Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy (15 page)

“Maybe I’m just giving myself the creeps, but something definitely feels wrong down here.” Chris looked down at the rubble. “Couldn’t you just smash your way through to wherever the gateway is?”

“I could. But I would probably complete Wyndham’s mission for him by burying myself in rubble. He has moved these walls around so comprehensively that I would have to destroy half the labyrinth before finding the chamber I need, if indeed anything remains of it – we saw the walls close in on one chamber until it disappeared completely.”

Will stepped back through, saw his sabre where it had fallen on the floor and picked it up. Idly, he inscribed shapes in the dusty floor.

“If there’s a gateway, and if that gateway leads where I hope it does, I must find another way to access it.”

Chris put his hand on the wall nearest him as if to test how solid it was, and said, “But you said yourself, you can’t get back to where it was.”

Will smiled. “This gateway is not, as far as I can tell, a physical thing – it is something else entirely. If it is tied to a physical place, then you’re right, we have no choice but to find a way back through the labyrinth.”

Will hadn’t given up on the labyrinth yet, but he doubted Wyndham would have left anything to chance given the enormous forces he had deployed in moving these walls. But he would explore further once he was on his own again.

He was still treating Chris and Rachel with caution, but Chris confused him even further by suddenly
becoming enthusiastic as he said, “We could go in from above! The ley lines come together here, so maybe that’s over the gateway you’re talking about. All we have to do is find the central point of that triangle, which has to be in the abbey ruins somewhere, then we dig down and find the chamber you were looking for.”

Will was impressed in some way, not by the optimistic leaps and assumptions, but by Chris’s enthusiasm, by his determination to find a solution to a problem that was not really his. But if Will had learned one thing over the centuries, it was patience.

“It’s worthy of consideration, but digging up the grounds of an ancient monument might bring more attention than we would want.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

Nevertheless, Will smiled and said, “We’ll think of something. But we should go back to the others.”

They made their way back to the library and this time Will closed the wall at the top of the steps. Rachel looked up when they came in, but her expression suggested she was at a loss as to what to do. Eloise still sat staring blankly in front of her.

“I think we should get her to a doctor.”

Chris said, “I don’t see how that will help. There doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with her.”

Rachel looked into Eloise’s eyes, then back to Chris
and Will. “No, but she’s traumatised in some way, beyond anything we can do for her.”

“Traumatised by something that’s also beyond the knowledge of the medical profession.”

“Chris, she’s a young girl, with a family who need to know what’s happened to her.”

“She has no family,” said Will. “Only me.”

He’d said it before he realised what he was saying, but Rachel didn’t question his words and merely said, “Then what do you think we should do?”

“She needs to be kept safe, and she needs to rest. If rest doesn’t bring her back to herself, then you may be right, but I fear if she doesn’t come back to us of her own accord, no doctor will be of help.”

“OK, we’ll take her back to our place for now.” Will was about to object, but Rachel said, “Where else can she go?”

He had thought to take her back to his chambers beneath the church, but it made sense now that he thought of it; she would be better with them, in the warmth, somewhere that she would be less likely to be haunted by whatever it was she had seen.

“You must promise me that one of you will stay with her at all times.”

“Of course,” said Chris.

Rachel said, “What about the school – we don’t
want them thinking she’s gone missing again.”

Will thought back to his wanderings around the school in the hours he’d spent waiting for Eloise to appear. Several times he’d stared in at the headmaster working in his study, long after his secretary had left, usually while the rest of the school was at dinner. It would be easy, Will thought, to speak to the headmaster without being seen by anyone else, to plant in his thoughts some memory of Eloise visiting family.

“I’ll deal with the school. And I will come to you tomorrow evening.”

“We can pick you up.”

“No, you stay with Eloise.” As an afterthought, he said, “But how will you do that? You have your establishment to run.”

Chris looked about to speak, but Rachel said, with no room for argument, “No, the café stays closed tomorrow.”

It was decided. Will carried Eloise to their car and watched as they drove away towards the city with her. She had to get better, there was no other possibility. She had to get better because without her he was defeated, in every way.

W
ill spent the rest of the night and all of the daylight hours in the tunnels. There was peace and calm down there now, no sense of the tectonic shifts that had taken place earlier, no sense of brooding disquiet. He wondered if the change in atmosphere had come about because these tunnels no longer led to the gateway he’d sought.

That seemed likely. On his own he was able to rebuild an image in his mind of how the labyrinth had been rearranged, and within the first hour, he could tell that there was no longer any way of even getting close to the site of the circular chamber.

It didn’t stop him looking, or calculating how many walls he might have to knock through to reach a gateway that could have been demolished anyway. He didn’t see how it could be done, particularly when Wyndham probably had it within his power to set the walls moving all over again.

Just before darkness fell the following afternoon,
he spent a little time in the one tunnel he’d otherwise avoided, where Eloise had been trapped. It puzzled him and made him angry again, wondering what had happened to her in there. He’d come close to admiring Wyndham, this unseen adversary, but he was determined now of one thing – he would destroy the sorcerer, or be destroyed in the process.

He didn’t linger once he’d left the tunnels, but headed directly to the school. Instead of approaching in the normal way, for his prime spot in front of the Dangrave common room, he walked round the back of the building and cut along in its own shadows until he was able to look from a small shrubbery into the headmaster’s study.

He was sitting there now, a slim, sporty man in his forties. On a shelf on the far wall there were some trophies, which Will imagined were his, some for running, others for tennis. His hair was receding, but it was cut short enough so as not to make too much difference. He had a clipped military bearing somehow, a look that seemed out of place with what Eloise had told Will about the school.

A secretary came into the office, but even without Will being able to hear the brief conversation, it was clear she was saying goodnight, that her working day was over. The headmaster smiled and went back to his paperwork.

Over the next ten minutes the headmaster didn’t stir and nor did Will. He heard a few cars driving away from the other side of the property, could smell food and hear the general good-humoured clatter of the school having dinner.

Will made his way inside then, through a door nearby which allowed the headmaster access to his own private shrubbery garden. He walked past the two darkened administrative offices, into the small hallway where visitors and students were kept waiting.

He looked at the nameplate on the door: Dr Paul Higson.

Will knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a response. The headmaster looked up as if annoyed that someone should come in without being summoned first, but he saw Will and smiled awkwardly.

“Just a moment, please – I’ll just finish reading this paragraph.”

“Of course,” said Will. He closed the door behind him and walked across to stand in front of the desk.

The headmaster pored intently over the document in front of him, a pen poised in his hand. It would be quick, Will imagined – hypnotise him as soon as he looked up from his paperwork, fill his head with thoughts of Eloise going to visit a sick relative, remind him that he’d forgotten to inform the other staff members. If it didn’t
work perfectly, it would work well enough to make Eloise’s new absence less problematic.

The headmaster put his pen down and said, “Just a second and I’m with you.” He was still looking closely at the document, and for the first time, Will became suspicious. It seemed odd that anyone in the headmaster’s position would so resolutely fail to make eye contact with a visitor, a stranger at that, someone who was not a student of the school, but appeared to be of that age.

Higson reached into the drawer at the side of his desk, saying, “Just staple these together and I’m done.”

Will glanced at the stapler sitting on the desk next to Higson’s telephone, but it was too late. Higson pulled a small but powerful torch from the drawer. He pushed himself backwards at the same time as he turned on the torch and directed its beam straight at Will’s eyes.

He said, “Stay back, get away from me!”

The pain was immediate and dazzling, ripping through Will’s eyes with a power that felt as if it might tear his skull apart. He was as stunned by his own stupidity as much as by the torch beam – obviously Wyndham had a connection with the school, obviously he’d had more than one person there working for him, so why hadn’t it occurred to Will that the headmaster himself might be in league with the sorcerer?

He was furious too, because this man was supposed to be concerned with Eloise’s welfare, but was actually part of a vicious plan to harm her. Higson was as guilty as Wyndham for the state Eloise was in now, perhaps more so given his duty of care.

The fury seethed up inside Will until he could no longer feel the pain, and though he couldn’t see, his other senses told him exactly where Higson was. Will threw the desk to one side and lunged forward. He grabbed Higson by the shirt and tie and threw him up against the wall with so much force that a painting fell to the floor nearby.

Higson let out a cry of alarm and tried to redirect the torch beam into Will’s eyes. Will grabbed his hand and crushed it instantly around the torch. The torch dropped to the floor and Will stood on it, smashing it.

Will’s vision was coming back to him now and he looked up into Higson’s face. Higson was kicking and flailing at Will, becoming more fearful with the growing realisation that his strength was inadequate. All Higson could do was avoid Will’s gaze and he did this by turning his head frantically to the side, exposing his neck.

Will looked at the vein throbbing above Higson’s collar, but he was too angry even to think about blood for the moment. Instead he lowered Higson to the floor while keeping him pinned to the wall, and now that they
were on the same level, he grabbed Higson’s face with his free hand and turned it forcibly to face him.

Higson closed his eyes and was whimpering now, all his military bearing gone, to the extent that Will no longer believed he had ever been a soldier.

“Open your eyes and look at me.”

“Never.”

“Then I’ll rip off your eyelids.”

“Please, don’t, I …”

“I have no intention of hypnotising you. But I tell you again, I will rip off your eyelids unless you open them. Wyndham has surely told you that I come from an age when such a torture would have been considered rather mundane.”

“I …”

“Open them!”

Higson opened his eyes, blinked them shut again, twice, and finally opened them properly, revealing them to be full of tears and terror.

“I was going to hypnotise you, but not now. Not now that I know you work for Wyndham.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“Eloise is in your care, yet you have allowed Wyndham to conspire to do her harm – you consider that nothing? You allow him to fill the school with his spies – you consider that nothing?”

“But I haven’t, please believe me. Marcus Jenkins, he’s the only … what I mean is, he’s the only connection with Wyndham. I haven’t conspired, I swear it.”

“Then your oath is worthless. You avoided eye contact, you used light to attack me, things you would not know if you were not in Wyndham’s trust. Reverend Fairburn was the same before you and he, let me remind you, is dead. So ask yourself where your fear should lie, with Wyndham, or with me?”

Higson winced with pain, and looked panicked and distraught as he said, “I think my hand’s broken.”

“Three fingers and the knuckle of your middle finger, not even a hint of the pain and injury I could inflict upon you.” The pain behind Will’s own eyes had almost subsided now, and he said, “Eloise has gone away for a day or two. You’ll tell staff that you knew about it, that she’s gone to visit a sick relative. You won’t question her when she returns, nor will you speak to her.”

Higson nodded, eager to comply.

“I had planned to make you follow these instructions by hypnotising you, but I want you to be conscious of what I’ve told you because I want you to understand something else. If any harm comes to Eloise, whether you are directly responsible or not, neither Wyndham nor anyone else will be able to protect you – mark this, I
will look upon it as a point of honour that her suffering is returned to you tenfold.”

“I understand.”

Will let him go and stepped away from him. Higson immediately clutched his injured hand, tentatively daring to look at the extent of the injuries. Will looked at the desk, solid and imposing, and casually pulled it upright again, leaving the debris lying on the floor.

He crossed the room to the door, but stopped and looked around briefly, then said, “My family built this house.”

Despite his wounded hand and his earlier terror, Higson produced an unconvincing expression of defiance as he said, “You’re a vampire – you don’t have a family.”

Will smiled. “I stand corrected. My brother’s family built this house.”