Stone of Fire: An ARKANE Thriller (Book 1)

Chapter 33

    Inside, the buzzing noise filled her head and Morgan gasped as she saw what the room held. Wasps’ nests draped from the ceiling and dripped down around the walls, hanging almost to the floor. Above them was a distant skylight and she realized this place must be under the botanical gardens where they could feed, even as they protected their secret. The air was thick with flying insects although many lay dead on the floor with the bodies of the soldiers.
    The men had been stung to death, the reaction to the sting bloating the bodies already. It must be potent venom or the volume of stings that killed them with anaphylactic shock. Wasps still crawled over the bodies, crowding on any exposed skin. Morgan could see one of the men’s faces frozen in a drawn-out scream as a wasp emerged from his swollen mouth. She shuddered, trying not to imagine the pain of his death but she noticed that the wasps were bigger than normal, with longer stings and the sheer number of them was astonishing.
     The buzzing increased at her entrance but the wasps kept their distance for now and Morgan wondered what made them attack. Her eyes darted around the room. She felt the door on her back realizing that there was nowhere to go except forwards into the room. She could see the stone plinth in the middle, similar to the one from the wadi in Tunisia. There was a box on top of it. The Pentecost stone must be in there, but how to get to it?
    Morgan clutched the key in her hand and looked away from the seething mass of writhing gold and black bodies. If it didn’t open the door, it must fit in a different place. Then she saw it. On the wall to her right, a good few paces away, three mandalas were carved, each with a keyhole in the center. It was the final test of the seeker. If she moved towards the wall, the wasps would be alerted and would attack. She would have seconds to place the key before they reached her, so there would only be time to try one of the mandalas. She needed to decide which before she moved or she would die here like these men, stung to death, overtaken by toxic shock and venom.          Morgan breathed quietly. The wasps still didn’t move against her which was puzzling. She looked down and saw a semicircle of light around her from the grille above. It was as if this protected her until she stepped outside the light towards the keyholes. More confident at the task now, she looked again at the mandalas. What was the difference between them and which was the right keyhole?
    Each mandala was a highly decorated carving with an image at the center. The paint had faded but Morgan could see that the keyholes were part of the intricate design of each central figure. On the right, a glorious rainbow of color illuminated the Sephiroth, the tree of life. It was a Kabbalistic image that Jung used in his writings and drew in the Red Book. The center mandala was a dark vortex of swirling shades in grey and black with slashes of vermilion. It was a destructive and almost cruel image, the keyhole a dark void at its heart. On the left, a many-legged crocodile spun around the keyhole, its limbs dropping off into a pool of blood below as a man chopped at them with a sword. Morgan shook her head. Even years of study in Jungian symbolism made this a difficult choice because they were all valid in some way. She closed her eyes and focused within. Doubts and fears flooded her mind, images of Faye and Gemma crying, Jake’s bloodied face, the bodies they had left in their wake, and then Elian’s bullet riddled body. In the maelstrom of emotion, she knew what it must be.

    Having made her decision, Morgan took one last look at the wasps and ran forward with the key outstretched in her good hand. As she stepped outside the light circle, the buzzing became loud and angry as the wasps took flight. She reached the wall and plunged the key into the center mandala as she felt the brush of tiny furred bodies against her skin and winced at the first sting. The mandala represented the shadow self, the dark side of the psyche that Jung believed must be embraced in order to become whole. It had to be the correct one.
    A flash of doubt entered her mind as the key plunged in. Then there was a cracking sound and the cavern filled with light. A high-pitched noise made her hunch over and cover her ears. She turned to see the bodies of the wasps drop out of the air, stunned or dead. Morgan wasn’t waiting to find out if they recovered. She ran to the center plinth, stepping around the bloated corpses and fallen wasps. She opened the box, took out the final Pentecost stone and ran for the door.
     The silver-haired man was waiting, and as she came through, he sprayed a cloud of suffocating fumes into her face. She coughed and fell to the floor, feeling him take the stone from her. Her vision narrowed and she sank into inky unconsciousness. The last thing she saw was the pale horse tattoo, a witness to her failure.

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