Secret Location
Central London
As the Dark King replayed the events of the last hours in his mind, an icy look formed in his eyes. The encounter with Blake and the woman had caught him off guard. Blake had made a grave mistake tracking him down and he would pay dearly for it. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of the axe-wielding woman and her dog, along with the shrill sound of the fire alarm alerting the emergency services, he would have killed Blake there and then. The woman was dangerous; she possessed real power; but no matter, soon they would meet the same fate as their friend Carla Sabatini.
The Dark King examined Wren’s letter under the magnifying lens. His face sharpened in concentration as his eyes ran over the sheet. Though the edges of the paper were badly charred, most of the handwriting was still readable, the water from the sprinklers having quickly extinguished the candle flame. He scrutinised the letter in silence, letting the words permeate his mind. He then held it up to the desk light and turned it over.
To his astonishment, something else was visible: a ghost of an image coming through on the back. He examined the back of the letter with an unblinking intensity. Slowly the significance of what he was seeing registered in his eyes. It was a map.
The letter had been exposed to the heat from the candle flame long enough to ‘heat fix’ the transparent ink that had been written on its reverse side. At the elevated temperature, the organic acids within the ink had started to oxidise and gain colour, and the map that had lain hidden for over three hundred years had become visible again.
‘The location of the Logos Stone,’ he gasped. The pupils of his eyes darted around the distinctive features of the map. ‘Of course,’ he breathed, looking down at the newly revealed architectural plan. He twisted his head towards the raven, his face contorting in triumph, ‘and with the Logos Stone, the light of God will be extinguished forever.’