The Power of Five Oblivion (13 page)

ELEVEN

Scarlett Adams hovered between three different worlds.

The first of them, she knew, was the real one – and she spent as little time there as she could. It was a world of pain, harsh light, the smell of antiseptic and the knowledge of plastic tubes, twisting down, carrying fluid into her arm. She was lying on her back, in bed, obviously in a hospital. Once she had seen a woman, dressed in white, leaning over her. A nurse. The woman had said something but the words were far away, indistinct, and anyway, they seemed to be in a foreign language. Sometimes she thought there was a man in the room with her, but whenever she turned to look at him he was no longer there. She knew that she was drifting in and out of sleep and what seemed like a few seconds to her might in fact be an hour. She had never felt more tired. Her arms and legs were completely useless. There was a foul taste in her mouth.

The pain wouldn’t stop. It was in the side of her head, like a knife pushed in between her eye and ear. The pain was throbbing in time with her heartbeat, so for every pump, pump, pump there was a stab, stab, stab. From time to time she was aware of someone pressing something against her lips, but she couldn’t drink. She wondered if she was going to die.

And if this was a hospital, where was it and what was going on outside? She heard machine-gun fire, random shots, the occasional crump of a mortar or grenade. Sometimes it was very close and the whole world – the bed, the room, the building – trembled and she smelt dust and felt it sting her eyes. She had to be in some sort of war zone. The explosions were more or less continuous and although she had no real idea when day ended and night began, she was certain they stretched across both.

She had herself been shot – but not here. That had happened in Hong Kong, in the Tai Shan Temple. She still saw the flash of the gun and felt the shocking impact of the bullet. How long ago had it been? Lying on her back with the pain and the darkness, she tried to piece it all together, as if making sense of the past might somehow explain how she came to be here now.

The Old Ones had taken over Hong Kong. They controlled the entire city and had lured her in, using her as bait in a trap that had been set for Matt … Matthew Freeman, a boy she had never met, even though the two of them had lived less than a mile apart for much of their lives. There were five of them. Gatekeepers. Matt was their unofficial leader. It was all very complicated and it made her head hurt (as if it wasn’t hurting enough already) just to think of it.

She focused on the last day. Hong Kong was in the grip of a typhoon that was destroying everything and would have killed them too if she hadn’t held it back. That was her power. She could control the weather … make it rain, make the sun shine. And it was she who had brought them all to the temple, through the eye of the storm. Who else was there? Jamie, of course, the American boy. And Matt.

But there were also two others … outsiders who had been drawn into the adventure, even though they really had nothing to do with it. The first of these was a journalist from a small, local newspaper in the north of England. Scarlett had barely met him but Matt had told her a bit about him while they were locked up together. His name was Richard Cole and he had become Matt’s closest friend.

The other man was Lohan, her own protector even if “friend” wasn’t quite the word for him. Dark-eyed, darkly handsome, always in control, Lohan was a member of the White Lotus Society, one of the Chinese Triads dealing in drugs, prostitution and God knows what else. He had never shown very much warmth or affection towards Scarlett and yet he had risked his life for her and would do anything to protect her. He was the man in the room with her, of course. It couldn’t be anyone else.

They had reached the temple, knowing that there was a door that could take them out of Hong Kong, anywhere they wanted. She had got them there. She had seen the door with its five-pointed star. It had been built specially for the Gatekeepers, to take them across the world in the blink of an eye. Everything was going to be all right. They had won.

But then, at the last moment, it had all changed. Suddenly the door had opened and Scott and Pedro had appeared. Scott was Jamie’s twin brother. And Pedro … if only he were here now. Matt had also told her how he had met Pedro when the two of them were in Peru. Pedro was a healer. He could touch her with one finger and all the pain would be gone and she would be turning cartwheels out of the room.

For a few brief seconds, the five of them had been together. That was all that mattered. All they had to do was form a circle and a gate would open up and swallow the Old Ones. Wasn’t that how it was meant to work? But before it could happen, someone had fired a shot. One of the guards must have been alive, hiding in a corner of the temple. Why had he chosen her? She had felt the explosion of pain in her head and had thought that this must be what it was like to die. And even as she fell, she knew her power had switched itself off and the typhoon would fall on the temple and demolish it. That was her last memory. She wasn’t sorry she had been killed. She was just sad that she had let the others down.

But she wasn’t dead. She had woken up here. One of them must have carried her. Maybe the others were waiting for her outside in the corridor: Matt, Pedro, Jamie and Scott. If only she could believe that, then the pain wouldn’t be so bad and she would feel less alone.

That was world number one.

The real world. The here and now.

But sometimes she would slip back into the life she had left behind when she flew to Hong Kong and she would see herself almost as if she were watching herself in a film. There she was … a confident, carefree girl moving across the screen in the uniform of a smart, south London private school (mauve dress, yellow jersey, ridiculous straw hat). On her way home, surrounded by her friends. She had to remind herself that this was her, how she had been, and not some stranger she would never see again.

She had lived in a comfortable house in Dulwich with a front garden and a gate and dustbins that were emptied once a week. Everything was ordered. School Monday to Friday and, annoyingly, Saturday mornings. Even weekends had their own routine, meeting up with Aidan, who was, she supposed, her first boyfriend, not that either of them would have ever used that word. They would hang out in the park, go shopping, see films, go to parties (home by eleven o’clock or else…). Looking back, she saw that she had been pinned down all her life like a butterfly in a glass case, but that was the way she wanted it. Didn’t everybody?

Of course there had been upsets. She remembered the day her parents had told her she was adopted – which was hardly a great surprise as she was nothing like them with her Indonesian looks, her long, very black hair and green eyes. But the telling of it, the explaining made it real and somehow took her away from them. It was official now.
You don’t belong to us
. What if they got fed up with her and sent her away again? They didn’t owe her anything. What would happen if her real parents turned up and demanded her back? She had been nine years old at the time and those had been the thoughts that went through her head.

And then, when she was fifteen, Paul and Vanessa Adams had got divorced. They had kept everything very civilized. There had been no plate-throwing or heavy-handed lawyers. But once again Scarlett had felt threatened. Everything she had taken for granted was being dismantled around her and there was nothing she could do. Her mother was moving to another country. Her father wanted her to go with him to Hong Kong. As her family life disintegrated, Scarlett had been struck by how little control she had over her own future – and it made her angry and afraid. Sitting on her own in her room, she had actually cried. How pathetic those tears seemed now.

Lying in bed with a bullet wound in her head, Scarlett felt she had plenty to cry about. One thing was certain. Her old life – Aidan, Dulwich, all the rest of it – was gone for good. She would never be able to return. At the same time, none of it mattered any more. She might die. She might never see Matt again. The Old Ones might have won.

She was determined it wasn’t going to happen. Somehow she was going to get out of this hospital bed and back onto her feet. It wasn’t over yet. She was going to fight back.

“Scarlett? Scarlett – can you hear me? I’m right here with you. You’re going to be OK.”

Someone was holding her hand. It was Lohan. She was sure of it. He had followed her through the door and across the world and he was with her now, as he had been when she was escaping from the Old Ones in Hong Kong. She tried to speak but her mouth was too dry, and anyway, she was exhausted. She needed to sleep.

Because sleep took her to the dreamworld – the third world – that she knew so well and that she had been visiting for as long as she could remember. It was here, in this empty landscape that she had first met Matt, Pedro, Scott and Jamie, although she hadn’t then known their names. The dreamworld seemed to have been constructed specially for them. It allowed them to communicate with each other. Although Pedro spoke only Spanish, he and Matt had been able to have conversations there, and when they woke up they remembered everything they’d said. If Matt was still alive, Scarlett was certain she would find him here. He was probably looking for her even now.

Scarlett slept and went back into the dreamworld. As always, there was no colour. The land was grey, the sea black, the sky a mixture of the two. What had happened here? she wondered. Had it always been like this? Surely dreams should be able to offer something more. She put aside her disappointment and called out for the others, her voice sounding as empty and lifeless as everything else.

And then, ahead of her, something moved. A man had appeared as if from nowhere, standing with his back to her. She saw that he was wearing a white shirt with a waistcoat but no jacket. Scarlett was completely shocked. She knew that the dreamworld could send strange messages. Jamie had met a cowboy figure who had seemed hostile but who had in fact warned him of an attempted assassination. Matt had been threatened by a giant swan.

Was this man here for her?

“Excuse me…” she said.

Slowly the man turned. Scarlett blinked. She was looking at a perfectly round face with a small, neat moustache. The man was wearing very black glasses, shaped like coins, that completely hid his eyes. He smiled at her, revealing more gold teeth than real ones.

“Five,” he said.

The Five. She was one of them. He had recognized her.

Scarlett woke up and knew at once that something had happened. Doctors often talk about a tunnel of pain and she realized that, at last, she had come out the other side. There was a rush of light and a sensation of leaving the worst behind her. She saw the ceiling then, moving her head, the wall opposite. There was a picture in a frame: a young, very confident-looking man in Arab dress. He was standing in the wind with his fist raised above him. Next to the picture was an open door, leading to a corridor. Early morning light was slanting down, hitting the corner of her bed. She was desperately thirsty. She could feel the bandage tightly woven around her head but that was good. Before, she hadn’t even been aware it was there.

“Scarlett…?”

Lohan was still with her. He was moving towards her bed, leaning over her. But as he came into focus, she saw that it wasn’t Lohan at all. Somehow they had all got switched in the escape from the temple. The man had a lean, intelligent face, a slightly crooked nose and dirty blond hair, cut short and tangled. Scarlett recognized the journalist, Richard Cole.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I’ll get the doctor. Is there anything you want?”

“A drink.”

“Here…” He picked up a glass, held it to her lips.

Scarlett swallowed. She felt the water go down.

“I was so worried about you,” Richard said. “But you’re looking much better now. You’re going to be fine.”

There were so many questions. The first one was the most obvious. “Where am I?”

Richard gritted his teeth. He sighed. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t asked.”

TWELVE

The last minutes in the Tai Shan Temple would stay with Richard for the rest of his life.

Everything had happened so quickly. The race across the city with Matt and Scarlett as the typhoon relentlessly destroyed everything around them. The temple itself, with dead bodies littering the ground, killed by the Triad soldiers who had been sent ahead to prepare the way for them. The sudden appearance of Scott and Pedro, carried thousands of miles from Peru in the blink of an eye. Then the gunshot. For a dreadful moment, Richard thought that Matt had been hit, but then he had seen Scarlett fall right in front of him and he had scooped her into his arms, knowing that the wound was bad, seeing the blood spread across his shirt.

And with Scarlett unconscious, the entire temple had given itself to the storm. The walls had been ripped apart like damp paper and he knew that if they waited more than a few seconds, the magical door that was their only way out would disappear. Matt had given the order and of course they had all obeyed. Richard remembered the fourteen-year-old boy he had first met in the Yorkshire town of Greater Malling. Then, Matt had been almost helpless, a delinquent in trouble with the police, and fostered by a woman who delighted in taunting him. It was only after Matt had discovered his power that he had begun to change, taking his place as the leader of the Gatekeepers. He had stopped being afraid.

They had plunged through the door just seconds apart, and even then Richard had wondered how it was going to work. The doors had been constructed for the Gatekeepers but each of them was allowed to take one person with them – one passenger. Who would decide where they were going? Weren’t they meant to have agreed on it before they left?

Through the door. If Richard had expected anything magical about the experience – a tunnel of bright lights and perhaps a whoosh of acceleration – he would have been disappointed. The other side was pitch-black. He was briefly aware of Jamie next to him, or maybe it was his brother, Scott, and then he was on his own with Scarlett still unconscious in his arms. He peered back through the darkness, but there was nothing. He wasn’t quite sure what to do, but at the same time he was very aware of the situation he was in. No matter where he ended up, his first job was to get Scarlett to a hospital. She could die in his arms.