Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series) (17 page)

I was still staring at
the door when I noticed how cold it had suddenly become. I pulled my coat
around me, but it was impossible to stop shivering. Glancing across at Min, I
noticed that she too had wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm. She was
swapping anxious looks with Thomas.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

There was an awkward
pause as Min and Thomas debated whether or not to tell me.

“Demarge’s presence is
much stronger now than it was before,” said Min.

“What does that mean?” I
said, suddenly feeling horribly conspicuous.

“That Demarge hasn’t just
sent a scout this time, but an Archon. A powerful one.”

I was still trying to
absorb what Min had said when a security guard came around the corner of the
Cathedral, the sweep of his flashlight catching us at the gate. He began
striding down the path towards us.

“Quick, Thomas we have to
get Clare inside,” said Min.

I looked at her
uncertainly. The guard was
right
there. Min seemed oblivious though. She
clasped the wrought-iron bars and shook it as hard as she could, but it
wouldn’t budge – it was locked fast.

“Allow me,” said Thomas.

He stepped forward and
cupped his hands around the lock. A thin rod of yellow light shot into the
keyhole, breaking it instantly. The gate snapped open and the three of ran up
the path towards the Cathedral’s huge wooden doors. The guard was waiting for
us at the top.

“You have broken into the
Cathedral grounds and are now trespassing.” He spoke directly to Min, obviously
thinking that Thomas and I were just kids. “You have five minutes to leave
before I call the police.”

“Sorry,” said Min
quickly. “You’re quite right. We didn’t mean any harm. We were just passing and
the grounds look so beautiful in the moonlight. The lock on the gate was already
broken. I just thought I’d show my children.” She shot me and Thomas a sidelong
glance.

The security guard shook
his head, looking at Min as if she was from another planet. I was beginning to
wonder if he might have a point.

“Lady, how you bring up your
kids is obviously your business, but it’s after three in the morning. I suggest
you leave and come back later, when the Cathedral is open. Otherwise, I’m going
to have to call the police.” He removed his walkie-talkie from its holster.

“Okay, I understand,”
said Min quickly.

The guard rolled his eyes
and shook his head again, muttering something under his breath that I didn’t
catch. Min nodded at the path.

“Come on kids, let’s go.”

I hesitated, trying to
catch her eye, but she was walking too fast. Thomas followed closely behind and
I figured that we weren’t going into the Cathedral after all. Fine by me. If
I’d had it my way I’d have been running around Wiltsdown trying to find Bede.

The guard had now put his
walkie-talkie back in its holster and was trailing behind us. I glanced across
at Thomas but he was looking straight ahead, as if walking out of the Cathedral
grounds at three in the morning was the most normal thing in the world to be
doing. Then suddenly, without warning, someone shouted. It took me a couple of
seconds to register that it was actually Min.

“Now!”

She tore past me,
grabbing my arm and pulling me up the path. The security guard stepped back,
completely taken by surprise. By the time he’d clocked what was going on, it
was too late. We were long gone.

“Hey! Come back here, you
can’t…”

The guard’s voice trailed
away, as the largest dog I had ever seen in my life bounded up behind him and
knocked him to the ground. Drool was dripping from its jaws, its yellow eyes
boggling wildly in its head. I screamed before I could stop myself.

“I’ll hold it back!” Min
shouted, letting go of my jacket. “Just keep going!”

Thomas pulled me forward
as the dog continued to race up the path towards Min, its eyes deranged with
hunger. A flash of light bounded from her hands, narrowly missing the dog’s
chest and striking it in the leg. It yelped with pain and faltered, but only
for a second. As I glanced behind me I could see Min taking aim with a further
ball of light. I didn’t get to see whether she hit the dog though, because all
of a sudden Thomas let me go and I slammed into the wooden doors, jarring my
wrists. He was now wrestling with the padlock, clawing at it to break it open.

“Hurry Thomas!” Min
screamed.

I turned around again to
see her racing towards us, the dog just a few paces behind. Thomas clasped the
padlock and closed his eyes. As the colour drained from his face, the padlock
began to glow with yellow light, becoming so bright that I had to squint. After
a few seconds there was a loud cracking noise, followed by the sound of metal
raining down on concrete. Thomas tore at the chains, ripping them from the
door, before pushing hard against the solid wood panels. They creaked, then
gave way. Thomas shoved me inside.

I was now standing in the
middle of a large atrium with a mosaic star that covered the whole marble
floor. If it was cold outside, it was freezing inside.

“Keep running!” Min
shouted behind me.

She was now trying to
shut the door of the Cathedral on the dog, but it was too strong. I turned and
was about to go back and help him when Thomas stopped me.

“There’s no time,” he
said. “We’ve got to get to the stairs.”

“Stairs?
What
stairs?” I scanned the room for likely suspects.

“This way,” said Thomas,
grabbing my arm and pulling me towards the staircase diagonally opposite. I
knew it led to the Murmuring Gallery, the mezzanine floor that circled the base
of the Cathedral’s dome.

 “Hurry!” Min shouted.

I turned to see the dog snapping
at her chest, saliva glistening on its teeth. Its amber eye caught mine, staring
at me like I was rump steak. I shuddered and gripped hold of Thomas’s arm.

“Keep running,” he said. “Min
can take care of herself.”

I wasn’t so sure. I
paused to check he was okay, trying to ignore the fact that Thomas was now pulling
so hard on my clothing that I was in danger of losing my coat. This time, as I
looked back, there was also a tall, thin man standing in the middle of the room.
Next to him was a boy.

“No, it can’t be,” I
whispered. I did a double take but there was no mistaking it.
Justin
?
What was
he
doing here?”

Justin stared at me with
the same mixture of recognition and shock. There was no time for either of us
to speak. Thomas had already plunged through the archway at the foot of the
stairs and was hauling me up the steps so fast that I almost tripped. I glanced
back one more time to see the mosaic star slip out of sight.

***

“I might have guessed
he’d send you,” said Min, glaring at Ecoli with disgust.

“Of course,” said Ecoli.
“Demarge always sends his best man when he wants a job done properly.” He
turned to the wolfhound. “Eredus, find the girl and bring her back.”

Eredus’s claws shone like
knives as he turned towards the stairwell.

“No!” said Min, throwing
herself in the path of the dog. Eredus growled, a deep, guttural, throatful of
gravel. Thomas held his ground. “You’ll need to get through me first.”

“Fine,” said Ecoli.
“Eredus, attack.”

The wolfhound drew back
on its haunches instantly

“No!” shouted Justin.
“The dog’ll kill her!”

“She’s in our way,” said
Ecoli.

“You’re sick,” said
Justin.

Ecoli turned to the boy,
visibly irritated.

“We’re here to do a job,”
he said.

“Yeah, but I didn’t sign
up for this,” said Justin.

“You knew
exactly
what you were getting yourself into when you took that pay cheque,” said Ecoli,
exhaling sharply.

Justin began to run. As
the wolfhound launched itself at Min, he threw himself between them. The dog’s
teeth burrowed deep into his back and ripped his coat open as if it were tissue
paper. Justin’s screams filled the atrium as his body landed heavily on the marble
floor. A pool of blood billowed around him, savagely red against the stark
white tiles.

Ecoli lunged towards Min,
snatching a handful of air she fled up the marble staircase. Eredus bounded
after her, but he was already several paces behind. Ecoli turned towards Justin.

 “You did that deliberately,”
he hissed.

“No. I swear. I was
trying to help,” Justin whispered through bloody lips.

Ecoli looked at him in
disgust.

“Try explaining that to
the boss,” he said.

Outside, a tall figure
was striding across
Beare
Bridge
, his long, winter coat billowing in
black clouds behind him.

***

Thomas and I were on the
middle step of the long, spiral staircase when Min came barrelling around the
corner.

“Hurry!” she said.

“Quick Clare, through
here,” said Thomas.

I looked at the creamy,
curved wall beside me. It was completely solid. Not a door or an obvious way in
anywhere.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Here,” said Thomas,
taking my hand and pressing it to the wall.

Then the weirdest thing happened.
Instead of feeling solid plaster, the wall gave way, as if it was made of
rubber. I got such a shock I pulled my hand back. The wall instantly returned
to its normal, smooth, unmarked self. I looked at Thomas, but before I could
open my mouth to ask what on earth was going on, I felt him push me sideways. I
was sure I heard the distant howl of a dog, before everything went deathly
quiet and I began to fall and fall.

Calix crouched cat-like on
the floor of the doll factory. She felt cold and clammy and her heart was pounding
so loudly that her whole body seemed to shudder with its echo. It was now impossible
to hear exactly what Bede and the man were saying to one another, but the
trembling fear in Bede’s voice was unmistakeable.
A
part of Calix felt like screaming in frustration:
why hadn’t Bede followed
her when he’d had the chance
? She knew, though, that it would have made no
difference
–
the man would have found him anyway.

Taking a deep breath, Calix exhaled slowly,
trying to calm her nerves. As long as she could still see
some
distance between herself and the hem of the long, black coat, poking out from
underneath the rack further from her, she figured she might still be able to
escape. She
slid her eyes to
the left, scanning the far wall until she located the door to the loading bay. It
was about five steps away, three if she made them half-jumps. To reach it,
though, she would have to venture out into the open where there would be
nothing to protect her. Besides that, the door was shut and if she got there
and found that it was locked, she’d be in big trouble. Even in a best-case
scenario, a shut door still meant factoring in ‘fumble time’ and having just
seen the speed at which the man could throw lightning across a floor, Calix
didn’t fancy her chances of beating his reflexes.

She was still working out
what to do when she suddenly realised she couldn’t hear voices anymore. Worse,
there was an eerie stillness in the room, as if something was on the brink of
happening which she was powerless to prevent. Calix peered under the rack, but
the hem had vanished.
Where’s he gone?
she thought. Suddenly, a storm of
wind hit her, flinging her back against the wall and knocking the air from her
lungs. Gasping for breath, she watched in a horrified daze as a black tornado
spiralled up from the assembly room floor, towards the mezzanine level. The
racks started to wobble, shaking the plastic dolls as if they were the totems
of an angry witch doctor. Then, before she could scream, the racks started to
topple, one after the other, a series of huge, metal dominoes covered in
dismembered bodies.

Calix covered her ears
against the deafening noise and quickly scuttled from the aisle on her knees. She
was now out in the open and vulnerable to attack, but it was better than
waiting to be crushed by a falling rack. She clambered to her feet and lunged towards
the door, pushing down on the handle with all her strength. The door flew open
and she ran, faster than she’d ever run before, down the corridor to the
loading bay at the side of the factory. She breathed a sigh of relief as she arrived
to find that all the delivery trucks were lined up in their parking bays, as quiet
as a herd of grazing cattle.

“Thank you, workers’ strike,”
she muttered as she ran to the first truck and peered inside the window. Damn,
no keys. She ran to the second truck, then the third.

“What do the drivers do
with the keys, eat them at the end of their shifts?” she cursed.

It was only once she’d reached
the fourth truck that Calix finally saw a set of keys, sitting like a gold
ingot on the driver’s seat. She quickly wrenched open the door and climbed in. Firing
up the engine, it crossed her mind that she’d definitely be sacked for stealing
a truck. Then again, being sacked was the least of her worries, once the police
caught up with her. As she stamped the accelerator into tyre-squealing speed
and flew up the ramp of the cargo bay, Calix prayed the squad car wouldn’t be
waiting for her in the car park.

***

Steel boot heels clipped
the marble floor of the Cathedral as their owner strode across the mosaic star.
The man stopped as he reached the figure lying sprawled in the middle of the
floor, looking down at him with the disdain of someone who had just stepped in
particularly messy road kill.

“So, you thought you
would assist Ecoli capture the girl did you?” said Demarge.

Justin nodded feebly. Any
slight movement, even breathing, pulled the skin tightly around his lacerations
like an agonising corset.

“Well, I find that
curious,” said Demarge. “You saw that Eredus already had Min-Isis in his
sights, so what more could you possibly have done to help?”

“I thought I could stop
her,” Justin mumbled. “I…I made a mistake.”

“Yes, you did,” said
Demarge. “Perhaps the worst mistake of your life. You see, Justin, I’m not sure
I can trust you any more, and an employee I can’t trust is worse than having no
employee at all. So tell me, what am I to do with you?”

“Kill him,” said Ecoli.

Demarge arched his eyebrow,
as if seriously considering the idea.

“Is Ecoli right? Should I
take his advice and save myself any more disappointment?”

Justin didn’t reply. He
was too busy trying to block out the pain that was pulsating in his back.

“He’s no good to you,”
said Ecoli, curling his lip at the prostrate figure. “I know you had high hopes
for him, but he doesn’t have the mettle.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said
Demarge. He shifted his gaze away from Justin and began scanning the room. “So
where did they take the girl?”

“It’s strange,” said
Ecoli, shaking his head as he turned towards the stairwell leading to the
Murmuring Gallery. “Eredus followed Min-Isis up those stairs but there was no
sign of her, Thomas or the girl. It’s as if they simply disappeared.”

Demarge glanced across at
the entrance to the Murmuring Gallery, frowning thoughtfully. He walked slowly to
the square doorway and placed his hand on the cold marble, closing his eyes and
inhaling deeply. As he gradually opened his eyes again, he held his fingertips
to his lips and gently exhaled.

“You’re clearly telling
the truth,” said Demarge.

“Of course,” said Ecoli, unable
to hide his irritation that there had been any doubt.

Demarge studied him for a
couple of seconds, deciding whether or not to take offence at his tone. Ecoli,
sensing that he may have gone too far, quickly averted his gaze. He was relieved
when Demarge let it pass and turned his attention back to the atrium of the
Cathedral.

“So, they’ve put the
entrance to the Slipworld in a Cathedral have they?” Demarge was speaking as
much to himself as to anyone else. “The
very
place where people come to
worship their creator.” He started to laugh, quietly at first, then gradually
louder, the great peals being pulled from somewhere deep inside him. “How
incredibly amusing. At least the Aeons have a sense of humour.”

Demarge didn’t wait for Ecoli
to reply as he began to climb the stairwell. He walked slowly, taking his time,
his hand tracing the curve of the wall.

“Very curious indeed,” he
muttered to himself.

His fingers scurried like
spiders over the plaster, investigating every lump, every crevice, every gouge
in the wall or chip in the paint that was even slightly unusual. As his boot
struck the middle step, Demarge’s eyes suddenly flashed with recognition. He paused,
his fingers testing every millimetre of the plaster.

“The presence of pale
light is so strong here,” he whispered to himself.

He took a deep breath and
pressed himself to the wall, as if straining to hear a sound far away. His hands
continued to work the plaster, using his fingertips like divining rods to
search for shallow spaces, pockets of weakness. He finally stepped back,
smiling to himself.

“I’ll be back,” he
whispered.

He turned and began
striding back down the stairs, the sound of his boots echoing off the marble. Ecoli
met him at the entrance to the atrium.

“Did you find anything?”
he said.

Demarge ignored the
question.

“Take the boy back and
have
Stanley
place him in the
guest quarters with the best view,” he said.

“As you wish,” said Ecoli.

He bent down and hefted Justin
onto his shoulders like the boy was a sack of onions. Justin groaned in pain
but was too weak to resist, as Ecoli strode effortlessly across the atrium and
through the main doors of the Cathedral.

Demarge was now alone. He
glanced down at the pool of blood on the floor, and began twisting his wrists. The
thick, sticky liquid started to move, slowly at first, then spiralling, faster
and faster until it formed a whirlpool on the floor, drawing in every last
smudge of red. The faster it spun, the smaller it got until finally it was no
more.

Demarge brushed his hands,
as if dusting away crumbs, and walked through the huge wooden doors leading outside.
He gave a single, loud clap, and the doors closed instantly behind him, locking
shut. He then strode down the path, past the still-unconscious security guard
and out through the front gates.