Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

The worshippers – who were, in fact, no such thing – had very simple instructions. Any child who passed through that door was to be seized. If they resisted, they could be hurt badly but preferably not killed. The same applied to any young person coming in from the street. They were to be stopped before they got anywhere near the door. The people in the temple were all armed with guns and knives, hidden beneath their clothes. They were in constant touch with The Nail and could call for backup at any time.

This was the ambush that Matt had feared. It was the reason he had refused to take the shortcut to Hong Kong. He had been right from the very start.

The fifteen of them stood there, muttering prayers they didn’t believe and bowing to gods they didn’t respect. And outside, gusts of wind – growing stronger by the minute – hurled themselves at the temple walls, battering at them as if trying to break through, tearing up the surrounding earth and the grass, whistling around the corners. A tile slid off the roof and smashed on the ground. A shutter came loose and was instantly torn away. The rain, travelling horizontally now, cut into the brickwork. The traffic in the street had completely snarled up. The drivers couldn’t see. There was nothing they could do.

The wind rushed in and the flames inside the temple furnace bent, flickered and were suddenly extinguished. Nobody noticed. All their attention was fixed on the doorway. That was what they were there for. Ignoring the storm, they waited for the first of the Gatekeepers to arrive.

Scarlett was in a dark place, but someone was nudging her, trying to draw her back into the light. Unwillingly, she opened her eyes to find a boy leaning over her, shaking her awake. She recognized him at once and knew that the fact that he was with her, that he was bruised and dishevelled, could mean only one thing… and it was the worst news of all. He was here because of her. The Old Ones must have tricked him into coming to Hong Kong and now the two of them were prisoners. Scarlett felt a sense of great anger and bitterness. She had been drawn into this against her will. And it was already over. She had never been given a chance.

“Matt…” she said.

At last the two of them were together. But this wasn’t how she had hoped they would meet. She drew herself into a sitting position and rubbed her eyes. They had given her back her own clothes but her hair, cut so short, still felt unfamiliar to her. At least she had lost the contact lenses. She had taken them out the moment she had been left to herself.

“Are you OK?” Matt asked.

“No.” She sounded miserable. “How long have I been asleep?”

“I don’t know. They only brought me here an hour ago.”

“When was that?”

“About eight o’clock.”

“Night or day?”

“Day.”

Matt examined his surroundings. They were in a bare, windowless room with brick walls and a concrete floor. The only light came from a bulb set in a wire mesh cage. From the moment the door – solid steel – had been closed and locked, he’d had to fight a sense of claustrophobia. They were deep underground. The policemen who had brought him here had forced him down four flights of stairs and then along a corridor that was like a tunnel. Ordinary policemen. The same as the ones who had arrested him. It seemed that the shape-changers, the fly-soldiers and all the other creatures of the Old Ones had decided to leave Hong Kong. He wondered why.

Despite everything, he had been relieved to find Scarlett. She looked very different from the photograph he had seen of her. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her, being stuck here on her own.

“Why are you here?” Scarlett asked. She still couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice.

“I came for you,” Matt said. He wanted to tell her more but he didn’t dare. There was always a chance that they were being listened to.

“You shouldn’t have. I’ve mucked everything up. I’d have got away if I hadn’t…” Scarlett stopped herself. She couldn’t bring herself to talk about her last meeting with her father.

Matt sat next to her so that they were shoulder to shoulder with their legs stretched out on the floor. From the way he moved, she could see that he had been hurt. He looked pale and exhausted. “Why don’t you tell me everything that happened to you?” he suggested. “You could start by telling me where we are. Do you know?”

She nodded. “The chairman came to see me…”

“Who is the chairman?”

“Just some creep in a suit.”

“I think I may have met him.”

“He wanted to gloat over me,” Scarlett continued. “He told me that you were on your way but I hoped he was lying. This is an old prison. We’re right in the middle of Hong Kong. It was left over from Victorian times.”

“So when do they serve breakfast?”

“They don’t. It’s bread and cold soup and they bring it once a day.”

Matt lowered his voice. “Hopefully, we won’t be here that long,” he said. It was as much as he dared tell her, but even so Scarlett felt a glimmer of hope. “You know I went to your home in Dulwich,” he said, changing the subject.

“Was that you in the car? There was an accident…”

“It was no accident.”

“I knew it had to be you,” Scarlett said. “They planned it all very carefully, didn’t they? Using me to get you here. Are any of the others with you?”

Matt nodded briefly and Scarlett understood. They both had to be careful what they said. She gazed at him as if seeing him for the first and the last time. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe I’m really talking to you. Do you know, I’ve even dreamed about you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Matt said. “We all dream about each other. It’s how it works.”

“There’s so much I don’t understand.”

“Join the club.”

“It looks like I already have.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know where my story even begins, but I suppose I’d better start with St Meredith’s…”

She told him – briefly and without fuss – and as she spoke, Matt knew that he was going to like her. She had been through so much, and in a way her experiences reminded him of his own at Lesser Malling, the way she had been reeled into something so completely beyond her understanding. And yet she had coped with it. She had been brought here. She had been locked in this room for three days. But she hadn’t cracked. She was ready to fight back.

She finished talking and it seemed to Matt that just for a moment the building trembled as something, a shockwave, travelled through the walls. Scarlett looked up, alarmed. Part of her knew what was happening and had even been expecting it.

“What…?” Matt began.

“It was nothing.” She said it so hastily that he could see she didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t even want to imagine what might be happening outside. “Tell me about yourself,” she went on, quickly. “Tell me how you got here. Did you go to the temple? They’ve got people there waiting for you. They thought you’d come through one of the doors.”

“I didn’t…”

He told her his own story, or part of it, starting in Peru. It would have taken too long to tell her the whole thing and he was still afraid of being overheard. From Nazca to London to Macau. It had been a long journey and it was only now that they both saw how closely they had been following each other’s paths.

Matt finished by explaining how he had found his way to Wisdom Court. This was the difficult part. He had seen Scarlett’s father die and he had been at least in part responsible. How was he going to break the news?

But she was already ahead of him. “That jersey you’re wearing,” she said. She had suddenly realized. “It’s his.”