The Book of Doom - By Barry Hutchison Page 0,39

she said. “He’s seen us already.”

“Have you been here before?” Zac asked.

“What? Yeah, I come here all the time,” Herya said. “Like I told you, I get around.”

“And you know Argus?”

Herya gave the briefest of nods. “Yep,” she said quietly.

“Right, then you can lead the way.”

The Valkyrie hesitated. “Of course,” she said.

She took a step in the direction of Eyedol. Her fingers went to the sheath tucked up inside her leather bodice, and to her mother’s knife that she had secured there.

She had a feeling they were going to need it.

AC HAD BEEN expecting doormen at the entrance to the club, but he needn’t have worried. The music had gradually become louder as they’d got nearer the building, and then become almost ear-shatteringly so when a set of double doors slid open at their approach.

“Welcome to Eyedol,” chimed a mechanical voice. It had to be coming from somewhere around the door, but it sounded to Zac as if it were right inside his head. “You’ll never want to leave.”

He and Herya stopped inside the doorway, which swished closed unnoticed a few seconds later. Angelo hid behind them, mumbling a prayer beneath his breath. As far as he was concerned, they’d just entered his own personal Hell.

He found the noise overwhelming. Every beat shook his bones, making his entire skeleton tremble a hundred and fifty times per minute. Red spotlights swept across the high ceiling and walls. Purple lasers painted pictures in clouds of blue smoke. Enormous flat-panel TV screens showing nothing but flames hung on every wall. The fires were only illusions, but Angelo could swear the heat from them was real.

A mass of heaving, sweaty bodies filled the dance floor, gyrating and twisting as if in the grip of madness. The dancers themselves took many forms, but the way they moved and thronged together gave them the appearance of a single living thing with too many limbs and heads to count.

The whole ceiling was designed to look like a bulging bloodshot eye, ogling endlessly down at the masses moving below. It was the single creepiest thing Angelo had seen in his life.

“I don’t like this,” he said.

“What?” asked Zac.

“I said I don’t like this,” repeated Angelo, raising his voice.

Zac pointed to his ear. “Can’t hear you. What?”

Angelo’s wide eyes darted around the cavernous room. The noise, the lights, the movement, they were all doing something to him, making his heart race and his head feel light.

Deep down inside the boy, something stirred.

“I said,” he began, his voice cracking. The next few words came out as a deafening roar: “I don’t like this!”

Zac ducked away, a hand clamped over his ear, a bubble of pain bursting on his lips. Down on the dance floor, a dozen heads glanced in their direction, before going back to thrashing and writhing around.

Angelo was trembling when Zac turned to look at him. His skin was slick with sweat, and in the dark centre of his eyes there was a dim red glow.

“It’s OK. Relax,” Zac said. He put his hands on the boy’s shoulders, then recoiled from the heat. “Angelo, listen to me,” he said more urgently. “Calm down, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Don’t like it. Don’t like it.”

“I know, but you have to calm down.”

“D-don’t like it.” The words came as a strangled wheeze from Angelo’s cracked lips. “Make... it... stop.”

Herya elbowed Zac out of the way. She smiled down at Angelo and pointed to the door. “Maybe you should wait outside.”

Angelo turned to Zac. The boy’s eyes were a shimmering haze of heat that flickered in time with the thumping beat of the music. “B-but...”

“It’s fine, we’ll call if we need you,” Herya said. She looked to Zac. “Right?”

“Um, yes. Of course. We’ll call if we need you,” Zac said.

“O-OK,” agreed Angelo, and there was a stench like sulphur on his breath. “I’ll w-wait outside.”

With a stuttered nod and a final glance around the inside of the club, Angelo backed towards the door. It slid open at his approach, making him jump. He waved gingerly at Zac and Herya, and then he was gone, leaving behind footprint-shaped scorch marks on the floor.

“That was close,” Zac said, staring down at the footprints. He looked up at the door as it closed shut. “You think he’ll be OK out there?”

“Better than he’d be in here,” Herya shrugged. “This way’s safer for all of us. He’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, I mean it’s just the Greek underworld,” Zac said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He could have