The Book of Doom - By Barry Hutchison Page 0,43

a light mounted in the ceiling and a rectangular LCD display built into one of the walls.

“Going up,” said the voice.

Zac took a look back along the corridor and found it still in darkness. He could hear the faint clicking sound of ten thousand blinking eyelids, and the distant din of fighting from beyond the door.

“Hurry, Zac Corgan. I do not have all day.”

“All right, all right. Keep your hair on,” Zac muttered, then he stepped into the elevator, turned round, and watched the doors slide closed. The number 666 flashed up in red on the display and the lift began to climb, slowly at first, but quickly picking up speed until Zac felt the G-force pressing down on him.

Just a minute or so later, he experienced a tiny moment of near-weightlessness as the lift came to an abrupt stop. He waited for the doors to open and, after what felt like a very long time, they did.

He stepped out of the lift and gazed around at the room he had arrived in.

It took up roughly the same amount of space as the dance floor downstairs had done, but it couldn’t have looked more different. A luxurious red carpet covered the floor. Vast chandeliers hung from the high, domed ceiling, casting a twinkling glow across the antique furniture. Something classical and dreary was being played on a vintage gramophone over in the corner, and the thudding of the dance music downstairs felt like a dim and distant memory.

“Greetings, Zac Corgan. Welcome to the home of Argus.”

“Where are you?” Zac asked. He looked over the room. “Show yourself.”

“I am here, Zac Corgan,” the voice said. Greek. It was definitely Greek. “I am behind you.”

Zac spun round and saw the lift doors close. There were pillars on either side of the lift, each several times wider than he was. Something about them drew his eye, and it took him just a moment to realise that they weren’t pillars at all. They were legs.

Slowly – ever so slowly – Zac looked up.

Angelo’s heart was playing the bongos in his chest. His arms were pinned by his sides and he could now say with absolute certainty that he definitely needed the toilet.

He was wrapped in a tight cocoon, unable to move, barely able to breathe. He felt as if he were dangling from a great height, being buffeted back and forth on the breeze, and occasionally bumped against something solid and flat. He was absolutely correct in every one of these assumptions.

It was warm in the cocoon, and as panic tightened round Angelo like a noose, it began to get considerably warmer.

Zac didn’t believe in giants. Or rather, he hadn’t believed in giants, until now.

The giant sitting in front of him had changed his mind. He was perched on an enormous throne, into the base of which the elevator doors had been built. He sat forward in the chair, his metre-long fingers gripping the armrests, his shed-sized head lolling down almost to his chest.

The clothes he wore were musty and thick with dust, giving him the look of a long-neglected museum exhibit. His skin was blotchy and held together with stitches. They criss-crossed his face like a city-centre road map, and Zac would’ve sworn that the thing in the chair was long dead, had it not been for the eyes.

The eyes were open. And they were staring down at him.

“Hi,” Zac said. “Almost didn’t see you there.”

“Hello, Zac Corgan,” said that voice again. The giant on the throne made no movement. “Will you bow before the all-seeing Argus?”

Zac gave the question all the consideration it deserved. “Doubt it,” he said.

The voice suddenly brightened. “Good. I cannot stand a kiss-ass!” it cried, and Zac realised it was coming from elsewhere in the room.

He turned to find a man grinning at him from behind dark-tinted glasses. The man was a little shorter than Zac, but considerably wider. He was bare from the waist up, his bulging belly sagging down over a baggy pair of white shorts that were tied with red bows round his knees.

His head was bald, but partially covered by a small red fez that he wore at a jaunty angle. The centre of the man’s chest was matted with thick black hair, and his top lip was weighed down by an equally thick, equally black moustache.

All these things registered just barely at the back of Zac’s mind. The front of his mind, meanwhile, was fully occupied with just one thought: nipples.

Where the man’s