Necropolis

and Draco, then slammed it shut. There was a flight of stairs on the other side. It led down into a room humming with pipes and banks of machinery. There was a service elevator on the other side.
    Lohan hit the button and the doors opened at once. The three of them piled in. He pressed two buttons: the ground floor and the basement.
    Scarlett stood inside the confined space, panting. Her heart was racing at a hundred miles an hour. It felt unnatural to be suddenly standing still, knowing that there was danger all around, but there was nothing she could do and nowhere she could go as the elevator carried them down. She just hoped there wouldn't be anyone waiting for them at the bottom.
    Lohan was completely relaxed, leaning against the back wall, the pendant hanging around his neck.
    Water was dripping down his forehead, over his eyes. 'You are to go with Draco," he said. "I have made arrangements. There are people waiting. You will be safe with them."
    "What about you?" Scarlett asked.
    "I will lead them away." He lifted the pendant, glanced at it, then let it fall again.
    "They'll kill you…"
    "If they find me, they will kill me. But my life is not in question here. You are all that matters. You must get away."
    "This is my fault." Scarlett felt miserable. She had led the creatures to the apartment. They were only here because of her. "I'm sorry…"

    'You are one of the Five!" Lohan stared at her as if he couldn't believe what she had just said. "Do not be sorry. Do not be a little girl. You have the power to destroy them. Use it."
    The elevator doors opened. They had arrived at the ground floor. Lohan stepped forward and looked outside. Scarlett could hear the wail of police cars, but there was nobody around, and she guessed that the police hadn't yet worked out that they had crossed from one building to another. But the jade pendant would bring them soon enough. Lohan gave a last instruction in Chinese to Draco and then he was gone.
    The doors slid shut behind him.
    'You stay with me now," Draco muttered.
    Red had been killed. The man with the machine gun was dead. Lohan was probably next. But he didn't seem to care.
    The elevator continued down to the basement. It opened into an underground parking garage. There was a shiny black car waiting for them, and at first Scarlett couldn't believe what had been arranged for her, what was waiting there beneath the building. But at the same time, she knew it made complete sense.
    She remembered what Lohan had told her. The entire city was against her. Every policeman, every surveillance camera, every official was looking out for her. How was she meant to get past them all?
    The car was a hearse. There was an open coffin in the back, the inside of it lined with cream-colored satin with a pillow at one end. Two men were waiting for her. They were dressed in dark suits, like undertakers, but she recognized them from The Peak. They were the ones who had killed Mrs. Cheng.
    One of them made a gesture. Scarlett knew what she had to do.
    This time she didn't argue. Without hesitating, she climbed into the back of the hearse and lay down. It occurred to her that only a few hours ago, when they had tried to lock her in the trunk of a car, she had thought it would be like being buried alive. And here it was, happening for real.
    She laid her head on the pillow. The two men moved toward her. And then once again darkness claimed her as the lid was bolted into place.
    TWENTY-TWO
    Ocean Terminal
    Nobody noticed the hearse as it swung out of the underground parking garage and began to make its way south toward Victoria Harbor. Everyone's attention was on the building where Lohan and his friends had been found. The hearse emerged on the other side, turned left at a set of traffic lights, and set off down the Golden Mile.

    It never did more than ten miles an hour. If anyone had been watching it, the fact that it was moving so slowly would only have made it all the more unlikely that it was being used as an escape vehicle. But very soon it had left the crowds and the police cars behind. In the front, the driver and his assistant gazed straight ahead, their grim faces hiding their joint sense of relief.
    For Scarlett, it was less easy.
    She couldn't see anything. She couldn't do anything. She couldn't even move. She was lying on her back, trapped in a black, airless space with the lid bolted into place only inches above her head. She was completely at the mercy of her own imagination.