one he’d just dived into. He was inside an underwater cave, a craggy ceiling of wet stone just a few inches above his head. By his reckoning, he must be right beneath the church. At one time there might have been room in here for a man to clamber almost clear of the water, but with the progressive sinking of the city there was only enough space for his head and shoulders.
Something was sticking out of a crack in the cave wall. An old bit of sacking, rotted with age. Bracing his legs for support, he reached out and grasped it, and found that the decayed cloth was wrapped around something hard and cold that had been wedged into the crumbling foundations. He gave it a tug and a wiggle, and it came out with a shower of stones. With his heart in his mouth he tore the layers of sacking away.
He let out a whoop when the gleaming Celtic cross fell into his hand.
It was about fifteen inches long, with rune-like markings and strange designs sculpted into the outer ring that connected the crosspiece to the shaft. It was made of some type of stone that he’d never seen before — quartz- like, denser than granite, creamy white in colour with flecks of black and vivid green. He clutched it to his chest and closed his eyes. He’d found it.
He couldn’t wait to show Alex. He stuck the precious relic in his belt, took a deep breath of the cave’s stale air, and swam his way back out of the cave. Seconds later he broke the surface and clambered up onto dry land, too excited to feel the numbing cold.
‘Alex! Look!’
No reply. She was nowhere to be seen. Glancing around, he saw that she’d unzipped her backpack while he’d been underwater. It lay empty on the pavement near the water’s edge, and beside it was the mysterious object she’d been toting around with her. He crouched down to examine it. An oblong steel case, the kind photographers used to protect their fragile equipment. The latches were undone and the lid was open, showing the foam padding inside. As well as something unusual. The case was thickly lined with a dark material that he realised with bemusement was lead.
That explained the weight of the thing. But why had she brought this with her?
‘Alex?’ he called again.
‘I’m here,’ she replied. She was twenty yards away, hanging warily back behind another pillar.
‘What’re you doing hiding behind there?’ he asked, puzzled. His extremities were beginning to tremble with cold now. ‘I found the cross, Alex. I found it!’
‘Put it in the case,’ she called over to him. Her voice sounded terribly weak, as if she was having to make an extreme effort to push the words out.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘I’m not well, Joel. Put the cross in the case, okay? It’s radioactive,’ she added desperately in a rasping croak. ‘I was going to tell you. It’s not safe to handle.’
He frowned. ‘Why the hell would it be radioactive? It’s only a bit of old stone.’ He took a step towards her, waving the cross in the air. ‘Look.’
‘Don’t come near me!’ she screamed. The exertion caused her to collapse to her knees, clutching her sides with a moan. Under the glow of a streetlamp, he could see from the pallor of her face and the dark rings that had suddenly appeared around her eyes that there really was something terribly, shockingly wrong with her.
He was about to say something when the wind was knocked out of him by a heavy impact that came out of nowhere. It sent him tumbling to the ground, still clutching the cross. He twisted up to see a big guy in a black bomber jacket and beanie hat moving in to stamp on his ribs. Joel rolled out of the way of the kick, but suddenly another man came running out of the shadows and booted him in the stomach. Joel doubled up in pain. He lashed out with the cross, felt it connect with bone, and heard a yell of pain. He staggered to his feet, only to be sent crashing back down on the hard ground by a punch to the face.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Joel’s attackers circled him. Four of them, all dressed in similar black clothes and wearing the cold, impassive expressions of hired thugs. The one who’d kicked him held something in his hand. Even before the long tongue of steel flicked out, Joel knew it was a switchblade. And something told him this was no ordinary mugging.
‘You’re coming with us,’ one of them said. ‘Someone wants to talk to you.’
‘Think again. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Fine. Then we’ll do it the hard way,’ the guy said. The circle closed in towards Joel. Four to one.
‘Put it in the case!’ Alex screamed from behind the column. Her voice broke up into a racking cough.
Joel ignored her. He swung the cross at his attackers. It was all he had to defend himself with, and he wasn’t about to toss it away.
But the four guys weren’t that easily put off. They all rushed him at once. He clubbed one of them, aiming for the side of the head, but the blow was deflected. One grabbed his wrist, another caught him with a hard punch to the jaw. Stars exploded in his eyes. He felt the cross fly from his hand. It turned a somersault in mid-air and landed in the steel case. The force of its landing caused the lid to slam shut.
By then Joel was down on the ground and curled up in a ball to protect himself from the kicks and punches raining down on him. He was too preoccupied with trying to escape being beaten to death to notice Alex get to her feet in the background. The pallor in her face had vanished abruptly and the sharpness in her eye was back as she came striding fast towards Joel’s attackers. Two broke away from the fight when they saw her coming, leaving their friends to take care of Joel while they dealt with this crazy woman who seemed to think she could take them on. They had their orders, in any case. She wasn’t supposed to leave here alive.
‘Leave him alone,’ she said as she walked up to them. ‘One warning is all you get. Then you die.’
One of the men laughed. ‘Listen to her. She’s fucking nuts.’ His friend reached inside his jacket and his hand came out with a.45 automatic.
The first man stopped laughing. ‘Thought we were meant to use the 9-mils they gave us.’
‘Fuck that,’ said the guy with the gun. ‘What for? You know me. I’m a big-bore kind of guy.’ He aimed the pistol at Alex and squeezed the trigger…Twice, three times, four times. The heavy-calibre slugs took Alex in the chest and she went straight down on her back and lay still. The sound of the gunshots reverberated across the canal.
‘There. Who needs poxy 9-mils anyway?’ the guy said, putting away his smoking pistol.
Joel’s cry of rage when he saw Alex go down was cut short by another kick to his stomach. In his fury he grabbed his attacker’s leg and sent the guy tumbling backwards. He leapt to his feet in horror.
Just in time to see Alex get up again.
Faster than the eye could follow, her hand shot out and her fist closed on the wrist of the guy who’d shot her. One wrench, and his arm was broken. Compound fracture, the bone jutting out of the ripped flesh and tearing through his jacket sleeve.
Another wrench, and she’d ripped his arm away completely at the shoulder, like a large joint of meat in her fist. His empty sleeve dangled at his side as his knees buckled and he collapsed in instant shock.
Alex swung the severed arm like a club at the one who’d laughed. The wet end caught him in the side of the head with a showering spatter of blood and battered him to the ground. She stepped over to him and drove her heel through his face, before turning back to his friend, who was gibbering and shaking violently in a pool of his own blood. Alex bent calmly over him, seized his head between her hands and twisted it until there was a splintering crack like a branch snapping. Straightening up, she shunted the body into the canal with her foot. Where the four shots had punched through her coat, the edges of the bullet holes were still smoking.
Joel saw it all, but the remaining two thugs had their backs to Alex and were too intent on him to have noticed anything. She walked swiftly up behind them and, before they had time to react, she reached out her arms, jerked them off their feet and cracked their heads together with bone-shattering power. They hit the ground, dead.
And there was silence. Carnage littered the canal-side. The pools of blood quickly spread to the edge and began trickling into the water.
