The Power of Five Oblivion (31 page)

He stretched out on the mattress as the door slammed shut. He heard the rattle of a chain being drawn on the other side. There was no window in the room and no light. Matt had to force himself to breathe slowly, not to panic in the intense dark. He had to remind himself that, in a way, he had chosen to be here. And he didn’t intend to stay long. He lay back with his eyes closed.

Five weeks had passed since he and Lohan had found themselves in the Brazilian city of Belém. The door from Hong Kong had led them to a huge church – the Basílica de Nossa Senhora de Nazaré – although it had long been abandoned to the floods, the filthy Amazon water that had swallowed up much of the city, spreading through the streets and under doorways, lapping through the once magnificent nave. The church itself was fairly modern but there had always been a holy building in the same place. An image of the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared there three hundred years before. Nobody had ever taken much notice of the little door, with its five-pointed star, that was concealed behind the altar.

Belém was almost completely abandoned, the few thousand people who remained either killing each other or letting disease and starvation do it for them. Matt and Lohan had quickly realized that they had been away for many years and had come back to a world that was very different from the one they had left. Worse still, the door in the church no longer worked. They were stuck here.

Matt was shocked to find himself separated from Richard. It had seemed to him that they had been together for so long and had faced so much danger together that they would never be apart. At the same time, he blamed himself for what had happened and the thought of it was still bitter in his mind. He hadn’t been thinking straight in those last moments at the Tai Shan Temple. If he had shouted out a single word, a destination, they would have all arrived there together. It could have been London, Cuzco, Lake Tahoe – anywhere. Instead, he had allowed them to pile in mindlessly and as a result they had ended up in different corners of the world.

And yet of all the travelling companions he could have chosen, he had considered Lohan the best equipped. Lohan had spent his entire life working inside one of Asia’s most dangerous criminal organizations. He spoke five languages, including Portuguese. When the two of them had been attacked by a street gang on the outskirts of Belém, just a few days after they had arrived, Lohan had responded with a speed and ruthlessness that had astonished Matt, leaving one man dead and two more in need of intensive care. Lohan had also refused to allow Matt to blame himself for what had happened after the escape from the temple.

“You had to get us out of there,” he said. “And you did. There was no time to sit down and look at a map, so why waste your energy going over it? It would have made no difference anyway. If we had all gone to one place, the Old Ones might have been waiting and we would have all been captured. Maybe it’s better this way. At least no one knows where we are.”

They had gone south together with only two aims: they had to avoid the Old Ones, and they had to survive. They had no money and were forced to steal food – again, Lohan was completely cold-blooded and efficient, and Matt soon saw that he would kill anyone who got in his way. Not that he was going to argue about it. There was no point, not with a man like this. As they had travelled, they had learnt that there was an airport still operating in Salvador and that it might be possible to buy a flight to another South American city or even to the United States. But Salvador was more than two thousand kilometres away. And a flight would cost thousands of dollars they didn’t have.

The slave markets were the only fast way to make money in Brazil. When people became desperate, they sold their children. If they were really desperate, they sold themselves. After five weeks on the road, when they had run out of food and knew that they could go no further, Lohan had sold Matt. It was as simple as that. There had been no other way.

Matt drank the water. It was warm and tasted of chlorine, meaning that it had probably been purified just as he had expected. He wondered about the other boy and wished he could help him but knew there was nothing he could do until later in the night. Eventually he dozed off, not so much sleeping as floating on the very surface of sleep. He wanted to go back to the dreamworld – but not tonight. He had enough to do already and it had been so long since he had seen Pedro, Scarlett, Jamie or Scott that he wasn’t sure what he would say to them if they met. When he opened his eyes again, he guessed that three or four hours must have passed. It was enough. It was time to make his move.

There was a chain on the other side of the door. Matt hadn’t seen it but he had heard the rattle as it was drawn through the bolts, somewhere above the handle. Still lying on the mattress, he visualised the bolts, the screws connecting them to the wood. He had the picture in his mind. He held it there, then sent out an instruction. How else could he describe it? A thought wave? A guided missile? He simply ordered the metal to break and a moment later he heard it do just that, cracking open as if someone had used a bolt cutter.

His power had increased ever since he had arrived in South America. As the days passed, he found that he could use his mind as effortlessly as he had once used his fists. He could move objects – even if they were several times heavier than himself. If he had wanted to, he could have stalled the vehicle that had brought him here, by simply telling the engine to tear itself apart. Maybe that would have been the easier way, but he had been interested to see where it would take him. And he was going to need the truck later on.

The door of the room swung open. Matt saw harsh electric light, leaking into the passageway from the arc lamps outside. He needed darkness. He thought about the generator building, imagined the mechanism inside, the turning cylinders, the wires. Once again, he pushed. The lights died instantly. The darkness was followed, seconds later, by the sound of shouting.

Matt stood up and finished his water. He felt good. He was in control.

It was time to go.

TWENTY-FOUR

There was no moon, no stars. The compound was utterly black. As Matt left the storage room where he had been kept, he heard voices – men shouting at each other in Portuguese – and saw the beams of torches leaping through the darkness. He took his time. Everyone would be concentrating on the generator and the loss of power. They wouldn’t have any time for him and provided he made his way carefully, he would be able to slip out before anyone realized he had gone.

The stockade was open. There was no need for locked gates when you were in the jungle, far from anywhere. And the drug lord had enough protection to hold back an army. Matt could have walked out, there and then – but as much as it exasperated him, he couldn’t do it. There had been the other boy in the truck with him. Matt hadn’t even learnt his name but somehow he still felt responsible for him. Right now, Matt could have been in his place. It was just his bad luck that the doctor had chosen him first, as casually as if he had flipped a coin. He had to know what they were doing to the boy and, if possible, prevent it. If it wasn’t already too late, they could escape together.

He had to cross the compound, to the arches on the other side. This was where he had seen the laboratories and it was to somewhere here that they had taken the boy. Matt didn’t dare walk straight across. There were too many men coming from too many directions, converging on the generator. Instead, he continued around the very edge, keeping close to the covered passageways, then hurried across the front of the house, passing the swings and the slide. He heard someone from inside calling out, a man’s voice, deep and gruff. Was it the drug lord, waking from his sleep, wondering what was going on? A guard ran past, only a few metres away, but didn’t see him. In the distance Matt heard a dog barking and that made him stop and turn round anxiously. Dogs wouldn’t be tricked by the darkness. They would find him by smell. If the drug lord kept guard dogs anywhere near the house, he might be in trouble after all.

He still hadn’t been seen so he quickened his pace, following the arches opposite where he had been. About half a dozen torches had converged on the generator building, the beams criss-crossing in the darkness, and he caught glimpses of men with unshaven faces and crumpled clothes, peering in to see what had happened. Matt knew that they would be confronted by cogs and pistons that had inexplicably bent themselves out of shape, cables that had been torn in half – and unless they had a back-up system, the only light they were going to see out here would come from the rising sun.

But as he continued on his way, he saw that one room was illuminated. There was a soft yellow glow coming from behind the glass windows … either candles or an oil lamp. Matt crept forward, his feet making no sound on the tiled walkway. He reached the window and looked in.

From the day that he had been arrested by the police and sent to be fostered in North Yorkshire, Matt had seen many horrors. The last minutes that he had spent at Raven’s Gate, his first encounter with the King of the Old Ones, had been enough for a lifetime. But he knew that he would never forget what he saw on the other side of the window. He was almost sick. It was hard to believe that any human being could be so monstrous, so cruel.

The drug lord had been buying boys to act as drug mules, to carry drugs inside them from country to country, crossing borders without being suspected or stopped. Matt knew that drug mules had flown into London and other major cities years before his adventures had begun. But the drug lord had taken things one step further. The Brazilian boy was lying on an operating table with a doctor and two male nurses leaning over him, their gloved hands bright with blood. His operation had been interrupted by the sudden loss of light.

He had been cut open and his body used to provide a hiding place for many packets of white powder. The plastic bags were packed into the cavities beneath his ribs and around his stomach. Anything that wasn’t vital had been removed to make room for more. Right now the boy was a glistening mess of blood and plastic, but Matt knew that he would be sewn up again and that he would live. He would make the journey to wherever the drugs were being sent and then he would be operated on again and the bags removed. How many times would he manage it before he died?

And he had been next. If the doctor had decided otherwise, it would be him lying there, unconscious and anaesthetized. Matt had to force back the fury he was feeling. If he released it, he would kill them all … the doctor, the assistants and the boy too. Perhaps he would be better off dead. But that wasn’t for Matt to decide. All he knew was that there was nothing he could do. He would have to leave him behind.

“
Quem são você
?”

The words came rasping out of the darkness. Matt turned, angry with himself, and saw a guard looming over him, inches away. He had been so fixed on the horror on the other side of the glass, he hadn’t heard him coming and now it was too late. The man was about to raise the alarm and even with his powers, Matt doubted that he could get past the dogs, the drug lord, the men with machine guns. Why had he even concerned himself with a boy he had barely met? His job – his one responsibility – was to get out of here in one piece.

The man opened his mouth to call out, then stared at Matt, his eyes widening, reflecting the light from the operating theatre. He pitched forward, a knife jutting out of his back. It had been thrown in almost total darkness, twisting twice in the air before it had found its target.

Lohan ran forward on soundless feet. “Matt?” he whispered.

“Yes…”

“I thought I saw you round the other side. What are you doing here?”

“I was just checking up on someone.”

Lohan followed Matt’s eyes back through the glass and saw what was happening. He showed no emotion at all and Matt realized that he had smuggled drugs all over Asia and Europe in his time with the Triads. He had probably used children himself. He might even have cut them up if it suited his plans. Lohan was eight years older than Matt, a few inches taller, slim and strangely detached. It was only the thin scar that ran diagonally across his lips that stood out, a reminder of his criminal past. And that was what he was. A criminal. The man he had just killed meant nothing to him. There had almost certainly been dozens of others.

“These people are bastards.” Lohan muttered the words matter-of-factly. “Do you want to do anything about it?”

“Yes. But we should leave.”

“I agree. I have a jeep outside. I’ve seen to the rest of their vehicles. Let’s go.”

The two of them set off together, leaving the dead guard and the dull glow of the operating theatre behind them. Most of the guards were still grouped around the generator and nobody stopped them as they approached a cluster of vehicles parked near the main entrance. The clouds had parted, allowing a little moonlight to steal through. Matt was grateful for it. They would need it as they navigated their way back through the jungle. Lohan pointed at a jeep and Matt hurried forward, almost tripping over a pair of legs stretched out on the ground beside it. They belonged to another guard, who was lying there with a thin strip of cord around his neck. After spending so long with Richard, Matt still found it hard to get used to a companion who killed people with such ease.

They climbed into the jeep, quietly closing the doors behind them. Lohan started the engine and at once another guard appeared, blocking the way ahead of them, already swinging his machine gun around. Lohan stamped on the accelerator. The jeep leapt forward and the man dived out of the way. Somebody shouted. But then they were through the gate and off down the track. Matt remembered what Lohan had said. Somehow, without being seen, he had managed to disable all the other cars. They weren’t going to be followed.

They drove slowly, the stunted trees and bushes sweeping past on both sides. Lohan pointed in the back. “I got you some bread, cheese and water,” he said.

“Thank you.” Matt reached behind him. He hadn’t eaten for twenty hours and his stomach was growling.