The dreamworld. All of them had been there. They all knew its significance. They had talked about it often enough. Pedro knew that he couldn’t argue. If Scott had been sent a message, they couldn’t ignore it, particularly if it involved his brother. And yet the doors were supposed to be too dangerous. It was the whole reason Matt and Jamie had flown to Europe and why the two of them had been left behind.
“Are you sure…?” he began.
Scott wasn’t in the mood for an argument. “I’m leaving as soon as it’s light,” he said. “You can come with me or you can stay behind.”
The next morning they left together. One of the Incas escorted them down to the clearing where the helicopter was waiting and then it was a two-hour flight to Cuzco airport. All the time, Scott had been silent and intense. He still hadn’t explained what he had seen. He was often reserved but now he seemed miles away, staring ahead with empty eyes. Pedro was trying not to think what they were letting themselves in for. Of all the Gatekeepers, he alone had never been through one of the doors, and the thought of transporting himself half-way round the world filled him with dread.
And here they were now in Cuzco. It was a beautiful evening with hundreds of tourists milling around the brightly coloured stalls that were spread out in front of them. The cathedral would be closing soon. The last visitors were coming out, surrounded by street children, begging for money and sweets. Taxis, like wind-up toys made out of tin, were buzzing around the main square.
Pedro was hungry but he didn’t dare suggest that they stop and eat. He knew what the answer would be.
“There it is…” Scott pointed at a great pile of bricks and ornate windows, a Spanish church built on the site of a place of worship that had been there centuries before. The Temple of Coricancha. It was where he and Jamie had found themselves when they first arrived in Peru. Inside was the doorway that had brought them from a cave in Nevada.
Neither of them spoke again. Pedro shook his head and followed as, with grim determination, Scott began to walk across the square.
Matt and Scarlett stood in the shelter of the prison, knowing that they couldn’t leave. Hong Kong was being torn apart by a force so devastating it was as if they had arrived at some chapter in the Bible when all the old prophecies happened and Judgement Day finally arrived.
Smashed buildings and debris were being flung along the street as if they weighed nothing. As they looked out of the broken doorway, a huge neon sign spun past like an oversized playing card. It was followed by a table, several crates, a lawn mower, part of a piano… They had somehow been sucked out of the shops and sent on their way as if they were prizes in some insane TV game show. Matt could actually see the air currents. Mixed with the rain, they had become a thousand grey needles that raced along the streets, slamming into cars and tipping them over, flattening everything in their path.
He looked up and saw two clouds rushing together, moving faster than he could have believed. They hit and there was a massive burst of thunder. A bolt of electricity so bright that it hurt his eyes crackled down and smashed into a skyscraper half a mile away, cutting it in two. Shards of glass and broken pieces of metal burst outwards as the top seven storeys of the building leaned over and then fell, trailing wires and pipes. Matt didn’t see where they landed or how many people were killed but he heard the massive explosion as they hit the street below. Despite the rain, what remained of the building caught fire. The orange flames licked at the falling water, desperately trying to climb into the air.
“We must wait…” Lohan was right next to him. Matt understood what he meant. If they took so much as one step forward out of the protection of the walls, they would be whisked away. He was having to shout the words to make himself heard.
“We can’t wait!” Matt shouted back. “We only have this one chance. We must leave Hong Kong now.”
Scarlett was behind him with Richard and Jamie. Matt turned round and their eyes met – and in that moment they both understood what was happening. They could have no secrets from each other. “This is you!” he shouted at her. The wind was still howling. A window on the other side of the road was suddenly torn out, the glass leaping away. “You’ve done this…”
“No!” Scarlett shook her head, trying to deny it.
“We all have powers. All five of us. This is yours.”
And Scarlett knew he was right. In a way, she had known it all along.
Her real name wasn’t Scarlett Adams. White Lotus believed that she was a reincarnation of Lin Mo, a figure out of Chinese mythology, a goddess of the sea. And if she had once been a goddess, then she would have a power that went far beyond anything humanly possible. The chairman of Nightrise had made another mistake. He had thought she could only predict the weather. In fact she could control it.
The evidence had always been there. At school in Dulwich, when Scarlett had wanted to go on a history trip, the weather had cleared up against all expectations. The same thing had happened again in Hong Kong when she needed to get to The Peak. Against all the forecasts, the rain had stopped and the sun had suddenly come out.
She had even used the same power at the battle, ten thousand years before. Jamie had once described it to Matt. Just as Pedro had appeared with his reinforcements, a storm had started, the rain coming down so violently that the Old Ones had been unable to see him.
It hadn’t been a coincidence.
It had been her.
The chairman had claimed that she was the weakest of the Five. He had been wrong. She was by far the most powerful.
“You can stop it!” Matt shouted.
“I can’t!” Scarlett shook her head. She had brought the dragon. She accepted that much. But looking inside herself, after three days in prison, after all she had been through, she knew that she didn’t have the strength to turn it back.
“Then you can protect us. You can keep it away.”
Scarlett looked out into the road, at the crashing rain, the buildings being scattered like confetti, cars spinning crazily, broken pieces of wood and metal hurtling past. Had she really done this, brought destruction on an entire city? How many people would she have killed? The thought terrified her more than anything else she had seen. Was she really responsible for this?
“I can’t do it, Matt…”
“You have to… We have to reach the temple.”
Lohan understood. “It’s not so far from here,” he shouted. “I can show you…”
“Scar…?” Matt looked at her.
And maybe it was simply the fact that he had used that name, a name from ten thousand years ago. Maybe that was the trigger. But in that second, something changed. Scarlett took a deep breath. For too long she had been a victim, pushed around by the chairman, by the Old Ones, even by the Triads. It was time to put that behind her. She was a Gatekeeper. That was what had brought her into all this and suddenly she felt a great anger for everything she had lost – her friends, her home, – even her father. And with the anger came the full knowledge of her own strength. She knew what she had to do.
“Follow me,” she said.
They left the prison. First Lohan, then Scarlett and Matt, with Richard and Jamie behind. They stepped outside into the rain, into the wind, into an endless explosion as nature pounded the city with all its strength. They should have been thrown off their feet instantly, or battered senseless to the ground. But the wind spun around them. The rain was lashing everything but they remained dry. They walked into the heart of the typhoon and it swallowed them up without touching them. It was as if they were inside a glass ball that surrounded and protected them. They could barely see. Everything was chaos. But while they stayed together, they were safe.
Lohan led the way but it was Scarlett who made it possible. She seemed to be in a trance, gazing straight ahead, her arms by her side. Matt kept close to her, knowing that his life depended on her protection. All around them, everywhere he looked, brick walls crumbled, buildings fell, windows shattered and, spinning in the rain, lethal shards of broken glass came slashing down. Again and again the thunder sounded. The clouds were a boiling mass.
They didn’t hurry. There was no need to. No living thing was going to come out in the typhoon and the five of them were completely invisible. Scarlett was more confident now. She looked almost relaxed. Walking next to her,
