The Secret Fire - Opening chapter - Day Five by Martin Langfield
genre
tags
alchemy,
crowley,
espionage,
fulcanelli,
ley,
london,
magic,
mystery,
nazi,
new-age,
newton,
occult,
oss,
paris,
soe,
spirituality,
spy,
thriller,
ww2
description:
The Secret Fire is a supernatural thriller set in London and Paris, during World War Two and in the present day.
It is a story of love, betrayal and forgiveness, in which a mighty spell — the legendary Fenland Working, which helped shield Britain from destruction at the hands of its Nazi enemies during World War Two -- is slowly dying with its maker.
As the key anniversary of the spell's casting nears, and its protective effects unravel in present-day London and Paris, a window in time begins to open that may allow history to be rewritten … for good or for ill. The fate of the modern world hangs in the balance.
Two men of matched but opposite powers — the chilling, sadistic occultist Isambard and the American OSS agent turned hard-nosed mystic Horace Hencott — battle across time for the soul of troubled double agent Peter Hale, while Horace’s proteges Robert and Katherine Reckliss must delve deep into the mysteries of their own families to come to his aid…
The Secret Fire is both a stand-alone novel, and a sequel to my first book, The Malice Box.
This story is from this book:
The Secret Fire
chapters
chapter 1:
Opening chapter - Day Five
Opening chapter - Day Five
chapter 1
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updated Apr 22, 2009
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5697 characters
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The hidden drawer opened at Robert’s first touch.
For a split second the room seemed to twist and roar about him, buckling and cracking, as if the walls of the world were caving in. Robert raised his arms over his head, pushing his chair violently back from the desk, knocking it over onto the wooden floor. He stood staring at the drawer, breathing hard.
Voices rustled at the edge of his mind: go no further, they whispered. Stop now.
Hatred echoed around him. For an instant, he had seen a bloodless face, stark-eyed and vengeful, floating in the darkness that had descended on him. A familiar face.
‘You’re dead!’ Robert hissed in anger.
Outside the window was a fifty-foot drop to the street below. There couldn’t be anyone there, and he was alone in the apartment. No one could be whispering to him. Robert slowly lowered his arms, peering into the darkness outside. Wraiths of mist swirled and eddied in random patterns. No apparition there now. He stood still, listening intently, blood rushing in his ears.
The face was that of a man Robert had fought to the death, two and a half years earlier, a servant and soldier of the Enemy. The memory still haunted him, nightly, in terrifying flashes: trapped underground, a stark sense of loathing rumbling around him like slow thunder . . . For a moment Robert was back there, and he tensed again, ready to defend himself, fists clenched, feet firmly planted, hyper alert to his surroundings.
Nothing. Silence.
He’d seen pale skin, a halo of white hair, piercing eyes . . . it was a face he knew, yes, and yet it was different. There was something else to it that he couldn’t name.
Robert brought his breathing under control, allowing himself to relax slightly.
He let his eyes roam over the desk he had been working at, the abandoned workspace of dear, crazy, loving Adam, his friend, whom the Enemy had destroyed.
His eyes returned to the hidden drawer, now open. Was this what Adam had wanted him to find?
Robert and Adam had been friends at Cambridge University twenty-five years before, rivals in love through the years since, co-conspirators in existential games, mostly of Adam’s devising, colleagues and competitors in the international news business. They’d been two halves, perhaps, of a single man. Air and fire were Adam: spontaneous, daring, ungraspable; earth and water were Robert: grounded, reliable, unstoppable. Each in turn had sought and won the hand of Katherine, the blue-eyed, raven-haired penitent spy who was now Robert’s wife.
There had been darkness over the decades. Adam had tipped over into madness in the 1990s, clawing his way back to the light with Katherine’s and Robert’s help. And throughout, they had been watched over by their mentor, a man charged with guiding them even when they rejected him: Horace Hencott, an Anglophile American and sometime academic, a wartime colleague of Adam’s grandfather. He was an octogenarian mage, the overseer of their individual psychic gifts, which each of them had denied, espoused, fought with, lost and regained over the years.
It was Horace who had brought them to their darkest game nearly three years earlier, a contest with real risks and real victims, the one that had claimed Adam’s life. The Enemy had tried to detonate a doomsday device in Manhattan. Millions of lives had hung by a thread, millions more had faced unbearable suffering. Robert had succeeded by the skin of his teeth in stopping it, at terrible cost to others, and to himself.
But, as Horace had said, the snake was never killed, only scotched. The Enemy had been angered, and would be back, working through new avenues, through new souls, aiming at new targets. It would have to be fought again. Robert, still agitated, stepped forward again to Adam’s desk. On either side were stacked the last ofthe files Horace had instructed Robert to go through after the events in Manhattan, seeking to understand just what Adam had been focusing on in the final months before his death.
Robert was sure Adam had left a message, a series of clues. With Adam, there had always been one more game to play, one more riddle to dragoon his friends into solving, one more chance to organize a party, a scavenger hunt, or another shot at self-discovery.
Robert stood, hands on his hips, staring down at the most recent batch of papers and photographs he had been examining. It had been his obsessive project, as Kat had called it, part of the recovery process Horace had devised for him after 2004: track down and gather together all the research papers and writings Adam had accumulated over his years in London, Miami, Havana and elsewhere, as well as in New York. See what he had learned about himself, and about the Enemy. It was a way of making peace with Adam’s memory, and with the things Robert had done.
Robert raised his eyes and peered into the hidden drawer that he had not noticed until this evening, until a glimmer of light, like a sunbeam reflected on water, had fallen on it repeatedly as he’d worked. A shard of ghost light, from God only knew where.
Snatches of words formed in his mind: Mar . . . regret . . . Robert shook his head, dismissing them, banishing the last echoes of the vision. Focus.
He reached inside the drawer.
It contained a sealed envelope. As he took it out, the air grew colder around his neck and shoulders. Robert felt eyes upon him, and he shivered.
The letter was addressed to him in Adam’s handwriting ...
(To read the opening 20 pages of The Secret Fire, click here)
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For a split second the room seemed to twist and roar about him, buckling and cracking, as if the walls of the world were caving in. Robert raised his arms over his head, pushing his chair violently back from the desk, knocking it over onto the wooden floor. He stood staring at the drawer, breathing hard.
Voices rustled at the edge of his mind: go no further, they whispered. Stop now.
Hatred echoed around him. For an instant, he had seen a bloodless face, stark-eyed and vengeful, floating in the darkness that had descended on him. A familiar face.
‘You’re dead!’ Robert hissed in anger.
Outside the window was a fifty-foot drop to the street below. There couldn’t be anyone there, and he was alone in the apartment. No one could be whispering to him. Robert slowly lowered his arms, peering into the darkness outside. Wraiths of mist swirled and eddied in random patterns. No apparition there now. He stood still, listening intently, blood rushing in his ears.
The face was that of a man Robert had fought to the death, two and a half years earlier, a servant and soldier of the Enemy. The memory still haunted him, nightly, in terrifying flashes: trapped underground, a stark sense of loathing rumbling around him like slow thunder . . . For a moment Robert was back there, and he tensed again, ready to defend himself, fists clenched, feet firmly planted, hyper alert to his surroundings.
Nothing. Silence.
He’d seen pale skin, a halo of white hair, piercing eyes . . . it was a face he knew, yes, and yet it was different. There was something else to it that he couldn’t name.
Robert brought his breathing under control, allowing himself to relax slightly.
He let his eyes roam over the desk he had been working at, the abandoned workspace of dear, crazy, loving Adam, his friend, whom the Enemy had destroyed.
His eyes returned to the hidden drawer, now open. Was this what Adam had wanted him to find?
Robert and Adam had been friends at Cambridge University twenty-five years before, rivals in love through the years since, co-conspirators in existential games, mostly of Adam’s devising, colleagues and competitors in the international news business. They’d been two halves, perhaps, of a single man. Air and fire were Adam: spontaneous, daring, ungraspable; earth and water were Robert: grounded, reliable, unstoppable. Each in turn had sought and won the hand of Katherine, the blue-eyed, raven-haired penitent spy who was now Robert’s wife.
There had been darkness over the decades. Adam had tipped over into madness in the 1990s, clawing his way back to the light with Katherine’s and Robert’s help. And throughout, they had been watched over by their mentor, a man charged with guiding them even when they rejected him: Horace Hencott, an Anglophile American and sometime academic, a wartime colleague of Adam’s grandfather. He was an octogenarian mage, the overseer of their individual psychic gifts, which each of them had denied, espoused, fought with, lost and regained over the years.
It was Horace who had brought them to their darkest game nearly three years earlier, a contest with real risks and real victims, the one that had claimed Adam’s life. The Enemy had tried to detonate a doomsday device in Manhattan. Millions of lives had hung by a thread, millions more had faced unbearable suffering. Robert had succeeded by the skin of his teeth in stopping it, at terrible cost to others, and to himself.
But, as Horace had said, the snake was never killed, only scotched. The Enemy had been angered, and would be back, working through new avenues, through new souls, aiming at new targets. It would have to be fought again. Robert, still agitated, stepped forward again to Adam’s desk. On either side were stacked the last ofthe files Horace had instructed Robert to go through after the events in Manhattan, seeking to understand just what Adam had been focusing on in the final months before his death.
Robert was sure Adam had left a message, a series of clues. With Adam, there had always been one more game to play, one more riddle to dragoon his friends into solving, one more chance to organize a party, a scavenger hunt, or another shot at self-discovery.
Robert stood, hands on his hips, staring down at the most recent batch of papers and photographs he had been examining. It had been his obsessive project, as Kat had called it, part of the recovery process Horace had devised for him after 2004: track down and gather together all the research papers and writings Adam had accumulated over his years in London, Miami, Havana and elsewhere, as well as in New York. See what he had learned about himself, and about the Enemy. It was a way of making peace with Adam’s memory, and with the things Robert had done.
Robert raised his eyes and peered into the hidden drawer that he had not noticed until this evening, until a glimmer of light, like a sunbeam reflected on water, had fallen on it repeatedly as he’d worked. A shard of ghost light, from God only knew where.
Snatches of words formed in his mind: Mar . . . regret . . . Robert shook his head, dismissing them, banishing the last echoes of the vision. Focus.
He reached inside the drawer.
It contained a sealed envelope. As he took it out, the air grew colder around his neck and shoulders. Robert felt eyes upon him, and he shivered.
The letter was addressed to him in Adam’s handwriting ...
(To read the opening 20 pages of The Secret Fire, click here)
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