Necropolis

when we get there?"
    Matt shook his head. "I don't know. I've thought about it. I've tried to work out some sort of plan. Maybe it would be easier if we knew what the Old Ones have been doing all this time." He thought for a moment. "Maybe we'll know when the five of us get together. Maybe it will all make sense."
    Matt stared into the darkness. The nights in Nazca were always huge. Even without seeing it, he could feel the desert stretching out to the mountains. There seemed to be five times more stars in the southern hemisphere than he'd ever seen in Europe. The sky was bursting with them.
    "What you said yesterday…" He turned to Richard. "About the Old Ones…"
    "They were looking for kids with special powers," Richard said. "That's how they found Scott and Jamie. If Scarlett went through the door at St. Meredith's, they'll know about it. They'll have read the article too."
    'You think they'll be waiting for us?"
    "Scarlett's being watched by the Nexus. Her father's with her. She took a couple of days off school. So far everything seems okay. She doesn't seem to be in any danger."
    Richard had been in constant touch with the Nexus, the strange collection of millionaires, politicians, psychics, and churchmen who knew about the Old Ones and had come together in a sort of secret society to fight them. It had to be secret because they were afraid of being ridiculed. How could they admit that they believed in devils and demons? The Nexus had made it their job to look after Matt and the other Gatekeepers. At one stage, they had paid for him to go to a private school. They were still paying for everything while the four of them were out here.
    And they were also protecting Scarlett Adams. They had moved in the moment she had been identified in the national press, hiring a team of private detectives to watch over her night and day. They were lucky that she lived in England. That made things easier. One of the Nexus members was a senior police officer named Tarrant, and he had arranged for all her calls to be monitored. Meanwhile, Scarlett had gone back to school. Her father was still with her in London, and there was a Scottish helper living in the house. By now, Richard knew a great deal about her. She was in the school play. She had a boyfriend named Aidan, and she regularly beat him at tennis. She seemed to have a happy life.
    Richard and Matt were about to rip all that up. Somewhere inside him, Matt felt guilty about that — but he knew he couldn't avoid it. She had been born for a purpose. His job was to tell her what that purpose was.
    Somewhere, an owl hooted in the darkness. The house was on the outskirts of Nazca, but Richard and Matt could make out the lights of the town, twinkling in the distance. Everything was very peaceful, but they knew that it was an illusion. Soon the whole world would change.
    "I'm not sure you should go," Richard said suddenly.
    "What do you mean?" Matt was surprised. Everything was ready. The tickets had been bought.
    "I've been thinking about it…this trip to England. You and Pedro and Scott and Jamie… all on the same plane. Suppose the Old Ones have control of American airspace. They could smash you into the side of a mountain. Or a building."
    "They don't want to kill us," Matt said. He was fairly sure about that. "If they kill us, we'll all be replaced by our past selves. That's how it works. And what good will that do them? They'll only have to start searching for us all over again. It's easier for them to keep us alive."
    Richard shook his head. "They could still force the plane down somewhere and capture you."
    Matt considered the possibility. The trouble was that the Old Ones had been silent for months. They seemed to have slipped into the shadows, as if they had never existed at all. Richard had been scouring the Internet, waiting to hear of a news event, some horror happening somewhere in the world that might suggest the Old Ones were involved. There were plenty of stories. The war in Afghanistan. Ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Misery and starvation in Zimbabwe. But that was just everyday news. That would happen even without the Old Ones. He had been looking for something else.
    "What do you think they're doing?" Matt asked. "Why do you think they haven't shown themselves?"
    Richard shrugged. "I guess they've been waiting," he said.
    "Waiting for what?"
    "Waiting for Scar."
    There was a movement on the veranda, and Matt tensed for a moment, then relaxed. He could tell it