thrust the pointed end at his stomach. She was moving incredibly quickly for a woman of her age but her fury had lent her strength. Matt fell against the railings as she threw herself at him. There was nothing he could do. She was taller than him. She was armed. And she was quite mad. Grunting with anger and exertion, she pressed the bar against his chest, pinning him against the side with such force that Matt thought she would crack his ribs.
He wished he could use his powers against her, but she had been right about that too. The power was no longer there. He had exhausted himself getting this far. There was a faulty switch inside him and now it had turned itself off. He was an ordinary boy again. And she was beating him.
Mrs Deverill lifted the bar so that it slid over his chest and under his throat. Now she was using it to crush his windpipe. Her pinched face, with its jagged cheekbones, was very close to his. Her eyes were burning with hatred and indignation. Matt felt the floor slipping away beneath his feet. He was being forced over backwards. The railing pressed into his spine and his neck bent back until he could see the pool behind him, upside down. With a gasp he brought his knee up, crashing it into the woman’s stomach. Mrs Deverill screeched and stepped back. Matt twisted to one side.
The bar slammed down again. Matt ducked. A rush of air swept past his cheek as the bar smashed into the railing. Sparks flew up. Then he jumped behind her, trying to take her by surprise. But she had been expecting the move. She lashed out with one foot, tripping him up. Then he was on his back, staring up as Mrs Deverill raised the bar with both hands. She was going to use it like a spear, crashing it down into his chest.
“You’re still mine!” she gasped. “I’ll have your blood. I’ll tear out your heart and take it back with me.”
Her fingers tightened. She took a breath.
And then she pitched forward, crying out. The iron bar missed. Matt looked past her and saw that Richard had recovered enough to make one last effort. With all his strength he had pushed her from behind. Jayne Deverill had lost her balance. For a moment she tottered, then with a shriek she fell over the railing and toppled into the tank.
She sank like a stone, plunging into one of the crates. With bubbles erupting from her mouth, she tried to reach the surface. But it was already too late. The acid was eating into her. Richard peered down and saw that already much of her face had gone.
“Don’t look, Matt,” he warned.
Mrs Deverill was no longer recognizable. Her flesh was peeling away and her hair had come out. Richard closed his eyes. Witches had been burned in the Middle Ages, he knew, but it could never have been as ghastly as this.
Matt stumbled to his feet. “This way…” he said, quietly.
There was a door at the end of the gantry and another flight of steps going ever further down. The walls were suddenly different. Instead of the paint and smooth plaster of the upper corridors, these walls were cut out of solid rock and were covered with patches of damp moss. The iron steps were rusty, descending into darkness. Richard could hear the sound of rushing water. The underground river!
The steps ended at a small, triangular platform. Just below them, the black river swept through miles of underground caverns, beneath the woods. The cave system was like an underground pipe, filled almost to the roof with freezing water. There were no banks or towpath to walk on. There was no other way out.
“Hold on to me,” Richard said. Matt hooked his arms around the journalist. “Just hold on.”
They jumped.
The reactor chamber of Omega One was breaking up. The flames had burst through almost everywhere. The heat was so intense that the heavy pipes and platforms were melting. The ground was buckling and breaking. A crack had appeared in one of the walls and the night air was feeding the flames, fanning the smoke.
Sir Michael Marsh stood alone beside the altar, the wind and smoke curling around him. The villagers, mad with fear, had attempted to flee. But outside the protection of the magic circle they had been incinerated instantly, swallowed up by the inferno. Now the observation box exploded, shards of glass and metal splinters cascading into the chamber, a rain of death.
The metal tower at the far end of the ring wavered as a new spasm seized the floor. With a sickening screech and an eruption of sparks it keeled over, tearing through a wall. Another window burst, a fireball shooting through it like a bullet from a gun.
Sir Michael leant against the sacrificial slab. Beneath him, underneath the smoke and fire, the black hand of the creature that he had summoned hammered one last time against the gate. The ancient stones had almost gone. They were crumbling away, dust pouring out of the gashes that had formed in them. Omega One was in the grip of an earthquake of its own making, the walls vibrating, the metal ladders and platforms shaking loose and crashing down.
Then with one last cry, a cry such as the world had not heard for a million years, the creature, king of the Old Ones, broke loose. The gate shattered. A single drop of Matt’s blood had been enough to weaken it. The hand stretched out.
“We’ve done it!” Sir Michael cried, his eyes widening. “You’re here! You’re free!”
The huge hand unfolded. All the light in the chamber was blotted out as the giant fingers stretched.
The hand was all around the scientist. He let out a thin scream of delight, which in an instant turned to terror as he realized what was about to happen. The hand closed on him and crushed him. Sir Michael Marsh died horribly, in the grip of the creature he had served all his life.
And then the reactor, pushed beyond its limits, disintegrated. A blinding, searing, fantastic light burst out, as bright as the sun itself: the light of an atomic explosion.
A huge mushroom cloud sprouted out of the ground. Man’s most dreadful creation ran wild. Spiralling upwards, it rushed towards the night sky, carrying with it enough deadly radiation to destroy half of England.
But the gate was open.
The vacuum had to be filled.
The atomic energy recoiled, drawn back into the gate that it had itself helped to open. The mushroom had risen far above the ground but now it was pulled down again, while at the same time the smoke and deadly gases were dragged back into the chasm that had been broken between the two worlds.
The creature itself was engulfed, flailing helplessly as it was sucked down like a spider into a gigantic plughole. It was trapped in a torrent of pure light that swirled round and round it, forming a whirlpool from which there could be no escape. A curtain of molten red flooded across, then dimmed and died away. Slowly the black and white squares of the reactor floor shimmered and began to reappear. The creature was gone. The gate had been resealed.
Two miles away, Richard and Matt, coughing and shivering, were spat out of an underground cavern and, reaching the bank, pulled themselves on to dry land. On the horizon, a ripple of pink spread across the night sky as the sun began its climb over the edge of the world.
At last, it was over.
THE MAN FROM PERU
“ The Times?”
“Nothing.”
“The Daily Telegraph?”
“Nothing.”
“The Daily Mail?”
“Nothing.”
“The Independent?”
“Nothing.”
“ Le Monde?”
“I don’t know. It’s in French.”
“There has to be something, somewhere.”
Matt and Richard were sitting at the kitchen table in the journalist’s York flat. Each had a pair of scissors and a mug of tea. More than a week had passed since their escape from Omega One, and both of them had changed.
