Justin grinned and his hair caught the light, like black gold. “I’ll take you to the gates.”
As we walked, the final entry in Oh-Fa’s journal kept pace with us. I heard it in a blend of Justin’s voice and my mother’s and knew for certain that it would not be much longer before I had my answers.
It is over.
I am alone in the camp with no map to show me the way back to civilisation. I will finish this journal. Then I will pack my treasure with what provisions I can and attempt to make it home. Although I do not deserve to see my daughter I will owe her an explanation when the time comes.
As I finished my last journal entry the Professor entered the tent and forced me outside.
“Murderer.” I spoke with fervour.
The Professor gestured with the gun. “I don’t care about that. As for you, die out here, or take your chances in there. And don’t even think about turning on me, unless you think you can find the way back to civilisation alone.”
Left with no choice I reluctantly took the gun. Then, half in a daze, I pressed my right palm to the back of the Professor’s hand. An unnatural effervescence seethed beneath my skin and when I pulled my hand free, the Mark imprinted by the Sunbird’s touch was gone. Now it lay over the Professor’s tendons like a spider pressed in a natural scientist’s book.
The Professor gestured impatiently. “Get on with it.”
Fearfully I looked into the shadow coating the fourth step. Then I frowned at the mathematics of the situation; hadn’t I been able to see five steps before?
And now there were only three. The shadows were advancing.
The Professor, determined to send me into the tomb, shoved me from behind. I wriggled sideways and pointed to draw his attention to the Darkness that now spilled into the camp.
Titus barked. He scampered towards the living shadow that blotted out a body length of sand and stopped at its edge, claws working furiously to keep him out of the boundary. He snarled continuously, a low sound of menace, and the Professor retreated. “What is it?”
I shook my head and watched the Darkness follow the Professor’s movement.
For his part the Professor ran for his tent. “Make it stop.” At his feet blackness reared like smoke, thicker and darker than the smog I had seen on my journey through London.
“Shoot it!” the Professor’s scream rent the air.
I stood petrified as the Darkness struck. Titus howled and the Professor shrieked once then disappeared.
After a while the Darkness receded back into the tomb. The murderous Professor had been taken to Anubis, just as the beast had promised.
And now I understand my mission; the path my life will take.
Even now I see a shadowy figure approaching across the sand. Alone in this great desert he cannot possibly reside among the living. I hope he will at least lead me back to Giza.
I am so very sorry my children. Please forgive me.
25
THE WHEEL KEEPS SPINNING
We stood outside the church, the last to arrive.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”Justin's anxiety was making him restless. “No.” I wrapped my arms around my chest as if I could protect myself from what was to come. “After that last dare, James could set anything. What if I can't do it?”
Justin said nothing.
“Your last dare killed you. My initiation nearly killed me. This isn't a good idea.”
He looked up at the stained glass window as if it held an answer and I rubbed my hand.
“I don't have a choice, do I?” I sighed and started forward.
“There has to be another way.” Justin caught my arm. “Perhaps we could get hold of my police records or something.”
I raised my eyebrows. “First of all, do I look like Nancy Drew? And second, if it was possible for me to hack into Scotland Yard, or break in or whatever, I wouldn't find anything.” I grimaced. “If your murderer wasn't going to get away with it, your touch wouldn't have transferred a Mark.”
Justin held his hand to his face, as if he'd see something on it. “I'm sorry.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “I didn't know. I would never have touched you otherwise.”
I nodded and stood with one foot on the church steps. “Thanks for saying that and I know you didn't even know you were dead. But you would have come for me eventually. In the end they all do.”
Justin opened his mouth and I stepped forward. “Come on, let's get this over with.”
The room was laid out as before, with a large circle of chairs overseen by the Icarus poster. Only instead of a chair in the centre of the ring, there was a bicycle wheel mounted on an easel with a large circle of wood behind. The wooden circle had each of our photos on and the wheel had a pointer attached.
I stared at it, searching for the missing image: Justin’s. Of course it wouldn’t be there. My own face had probably taken his place.
James’ picture was an old one; in it he was slimmer and his skin was bare of tattoos. The arrogant facial expression however, was the same. The image had a big pair of scarlet wings stuck on top with blu-tack. I figured that meant he was exempt from the wheel: the challenger.
“Nice of you to join us, Oh. Are you going to stand there all night?” James sneered.
The empty chair was between Pete and a boy I recognised from the year below. Alan fidgeted uncomfortably as I slipped into the circle and sat next to him. I shot him a glare, remembering the feel of sand in my clothes. It was obvious what he had done to get into the club. Justin took up a position at my back just as, with a death’s head grin, James rose from his seat and put one hand on the black tyre. His eyes met mine as he whipped the wheel downwards.
I swallowed. Half of me; the sensible half, wanted the wheel to keep spinning, to land on any of the other fifteen smiling faces. The other part clenched my blackened hand and prayed for it to stop with the pointer covering my own image.
As the wheel spun, Justin stepped from behind my chair. Once inside the circle he raised his eyebrows. Feeling sick as a dog, I gave the smallest possible nod and he waited next to the wheel, like a compère, for the spinning to slow.
Tension thickened the air as the wheel started to clack less and less quickly and faces around the ring tensed and paled. I could hear Alan breathing through his nose, hard on the inhale, as if he couldn’t get enough air.
I glanced around. Even Harley was leaning forward. His curls were a greasy tangle around his eyes as he waited for the outcome with gritted teeth.
Yet Pete seemed fairly relaxed. He sat on my left, arms dangling by his sides, legs crossed at the ankle. Then, there it was; the little muscle on his jaw that twitched when he was stressed. He was pretending not to care, but he did. No one wanted the wheel to land on them, not even Pete.
Today, they didn’t have to worry.
Now I could see the individual spokes as the wheel turned. It wouldn’t be long. Finally the wheel was barely moving. It was coming to a halt, stopping a full half turn away from my image.
The little pointer brushed Alan’s cheerful face and he winced as if it had actually touched his skin. But it was still moving on past Harley whose exhalation made his curls shiver, past Tamsin who blinked and dabbed at her mascara, past a younger girl called Ella who sagged into her chair, past Pete. No, not past Pete. It was going to stop on his picture. I couldn’t help myself, I turned with everyone else to look at him, see how he was taking it. James raised his arm, but then…
Then Justin gripped the wheel.
Sweat stood out on his forehead as if the tyre was resisting him. He only had to get it going again, just enough to move it past three more pictures.
My breath stopped as the wheel moved fractionally.
Pete groaned audibly as it moved past him, turning on, past one then two, images. Mine was next.
Then James reached out and touched the easel and Justin’s hands slipped through the tyre as if it had turned to air. He could no longer touch it.
No
.
My eyes widened as I stared at the wheel, willing it to keep moving. It trembled and then, thank God, momentum moved it a tiny bit more and the pointer sat directly over my face.
I was going to be challenged after all.
Pete frowned. “She’s only just done a dare.” He leaned back in his chair, acting as if he didn’t really care. “Should we spin again?”
A chorus of negatives filled the space; voices tense with the fear that their reprieve might be snatched away.
“It’s alright, Pete.” I smiled tightly. “It can’t be worse than the last one and I managed that OK, didn’t I?”
Pete’s eyes skidded from mine. “
Dying
to be popular, are we?” He shrugged and rose from his chair. “Your funeral.” He leaned against the wall again.
I swallowed and turned to face James.
“Now we’ve got
that
out of the way…” James smirked and his hair glittered bronze in a shaft of dusty light. “Time for the challenge, Oh.”
I nodded.
“Come on then. On your feet.”
“Up, up, up.” The refrain propelled me onto my toes. The temptation to take Justin’s hand was so great I had to fold my arms.
“You know the rules now.” James’ voice was bloated with satisfaction. “I set the challenge but you can
double dare
if you want to send it back my way. If you do you have to double up, that is make the dare twice as hard, according to the moderators Harley and Tamsin here.” He gestured and the light falling on his wrist made a shadow like a snake moving over the floor. “If you can’t make the challenge doubly hard, it goes back to you. If I turn down the double dare, someone else is allowed to take it on, for points. If you would rather take a truth than the dare, you can enter the confessional.” His smile widened like a sharks. “This week in the confessional we’ll be testing the truth about your personality: how much pain can you stand? Of course, you can choose to swap your place in the confessional with someone else, your best friend in the group, the guy who proposed you. So what’s it going to be, Oh? Truth or dare?”
“Just to clarify,” I rasped. “I can go into the confessional and you’ll hurt me until I can’t stand it any more. Or I can make Pete go inside instead, which makes me look like a bitch and means Pete’ll probably do the same to me next time he’s challenged. Or I can take your dare, but I don’t know what it is yet?”
“That’s right.” James nodded. “Fun, isn’t it?”
“But I can double dare you?”
“Only if you can double up and not make the dare impossible.”
“And if I win the dare I get to set the challenge next time?”
“That’s right.”
“And if I refuse the dare altogether?”
James glanced at Tamsin for a second. Her crimson lips curled. “Remember Derek?”
My mouth went dry. “But what if I lose the dare, if I just can’t do it?” That was the only thing I wasn’t clear about.
“Why, nothing,” she answered.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” James parroted. “If you genuinely try but still fail the dare, you go back on the wheel and I get to set another challenge next week.
“That’s it?” I wrinkled my nose.
James leaned forward. “So what’ll it be? Truth or dare?”
I met his gaze with a steely one of my own. “Dare.”
Excitement made James literally dance on the spot. “Everyone listening? Here’s the dare for this week. Remember what Hargreaves had to do the other week, and how he
failed
? Well that dare is still up. Oh, you have to go to the building site where he died, climb the scaffolding and walk across the part that hasn’t got a handrail.”
Gasps rent the air as the shock hit the rest of the V club. Justin literally growled and as I turned he launched past me, fists swinging. His right arm powered through James’ cheek and came out the side of his head without moving a single carefully styled hair.
He landed on his side, spitting and furious.
“You can’t be serious?” Pete rubbed his stubble-specked head.
I met James’ smug gaze and blinked. My breath sat in my chest like an undigested wad. “Are you allowed to set a challenge that isn’t possible?”
“Moderators?” James glanced over at Tamsin and Harley.
Slowly Tamsin nodded, but her face was now white. “W-we already decided it was possible.”
Pete leaped back into the circle. “Come
on
, there’ll be security now. Maybe even police. If we get caught they’ll look harder at Justin’s death.”
James shook his head. “We have friends in high places, Petrol Pete, remember? The Met won’t be looking into the V club.”
“Fine, but wake up, Justin
died
.
Clearly
it isn’t possible.”
Harley’s lips twisted under his acne scars. “I dunno, dude, it should be do-able. Justin was just unlucky.”
“Unlucky?” This time Justin hurled himself at Harley, grabbing for his lapels. In the end he had to settle for screaming into his ear. “You
dick
, I’m
dead
. You call that unlucky?”
Tamsin sniffed. “Pete has a point, Justin did prove it impossible.”
I forced myself to breathe past the obstruction in my throat. This dare was beyond crazy. The V club was out of control. But now I had a way to get the challenge on my own terms.
“I’ll do it.” I silenced the objections with a stab of my gloved hand. “But on one condition: if I make it, I get to set a challenge.”