The Romulus Equation (23 page)

‘Seeing as you love this place so much, why don't you get comfy,' he said to Sirona, wrapping the chains around the wheelchair and through the bars of the cell. ‘This close to hell, at least you won't have a long trip!'

Destine strode over and faced Elizabeth Quaint. ‘Shame on you, for the pain you have caused Cornelius!' She slapped the old woman across the face, feeling immensely pleased with herself.

Prometheus pulled her away and gathered her into his embrace. The fortune-teller wept, burying her head into his broad chest. ‘He'll bounce back, you know,' he told her. ‘This is Cornelius flipping Quaint we're talking about. He's made it through worse.'

‘I pray that you are right, Aiden,' Destine said, smearing her tears on the strongman's lapel. ‘As close to Cornelius's heart as I am, I felt only a fraction of the pain within it… and I honestly do not know if he will ever recover.'

Viktor tapped Prometheus on the shoulder. ‘Not to intrude, but might I remind you of the order of business? Volcano, imminent eruption, us getting out of here,
ja
?'

‘Sounds good to me,' beamed Prometheus. ‘Sorry, but who are you again?'

‘My name is Viktor. Viktor Dzierzanowski. As in Zee-Er-Zan-Offski.'

Prometheus sized him up and down. ‘So how did you get mixed up in all this?'

‘I am an old friend of Cornelius,' replied Viktor.

‘Oh,' nodded Prometheus. ‘That explains everything.'

Pushing all that he had learned to the back of his mind, Quaint supplanted it with something more pressing: namely, his escape. Whatever the reasons motivating his mother's deception, he needed to face them on altogether more stable ground. But his thoughts rebelled against it, forcing him to confront them. He was a grown man, he told himself, and he could accept the truth. After all, he had been pursuing it all his life. Now that he had come upon it, he could not ignore it. But as much of a grown man as he was, he was something more besides. He was a son that had lost his mother, only to find her again, only to wish that he had not. And he was a father. That was a strange feeling in itself. Constance. The name echoed in his head. He began to picture what she might look like but then – ‘
No
!' he roared. He couldn't stop to think about any of that now. First he had to pull off another miracle and get out of this place, and only once he was safe could he afford to even think about what he was going to do with the knowledge that he had acquired.

As he skidded down the steep tunnel from the Consortium's prison, he realised that it was not just his rapid descent that was making him sweat. The heat had increased tremendously, and the stench of sulphur was scorching his lungs. He dearly wished to catch his breath, but he could feel the tunnel walls shaking and that meant only one thing. Trouble was brewing, and as he retraced his steps back towards the bubbling sea of lava, it felt as if he was running into hell itself. Despite being in a daze at the time, he recalled Viktor's explanation of how he had survived the volcano's blast earlier, and although Quaint was none too keen to experience it for himself, he prayed that the chain attached to the structure at the top of the pit was still there. He would have to be quick about it, though, because the volcano was building up to something far bigger than the minor eruptions felt so far.

At the end of the tunnel, eventually the exit became clear – that is to say, it was anything but. Several large boulders had fallen from above, blocking the way through completely.

‘Oh, this is just marvellous,' groaned Quaint, leaning against the tunnel's wall. He leapt immediately away from it with an undignified yelp. He licked his fingertip and touched it gingerly to the wall. It hissed like a lit match in a bucket of water. ‘This place is like an oven… and if I'm not careful, I'm going to be Sunday roast!'

He looked at the rocks blocking his exit. There was no other way. He had to try to shift them, even if only enough for him to squeeze himself through. He was thankful that his dislocated shoulder had been healed by the old witch claiming to be his mother. He wasn't going to knock it, as right at that moment he was relying on it. It happened to be the only thing in his favour. Tearing off his waistcoat, Quaint tore ripped it in half, wrapping the material around each of his hands. He grabbed the rock and slowly – all too slowly – he felt it budge. With his brow glistening with perspiration and his torn shirt sodden against his back, the conjuror lifted the rock and threw it aside.

A few precious minutes later, Quaint had finally cleared enough of a gap in the rocks for him to squeeze (albeit painfully) through. The sight that greeted him on the other side, however, did not fill him with joy.

The lava was rising quicker that he had expected, bubbling and boiling, spitting fire into the air, and the higher it rose the more that it consumed, clinging to the mouth of the cave. Quaint leaned out as far as he dared, looking up into thick black smoke. He was in luck (which did fill him with joy, as it was such a rare occurrence). The chain was still there, attached to the structure at the top of the pit. But could he reach it, that was the question. He had jumped down originally from quite a distance further than Viktor – but this leaping up was not as easy as falling down. The jump was at least twelve feet.

Moving the rocks into position on top of each other to create a causeway, Quaint was that much closer to the swaying chain. He smiled, congratulating himself, as he tensed his leg muscles and threw himself towards the chain, praying that he had timed his jump correctly.

He never got the chance to find out, as he felt something grasp his ankles, yanking him back down onto the rough rocks. Quaint's chest slammed down on the sharp edges and the air emptied from his lungs. He felt himself being dragged backwards, back into the tunnel…

‘What the devil—?' he asked aloud.

Devil was right, he realised, as his vision cleared.

‘Leaving so soon, Cornelius?' asked Antoine Renard, towering over the conjuror's body. ‘You are a guest of the Hades Consortium, and it is most impolite not to say goodbye.'

‘Goodbye,' Quaint said, lashing out with his heel into Renard's face. ‘This is starting to get getting dull, Antoine. You and I fight, I win… you die… and then you come back to life. Well, I've had enough of ghosts to last me a lifetime. This time you and I finish this properly.'

‘You took the words right out of my mouth,' said Renard.

His metal fist hand struck Quaint in the ribs and the conjuror slumped against the tunnel wall. His sweat spat back at him like acid, and wisps of smoke trailed from his soaking wet shirt. The walls were almost glowing; their heat so intense. Quaint galvaniszed his strength. Fighting Renard was one thing, but fighting him in the middle of a boiling hot oven was something else entirely. Feigning weakness as Renard closed in for the kill, the conjuror smashed the back of his head into the Frenchman's face. Blood sprayed from Renard's lip – but he was a distance away from finished yet and time was running out. Quaint looked at the cave mouth. The magma lava was rising quickly, seeping up over the ledge. In but a few moments it would burst the bank of rocks and flow into the tunnel.

‘Let's make this quick,' said Quaint, charging into Renard, lifting him off his feet, slamming him into the wall.

Renard screamed as the boiling rocks scorched the flesh from his back. Quaint pummelled at him with his fists, again and again, allowing every measurable ounce of his hatred to empower him. He had allowed the Frenchman to slip through death's grasp before, and this time he was determined to see his final end.

Renard, of course, had other ideas.

With his iron metal hand, he caught Quaint a glancing blow to head and the conjuror stumbled back in a daze, his legs like jelly. Renard was on him again, relentlessly, throwing punch after punch and Quaint could do nothing to avoid them and crashed onto his back. Renard lunged on top of him, pushing his elbow against Quaint's throat.

‘All this would be a lot easier if you would just submit, Cornelius,' snarled Renard to his pinioned foe.

‘To you?' gasped Quaint, trying to wrench himself free. ‘Go to hell.'

‘No need,' said Renard, nodding towards the river of molten magma lava seeping into the tunnel. ‘Hell has come to me, it seems… and this time you're coming with me.'

‘Not whilst I still draw breath,' growled Quaint.

Two seconds of breath, he thought. Two seconds of life. Two seconds to perform a miracle. With a burst of strength that came from nowhere, Quaint threw Renard off him, and scrabbled to his feet. Feeling the hairs on the back of his neck twitch, Quaint side-stepped just in time as Renard's iron metal fist hand almost took his head off. Missing his target, the Frenchman span out of control and the brittle outer shell of the tunnel wall shattered as his punch made contact with it. The conjuror took full advantage, hammering punches into Renard's ribs, and with his fisted metal hand embedded in the wall, there was nothing he could do to defend himself. He screamed as he wrenched at his metal hand – finding that it would not budge. The metal had fused to the boiling hot rocks upon impact.

‘Help me, Cornelius! I cannot get free!'

Quaint allowed himself a pleasing smile. ‘Oh, really? What a shame.'

‘Damn you! Are you just going to leave me here to rot?'

‘No, I'm going to leave you here to burn.,' Quaint grinned. ‘And I hope you'll have the decency to die properly this time.'

Renard spat at him. ‘
Au revoir
, Cornelius.'

‘Don't say
au revoir
, Antoine,' said Quaint. ‘Say goodbye.'

Cornelius Quaint knew that his time was running out, which was never ideal when his life was hanging by a thread. He crawled back through the gap in the fallen rocks, but by this time the lava was flowing freely above the lip of the tunnel. He would be a cinder were it not for the rocks giving him safe haven. Renard had kept him busy too long. As he leapt from one boulder to the next, the heat spat and bit at the soles of his boots.

He stared up at the chain and muttered a silent prayer before launching himself into the air. There would be nothing, no one, to delay him this time. As his hands made contact he was rather glad that he'd had the forethought to bind the material around his hands as the chain was a great deal hotter than before. As he wrapped his thighs around it he felt the metal scorch his skin. This only fuelled his climb, pushing him on, higher and higher up the chain. It swayed around violently the faster that he climbed, but he had no choice.

The monster below him roared angrily and spat fire that sprayed all around the walls of the pit. This was going to be close. Through the acrid smoke, Quaint's eyes wept constantly, but even half-blind still he kept on climbing, feeling the boiling hot chain burning his hands, his thighs, any part of his body that touched it.

He made it to the top of the structure without getting burnt burned to a crisp and flopped down onto the wood, catching his breath. Rolling onto his stomach he looked down into the churning volcano below, keen to see how close to death he had been. He couldn't see much through the smoke, just the ever-rising lava that clung to the walls of the pit. The volcano growled, irate that he had slipped through its fingers. But he had. He had done it again, survived against the odds. He had to get up, had to get keep moving, had to get out of the Hive before the volcano claimed it. But his body was too numb to move. It had taken such punishment these past few days that Quaint could hardly blame it – the problem was that this was the moment when he needed it the most.

‘Get to your feet, damn you!' he ordered himself. ‘You're almost there. All you have to do is get up.' He tried, but his legs were like jelly, his muscles as weak as a baby's, his bones as fragile as glass. Again and again he tried to move, blackmailing his limbs. ‘If you just do this one last thing for me, I swear I'll go back home and sit in a bath for a month. No more poking my nose in where it's not wanted, no more death-defying adventures, no more tricky escapes… and definitely no more chasing ghosts halfway around the world. So what do you say? Have we got a deal?'

Gradually his legs found solidity, his muscles strength and his bones rigidity. He got shakily onto his knees, peering over the edge of the structure and into the agitated volcano. He scowled, seeing movement below him. It was probably just the rocks shifting at the bottom of the pit, swept up in the river of rising lava. Or at least, that was his best guess. But then something else caught his eye.

The chain attached to the structure was moving.

‘Oh, this is ridiculous,' groaned Quaint, as Renard's scarred face came into view through the smoke – looking a bit more worse for wear than before – not unlike the rest of the Frenchman. Most of his hair was gone, burned down to the scalp. His metal hand was now just a bloodied stump, and the arm attached to it was scorched almost down to the bone.

‘Did you think I'd just let you walk away?' he said, his voice choked by the smoke. ‘We were just getting warmed up… so to speak.'

Quaint tensed, ready to lash out – but Renard was faster. His hand darted towards the conjuror and snatched hold of his wrist. Quaint tried to twist it from Renard's grip, just as he felt an incredible sense of weightlessness. A column of smoke blasted into his eyes, down his throat. His cheeks were taut to his skull, his stomach turned over itself and an onrushing breeze smacked him in the face and he felt his teeth jangle in his gums. Quaint frowned, wondering why he was experiencing all the tell-tale signs of being in flight.

… Until he realised that he wasn't flying.

He was falling.

Down.

Down into the pit.

Dragged to his death by the devil himself…

‘Interesting,' Quaint said. ‘Of all the ways that I thought I'd go… this is new.'