The Mak Collection

by Tara Moss

  The next elevator arrived and they both stepped in. Alone. The elevator operator ignored them.

  He was all but alone with his target, but he did not let his attention betray him.

  Mak.

  Luther had encountered her twice before, and despite this, he was sure that she did not recognise him, nor did she sense his sinister purpose. She had never before seen his face. She had no reason to be able to identify him.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she said casually.

  Luther looked around. She had addressed him. Their eyes met again and she held his gaze fearlessly, seeming at ease in her surrounds.

  He nodded in reply, and looked away.

  Mak.

  The tiny elevator rattled and shifted as it descended to the next level. They both swayed in sync with the old carriage, which squealed and hummed. At the next platform, the doors slid open, and Luther stepped out after she did. He walked to the elevator that would take them to street level, following a few feet behind her. Four tourists got in, and the carriage delivered them safely to ground level.

  Mak was the first out.

  Luther watched her walk away.

  He did nothing.

  CHAPTER 47

  Makedde walked below the cold, rainy streets of wintry Paris, navigating the dank domain of six million dead Parisians.

  The Empire of the Dead.

  After the Eiffel Tower and the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, Denfert-Rochereau Ossuary, famously known as the Catacombs, was Makedde’s favourite Parisian icon. She had visited the web of underground passageways nearly a decade earlier when she was working in Paris as a fashion model, and, being Makedde, she’d long had the morbid tourist destination at the top of her list of places to revisit. Walking amongst the bones of six million long-dead Parisians was a unique experience, and had affected her enormously on her first visit. Makedde had seen death many times in many settings, but there was something about the seemingly endless corridors of anonymous femurs and skulls, the display of all those naked bones placed namelessly, sometimes haphazardly and other times in meticulous, near-artistic stacks, that spoke to her of her own smallness, and mortality. She found it strangely reassuring to face the facts so largely ignored aboveground.

  Underneath, we are all just bones. We are all the same. We are all dying.

  There could be no better memento mori, or reminder to value your moments of living.

  THE EMPIRE OF THE DEAD, the sign above the entranceway said, and with a sense of both fascination and respect for her surroundings, Mak made her way through les carrières of Paris, the old limestone quarries famously transformed in the 1780s into a place of reburial. In those times Paris had been suffering disease due to insanitary burials and overcrowded cemeteries, and officials decided to move thousands of bodies from their marked graves to the abandoned quarries, to be placed in anonymous stacks.

  Skulls. Stacks of skulls.

  Each of those hollow eye sockets had once framed the outlook of some living person, some unique life. Mak found that she was as fascinated by the place as she had been as a twenty-year-old seeing it for the first time.

  With her mind fixed contentedly on her sightseeing, and the anticipation of Bogey’s arrival, Mak did not foresee her fate. And the bones could not warn her.

  Mak was not alone.

  She had been followed.

  Oh!

  A whirl of movement caught her eye, and she turned too late, her motion arrested by a stifling set of arms, her neck locked within the crook of an elbow, pressure behind her head, squeezing…she was in a chokehold…the chest behind her felt as solid as a slab of boulder. Immovable. Impenetrable. And she was being lifted, her heels off the ground now…and her toes. She wanted to cry out but had no breath. Her arms, which now felt strangely autonomous and almost detached, had at first flailed at her attacker, but her stabbing fingers met only with the unyielding flesh of solid muscles, no eyes to scratch at, no soft tissue to grab. Her own eyes remained open, though half blind with a fog of increasing moisture, and the throb of pain and pressure in her head.

  Time stretched to slow motion as she frantically kicked at her surprise attacker. She tried to punch, to gouge, but all the while the pressure on her neck increased painfully, and she could not breathe. Every single molecule of her being switched to blinding panic, the sensation of death—of drowning—weighing hard on her nerves, urging her for action. Do something! Breathe! But she had no air, she had no air, no air, no air…no air…

  Time seemed to stretch on, breathless, while her brain fought against its inevitable disconnection from vital oxygen.

  In reality it only took a few seconds.

  Mak was unconscious.

  Seconds or minutes or years later, Makedde Vanderwall woke disoriented, and disconcertingly euphoric, her muscles tingling warmly throughout her limbs. Discombobulated. A deep tiredness weighed against adrenaline-fuelled elation. Her heart beat in an odd rhythm. Strange. Where am I?

  She was slung over a man’s shoulder. The man seemed huge, monstrous.

  Nothing felt right.

  What’s going on?

  Disorientation soon made way for electrifying fear.

  Arslan. My God, is it Arslan? Is he trying to kill me? No, this man is too big.

  She had been choked unconscious, she now realised, and she was only just waking up. How long had she been unconscious? How much time had elapsed? She had not even spotted her attacker before he had his arm around her throat. If she had not even spotted him, had not even made a dint in him with all her struggling, then he was capable and meant business, and she was in terrible danger.

  She was somewhere in low light, and she could make out the heels of the man’s shoes as he walked along an old stone pathway. They were underground. He had choked her unconscious and was carrying her.

  Skulls.

  There were skulls everywhere she looked, their empty eye sockets staring back at her in the low light. The Catacombs. She was still in the Catacombs. Not far from where she had been standing before she had suddenly had the oxygen choked out of her.

  ‘Hey!’ she shouted, although the cry came out strained. Her throat throbbed, as if she had been axed in the Adam’s apple. She tried to punch the man again but could only reach his hamstring.

  No!

  There was a jab of something—a needle; it sheared through her jeans and into her buttock. She let out a short cry.

  Blackness folded around her abruptly, sending her into a much deeper, much longer sleep.

  Impassive, the fleshless faces of Denfert-Rochereau Ossuary’s dead watched Makedde’s attacker bear her away.

  CHAPTER 48

  Bogey woke with a start.

  Mak.

  He found himself strapped into an economy seat on a plane bound for London. His limbs felt stiff, and his mouth dry. He had no place to stretch his legs out. Bogey blinked and looked around him. Passengers up down the aircraft were dozing, their mouths hanging wide and slack. The man next to him had a reading light on, washing him in a white circle of light. The man cast an uncomfortable glance his way, and Bogey realised with embarrassment that he had made a strange noise as he woke. He was a nervous flyer, and had never taken as long a flight as this one would be. He was only four and a half hours in.

  The flying, however, was not the root of his uneasiness.

  For reasons he could not justify, Bogey had woken in a strange terror, deeply concerned about Makedde’s wellbeing. His sleep had been intermittent, his armrest already pummelled by a violent restlessness. Distress soaked his every pore and nerve ending, as convincing and real as any legitimate panic.

  Mak.

  He had every reason to be smiling. He should have been excited by his fast-approaching arrival in London, then Paris. He had every reason to feel elated to soon be seeing Mak, a woman who, should he be honest with himself, he had fallen for when they first met.

  Instead, he felt panic.

  Bogey rubbed his eyes and replaced his gl
asses. He put his seat upright, and remained that way for a few minutes, willing his heartbeat to slow to a normal pace. Out of habit, he reached for the packet of cigarettes in his leather jacket before remembering that he did not have any. He had no matches either. Neither would be helpful on a flight. Bogey was trying to quit. It did not seem to be working. In his mysterious rush of panic, the urge to smoke was strong.

  It wasn’t guns that killed people, it was the bullets. Not the cigarettes, but the matches.

  Makedde did not smoke. She never had. He wanted to quit for her.

  By now it would be night-time in Paris, where Mak had said she would be sightseeing for the day—the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower. She had promised to show him these places if he had time out from the Form Art and Design Fair. Of course I have time. The truth was that London was an excuse to get to Paris to see her. She was the reason he was heading all the way to the design fair. He was not exhibiting his work there, and would most likely not be able to exhibit for another couple of years. She was the reason. He dared not tell her, but she probably already knew.

  Bogey found he could not take his eyes from the inflight phone that was staring him in the face from the seatback in front of him. EASY CALLS IN TWO STEPS, it said.

  Just call her and see if everything is okay. Bugger the cost.

  In moments he had swiped his credit card into the seatback and the headset was ringing. The receptionist at Mak’s hotel answered.

  She put his call through, and it rang a dozen times. With each ring, his distress increased.

  ‘Il n’y a pas de réponse. There is no answer,’ she said.

  Bogey took a breath and swiped his credit card again. This time he dialled her mobile.

  ‘Hi, you’ve reached Mak. I’m sorry I can’t come to the phone right now…’

  It went straight to her voicemail.

  Strange.

  He had expected her to be back at her hotel by now, or at the very least answering her mobile in a restaurant or café somewhere. Why was it turned off? By his calculations it was already ten o’clock Paris time, yet she could not be reached. Was the stab of worry he felt motivated by fear for her, or fear of a misunderstanding? He recalled their last conversation, and tried to think of anything he might have said wrong. Was he pressuring her by suggesting he join her in Paris? Did she know that he had not intended travelling across the globe to London to attend the show this year, that it had always been a dream of his, but that he was not planning to go until he had something special to exhibit? Did she know he was only going as an excuse to see her, removed from all distractions, in the world’s most romantic city? Would that knowledge make her uncomfortable? She had just come out of a significant personal break-up. Perhaps this was all too much, too soon?

  No.

  Mak is in trouble.

  Bogey resolved to continue calling her until she answered. He knew he would not be able to go to sleep again until he heard her voice and knew she was okay. His fingers reached again for the packet of cigarettes he did not have, and he sat back, worried and trapped. He tried to reassure himself that she was at a show, or a cinema, and had therefore turned off her phone. She would soon turn it back on. She was fine.

  Mak is in trouble, he thought again.

  It would be another twenty hours before touchdown at Heathrow.

  CHAPTER 49

  Mak cracked open her heavy eyelids a millimetre, as far as she could manage. She was in a dark, unfamiliar space.

  Below her was something like a bare mattress, and around her was wrapped a heavy set of woollen blankets. She could see her breath in the air. Her nose felt cold, though her eyes were warm and puffy. She did not know where she was, or how she had got there, and nearly as urgent as this confusion was the tornado of pain in her head, and her throat, which ached as if she had been punched in the trachea. She pulled a leaden hand from under the blankets and caressed her aching neck. Thirsty. Unbearably thirsty. With effort, she struggled to sit up, and immediately felt a deep throbbing in her muscles. Her head felt almost too heavy to keep upright.

  My ankle?

  Makedde’s ankle felt strange. With dread, she pulled the blankets away and looked at it. The room spun. No! There was a heavy cuff locked around her flesh. A metal cuff and a chain…

  Scream.

  Scream!

  Makedde’s mouth opened to shriek, but she caught herself before she uttered a sound. It was only a well-honed survival instinct that kept her quiet. For the moment she was alone. But she might not remain alone if she made a noise. She had to use caution. Anyone she would meet in this situation was not likely to be on her side. She had to figure a way out before her captor—or captors—came back.

  Nothing to be gained from screaming right now. Nothing at all. Look. Listen. Remain calm. Figure this out. You can figure this out…

  Waves of dizziness bombarded her. She was being beckoned back into unconsciousness. She struggled to remain alert and take in some of the detail around her. She was in a cold, dank space that smelled of mould and fermentation. She could see that the ceiling was low, perhaps not much more than two metres high. The floor was made of stone. The walls were stone. She saw wooden shelves of bottles on both sides of her. A cellar? She was not in the Denfert-Rochereau Ossuary any more. Could she be somewhere nearby? She hoped so. But probably not. Mak sensed that a lot of time had elapsed. Perhaps hours, perhaps even a day or two. Yes, it was at least a day. Her mouth was dry, her stomach felt hollow. My God, where is this place? There were no windows. She could not tell the time of day. A bit of light crept in from the top of a narrow, steep staircase of the type you found leading to attics, she thought. Was it artificial light, or sun seeping through? She could not tell.

  Her eyelids felt heavy. They threatened to shut. Mak had been drugged. She was imprisoned, and she had been drugged.

  Arslan.

  Could he have been following her? Could he have tracked her down and drugged her? He was dangerous and he was on the loose. She was in danger.

  As it is at the moment, you can’t get far. No windows. One door. You are chained. And you don’t know why.

  The world within and without her dissolved into a terrifying, ill-defined fog. Her body didn’t feel right. Her brain stopped co-operating, stopped being lucid. And now her eyelids were too heavy to stay open any longer. She forced them open with her fingertips.

  It isn’t safe to sleep.

  Stay awake…

  Stay awake!

  A black void crept in around her, suffocating, stifling, more powerful than her determination to remain wakeful. The corners of her vision blackened like the edges of an old photograph. Gradually her fingers dropped, and her warm, bloodshot eyes shut of their own volition.

  Mak felt her neck go limp as she slipped again into unconsciousness, the fingers of one hand wrapped around the heavy iron ankle cuff that kept her prisoner.

  CHAPTER 50

  Luther Hand inserted his key and silently unlocked the heavy padlock on the cellar door.

  He paused.

  The padlock was new, and looked out of place in the rustic surroundings of the dilapidated farmhouse, where everything seemed to have been in place decades before his arrival. He let it swing on the hook with a rattle. He pushed the door open with his boot, and listened.

  Silence.

  Had there been any witness to this moment, they would have seen that Luther’s ravaged face did not betray any emotion. Beneath the surface of his cold countenance, however, conflict raged. With the door ajar, Luther peered inside at the short, steep set of steps that descended to the wine cellar. The stairs disappeared into relative darkness. His eyes took a moment to adjust, and once he could make out ghostly shapes of stone and wood, he stepped inside and listened again. Luther felt a strange tightness in his stomach, a kind of queer adrenaline. He took pleasure in standing in the cool dark, listening for stirring below. He felt satisfaction. Strangeness. Even something like fear.

  He
could hear nothing.

  Is she asleep?

  There was no need to sneak up on her now, not as he had in the Catacombs.

  Luther pulled a cord that dangled just inside the doorway next to him, and a bare light bulb flickered to life, casting a pale white glow into the space, illuminating the wooden steps and old stone walls. Now he could hear movement below, a weak shifting. The light had startled her out of a doze. She was there just below him. She was awake. Wasting no more time, Luther walked solidly down the staircase. It was not until he reached the bottom that he looked at his captive.

  Makedde Vanderwall.

  The bare bulb cast a circle of light on the floor where she sat. He’d taken her boots off to fit her ankle with the heavy iron cuff. The right leg of her jeans half obscured the cuff, from which a slack trail of chain ran to one dusty corner of the cellar, and an iron ring on the wall. The chain was solid, and quite sufficient to keep anyone in one place, even the likes of Mak Vanderwall who had proved resourceful in the past. She wore her black top and winter coat, which he had emptied of its few contents—a mobile phone, some cash, an old-fashioned hotel key and a small notepad and pen. He’d covered her with blankets, and she now wore them around her shoulders and over her toes. She was huddled on the bare mattress, knees bent to her chest and back against the wall. It was cold down here, cold and dark.

  There was much about this moment which was odd for Luther. For starters, he had rarely been interested in keeping people alive. On the handful of occasions in his career when he’d been required to do so, he’d arranged a similar setup, finding a cellar or storehouse, usually equipped with basic medical supplies and the most common tools of persuasion. Waterboarding. Electric shock. Those targets would always be eliminated once the required information was elicited. This was not Luther’s area of expertise, and such jobs had been rare. He was an expert killer, not a torturer. That sort of work was generally left to those with military training or a particular interest in the field. It was not Luther’s interest.