“I can’t believe this mush is coming out of my mouth.”
— Bea
DEEPER UNDERGROUND
Marina Blavatsky escorts both agents to a small room somewhere at the back of the hotel, just off the wine cellar. It is small, and they need to descend steps to get there, and that is all either of them can say, lost in the balm of her presence.
“I understand you wish to join us at our Sanctuary,” Blavatsky says in the soft, earnest voice of someone who understands she needs to make people believe in her. And it’s so, so easy to believe, her calming presence emanating a sense of peace and contentment. “What is it you seek?”
“Oh!” Thomson says as Ashley. “I have been experiencing some blockage in my heart chakra. I have tried for a long time to resolve it myself. I’ve done a lot of work on it, but I just can’t seem to clear it.”
“The heart chakra is commonly blocked by our exposure to the ills of the modern world,” Blavatsky says sorrowfully. “War, conflict, our destruction of nature — all these things serve to make our souls sick and our hearts ache. Tell me, do you have any negative experiences in your base chakra?”
“No,” Ashely replies, clearly grateful for this blessing. “I feel entirely grounded. The power flows up from my basal charka to my solar plexus, but then my heart chakra blocks it reaching my third eye.”
“I am sure we can help you reconnect your higher vision to your root,” Blavatsky says. She turns to Bea. “And what about you, my dear? How do you think we can help you?”
“Well, I’m just out here for some rest and relaxation, really,” Bea says. “Your retreat seems like a nice place.”
“We don’t offer mere rest and relaxation,” Blavatsky says, letting her expression reveal a trace of disappointment. “Our Sanctuary is for people who wish to work on self-improvement and reconnecting to the One-Consciousness of their Higher Selves.”
“Yes, well, I just need some R&R, really, and Ashley is keen to go, so I thought I’d come along with them as your retreat just seems so great.”
“Hmm. Well, I think it would be better if you stayed here for a while and perhaps gave some serious consideration as to how we could help you improve yourself,” Blavatsky says. “Meditate upon your lost connection to One-Consciousness, and I will return in a day or so to see how you are getting on. But you, my child,” she smiles serenely at Ashley, and her smile is like an ancient deity sending a sunbeam to pierce a stormcloud, “you can come with me.”
Blavatsky leads Ashley from the small room and back into the cellar, and to a stout metal bulkhead in one corner. Bea hurries after, saying, “No, really, I want to stay with my friend,” and is stopped at the door by a couple of great hulking lads who do a very effective job of blocking the way. Each one of them looks like three gorillas stuffed into a human suit, and they are implacable.
“I need to go with my friend,” Bea says. They remain impassive. “Look, I’ve got her phone, if you’d just let me past for a moment so I can give it to her…”
They might as well be statues.
Cursing under her breath, Bea kicks one of them hard in the shin, and, when he bends to brush the dirt from his trouser leg, snatches some hair from his head. He doesn’t seem to notice.
She turns and draws a rough sketch of him in the dirt on the floor of the cellar. Head, arms, legs, a torso like a brick shithouse… That will have to do. She scatters the hair over the sketch and, with a sharp, violent movement of one finger, scores a line though his stomach.
This is rough and ready dark magic. With a more detailed poppet there is all sorts she could do, but with this brief sketch the effect is mild, if unexpected.
The man she kicked makes a noise like a blocked sewer. It comes from his abdominal region. He clutches his gut, and there is an almighty flapping, farting sound from the vicinity of his trousers. The sound is accompanied by a stench as foul as Satan himself eating rancid eggs then letting out a vast and potent bottom burp in the lower depths of Hell.
The guard’s face turns bright red, and he runs off in the direction Blavatsky took Thomson. His twin turns to watch him go, an expression of disgust on his face.
Bea takes the opportunity to slip past the guard and head on into the cave.
There is an area of dirt covered by lots of footprints heading in both directions, as if this route in and out of the hotel has been used by many people, or a few people for a long time. On the left is an area of water, glowing with a soft, greenish-turquoise light, the colour of oxidised copper. On the right, the cave wall is set with irregular, distantly-spaced amber downlighters, which give enough light to see but not so much that night vision is destroyed.
Following the path, she comes to a wooden boardwalk, which tracks around the side of the cave, over the water. Following the stench, as much as anything else, Bea is about 200m into the cave when she hears a metal clang, as of a bulkhead door being shut.
She has seen enough, and without her kit there’s not much she can do. She heads back to get the others.
Thomson-who-is-Ashley accompanies Blavatsky all the way through an underground grotto. The lights are an exquisite amber glow that sets off the stalactites and rocky fissures to aesthetic perfection, and the water is a calming, blissful shade of tropical blue. They pass through another metal door and reach a sturdy wooden landing stage. Ahead, the cave is flooded with that same pristine water, but there is a boat waiting for them. They climb in, the boat held steady by a man with the height and muscle of a bodybuilder, and then he gets in behind them and punts them down through the cave.
Perhaps they travelled for minutes, perhaps they travelled for hours. It is hard to say, wrapped in the blissful contentment of Blavatsky’s presence. Eventually, they disembark onto another small, underground beach, then leave the cave system by an exit Thomson recognises from the video Maya shot in her seagull scouting run.
There is a car waiting — a luxurious 4×4, probably a Range Rover. It takes them to the villa where the team first registered their interest in coming to stay.
Blavatsky ushers Ashley into a spacious room where the colours are soothing tones of oatmeal and ripe wheat. A delightful scent of sandalwood and cypress suffuses the air with the healthy, calming aroma of a luxury Scandinavian spa.
“So. Tell me more about your blocked heart chakra,” she says, patting a seat.
“As I said, my heart chakra just feels blocked. I can’t get in touch with my third eye properly. It’s very frustrating. I’ve tried everything, and I really hope you can help.”
“I’m sure we can. You see, our personal power is like water in a river. It needs to be free to flow, free to find the pathway to our own personal enlightenment, and that path can be different at different stages. We become stifled by the trappings of the modern world, and substitute personal growth for acquisition and power over others rather than power over ourselves. We see this kind of blockage here very often. I would like to introduce you to my partner, Obsidian. He has a powerful kundalini energy that is most potent in these cases. Would you like to meet him?”
As they listen to this, Thomson constructs a partition inside their minds, channelling every childhood experience of living in a commune with hippy parents who once fed them mushroom tea to demonstrate to a friend having a bad trip that it was his own fault for not getting his karmic balance sorted out before trying to talk to the mushroom people. Thomson had a great time. Now it is Ashley who is open to everything Blavatsky says, and the more Blavatsky talks, the more Ashley thinks she has a point. Well of course her heart is blocked. Look at all the terrible things happening in the world. And maybe the things they said to the receptionist when they first arrived hadn’t been made up, maybe they only thought they were inventing them to get on the inside. Now they are here, it seems only right that they get that blockage sorted out so they can achieve ever greater levels of insight.
“Yes!” Ashley says. “I would love to meet him.”
Bea runs back through the cave and meets John and Maya, on their way down the steps having failed to find either Thomson or Bea in the bar.
“They’ve got Thomson!” Bea says. “We were looking at the picture, and this woman just wafted in and she put her hands on us and… Guys, I think she has magic abilities. It just felt so right for her to touch us.”
“Slow down,” John says. “What happened?”
“This woman! She came and touched us and took us to another room. Thomson started talking about heart chakras and — I can’t believe this mush is coming out of my mouth — and how it was blocked and she couldn’t see through her third eye any more or something. Then, when she talked to me, I just told her I wanted some rest and relaxation and she lost interest. Just like that, I feel like I snapped out of it, but she took Thomson.”
“Where?” Maya asks.
“Down there. There’s a cave. I couldn’t follow because there were a couple of goons blocking the ay, and by the time I managed to get past them, Thomson and the woman were gone.”
“Time to gear up,” Maya says.
They run upstairs and get some weapons, Maya going as far as donning her armour, then they head back down to the basement.
“What’s that on the floor?” Maya asks. “Looks like some black magic has been going on down here.”
Bea shrugs. John looks suspicious.
The door is a thick steel bulkhead, the type found on submarines. This time, although the two goons have gone, it is locked.
“What do you think, John? Would your baseball bat take care of that?” Maya asks.
“I don’t know. It looks pretty thick.”
“How did you get through the gate at Codona’s?” Bea asked. “That was a spell, wasn’t it?”
“It was an orb with a door opening spell bound to it. I don’t have it any more.”
“Okay, but what about dragon fire? Would that maybe weaken it so John could have at it with his baseball bat?”
“I suppose it’s worth a shot. My dragon fire isn’t like a welding torch, it’s more of a flood. I don’t think it’s hot enough to melt the steel. It didn’t melt the brass plate from the vampire’s coffin, but we could have a go.” She looks around the room. It’s not very big, certainly not for a minibus-sized dragon, but she should just about fit if she lets her tail go up the stairs. “You guys had better give me some room. I don’t want to squish you.”
Bea and John make room, and Maya squeezes her dragon form into the wine cellar. Bottles smash. Half a dozen bottles of 153 Chateau Lafite Rothschild spills their heady contents into the dirt, making wine connoisseurs everywhere weep. A number of fine cheese smear into the walls as shelves crack and racks splinter. An aged ham is crushed into the ceiling overhead.
Maya turns her flame onto the door for a couple of minutes. The stone bakes. The cheese melts and toasts. Eventually she is squashed into a very expensive, burnt red wine fondue. She turns back into human form and brushes melted cheese off her shirt.
“Aw, man,” John says, as he gingerly tip toes back into the wine cellar. “Now I really fancy a cheese toastie.”
He approaches the door, settles his stance, and swings. Right at the apex of the curve, the baseball bat accelerates, almost leaping from his hands, and smashes into the door. The heated sandstone crumbles around it, weakened by the heat driving moisture from the interstitial spaces, and the door flies into the cave. It lands in the water with a splash. Water drenches the wooden walkway and the dirt beach.
Under the cooked cheese and boiled wine is a distinct eggy smell, along with the unmistakable aroma of barbecued pork.
John pulls a face. “Oh no. I know what else smells like barbecued pork.”
They carefully enter the cave. As they do, a pair of shoes floats up from where the door landed in the water. A greasy slick spreads on the water.
“Ew,” is John’s only comment. He avoids looking down into the water.
“We should check,” Bea says.
“Check what?” John pulls a face. “You want to go down in the water and see if Goon Mark II is still alive?”
“Was it just his shoes that floated up?”
Wondering what else Bea might be considering, John says, “Yes.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right then.” Bea nods, satisfied. “Let’s go.”
Ashley’s eyes widen as Obsidian enters the room and stands in front of the window looking out onto the surrounding shrubs. He is more than 2m tall, with long, brown hair, a chiselled jaw, blue eyes, and a lean, muscular body of which entirely too much is on show as a result of the fact he is wearing what looks like a loincloth made of torn chamois leather.
“Obsidian leads our Men’s Primal Power meditation groups,” Blavatsky says. From the way she looks at him, and he at her, there is more to the relationship between these two than conning gullible hippies out of their life savings in the promise of self-improvement.
“You know,” Ashley says, in response to the frantic prompting from their more sensible alter-ego Thomson, “I’d really like to learn how to do this myself.”
“Oh, I understand entirely,” Blavatsky tells them with a sympathetic smile. Is that a hint of superciliousness underneath, though? “But unblocking such things when you are the one who is blocked is next to impossible.”
“Even so, I’d really like to try. I think I’d feel more empowered.”
“I do understand, but Obsidian is blessed with exceptionally potent, powerful kundalini energy, and is particularly skilled at clearing blockages of this nature.”
“Um, yes, but I’d feel much more able to channel my own power in pursuit of my higher calling if I did this myself, rather than accepting what someone else did for me.”
Blavatsky sighs a little. “Unblocking something like this is expecting a river to unblock a great dam that has been built across it. The river may not be able to find enough energy, partially because of the dam, and it takes someone else to come along with pick and shovel or, when it comes to it, explosives, and unblock it. Only then can the river use its own power to find its true path. That is all Obsidian wishes to do for you. Remove that dam so your power can flow into its correct path. He will not choose the path for you. He is particularly powerful at such things.”
“All the same—” Ashley is almost squeaking now. In how many ways and how many times do they have to say no?
“Very well,” Blavatsky sighs. “I can see you are uncomfortable, no doubt a symptom of the very blockage you have asked us to help you remedy. Would you prefer if I introduced you to one of our meditation groups, and you can work away at it yourself? Perhaps after you’ve chipped enough of the loose material off the edges, you’ll feel ready for Obsidian to clear the rest for you.”
“Oh yes. That would be super, thank you,” Ashley says, unable to contain her relief.
Blavatsky goes to Obsidian and murmurs something in his ear. He grunts, wordlessly, and leaves the room. A moment later, Luna from reception comes in.
“Luna, show Ashley to one of the kundalini yoga meditation groups, please.”
“Of course, Madame,” Luna says with what looks like a slight bow.
Luna gestures for Ashley to precede her, and guides them from the villa.
“I’m so thrilled you were able to join us,” she trills once they are outside.
“Yeah,” Thomson says, a little shaky in the aftermath of what feels like a very close call. “Nice to see you too.”
Down in the cave, the rest of the team finds another door. It’s the same as the first: a metal bulkhead door, waterproof, as if someone expects the cave to flood at some point and is trying to stop water flooding up in the hotel. Maya gives the wheel a shove. It shifts a little — the door isn’t locked — but it’s too stiff to move. Probably needs someone with the strength of three gorillas.
“Should have brought some of that rendered fat,” Bea says, earning horrified gasps.
“You’re getting worse, Bea,” John says.
Bea grabs the other side of the wheel from Maya and, with John keeping time for them (much to Bea’s irritation), they get it open.
On the other side of the door Is a small beach with a wooden landing stage built against it. The air is bitterly cold, all the heat sucked away by the glacier-melt water.
“You’ve got your sword, right?” John asks Maya. “Is it…” He breaks off laughing. “Is it a long one?”
Maya rolls her eyes. “It’s a two-hander, John.”
This does not help.
Eventually John manages to explain that he wanted to use it to check how deep it is, but the water is incredibly clear and they can see it is at least eight feet where the small quay disappears into the water, and probably gets deeper beyond that.
“And they went down there?” Maya asks. She kneels to test the temperature of the water. Icy cold.
“Must have had a boat,” Bea says. “No boat here, though. We could swim.”
“The water is SUPER cold,” Maya tells her. “And we don’t know if those lights go all the way, or if there are other side passages, ways to get lost.”
“Well, what if you go down there in your seagull form?” Bea asks.
“I don’t think that’s the best idea.”
“They’re bound to be going back to the compound, right?” John says. “I mean, we know that’s where they’re based. We don’t know our way through this tunnel, we can’t call Thomson because there’s no reception down here and we don’t even know if they still have their phone on them. We can’t use GPS to find our way for the same reason. So maybe we should just go back to the compound in the car and look for Thomson that way. You know, like sensible people. Not that we’re especially know for being sensible, but still.”
“Yeah,” Maya agrees, peering ahead into the depths of the cave. It really is very cold and dark down there. “Let’s grab Thomson’s stuff and go.”
Luna takes Ashley over to one of the meditation groups on a large, grassy area between the potato field and the woodland that buffers the working estate from the mountains. Around a dozen people, men and women, all dressed in white, are gathered on and around a white blanket next to what looks suspiciously like a Maypole. Luna crosses to a lithe, athletic blonde woman with glowing skin and perfect, toothpaste-advert teeth, and whispers something to her. She rises gracefully to her feet, like a ballet dancer, and comes across to where Ashley is waiting.
“Hello Ashley. I am Topaz. I am the leader of one of our Kundalini Yoga groups and Luna tells me Madame has suggested you join us for the day while you get your bearings. I know this place can be overwhelming at first.” She smiles a toothpaste smile. “Have you done yoga before?”
“Yes. Not this particular type of yoga, but I have done yoga.”
“Excellent. You should feel right at home.” She gestures to the blanket. “Have a seat. Would you like some tea?”
There is a glass urn in the middle of the blanket. If that’s tea, it’s not the kind a builder would be pleased to see in his mug. The liquid has a greenish-yellow tint to it, and there are flowers and herbs swimming around in there.
“Thank you,” Ashley says. Luna nods to Topaz and then strides away towards the villa.
Topaz pours a glass of tea from the urn and hands it to Ashley. Thomson sniffs it. Chamomile, certainly. Maybe nettle. Some mint, a touch of cinnamon, ginger and… Oh my. That’s artemisia. Pungent, intensely herby, incredibly fragrant in the way you know means it’s bitter as all hell. Thomson isn’t sure what the wormwood is supposed to do — they’re pretty damn sure it’s not to expel parasites — but is 100% certain they do not want to drink it. They pretend to take sips while tipping it surreptitiously onto the grass.
Once the cup is empty, Topaz stands and claps her hands. “All right, class, time to begin.”
They start in child’s pose, which is unusual. Topaz has them breathe in and out, and in and out, and then moves into a variation on Sun Salutation. She says, breathlessly, “Now breathe in and feel the grounding energy of the Earth beneath you rise up and connect with your root chakra. Feel it rise up and in and up and…”
Thomson chokes and scrabbles back from their mat. Topaz notices and tells the rest of the class to carry on.
“Are you all right?” she asks, concerned.
“It’s just… Maybe the tea? All so…” Thomson exaggerates their shakiness and pretends to lose their balance. “Overwhelming.”
“That’s all right. These things can affect us like that. Let it wash over you. Come, sit by this tree. Lean into the tree.” She sits Thomson-Ashley down on the grass in the shade of a large sycamore. “Feel the tree. Be one with the tree. Let its strength nurture and sustain you. Let its mighty length give you strength. Breathe with the tree. Be the tree.”
“I will,” Ashley says, breathlessly. “I will.”
Topaz goes back to class but continues to watch her latest pupil keenly.
As Bea, John and Maya emerge from the cave system into the cellar, they find George Figgs clutching his hair in the middle of his ruined cellar, wailing.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?” he screams, frothing at the mouth.
“Us? Nothing,” John says.
“Oh. Hope there was nothing valuable in here, ” Maya adds, poking a cheesy splinter with her toe.
“There was an ENTIRE CASE of Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1953 down here. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH IT WAS WORTH?”
“Not much of a wine drinker,” John says with a shrug.
“What did you DO? Did you bring EXPLOSIVES into MY HOTEL?”
“Don’t be silly,” Bea says. “Looks like rats to me.”
“Rats? RATS? Look at the cheese! The wine! Le jambon! Ma charcuterie!” He pulls some hair from his head. “Rats would not do this. IT IS NOT FRENCH.”
“Um.” John scratches his head. This guy is taking it pretty hard.
“GET OUT!” George screeches.
“Yeah, we were just going to get our things and—”
“GET OUT! OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT!”
“Wait,” John says, as if he has forgotten something. He reaches over to the wall and drags his finger through some melted Camembert. He sticks it in his mouth. “Yum.”
George screams. It sounds like a pig with its tail caught in the barn door. He chases them out of the cellar. “You will pay for this! I will charge the damage to that ridiculous credit card you carry! Don’t think I didn’t recognise it!”
The team run upstairs, grab their things, and leave.
“Wow,” says John. “He was a bit dramatic.”
“Yeah,” agrees Maya. “I wonder what his problem was.”
“So, shall we go and look for Thomson?” Bea asks.
They drive back to the compound and park in a layby near a small wood, pulling as far off the road as they can get without running over the fence.
“Seagull?” John asks.
“Seagull,” Maya confirms. She sheds her armour, because the carrying capacity of a gull is only about a kilo, and armour doesn’t vanish in quite the same way that clothes do when she changes.
Taking off, she circles around the perimeter of the estate in the same way she did before. She sees fresh tyre tracks at the cave entrance and, edging into the wind, drifts slowly over a grassy area where a group is participating in some very loud and grunty yoga of a type she doesn’t recognise. A pair of feet are just visible under the canopy of a nearby tree, and, on a hunch, she drifts lower still and closer to the tree, as if scouring the grass for worms.
It’s Thomson all right. Maya lands on the far side of the tree and waddles around to where they are sitting.
Thomson spots the gull. “Maya,” they whisper. “If that’s you, do the seagull tippy-tap dance.”
Maya papples the grass as if looking for worms.
“Oh thank God,” Thomson mutters. “Listen, I’m okay. I think I’m good on the inside here and can learn a lot.”
Maya does the patter dance again to show she understands.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Thomson says.
Maya waddles back round the tree then takes off, running across the grass to build up speed.
Back at the car, she updates the others.
“We need some way to stay in touch,” Bea says. “Do you think they’ve still got their phone?”
“Maybe. Let’s hope they’ve got it on silent,” John says, although Thomson always has it on silent. “But it would be pretty obvious and they might take it off her.”
“Maybe there’s something in the surveillance kit,” Maya says.
They dig around and find a tiny two-way transmitter-receiver, small enough to disappear inside an agent’s ear.
“Cool. But how are we going to get it to them?” John asks.
“I’ll just change back into a seagull and take it to them,” Maya says. “Have we got a backpack that might fit? We should have asked Merlin to make a seagull sized backpack.”
“It would be pretty obvious if a seagull went up to Thomson wearing a backpack and they had to dig around inside it. How about this instead?”
And he holds up an empty packet of Benuts 3D Bugles. Paprika flavour.
“Perfect,” says Maya.
