She needed a bath after the flight. Sarah wondered if Jane Roylston would be there. But there was no sign of the woman. Either she was far more tidy than Sarah, or her bed had not been slept in. In fact there was little evidence that she had been there at all.
Not that Sarah was too worried. Miss Manners would know where she was – she’d be sure to be keeping an eye on her friend. And if the woman had recovered from the ordeals inflected on her by Crowley then that had to be a good thing.
Soap was a luxury that Sarah had not enjoyed for several days. She lay soaking in the bath, the water right up to the ‘plimsoll line’ painted on the inside to show how much she was permitted. But finally, she had to get out and face the real world again.
Sarah went straight to the British Museum from her flat. But the door down to the vault below the Great Court was locked and there was no sign of Elizabeth. Hunting through the building, she finally found the elderly man that Elizabeth called Young Eddie sitting drinking tea in a storeroom.
‘Just taking a quick break,’ he apologised. ‘Elizabeth has left me a list of things she wants moved or sorted or catalogued.’
‘Where is she?’ Sarah asked.
‘Just having a day off. Or as close as she gets. She’ll be reading up on something or writing about something else. Then she’ll go and see a play, if there’s anything good on. She always wanted to be an actress, you know.’
Sarah wasn’t sure what she would find at Station Z or where she might be sent by tomorrow, so she entrusted Vasilov’s letter to Eddie to pass on.
‘I’ll see she gets it,’ he assured her. ‘Vasilov is one of the good guys.’
‘You know him?’
‘We met. A long time ago. You ever heard the term Vrolak?’
Sarah shook her head.
‘Well, pray you never do,’ he said, pushing the envelope into his jacket pocket. ‘Right then, best get back to work. No peace for the wicked – and if they don’t rest, neither should we.’
* * *
Hoffman had his own uniform stashed away together with his identify papers not far from the Square of Fallen Heroes. Heading back that way, Guy and Leo stripped the uniforms from two of the German soldiers they had killed earlier in the day. It was an unpleasant process, made more horrendous by the fact the rats had already found the bodies.
‘You sure about this?’ Guy asked, not for the first time as Hoffman buttoned his jacket.
‘This place is just a sample of how the world will be if the Vril take over,’ Hoffman said. ‘I came here to find someone, hoping she was here waiting for me. Alive and well. Now I hope to God that if she’s still here then she’s dead already. But whatever happened to her, she’s lost to me, I know that.’
‘But the risk,’ Davenport said. ‘Not just to us. You’re suggesting we gamble everything.’
‘It’s already in play. The Vril have two of the keys. I don’t know if they have another they can use. But I do know that we can’t destroy this one.’ He picked up the axe, and slammed it hard against the remains of a shattered wall. ‘You see,’ he said, showing them, ‘not even scratched. And if we keep it or hide it, the Vril will seek it out. They can feel it. It calls out to them. You thought you had one of the keys safe, and now they have it. Eventually they will get this one too. Oh, it might take months or even years, but they’ll get it, and when they do…’ He turned a full circle, his arms out to show them. ‘Well, you can see for yourselves.’
‘The axes stayed hidden for thousands of years up till now,’ Guy pointed out.
‘It’s only now they want them back,’ Hoffman told him. ‘Perhaps it’s only now that they found they were missing.’
‘What puzzles me,’ Davenport said, ‘is how they went missing in the first place. They were all down in the Labyrinth originally, we saw where they were kept. Who took them and why?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hoffman said. ‘But I think I can guess. The legends have some truth in them. And we are not the first people to fight back against the Vril.’
‘Theseus and the Minotaur?’ Guy said. ‘Well, we saw the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, so that much is true.’
‘Did he rescue the girl or retrieve the axe?’ Davenport said. ‘Two of them perhaps. And so a legend is born.’
‘And the Minotaur?’ Guy asked.
‘The Vril have been here a very long time,’ Hoffman said. ‘Most of them are sleeping, deep underground, but not all. They experiment constantly. And that includes perfecting their Ubermensch technology – developing how they administer the infection, how they control people like me afterwards. Who’s to say they haven’t experimented with other creatures – bulls, hybrid humans?’
‘And people knew about them before,’ Guy said. ‘Was that writer, Bulwer-Lytton, picking up on the legends and myths, do you think?’
‘More likely his mind had some affinity with the Vril,’ Hoffman said. ‘They control the Ubermenschen by putting thoughts into their minds and enhancing those thoughts and instructions with the bracelets. But not everyone needs a bracelet to hear them. Bulwer-Lytton probably thought the ideas came to him in a dream, or that he just imagined them.’
‘Whereas in fact there was a mental link of some sort, he picked up on the actual Vril transmissions and thoughts,’ Davenport said. ‘H.G. Wells too, perhaps, to a lesser extent. Well, it would also explain why the book caught on. The notion of Vril energy became a very popular one.’
‘I’d never heard of it before,’ Guy said.
‘Oh yes you had,’ Leo told him. ‘You ever had Bovril?’
‘Of course.’
‘That’s where the name came from. The “bo” from bovine, as it’s derived from beef. And the “Vril” was to imply it gives you mysterious energy. If Hoffman here is right, these creatures have been influencing our lives, our evolution, to a greater extent than we ever imagined.’
‘So let’s get out of this hell, and do what we can to stop them,’ Hoffman said. ‘At least, to prevent the Vril hibernating beneath Crete from ever waking up.’
The greatest danger now they were in German uniform was from Russian snipers. They moved cautiously, keeping inside buildings as far as possible. Hoffman had a good idea of where the Russian strongholds were located. Being shot was barely more than an inconvenience to him, so Hoffman tested the open ground they had to cross by going first.
It took them all night to reach the German lines, the sounds and smells of the battle enveloping them and the darkness constantly dispelled by fires and the flashes of explosions. But once they were behind the front line, Hoffman’s uniform got them out of the ruined city. They walked through fields of wounded men lying on the ground, the lucky ones getting some rudimentary attention.
‘They evacuate the ones that have a chance of surviving,’ Hoffman said. ‘If I can get us on an evacuation flight back to Germany then we can arrange transport to Crete.’
‘As simple as that?’ Guy asked.
‘I work directly for Heinrich Himmler,’ Hoffman said. ‘I may have been rather out of touch, but I’m hoping that will still count for something.’
‘How much does Himmler actually know?’ Leo asked. Speaking in English, he kept his voice low. ‘About the Vril, I mean?’
‘Enough. But he’s more interested in how he can exploit their knowledge and technology than in the threat they pose. He doesn’t see that at all. Most of what he knows comes from a Vril craft that crashed near Freiburg in 1936.’
‘The remains we saw in the Vault at Wewelsburg. And the creature,’ Guy said.
‘The creature is dead, but he has others hidden away in another Vault. I didn’t know that then. How much more he has…’ Hoffman shrugged.
‘And the first Ubermensch came from Tibet, I believe,’ Leo said.
Hoffman was surprised. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Standartenfuhrer Streicher mentioned it. He was rather drunk at the time. And to be fair, he wasn’t very specific but it was enough for me to draw my own conclusions.’
‘I never thought I’d say this,’ Guy told them, ‘but whatever the Nazis are up to and whatever threat it poses, it will have to wait for the moment.’
Several hours later, as their plane took off, Guy looked down through a side window. The city below was a wasteland, smoke from the fires and explosions drifting across the rubble. It was hard to believe that he had actually been down there in that hellish place. But if Hoffman was right, unless their plan succeeded the whole world would soon be reduced to the same state.
* * *
The Séance Room was the obvious place to hold an exorcism. Jane was docile and compliant, but she seemed more aware of what was going on now, more herself than she had been a few days ago. Miss Manners spent several minutes explaining to her quietly and carefully what they were planning.
‘And then you should be free of the Vril presence in your mind. You do want to be free of it?’ she asked.
‘I … I don’t know.’ Jane considered. Then: ‘Yes,’ she decided abruptly. ‘I want to be free of it. I want to be able to think again. My mind is just so numb.’
Whatever Sarah had thought she might find when she returned to the Station Z offices, this wasn’t it. Brinkman welcomed her back, listening to her brief account of her time in Moscow, before leading the way through to the Séance Room.
Jane was lying on her back on the circular table. Her bare legs emerged from the loose dress she wore. Her arms were outstretched on either side, the bracelet still clamped tightly in place above her elbow.
‘Don’t you need to be a priest to do this?’ Sarah said as she helped light the candles.
‘Only for a Christian exorcism,’ Miss Manners replied. ‘And there’s nothing very Christian about this. In fact, the words I shall use are taken from one of the texts in Crowley’s library. It’s been handed down since time immemorial.’
‘Will it work?’ Brinkman asked. ‘Do the Vril respond to, what would you call this, magic?’
With the candles lit, Miss Manners ushered Sarah, Brinkman and Green to the side of the room. ‘They do seem to have some affinity with the occult,’ she said. She lowered her voice. ‘And Jane will understand what’s happening. This is as much for her benefit as it is for theirs.’
‘How do you mean?’ Green asked.
‘She’s sharing her mind with them at the moment. I’m hoping that the text is derived from actual rituals and ceremonies established either by the Vril, or by their enemies in ancient times. But whatever the origin, if Jane believes that this process has weakened or expelled their influence, then perhaps her own mind will be better able to reassert itself.’
Sarah nodded. ‘Restoring her self-confidence, I see. And removing the bracelet will also weaken their control, I guess.’
‘If we can remove it,’ Brinkman said. ‘I assume she wore it above the elbow so no one would see it. But the thing’s pretty much welded into her skin. There’s sure to be some … damage.’
‘Can’t be helped,’ Miss Manners said. ‘But you know, I’m not sure she’ll care – or even notice.’
With the lights turned out, the room was lit only by the candles. Sarah and the others were too far away to hear clearly what Miss Manners murmured as she moved round the table. There was a bowl of water on a side table. She dipped her fingers in it, then shook the water over Jane’s supine body, sprinkled it on her face, traced it down the palms of her hands.
Jane’s body tensed, her back arching up off the table and her face contorted in apparent pain, eyes wide open. Her breath came in sharp gasps as Miss Manners continued with the words, standing at her head and staring down into her friend’s eyes.
Finally, Jane gave a cry – a sound that combined pain and sadness and loss. Her teeth clenched together and she began to writhe uncontrollably on the table.
‘Hold her!’ Miss Manners ordered. ‘Hold her arms down.’
The woman’s legs were kicking and thrashing. Brinkman and Green hurried across, each grabbing one of Jane’s arms. Green leaned his weight down on her shoulder, holding her forearm with both hands.
Miss Manners grabbed Jane’s hand, which was clenching and unclenching. She worked at the bracelet on the upper arm, unclasping it and folding it open. As it moved, the orange tendrils connecting the inside of the bracelet to the flesh rippled and pulled, desperately dragging the bracelet shut again.
‘Sarah – help me with this.’
Sarah grabbed one half of the bracelet, working her fingers beneath it. She could feel the thin tentacles squirming round them, imagined them burrowing under her own skin, and felt sick. She swallowed, concentrating on the task of tearing open the bracelet.
Miss Manners had hold of the bracelet on the other side of the central hinge. Like Sarah, she was working it back, prising it slowly open. One of the tendrils snapped. Then another. They curled back in on themselves, retreating into the bracelet at one end, the flesh of the arm at the other.
With all her strength, Sarah ripped the bracelet open. Jane gave an almighty scream, her whole body rising up from the table before sinking back down again as her cry faded away. Skin tore from Jane’s arm where the tendrils struggled to keep hold. An orange wound opened up, like a second visceral bracelet. But already the skin was beginning to reform as the tendrils closed it up again.
Jane’s gasping breaths slowly subsided. Her eyes were closed now, her head lolled to one side. A thin strand of saliva hung from the side of her mouth like a spider’s thread. Slowly, warily, Green and Brinkman let go of her shoulders and arms and stepped back.
‘Is that it?’ Green asked, his voice tight with nervous energy.
‘I don’t know,’ Miss Manners admitted.
‘She seems to be asleep,’ Sarah said.
‘I’ll stay with her,’ Miss Manners told them. ‘We’ll see how she is when she wakes.’
* * *
The dreams were vivid and terrible. A confused jumble of nightmare images, part memory, part vision. It was like when she saw through the eyes of the cat – gazing out through eyes that were not her own. Some of the things she saw had already happened; some were visions of things that were yet to come. Plans and aspirations, intentions and strategy.
She had only the vaguest memory of how she had become like this. Her skin crawled and tightened as she recalled something moving up her naked body. A stab of pain. The bracelet heavy on her arm. But the details were an unfocused blur.
More clearly, she could see a field of rough grass sloping down towards the sea. Rocky outcrops piercing the vegetation, the grass becoming thinner and disappearing as an area of stone thrust up through it. A shelf of rock scattered with patches of shadow. Beyond and to the side of this there were buildings, a utilitarian industrial landscape juxtaposed with the natural one. Huge storage tanks dwarfed wooden huts, metal pipes snaking away out of sight.
Then the rock seemed to come to life. The dark shadows were moving. Creatures hauled themselves up out of the holes in the rock. Long gnarled limbs reached up, searching for purchase before levering bulbous dark bodies out of the blackness. The huge bloated creatures scuttled across the rock, into the field, more and more of them – almost liquid in their density, a viscous wave of grotesque spiders spilling out of the ground and staining the fields black.
* * *
‘I dreamed terrible things,’ she asked weakly. ‘What do they mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ Miss Manners sighed. ‘Some of it is probably your memory of what Crowley did to you. The rest…’ She handed Jane a glass of water. ‘How do you feel? Are you … yourself?’
‘My head is clearer. But there’s still something, at the back of my mind. Like when you can’t quite remember something that you ought to know well. A shadow across my memories and thoughts.’
‘Hopefully it will clear.’
‘Am I free of them?’
‘Perhaps. But your body has obviously undergone quite a change. Mrs Archer might have some ideas, but I can’t tell you anything much you don’t know yourself. Your dreams suggest you’re still linked to the Vril. If you can resist their influence, that might help us.’
‘You think I can see what they are doing, or intending?’
‘You have a gift,’ Miss Manners said. ‘If we can focus that, see what the Vril are doing just as you saw what the cat saw in Los Angeles, then perhaps.’
‘It may be too late,’ Jane said. ‘I can’t explain exactly what I saw. But I do know it was the end of the world.’
Miss Manner sat down beside her. ‘Then you’d better tell me what you saw. Every detail.’
* * *
‘It does sound like the place we found in Crete,’ Brinkman agreed.
‘And either the hatchway you saw has been opened, or the Vril intend to open it.’
‘Releasing thousands of the buggers,’ Green added. ‘Millions.’
‘That would tie in with the stories about opening the gates of hell and awakening vengeful gods, or whatever it was,’ Sarah said. ‘But how do we stop it – assuming this is a prophecy and it hasn’t happened already?’
Brinkman’s phone rang, and he gestured for Miss Manners to answer it. ‘Unless it’s urgent, I’m not here.’
She lifted the receiver. ‘Colonel Brinkman’s phone, Miss Manners speaking.’ She listened for a moment, then covered the receiver his her hand. ‘Wiles,’ she said quietly. ‘I think you’d better speak to him.’
‘So I’m a message service now am I?’ Wiles said as soon as Brinkman took the phone. ‘Not like I’ve anything else to do, now, is it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Brinkman told him, ‘but I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m talking about a message picked up by several of the Y Stations, that’s what.’
‘What of it?’ Brinkman asked, nonplussed.
‘Well, I can’t think why it was passed straight to me, but let me read it to you. This was received at nine-seventeen GMT today. And it reads: “FAO”, that means “For Attention Of”, by the way.’
‘Yes, thank you, I did know that.’
‘Well, that’s a start. Anyway, it says: “FAO Dr Wiles.” That’s me, by the way. “Tell Ollie”, and I assume that is you, “Tell Ollie we are off to meet his shepherd friend most urgently. All help appreciated. Guy and Leo.” And for the record I have no idea who this shepherd is.’
‘It’s all right,’ Brinkman told him. ‘I know who he is.’
‘Oh? A codename is it?’
‘No, he’s a shepherd.’
‘Well that’s clear as mud then,’ Wiles said. ‘I’ve sent a copy down to you by motorcycle, as Eleanor assures me that’s the quickest way. There’s a bit more, but it’s just dates and times which may make more sense to you than to me. But the whole thing is so cryptic I assumed it must be urgent.’
‘It is,’ Brinkman agreed. ‘Thank you. You may not appreciate it, but if you get any more messages like this, please do pass them on as soon as you can.’
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ Wiles said. ‘I’m just a bit miffed that it sounds like some people are having more fun than I am.’
‘So what was that about, sir?’ Green asked as Brinkman hung up.
‘I think we were right: what Jane saw is related to our excursion to Crete. That, by a rather roundabout route, was a message from Mr Davenport and Major Pentecross.’
‘Really?’ Sarah’s excitement was obvious. ‘Did they get to Stalingrad? Where are they now?’
‘I’m afraid I have no idea,’ Brinkman told her. ‘But I know where they’re going.’