Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

Scarlett turned round. The man with the sword-stick was already sheathing it. The other was wiping his machete on a piece of cloth. She swallowed hard, not wanting to do this. There was a lot of blood, spreading across the path.

Mrs Cheng was lying on her back, the legs in their black stockings lying straight out in front of her. There was a dreadful wound in her chest where one of the blades had stabbed her through the heart. The other had decapitated her. Scarlett forced herself to examine the rest of the body. She saw something thick and green coming out of the jacket where Mrs Cheng’s neck should have been. It had been severed half way up. But it didn’t belong to a human body. It looked like part of a snake.

And the head, lying on the path, wasn’t human either. It was the head of an oversized lizard, with yellow and black diamond eyes, scales, a lolling forked tongue. Scarlett glanced back at the body. Mrs Cheng had thrown out one of her arms as she fell. It was also covered in scales.

A shape-changer.

That was what they had said. And in the shock of the moment, all Scarlett could think was – was this the creature she had been living with since she had come to Hong Kong? Audrey Cheng had cooked for her. She had been sleeping in the same flat. And all the time…

She thought she was going to be sick. She couldn’t get the hideous images out of her head. But then she heard the sound of an approaching engine, coming down the path towards her. Had they been discovered? The woman and the two men weren’t moving. They didn’t look alarmed. Scarlett relaxed. Whoever was coming was part of the plan.

A motorbike appeared, speeding round the corner. It was a silver-grey Honda, being ridden by a figure in black leather, gloves and boots. Scarlett guessed that it was a man, but it was hard to be sure as his head was concealed by a helmet with a strip of mirrored plastic across his face. He stopped right in front of them, the wheels tilting underneath him, one leg stretching out to keep the bike upright.

The woman grabbed hold of Scarlett once again. “We need to get you out of here fast,” she said. “We don’t have time to explain.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere safe.”

They had produced a second helmet. Scarlett hesitated, but only for a few seconds. Audrey Cheng’s dead body told her everything she needed to know. She had been living in a nightmare and these people, whoever they were, were rescuing her from it. She grabbed the helmet and put it on, then climbed onto the bike, putting her arms around the driver. At once they were away. She felt the engine roar underneath her as they shot down the path and she tightened her grip, afraid that she would be blown over backwards by the rush of wind.

They shot past a man walking a dog and then a family of local people who had been posing for a photograph but who scattered to get out of the way. They turned another corner. If they went much further, they would surely arrive back at the tram station where Scarlett had begun. On one side there was a small park, on the other a driveway leading up to a house, for there were a few private homes scattered along the upper reaches of The Peak. But that wasn’t where they were heading. Scarlett saw a parked car with two more men waiting. They skidded to a halt.

She got off, quickly removing her helmet. The two men were young, in their twenties, both wearing jeans and sweatshirts. One was Chinese but the other was a foreigner, maybe from Japan or Korea. They both hurried over to her, their faces filled with a mixture of determination and fear.

“You have to come with us,” the first one said. He had a thin face and his nose and cheekbones were so sharp-edged that they could almost have been folded out of paper. “We must leave at once.”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe.” That was exactly what the woman had said. “Not far. Maybe twenty minutes.”

“Wait a minute…”

“No time.” He spoke in fractured English, spitting out the words. “You want to die, you stay here. You ask your questions. You want to live, get in the car. Now! They will be coming very soon.”

“Who will be coming?”

“Shape-changers. Or worse.”

The other man had gone over to the car. But he hadn’t opened the door. He had opened the boot.

“You don’t expect me to get in there!” Scarlett said.

“It must be this way,” the thin-faced man insisted. “You can’t be seen. But you’ll be all right. We make air-holes…”

“No…” It was too much to ask. Scarlett didn’t care how many shape-changers there might be, making their way up The Peak. She wasn’t going to be locked in the boot of a car by two people she had never met before and driven off to God knows where. “You can forget it…” she began.

The man had whipped something out of his pocket and he grabbed her before she knew what he was doing. She felt a handkerchief being pressed against her face. She kicked out, trying to knock him off balance, but he was too strong. The fumes of some sort of chemical, sweet and pungent, crept into her nose and mouth. Almost at once, all the strength drained out of her. She felt her legs fold and the world spun. And then she was falling, being guided into the boot, which had become a huge black hole waiting to swallow her up.

The end came very quickly. Darkness. Terror. And then the welcome emptiness of sleep.

She was in a cage, not lying down but standing. And there was something strange. The wall was moving. It seemed to be scrolling downwards in front of her. Or was it she who was moving up?

As consciousness returned, Scarlett realized what was happening. She was in a lift, one of the old-fashioned sort with a folding iron gate instead of a door. What she was looking at was the brickwork between floors in what must be a very tall building. She was pinned between the Japanese man and the one she had decided to call Paper Face. They were supporting her. She could still taste the drug – chloroform or whatever it was – that had knocked her out.

Scarlett groaned and the two men immediately tightened their grip. There was no chance she was going to start a fight in such a confined space, but she had already struggled at the car and they weren’t taking any chances.

“You are safe now,” Paper Face said.

“Where am I?”

“You will see… very soon.”

The lift slowed down and stopped and the Japanese man jerked the cage door open. They stepped out into a long, dimly lit corridor with walls that were either grimy or had been deliberately painted the colour of grime. There were doors every few metres. The whole place looked like a cheap hotel.

There was a Chinese man guarding the corridor with a machine gun cradled across his chest. The sight of the weapon struck Scarlett as completely bizarre. It was like something out of a gangster film. But the man didn’t look anything like her idea of a gangster. He was dressed in jeans and a loose-hanging shirt. He was skinny, with a wispy beard, a tattoo on his neck and a gold tooth prominent at the front of his mouth. A drug dealer perhaps? Looking at him, it was hard to believe that he was on her side.

The two men took her to the fourth room along the corridor. Paper Face knocked and the door was unlocked from inside. They entered. Machine Gun stayed where he was, opposite the lift.

Scarlett found herself in a large, almost empty flat that looked as if someone had recently moved out… or in. There were a few pieces of furniture, some of them covered in dust sheets, and no decoration: no carpet, no lampshades, no pictures on the walls. The windows had been blanked out with sheets of papers. Scarlett wondered why. They had to be fairly high up so surely there was no chance of anyone looking in. An archway led into a small kitchen and there was a corridor on the other side, presumably with a bedroom and bathroom at the end.