‘I gather you’ve been a bit of a naughty boy,’ Crowley said. He handed Rutherford a glass of brandy.
Rutherford looked like he needed it – pale and shivering. He gulped the brandy down, and Crowley refilled the glass.
‘Not me,’ Rutherford managed to gasp. ‘It’s Jane you need to watch. She’s telling the Manners woman everything, I’m sure of it.’
Crowley leaned back in his chair, amused. ‘And that’s worse than you running off to Herr Hitler’s friends, is it?’
Rutherford didn’t meet his gaze. He sipped at the brandy. ‘I just…’ he muttered.
‘Just nothing!’ Crowley roared. ‘You were nobody when you came here. You had nothing. You knew no one. If it weren’t for me, you’d probably be dead in a gutter by now, and don’t you forget it. This is how you repay me?’
Rutherford didn’t answer.
‘Our friends at MI5 want me to kill you, you know.’ Crowley’s tone was offhand, conversational – as if he was remarking on the weather outside.
But it snapped Rutherford back to reality. He stared at Crowley. ‘Kill me?’ he echoed, his voice strung out with nerves.
‘“Execute” was the word they used. And I ought to after this…’ He nodded at the bookcase still standing away from the wall to reveal the hidden room behind.
‘But – you can’t!’
Crowley’s voice was hard. ‘Oh yes I can. I always could, but now I have official permission to kill you in cold blood any time I see fit. Don’t forget that, not ever. But for the moment, well…’ He smiled. ‘We’ll see, shall we? I might be able to persuade MI5 to keep you alive. Perhaps.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Rutherford asked.
‘As you are told, for a change. For a start, you say nothing of what you’ve seen here.’
Now he knew he was safe for the moment, there was a hint of the old defiance in Rutherford’s voice. ‘I don’t know what I have seen.’
‘Then perhaps I should enlighten you.’
‘And Jane Roylston? I was telling you the truth – she’s passing on everything to Brinkman and his lot.’
‘Yes…’ Crowley considered. ‘I suppose that’s hardly surprising.’ He stood up. ‘I think perhaps it is time for poor Jane to meet her destiny.’
‘Kill her?’ Rutherford breathed.
‘I’m still deciding whether or not to kill you.’
‘Then what do you mean?’
Crowley took Rutherford’s empty glass from him, placing it on the desk. ‘Bring her to the cellar. Just Jane and you, no one else. I’ll meet you there.’
‘What if she won’t come with me?’
‘I’m sure you can persuade her, Ralph. You’re good at that, I know. And I’m sure you’d enjoy it.’ Crowley turned to the dark opening behind the bookcase. ‘I have someone else to bring.’
* * *
To Rutherford’s disappointment, mention of Crowley’s name was enough for Jane Roylston to follow him down to the cellars. She glanced warily back at him as they descended into the flickering light of the stone-lined chamber. But Crowley was already there, the candles already lit. A copper bowl of incense burned smokily on a stand close to the altar stone.
‘You want me to try making contact again?’ Jane asked. ‘I told you, the link has been broken. There’s nothing there to make contact with, not any more.’
‘You have a very special ability, Jane,’ Crowley said. His craggy face was an escarpment of trembling shadow in the candlelight. ‘I think it’s time to take your talents to the next level. Into new territory – for all of us.’ He gestured to the stone altar table in the centre of the chamber. ‘Please.’
As she had done so many times before, Jane stepped up on to the dais surrounding the table. She glanced back at Crowley, and glared at Rutherford who stood smirking next to him.
‘Naked, if you would be so kind,’ Crowley said. His pale tongue licked quickly over his bloodless lips.
‘I’ll help you if you want,’ Rutherford said. The anticipation was obvious in his voice.
‘I can manage,’ Jane told them. She was close to the burning incense, the smoke making her lightheaded and woozy. She kicked off her shoes and unbuttoned her blouse, all the while conscious of the two men staring at her. She was used to it, but she still found it unsettling. Especially Rutherford.
The table was cold under her back as she lay down. She stared up at the vaulted roof above, its details lost in shadow as the light danced over the stone surface. The perfumed smoke from the copper bowl beside the table drifted across, blurring the image and dulling her senses. ‘I’m ready.’
‘Not quite,’ Crowley said. ‘Don’t resist, my dear. It will all be over soon.’
The smell of the incense was stronger now, the smoke thicker. Through it, she saw Crowley looking down at her, holding the copper bowl close to her face, letting the smoke drift across her. She breathed it in, feeling herself begin to slip away.
Someone took her hand, pulling it gently away from her body until it was stretched out to the edge of the stone table. She felt the metal clasp round her wrist, securing it in place. Then the other arm. Jane felt a moment’s panic as her legs too were pulled apart. She tried to sit up, to see what they were doing, but her head felt so heavy …
Then cold metal closed round her ankles, holding her spread-eagled across the stone.
* * *
Crowley replaced the copper bowl on its stand and looked down at the woman stretched out on the stone.
‘What are you going to do to her?’ Rutherford asked. He too was staring at Jane. He’d never seen her look so beautiful. So helpless.
‘I shall do nothing,’ Crowley said.
For a moment, Rutherford thought Crowley would just leave, and let Rutherford do whatever needed to be done. But instead he stepped down from the dais and went to one of the alcoves at the side of the chamber, reaching down into the shadowy darkness.
When he straightened up and turned around, Crowley was holding the metal cage Rutherford had seen in the hidden room. It was covered with a black velvet cloth, and Crowley carried it carefully, almost reverently to the altar table. He set it down on the stone surface, between Jane’s ankles.
‘What’s going to happen?’ Rutherford asked, breathless.
‘To be honest, I don’t know.’ Crowley gently pulled the cover from the cage, murmuring quietly as he did so. Rutherford could not hear the words, wasn’t sure it was English – Latin perhaps? Or an even older tongue?
Darkness quivered inside the cage. A living shadow. Slowly, carefully, warily, Crowley undid the clasp at the front of the cage, and lifted up a section. He stepped back as the inchoate darkness reached out through the opening.
An angular limb, gnarled and grotesque like the leg of a giant spider, licked out of the cage. Then another. The creature inside pulled itself out, and squatted malevolently between the cage and Jane. Sensing something was happening, she tried to raise her head, looking down along the length of her body. Rutherford didn’t know if she could see the nightmare creature that was moving slowly towards her. He hoped so. Her eyes were wide with fear, her whole body trembling.
One of the creature’s skeletal limbs brushed against her thigh, and Jane cried out in surprised terror. The cry was choked off as the creature moved on, upwards, reaching out across her flesh, hauling itself up onto her body. The single eye swivelled back and forth as it surveyed its prey. It paused, the pulsing, bulbous body resting on the woman’s naked belly, gnarled legs stretching out across her thighs, her breasts, towards her face.
Jane’s head lifted again and she saw the dark nightmare stretched out across her. Her whole body convulsed with the effort of screaming, back arched and limbs straining at the manacles. The creature’s limbs curled round her in a macabre embrace, clutching her tight, then abruptly releasing her.
Her body slackened, fell back to the stone.
Crowley stepped forward, muttering urgently to the creature. A limb whipped out like a tentacle, narrowly missing Crowley’s face. He stepped back with a snarl, gave an angry, guttural order. Slowly, reluctantly, the creature withdrew. Its crooked limbs gathered into a knotted mass beneath its dark, bulbous body. A single defiant eye glared for a moment back at Crowley.
Then it withdrew into the cage, and Crowley snapped the bars back into place and closed the clasp.
‘How do you control it?’ Rutherford’s voice was a dry rasp.
Crowley glanced at him. ‘Ancient words of power, handed down through the generations of natives in the Himalayan foothills of Nepal. I am never quite sure whether the words control it, or whether it merely does as I ask.’
Rutherford’s heart was thumping and he was breathing heavily – part excited and stimulated by what he’d seen. Part horrified. He stepped up onto the dais beside Crowley, keeping well clear of the cage. Not daring to look at what it held. Instead he stared down at the body of Jane Roylston.
‘Is she dead?’
‘No, she’s not dead,’ Crowley said.
A thin trail of blood wept from a narrow slash across her left breast and down her chest. Several smaller lacerations criss-crossed her stomach and the top of her legs. A bead of blood welled up from a point close to her navel, running slowly across the undulations of her body and dripping to the stone table.
‘What now?’ Rutherford said, his voice a nervous whisper.
Crowley picked up the black velvet cloth and draped it back over the cage. ‘Now we wait.’