by Kate Johnson
“Very well, but only if you want to go round in very small circles.”
He rolled his eyes and we went down to the quay, where there were still a lot of residents poking about. One of the cottages had a hubcap embedded in the wall.
“Was that your car that exploded?” a woman with a mean face asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Look at what it’s done to my house! That’s Grade II listed, that is. I want your insurance details. I’m not paying for this damage.”
I sighed. “Look, I’m really sorry about your house, but frankly I don’t actually give a crap.”
She stared for a second, then screwed up her face, like a baby about to start bawling, but I turned away and ignored her. Luke was standing by a small dingy that bobbed about in the little harbour, watching me and shaking his head.
“Do I have a neon sign above my head that says ‘Freaks Wanted’?” I asked, and he grinned.
“No, but you have one that’s advertising for trouble.” He stepped into the boat and held out his hand for me. I’m not very good with boats. I don’t like the floor to be moving. I stumbled and fell into him and he pulled me upright, holding me for a few seconds.
“You okay?”
No. My heart was about to explode.
I managed a nod and quickly sat down, and Luke untied the rope mooring us, took the oars and pushed us away from the little crowd by the harbour, one of whom started yelling, “Hey, that’s my boat!”
“Thanks,” I called back, and we ignored him.
I actually had to look away after a while, because when Luke pulled on the oars his biceps bulged and I started to get dizzy. I needed to get some, and I needed to get some of him. And soon. As soon as we got home, I was locking him in my room and swallowing the key.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” I managed to ask. “Your arm?”
“Yep,” Luke said. “You can kiss it better later.”
Hoo boy.
It only took a few minutes to row over to the mainland beach, pull the little boat up to dry sand, and then start across the beach with wet feet, feeling very Ursula Andress. Although with slightly more clothes and not so much tan, obviously.
Livvy had arranged for all the helicopters to be parked in an overspill car park on the edge of the mainland village. As we walked through the pretty streets, people were starting to come awake, old men with leathery faces going down to the harbour, a milkman whining around in his little truck, a florist getting in her van and driving off to the flower markets.
“I like this time of day,” I said to Luke, and he looked as surprised as I felt. “I mean, not when I have to go to work, obviously, but when I can just look at the sun and smell the air. It’s all clean and fresh.”
He nodded. “This time of year, it’s the only time you can be cool.”
I disagreed. Luke was cool all the time. And, against all laws of physics, really, really hot.
“Do you really know Daniel Masters’s dad?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Vaguely. Friends with my parents.”
“I thought—” I began, then stopped. Luke looked at me sharply.
“What?”
“I—” might as well go for it “—I thought Maria said your parents were dead.”
He gave a curt nod. “Car crash when I was seven. I didn’t hear about until the next day. I was at school.”
Jesus. “I’m sorry,” I said, and Luke gave me a tight smile.
“Not your fault. Just don’t ever get in a Morgan, okay?”
“I think it’s fairly safe to say I won’t.”
We reached the car park, which was really just a meadow with a tariff board stuck at one end, and I stood for a few seconds, looking at the small fleet of helicopters. Livvy had obviously pulled in a few favours. Aside from Daniel’s Mastercar ‘copter, there were machines advertising football teams and banks, diamond companies and what we decided might be a polo team or two.
“Talk about millionaire’s playground,” I said, and Luke nodded.
“Pretty impressive.”
We found the Masters helicopter, a very attractive machine in shades of blue and shimmering silver, and Luke opened it up. Inside were two seats looking out of the huge windscreen, and then a row of three seats behind. They were all finished in plush leather and it was all very impressive.
Luke took a seat at a bank of confusing controls and looked them over. He glanced at me. “Are you getting in?”
“I’ve never been in a helicopter before.”
“So?”
I made a face. Obviously he didn’t understand what a rite of passage it was. I climbed up into the cockpit.
“Where should I sit?”
“Wherever you like. Just not here.” He put on a pair of headphones and switched on the radio, and as I tried to choose between the great view of both Luke and the countryside versus some much-needed sleep on the back seats, he radioed ATC and got permission to fly us back. He peered at the dash. “Hope we have enough fuel.”
“What do you mean, you hope?”
He grinned. “I’m joking. It’s a full tank. You ready? No walking about while we’re in the air.”
I strapped myself into the front seat. “Ready.”
“Okay.” He flicked about a million switches and the rotor blades started up with a whump, whump, above us, and then the engines got louder and whirrier, and we started to rise into the air.
My fingers were gripping the arms of the seat.
“You’re not scared of flying, are you?” Luke glanced at me.
“No,” I said, “I’ve just never been quite so close to the outside before.”
“When I was learning to fly they took us up in little bubble ‘copters with no sides in them.”
“Like on M*A*S*H?”
“Yeah. Only without the stretchers.”
We got up to a steady height and I made the mistake of looking down. “Oh, Jesus.”
“What?”
“It’s kinda high.”
“Flying generally is.”
“I’m not so good with heights.”
“But you’re five foot ten.”
“So? This is a lot higher than five foot ten.”
Luke smiled, but didn’t comment. “Why don’t you try and get some sleep? It’ll probably take us a couple of hours to get home.”
“It took me five to get here.”
Luke glowered. “It took me seven.”
“That’s because your car goes faster when it’s being towed.”
“I hit rush hour, okay?”
I smiled and closed my eyes. “Whatever.”
I had forgotten quite how tired I was, but as soon as I closed my eyes I settled into blissful sleep, lulled away by the whirr of the blades above us. As I drifted away I made up a mental to-do list: check key in crypt door, rescue Séala, find and stop Janulevic, apologise to Docherty, call vet, have sex with Luke, sleep.
It was only the last one I had any confidence about.
The quietening of the engine woke me, the same instinct that used to kick in on long car journeys when I was a kid, waking me in time to see our destination sliding up to meet us. Luke was taking off his headphones, his hair rumpled and sexy.
“Are we there?”
“Well, we need to cross the road, but yeah, we’re there. Sleep well?”
My neck was cramped and I had pins and needles in some interesting places, but I nodded. “Very smooth flying.”
“It’s what I do. Well, what I did.”
“Do you miss it?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t think I did, but now I do.”
We picked up our stuff and got out of the helicopter. Luke patted its nose, the same way I thank Ted after a long journey, and I had to hide a smile.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked.
“Load up your gun, unlock the crypt, and let’s see what we can find.”
“Good plan.”
“It’s a shame you’re not still in the Lara ou
tfit. You’d fit right in.”
“Well, you’re still quite Spikey. You won’t look out of place.”
Angel’s church reared elegantly from the trees, looking like a picture on a jigsaw puzzle I had as a little girl. There were birds singing and the road seemed a long way away. In fact, as we approached the creepy, half-hidden crypt, the whole modern world seemed a long way away.
“You ever been in here?” Luke asked.
“No. I don’t think anyone ever has.”
“Someone must have.”
“Not anyone living.” I took the key out of my little Lara backpack and started searching through the clinging foliage for a door. The crypt was made of stone, low-slung and crumbly where the ivy had dug in. There were things scuttling in the leaves, things hanging and flitting and leaving sticky trails. I shuddered.
“What?” Luke said.
“Bugs,” I said, and he rolled his eyes.
“I could have picked a squaddie. I could have picked a copper. I could have picked a bloody ex-con, or even a current con, but no, I had to go and choose the girl who’s afraid of flying and creepy crawlies.”
“I’m not scared of flying,” I said. “It’s heights.”
“It’s the same thing!”
“No, it’s not, if I don’t know I’m high up I don’t get scared. And I am not afraid of creepy crawlies. I just don’t like them. And if you let that fucking huge great big spider there get anywhere near me, I will shoot you dead.”
I had frozen completely at the sight of the creature, who was nearly as big as my hand and had a fat brown body with stripy legs. It looked like one of those horrible loud women who shout stuff out on talk shows. Bleurgh.
Luke shook his head at me and dug out a knife from his boot. He cut away the hanging curtains of ivy, sending the spider rushing away and revealing a small door set well back, down a couple of worn, slimy steps.
“You get the feeling no one has been down here in a very, very long time?” I said, and Luke nodded. “You get the feeling you should have your gun out?”
“Pretty much,” Luke said. “God, I’m turning into you.”
I scowled at him for that, but it was pretty halfhearted. I pulled my fleece around me a little closer and checked the gun at my side. Docherty’s gun, with the laser sight. I was hoping I wouldn’t need it, but the dramatist in me was imagining zombies and mummies and vampires in there. Although if they were Spike-like vampires, then of course I wouldn’t shoot.
Everyone knows that doesn’t kill them, anyway.
I got out the key, put it in the rusted padlock, and nothing happened. It wouldn’t turn.
I looked up at Luke. “Of course, it could be another lock,” I said, and he rolled his eyes and took over. But he couldn’t turn the key either.
“It fits,” he said. “How many other old locks like that are there around here? It’s got to be this one.”
“So why won’t it open?”
“It’s bloody ancient. Stand back.”
I wondered what he was going to do, and then I saw him get out his gun and aim it at the lock.
I jumped away, there was a loud report, and then I looked back and Luke was chucking the wrecked padlock on the ground and shoving at the door. Once, twice, three times, and then it came open with a mighty creak, and he half-fell inside, and a massive cloud of dust and foul air flew out, choking me.
Chapter Seventeen
I was on the ground, coughing and spitting out dust, wiping it away from my streaming eyes, and Luke was leaning in the doorway, watching me.
“You didn’t think to close your eyes?”
“Well, what if there’d been someone in there? Janulevic, maybe?”
“In a crypt that hasn’t been opened for centuries?”
I stuck my tongue out at him, and only slightly ruined the effect by coughing some more.
“Are you ready?” Luke asked, and I hauled myself to my feet, nodding.
“Ready.”
Luke got out a big heavy-duty flashlight that he’d got from the helicopter, and shone it inside. The steps went down another couple of feet, so that most of the dank little room was underground. I followed him in, cautious even though I knew there was no way anything living could be in there.
And in fact there wasn’t even anything dead, either, apart from a couple of smelly rats in the corner of a small, brick-lined room, with a door at the far end. We looked at each other, and Luke got the key out. I shook my head and pushed at the door, which was pretty rotten, and it shambled inwards.
“Smart arse,” Luke said, and I preened. He was standing pretty close, but for once I wasn’t feeling horny. It’s all right for Buffy and Spike to get their naughty on in a crypt, but that was a nice, clean Hollywood studio, not a damp, dirty, dead-ratty hole.
The rotten door revealed a tunnel: narrow, low and very dark. It was hard to remember that outside it was daylight, a nice pretty summer’s day. In here it was forever night, a cold, damp winter night.
“Ladies first?” Luke suggested, and I stared at him.
“You must be fucking joking.”
“You’re not scared, are you?”
“Of course I bloody am. Didn’t you watch the Indiana Jones films? Or Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? Nothing good ever comes out of dark, slimy tunnels.”
“Wuss.”
“And proud of it.”
He shone the light into the tunnel. It reflected off curved brick walls, black with slime and dirt. The tunnel sloped downwards, and unless I was wrong, aimed for somewhere under the church.
Luke stepped inside, and when I hesitated, reached back and took my hand and pulled me after him.
It was hard to know how far we were going. After a few steps we were swallowed up in total darkness. There was nothing either forwards or backwards, just slimy black walls on either side, a steady sound of dripping, and our own echoing footsteps. It was cold in the tunnel, and damp, and we were breathing in white clouds.
“How long have we been in here?” I whispered after what felt like half an hour.
“About a minute and a half.”
“Feels longer.”
“That’s because you’re walking slower than my car.”
So he did have a sense of humour about it. “Which is in turn because I don’t want to go A over T and break my neck on this slimy floor.”
“Sophie?”
“Yes?”
“Why are we whispering?”
I blinked. Because people in dark tunnels always whisper. “So the zombies won’t hear us.”
“Ah.”
My heart was thumping so loudly, my blood thudding in my ears, I could hardly hear anything. I don’t know why I was so afraid. I didn’t even know what I was afraid of—but maybe that was the thing. I was scared of the unknown. Maybe Janulevic was hiding down here. Maybe it was Greg Winter’s skeleton. Maybe Indiana Jones-style riches, glittering like the contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Or maybe just some more dead rats.
Finally we got to another little door. There was a niche in the wall with some candles—some damp, extinct candles—and some very dead matches.
We stood and looked at the door for a while. It was about four feet high, and it reminded me of a door in my old schoolfriend Sarah’s house. It was this ancient Elizabethan mishmash of about four minuscule cottages knocked into one, with staircases all over the place and intricately useless plumbing, and there was this one door that I was too tall for when I was seven. Honest to God, seven.
“Well,” Luke said, still holding my hand, “what d’you rec?”
“I reckon I wish I was in bed with the covers over my head.”
“Since when did you get to be such a coward?”
“Since I thought I was right about a lot of things and found out I was horribly wrong.”
“Such as?”
Boy, he really wasn’t showing any mercy.
“Docherty,” I said. “You.”
“You weren’t wrong about
me,” Luke said quietly, but at the same time something scuttled behind me, and I jumped, and his hand tightened around mine.
“You think maybe we should go in?” I said, looking at the door. “Face our fear?”
“Speak for yourself,” Luke said. “I’ve been potholing in Wales. This is a walk in the park.”
“Watch out, macho alert.”
He grinned in the darkness and handed me the torch as he lifted the latch on the little door, took out his gun, and pushed the door open with his foot.
The room was low and very dark, and so long the torch beam didn’t reach to the other side. At a guess, it was maybe twenty feet across, with brick arches that were only just high enough in the centre for Luke to stand underneath. Along the walls were stone shelves, and I couldn’t see what was on them to begin with.
“Storage?” I whispered.
“Yes,” Luke went over to the nearest shelf, leaving me alone and vulnerable by the door, “definitely storage.” He brushed away a cobweb, and I sucked in a breath, because what was on the shelf was a skeletal hand. And not just a hand, a whole body. And then I looked around, and saw through the thick, heavy layers of dust that every shelf bore bones, some neatly laid out in order, some in miscellaneous heaps.
“I thought Angel said this place was empty,” I croaked.
“Apparently she was wrong.”
I tried to calm myself. What was so damn scary about bones? These people were dead, had been dead for a very, very long time. I’d faced much scarier things than a couple of heaps of bones.
“How many do you think there are?” I said, creeping over to Luke and peering over his shoulder at the skeleton.
“God knows. I don’t know how far the barony goes back. There could be hundreds.”
I shuddered.
“What? They’re already dead, Soph, they can’t hurt you.”
“I know. But dead things are always creepy.”
“Says she living with a cat who turns her living room into a graveyard.”
“I know, but they’re fresh. They’re like what you buy in a supermarket.”
“So let me get this straight,” we were moving along the ranks of dead barons now, “you don’t find dead, ripped-apart squirrels creepy, but the bones of someone who died hundreds of years ago make you shudder?”