‘You want me to try making contact again?’ Jane asked. ‘I told you, the link has been broken. There’s nothing there to make contact with, not any more.’
‘You have a very special ability, Jane,’ Crowley said. His craggy face was an escarpment of trembling shadow in the candlelight. ‘I think it’s time to take your talents to the next level. Into new territory – for all of us.’ He gestured to the stone altar table in the centre of the chamber. ‘Please.’
As she had done so many times before, Jane stepped up on to the dais surrounding the table. She glanced back at Crowley, and glared at Rutherford who stood smirking next to him.
‘Naked, if you would be so kind,’ Crowley said. His pale tongue licked quickly over his bloodless lips.
‘I’ll help you if you want,’ Rutherford said. The anticipation was obvious in his voice.
‘I can manage,’ Jane told them. She was close to the burning incense, the smoke making her lightheaded and woozy. She kicked off her shoes and unbuttoned her blouse, all the while conscious of the two men staring at her. She was used to it, but she still found it unsettling. Especially Rutherford.
The table was cold under her back as she lay down. She stared up at the vaulted roof above, its details lost in shadow as the light danced over the stone surface. The perfumed smoke from the copper bowl beside the table drifted across, blurring the image and dulling her senses. ‘I’m ready.’
‘Not quite,’ Crowley said. ‘Don’t resist, my dear. It will all be over soon.’
The smell of the incense was stronger now, the smoke thicker. Through it, she saw Crowley looking down at her, holding the copper bowl close to her face, letting the smoke drift across her. She breathed it in, feeling herself begin to slip away.
Someone took her hand, pulling it gently away from her body until it was stretched out to the edge of the stone table. She felt the metal clasp round her wrist, securing it in place. Then the other arm. Jane felt a moment’s panic as her legs too were pulled apart. She tried to sit up, to see what they were doing, but her head felt so heavy …
Then cold metal closed round her ankles, holding her spread-eagled across the stone.
* * *
Crowley replaced the copper bowl on its stand and looked down at the woman stretched out on the stone.
‘What are you going to do to her?’ Rutherford asked. He too was staring at Jane. He’d never seen her look so beautiful. So helpless.
‘I shall do nothing,’ Crowley said.
For a moment, Rutherford thought Crowley would just leave, and let Rutherford do whatever needed to be done. But instead he stepped down from the dais and went to one of the alcoves at the side of the chamber, reaching down into the shadowy darkness.
When he straightened up and turned around, Crowley was holding the metal cage Rutherford had seen in the hidden room. It was covered with a black velvet cloth, and Crowley carried it carefully, almost reverently to the altar table. He set it down on the stone surface, between Jane’s ankles.
‘What’s going to happen?’ Rutherford asked, breathless.
‘To be honest, I don’t know.’ Crowley gently pulled the cover from the cage, murmuring quietly as he did so. Rutherford could not hear the words, wasn’t sure it was English – Latin perhaps? Or an even older tongue?
Darkness quivered inside the cage. A living shadow. Slowly, carefully, warily, Crowley undid the clasp at the front of the cage, and lifted up a section. He stepped back as the inchoate darkness reached out through the opening.
An angular limb, gnarled and grotesque like the leg of a giant spider, licked out of the cage. Then another. The creature inside pulled itself out, and squatted malevolently between the cage and Jane. Sensing something was happening, she tried to raise her head, looking down along the length of her body. Rutherford didn’t know if she could see the nightmare creature that was moving slowly towards her. He hoped so. Her eyes were wide with fear, her whole body trembling.
One of the creature’s skeletal limbs brushed against her thigh, and Jane cried out in surprised terror. The cry was choked off as the creature moved on, upwards, reaching out across her flesh, hauling itself up onto her body. The single eye swivelled back and forth as it surveyed its prey. It paused, the pulsing, bulbous body resting on the woman’s naked belly, gnarled legs stretching out across her thighs, her breasts, towards her face.
Jane’s head lifted again and she saw the dark nightmare stretched out across her. Her whole body convulsed with the effort of screaming, back arched and limbs straining at the manacles. The creature’s limbs curled round her in a macabre embrace, clutching her tight, then abruptly releasing her.
Her body slackened, fell back to the stone.
Crowley stepped forward, muttering urgently to the creature. A limb whipped out like a tentacle, narrowly missing Crowley’s face. He stepped back with a snarl, gave an angry, guttural order. Slowly, reluctantly, the creature withdrew. Its crooked limbs gathered into a knotted mass beneath its dark, bulbous body. A single defiant eye glared for a moment back at Crowley.
Then it withdrew into the cage, and Crowley snapped the bars back into place and closed the clasp.
‘How do you control it?’ Rutherford’s voice was a dry rasp.
Crowley glanced at him. ‘Ancient words of power, handed down through the generations of natives in the Himalayan foothills of Nepal. I am never quite sure whether the words control it, or whether it merely does as I ask.’
Rutherford’s heart was thumping and he was breathing heavily – part excited and stimulated by what he’d seen. Part horrified. He stepped up onto the dais beside Crowley, keeping well clear of the cage. Not daring to look at what it held. Instead he stared down at the body of Jane Roylston.
‘Is she dead?’
‘No, she’s not dead,’ Crowley said.
A thin trail of blood wept from a narrow slash across her left breast and down her chest. Several smaller lacerations criss-crossed her stomach and the top of her legs. A bead of blood welled up from a point close to her navel, running slowly across the undulations of her body and dripping to the stone table.
‘What now?’ Rutherford said, his voice a nervous whisper.
Crowley picked up the black velvet cloth and draped it back over the cage. ‘Now we wait.’
CHAPTER 17
Before leaving for the Bertesgarten, Himmler insisted on a status report from both Hoffman and Nachten.
‘Perhaps you will have some good news for me to pass on to our Fuhrer,’ he suggested, looking from one to the other.
Hoffman was too familiar with Himmler to be intimidated, but Nachten – he was pleased to see – shuffled uncomfortably. They were sitting at a large, round stone table in one of the anterooms. Nachten had brought a plentiful supply of notes and papers, books and folders which were stacked in front of him. Hoffman had his notebook.
When he judged that Nachten has squirmed enough, Hoffman replied. ‘As you know I have been researching the axe supposedly connected to the Black Forest. But, I am sorry to report, with little progress so far,’ Hoffman admitted. ‘I shall inform you both when I get a lead.’
He made a point of looking down at the notebook on the table in front of him. He saw to his surprise that while they had been talking he had drawn in the margin. Several small axe-heads. A few of the runic symbols. And a complex circular pattern, lines spiralling inwards to form paths – some blocked and some opening into other sections. It was a shape he had seen before, in his mind’s eye and in his dreams. He closed the notebook and looked up. ‘There are several possibilities I should like to follow up.’
Himmler nodded, and turned back to Nachten. ‘What of the third axe?’
‘I need to do more research myself. But I have discovered enough already to believe that my researches are pointed in the right direction.’
‘And what direction is that, if I may ask?’
‘Greek myths and legends. I believe the third axe-head is still in Greece.’
‘Explain, if you would.’ Himmler leaned forward, hands clasped together on the cold stone surface of the table. ‘Briefly,’ he added.
* * *
‘You two are looking very pleased with yourselves,’ Sarah said.
Leo was perched on the edge of Miss Manners’ desk, the two of them talking quietly. There was no one else in the office, and Sarah had heard Leo’s laughter from the stairs on her way up.
‘We think we may have tracked down our elusive axe,’ Leo explained.
‘Dr Wiles and Mrs Archer suggested Crete as a possible location,’ Miss Manners said. ‘But it was just a theory, based on a myth and Evans’ archaeological finds. Nothing very concrete to back it up.’
‘And now?’ Sarah asked.
‘Now it looks as if there may be a connection to the Labyrinth in Crete after all,’ Leo said.
‘The legend of Theseus and the Minotaur?’
‘That’s right,’ Leo told her. ‘The Palace of Knossos on Crete where the Labyrinth was supposedly built was also known as “The House of the Double Axe”.’
‘So there’s a connection.’
Leo sighed. ‘Well, sort of. It may not be as clear cut as it seems, because actually any Cretan palace was known as a house of the double-axe. That said, it keeps us in Crete. We, by which I mean archaeologists and classical academics, tend to associate the island with the bull.’
‘They had paintings and statues of bulls everywhere,’ Miss Manners added. ‘They sacrificed bulls, and of course there’s the Minotaur.’
‘Half man, half bull. However that happened,’ Sarah said, mainly to show she knew what they were talking about.
Leo had stood up from the desk and was pacing back and forth as he explained. ‘Well, keeping it brief, King Minos of Crete asked the god Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull from the sea as a symbol of support for his reign. Minos was supposed to sacrifice it, but the bull was so impressive he kept it and sacrificed a different one instead. As a punishment, the king’s wife was made to fall in love with the bull and, well, the result of this relationship was the Minotaur.’
‘That’s…’ Sarah struggled to find a word. ‘Disgusting,’ she decided.
‘Yes, well, there’s a lot of that sort of thing in Greek myth, I’m afraid. But anyway, apart from the prevalence of bulls in Minoan – Cretan – history, axes are also important.’
‘The Cretans sacrificed bulls,’ Miss Manners said, ‘using double-headed axes like the one we’re interested in, though rather larger of course. And remember the Thor legend?’
Sarah nodded. ‘Wasn’t the third axe supposed to belong to Thor?’
‘That’s right. Well, the Greek god Zeus used an axe to create storms, so there’s another similarity.’
‘And he’s often depicted holding an axe,’ Leo explained. ‘In fact,’ he went on, ‘the Greek for “lightning” literally translates as “star axe”.’
Miss Manners cleared her throat. ‘But getting back specifically to Crete, Minoan priestesses carried these double-headed axes on ceremonial occasions.’
‘So,’ Sarah said, ‘lots of connections.’
‘Too many for it to be a coincidence, now we’ve looked at it,’ Leo agreed. ‘Or so we believe.’
‘So, what next?’
‘Since we talked to Dr Wiles at Bletchley,’ Miss Manners told her, ‘he has managed to trace several UDT sightings and transmissions in the Mediterranean back to Crete. Of course there are a lot of other places on those same trajectories. But there are also suggested Ley lines that meet in Crete. All that taken together…’
‘Adds up to something worth investigating,’ Sarah agreed. ‘What about your friend Jane Roylston? Can she confirm or help with any of this, do you think?’
‘I wondered that,’ Miss Manners said. She was frowning behind her severe spectacles. ‘But I’ve not been able to contact her. She’s been out of touch for a while now. So long, in fact, that Guy and Colonel Brinkman are going to see Crowley. If nothing else, he may know something about occult connections to Crete which might help.’
* * *
The resentment was growing in him by the day. Ralph Rutherford felt he was being kept on a leash, like a dog. Crowley insisted he couldn’t even leave the house, and he felt like every moment he was being watched. He had never really liked Crowley. He certainly didn’t trust the man. And now, at any moment, he might decide to follow the advice of MI5 and stick a knife into Rutherford’s back.
A knife … Like the one now in Rutherford’s hand …
It was all Jane Roylston’s fault. Since the bizarre ritual down in the cellar with the grotesque creature, Rutherford hadn’t seen her. Jane was confined to her room – recovering, according to Crowley, though the way he said it made Rutherford sure the man was keeping something from him. He couldn’t get back at Crowley, not easily, not yet. But Jane …
There was no answer when he knocked on the door. So he opened it and went in. She was sitting on the side of her bed, staring out of the small window. She didn’t turn when he spoke.
‘Jane.’
He walked round to stand in front of her, holding the knife where she could see it. ‘Stand up,’ he ordered.
She looked up at him, but made no effort to stand. Her expression was blank. Her eyes showed none of the fear and loathing he was used to seeing in them. She turned back towards the window.
‘I said stand up!’ he yelled, suddenly angry.
She stood. Slowly, almost dreamily. Her eyebrows raised slightly, but otherwise she did not react to the outburst.
‘I can make life very difficult for you,’ he said. Still no reaction. ‘Difficult and painful.’ Nothing. Feeling the tension and resentment building inside him, he reached out with the knife, tracing the point of it down her cheek. She turned slightly to look at him.
‘Yes, that got your attention, didn’t it,’ he whispered. ‘You’re nothing, you understand. Crowley can do anything he likes to you. You know that. Well, so can I.’
He pressed harder with the knife, until it bit into the skin below her eye, producing a tiny bead of blood.
‘I’m going to teach you to show me respect.’
A thin line of colour followed the blade as he drew it slowly down her face. She didn’t flinch. That angered him even more, and he pressed harder. The skin parted beneath the blade. Rutherford smiled, looking for the pain and fear in her face.
But there was nothing.
And hardly any blood.
Instead, pale orange tendrils licked out from the cut – probing, feeling, gently pulling the skin back together. Rutherford felt his own skin begin to crawl at the sight. He took a step back, raising the knife again. But Jane’s hand whipped out, grabbing his wrist in an impossibly firm grasp. He felt the bones compress and shatter. The knife fell to the floor.
Her other hand was round his neck, squeezing tight as Rutherford gasped for the air he needed to cry out. His vision blurred. But before it faded completely he saw that now at last her face was showing some reaction, some emotion.
She was smiling.
Then everything was darkness and silence as he crashed lifeless to the floor.
CHAPTER 18
‘I did telephone Mr Alban a few days ago,’ Crowley said. ‘He said he couldn’t speak as he had to go and look after a Mr Brown.’
They were sat in Crowley’s study. Brinkman glanced at Guy Pentecross. He happened to know from a recent high-level briefing that Alban was at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country house, and ‘Mr Brown’ was in fact the Russian foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who was meeting Churchill there.
‘What did you want to talk to Alban about?’
Crowley shrugged. ‘Nothing important. He asked me to do something for him a little while ago. I merely wished to confirm that I had done it. But,’ he went on quickly, ‘what can I do for you? It seems that our arrangement is all rather one-way at the moment, doesn’t it?’
‘How do you mean?’ Guy asked.
‘I’m sure there are many people who would happily scratch it,’ Brinkman told him. ‘But if there is anything specific?’
‘Oh please.’ Crowley’s smile was almost predatory. ‘You first.’
‘Nothing too taxing,’ Brinkman said. ‘We just wanted a quick word with Jane Roylston.’
Crowley’s smile hardened into a frown. ‘May I ask what about?’
Brinkman considered for a moment before answering. ‘We wondered if she knew of any connection between the Vril and Greece. Crete in particular.’
Crowley sat back in his chair. ‘Well, you’ve answered one of my questions already, then.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’m afraid Jane isn’t here. She disappeared, just upped and left about, oh, a couple of weeks ago, I should think. I did wonder if she had come to join your people. Obviously not, if you’re asking me about her.’
‘You’ve no idea where she went?’ Brinkman asked. It seemed unlikely, but it was possible.
Guy voiced his next thought:
‘That man Rutherford – could he have anything to do with her disappearance?’
‘No.’
‘You seem very sure,’ Brinkman said.
‘I am. Ralph is no longer with us either, you see.’
‘Then perhaps—’ Guy started.
But Crowley cut him off. ‘There is no connection between the two, I can assure you. If you need confirmation, then ask your friend Alban. He knows what happened to poor Ralph, and if I tell you that Ralph, er, absented himself from us, shall we say, before Jane left then you will understand that the two are not connected.’
‘I see,’ Brinkman said, though in truth he didn’t. He would leave a message for Alban and hope the MI5 man could clarify things. ‘Then it seems we’ve had a wasted journey.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Crowley said. ‘But I’m sure Miss Roylston will return to us soon. She probably just needs a little time to herself. But I must apologise that she isn’t here to help you now.’
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