Sinclair retraced their steps
and joined the others.
James and Gresnick were standing exactly
where she’d left them, their expressions oddly vacant.

‘
What now?’
Gresnick
asked.

Lucy didn’t know what to say.
There was
only one Grail Hallow left – the Holy Grail itself.
Or, rather, the
object Robert de Boron claimed was the Grail.
Lucy had no idea
where to find it.
Raphael’s panel showed a castle on a wooded
mountain overlooking a lake.
There was no such place near here.

‘
Well, first, let’s get
out of here,’ Sinclair said.

Lucy gazed at James.
There was such a
pained expression in his eyes.

‘
What do you think,
James?’

‘
This is your
show.’

My
show
?
That was the last thing this was.
She
was the puppet, unable to see the strings.

She headed for the path back to the
entrance.
They entered a large passageway, with boulders stacked on
one side.
She remembered from her childhood that this chamber
contained a strange cave shaped like a black cat.
She found it
frightening back then.
It had lost none of its creepy aura.

Walking fast, she led the group down a
long flight of steps that broke out into a much larger passage, not
far from where they’d come in.

‘
Stop!’
Gresnick
hissed.

Lucy looked quizzically at him.
He put
his finger over his mouth.
She concentrated hard, trying to
understand what had made him so agitated.
Then she heard it: an
engine ticking over.

‘
Morson’s found us,’
Gresnick said.

74

A
ll the lights
went out.
Lucy shook her head, dismayed.
Was it meant to end this
way?

‘
What are they doing?’
Sinclair whispered as Gresnick switched on his torch.
There were no
sounds of footsteps, no signs of pursuit.
‘Are they just going to
wait out there?’

‘
There’s another way
out,’ Lucy said.
‘There are lower levels to these chambers.
They
haven’t been opened to the public because they regularly flood, but
they exit further up the Gorge.
They might be passable.’

‘
We don’t have a
choice,’ Gresnick said.
‘Let’s get moving.’

Lucy took Gresnick’s
torch and swept it around the passageway.
A
Do Not Enter
sign behind a roped-off
area showed the entrance to the lower levels.

‘
We’re not cave
explorers,’ James said.
‘We might get trapped.’

‘
It’s either this or
Morson,’ Sinclair said.
‘I’m willing to take my
chances.’

‘
We’re wasting time.’
Lucy marched off, pushing the security rope to one side.

Ducking under several low archways, she
entered an enormous cave.
As she made her way further in, she heard
queer, scuffling sounds and bizarre echoes.
She swept her torch
round but it showed nothing other than damp cave walls.
Green slime
dribbled down in a few places.

Taking a few more paces, she found her
steps becoming increasingly laboured.
The cave floor was covered
with some sort of glue.

‘
What is
this
?’
Gresnick
complained.

‘
It’s shit,’ James
said.
‘There’s a bat colony here.’

Lucy pointed her torch at the cave
roof, then nearly dropped it.
A mass of bats was hanging there,
twitching.

‘
Jesus Christ, they’re
everywhere,’ Gresnick gasped.
‘There must be thousands of
them.’

Lucy stood there, transfixed.
She
pictured them swooping down all at once, a dense choking cloud
heading straight for her.
They were probably vampire bats.
They’d
suck every drop of blood out of her.

‘
We have to keep
going,’ Sinclair said.
‘They’re not doing anything.
Our luck might
hold.’

Lucy wasn’t sure she could take another
step.
She switched off the torch for fear of attracting the bats.
Darkness enveloped her.
All she could think of was the bats, the
terrifying sound they’d make if they attacked.
Just a question of
time.
She was aware of something else – a feeling of unutterable
dread.
It was there at Tintagel, there at Cadbury, and now it had
arrived here.
Something malignant was following her – darkness,
darkness itself.

‘
Can’t you feel it?’
she asked.

‘
Move,’ Gresnick
barked.

‘
I feel it,’ James
said.
‘It’s found us.’

‘
What are you talking
about?’
Gresnick snarled.

‘
There’s no
time.’

Lucy managed to struggle forward, but
now she heard new sounds – writhing, scurrying, as though the walls
and ground were coming to life.

Panicking, she switched on her torch
again.
Hundreds of thousands, millions maybe, of spiders, beetles,
centipedes, ants and small black snakes were carpeting the cave
floor, swarming all around her feet.

Unable to control herself, she vomited
over the creatures nearest her feet.
She felt as though her insides
were dissolving.

Gresnick gripped her arm and dragged
her away.
They moved as fast as they could, under another low arch
and into a fresh cave.
Then they halted.
The new cave was glowing
yellowy green: the ground, the walls, the roof, everything.

‘
Fireflies,’ James
said.
‘Adults and larvae.’

Firefly larvae, Lucy knew, were called
glow-worms.
In ancient China, they used to collect the glow-worms
and fireflies and put them in transparent containers to make
primitive lanterns.
She’d always wanted to see them.
Not anymore.
They were terrifying, like the tiny lights of hell.

‘
Luciferin,’ James
said.

‘
What?’

‘
It’s a light-emitting
chemical.
That’s how these things glow.’

Luciferin
– Lucifer’s light.
The luminescence of hell.
That’s what this was.
That’s why the sea at Tintagel glowed, and
why this cave was glowing.
Every dark creature glowed when their
master was near.

Fear flooded every cell in Lucy’s body.
The cave’s yellow-green luminescence was slowly changing to
aquamarine, and she knew it wouldn’t be long until it was pure
blue: somehow, the world was conspiring to become her worst
nightmare.
Her forehead was saturated with sweat.
She had a fever
coming on, with hot and cold shivers running up and down her
body.

‘
We’re lost, aren’t
we?’
Gresnick said.

Lucy shook her head.
‘I promise you,
there’s a way out.
I remember now what the tour guide told us when
I came here as a kid.
He said there was a passageway behind one of
the waterfalls.
It was where the men who found the caves first
broke in.’

‘
So, we go
back?’

She nodded, embarrassed by her
mistake.

‘
There are pools of
pitch in here,’ James said.
‘Can’t you smell it?’

‘
So what?’

‘
If there’s a spark,
the whole place goes up.’

‘
Come on, let’s get
out,’ Gresnick shouted.

Before they could move, the cave
erupted.

‘
God preserve us,’
Sinclair yelled.

All of the fireflies had become
airborne.
They were joined by an overwhelming, buzzing, seething
mass of wasps, bees and hornets.
Then the bats joined in from the
adjacent cave, filling the entire chamber with their flapping wings
and high-pitched squeaks.
On the ground, all the insects had
reappeared, and there were rats too, thousands of them.

Lucy screamed and pressed her hands
against her ears to shut out the din.
The gates of hell were wide
open and hell’s creatures were swirling and scampering around her
like a whirlwind, but nothing touched her, not a thing.