Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series) (22 page)

The footsteps behind me
were now closing in. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse
of a black blur. I was almost at the door when a tall figure suddenly stepped
in front of me. Before I had time to think, let alone stop, I’d ploughed
straight into him. The figure reacted just in time, catching my shoulders in
his black-gloved hands. I instantly recoiled, as Demarge arched his right
eyebrow, smiling triumphantly.

“Leave me alone,” I said,
struggling to keep my voice as level as possible.

“That’s not very polite,
especially after you accepted my hospitality just a few days ago,” he said.

I held Demarge’s gaze, as
I began inching backwards away from him. To my relief, he didn’t try to narrow
the gap. Instead, he just stood there, looking at me as if he was examining a
bug under a microscope. So far, so good. Once I figured I was far enough away
to make a decent run for it, I turned and bolted for the altar at the far end
of the Cathedral. I was directly under the dome, the transepts stretching out
to either side of me, when all of a sudden Demarge appeared again, out of
nowhere.

“Come Clare, surely Min-Isis
has told you who I am by now,” he said.

“So?” I said, sounding
painfully like one of those kids in the playground who tries to tough it out
with a bully, knowing all the while that they’re about to get their head kicked
in. Demarge smiled. He was playing with me now.

“
So
you’ll know it’s
pointless trying to outrun me.”

“I don’t know what you
want from me,” I said.

Demarge gave a sceptical
snort.

“Oh, I think you know
perfectly well what I want,” he said. “Min-Isis and Thomas will have told you
that much, I’m sure.” He shook his head, thoughtfully. “In fact, they never
would have sent you back if they hadn’t warned you about me.”

“They didn’t send me
back,” I blurted out, cursing myself the minute the words had left my mouth.
Now was definitely not the time to start acting like I’d taken a powerful truth
serum. For some reason though – I had no idea why – there was something about
Demarge that made me tell him far more than I ever intended to.

He smiled slyly. “So they
don’t know you’re here?” It was more a statement than a question.

I glared at him,
determined this time not to say any more than I already had.

“I wonder what could
possibly
make you disobey Min-Isis and Thomas like that?” Demarge sounded genuinely
interested, his eyes gradually clouding with smugness. “It’s your brother,
isn’t it? You know I have him.”

“If you’ve hurt Bede…” I
trailed off, as the futility of making any sort of threat suddenly slapped me
in the face. God versus Clare. No prizes for guessing who was going to win that
one.

“You’ll what? Strike me
off your Christmas card list?” Demarge’s cruel, hard, laugh reverberated off
the walls of the atrium.

“Just tell me he’s okay,
that you haven’t handed him to the police, or…” I struggled to find the right
words.

Demarge smiled patiently,
waiting for me to continue. He was clearly enjoying himself way too much.

“
Done
anything to
him,” I finally managed to stammer, my voice wavering like a badly trained
tightrope walker.

“Your brother is
perfectly well,” said Demarge. “He could, of course, be a lot better if you
co-operated.”

“What?” I said, as a cold
shiver rippled through me.

“I’m offering you an
opportunity, Clare,” said Demarge coolly. “Agree to join me and you can have
your brother.”

“What do you mean?” I
said.

“The police will hunt
Bede until they find him and when they do, he’ll be charged with murder. Clare,
he will be convicted, I’ll make sure of it. We both know the penalty he’ll be
lucky to see the light of day again.”

I felt the colour drain
from my cheeks. “But he’s innocent,” I said, weakly.

“So save him,” said
Demarge.

“You’re blackmailing me
into joining you?”

Demarge shrugged.
“Everyone has a price, even you.”

“You’re sick,” I said.

“No Clare, just honest.”
Demarge arched his right eyebrow mockingly.

“You don’t know anything
about me,” I said.

“To the contrary,” said
Demarge. “I think you’ll find I know you better than you know yourself.”

I shifted uncomfortably on
my feet. He couldn’t possibly be right, he’d only just met me. At the same time
though, what did I really know about anything any more? It was only a few hours
ago that I’d discovered my whole world was a hoax, dreamt up by the psychopath
standing in front of me. I had to admit, there was a good chance I was deluded
about a lot of other things too. I could feel my head start to spin as I tried
to make sense of it all. But no matter how hard I tried, my thoughts kept
crashing into each other like dodgems, rather than fitting neatly together. I
took a deep breath, determined to get a grip on myself. Whatever the truth was,
I could work it out later. Right now I had to find a way of escaping.

“Whoever you think I am,
you’ve got the wrong person,” I said.

Demarge shook his head
slowly, smiling at me as if he was humouring a small child.

“There is no mistake,
Clare.”

I stared at him,
remembering what Min and Thomas had said to me in the
Valley
of
Flowers
, about
being a Shard and having more light than many others. It still didn’t make any
sense, but if it meant helping my brother then fine, I was happy to play along.

“So what do I have to do
before Bede will be safe?” I said.

Demarge smiled. “See? I
knew you’d come to your senses.”

“I haven’t
agreed
to anything,” I said, trying to regain whatever ground Demarge thought I’d
conceded. “I still don’t understand what you want me to do.”

“It’s very simple” said
Demarge. “You can start by showing me where the entrance to the Slipworld is.”

“I can’t, I don’t know
where it is,” I said. It wasn’t a complete lie, given how hopeless it had been
trying to find my way back.

Demarge looked at me
sceptically.

“Then you can show me
exactly where you came out on the stairwell. I’ll take it from there.”

I glared at him,
desperately wracking my brains for a way to stall for time.

“Come on, think, Clare!”
I said to myself. But rather than helping, it just seemed to make my mind go even
blanker. I took a step backwards, catching a glimpse of the sign for the underground
crypt.

“I don’t remember,” I
said. “It all happened so fast.”

Demarge frowned, his eyes
narrowing to razor blades. Before I could say another word he lunged towards me,
making me jump back in shock. His cool breath skittered lightly across my cheek
as he leaned in close to my ear. The warm scent of sandalwood enveloped me
completely and for a second all I could think about was closing my eyes and
breathing it in.

“Don’t toy with me,
Clare,” he whispered. Each word was an ice-cube sliding down my back. I shuddered
and stepped away from him. “Shards like you have come and gone for centuries:
scientists, explorers, philosophers, even self-professed prophets. They all
thought they could defy me and they were all wrong. Every last one. Please
Clare, don’t make the same mistake.”

I continued to back away
from Demarge, slowly but surely. Glancing behind me, the top of the stairwell
to the crypt was now tantalisingly close. Was it worth making a run for it? Could
I even make it? There was only one way of finding out.

I turned and fled,
hurling myself down the steps with everything I had. My feet skidded sideways under
me but I barely noticed. All I could think about was reaching the room at the
bottom that housed the ancient graves. Behind me, Demarge’s calm, deliberate
footsteps rang out across the atrium like a death knell.

“So you want to play cat
and mouse do you? Don’t you know that the cat always wins?”

Demarge’s voice sliced
through my panic and into my chest like a cold spike. Deep down I knew he was
right. Whatever I did, I was simply delaying the inevitable. Eventually he
would find me and drag me up the staircase, and there was nothing I could do
about it. But delaying things, even for a few seconds, was still worth it if it
meant that Min and Thomas had more time to find Bede and get him safely into
the Slipworld.

The stone arch of the
crypt was now directly in front of me. I lurched through it, into a square
chamber where I was instantly confronted by rows and rows of sarcophagi.

In the dim light, the white
marble tubes reminded me of insect larvae, as if the crypt was some sort of
hatchery for zombies. I cringed. The crypt had always given me the creeps, ever
since I had first visited it with my mother and Bede when I was little. But
creeps or no creeps, there was no time to think about it now – I desperately
needed a place to hide.

The obvious solution was
to find a couple of sarcophagi with a decent amount of crawl space between them.
As I ran down the first aisle, I realised it was going to be harder than I
thought. Some of the coffins were packed so tightly that there was barely
enough room for a cat to squeeze into, let alone a person. By the time I
reached the fourth one I was starting to panic. Demarge would be here in no
time and I’d be completely out in the open.

Then, just as I was
drawing alongside the fifth and sixth sarcophagi, my luck began to turn. Unlike
the others, these ones were mounted on a small plinth and there seemed to be a
bit more room between them. I jumped up the small flight of stairs, and edged
around the front of the two rectangular stone boxes. Each was the height of my
hip, giving me enough room to crouch down without being seen. I was about to
crawl into the gap between them when I noticed that one of them had a large
chunk of its stone lid missing. I could now hear Demarge’s footsteps fast
approaching the entrance to the crypt.

“Coming, ready or not,”
he called in a sing-song voice.

I froze, staring stupidly
at the doorway for a couple of seconds. Any moment now, a long black coat would
come swooping into the room and it would all be over. I glanced down at the
damaged sarcophagus and sized up the gap in the lid. Then, without stopping to
think, I quickly climbed in. It was much tighter than I’d realised, and for a
horrible moment I really thought I wasn’t going to make it. But, with a bit of
panic-fuelled scraping and shimmying, I finally managed to cram myself in. The
thought of lying alongside someone else’s bones made me feel nauseous. I
swallowed hard, trying to calm my stomach, and ducked under the lid just as
Demarge entered the room.

“You can’t escape, Clare.
Wherever you are, come out now and I won’t hurt your friends.”

I held my breath,
petrified that even the slightest noise might give me away, as the metallic clip
of Demarge’s boots slowly sauntered down the aisle towards me.

“Very well then, if it’s
games you want to play…”

There was a loud sizzling
noise, like live electricity, followed immediately by an explosion so violent
that my stone hideout vibrated on its stand. I jumped in shock, almost hitting
my head on the underside of the lid. It took me a couple of seconds to work out
exactly what had happened. Then I realised – Demarge must have destroyed one the
sarcophagi, looking for me. The sizzling sound started up again and I peered
through one of the cracks in the coffin. A jagged bolt of light was snaking its
way towards the second sarcophagi, striking it with a lethal blow. I covered my
head in my arms as a hailstorm of stones and bones clattered against the slate
floor and ricocheted off the lids of the surrounding sarcophagi. If Demarge was
going to keep this up I’d have no choice but to surrender. That, or end up
being a crispy critter in someone else’s coffin. The third sarcophagus was now
exploding and I peered through the crack again to see someone’s skull rolling
across the floor, the empty eye sockets glaring at Demarge accusingly.

“Yes?” he said, glaring back
at the skull.

He turned suddenly and
for a second I felt his eyes bore into me. Had he seen me? I ripped myself away
from side of the coffin, my heart beating like a mallet in my chest.

“This is becoming a very
boring game, Clare. The longer you make me play it, the worse it will be for
you when I do find you.”

Demarge was now just one
coffin away from blowing me to smithereens. I had to decide what to do. Fast. If
I hung on for another couple of seconds, I could always surrender after Demarge
had demolished sarcophagus number four. But what if he didn’t hear me shouting
over the sound of falling rubble? Or, what if I was too slow getting out of the
coffin and Demarge ended up blasting me without realising that I’d actually
surrendered? That really would be a cruel twist of fate, being so uncoordinated
that I literally couldn’t save my own life. I realised that there was only one
thing I could do, and that was to give myself up immediately. I still had no
idea exactly how I was going to talk my way out of showing Demarge the entrance
to the Slipworld. I just hoped I’d be able to figure it out once I was back in
the atrium.