THE HISTORY OF THINGS TO COME: A Supernatural Thriller (The Dark Horizon Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  With his police badge raised high above his head, Milton burst through the front door of The Faversham and was quickly followed by four armed uniformed officers. A hundred terrified faces stared at Milton in complete silence. After nodding his orders, two of the policemen headed towards the swing doors at the back of the restaurant leading to the kitchen, and the others took positions in the centre of the dining hall. Half-walking, half-running, Milton ran over to the undercover cloakroom attendant.

  She stood there shaking, her wide eyes staring into empty space. Slowly, the detective unpeeled her fingers from the handle grip of her firearm and dropped the gun into his coat pocket. Then he lowered her trembling hands, waved over to the police officer wearing the red lumberjack shirt and directed him to look after her.

  At his feet was the body of a dead man whose face had been cloven in two by a spike of molten metal travelling at twice the speed of sound. The effects had been catastrophic.

  Milton’s eyes tracked over the body to the canvas bag lying on the floor. He walked over to it while snapping on a pair of surgical gloves. The bag was about the size of a laptop case; light green, almost military. He thought for a second and then pulled back the zip. For a long while, he stood there staring at the bag’s contents. It just didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.

  The sound of screeching tyres from a police car arriving outside shook Milton from his thoughts. Mumbling to himself, he searched the inside pocket of his coat for his mobile phone and dialled a number. It only took two rings to get an answer.

  ‘Vincent, its Lukas. There’s been another shooting.’

  ‘Jesus, where?’

  The detective whispered into his handset. ‘Soho, in a packed bloody restaurant. Vincent, I’ll explain later. Now I need your help.’

  The detective picked up the canvas bag and placed it the counter. ‘I need you to tell me why people are being killed because of these fucking books.’

  Chapter 2

  Wednesday 10 December

  Vincent Blake waited patiently for DCI Milton to finish reading the final page of the forensics report. In that moment, two things separated the men: the first was an unremarkable office table, its well-worn exterior a testament to the years it had stood in Milton’s office; the second was certainty as to the provenance of the small leather-bound book sitting proudly on the table top.

  The policeman gave out a deep sigh, dropped the report nonchalantly onto the floor and leant back in his chair. It creaked back disapprovingly. Milton was an ox of a man who stood over six feet five inches tall. His skin was dark from his Caribbean ancestry, and his face wore a prominent scar from a knife attack during a drugs bust south of the river. He looked over to Blake, and the crack forming at the side of his mouth stayed around long enough to form a transitory grin.

  ‘Vincent, all this lab stuff means nothing to me. What can you tell me? Is it genuine?’ Blake leant forward and slid the volume carefully across the table to his old friend.

  In contrast to the detective’s imposing frame, Blake was a lean man. He was dressed smartly in an open white shirt, a pressed grey suit and a pair of gleaming black boots. He dragged his chair behind him and quickly positioned himself at Milton’s side, as if he were there to turn the sheets of music for a concert pianist.

  ‘This one’s a puzzle, it really is.’ Blake’s eyes were now locked onto the small, dark-tanned volume finished with gilt decorations. ‘The cover is good. I initially thought it might have been aged chemically, but you can usually smell if it’s been done that way.’ Blake leant over the book and gave the cover an exaggerated sniff. ‘There’s absolutely no trace of chemical tampering. It’s in fabulous condition.’

  He opened the antique book and continued. ‘I’ve done isotopic testing to confirm the age of the paper and the type of parchment glues used in the bindings, and they all check out.’

  He rotated the volume ninety degrees so that the policeman could get a clear view of the first page. It was blank apart from a signature in neat lettering in its top right-hand corner.

  Isaac Newton

  ‘The handwriting is consistent with the originals in the British Library. See the sweep in the tail of the letter I and the forward leaning letter S? These are all very characteristic.’

  Blake paused and again rearranged his chair position. ‘The answer to your question—whether the volume is a fake or not—is actually contained within the forensics report.’ A smile spread slowly across Blake’s face as he recovered the abandoned report from the floor. ‘I asked the forensics team to run a full spectroscopy analysis of the coloured inks used throughout the book.’ After quickly finding the appropriate place in the report, he read aloud the list of inks that most closely matched the atomic profiles revealed by the laboratory analysis. ‘Orpiment, yellow ochre, madder, azur d’Allemagne, vermillion, malachite green, ivory black, red ochre, vert azur—’

  ‘Okay, Vincent, enough, enough!’ the policeman protested. ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘My point is that all these colours were commonly available in London in Newton’s time, but getting hold of these colours today, blending them and artificially ageing them to produce these shades would be very difficult to do.’ A frown fleetingly passed over Blake’s brow. ‘Every part of my analysis indicates that it’s genuine.’ He paused. ‘The bigger mystery is what does it all mean?’

  Blake thumbed carefully through the yellowing pages and then let the volume fall open. For a long moment, the two men just stared at the revealed writing. Both sides were alike, as if the book’s spine were a mirror producing a reflection of itself. The entire surface area of each page was filled with handwritten numbers neatly tabulated into columns, with ten columns to a side. At certain points down the length of each column, a particular number was stained with a spot of translucent coloured paint. Finally, Blake broke the silence.

  ‘Every page of the notebook is the same. Newton wrote hundreds of notebooks during his lifetime, but not like this one.’

  Milton gave a quiet grunt and nodded.

  ‘They could be tables of results from his experiments, but the numbers and colours appear to follow no discernible pattern. More likely that it’s code.’

  ‘Code?’ said the detective.

  ‘Code to protect his research from prying eyes,’ said Blake. ‘Lots of the old scientists did it, and some modern ones still do. It’s all about being the first to go public with a discovery. Until you go public, you protect what you’ve discovered. Reputations depend on it.’

  ‘So you’ve got no idea what it means?’ asked Milton.

  ‘No idea at all.’ Blake shrugged and gave out a long sigh. ‘Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can come up with.’

  Milton checked the date on his watch. ‘Two weeks. You’ve got two weeks and then it will need to be returned to its owner,’ said Milton.

  Blake nodded.

  The policeman retrieved a sheet of folded paper from his jacket pocket, along with a shiny silver foil bag, and smoothed both out on the table top. Milton picked up his pen and signed the bottom of the Evidence Appropriation Form with a casual squiggle before sliding it and the silver evidence bag over to Blake. The detective waited until Blake had signed before continuing.

  ‘Two weeks, no longer,’ said Milton.

  ‘Right you are. What about the courier who was shot? You get an ID on him?’

  ‘There wasn’t much left of his face, but his fingerprints came up with a match. Hold on.’ Blake waited as Milton retrieved his briefcase from underneath the table with his feet. He picked it up, laid it flat next to the book and flipped open the locks. From inside he located a photograph and handed it to Blake.

  ‘Tarek Vinka. A grade-one hard bastard. Bosnian, ex-army, turned mercenary. Interpol has been after his hide for years.’

  Blake stared at the police mug shot of a man standing against a back
ground of horizontal lines indicating the man’s height. He looked like a bare-knuckle boxer.

  ‘He’s been linked to a number of armed robberies in France and Luxembourg, and a kidnapping in Milan. I don’t think he’s going to be missed anytime soon.’ The detective gave a half-smile that died fast. ‘So we have another robbery.’ Milton started rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘And a Bosnian mercenary gunned down in a busy restaurant. The only clue we have is this bloody book.’

  Simultaneously, the two men gazed back at the book.

  ‘There is one thing,’ said Blake. ‘The last page is different.’

  Before the policeman had time to ask why, Blake was busy locating the page.

  ‘There,’ said Blake.

  ‘And what the hell is that?’

  The page staring back at the two men couldn’t have been more unlike the previous ones. Instead of having columns of numbers, the page was given over to a drawing, expertly executed in black ink. The design was circular, and its circumference almost touched the edges of the page. It was divided into twelve equal quadrants, like the spokes of a wheel. Where the end of each spoke intersected the circle’s perimeter, the same small peculiar motif had been copied.

  ‘They look like bees,’ said Milton, his eyes scanning around the face of the illustration.

  ‘I thought that too. Bees,’ agreed Blake.

  ‘And this?’ The detective pointed at the word written at the centre of the circle.

  ‘Clavis? It’s Latin,’ said Blake. ‘It means “the key”.’

  Chapter 3

  Saturday 13 December

  The early evening flurry of light snow hung in the air like a fog. Through the lens of suspended snowflakes, the lights from the constant stream of traffic moving along Clerkenwell Road were transformed into a wash of diffuse orange and reds.

  Abruptly, Vincent Blake stopped on the pavement, bringing his wife and daughter to a sudden halt beside him. Blake gently squeezed the hand that had just arrived in the large pocket of his tailored overcoat. The gloved hand felt warm and caused a big smile to crinkle across his face.

  ‘Searching for sweets, Sarah?’

  Sarah gave her dad’s finger a pinch in response.

  ‘You know me, Dad. Always searching for sweets.’

  The pretty girl of ten years looked up expectantly at her father, her face beaming. Without looking down, Blake tugged the front of the girl’s baseball cap covering her eyes. His daughter’s hand quickly recoiled from Blake’s pocket, and she went about resetting the tight curls dislodged by the movement of the hat.

  ‘Dad, the hair. Don’t touch the hair!’

  The child’s feigned annoyance dissolved as a small chocolate bar appeared before her eyes.

  ‘You are very welcome,’ said Blake, wiping away the single snowflake that had just landed on his lips.

  A man in his mid-thirties, Blake spoke in a quiet measured way that hinted at a public school education. Nomsa had often teased him that he spoke like an English diplomat, which he secretly enjoyed. His face was strong-featured without being conventionally handsome, and even under the street lights, his skin still bore the remnants of an incongruous tan. His slightly thinning hair was swept dramatically backwards, and his chin was hidden under a purple scarf. Trying to keep warm, Blake began to rock from side to side, his polished boots glistening on the damp pavement.

  ‘It’s time to head home.’ His breath condensed in the cold air as he spoke. Smiling over the folds of his scarf, Blake looked affectionately over to his wife.

  Dr Nomsa Blake was an elegant woman. She was tall, of an equal height to her husband. Apart from a simple fringe swept back across her forehead, her sleek, straightened hair was neatly tucked under a white woollen ski hat. She was pretty, with a clear café-latte complexion, which made her look younger than her thirty-nine years. Originally from Zimbabwe and educated at Cambridge, Nomsa Blake had carved out a successful career as a human rights lawyer. She gently took her husband’s arm.

  ‘Sarah wants me to help her choose a nail varnish at the chemists,’ she said. ‘On the way home, we’ll pop to the deli and pick up something for dinner. You head back and get the fire going.’ Nestling into Blake’s neck, Nomsa stared down at Sarah unwrapping the chocolate bar. Blake pulled his wife and daughter in close to himself, as if protecting them from the cold wind. Several seconds later, a muffled voice came from within the folds of his overcoat.

  ‘Dad, I can’t breathe.’

  Chuckling, he released his captive from his forced embrace. He crouched down and whispered in Sarah’s ear.

  ‘Princess, make sure Mum gets something nice for dinner,’ he said.

  Sarah returned her father a reassuring wink. ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll make sure.’

  A chilled blast of wind blew down Clerkenwell Road.

  ‘It’s freezing. Get the kettle on, love. We’ll only be a few minutes.’

  Blake hauled himself upright and kissed his wife’s cheek. He lingered for a moment and kissed her again, this time on the lips.

  ‘Oh please! Do you have to? In public and everything? You two are so embarrassing.’

  ‘What you can’t see won’t hurt you,’ said Blake.

  He gave a second tug at the peak of Sarah’s cap, and then, with a long lazy rub of his hand, further dislodged the cap from its fashionable position.

  ‘I’ll see you both in a couple of minutes, and remember … something nice for dinner.’

  With that, Vincent Blake turned up the collar of his overcoat and made his way through the lines of parked cars in the direction of home.

  ‘Okay Dad, see you later,’ waved Sarah.

  Vincent Blake didn’t hear the words of his daughter above the din of the loud London traffic.

  Chapter 4

  The ground-floor study of Blake’s Victorian home was silent but for the sounds emerging from a large boxer dog sleeping next to the glowing embers of an open coal fire. The animal snored soundly, its body stretched out parallel to the ceramic tiled hearth. Abruptly the dog let out a long laboured breath, sending its oversized jowls spluttering against the oak floor.

  Apart from the fire, the only other illumination in the room came from the lights of a Christmas tree, its branches heavily laden with decorations and long tracks of silver and red tinsel. The lights had been set to gently build in intensity over the course of several minutes to gradually impart the room with a rich ruby glow before dimming again.

  The dog gave a shudder and opened its eyes wide. Within seconds the animal was on its feet, ears upright and alert. Sensing vibrations in the air, the dog’s nostrils twitched, its compact but powerful body standing on perfectly straightened front legs. The dog waited, its eyes glistening from the lights of the Christmas tree. A sound came from behind the door, quickly followed by another, this time louder. The boxer’s strong muscular neck turned, its short blunt muzzle tracking something on the other side of the wall. Slowly, the door handle began to move. Backing away from the door, the dog’s white fangs began to bite at the air. The door creaked open.

  The Drakon stood tall, barely clearing the top of the doorframe. Dressed in black, features hidden under a ski mask, the Drakon watched the snarling dog standing bolt upright in the corner of the room, a long strand of saliva trailing from its exposed fangs. The Drakon’s eyes burned into the centre of the dog’s skull like laser beams.

  Do not fight,

  Feel my shadow surround you.

  Do not struggle against me.

  Yield to me.

  The animal attempted to shake its head to free itself from an invisible force tightening around its skull. The dog grappled to retain a foothold on the polished oak floor. The Drakon moved forwards. An impenetrable gaze locked onto the whimpering animal. Cold hands quickly surrounded the dog’s head, enveloping it like a dark shroud. Long finger
s stretched out, fingertips moving quickly over the ridges of the animal’s heavy, compact skull.

  Do not struggle.

  Yield to me.

  The dog’s fur grew crimson in the intensifying lights of the Christmas tree as if the animal’s body had started to glow with heat.

  Feel my shadow surround you.

  Yield to me.

  With its head tilted upwards and cupped in the Drakon’s hands, the dog stared back in terror.

  Feel my shadow surround you.

  A tremor shook along the animal’s backbone before its back legs gave way underneath it. Then it was still.

  The Drakon loosened the grip, and the dog’s body fell to floor with a heavy thump. A dark line of blood began to trickle from the dog’s left ear along the wooden floor. Stepping back from the discarded corpse, the Drakon now focused on the room layout.

  The study was large, its original function probably that of a sitting room. It was tidy and ordered, and two of its walls were given over to a series of densely packed but well-organised bookshelves. Moving quickly, the Drakon scanned their contents. Each shelf was labelled with a handwritten sticker identifying a particular subject area: issues of modern academic journals on renaissance art, archaeology, material science, and architecture rubbed shoulders with old and obscure leather-bound volumes.

  At regular gaps along the shelves were pictures, ornaments and curios of all different types. One such space was dedicated to a small collection of astronomical instruments: gilded brass sundials, quadrants of various sizes, a large brass astrolabe with Arabic lettering stamped down one of its sides, and a celestial globe representing a three-dimensional map of the night sky.

  A loud popping sound came from the open fire. A pile of glowing coals collapsed into each other, sending a long single flame upwards into the chimney. The movement in the fire drew the intruder’s gaze from the astronomical objects to a photo frame positioned in between two stacks of dog-eared papers.