Necropolis

NIGHT ATTACK

Slowly, determinedly, they closed in on the house.

There were more than a dozen of them: nightmare figures, shuffling across the lawn. Where had they come from? Matt could imagine them climbing out of the local cemetery. There was something corpse-like about them. A gleam of light from the living room caught one of their faces and he saw glistening bone, one empty eye socket, dried blood streaking down the side of the cheek and neck. At that moment he was sure of it. These creatures couldn’t be killed. They were already dead.

As if to prove him wrong, Professor Chambers stepped forward and fired a shot at the nearest of them. Matt saw a great gout of blood explode out of the back of its head. It fell face down and lay, shuddering in the grass. So at least they could be stopped! She fired again, hitting another of them in the shoulder. The creature twitched as if shrugging off the bullet. Blood spread across what was left of its shirt. But it kept on coming. It didn’t seem to feel pain.

Richard was already on his feet, loading the revolver that he had taken from the gun cabinet. A few weeks before, Matt had smiled when he had stumbled across him, shooting tin cans in the desert. Now he was glad that Richard had decided to practise.

When the attack had begun, Scott and Jamie had snatched up a couple of makeshift weapons – anything they could get their hands on. Jamie had a baseball bat. Scott had found a kitchen knife which he was holding in front of him, the blade slanting up. Pedro had backed away to the other side of the room. He was standing with his back to a full-length window, his eyes darting left and right, waiting for the first attack.

He hadn’t looked behind him.

“Pedro…! Watch out!” Richard shouted the warning.

One of the creatures was looming out of the shadows on the other side of the glass. Pedro spun round just in time to see a dead, white face, staring eyes, grey lips, hands stretching towards him. The creature didn’t stop. It walked straight through the window, smashing the glass which cascaded all around it, and came into the room with blood streaming down its face. Shards of broken glass were sticking out of its flesh, but it didn’t seem to notice. Richard lifted his revolver and shot it twice in the head. It crumpled and fell at Pedro’s feet. At the same time, Richard twisted round and fired again. Another of the creatures had reached the open French windows and was about to step inside. It threw up its hands and fell back with a bullet between its eyes.

But there were still many more of them moving slowly across the lawn, unafraid of dying, determined only to reach the house. Perhaps Ramon had been a diversion after all. While he had been talking, the night attackers had completely surrounded the house. Matt heard the sound of wood splintering upstairs and knew that some of them must have climbed up to the balcony and broken in that way. Jamie stepped forward and grabbed the diary, which he threw to Scott in a single movement. Scott caught it without even looking and slipped it into his jacket. Neither of them had spoken and Matt knew that the two of them must have communicated telepathically. He had seen them do it often enough. Each one of them knew instantly what the other was going to do. They were almost like reflections of each other.

Richard was reloading. Joanna Chambers fired again. She pulled some more bullets out of her dressing gown pocket but even as she fumbled with the loading mechanism, one of the creatures launched itself at her, grabbing hold of her with one hand, lifting an ancient-looking knife with the other. The blade was black with a broken, serrated edge. It stabbed down.

Matt stopped him.

Six months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to do it. But then he had been alone. Now four of the Gatekeepers had come together and Scott, Jamie and Pedro had added their power to his. All he had to do was think about it and the blade snapped in half. The creature screamed in pain and a wisp of smoke rose from the palm of its hand as the hilt of the knife burned into it. By now, Chambers had loaded her rifle. She fired a single shot at point blank range, putting it out of its misery.

“We can’t control them!” Jamie shouted.

If these creatures had been fully human, he might have been able to make them turn round and leave the house. He and Scott didn’t just read minds. They were also able to control them. All their lives, the two brothers had recognized that they were living under a curse. Always, they had to be careful what they said. One unguarded thought, one word spoken in anger, could turn them into murderers. Once, Scott had almost killed a boy at school. And later, when their foster father committed suicide, Scott had known that he was secretly to blame.

But this time it wasn’t going to work. Their attackers didn’t seem to have minds that could be controlled. It was as if they had already been programmed to kill with no thoughts of their own. And there were too many of them. Matt glanced into the garden. It was still very dark outside but he could make out a whole crowd of them, moving relentlessly across the lawn. There were more at the back of the house and yet more of them upstairs.

Matt heard a horrible gargling sound and turned just as a man – or the remains of one – stumbled over the sofa and launched himself at him. The man was naked to the waist, sweat and slime dripping off his chest. Matt nodded and the man was flung backwards, crashing into the wall. He slid to the floor and lay still.

“They’re on the stairs.”

It was Scott who had seen them. The creatures from the balcony were making their way down, their movements slow, almost robotic. Jamie ran forward with the baseball bat and swung it into the face of the first man that he reached. There was a crunch of breaking bone. The man crumpled.

Matt looked all around him, wondering where the next attack was going to come from. At the same time, he smelled something. His eyes had begun to water and he was aware that it was getting more difficult to breathe. The temperature had risen too. Richard fired again, hitting one creature, then used the revolver as a club, smashing it into a second. “The house is on fire!” he yelled.

Matt didn’t need to be told. Smoke was pouring down the staircase, sucked into the ground floor by the turning fans. He could already hear the crackle of burning wood. Stretched out in the hot Nazca sun – it almost never rained in this part of Peru – the professor’s house would be bone dry. There were fire extinguishers in all the rooms, but they weren’t going to be given a chance to use them. Left to itself, the fire would consume the whole building in minutes.

Richard fired two more shots but then the gun clicked uselessly in his hand. He rummaged in his pocket, searching for more ammunition. Professor Chambers blasted off another round, but she too had only a few bullets left. And the creatures kept on coming. Kill one and another two or three would take its place. There seemed to be no end to them. Matt saw another one appear on the stairs, holding an iron post similar to the one that had killed Ramon. It had been torn free from the garden fence. He watched as the creature lifted it up to its shoulder, realized too late what it was about to do.

The creature flung the rod like a spear, aiming straight at Pedro. Matt shouted a warning. Pedro twisted round. The missile turned once in the air and then struck him a glancing blow on the side of the head. He cried out and fell to the floor, dazed and bleeding. Another creature – dressed bizarrely in the rags of a dinner suit – closed in on him. Matt couldn’t reach him. He was too far away. But Scott was there. He still had the kitchen knife. He was standing between Pedro and his attacker. Matt waited for him to move.

Scott did nothing. He stood where he was, frozen to the spot. He wasn’t even blinking. Matt could see his chest heaving and his hands seemed to be locked in place, the fingers bent. His whole body was rigid.

Matt knew what was happening. He had seen it before. Scott wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t a coward. But he had spent weeks with Nightrise, with the woman called Susan Mortlake and in that time they had got into his mind. It was hard to imagine how much pain they had put him through, trying to turn him against his friends. This was the result. In moments of stress, he simply shut down. Even Pedro had so far been unable to help him. The wounds were too deep.

Pedro was lying still. There was a gash on the side of his head. Jamie was lashing out with the baseball bat, using it like a club or a sword. Matt looked for a weapon but couldn’t see one. The man in the dinner jacket had reached Pedro and was standing over him. He had produced a second weapon, an axe which he was holding in both hands. Desperately, Matt searched across the room, saw a jagged piece of broken glass on the floor and – using his power – swept it through the air and into the creature’s throat. The creature screamed horribly and fell back in a fountain of its own blood.

“We have to get out of here!” Richard shouted.

The air was full of smoke. It was getting harder to breathe inside, but running out into the fresh air would be suicide. Nobody would be able to see anything in the darkness – and if these creatures had night vision they would be in total command. Matt stood there, cursing himself. There were tears streaming down his cheeks. He knew that this was happening because of Scarlett. He had been expecting it. So why hadn’t he been better prepared?

At any event, he knew that Richard was right. They had to get out of the house before they suffocated. The smoke didn’t seem to have any effect on the attackers. It was as if their lungs had rotted away and they didn’t need to breathe. Jamie threw the baseball bat at one of the creatures on the stairs, then ran over to his brother. Matt reached Pedro and helped him to his feet. At least he didn’t seem to be too badly hurt. Professor Chambers blasted away with the rifle, clearing a way to the French windows.

“Look out!”

It was Richard who had shouted the warning. Matt looked up just in time to see part of the ceiling come crashing down in a chaos of orange fire and black smoke. The flames were leaping up at the night. It seemed that most of the roof and part of the second floor had gone. Taking Pedro with him, he threw himself to one side and the falling debris missed him by inches, crashing down onto the sofa where Ramon, the man who had started all this, was sitting. The iron rod that had killed him was slanting out of his chest. He was watching it all like a disinterested spectator.

The six of them staggered out into the garden leaving the burning house and the remaining creatures – nine or ten of them – behind. Professor Chambers fired one last shot. “No more ammo!” she called out to Richard but there was a strain in her voice and Matt wondered if she had been hurt. He looked at her in alarm. There was a patch of red spreading across the front of her dressing gown. A dark gash showed in the material. But she wasn’t going to let the pain slow her down. “How about you?” she demanded.

“Two more bullets…” Richard replied.

Two more bullets and the attackers were everywhere. Matt could see them clearly in the light of the flames, their eyes glowing red, their hands clutching knives, axes, chains and lengths of barbed wire which they flailed like whips. Pedro was leaning against him, blood running down the side of his face. Scott and Jamie were standing together, catching their breath. They had made it outside but they had nowhere to run. Another creature lumbered towards Professor Chambers, who stood where she was, clutching her wound. Richard shot it twice.

Matt was almost ready to give up. He couldn’t believe that it was going to end this way, surprised and surrounded in a garden in Nazca. Was this what the fight had all been about? He was a Gatekeeper. He had returned to the world after ten thousand years. Was he really going to allow himself to be beaten so easily?

And then the night exploded a second time, with lights bursting out all around them, slanting in from every direction. Matt and Pedro stood where they were, swaying on their feet. Jamie moved towards his brother. Richard and Professor Chambers swung round with their now useless guns. They were trapped, huddled together in a group with the blazing house behind them, the lights in front, surrounded on all sides. Matt tried to see who it was that had arrived at this late stage. Did he have the power to send them back? He bowed his head, drawing on the last of his strength.

Then, as if from nowhere, a volley of arrows was fired in his direction. But not at him. They had been aimed deliberately over his head. Some of the creatures on the edge of the house cried out and fell back as they were hit. Another volley followed, taking out more of them. The lights were coming from the headlamps of four or five cars that had driven to the edge of the garden and parked in a semicircle. There were men running across the lawn. There were several gun shots. One of the men stopped and reached out for Professor Chambers who more or less collapsed in his arms. The others continued into the house, blasting away with hand guns, searching for any remaining attackers and setting to work, fighting the fire.

And suddenly Matt knew who they were.

They had helped Pedro and him when they had first come to Peru, spiriting them out of Cuzco through a network of underground tunnels. The two boys had stayed with them in their hidden city, Vilcabamba, high up in the mountains. They were Incas, the tribe that had once ruled Peru, but which had been reduced to little more than a handful of survivors, living in secret. They had promised to look after Matt and the other Gatekeepers while they were in Peru. And they had come, true to their word.

They were armed with guns as well as their own traditional weapons and they made short work of the attackers. Machetes swung through the darkness, slicing into rags and flesh. Bullets hammered through the night. It was over very quickly. Matt, Pedro, Scott and Jamie waited on the lawn while the last of the creatures was finished off. Richard was now helping to support Joanna Chambers. All the colour had left her face. She was barely able to stand.

One of the Incas came over to them. He was short with broad shoulders and a dark, serious face. “Are you OK?” he asked.

“We’re all right,” Richard said. “But Professor Chambers has been hurt.”

“I am Tiso. We came when we heard the first alarm. I am sorry. We arrived too late.”

“We’re just glad you’re here,” Richard said. “Can we go back into the house? We need to get her inside…”

But it was another half hour before the Incas had put out the flames and they could get back in. The roof and part of the first floor had gone, but there were still two bedrooms that were habitable and, once the debris and the dead bodies had been cleared, the six of them would be able to camp out on the ground floor.

The house would never be the same again. Matt looked at the charred wood and the soiled carpets, the broken windows and debris, and felt a mounting sadness. It had been such a beautiful place. Professor Chambers had lived there for much of her life but then he and the others had come along and ruined it for her. In a few hours, they were supposed to be departing – on their way to London. And this was the mess that they were leaving behind.

Tiso and some of the other Incas helped carry Professor Chambers into her study. Richard went with her and Pedro followed too. His healing powers were going to be needed more than ever, although it looked as if the professor might be too badly injured even for him. She needed medical help, and sure enough a doctor arrived a few minutes later, urgently summoned from the nearby town. Matt, Scott and Jamie stayed outside while she was examined. None of them said anything. They were exhausted. Just a few hours before they had been laughing together, having dinner and playing dice games. And now this!

Matt glanced at Scott. “Where’s the diary?” he asked. At that moment he almost wished they didn’t have it. It didn’t matter how valuable it was. It had so far brought them nothing but trouble.

Scott took it out of his jacket pocket and handed it over. “I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was low. “I didn’t help you, back there. I didn’t help Pedro. I wanted to. But…” His voice trailed off.

“It doesn’t matter,” Matt said. “Everything happened so quickly. Anyway, Pedro’s going to be OK.”

“What are they doing in there?” Jamie stared at the closed study door. His voice was angry. He kicked out at the sofa were Ramon had been sitting. The dead man had been carried outside but there was still a great gash in the leather to remind them of what had happened. He turned to his brother. “You got it wrong,” he said. “You said he was telling the truth.”

Scott blushed – with embarrassment or perhaps with anger. “I thought he was telling the truth,” he said.

“You may have been right,” Matt interrupted. The two brothers seldom argued and he was surprised to see them starting now. “We can’t be sure that Ramon was responsible for what happened tonight. He told us he was in danger and he was certainly right about that. They killed him. So maybe the rest of his story was true.”

“Can we use it?” Scott asked.

Matt opened the diary. There was a page covered with diagrams. One of them looked a bit like a motor car, though as if drawn by a child, and he remembered that Joseph of Cordoba – the mad monk – was supposed to have been able to predict the future. He flicked through it. Some of the pages had been marked with a modern pen. Someone had scribbled down words and figures, underlining certain areas of the text. Diego Salamanda? The diary had belonged to him and he could have spent weeks deciphering it. It seemed that he had left some of his handiwork behind.

Matt tried to make sense of some of the words but the monk had written in ancient Spanish and anyway his handwriting was almost illegible. “I can’t read this language,” he said. “And although Pedro can speak it, he can’t read…”

“Maybe the professor will be able to work it out,” Jamie suggested.

Professor Chambers. Matt remembered how Richard had looked when he had helped carry her in. The two of them had been inside for a long time.

And then the door of the study opened. Pedro came out. He shook his head briefly and sat down, looking miserable. The doctor followed him. He muttered a few words to Richard, then left the house, doing his best to avoid eye contact. That was when Matt knew that it wasn’t going to be good news.

“Matt…” Richard called him over to the door. “She wants to see you,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “She wants to say goodbye.”

“Is she…?” Matt realized what he’d just been told. “She can’t be dying,” he said. “What about Pedro? Can’t he help her?”

“It’s too late for Pedro. There’s nothing he can do.” Richard sighed. “We’ve called an ambulance for her and it’s on its way now. But she’s not going to make it. I’m sorry, Matt. I don’t know how it happened but she was stabbed. There’s been a lot of internal bleeding and…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “She’s not in any pain. The doctor’s seen to that. But there’s nothing more we can do for her. Do you want me to come in with you?”

“No…” Matt went into the study.

Joanna Chambers was lying on the day-bed that she liked to use as a place to think when she was working. As usual, her desk was completely covered in papers along with a bottle of brandy and a box of her favourite cigars. The old-fashioned radio that she liked to listen to was next to her computer but it was turned off, silent, and somehow that made Matt sadder than anything else, the thought that she would never listen to it again.

She was still in her dressing gown but someone had drawn a blanket over her legs and chest. There was only one light on and it was burning low, casting a soft glow across the room.

He thought she was asleep but as he closed the door, she looked up. “Matt…?”

He went over to her. “The ambulance is on its way,” he muttered. “The doctor says…”

“Don’t tell me any stuff and nonsense,” she cut in, and just for a moment she sounded exactly like her old self. “There’s nothing they can do for me and anyway I’m not going into any local hospital. Dreadful place.” She tried to shift her position but she didn’t have the strength. “Come and sit next to me,” she said.

Matt did as he was told. His eyes were stinging and there was an ache in his throat. Why did it have to happen like this? Why couldn’t she be all right? He remembered Professor Chambers as he had first seen her, piloting her own plane. She had worked out the secret of the Nazca Lines and she had been with him, in the middle of the desert, when they were attacked by the condors. He knew that without her, he would never have located the second gate. And since then, she had looked after them, never once complaining as her house was invaded and her work interrupted.

Matt had used his power to protect himself. Why hadn’t he been able to do the same for her?

“Now you listen to me,” she said. She found his hand and clasped it. “You mustn’t be upset about me. You have a very great responsibility, Matt. I don’t think you have any idea yet what is going to be asked of you. And how old are you? Fifteen! It’s not fair…”

She closed her eyes for a few seconds, fighting for breath.

“The Old Ones will be beaten,” she said. “Ever since the world began, there’s always been good and evil, but somehow we’ve managed to muddle through. You’ll see. It may not be easy. What happened today… silly, really. We should have known they would come.”

She let go of his hand. She couldn’t manage very much more.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” she said. Her voice was fading away. “I’m so glad I met you, really. I’m glad we had our time here. I’ve always loved this place, always been happy here…”

She pointed at the door with one finger, telling him to leave her. Matt did as she said. Richard was waiting for him outside.

The ambulance arrived ten minutes later. But it was too late. Professor Chambers was already dead.