The Camelot Code Read Online Free PDF

He slaps it down. Climbs unsteadily off the stool pushed up against the long brown bar and heads for the door. He’s going to make it.
    The freezer lid has stayed closed. He’ll survive another night.

11
     
WALES
     
    The pull of the moon is strong.
    Ebb and flow. Like the rush of a tide hitting a shoreline, then creeping back out to sea.
    Myrddin feels the elemental shift as he arthritically descends the stairs in the ancient tower. His bare feet slap cold well-worn slabs. His thin and mottled hands scratch cotton-candy hair that covers his head and face in almost equal measure.
    Once more he’s been disturbed. Jarred from his sleep in the early hours. His mind filled with doubts and demons.
    A rumbling cough breaks from his lungs and escapes as an echoing hack down the dark, stony passages.
    He pushes open the heavy door to the Chamber of Prophecies and savours the oaky creak it makes and the clang of iron latch and lock as he closes it behind him.
    This is his Chamber. Only he has ever come in here. Only he can divine the meaning of the visions that are channelled to this sacred spot. To the Font of Knowledge that stands on the tomb of the great one.
    The musty midnight air is stirred by the swish of his long and lavishly decorated robe. His long fingers find the curved rim of the receptacle and he peers down into what seems an abyss.
    The still liquid begins to tremble.
    The augur sees shapes in the fractured surface, like clouds blowing in a stormy sky, swirling and spinning, spiralling and disappearing. Clouds torn and eaten by a monstrous black bird with a stomach full of flesh and bones.
    Beneath the drifting grey islands, there is a woman with two faces. She is near a great lake, hiding in silence behind a giant shield of wood, wanting to be found by one but not another. She is full of love and confusion, the sun of the heart at odds with the moon of the mind.
    The old mystic’s legs sag. He understands what the vision means. Knows who the woman is and whom she is going to betray. The consequences of the act are clear to him.
    Darkness sucks oxygen from his lungs and starves his brain of thought. He slips shoulder first into the stone, then collapses onto the sacred tomb beneath it.
    The world sways around him. He floats out into the blackness, like a small boat pulled from shore by the tides of an ocean.

12
     
HRU CRIMES UNIT, SAN FRANCISCO
     
    Most of the city is still sleeping when Mitzi heads in to work.
    She likes that she missed the rush hour. The great red bridge is almost empty and all the more magnificent for it.
    Most of all, she likes that she’s not starting her day with an awkward face-off with Jack.
    She spent most of the night wondering if she should tell her sister. But tell her what? That her husband was drunk and made a pass? That he said he’d always preferred her to Ruth? Either of those things was likely to end their marriage and create a rift between her and Ruth.
    Hopefully, he got the message.
    She takes a coffee to her desk and starts up the desktop PC. Her mailbox is jammed with spam and a couple of messages from ex-colleagues wishing her the best in the new job.
    Before she starts work, she browses the
Huffington Post
. It has features on ‘Bondage for Beginners’, ‘Ten Reasons Why Women Like Bad Boys’ and ‘How Wearing Rubber Knickers Can Help You Lose Weight’. She works back to front, dismissing the pants story out of hand – she’d have to wear a truck tyre to lose the amount of weight she wants to. Bad boys are the last people she needs in her life. And she’s damned sure she doesn’t want her wrists wrapped up in cling film while some masked stranger spanks her with fifty-dollar paddles.
    About an hour later, there are noises in the corridor.
    Eleonora breezes in with wet hair and no make-up. She’s dressed head-to-toe in Fendi. A tailored military jacket in jade, and matching beltless pants cling to every perfect inch of her legs. A zesty yellow top is paired