Richard was reloading. Joanna Chambers fired again. She pulled some more bullets out of her dressing gown pocket but even as she fumbled with the loading mechanism, one of the creatures launched itself at her, grabbing hold of her with one hand, lifting an ancient-looking knife with the other. The blade was black with a broken, serrated edge. It stabbed down.
Matt stopped him.
Six months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to do it. But then he had been alone. Now four of the Gatekeepers had come together and Scott, Jamie and Pedro had added their power to his. All he had to do was think about it and the blade snapped in half. The creature screamed in pain and a wisp of smoke rose from the palm of its hand as the hilt of the knife burned into it. By now, Chambers had loaded her rifle. She fired a single shot at point blank range, putting it out of its misery.
“We can’t control them!” Jamie shouted.
If these creatures had been fully human, he might have been able to make them turn round and leave the house. He and Scott didn’t just read minds. They were also able to control them. All their lives, the two brothers had recognized that they were living under a curse. Always, they had to be careful what they said. One unguarded thought, one word spoken in anger, could turn them into murderers. Once, Scott had almost killed a boy at school. And later, when their foster father committed suicide, Scott had known that he was secretly to blame.
But this time it wasn’t going to work. Their attackers didn’t seem to have minds that could be controlled. It was as if they had already been programmed to kill with no thoughts of their own. And there were too many of them. Matt glanced into the garden. It was still very dark outside but he could make out a whole crowd of them, moving relentlessly across the lawn. There were more at the back of the house and yet more of them upstairs.
Matt heard a horrible gargling sound and turned just as a man – or the remains of one – stumbled over the sofa and launched himself at him. The man was naked to the waist, sweat and slime dripping off his chest. Matt nodded and the man was flung backwards, crashing into the wall. He slid to the floor and lay still.
“They’re on the stairs.”
It was Scott who had seen them. The creatures from the balcony were making their way down, their movements slow, almost robotic. Jamie ran forward with the baseball bat and swung it into the face of the first man that he reached. There was a crunch of breaking bone. The man crumpled.
Matt looked all around him, wondering where the next attack was going to come from. At the same time, he smelled something. His eyes had begun to water and he was aware that it was getting more difficult to breathe. The temperature had risen too. Richard fired again, hitting one creature, then used the revolver as a club, smashing it into a second. “The house is on fire!” he yelled.
Matt didn’t need to be told. Smoke was pouring down the staircase, sucked into the ground floor by the turning fans. He could already hear the crackle of burning wood. Stretched out in the hot Nazca sun – it almost never rained in this part of Peru – the professor’s house would be bone dry. There were fire extinguishers in all the rooms, but they weren’t going to be given a chance to use them. Left to itself, the fire would consume the whole building in minutes.
Richard fired two more shots but then the gun clicked uselessly in his hand. He rummaged in his pocket, searching for more ammunition. Professor Chambers blasted off another round, but she too had only a few bullets left. And the creatures kept on coming. Kill one and another two or three would take its place. There seemed to be no end to them. Matt saw another one appear on the stairs, holding an iron post similar to the one that had killed Ramon. It had been torn free from the garden fence. He watched as the creature lifted it up to its shoulder, realized too late what it was about to do.
The creature flung the rod like a spear, aiming straight at Pedro. Matt shouted a warning. Pedro twisted round. The missile turned once in the air and then struck him a glancing blow on the side of the head. He cried out and fell to the floor, dazed and bleeding. Another creature – dressed bizarrely in the rags of a dinner suit – closed in on him. Matt couldn’t reach him. He was too far away. But Scott was there. He still had the kitchen knife. He was standing between Pedro and his attacker. Matt waited for him to move.
Scott did nothing. He stood where he was, frozen to the spot. He wasn’t even blinking. Matt could see his chest heaving and his hands seemed to be locked in place, the fingers bent. His whole body was rigid.
Matt knew what was happening. He had seen it before. Scott wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t a coward. But he had spent weeks with Nightrise, with the woman called Susan Mortlake and in that time they had got into his mind. It was hard to imagine how much pain they had put him through, trying to turn him against his friends. This was the result. In moments of stress, he simply shut down. Even Pedro had so far been unable to help him. The wounds were too deep.
Pedro was lying still. There was a gash on the side of his head. Jamie was lashing out with the baseball bat, using it like a club or a sword. Matt looked for a weapon but couldn’t see one. The man in the dinner jacket had reached Pedro and was standing over him. He had produced a second weapon, an axe which he was holding in both hands. Desperately, Matt searched across the room, saw a jagged piece of broken glass on the floor and – using his power – swept it through the air and into the creature’s throat. The creature screamed horribly and fell back in a fountain of its own blood.
“We have to get out of here!” Richard shouted.
The air was full of smoke. It was getting harder to breathe inside, but running out into the fresh air would be suicide. Nobody would be able to see anything in the darkness – and if these creatures had night vision they would be in total command. Matt stood there, cursing himself. There were tears streaming down his cheeks. He knew that this was happening because of Scarlett. He had been expecting it. So why hadn’t he been better prepared?
At any event, he knew that Richard was right. They had to get out of the house before they suffocated. The smoke didn’t seem to have any effect on the attackers. It was as if their lungs had rotted away and they didn’t need to breathe. Jamie threw the baseball bat at one of the creatures on the stairs, then ran over to his brother. Matt reached Pedro and helped him to his feet. At least he didn’t seem to be too badly hurt. Professor Chambers blasted away with the rifle, clearing a way to the French windows.
“Look out!”
It was Richard who had shouted the warning. Matt looked up just in time to see part of the ceiling come crashing down in a chaos of orange fire and black smoke. The flames were leaping up at the night. It seemed that most of the roof and part of the second floor had gone. Taking Pedro with him, he threw himself to one side and the falling debris missed him by inches, crashing down onto the sofa where Ramon, the man who had started all this, was sitting. The iron rod that had killed him was slanting out of his chest. He was watching it all like a disinterested spectator.
The six of them staggered out into the garden leaving the burning house and the remaining creatures – nine or ten of them – behind. Professor Chambers fired one last shot. “No more ammo!” she called out to Richard but there was a strain in her voice and Matt wondered if she had been hurt. He looked at her in alarm. There was a patch of red spreading across the front of her dressing gown. A dark gash showed in the material. But she wasn’t going to let the pain slow her down. “How about you?” she demanded.
“Two more bullets…” Richard replied.
Two more bullets and the attackers were everywhere. Matt could see them clearly in the light of the flames, their eyes glowing red, their hands clutching knives, axes, chains and lengths of barbed wire which they flailed like whips. Pedro was leaning against him, blood running down the side of his face. Scott and Jamie were standing together, catching their breath. They had made it outside but they had nowhere to run. Another creature lumbered towards Professor Chambers, who stood where she was, clutching her wound. Richard shot it twice.