The Key Read Online Free PDF Page A

Samuel had made – the Tau – was the sign of the Sacrament, the same shape that now haunted her dreams. Except it wasn’t a dream, it was real. In her blossoming consciousness she knew that she had seen the shape, somewhere in the darkness of the Citadel – she had seen the Sacrament. She focused on the memory, willing it to take sharper form, but it kept shifting, like something at the edge of her vision or a word she could not recall. All she could remember was a feeling of unbearable pain and of … confinement.
    She glanced up at the heavy door, noticing the keyhole now and recalling the corridor beyond. She had glimpsed it as the doctors and nurses had come and gone over the past few days.
    How many days? Four? Five, maybe.
    She had also seen two chairs pushed up against the wall with men sitting on them. The first was a cop, the uniform a dark blue, the badges unfamiliar. The other had also worn a uniform: black shoes, black suit, black shirt, a thin strip of white at the collar. The thought of him, sitting just a few metres from her made the fear rise up again. She knew enough of the bloody history of Ruin to realize the danger she was in. If she had seen the Sacrament and they suspected it then they would try to silence her – like they had silenced her brother. It was how they had maintained their secret for so long. It was a cliché, but it was true – the dead kept their secrets.
    And the priest standing vigil outside her door was not there to minister to her troubled soul or pray for her rapid recovery.
    He was there to keep her contained.
    He was there to ensure her silence.
    Room 410
    Four doors down the corridor Kathryn Mann lay in the starched prison of her own single bed, her thick black hair curled across the pillow like a darkening storm. She was shivering despite the hospital heat of her room. The doctors had said she was still in shock, a delayed and ongoing reaction to the forces of the explosion she had survived in the confines of the tunnel beneath the Citadel. She had also lost hearing in her right ear and the left one had been severely damaged. The doctors said it may improve, but they were always evasive when she asked how much.
    She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this wretched and helpless. When the monk had appeared on top of the Citadel and made the sign of the Tau with his body she had believed the ancient prophecy was coming true:
    The cross will fall
    The cross will rise
    To unlock the Sacrament
    And bring forth a new age
    And so it had happened. Liv had entered the Citadel, the Sancti had come out and now they were dying, one by one, the ancient enemy, the keepers of the Sacrament. Even with her damaged ears, Kathryn had heard the clamour of medical teams running in answer to the flat-lining wail of cardiac alarms all around her. After each alarm she would ask the nurse who had died, fearing it might be the girl. But each time it had been another monk, taken from this life to answer for themselves in the next, their deaths a portent of nothing but good. She had been kept apart from Liv so did not know for sure what had happened inside the Citadel, or even if she had discovered the Sacrament, though the steady deaths of the Sancti gave her some hope that she had.
    But if this was a victory, it was a hollow one.
    Whenever she closed her eyes she saw the body of Oscar de la Cruz – her father – lying broken and bloodied on the cold concrete floor of the airport warehouse. He had spent most of his long life hiding from the Citadel after escaping from within its walls and faking his own death in the trenches of the First World War. But they had still got him in the end. He had saved her life by smothering the grenade, thrown by a dark agent of the Citadel, meant for her and Gabriel.
    It was Oscar who had first taught her about the Citadel, its sinister history and the secrets it contained. It was he who had taught her to read the prophetic symbols etched on the stone when