The Key (17 page)

He leaped forward and sprinted across the rubble-strewn road towards the underground car park, all thoughts of caution and personal safety gone from his mind. He had to get to his mother, fast.

The barrier flashed past as he powered down the ramp, his way ahead illuminated by the fitful flash of hazard lights from all the cars parked there. He crashed through the doors to the stairs and launched himself up the first flight three at a time, grabbing the rail to slingshot himself round the curve. Already his legs felt tired. The sprint to the hospital had burned up most of his energy and he was running on fumes and fear. In his mind he pictured the scene that might be unfolding in his mother’s room: the priest, turning away from the window, making his way over to the bed. The hospital was in chaos. She would be easy to subdue. No one would hear. The priest could take his time if he chose to, if that was why he was there.

Gabriel reached the ground floor and heaved himself up, using his arms to drag himself along the banister. His legs were burning, his breath ragged. It had taken him about ten seconds to make it up the first flight, but he was already slowing. Four more flights and then a dash across the connecting bridge and into the dark of the old psyche ward. His mother was a minute away at best.

One minute. Probably a little more.

Much too long.

Kathryn Mann watched the priest from the fragile fort of her bed as though he was a bear walking across her room. He was talking to her but her hearing was too damaged and the high-pitched whine of fear too loud in her head for her to make out what he was saying. His face was fixed in a kindly expression that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He might be saying things to calm her after the quake, making sure she was all right – but she felt terrified.

She doubted she would have the strength to fight him or get away if it came to that. He looked so solid and strong and the quake had shaken her up, knocking her already fragile equilibrium. She felt weak and sick. The room was swimming, he was shifting in and out of focus as he moved closer to the bed. She felt a jolt as he shoved the bed back against the wall from where it had been shaken. Then he came round the side, still talking. He leaned forward, reaching for something behind her head and she caught snatches of what he was saying:

‘… Don’t worry. Soon be over …’

The room shifted as he slid a pillow from behind her head.

Her head lolled to one side and her gaze settled on the door. She was too weak to fight, or run, or even shout for help. She thought of Gabriel, and the pain of never seeing him again. She hoped he would come and find the diary, even if he was too late to save her. Her beautiful boy, so like his father.

Then, as if summoned by her need to see him once more – the door began to open.

Ulvi did not notice at first. He was focusing on the woman’s neck, deciding whether to smother her or just break it for speed.

‘Everything OK in here?’

He looked over and saw the cop.

Ulvi felt a surge of hatred. He had figured the idiot would be out of the way at least until the lights came on, but the damn irritating fool clearly wasn’t even up to sorting out that simple task.

‘All fine,’ he said, adjusting the pillow that had almost become a murder weapon.

The cop regarded him from the doorway, his scrutiny switching between the woman and him. ‘You checked on the monk?’

Ulvi’s hatred continued to simmer. ‘No, not yet.’

The cop nodded slowly as if the answer had revealed something. ‘Well then, maybe you should.’

Ulvi felt such a desire to slit the man’s throat it was almost unbearable, but in this room at least the policeman edged it on jurisdiction. The woman was under arrest and was therefore technically his charge. So he swallowed all the violent feelings he was experiencing and made his way out of the room without another word.

Outside, the corridor was still dark and he had to feel his way along the wall to where the monk’s room lay. He reached it and looked back. The cop was there, watching him. He could see his outline against the distant glow of light coming from the main building. Why had he picked tonight to turn into a proper policeman?

No matter.

The monk needed dealing with too. He would kill him quickly then go back and finish what he had started. And if the cop was there, then he would have to die too. With the girl gone, Ulvi had a spare bead in his pocket.

The fear that had flooded Kathryn when the priest had been in her room was now curdling inside her.

‘You OK?’ the cop asked, stepping in from the corridor and closing the door behind him.

She nodded, forcing a smile that was lost in the darkness.

With the meagre light from the corridor now absent, the room was almost black. Since her hearing had suffered in the blast Kathryn had noticed how her other senses had expanded to fill the gap. She could smell the cop as his movement across the room displaced the air: coffee and fabric conditioner and some kind of disinfectant that had probably leached into the fabric of his uniform from sitting too long out there in the scrubbed corridor.

He appeared by the window, a silhouette against the night sky. A sliver of moon had risen over the rooftops, reminding her of the secret she carried. She felt the weight of it – as her father must have, carrying it alone for all those years. She sensed the air shift again as the cop stepped away from the window and came closer to her bed, bringing the smell of disinfectant with him.

‘I’m not sure about that priest,’ the cop said, almost to himself. ‘That’s why I came back – to make sure.’

A hand flew out of the darkness and clamped over Kathryn’s mouth and nose, cutting off her breathing and preventing her from making any sound. He was wearing surgical gloves – the source of the antiseptic smell.

She tried to twist away, but he was already on her, straddling her body and pinning her to the mattress with his knees. She tried thrashing her head from side to side, hoping to dislodge his hand so she might scream, but the latex glove gripped her skin and held it fast.

He brought his face closer to hers.

‘Shhhh,’ he said, ‘quiet now.’

He yanked her head sideways to expose her neck and she felt something sharp and cold on it. In a panic she threw every ounce of energy she had into arching her back and bucking against the hard hospital mattress, jolting him forward and making his hand slip from her mouth. She shrieked for half a second before the hand clamped down harder and the cop shifted position, grinding his whole weight painfully on to her arms to stop any further movement.

Her head was snapped round again, more violently this time, and she felt the pressure return, biting into her flesh. She had a sudden image of a vampire, feeding on her in the dark and she realized with certainty that she was going to die.

Kathryn thought of the secret she held in her head and wondered what would become of it. The cop – if he was a cop – would know the room would become a crime scene and anything in it would be scrutinized as evidence. The latex gloves showed he was being careful. If he found the book hidden in the bed, then she doubted anyone would ever discover its contents. Everything they had done, all the thousands of years of waiting for the prophecy to come to pass, would be for nothing.

Tears leaked out of her eyes at the injustice of it all. She cursed herself for being too weak to fight back, but destiny had always been stacked against them from the start. She regretted leaving Gabriel, but her father would be there on the other side, and so would John. She would see her husband again. She began to relax into her fate as she felt coldness spread through her neck as if death was already seeping into her.

Then the door to her room flew open and Gabriel surged through the darkness towards her.

Gabriel sprang at the shape on the bed, hitting it full on and driving it into the wall. The man was big and solid and undoubtedly armed, but Gabriel had landed on top, giving him the slightest of advantages.

He grabbed the man’s right hand – the one most likely to be holding a weapon – and smashed his elbow hard into the wrist, shocking the tendons into release. There was a grunt of pain and something clattered away in the dark, too light to be a gun. Gabriel yanked the hand away and caught a glimpse of the man beneath him – not the priest but a cop. He grabbed for his holster, but the cop had got there first. His gun was already halfway out and angling up. Gabriel grabbed it and lunged forward with his head. He felt a wet crunch as the thick bone of his forehead connected with the soft cartilage of the cop’s nose. His grip on the gun tightened reflexively in response to the pain – but there was no shot. Whatever make it was, the gun came with a safety catch, and it was still on.

Gabriel wrenched it more violently now he knew it wasn’t going to fire, jerking it upwards in a series of sharp tugs to twist it away from the cop’s grip. He drove his head forward again, drawing a fresh grunt of pain and feeling wetness on his forehead where blood was flowing from the first blow. With a final violent tug, the cop’s finger snapped and Gabriel pulled the gun from his hand.

The cop cried out in pain and thrashed against the floor in panic, knocking Gabriel forward so his head hit the wall, dazing him slightly while the cop continued to buck beneath him in an attempt to get free. Gabriel had the gun now but was holding it by the barrel. Things were moving too fast to shift it into a firing position so he lashed out instead, using it like a hammer. His first blow glanced off the cop’s head. Then a fist crashed into his side, bruising his kidneys and knocking the wind from him. He drew his arm back again but the cop kicked out and got lucky. He connected with Gabriel’s arm and the gun went clattering away into the darkness.

Now neither of them had it.

The cop seized the opportunity and scrambled to his feet, vaulting over the bed and out of the room. Gabriel rolled after him, pausing by the door and ducking his head outside to scope the corridor, keeping it low in case the cop had a second gun. He needn’t have worried. The cop’s only intention was to get away. Gabriel saw him disappear round the corner leading back to the main building. He considered giving chase, but his legs were too tired from the sprint up the stairs and there was something more serious bothering him.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and used the light to locate the gun. It was a Beretta PX4 – not exactly standard police issue. He picked it up, checked the safety and slipped it into his waistband. Then he turned to the still figure of his mother on the bed. The thing that had been troubling him was her silence. She hadn’t moved or said anything since he had flown across the room and knocked away her attacker.

‘Hey,’ he said, leaning in close. ‘You OK?’

He shone the light of his phone into her face. She looked deathly pale, but her eyes were open. ‘Gabriel,’ she said, smiling up at him. ‘I knew you would come.’

He took her hand and held it in his. Her eyes seemed to look straight through him.

He noticed something on her neck and moved the light over for a closer look. Blood leaked from a small, ragged puncture wound. Too small to be from a knife. The jagged edge suggested that whatever had made it had been torn free when he knocked the cop to the floor. He swept the light over the room and saw the syringe sticking out from under the bed, the plunger pushed most of the way in. He picked it up, sniffed it. There was no odour. The liquid inside was clear. It could be anything, anything that would render an adult instantly immobile.

He looked into his mother’s face holding up the syringe. ‘He injected you with something. I need to get a doctor. Find out what it is. See what they can do to flush it out. You just hang tight, OK?’ He made a move to leave but Kathryn gripped his hand. ‘Stay,’ she said. ‘It’s too late. You’ll never find anyone in time. I can already feel it working.’

Raw anger boiled inside him. He knew she was right. Even if he managed to find a doctor, the chances of persuading him to run an emergency tox test in time to administer an antidote were slender. But he refused to give in. There had to be a way. He was standing in a hospital and somewhere in this building there was something or someone that might save his mother’s life. Then he realized exactly what it was.

He thrust the gun into her hand. ‘If the cop, or the priest, or anyone else comes back to do you harm, then use this. I’ll be right back. I promise.’

Then he kissed her on the forehead and darted from the room.

Gabriel knew that every mission relied on two things: objective and solution.

The first part he had already worked out. He needed to know what poison was coursing through his mother’s veins and the only person who could tell him was the cop. The second part of the problem was finding him.

Casting ahead, Gabriel tried to anticipate the cop’s next move so he could get there quicker. He would avoid the more populated areas so no one saw him, but he would also want to get out of the building as fast as possible before the main power came back on. The lifts were out, which left the stairs, and the first flight he would come across were the ones Gabriel had used, leading down to the underground car park – the perfect place for an ambush. If he could get there first.

He moved down the corridor and ducked through a door into a deserted ward room. Inside, the floor was littered with workmen’s tools and materials, scattered by the earthquake. He spotted a pair of heavy-duty gloves amongst the mess and picked them up as he made his way to the window. It was sealed by a single piece of board that split with a single, sharp kick.

The cold night air hit him as he stepped on to the scaffold platform he had seen from the street. The whole thing rattled as if the earthquake had shaken it loose from the building. But now was not the time for caution.

He unhooked one of the lengths of coiled rope from the scaffold and dropped it over the edge of the platform. It was too dark to see but he heard it patter on the pavement, four storeys down. The other end fed through a pulley and was secured to the platform. Gabriel leaned back on the rope to test it then stepped over it, feeding it round his right leg, over his back and round his left arm.