The Bloodline Cipher (11 page)

‘So – “
flesh offer sacrifice to temple
”. Sounds fun,' Jonah said wryly. ‘What was that you were saying about not believing those lurid tabloid takes on black magic?'

‘There are many kinds of sacrifice.' Maya paused, and when she spoke again her voice held a more challenging tone. ‘Look at the way you and your friends have given yourselves to Coldhardt.'

Jonah frowned. ‘You what?'

‘Everyone sacrifices their brainpower, their free time, their physical presence to get something back, whether it's an education, a regular pay cheque, power, respect …' Maya looked at him. ‘What you do is different. You're prepared to sacrifice your
lives
for Coldhardt.'

‘What would you know about it?' said Jonah defensively.

‘You offer up your flesh and bones in his cause …' Maya went on. ‘And do you ever stop to think that some day that offering may be collected?'

Jonah shifted uncomfortably. He wasn't used to conversations like this. He resorted to flippancy. ‘God, you're a real barrel of laughs, aren't you, Maya? How'd you get so happy?'

‘Knowledge makes me happy. Cracking codes. Learning secrets.' In the light of the screen, her freckles looked grey, like dust motes settled on her skin. ‘How about you? Does your life make you happy, Jonah?'

The challenge prickled at him. ‘I guess. OK, fair enough, I'm not happy with some of the situations I pitch up in,' he admitted. ‘But to leave my friends would make me more unhappy. Besides, when I joined up I wasn't exactly turning my back on a brilliant future. I was in a Young Offenders' Institution, a kind of prison – no visitors, no meaning, no hope.'

‘So Coldhardt has given you meaning in your life …' She grinned unexpectedly. ‘As well as cool visitors like me of course.' She paused. ‘But what about hope?'

‘I hope I'll be around long enough to enjoy what I've got,' he joked. ‘Because at the end of the day, I'm bloody lucky.' He gestured to the computer. ‘I get to do what I love, what I do best, and I get rewarded for it – tons of cash, a fantastic lifestyle, and friends I can count on for the first time.' He leaned in closer for emphasis. ‘Before I met Coldhardt, I was just living. But this last year, I've been really
alive
.'

Maya folded her arms. ‘Nothing like risking your life to make you appreciate it all the more, huh?'

‘Patch once said we'll live for ever or die trying.' He met her gaze. ‘I'm with him on that one. It's the only way to get through the days.'

‘Maybe.' Maya's cool grey eyes didn't falter. ‘What about Coldhardt, fount of your happiness – will
he
live for ever?'

Jonah half smiled. ‘He's working on it.'

There was a pause and then another unexpected grin dimpled Maya's cheeks, easing the tension. ‘I'm glad. After all, for ever might
just
be long enough to crack the end of this manuscript …'

Jonah shook his head. ‘That'll have to wait. Right now, the offering I've got to make to Coldhardt is a decrypted plaintext version of the title page.'

‘He asked you just for that?' Maya blinked. ‘Why?'

‘To show we can do it, I suppose. Or maybe because he prefers to start at the beginning and move on, like me.'

‘At his age, I'd have thought he'd be more interested in endings …' Maya leaned back in her chair. ‘Oh, well. Guess it's your lucky day. We can give him the title page straight away.'

Jonah stared at her. ‘What?'

‘It was translated way back, by a clerk in the museum that held the manuscript before it was stolen and the whole place burned down. The clerk's notes were folded up and placed within the manuscript. Blackland found them there in the monastery.'

‘Why didn't you tell us this sooner?' Jonah demanded.

‘It hardly counts as part of the manuscript. It's thought that the cover page is a later addition to the whole, possibly sixteenth century. And it's encoded in a completely different way to the rest of the manuscript, more of a word puzzle. The characters of an invented language had to be transposed into Latin and then only certain letters chosen –'

‘OK, OK. So what does it
say
?'

‘How does it go, now …' Maya cast her eyes
upwards, as if remembering, and Jonah had the feeling she was teasing him. ‘
The life of a creature is in the blood. Through the mercy and purity of Guan Yin, who gave up her eyes so her father might see, this Bloodline Cipher is disposed to thee. Thy flesh be stitched with threads immortal, they hold fast though the blood sweat fastens
.'

‘That's it?'

‘That's it.'

‘Just a bit cryptic, then.' Jonah frowned. ‘Do you have the scan of the title page? I'd like to run my own decryption just to be sure.'

‘I did the same,' she said approvingly. ‘We can compare all three versions.'

He grinned at her. ‘And that way, we needn't tell Coldhardt the work had been done for us already. Nice one!'

He rose to go. Maya caught hold of his hand and looked up at him hopefully. ‘So will I get to meet your mysterious Coldhardt? He sounds like he'd fit right in with my crowd back home.'

‘He probably would,' Jonah agreed, gently freeing his fingers. He liked Maya but not in that way. ‘We'll see what he says. I'll go and call him.'

Crossing the room, Jonah could feel Maya's eyes on his back. And as he closed the door behind him, he hesitated.
You might just fit in with our crowd too
, he thought.
A code-cracker with a passionate, in-depth knowledge of all that creepy stuff Coldhardt's into
…

He headed for the phone, a mixed-up feeling inside him.
Maybe I could find myself leaving here sooner than I thought
.

* * *

Tye sat on a brown, cracked leather sofa in the hangout, brooding on all that had happened.

A guy who's supposed to be dead, clinging to life for thirty years?
She chewed her lip.
Suddenly back and stoked for revenge? It's got to be a wind-up
.

What was this guy hoping to achieve?

The sumptuous sofas were arranged around a full-sized snooker table. Drinks and snacks dispensers lined the walls along with arcade video games, pinball tables and fruit machines, hemming in their chill-space with walls of lurid light and colour. There was even a gleaming chrome coffee bar. A room to the left housed a miniature cinema – only eight seats but a full-sized screen; while to the right were two rooms each with an enormous HD TV – one for watching and one for gaming on.

Right now, neither were in use. Patch stood at the coffee bar in a cloud of dusted chocolate, finishing off a cappuccino with hazelnut syrup, while Motti lay sprawled on the sofa beside her with a beer and a comic book. The hangout seemed so big and empty with just the three of them here tonight.

‘It was such a weird atmosphere in there today,' said Tye quietly. ‘Do you believe this Heidel guy's for real?'

‘I didn't see much of the guy, remember?' Motti pointed to the purple swelling like a tattoo on his temple. ‘But Coldhardt doesn't normally make mistakes. If he thought he killed the guy …'

‘I wish I knew why he seems so rattled by the whole thing.' Tye slumped down a little lower in the sofa.
‘How many people do you think he's killed over the years?'

‘Maybe he's worried the whole damn lot of them are gonna come back.' Motti rubbed his sore head. ‘To haunt him with a baseball bat.'

‘This guy obviously knows Coldhardt,' Tye went on, ‘and must know all there is to know about us.'

‘Gee, d'you think maybe he'll send us cards on our birthdays?'

‘He knows about the Bloodline Cipher too …'

Motti turned the page of his comic book. ‘Whatever the hell that is.'

‘We know that the older Coldhardt gets, the harder he chases ways to live longer,' Tye reminded him. ‘Elixirs of youth, mad Aztec goddesses …'

Motti looked at her. ‘What, and now a code in some old book?'

‘
I'm the living proof of something Coldhardt will never own
…' She shrugged. ‘If Heidel's supposed to have died thirty years ago, maybe whatever's in that cipher helped him stay alive?'

‘Uh-huh,' said Motti, ‘and maybe
Scooby Doo
's a documentary.'

‘I know it sounds far-fetched.' Tye held up her hands. ‘But it would make sense of why Heidel threw the manuscript into the flames.'

Motti got her meaning. ‘He wanted to make damn sure Coldhardt didn't get the benefit of what's in there?'

An uneasy silence hung in the air between them.

‘I hope this Maya bird works out all right,' Patch announced, coming over to join them. ‘Then Con and
Jonah can come back and we'll all have a new buddy to get to know.'

Tye half smiled, despite herself. ‘You're always first to accept anyone new, aren't you?'

‘Safety in numbers! You can never have too many people watching your back.'

‘Uh-huh.' Motti took a swig of beer. ‘Trouble is, Cyclops, Red can't watch your back while you're staring at her front.'

‘Nothing to stare at,' said Patch, forlorn. ‘Her shoulder blades are bigger than her baps.'

‘Don't be so gross,' Tye complained. She threw a cushion at Patch, spilling hot coffee into his lap. He jumped up, yelling in pain.

‘One in a million shot, Tye,' Motti drawled, putting down his beer. ‘You actually hit something down there.'

Patch grabbed the beer and poured it over his steaming crotch. Then he sank back in his seat with a relieved sigh.

‘OK,' said Motti calmly. ‘You got exactly ten seconds to fetch me another beer.'

‘Maybe I could wring out my trousers into a glass?'

‘And maybe you could wind up with two broken legs.'

Patch hurried away to the fridge. He turned on the sound system while he was there, and strident, doomy guitars thundered out from the speakers scattered about the room. ‘That's better!' he yelled. ‘Better party while we can. 'Cause when Heidel and Bree said they'd be seeing us again …' He itched the skin beneath his eye patch. ‘I reckon they meant it.'

Motti nodded. ‘This whole thing's got “grudge match” written all over it.'

‘So why'd they have to take it out on us?' complained Patch.

‘They're against Coldhardt and all he stands for,' Tye reminded them.
The big man gathers his little ones to him
, Heidel had sneered.
Insists that they prove their love by risking everything, time after time
.

‘Coldhardt won't take this lying down,' said Patch confidently. ‘He'll sort that lot out.'

Motti touched the cold beer bottle to the angry bruise on his head. ‘You mean he'll make us do it for him.'

Their luck holds for a time
… Tye closed her eyes and seemed to see Heidel's, the colour of stagnant water.
But then, in walks death
.

‘We must be strong,' quoted Patch, parodying Coldhardt's voice. ‘All of us.'

Tye didn't smile, and Motti went back to his comic. They sat with Patch in distracted silence while the music blared on around them.

Tye woke early. She wondered how Jonah had slept, what his bed was like. How it would feel with him lying beside her. Not just for those snatched, secret hours when the house was quiet, or when the others were too wasted to hear the creak of the floorboards outside her room, but for a whole night, every night. The two of them with nothing to hide.

Nothing to hide?
Tye dwelled on the idea with a kind of numb fascination. Reading lies off everyone else her whole life hadn't exactly encouraged honesty in herself. She had feelings buried so deep even she'd forgotten what they were, most of the time.

She stared up at the virgin white of the ceiling. Damn Jonah Wish for not being here right now.

As she turned in bed she caught sight of her smoke-stone lying on the top of her dresser, sparkling in the earliest strands of sunlight through the pale curtains. Weird; she was sure she hadn't left it out in the open. She held it between dirty fingernails; it was beautiful the way a speck of night seemed caught inside it, like a tiny fly in glittering amber. Coldhardt had given one to each of them when they'd joined up; his way of telling them they had proved themselves to him.

The day she'd got hers had been one of the happiest of her life, her entrance into a world she could never have imagined. Now she could hear a lazy little voice whispering in the dawn quiet:
you bought that crap – and he bought you
.

The soft, insistent beep of her pager woke her from her thoughts. Coldhardt was calling another meeting. Surely he couldn't want that Jonah back-up rota off her already …?

Or else something happened to Jonah in the night
.

Tye rose from her bed, threw on some clothes, half-tamed her hair with a headband and ran from the room.

Fifteen minutes later, back in the stark striplighting of the hub, she was wishing she'd spent a little longer on her appearance. Coldhardt, Patch and Motti were not yet here. Con was back, nursing a coffee. And while Tye sat quiet and dishevelled at the table, Jonah and Maya were chatting bright-eyed and busily like members of some secret code-crackers club.

‘My first water coolers were hand-made out of old aquarium pumps and home-made water-blocks,' Jonah was saying. ‘Used to piss off my foster families so much …'

Maya laughed. ‘I can imagine – this weird kid they'd taken in, taking apart their PC and shoving things inside it.'

‘Not that weird!' he protested. ‘I just couldn't stand the noise of the fans working overtime to vent all that heat …' He sighed. ‘Now I order purpose-built cooler kits and it's just so easy.'