The Bones Of Odin (Matt Drake 1) (25 page)

“Right.” Kennedy hurried to the edge of Aphrodite’s niche. Then, hugging the jagged rock, she leaned around the corner. “Some kind of structure here . . . Jeez! Oh, man.”

Drake held her shoulders and peered into the dark. “I think you mean -
fuck me!”

There, stretching away beyond the reach of their lights, was a thin ledge that turned into an even thinner spiral staircase. The staircase stretched up above them, heading for the next level.

“Talk about vertigo,” Drake said. “This just took the biscuit
and
the jar.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

THE TOMB OF THE GODS

The spiral staircase felt solid enough, but the simple fact that it wound through empty air above an endless pit, not to mention that its architects had failed to fit any kind of banister, made even Drake’s well-trained nerves judder faster than a flea on a vibrator.

One complete circle led them about a quarter of the way up Aphrodite’s niche, so Drake figured they had four or five circuits to do. He moved up a step at a time, following Ben, trying to keep his fear at bay by taking deep breaths and always looking ahead to their goal.

Sixty feet up. Fifty. Forty.

When he neared thirty feet he saw Ben stop and sit for a moment. The boy’s eyes were petrified with fear. Drake sat gingerly on the step below him and patted his knee.

“No time to start composing the new Wall of Sleep track, dude. Or dreaming about Taylor Momson.”

Then the SAS soldier’s voice echoed up from below them. “What’s going on up there? We’re shittin’ ourselves down here. Get movin’.”

SAS soldiers, Drake thought. Didn’t make ‘em like they used to.

“Take a break,” he shouted back. “Just be a mo’.”

“A break! A fu-”
Drake heard Wells’ low tones, then silence. He felt Kennedy sit near his feet, saw her tight smile, and felt her shaking body through his toes.

“How’s the kid?”

“Missing college,” Drake made himself laugh. “Fellow band members. The pubs of York. Free cinema night. KFC. Call of Duty. You know, student boy things.”

Kennedy peered more closely. “That’s not what student boys and girls do in
my
experience.”

Now Ben opened his eyes and tried a strained smile. He inched himself around on hands and knees. Once facing upwards again, still on hands and knees, he climbed up one gruelling step after another.

Inch by inch, step by perilous step, they ascended. Drake felt the stress making his head and heart ache. If Ben fell he would willingly block the boy’s fall with his own body, if only to save him.

Without question or hesitation.

Another full circle and they were about twenty feet from their goal - a ledge that mirrored the one they had just traversed. Drake studied it in the flickering torchlight. It led back towards the entrance shaft but obviously one level up.

Level up?
He thought. Christ, he’d been ‘retro-ing’ it too much with Sonic the damn Hedgehog.

Above him he saw Dahl waver. The Swede had stood up too fast, over-balanced, and now had too much weight on his back foot. There were no sounds, just the silent struggle. He could only imagine the tortures flooding Dahl’s mind. The space at his back, the safety in front, the thought of the long, torturous drop.

Then the Swede flung himself forward, hit the steps, and clung for dear life. Drake heard his heavy breathing from ten feet down.

A few minutes later and the arduous climb continued. At last Dahl stepped off the stairs and onto the ledge, then crawled forward on hands and knees to make space. Drake followed not long after, pulling Kennedy with him, feeling stunned relief at being back on their narrow ledge that still left them only a slip from screaming death.

When they were all accounted for, Dahl breathed. “Let’s get to the next niche and call a rest,” he said. “I, for one, am totally blasted.”

After five more minutes of shuffling their sore bodies and fighting off increasing muscle cramps they stumbled into the fourth niche, the one that stood directly above Aphrodite’s Tomb.

No one saw the resident God at first. They were all on their knees resting and panting. Drake thought wryly that this was what civilian life had led him to, and only looked up when Parnevik uttered an expletive that would have seemed odd coming from anyone else, but not him.

“Woof!”

“What?”

“Woof! Doghead. It’s Anubis.”

“The jackal?” Wells sat back on his arse and gripped his knees to his chest. “Well. I’ll be . . . ..”

“An
Egyptian
deity,” Parnevik said. “And this one undoubtedly linked to death.”

Drake took in row upon row of mummies and coal-coloured jackal statuettes. Gold-inlaid coffins and emerald-studded
ankhs.
Unimpressed, he turned his back on the God’s burial chamber and broke into a KitKat. A moment later, Kennedy was seated by his side.

“So,” she said, unwrapping her own food and drink.

“Damn, you’re good at the chat-up lines,” Drake grinned. “I’m feeling myself aroused already.”

“Listen, buddy, if I wanted you aroused then you’d be putty in my hands.” Kennedy shot him a grin both cheeky and exasperated. “Damn, you guys can’t quit it for a minute can you?”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Just playing. What’s up?”

He watched Kennedy peer off into the void. Saw her eyes widen when she caught the faint sound of Frey’s soldiers catching them up. “This . . . thing . . . we’ve been skirting around for a while. Do you think, um, we’ve actually got something, Drake?”

“I certainly think Odin’s down here.”

Kennedy rose, about to walk away but Drake put a hand on her knee to stop her. The touch almost produced sparks.

“There,” he said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think I’ll have much of a job when we get back,” she whispered. “What with the Thomas Kaleb serial killer thing and all. That bastard killed again, you know, the day before we got to Manhattan.”

“What?
No.”

“Yes. That’s where I went, to walk the murder scene. And to pay my respects.”

“I’m so sorry.” Drake refrained from hugging her, recognising it was the last thing she needed right now

“Thank you, I know. You’re one of the most honest men I’ve ever known, Drake. And the most selfless. Maybe that’s why I like you so much.”

“Despite my annoying comments?”

“Very much
despite
those.”

Drake finished the last of his chocolate, and decided against tossing his KitKat wrapper into the void. Knowing his luck he’d trigger an ancient litter-trap or something.

“But no job means no ties,” Kennedy went on. “I have no true friends in New York. No family. I guess I might need to disappear from the public eye anyway.”

“Well,” Drake mused, “you’re an enticing prospect, I can see.” He gave her goofy eyes. “Maybe you could say bollox to gay ole Paris and come visit merry old York.”

“But where would I stay?”

Drake heard Dahl mustering the troops. “Well, we’ll just have to come up with a way for you to earn your keep.” He waited until she had climbed to her feet then caught hold of her shoulders and gazed into her sparkling eyes.

“Seriously, Kennedy, the answer to all your questions is yes. But I can’t deal with all that  right now. I have my own baggage that we need to discuss, and I
so
need to keep focused.” He nodded towards the void. “Down there is Alicia Myles. You might think of our journey so far as being dangerous, of this Tomb as being dangerous, but, believe me, they’re
nothing
compared to that bitch.”

“He’s right,” Wells came up and caught the last comment. “And I’m seeing no other way out of here, Drake. No way to avoid her.”

“And we can’t block the route because we need a way out,” Drake nodded. “Yes, I’ve trawled through every scenario too.”

“Knew you would have.” Wells smiled as if he’d known all along that Drake was still one of his boys. “C’mon, the turnip’s bellowing.”

Drake followed his old boss to the ledge, then took his place behind Ben and Dahl. One appraising glance saw everyone refreshed but edgy about what lay ahead.

“Four down,” Dahl said, and shuffled away across the ledge, mountain at his back.

The next niche was a surprise and gave them all a fortifying boost. It was the Tomb of Thor, son of Odin.

Parnevik was bleating as if he’d discovered a Yeti camped out in Death Valley. And, for him, he had. The Professor of Nordic mythology had located the Tomb of Thor, arguably the best known Nordic figure of all time thanks in part to Marvel comics.

Pure elation.

And for Drake, the presence of Thor suddenly made it all the more real.

There was a respectful silence. Everyone knew of Thor, or at least some incarnation of the Viking God of thunder and lightning. Parnevik lectured about
Thorsday
, or as we now know it - Thursday. This interlaced with Wednesday – or
Wodensday
, or
Odinsday.
Thor was the greatest warrior-god known to man, a hammer-wielding, enemy-felling
tour de force
. The pure epitome of Viking manhood.

It was all they could do to drag Parnevik away and stop him from trying to examine Thor’s bones there and then. The next niche, the sixth, contained Loki, the brother of Thor and another of Odin’s sons.

“Trail’s hotting up,” Dahl said, with barely a glance inside the niche before continuing along the ledge -which ended against the mountainside - a solid black mass.

Drake joined the Swede, Ben and Kennedy as they ran torches over the rock-face.

“Footholds,” Ben said. “And handholds. Looks like we’re going up.”

Drake craned his neck to look up. The rock-ladder ran up into infinite dark, and they would have nothing but air at their back.

First a test of nerve, now what? Strength? Vitality?

Again Dahl went first. Climbing fast for twenty feet or so before seeming to slow as the blackness engulfed him. Ben chose to go next, then Kennedy.

“Guess you can keep an eye on my ass now,” she said with half a smile, “Make sure it doesn’t go flying past you.”

He winked. “Won’t take my eyes off it.”

Drake went next, scrabbling for three perfect holds before moving his fourth appendage. Rising in that fashion he rose slowly up the sheer rock-face into the volcanic air.

The rumblings continued all about them: distant complaints of the mountain. Drake imagined the magma chamber sitting not too far away, bubbling, spitting hellfire and discharging it across the walls, spewing up towards the distant blue Icelandic skies.

A foot scraped above him, slipping off its little ledge. He held himself stock-still, knowing there was little he could do if someone came barrelling past him, but prepared, just in case.

Kennedy’s foot swayed in space about a metre above his head.

He reached out, swinging a bit precariously, but managed to grab the sole of her boot and guide it back to its ledge. A short whisper of thanks drifted down.

On he went, biceps on fire, fingers aching in every joint. The tips of his toes bore the weight of his body for every small ascension. Sweat slicked his every pore.

He estimated two hundred feet of safe but terrifying hand and footholds before they reached the comparative safety of another ledge.

Gruelling work. Edge of the world, apocalypse-later kind of work. Saving humankind with every punishing step forward.

“What now?” Wells was flat out on his back, groaning. “Another bloody ledge-walk?”

“No,” Dahl didn’t even have the strength to make a joke. “A tunnel.”

“Balls.”

On their knees they crawled forward. The tunnel led into an inky darkness that made Drake start to believe he was dreaming before he abruptly ran into Kennedy’s stationary behind.

Face first.

“Ow! Could’ve warned me.”

“Difficult when I was suffering the same fate,” came back a dry voice. “Only Dahl came out of that pile-up
sans
bruised nose, I think.”

“It’s my damn heart I worry about,” Dahl called back wearily. “Tunnel ends right up against the first step of another staircase at, um, I’d guess a forty-five degree angle. Nothing to left and right, at least nothing I can
see
. Prepare yourself.”

“These things must be attached somewhere,” Drake muttered as he crawled on bruised knees. “They can’t just be suspended in mid-air, for God’s sake.”

“Maybe they can,” Parnevik said. “For a
God’s sake.
Ha ha. I made a joke, but seriously my best guess is a series of flying buttresses.”

“Hidden beneath us,” Drake said. “Sure. Must’ve taken a hell of a workforce. Or a couple of really strong Gods.”

“Maybe they asked Hercules and Atlas for a hand.”

Drake edged out onto the first step with a curiously creepy feeling invading his brain and ascended the rough stone. They rose for a while, at length emerging onto another niche based around a suspended platform.

Dahl met him with a jaded shake of his head. “Poseidon.”

“Impressive.”

Drake sank again to his knees. Christ, he thought. I hope the Germans are having it just as hard. At the end, maybe instead of a battle they could duke it out with rock, paper, scissors.

The Greek God of the Sea carried his usual trident and a roomful of fabulous wealth. This was the seventh God they had passed. The figure nine began to gnaw at his mind.

Wasn’t the number nine the most sacred in Viking mythology?

He mentioned it to Parnevik whilst they rested.

“Yes, but this place clearly isn’t just Nordik,” the Prof jabbed a finger towards the trident-bearer behind them. “Could be a hundred of them.”

“Well, we clearly aren’t going to survive
a hundred of them,
” Kennedy bickered at him. “Unless someone built a Ho-Jo’s up ahead.”

“Or better still, a
bacon-buttie shop
,” Drake smacked his lips. “I could sure down one of those bad-boys about now.”

“Crusty,” Ben laughed and slapped his leg. “You speak about ten years out of date. But don’t worry - you still have entertainment value.”