The Burning

by Will Peterson

  The main pool was lit by the glow from the tomb above, and tiny, phosphorescent jellyfish were caught in the beam. But there was another, stronger light that came from somewhere across the water and which gave the bottom of the lagoon an odd radiance, like a swimming pool illuminated at night. Rachel swam along with the twins and then signalled that she needed to go back to the surface to breathe. They swam back up to the top, treading water while they took mouthfuls of air.

  “We should go towards the light,” Rachel said.

  Taking another breath, they all dived back to the bottom of the pool and swam towards the glow. It came from a tunnel that led into what appeared to be another cave a little further on.

  Carmen signed that they should swim through. With her breath running short, Rachel swam after Carmen, pushed along from behind by Inez. The tunnel was longer than it had at first appeared, but became brighter and higher, and Carmen swam upwards. They broke the surface of the water and found their heads in a small pocket of air, just beneath the roof. The surface of the rock glittered with tiny crystals and brightly coloured coral. Rachel panted, taking deep breaths of the heavy, sulphurous air.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” she gasped.

  “You must,” Carmen said, pushing black strands of hair back off her face.

  “You must rely on us to help you, Rachel,” Inez said. “You can do it. You just need to relax.”

  “Relax?” Despite the circumstances, Rachel managed to laugh.

  They took another breath and pushed on. After a few more strokes, the tunnel opened out into a wider underwater cavern. The white light was dazzling and seemed to come from above, like the beams of headlamps, flooding the water with light. Carmen swam upwards again and Rachel followed quickly, anticipating more air – but there was none. The water seemed to go on for ever and Rachel began to panic. The lack of oxygen was burning her lungs, and her limbs began to fail wildly in the water.

  Don’t panic, Inez said with her mind. Don’t be afraid of the water; breathe it.

  And suddenly, Rachel could breathe again, as though the water had become air. Inez pushed her onwards, upwards towards Carmen, who was floating above.

  Carmen pointed into the light and, as she came closer, Rachel could see another colour emerging between the fragmented beams.

  Gold.

  She swam towards the gold, which was glinting and rippling through the blue water. She reached out … getting closer.

  Gabriel dragged himself across the wet floor. He knew he had been foolish to go it alone and allow himself to be caught off guard. If only he had managed to keep Adam and Rachel close, their combined power would never have allowed this to happen. It was one of the reasons he had brought them all together: to enable him to achieve things he could not manage alone. They thought he was protecting them, which, up to a point, he was. But neither Adam nor Rachel had realized that they were also protecting him.

  Would he fail here, at the final hurdle? Beaten and destroyed by the brutality of men like Hilary Wing? Men who had murdered his ancestors and scattered their remains, so that now, tens of thousands of years later, Gabriel had been sent to retrieve them.

  He could hear a shuffling further along the passage that led away from the tomb. He took a second to gather some strength. He could overcome the pain with his mind – that was easy – but the shock and the beating had drained his body of energy. He could not channel any of his usual powers.

  He dragged himself to his feet and, staying close to the wall, moved along the passage. He followed the shuffling noise that echoed back along the corridor. It seemed to be coming from a chamber some way ahead – one that was concealed by a twist and turn in the rock, as the tomb had been.

  Gabriel hugged the wall until he was outside the entrance to the room, then peered cautiously inside. It was decorated with paintings like the others, and there were several doors leading off to smaller, adjoining rooms. A carpet of bees crawled over the ceiling and buzzed lazily in and out of one of the side rooms. Many alcoves had been carved into the walls, each of which held metallic bowls, cups, bangles and lumps of clear crystal which glowed in the half-light. Hilary Wing was hunched over a pile of artefacts. He was stuffing as many as he could into his cloak, dropping priceless items on to the stony floor in his haste.

  “I suppose you think these belong to you too?” Gabriel said weakly.

  The hooded figure spun round, his scarred skull protruding from the hood like the head of a snake.

  “Put them back,” Gabriel said.

  “Are you going to make me?” Wing hissed. “You can barely stand. I’m surprised you are still alive. They make you freaks out of tough stuff.”

  The irony of being called a freak by Hilary Wing was not lost on Gabriel. “I think the phrase is something about ‘the pot calling the kettle black’, isn’t it? And while we’re on the subject of who is and isn’t a freak … don’t you think that there might just be a little bit of me in you?”

  Despite the lack of expression on the papery skin drawn over Wing’s bones, there was a sudden change in mood. A strange gurgle came from the back of his throat. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how do you account for your amazing powers of recovery? Your ability to withstand pain? Anyone normal would have died in that crash … and certainly from those burns. Perhaps you are more like us than you like to think?”

  “Shut up!” Wing screeched. Dropping the remaining bowls, he flew at Gabriel, pinning him against the wall; his stick across the boy’s throat, squeezing the breath out of him.

  “They knew all about you,” Gabriel whispered hoarsely. “Look on the walls…”

  Wing’s reptilian face twitched, the flesh tautening around his open nose cavity. The blue eyes broke contact with Gabriel’s and widened, scanning the painting on the wall behind the boy’s head.

  It was all there.

  Hilary Wing’s life was drawn out in front of him. A big house the shape of Waverley Hall: his family home. Then the village: tiny little huts leading to a moor on which was painted a big Triskellion. Next to the Triskellion were twins and a man with long hair and a beard: Wing himself.

  “What is this?” His eyes darted around the walls. He was keeping the pressure on Gabriel’s throat, but there was panic in his voice. Everywhere he looked there were moments from his life displayed in swirls of colour against the rock. His eyes went to the picture of a man alone, seated on a kind of horse, with wheels where its legs should be. Further on, the “horse” was painted in flames, with the next image depicting a man in a hood, brandishing a long stick and looking like the Grim Reaper.

  Wing seemed to recover his composure and turned his eyes back to Gabriel. “If that’s supposed to be me, the artist has made me look like Death himself.” He pressed down on Gabriel’s neck and smiled. “Which, as far as you’re concerned, is exactly what I am…”

  Rachel reached forward into the thick, green seaweed. Rays of golden light were coming from behind the weed, fragmenting and flickering as they floated back and forth. She felt coral, rough and knobbly, beneath her fingers and then something metallic, like a blade. Rachel felt a buzz spread through her body; felt the strength return.

  It’s here! she said with her mind. We’ve found it.

  The Spanish girls began to tear at the weed with their hands, exposing a niche in the rock behind.

  For the first time in the tens of thousands of years since it had been hidden away under water, deep beneath the caves, a human hand touched the Triskellion.

  The second Triskellion.

  The blades glinted against the dark rock, held firmly in place, encrusted with coral and bound by weed. From out of the depths, one or two small silver fish swam up and basked in the glow of the blades. Five or six more followed: bigger, darting faster between the beams. Then ten, twenty more, until a whole shoal of fish wove between the rays of light and began to nibble and pull at the tangles of weed that had held the Triskellion in place for so many years. A
ided by the fish, Carmen and Inez found small stones and sharp pieces of shell, and all of them worked at the coral and cut away the weed until, finally, the three-bladed amulet came free in Rachel’s hand.

  Rachel held the Triskellion out in front of her. The twin beams of light which still shone from somewhere deep in the gloom beyond, bounced off the blades and refracted into rainbow colours that cut through the water like lasers. The fish began to swim in formation, weaving in and out between the beams, like a fluid silver ribbon.

  We have to go, Rachel said with her mind.

  No … you must go.

  Inez’s voice was loud and clear in her head. But as Rachel looked at her, the Spanish girl appeared pale suddenly: the vigour gone from her strong, swimmer’s limbs.

  Hurry up, Rachel pleaded with her thoughts. We need to get back. We don’t have long.

  We have all the time in the world, Carmen’s voice said.

  Come on! Rachel started to swim back towards the tunnel, then turned, aware that she was on her own. Neither of the Spanish girls were following her. Rachel looked helplessly from one to the other as they drifted away, surrounded by fish which darted around them and glinted in the underwater light. Both girls were now very pale: fading before Rachel’s eyes.

  Please… Rachel pleaded, her mind reaching out.

  Their black hair floated about their heads like fine seaweed, their limbs swaying loosely with the underwater currents. As Rachel watched, they seemed to float further and further away from her, drawn deeper into the twin beams of light.

  What are you doing? You have to come with me! she screamed with her mind, but all the time she could feel herself being magnetically drawn in the opposite direction: sucked back towards the tunnel.

  The life was draining from Gabriel as the stick was pressed hard against his throat. “This time you won’t get back up.” Wing’s voice was strained with the effort of trying to kill this boy who would not lie down.

  Then Wing screamed.

  A wild, animal yell reverberated round the cave as the treasured amulet round Hilary Wing’s neck suddenly became white-hot. His claw-like grip loosened on the rod across Gabriel’s throat and it dropped to the ground with a clatter.

  An image flashed into Gabriel’s mind: a girl’s arm pushing upwards, breaking the surface of still, turquoise water, a shining amulet held triumphantly in her fist. With the little remaining strength he had, Gabriel reached out and grabbed the other Triskellion that was now hissing as it burned into the scarred tissue of Hilary Wing’s chest.

  Wing screamed louder as the amulet was wrenched from his neck, just as he had torn it from Gabriel’s. Suddenly, the cavern filled with a blinding white light and a howling wind rushed through the room, pulling Wing back. It threw him from wall to wall, smashing his face into the rocks painted with his own life story, before sucking his body into one of the small, dark chambers that lined the cave.

  Gabriel gripped the Triskellion tight and felt its power surge through his body. He staggered across to the entrance through which Wing had just been dragged. A low buzz came from within but it was drowned out by Wing’s screams. Gabriel stepped into the chamber.

  It was the inside of a gigantic beehive.

  Gabriel stared. The room was a scale model of the caves themselves. The walls were thick with layer upon layer of bees, and every nook and cranny was clogged with dense honeycomb. Yellow wax covered every surface and blobs of thick golden honey dripped from the ceiling. As Gabriel entered the room, the buzzing rose to fever pitch and a column of bees peeled off, swarming around his head, covering his face and hands. Gabriel smiled as the bees crawled over him as if tending his wounds, nuzzling and licking like a thousand tiny cats pleased to see their master return.

  He turned at the noise from the far side of the chamber and stared at the hideous scene.

  Wing had fallen, or been pulled back, into a deep pit of honeycomb alive with the maggot-like pupae of developing bees. He flailed around on his back, but the more he struggled, the deeper his limbs became stuck in the dense brown honey which shifted around him like sticky, sweet quicksand. His head was a helmet of bees, and his pale blue eyes shone out, terrified, from among the black insects, while their grubs feasted on his rotting flesh. His moans were momentarily drowned out by the drone of the bees, then rose up louder as the insects began to burrow into his ears, mouth and into the cavity where his nose should have been.

  Gnawing their way into his head.

  Adam knew that Van der Zee could see it in his face. The enormous wave of excitement, of exhilaration, that he’d felt from Rachel – that had passed straight from her thoughts into his – could only mean one thing, and Adam had been unable to keep it from his expression.

  “They’ve found it, haven’t they?”

  “Found what?” Adam said, wide-eyed.

  Van der Zee shook his head, impatient, and turned back to the desk. The screens were still blank. He grabbed the microphone to address the Hope operatives on the boat. “It’s time to move,” he said. “They’ll be coming out of that cave any time, so let’s get a welcoming committee up on to that beach right now…” The order was acknowledged. Van der Zee turned back to Adam and shrugged. “Soon be over,” he said.

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adam said. “What you think anyone’s found.” He took a step towards the control desk but was intercepted by the guards.

  “Shame we have no pictures,” Van der Zee said. “But you should be able to hear everything.”

  As if on cue, a voice boomed from the speakers. High and edgy – a New York accent. “Talk to me, Van der Zee.”

  Van der Zee turned back to the desk. “I believe the artefact has been acquired.”

  “That’s good. Very good…”

  “So I’ve sent in a team to intercept them. That was the plan, right?”

  “Yes, it was.” The man in New York paused. “But plans can change, doctor, you need to be aware of that. We’re dealing with people who are not … predictable. You have to think fast, and be flexible. Do whatever the situation demands. You with me?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “Get back to me when they’ve come out.”

  Van der Zee was about to speak again when the caller clicked off. He turned the chair round slowly until he was facing Adam.

  “What does that mean?” Adam asked. “‘Whatever the situation demands’?” Van der Zee said nothing. “And what happens to me, when all this is over?”

  Van der Zee stared at the floor for a few seconds and when he raised his head, he could not look Adam in the eye. “That’s not my decision,” he said.

  Adam felt the words like a cold hand on the back of his neck.

  He knew that there were men on their way to the beach. Rachel and the others would be walking out of those caves into big trouble. He knew that he was in trouble too, and he knew that he could not just sit back and let it happen.

  He needed to make a move.

  Gabriel unfastened the leather necklace and handed it back to Rachel. When she had threaded the new amulet on to it, he passed across the original Triskellion.

  “They belong together,” he said.

  Rachel put the Triskellion back on to the necklace and turned so that Gabriel could fasten it behind her neck.

  The moment the two amulets touched, they began to move, sliding across each other, singing against Rachel’s skin.

  “It’s been a long time,” Gabriel said.

  It was as though the metal of each Triskellion had softened: as though one could pass directly through another. The blades kissed and twisted together, weaving intricate patterns, and the light glowing from them laced round Rachel’s throat.

  Then it was over, and the amulets faded and slowed until they hung motionless from the cord round Rachel’s neck. They clinked softly when she turned to look at Gabriel.

  “You’ve got something on your hands,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Is it
… honey?”

  Gabriel wiped his palms against his trousers. “That creature you saw by your bed … he won’t be bothering you again.”

  Rachel stared hard at him, then nodded, understanding. “That’s a relief,” she said.

  “We need to go.” Gabriel moved towards the steps that led back up into the tomb.

  But Rachel had walked back to the edge of the water and stood gazing down into the depths. “Carmen and Inez,” she said. She turned and looked imploringly at Gabriel, but even as she’d spoken their names, she’d known that they would not be coming back up.

  Gabriel shook his head. “They knew all along what they would have to do.” He held out a hand. “Come on. We need to catch up with the others and get out, fast.”

  Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard were sitting on rocks, idly tossing pebbles at gulls, when they first heard the boats. They looked up and stared out to sea as the whine of the outboard motors grew louder, then watched as the two motorized dinghies came quickly round the headland.

  The boys stood and rolled up their sleeves.

  The two boats hit the sand within a few seconds of each other and six men piled out of each. They were dressed head to toe in black and all wore dark glasses and inhibitors.

  They exchanged a few words and then began running hard towards the entrance of the cave, quickly covering the few hundred metres or so between them and the two sixteen-year-old French boys.

  Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard stood and watched them coming. Jean-Luc glanced at his brother. “There are twelve of them,” he said. “It’s not fair.”

  “You’re right,” Jean-Bernard said. “The odds are terrible.”

  Jean-Luc grinned. “Well, maybe we should each have one arm tied behind our backs. Give them a fighting chance…”

  The brothers stepped casually out into plain sight and waited until the last possible second to strike. The man who appeared to be in command signalled to his men that they should be careful, but it was clear from their reactions that they did not see the twin boys – “special” or not – as much of a threat.