Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us (31 page)

‘The snake-root doesn’t offer eternal life,’ he retorted, looking down at the body on the altar. ‘Jonah is right – there’s no
life
in this bag of scrag and bones. Only an absence of death.’

‘Better a slow decline over five thousand years than this handful of heartbeats the rest of us are given,’ she said. ‘And now the truth of Ophiuchus’s discoveries is within my grasp, I shall go on to taste true power – and wealth beyond imagining.’

‘We’ll share it for ever,’ Yianna called, ‘won’t we?’

‘You thought I wanted eternal life for its own sake, didn’t you, Nathaniel?’ Samraj shook her head. ‘You underestimated me. As the years stretch to decades, as the decades stretch to centuries … I shall probe every last secret of the human genome, unlock every last cell of the human mind.’

‘She’ll learn how to make me well again!’ Yianna bragged to Tye and the zombie-like Motti, as though she was desperate to be a part of the moment.

But Samraj was on a roll. ‘No longer shall death be the price we pay for progress. All secrets shall be mine – and I shall use them for the betterment of humankind.’

‘Totally safe,’ Motti said happily.

‘When I can cure cancer with a routine operation,’
said Samraj, ‘when I can banish disability from the human race … When I can extend the lifespan indefinitely of anyone I choose … What will people not give me in return?’

She paused, surveying her audience. They all were standing still and silent as statues in the stinking, smothering gloom. Tye realised that even Yianna was waiting to hear.

And finally, Samraj answered her own question.

‘They will regard me as their saviour.’

Jonah would have shaken his head in bewildered disgust if he hadn’t been afraid Samraj would blow it off at the slightest provocation. Standing there, sweaty and dishevelled, her make-up smeared over half her face, she was at once both frightening and pathetic. And she had clearly lost the plot big time.

‘So there you’ll be, saviour of a world full of perfect people, all living for ever.’ Coldhardt didn’t bother to hide the sneer in his voice. ‘Driving out the impure. Driving out the different.’

She stared at him like he just didn’t get it. ‘Improvements must be made.’

‘And when you have grasped every last genetic root of humanity’s design, what then? What will sustain you, stop you from decaying like …’ He gestured down at the body on the slab. ‘…
this
.’

‘There is much I must learn from this man,’ said Samraj. ‘If the snake-root reveals doors to higher realities then I shall kick them down, map out every perception of which the mind is capable – every higher sense.’ She smiled, looking at him almost hopefully. A
thick dribble of mascara stained her cheek like a black tear. ‘Don’t you see, Nathaniel? In time, anything can be mine.
Every
thing.’

S
he’d still share it all with him
, Jonah realised,
no matter what he’s done
.

‘It would never have worked between us, Samraj,’ said Coldhardt bluntly, taking a step towards her. ‘You see, we’re both takers in life. I take precious treasures, chances, risks – pleasures, where I can.’ He looked down the barrel of her gun, perfectly calm. ‘You simply take things too far.’

‘
I
take things too far?’ She shook her head, gritted her teeth. ‘I know what you did. The bargain you made when you were young. The way you sold your soul.’ Jonah stared, terrified, as her hands squeezed over the gun as though she were trying to wring sweat from the handle. ‘I offered you a way out. A way to cheat what’s coming to you. To cheat death.’

He took a step closer to her, looked tenderly into her eyes.

‘And end my days with you … looking like that relic on the slab?’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘Shoot me now. It’s hot as all hell in here. I won’t have far to travel.’

Her face twisted as she fought to contain her anger. A crazed smile forced its way through her lips and she spoke in a low, trembling voice. ‘I wonder … if in all the years before me … there will ever come a sweeter moment than when I kill you. But first, I think we should watch your children suffer.’ She glanced back at her acolytes, shouted at them in their own language, then smiled back at Coldhardt. ‘Slowly.’

Jonah heard Tye gasp as the blade pressed into her throat, saw Con and Patch assume uneasy fighting stances as the acolytes started towards them.

‘No!’ Coldhardt made to grab Samraj’s gun, but her finger was already flexing on the trigger. All but forgotten, Jonah lunged forward over the wizened, shrivelled old body, grabbed her wrist and twisted it as she fired. The shot went wild. The report was like a bark of thunder and a glass tapestry shattered above them, showering them with shards.

Then there was a quieter sound, like eggshells crushing, and Jonah found himself violently thrown aside. He fell to the slimy floor and rolled over.

When he looked back up, the shadowy scene before him made little sense at first.

The acolytes had suddenly abandoned their tasks, even Hela. They had fallen to their knees as if in worship, muttering and wailing, singing strange prayers in ragged unison. Yianna was lying on her back on the floor at Motti’s feet, shouting for help; she had been abandoned. And why wasn’t Tye moving? Why was she just staring at the altar like Con and Patch, like they were all rooted to the spot? Even Coldhardt was …

Then suddenly he saw the force that had sent him sprawling.

The old, bony body of Ophiuchus was sitting up in the crimson puddle of his fine cloak.

His skin was like thin grey chewing gum stretched too far over the sticks of his old bones. The eyes were dead yellow jellies, pricked with specks of blackness, unblinking as they stared, affronted, at Coldhardt and
Samraj. The cadaver’s jaw sagged open – and for a moment Jonah thought it would snap straight off.

But then a word formed in the creases of his leathery lips, rode out on a heavy breath.

Jonah didn’t understand the word, but he guessed it would sound bad in any language.

‘Ophiuchus,’ Samraj breathed, lowering the gun. She started speaking to the apparition in what might have been its own language, but which sounded like a frightened babble to Jonah’s ears.

Then his sight began to blur. The smoke of spores was thickening, distorting his vision. Lights were sparkling in the broken tapestry, and sinister shapes resolved themselves from the shadows they cast. The misshapen statues seemed to shift on their plinths. A low boom was building in his ears. The wall paintings were folding into the blackened, scabrous walls – strange windows opening on some wrong, forbidden world. Letting in
things
.

Jonah clutched his hands to his head as the funereal chamber seemed to warp all around him. The prayers of the cultists were growing wilder, higher in pitch. They started to sound like screams.

‘Samraj!’ That was Yianna. She was shrieking. ‘You hear the acolytes? These are the visions of Ophiuchus. He’s showing us what he’s seen.
This
is the evil the old mages linked him to.’

‘No!’ He could hear Samraj but no longer see her. She was lost to the darkness like Tye, like Coldhardt, like all of them. ‘Superstitious rubbish! This … this is some kind of mass hallucination …brought on by the snake-root –’

‘Flesh of the gods!’ Yianna screeched. ‘He ate of their bodies to feed his soul. Now the gods have come for
our
skins!’

‘Don’t believe it!’ That was Tye’s voice. ‘This is our reality, here in the chamber
here
.’

‘
Catena Mundi
, the link between worlds, yes?’ Con shouted. ‘Yianna is right, they
have
come for us.’

Jonah joined in with the acolytes’ screams as weird, willowy phantoms drifted from the shadows towards him.

Tye stared around the chamber in horror. Hela was down on her knees, clutching at her throat, tearing at her veil. Jonah was lying on his back near the altar, arms flailing as if a cloud of invisible wasps had descended on him. Con was curled in a ball beside a pillar, rocking herself for comfort, while Patch all but drowned out the babbling prayers of the acolytes with his screams of ‘Get away!’ repeated over and over again. Yianna was silent now; her face a grimace of sheer terror, trapped in some private hell.

Of Coldhardt there was no sign at all.

‘Totally safe,’ murmured Motti. Something had happened to him when he’d first checked the doors to this place. Had he tripped something – some ancient last line of defence – or had the snake-root spores somehow altered his perceptions ahead of the rest of them?

Tye kept catching intense colours at the fringes of her vision, blindingly bright patterns at the backs of her eyes. Either the spirits she had invoked earlier in the antechamber were helping to keep her sane or this
had
to be an illusion brought on by the snake-root spores. Tye had sat through enough voodoo rituals as
a child to know how certain substances could mess up your mind, cheat your senses – and to know how faith and fervour could feed into that hysteria, keep it going, lift you higher.

If you were prepared to surrender yourself to that ride, it could be a euphoric experience. But if you didn’t want to let go, if you were afraid …

The old figure was sitting up like his back was locked in place, like it might splinter if he ever moved again. His face was just as rigid, fixed and imperious. Samraj was weeping, wailing, her reason lost, beating her legs in frustration.

Where the hell was Coldhardt? Had he run out on them for real this time?

The room was starting to bend around her. Tye knew she didn’t have long before she was as helpless as everyone else. She guessed that whether hallucination or some kind of psychic attack, these visions could drive them all mad.

She needed a distraction. Phosphor cap? She had one stuck beneath her collarbone, though she was so sweaty now it had almost come free. She threw it down between Patch and Con, shielded her eyes from the explosion of light …

When the smoke cleared, Tye saw that Patch had stopped shouting. Had she brought him round? No – he was just standing there, looking up into the shadows, gibbering. She had thought that with just the one eye, perhaps he wouldn’t be so easily affected by –

The eye.

Tye stumbled over to him. The pressure was building
in her ears, she couldn’t swallow it away. It was so damned hot, and every step she took broke more of the fleshy mould and spilled more spores.
You idiot! You could be making things worse
, she thought, but she had to reach Patch, and this stuff was everywhere.

She lifted up the leather patch over his eye.

Ick. Ick. Ick
.

And she hooked her nails around the ceramic eyeball and plucked it out.

Patch didn’t even flinch as the leather slapped back down over his face, hiding the little pit beneath.

‘Gelignite,’ she muttered aloud, her fingers trembling as she tried to undo it. ‘He said he kept gelignite in this one …’ She gasped as she walked into something.

It was one of the creepy statues, like a wraith captured in marble.

Suddenly it was leaning down, shoving its huge shadowy face into hers.

She closed her eyes, bit hard on her lip, scissored her teeth on the flesh till the pain and the shock of the blood on her tongue made her gasp.

When she opened her eyes, the statue was just a statue. But the patterns behind her eyes were starting to circle and spin, the same sickly yellow as the glow of the snake-root.

‘Motti!’ she shouted, pushing a wailing acolyte aside to get to him. ‘How do I use this stuff?’

‘Totally safe,’ he said.

Tye shouted in pain and surprise as her left ankle was grabbed tight.

It was Hela, unveiled. Her old face was thick with
blue veins, twisting in despair as she clutched hold of anything for comfort. Tye tried to yank herself free but she was held fast.

And she felt the colours edge round from behind her eyes for a full-on assault. This time she might be dragged under.

‘Motti, it’s
not
safe!’ she shouted, reaching out to him. ‘How do I set this stuff off?’ She could almost touch his hand …‘You went under before any of this started happening. Now I need you here with us. It is
not
safe, you stupid bastard, d’you get me?’

She grabbed hold of his hand, staggered in Hela’s grip, opened out his fingers, slapped Patch’s eyeball into his palm.

‘Look what Patch did to you!’ she yelled. ‘He’s totally got one up on you now. He’s laughing his ass off at you, Motti! He’ll dine out on this for months!’

Slowly, Motti looked down at the thing in his palm. At the grey eye staring cheekily back at him. And suddenly he cringed, roared with disgust and –

‘No!’ Tye yelled. ‘Don’t!’

He threw the eyeball away.

It sailed into the wall, cracked against one of the mosaics.

And exploded in a white inferno that drove every shadow from the place.

Tye felt a wave of heat break over her. It felt hot enough to strip skin. Motti was thrown forward by the blast, smashed into Tye, breaking Hela’s grip.

So
that’s
how you set it off
, thought Tye as the cavern started falling in around her.

* * *

In the aftermath, Jonah’s ears screamed with the noise of the explosion. The heat of the blast had barely warmed him, but its light had seared through the engulfing darkness, driving away the phantoms – for now at least.

With a frisson of fear, Jonah saw that the twisted, ancient body was lying on its back on the stone once more, as though it had never moved at all. How much of the last few minutes had been delusion and how much real, he didn’t know – but he could still see the nightmare shapes of the wraiths every time he closed his eyes, as if the brightness of the blast had burned the images on to his eyelids.

A severed stone head stared across at him from the floor – one of the statues, brought down in the blast. He stared at it dumbly for a few seconds. Another few metres and it would have crushed him flat.

Focus
, he willed himself.
This is still a nightmare and you’re trapped in it
. He choked as he brushed dust and debris from his body. The cavern was brighter now – the fungus on the wall around the mosaic had caught light and was starting to blaze with a thick, orange flame. And blearily, Jonah saw someone stagger in front of him.