by Sam Christer
Caitlyn looks to the door. She’s almost too scared to talk. ‘What’s happening out there?’
‘They’re going to complete the ritual here, not at the henge.’ He wishes he had better news to break.
Her face is heavy with sadness. She looks completely lost. ‘Can you just hold me for a moment? I feel like I’m going to fall apart.’
Gideon moves closer. She wraps her hands around his waist and rests her head on his shoulder. It feels good to be comforted. To cling on to someone who doesn’t want to hurt her.
‘Hey!’ One of the Lookers rattles the cell door. ‘None of that. Back away from her.’
Gideon gives the man a withering glance. Does the idiot think he’s planning to have sex with her? How stupid. He knows as well as anyone that a defiled sacrifice wouldn’t be any use to anyone.
No use to anyone.
How could he not have seen it.
He might still be able to save her life.
169
The Henge Master stands clad in a hooded ceremonial sackcloth robe bleached red using an ancient mixture of beets, madder and chokecherries. Beneath his hood there is a moon-like crescent, the outline of his shock of grey-white hair.
The Sacreds have been positioned in their tabernacles. Special sanctuary lights, multicoloured glass tubes filled with virgin candles, have been positioned and lit at equidistant spaces around the henge.
Through the star shafts he sees the colour of the sky.
Twilight is but a blink away.
The Master is close to exhaustion. The strain of transporting the Sacreds to the Sanctuary has wearied him. But he will not fail.
He raises a ceremonial stone sprinkler, filled with water washed from the Sacreds and creates a divine line from the Altar Stone inside the horseshoe of trilithons, out through the eastern arches of the sarsens, across the Slaughter Stone to the Heel Stone.
From a pocket in his gown, he draws the ceremonial stone knife and gazes upon the slab where the sacrifice will be cut. Five cuts. One for each of the mighty trilithons where the Chief Sacreds reside, the gods of the sun, moon, stars, earth and afterlife.
She will be left for five hours. One hour for each god. Afterwards, she will be untethered and washed again in blessed waters. Then she will be offered.
The Master’s hand falls to his other deep pocket. He feels that they are there. The sacrificial hammers. He turns his attention to the two Bearers watching and waiting from the other side of the opening to the Great Room. In their grasp is the rough litter made of pine, ready to convey the sacrifice on her fatal journey.
He is ready.
He nods. The Bearers move instantly away.
170
‘What were you running for, Lee?’ Megan twists his arm even further up his back as she stands over him. ‘I don’t have time to mess around and neither do you.’
‘All right. All right, I’ll tell you.’
She sees Jimmy crossing the field and lets go of Johns. The kid struggles to his knees. Cradles his twisted and aching arm. ‘I got scared. I saw you at my place and just freaked.’
She pulls him to his feet. ‘You and Sean Grabb killed Jake Timberland and you helped him kidnap Caitlyn Lock. In policing terms, you are screwed, my strange young friend.’ She jabs a finger in his bony chest. ‘We already have the forensics to link Grabb with the killing and the abduction. And I’m sure that once we go hunting for your DNA, we’ll find it. Juries love DNA. Three letters that they’ll believe more than anything an ex-junkie like you could dream up.’
Johns has been jailed before. He doesn’t want to go back. He looks beyond them, down the road to the big open world. Balancing his options. Finally he speaks: ‘I want immunity, right? A guarantee I ain’t going to get charged with nothing.’
‘Dream on,’ says Jimmy. ‘We’re past immunity. It’s down to damage limitation now. Hurry up. What have you got before we throw the charge sheet at you?’
He nurses his arm again. ‘Not much. It’s not like you think.’
She glares at him. ‘Don’t piss about, Lee. We need everything. No lies. No leaving bits out. Everything.’
He puts his hand to his head. Images are swimming back to him. The man lying dead in the van. The pretty woman screaming and kicking. Him in the Camper suggesting they kill her rather than get caught. ‘It was an accident. Nobody meant anyone to die or anything.’ He sees their unbelieving looks. ‘I mean it. We were after them because the girl touched one of the Sacreds. Things got out of hand. Sean hit the bloke and when we drove him away he died. It freaked us out. We didn’t plan it like that.’
‘I said don’t leave things out.’ Megan jabs him again. ‘Why were you at the henge? Who wanted them and for what?’
He swallows. ‘A stranger has to be picked for the ritual. Sean said it had been decided that it would be whoever touched one of the Sacreds. It didn’t have to be that girl or the bloke with her, it could have been anyone, you know? They just got themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘So where is she?’ asks Jimmy.
‘She’s at the Sanctuary, the place I told you about. But like I said, I don’t know where it is.’ He can see their anger. ‘Really. I’ve never seen it from the outside. Out along the A360. Out near Imber, that’s all I know. We stopped on a road just before the village, near the range. Sean went on from there with the girl in his Warrior and I waited in the Camper with the stiff.’
Megan wants to crack him. ‘You’re talking about a young man whose life you stole. Show some respect.’
‘Go on,’ says Jimmy.
‘Sean came back and said he’d phoned someone. A member of the Inner Circle. He looked relieved. He thought it was all going to be all right.’
‘So what was all that earlier today?’ Megan asks. ‘That story about something happening at Stonehenge?’
He colours up.
She reads his face. ‘If this girl dies, you’re getting charged with murder.’
He understands. ‘A man called Matt Utley, we just call him Musca, came to me.’ He looks towards Jimmy. ‘He knew you were trying to get hold of me, to talk to me about Sean. He says that I’m to contact you, tell you that something’s going off tonight at the henge.’ Johns glances back to Megan. ‘I was confused like, because something was supposed to be going off there tonight. It’s the start of the ritual.’ He dries up.
‘Go on, Lee.’ Jimmy’s voice is firm.
‘Tonight is when the girl should be, you know, sacrificed. And it should be at Stonehenge.’
‘Should be?’
‘That’s the point,’ he explains, looking from one to the other. ‘They know you’re on to them. They know everything. Musca wanted me to say this to you. So you’d go to the stones.’
She lets out a long sigh. ‘So where would be the right place?’
‘The Sanctuary, I guess.’ He puts his wrists together and offers them out to Jimmy. ‘You’ve got to lock me up. Put me in protective custody somewhere. Musca said he’d kill me if I fucked this up. Said I’d go the same way as Sean if I didn’t do what he wanted.’
‘Get him locked up,’ she says. ‘DCI Tompkins can deal with him.’
171
The crazy son of a bitch is at it again. Phoenix has his shirt off and his hands up the back of the sacrifice’s robe. The bastard is feeling her behind. Volans presses his face to the bars of the cell, he can’t believe what he is seeing.
‘Hey!’ He rattles the cell door. ‘Leave her alone, you dog. I told you once.’
The two of them are in the corner trying to hide but he can still see them. Musca appears in the passageway. ‘What’s going on?’
‘That idiot is trying it on with the girl.’
‘What? Stop them. Open the damned door.’
Volans fumbles with the keys. Musca catches a glimpse of them kissing. ‘Quickly. Come on.’
The two Followers stride into the cell and catch Gideon and Caitlyn locked in a passionate embrace, oblivious to
the noise around them.
‘Stupid fool!’ Musca grabs him by the hair, pulls him away from her.
Caitlyn steps back. Face full of desperation.
Musca spins Gideon around and crashes a fist into his face. But he doesn’t go down, he bear hugs him and holds on for dear life. Caitlyn lunges forward. A jagged shard of broken pot plunges into the side of Musca’s neck. She feels the warm spurt of blood on her face and knows she’s hit a main vein.
Musca shudders. Gideon lets him slip to the cold floor, then pulls a gun from his waistband. Volans is frozen. Stuck between helping his dying brother or securing the sacrifice.
‘Get the fuck away from her,’ Gideon says. ‘I won’t hesitate to kill you.’
172
‘Caitlyn, take his gun.’
Shaking with adrenalin, she draws the weapon from Volans’ waistband and pulls the bunch of keys from his hand.
‘Kneel down. Face the wall!’
As Volans moves, Gideon glances at the gun in his hand. He’s never held a firearm before, has no idea how to use it. No clue where the safety guard is or whether it’s even loaded.
‘Let’s go!’ He pushes Caitlyn out of the cell and closes the iron door behind him. He grabs her by the sleeve and they sprint down the passageway. Behind them come Volans’ cries for help.
In Gideon’s mind is a mental map. One he knows is incomplete. But it’s all they’ve got. He figures the most direct escape to be past the Great Room, on to the curving passageway of the the Outer Circle, then past the Master’s chamber. It would lead them to the stone staircase and the warehouse exit.
But that’s not where he’s heading. He’s following a hunch. One that will get them free. Or get them killed.
173
The Master steps hesitantly from the Great Room and looks around. The sacrifice should be here by now.
He hears noises spilling down the corridor, turns and walks back towards the cell. Four Bearers are running towards him. Without the litter.
‘She’s gone,’ shouts one. ‘The girl is out of her cell.’
‘My son, where is he?’
‘Also gone.’ The voice is that of Draco, hurrying up to the Master, blood on his hands. ‘They’ve killed Musca and taken Volans’ gun.’
‘Block the main exit,’ says the Master. ‘They will head for the stone steps into the anteroom.’ He feels ashamed that he trusted his child, personally guided him around the Sanctuary.
Draco despatches the Bearers. ‘And the avenue, what about the passageway from your chamber?’
The Master shakes his head. ‘He doesn’t know of it, but secure it anyway.’
‘I’ll go myself.’ Draco takes two men, instructs the rest to search the Sanctuary.
The Master looks into the emptiness of the Great Room. He can sense the displeasure of the Sacreds. But he is calm. The place is a fortress. There is plenty of time to recapture the girl and to complete the ceremony before first light.
He walks towards the Great Room, then thinks better of it.
He smiles and shouts for Draco. ‘Let the men go. Come with me. I know where they are.’
174
The wall torches are few and far between, the maze of passageways cold and heavy with the smell of damp and death.
Caitlyn clings to Gideon as they run. She prays that he knows what he’s doing. Fresh in her mind is her own futile escape attempt.
Something seems wrong to her. They’re heading downward. Running deeper into this horrible place rather than up and out into the safety of the outside world. ‘We’re going the wrong way!’
‘Trust me,’ shouts Gideon, short of breath.
Caitlyn knows she doesn’t have a choice.
As they run down the darkened corridors, he frantically tries to picture the twists and turns of the Sanctuary. In his mind it is like a buried pyramid, only dome-shaped. He sees the upper levels, the modern operational area. The carefully constructed weight-relieving chambers and corridors. Under them the Master’s chamber and the Great Room. He sees the Ascending and Descending Passageways east and west of these. Pictures them all built around the central star shaft. The corresponding points of the compass and constellations.
Now he envisages the eastern passageway. The access to the lowest level. The Crypt of the Ancients. The place they are heading towards.
The twisting and tilting corridors remind him again of Egyptian tombs. The kind of places that hold architectural secrets. He sees Khufu’s Great Pyramid and remembers its hidden chambers and passages.
He prays the Sanctuary has its own secrets. The star shafts, the varying heights in the corridors, the Ascending and Descending Passageways, and the geographic alignments. They are all clues that he’s right.
They slide to a halt in front of a locked oak door.
‘Quickly,’ he says, pulling a breathless Caitlyn tight to the wall. ‘Sit down. Sit here and stay here.’
He backs off several metres, turns to look at her. ‘Further forward. Come towards me half a metre.’
She slides along the ground, pulls her shaking knees up to her chest, rearranges the loose sacrificial gown.
‘Okay. Stop.’ He backs off further, rounds the corner of the passageway behind them, then reappears, looking hard at her.
‘Stay here. Don’t move. Whatever happens, even if you see them coming for you, don’t move.’
175
Caitlyn sits shaking on the cold floor, caught half in the light of a flickering wall torch, half in the long shadows of the high passageway leading to the Crypt of the Ancients.
Gideon has vanished. She is alone. Her mind drifts. Back to when she was a child, playing hide and seek with her parents. Only she hides so well neither of them can find her. She waits and waits and waits. Fears they’ll never come.
Is he gone for good? Has he left her as a decoy?
There’s a noise. Footsteps. Someone is approaching. The waiting is over. Muffled voices. They are coming for her. She remembers what he said: don’t move … whatever happens … don’t move.
Caitlyn holds her nerve. They’re close now. Very close. Footsteps so loud that she knows she is only seconds away from discovery.
She sees them. Two men. One old. One younger. Caitlyn screams. One of them moves to grab her.
The corridor fills with a ball of noise. A sound so loud she flinches in shock. Painful ringing erupts in her ears. The man in front of her clutches his chest. His eyes are wide, his mouth open. He lurches to the side, falls to his knees.
Gideon steps from the shadows. He levels a shaking gun at the older man in the red robe. ‘Father—’ He spits the word out.
The Henge Master glances at Draco on the floor, his blood leaking onto the stone. ‘What have you done?’
Gideon waves the gun. ‘—I need the key to the Crypt.’
The Master lifts the string from around his neck, his face full of contempt. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to leave without stealing something precious. You’re just a grave-robber like Nathaniel.’ He throws the key into the pool of blood near Draco.
‘Get it,’ Gideon says to Caitlyn, the Glock still levelled at his father.
She bends to pick it up.
Draco grabs her by the ankle, pulls her over.
The Master charges Gideon like a bull elephant, crashes him into a wall.
There is another deathly explosion.
176
The two men slump to the ground. Locked together. The Glock clatters over the blood-spattered stone slabs.
Caitlyn’s survival instinct kicks in. She stretches her arm through the cloying pool of Draco’s blood and grabs the fallen weapon. He’s still pulling at her. Strong hands moving from her ankle to her knee. She twists around. She has no choice but to go with the thought in her head. She pulls the trigger. Shoots him in the face. Point blank. The report is deafening.
Blood and brains spatter her. She drops the gun and holds her crimson-soaked hands in horror. She sits frozen until Gideon gets to
her.
‘Come on, we have to go.’
Caitlyn can’t move. Multiple images of what she’s done are already branded in her mind. The way he looked at her, then the blood-red mist, flaying skin, saliva, flying bone. He’s dead. She just killed someone.
‘Caitlyn! Get up!’
She feels Gideon grab her hand. It’s wet with blood and brain. He is pulling her along, the stones feel soft beneath her feet. Her vision blurs. She stops and retches. Heaves the last specks of moisture from her empty stomach.
‘Come on!’
She retches again and looks to the side. Gideon is unlocking a door just a few metres away.
He rushes back and gets her, drags her with him through the new opening.
Blackness. Total blackness.
She stands shaking while he searches. The blood red mist sprays up before her eyes again. Flesh. Saliva. Bone. The final, frozen look in his eyes. Like a broken doll.
Light. A wall torch finally starts to burn close to her. Orange. Orange not red. Gideon has lit it. He leads her by the hand, lighting giant candles around the room. The blackness dissipates, dribbles away like water on hot sand. The room tilts. Her knees buckle and she feels a sickly warmth course through her.
‘Caitlyn!’
She hears his voice, tinny and distant, a shout from down a long, dark tunnel, as she falls.
177
The bullet from the Glock has gone straight through the Master’s thigh. He’s lucky. As a career soldier, he knows two simple truths. First, there’s no such thing as a non-fatal shooting. Let any wound bleed long enough and you’ll die. Second, unless you shoot your enemy in the skull or the spine, you’re not going to incapacitate them with a handgun. They’re going to be shocked to hell, but once they’re over that, they’re going to be up and at you again. And that’s what he’s going to do.
He wipes away the blood and examines the entry and exit points. Clean. He feels tentatively around the traumatised skin. The bullet was low velocity, so it’s a straight hole. Little effect on the surrounding tissue. He presses and watches the cavity fill. If it had been a high-velocity rifle, the injury may have been much worse.
