Raven's Gate

last ounce of his strength had deserted him.
    “We’ll be there very soon. It won’t take long. And you needn’t be concerned. It will all be over very quickly and it won’t hurt as much as you think.”
    The car left the road. The wheels bumped over a muddy, stony track. They plunged into the pine forest. Ahead of them the lights of Omega One shimmered in the rain. Matthew tried to throw himself at Sir Michael Marsh but the old man easily pushed him back.
    They reached the gates of the power station and stopped. The night was suddenly cut apart by an immense guillotine blade of lightning. The villagers were there, with Mrs Deverill standing in front of them, Asmodeus curled around her leg. They were all waiting for him.
    “No!” Matt shouted, the single word echoing all around.
    Sir Michael got out of the car. “Take him!” he ordered.
    The door was pulled open. Grey, dripping hands reached in and clamped down on him. Matt lashed out but it was too late. He was dragged out of the car and lifted into the air. A huge spotlight cut through the rain, blinding him. There was a crowd of people … the entire village. This was the moment they had been waiting for and now they had him.
    Squirming and shouting, Matt was carried above their shoulders and into the heart of Omega One.

DARK POWERS
    It was like being in a nightmarish technological circus.
    The reactor chamber was a great circle with silver walls and a domed ceiling at least thirty metres high. Instead of sawdust, the floor was covered with black and white squares, and the roof was made of steel rather than canvas, with red and blue gantries criss-crossing high above the ground. There was an observation window in front of what must have been a control room and a wide balcony that ran the whole way round. Seating for an audience?
    Across the centre of the chamber two railway tracks ran parallel with each other and there was a massive tower – all platforms, railings, ladders and dials
–
mounted on wheels so that it could move backwards and forwards. The tower dominated the chamber. For the moment, it was still. A single wide corridor led out of the ring. If it had been a circus, this would have been the path along which the animals and the clown’s cars would have entered.
    The arena was lit by brilliant floodlights attached to brackets. Everything was spotlessly clean and even the air had a metallic, sterile taste to it as hidden ventilators filtered it with a constant hum.
    This was the heart of Omega One. Matt knew that under the floor, protected by ten metres of reinforced concrete and steel, a dragon lay sleeping. Its every breath trembled with pent-up anger. When it awoke, its roar would have the force of an exploding sun. Such was the power contained in the fragile cage of the nuclear reactor.
    Watched by the silent villagers, Matt examined his surroundings. For all its technology, the power station was not so different from any modern factory. What made it so fantastic was that, in stark contrast to the machinery, it had been filled with the trappings of an almost forgotten age. The twenty-first century forced into an unholy marriage with the Dark Ages. Inside the nuclear power station the ground had been prepared for a witches’ sabbath – for the celebration of black mass.
    Despite the electric lights, the chamber was decorated with thousands of flickering candles, all of them black, their wicks spluttering. Smoke twisted up and was whisked away into the ventilation system. The candles surrounded a circle that had been painted on the chessboard floor with a series of words, written in capital letters, going all the way round. HEL + HELOYM + SOTHER… They were foreign words that meant nothing to Matt and he gave up trying to read them. Inside the circle there were various symbols – arrows, eyes, five-pointed stars and spirals – that could have been the doodles of some demented child, except that they had been marked out in gold paint, seemingly with care.
    His eyes were drawn to a slab of black marble in the very centre of the circle. The stone was the size of a coffin, with a single design engraved in gold at the foot:

    A wooden cross hung from above. But it was upside down. Directly beneath it, on the stone, lay a knife, its blade a twisted tongue of dull silver, its handle fashioned from the horn of a goat.
    Matt shuddered. He knew what all the preparations were for. This was where his life was meant to end. The knife was for