Stone of Fire: An ARKANE Thriller (Book 1)

Chapter 3

Oxford, England
 May 18 10.33pm

      Morgan was held face down by the three men, pressed hard against the handlebars of her bike. She didn’t struggle. There was no use. It was better to lie still, listen and think while she worked out what to do next. She felt her gun digging into her thigh where she had jammed it in her pocket. It would only take a second to draw it and she tensed, waiting for the ease in pressure that would surely come. They hadn’t killed her, so they couldn’t be the same group as the men from her office. Maybe they were Fry’s backup team? The van came to a stop and the pressure lessened. A voice spoke, quiet but authoritative. She could hear a faint South African accent in the deep tone.
     “Morgan, I’m Jake Timber. A friend. We’re going to let you up now. Please know that we don’t intend to hurt you. We needed to protect you and getting you off the street quickly was paramount. Please don’t scream. We need to talk.”
     He must have motioned to the men to let her go because they loosened their hold and she could move again. Morgan curled and sprang up to a kneeling position, gun in hand pointing straight into the face of the man calling himself Jake. He was dark haired with a rash of stubble on his chin; his amber-brown eyes showed little emotion even though his mouth smiled in welcome. Her gun was inches from his nose but he didn’t flinch. She was so close she could see a faint scar that twisted up, like a mini corkscrew, from his left eyebrow to his hairline. She was aware of his men hovering just behind her, but he wouldn’t have a chance if he tried anything. Jake held his hands up.
     “We need to talk about your stone, and Faye. Just give me ten minutes and then you can leave if you need to. We’ll deal with the bodies in your office as well.”
     Morgan was unmoved and silent. He continued, “I’m going to show you something now so you know I’m telling the truth. Can I open my collar very slowly?”
     She nodded, the weapon unwavering in her hands. Keeping one hand raised, he slowly peeled back the collar of his shirt, revealing a tan leather string which he pulled up to show her a stone hanging round his neck. It was not exactly the same as hers, but similar enough. If he had a stone, Morgan thought, then he must know more than her. Fry had not finished explaining the significance of the stones, let alone why her family was involved. She lowered the gun.
     “OK, let’s talk, but I need details quickly. I want my sister protected and I want answers now.”
Jake nodded.
     “You’ll have them soon. Let’s go.”
     The men opened the van door into a warehouse sized room. There were a few workstations, banks of computers and maps pinned to the walls. Morgan thought it looked like a police crime scene investigation unit, only messier. She climbed out, refusing the hand of one of the men. She turned to Jake, “So, where are we?”
     “The Pitt Rivers, next to the Museum of Natural History. Don’t worry, we’re safe. Few people even know our base here exists.”

     Jake led the way up through the main gallery of the museum to the rooms beyond. Dim floor lights illuminated the black and white stone tiles and iron gratings, but the torchlight also picked out figures within the wooden and glass cases crowding the main hall. It was a higgledy-piggledy place that Morgan had explored before, each case stuffed full of items, some with tiny handwritten notes from the original curator. She knew it had been founded in the nineteenth century, recipient of the collection of General Pitt Rivers, an avid collector in the field of archaeology and evolutionary anthropology. What distinguished his collection were the objects used in daily life as well as the ritual and sacred artifacts of the various peoples of the world.
     The overall sense was of a museum crowded and alive in some way; the gods of such different cultures stuffed into tiny rooms, separated only by the glass of the cabinets. Morgan could almost imagine them stepping down from their cases in the dark of night, to wage war upon each other. The many handed Nataraja from India, skulls dripping from her neck and blue skin gleaming, wielded a sword at the head of a tribal god from Benin as Incan priest icons menaced the Native American totems. A flash of torchlight illuminated a case of giant wooden birds of paradise, their spiraling feathers like huge tongues. They crouched next to crocodiles and the jet black head of a bull, horns sharply tipped and glistening.
    Here was the agonized face of a Christian martyr, neck twisted towards his God, desperate for release, next to a case of ceremonial knives for stripping the flesh from sacrificial animals. There a macabre toy cabinet, full of stuffed creatures with beady eyes that seemed to follow them past. The ghosts of dead children hung in their wake, puppets on tall sticks with limbs like dead trees, broken and dangling. As they walked through the main hallway, a huge Native American totem pole loomed over them, a squatting amphibian over the eyes of a huddled figure. Morgan felt the power of these objects in the semi-darkness. What was mere curiosity in the day had turned to mystic awe in the dark. She loved to come here and wonder at the collections, but this was experiencing the museum in a different, visceral way. She followed close to the man in front as he led her to the back of the main exhibition hall and then down some stairs into the crypt. What did it all have to do with the stone her father had given her, she wondered.
     Jake turned back, clearly trying to break the ice.
     “You probably know that William Pitt Rivers was an explorer, that he roamed the British empire collecting artifacts from now lost civilizations.” Morgan nodded.“What most people don’t know is that Pitt Rivers worked for a secret government agency on behalf of Queen Victoria. That agency has been investigating the supernatural for hundreds of years now. Many of the artifacts you can see in the museum are fakes but the real items are down here, a source of ancient power we are still investigating. You’d know the public face of the agency as the ARKANE Institute.”
     Morgan ran her fingers along one of the dark wooden cabinets, her eyes widening at the name.
“I’ve been to some of the ARKANE conferences. I thought it was just an academic collective for research and publication.”
     Jake smiled as they reached a large wooden door at the end of the hall.
“That’s just the official version. Welcome to the other side of ARKANE.”

     He opened the door and Morgan gasped as she walked onto a small balcony overlooking five more levels below her with large glass windows opened to the lightwell. Each level had workstations with different artifacts spotlighted upon them, and equipment for dating and analyzing. The place was empty now, but she could see that during the day it was a working lab combining technology with ancient manuscripts to fathom the secrets these objects held.
     “I knew there were levels below Oxford, as I’ve been in the stacks under the Bodleian library, but how could this all be kept secret?” she asked Jake. He grinned, raking his hands through his dark hair, tiredness evident in his eyes.
     “There’s a whole city beneath Oxford, chambers of secrets from down the ages. Some were hollowed out by the early monks and used for teachings banned in the University, and others for the secret societies that have always flourished in the company of powerful men. Occult knowledge has always needed its protectors and the ARKANE Institute is just one in a long line. The secrets are only known to a few, but now you need to know about this particular one because the stone you’re wearing puts you in danger.”
     Morgan touched the worn leather around her neck.
     “So what’s going on? We need to protect Faye and her family if those men are coming for the stones. We each have one.”
     Jake indicated the stairs leading down into the complex.
     “A team is on the way to her house now so she and her family will be safe, but we need to talk. Come down to the research center and I’ll tell you what we know about these stones and why the timeline is so critical.”