Regina hefted the wrench, and not for the first time wished she’d managed to hold onto her gun. She’d considered going back for it, feeling her way through the eerie and, as she was now convinced, unnatural darkness, but it could have been anywhere in there, and she’d be wasting precious time trying to find it. If there was anyone else in the house, there was every chance they’d heard the shots that Hargreaves had fired, and the longer they waited, the more chance the enemy had of getting away, or readying an ambush.
She watched Hargreaves as he beckoned for her to move forward, edging open another door with the side of his boot. He disappeared through, and she followed after, glancing over her shoulder to ensure they weren’t being observed from behind.
So far, the ground floor seemed abandoned. They’d emerged from the cellar beneath the staircase in the main hall, and having first secured the kitchen and back door, were now moving through the interconnected dining and sitting rooms.
The kitchen had shown evidence of recent occupation—food remnants in the bin, dirty plates heaped by the sink, a half-drunk mug of coffee on the worktop—but it was days old, and beginning to smell.
Similarly, the dining room had been used in the last few days, as evidenced by the position in which the chairs had been abandoned and the three-day-old newspaper left in situ on the tabletop.
She moved further into the sitting room, while Hargreaves covered the door that led back into the hallway. The furnishing here was sparse and old—a cracked leather chesterfield, a writing bureau standing open and empty, an overturned side table. The once-vibrant wall cloths were faded too, save for three or four patches of bright green where pictures had once hung.
Regina was beginning to build a picture of what had happened here. It was clear that nobody had lived in the house for months. The Russians hadn’t furnished the place, but had used it as a temporary base or meeting point, perhaps only in their dealings with Sabine Glogauer, or as a location for their attempted entrapment of Rutherford. She was beginning to think that Hargreaves was right—they’d cleared out the moment Rutherford’s cover was blown, leaving the dog behind in the darkened cellar to deal with any subsequent intruders. It was looking increasingly likely that she and Hargreaves were going to leave the place empty-handed.
They moved out into the hallway. The light from the streetlamp outside was shining through the stained-glass panel above the door, forming bright pools of red and blue and yellow on the Minton tiles. A small heap of post lay on the mat—circulars, a newspaper, and something presumably addressed to the previous inhabitants or owners of the house. Nothing there that could help shed light on the Russians’ activities.
She used the wrench to indicate the stairs to Hargreaves, who nodded his assent.
Hargreaves went first, still clutching his weapon in both hands. As he climbed, Regina could see he was working his jaw back and forth, tense and alert, expecting danger at any moment.
Slowly, they ascended the stairs to the small landing at the top. Here, a door opened into a large bathroom—which was clean but empty—and another small flight of stairs doubled back, leading to a long, thin landing from which a series of doors led to what she assumed to be bedrooms. At the end of this landing, another set of stairs led on to the floor above.
Hargreaves approached the first door, but just as he was about to reach for the handle, cocked his head to one side, listening intently.
“What?” mouthed Regina.
Hargreaves touched the tip of his ear, indicating for her to listen. She paused, straining to make out what he’d heard. After a moment, she heard it too—a creak of floorboards from the landing directly above. Something—or someone—was moving up there.
Hargreaves stepped away from the door. He took a deep breath, and then met her gaze. By way of answer, she hefted the wrench, and nodded. He turned and strode purposefully toward the other end of the landing. Then, pausing only to glance back and ensure she was following, he turned and hurried up the stairs.
Regina broke into a run, taking them two at a time. If there was someone up there, they had him trapped—there was no other escape route from the third floor, and a leap from the window would either kill him, or shatter his legs. Perhaps this was the chance they’d been looking for; an opportunity to get some answers.
“Stop!”
She reached the top of the landing to see Hargreaves brandishing his gun at the back of a man in a hooded robe. He appeared to be dressed in identical fashion to the others they’d encountered during the ambush the previous night. He was standing at the far end of the landing with his back to them, facing a door.
“Stay exactly where you are, or I’ll shoot.” Hargreaves glanced at her, a cocky smile on his lips. The hooded man did as Hargreaves had commanded, and remained still, not even turning his head to look at his assailants.
“Now raise your hands.”
The man did as ordered, raising both hands above his head. As he did so, however, the index finger of his right hand brushed the surface of the door, tracing a small circular pattern across the grain. Light flared, bright and obtrusive, as if the tip of his finger had somehow ignited the pattern in the wood. With a grunt of effort, he reached for the handle, trying to bundle himself through the door in one sudden, jerking movement.
Hargreaves was the quickest to react. His weapon bucked as he discharged a shot, and he launched himself forward, barreling after the hooded man, intent on bringing him down. Regina charged after him, gripping her borrowed wrench.
The shot had clearly struck home, and the man staggered, tumbling through the open door into the room beyond. Hargreaves reached the door seconds later and barreled through, kicking it aside as he rushed after the hooded man. It rebounded with a loud thud, swinging back at Regina just as she reached it. She threw her hand out, catching the edge of it, and used her momentum to shove it open again, bursting through into the small box room on the other side.
Confused, Regina wheeled on the spot, the wrench still raised above her head like a primitive club. There was no sign of either Hargreaves or the Russian. The room was simply bare and unadorned—the scraps of an ancient maroon oilcloth on the floor, and yellowed paper on the walls that had once clearly been patterned with ostentatious peacock feathers.
“Hargreaves?”
No answer.
Had he succumbed to some kind of enchantment? Cautiously, Regina circled the room, testing the walls for a hidden panel or covered door. Nothing. There was no sign that anyone had ever been there. The two men had simply vanished into thin air.
She stepped back out onto the landing and pulled the door shut behind her. She studied the door for a moment. It certainly looked like an ordinary wooden door. Except… where the hooded man had described a circle of light with his finger, there was a rough groove cut into the wooden panel, as if someone had crudely scratched the design into the wood with a penknife. It was little more than a circle with three strange symbols inside of it, which looked to her like letters from a Slavic alphabet she’d never encountered before.
Slowly, she turned the handle and pushed the door open again. Still nothing. Just the same empty room beyond. She closed it again, tucking the wrench into the back of her trousers. What had she seen him do?
She reached up, mimicking the actions of the hooded man. Using the tip of her index finger, she followed the line of the circle on the door. As she did so, her finger seemed to leave a trail of fizzing, crackling light, as if live electricity was leaping from her body and imbuing the wood with energy. It tickled her skin, as if her body were somehow interacting with or reacting to the charge. She completed the circle, and started on the symbols. First one, then the second, watching them light up as she progressed… and then, without warning, the light seemed to sputter and fizz out. Within a moment there was nothing but a marked wooden door again.
Frustrated, she tried again, but the result was the same. Perhaps she was doing something wrong. She closed her eyes, trying to recall what the man had done. He’d definitely drawn the circle first, she was sure of that. But in what order had he marked the symbols? She couldn’t be sure. She decided to try again, this time altering the order. When the light petered out again, she kicked at the door in frustration, sending a thunderous bang echoing through the empty house.
Taking a deep breath, she tried again, and then a fourth time, and on the fifth, she finally appeared to hit on the correct order, as the sigils continued to glow, even after she’d lifted her finger away from the design.
With a deep breath, she stood back, peered up at her handiwork, and then opened the door.
This time, when she stepped over the threshold, everything was chaos.
Hargreaves was on his knees before the prone body of the hooded man, on the floor of what appeared to be the kitchen of a Georgian farmhouse. Through the window she could see golden fields of wheat and barley, stretching away into the distance. Hargreaves was bellowing something at the hooded man, and his hands were pressing on the man’s torso. They were covered in blood. She could smell it, rich and thick and tangy. The man was bleeding out from the gunshot wound.
“Hargreaves,” she said, unsure what else there was to say. Her mind was reeling. Was she really here, in this farmhouse in the middle of nowhere? One minute they’d been in a terraced house in Belgravia, the next they were… elsewhere.
The door had clearly been some sort of portal, similar to the ones she’d seen the Russians conjure during their ambush—but she’d activated it herself. It seemed so surreal. And now this…
“Regina? Oh, thank God.” Hargreaves looked up at her, the relief evident on his face. He glanced down at his blood-stained hands. “He won’t talk.”
Regina crossed the room and stooped over the body, placing two fingers to his throat. She felt for a pulse. The man’s eyes were open and staring up at her, and there was a wry smile fixed on his lips. Blood dribbled from his mouth, matting his beard. She felt his body convulse, and he expelled a long, burbling wheeze. “He’s gone.”
“Shit. I only wanted to wing him.”
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think he would have talked.”
She straightened up, wiping her fingers on her sleeve. Beside her, Hargreaves was also getting to his feet.
“Where the hell are we? What happened back there? One minute I was running along the landing of that house… the next I was wrestling him to the floor in here.” He crossed to the sink and turned the creaking tap on, rinsing his hands. Blood swirled around the porcelain basin, bright and obscene. She could see it was matted in the hair of his forearms, trapped beneath his fingernails. The thought turned her stomach, and she looked away.
Hargreaves turned the tap off and dried his hands on a rag. He walked back to the door, opened it, and peered through. “It’s a store cupboard,” he said. “Filled with tinned food and grain. I just… I don’t understand.”
Regina walked over to join him. She peered over his shoulder for a moment, and then reached up and tapped her fingernail against the door. “Here. Look at this symbol. That’s what he was doing when you shot him. The door is a portal. Trace your fingertip around it like this…” she ran her finger around the outer edge of the circle until it began to glow, “…and suddenly it points to somewhere else.”
She stepped back, regarding Hargreaves. He was frowning, watching the fizzing light on the door as it slowly sputtered out. “How did you know how to do that?”
“I watched him do it, right before he went through the door. It took me a few goes to get it right, but that’s how I was able to follow you,” she said. A thought occurred to her, and she looked around the room. There were two further doors leading from the farmhouse kitchen. She walked over to one of them. Sure enough, there was a circle engraved here, too, but with a different configuration of symbols inside of it. “This one’s the same, too.” She began to trace the outline, watching it crackle to life. “They must have a whole network of them, leading them wherever they want to go.”
“So this place is a sort of hub?”
Regina shrugged. “Perhaps. Or a safe house; somewhere to escape to if things get too hot. Somewhere they’d never be found.”
“Well, we found it,” said Hargreaves. He looked thoughtful. “Do you think more of them might come this way?”
“Hard to say, but we can’t take any chances.”
He nodded. “Help me hide the body, then.”
With a grimace, she took the dead man by the arms and helped to lift him over to the store cupboard. His dead, staring eyes seemed to follow her every move. Hurriedly, they bundled him in and closed the door. It wasn’t going to fool anyone for long, but it was something.
“We should get back to Absalom,” said Hargreaves. “This is huge.”
Regina nodded absently, as she returned to the other door. She opened it, peering into the small living room beyond. Then she closed the door again, and started tracing the Slavic symbols with her finger.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re right. We need to tell Absalom. But what do we really know at the moment? That a house in Belgravia contains some kind of energy portal to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. But what if this door,” she stood back as the sigils began to glow, “leads somewhere else? What if we can find out more about what they’re up to? Where their real base is?”
“I’m not so sure, Regina. We might not be so lucky next time. What if we find ourselves trapped, or worse, stumble right into the middle of one of their weird pagan rituals.”
“Then you’d better make sure you’ve still got that gun,” she said. She reached out, opened the door, and stepped through.