The smell of burning.
That was what had triggered his power. He had smelled burning when he was sinking into the bog. The same smell had been there in the detention centre when he broke the jug. And even before that… long before that. Now he remembered. His mother had burnt the toast on the morning of the accident that had killed her. Somehow that tiny incident had become the trigger. He had smelled burnt toast the moment before the security guard had appeared in the warehouse. He had known what was about to happen.
He stopped trying to influence the knife. He stopped trying to turn something on inside himself. Instead he thought back to six years ago. He was eight years old again, sitting in a kitchen in a south London suburb. For just a second, a single frame in a film, he saw the yellow painted walls. There was the kitchen cupboard. The teapot shaped like a teddy bear.
And his mother.
“Come on, Matthew. We’re going to be late.”
He heard her voice and smelled it once again. The toast burning…
Inside the nuclear reactor the whispering had stopped. The great stones of Raven’s Gate had returned. They stood, almost touching the dome of the power station. Their worn, flinty surface – thousands of years old – the metal plates, the pipes and machinery that surrounded them. Sir Michael Marsh raised the knife. His fists, clutching the hilt, tightened.
“No!” Richard shouted.
The knife plunged down.
It had less than an arm’s length to travel. It would slice easily into the boy’s heart. The tip reached Matt’s shirt and it pricked his skin. But that was as far as it went. It stopped, as if caught by an invisible wire. Sir Michael uttered a strange, strangled moan, pulling down with all his might. He stared at Matt, knowing that the boy’s power had finally awoken, and with that knowledge came the first whispers of fear and defeat.
“No…” he muttered in a broken voice. “You can’t! Not now! You can’t stop me now!”
Matt looked at the knife and knew that he was in total control.
Sir Michael screamed. The blade was glowing molten red. The hilt was burning the palm of his hand. His skin crackled and smoke rose, but he couldn’t drop it. With a last effort he managed to bring his arms down and the knife tumbled uselessly to the floor. Whimpering, he spat on his wounded hands. At the same time the straps that had been holding Matt smouldered and snapped. Matt rolled off the altar and got to his feet.
He took a step forward and stood on the surface of the pit, daring the villagers to come close. Nobody moved. Even the creature beneath, although it was a hundred times his own size, cowered and backed away. A streak of poisonous green rippled outwards in a brilliant stain. Matt turned to face the villagers. Nobody tried to stop him. He broke through the circle and ran towards Richard. The metal railing behind the journalist snapped. Instantly he was free.
“Follow me!” Matt ordered in a voice that was barely his own.
Too stunned to do anything but obey, Richard followed him. By the time the villagers had absorbed what was happening, they had disappeared through the one door of the chamber that was still open.
Mrs Deverill recovered herself. With a howl of fury she launched herself after them. Mr Barker, the chemist, tried to follow her. But he had left it just too late. He had only taken three paces across the chamber when the ground in front of him broke apart, fragments of metal and concrete flying upwards. Orange flames roared and a dense cloud of white smoke poured out, smothering him. Screaming, he collapsed to the floor and lay still.
A siren wailed and lights set all around the dome began to flash. A radiation warning. The levels were already lethal and were rising with every second that passed. “Stay in the circle!” Sir Michael bellowed. He was sobbing, still cradling his ruined hand. “The radiation has broken free. But we’re protected in the circle!”
The orange flames climbed up, higher even than the stones, licking against the ceiling. Smoke belched out, forming a living carpet. A sprinkler system had come on automatically and thousands of litres of water were showering down, soaking and blinding the villagers. Still, it wasn’t enough to put out the fire. Not this fire. The flames leapt through the water, hissing and crackling. The whole building began to shake.
Claire Deverill was the first to break. With a panic-stricken cry she threw up her arms and ran between two of the stones, making for the same door that her sister had taken. But the moment she was outside the magic circle she was no longer protected. The heat of the flames blasted into her and her clothes caught alight. The smoke grabbed at her legs, dragging her down. She screamed and tried to scream again. But there was no air in the room, only smoke and fire. Her face contorted and her eyes went white. She fell and lay there, convulsing on the floor.
“Stay in the circle,” Sir Michael repeated. “The doors are locked. They can’t escape.”
Beneath the floor the gigantic creature punched and punched again at the invisible barrier. But it couldn’t break through. It had ritual. It had fire. But the blood of the child had been denied it, and it didn’t have the strength.
And that was when Sir Michael noticed the knife. The tip had penetrated Matt’s shirt and skin. Matt’s power had stopped it, but not before it had drawn blood. There was a single red drop at the very tip of the blade. Sir Michael’s eyes widened. With a cry of pleasure he leapt forward and snatched up the knife. The blood was still wet. It glistened beneath the arc lamps.
Sir Michael laughed and brought the knife crashing down towards the gate.
The power was surging through Matt and nothing could stand in its way. Locked doors were torn from their hinges as if struck by a tornado. Steel plates bent and crumpled as he approached. Omega One was a labyrinth but he seemed to know exactly where he was going. Down a flight of metal stairs, along a corridor, through an archway and on towards a set of automatic doors that hissed open as he approached. It was as if he had worked here all his life.
Richard was close behind him. The journalist no longer knew where they were going but he could tell that their general direction was down. Already they had to be well below ground level. The warning sirens were still sounding all around them, and lights flashed red and white at every corner. Steam hissed out of pipes. Water cascaded down from the sprinkler system. The whole power station seemed to be trembling, on the verge of breaking up, and he was worried that they were going to trap themselves. There couldn’t be an exit under the ground. But he knew that this was no time to argue. He kept his mouth shut, following Matt in grim silence.
They passed through a room stacked from floor to ceiling with banks of machinery, then down another corridor. A door at the end flew open, beckoning them on.
It led to a metal gantry above a tank of water. But it was like no water that Richard had ever seen. Pausing to catch his breath, he leant over it. The water was blue – a fluorescent, unnatural blue – and it was crystal clear, without so much as a speck of dust on the surface. The tank was square and about three metres deep. At the bottom was a row of metal containers, each one stamped with a series of numbers. Half of them were empty. Half contained twisted bars of metal, packed tightly together.
Richard knew what he was looking at. This was where the radioactive waste from the reactor was stored to cool. It wasn’t water in the pool, but acid. The boxes beneath the surface contained the deadliest substance in the world. With a shiver he stepped back. Matt was waiting for him, his face set with a strange determination. It was hard to tell if he was asleep or awake.
“OK. I’m coming,” Richard said.
The blow took Richard completely unawares, crashing into the back of his head. If he hadn’t been moving forward, it might have broken his neck. He fell to his knees. A woman brushed past him and stepped on to the middle of the gantry, facing Matt. It was Mrs Deverill. Richard tried to get to his feet but he was barely conscious. All the strength had drained away from him. He could only kneel there, helpless, as Mrs Deverill walked towards Matt, an iron bar clasped in her hands.
“He didn’t listen to me,” she spat. Her face was distorted by fury, her eyes livid, her mouth an inhuman grimace. “We should have locked you up, starved you, kept you weak. But it’s over now, isn’t it? The power’s gone. You don’t know how to control it. Now I can kill you and take you back.”
She raised the iron bar. Matt looked around him. He had nowhere to run. On one side there was a wall. On the other, a low railing to stop him falling into the tank of acid. The gantry was only two metres across. Mrs Deverill was standing between him and Richard. Even if he could have run away, it would mean leaving his friend at her mercy and he couldn’t do that. He had no choice. He would have to fight.
She swung the bar through the air. As quick as a panther, Matt leapt aside, then lurched back as Mrs Deverill
