The Romulus Equation Read online

  ‘What the devil—?’ he asked aloud.

  Devil was right, he realised, as his vision cleared.

  ‘Leaving so soon, Cornelius?’ asked Antoine Renard, towering over the conjuror’s body. ‘You are a guest of the Hades Consortium, and it is most impolite not to say goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ Quaint said, lashing out with his heel into Renard’s face. ‘This is starting to get getting dull, Antoine. You and I fight, I win… you die… and then you come back to life. Well, I’ve had enough of ghosts to last me a lifetime. This time you and I finish this properly.’

  ‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ said Renard.

  His metal fist hand struck Quaint in the ribs and the conjuror slumped against the tunnel wall. His sweat spat back at him like acid, and wisps of smoke trailed from his soaking wet shirt. The walls were almost glowing; their heat so intense. Quaint galvaniszed his strength. Fighting Renard was one thing, but fighting him in the middle of a boiling hot oven was something else entirely. Feigning weakness as Renard closed in for the kill, the conjuror smashed the back of his head into the Frenchman’s face. Blood sprayed from Renard’s lip – but he was a distance away from finished yet and time was running out. Quaint looked at the cave mouth. The magma lava was rising quickly, seeping up over the ledge. In but a few moments it would burst the bank of rocks and flow into the tunnel.

  ‘Let’s make this quick,’ said Quaint, charging into Renard, lifting him off his feet, slamming him into the wall.

  Renard screamed as the boiling rocks scorched the flesh from his back. Quaint pummelled at him with his fists, again and again, allowing every measurable ounce of his hatred to empower him. He had allowed the Frenchman to slip through death’s grasp before, and this time he was determined to see his final end.

  Renard, of course, had other ideas.

  With his iron metal hand, he caught Quaint a glancing blow to head and the conjuror stumbled back in a daze, his legs like jelly. Renard was on him again, relentlessly, throwing punch after punch and Quaint could do nothing to avoid them and crashed onto his back. Renard lunged on top of him, pushing his elbow against Quaint’s throat.

  ‘All this would be a lot easier if you would just submit, Cornelius,’ snarled Renard to his pinioned foe.

  ‘To you?’ gasped Quaint, trying to wrench himself free. ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘No need,’ said Renard, nodding towards the river of molten magma lava seeping into the tunnel. ‘Hell has come to me, it seems… and this time you’re coming with me.’

  ‘Not whilst I still draw breath,’ growled Quaint.

  Two seconds of breath, he thought. Two seconds of life. Two seconds to perform a miracle. With a burst of strength that came from nowhere, Quaint threw Renard off him, and scrabbled to his feet. Feeling the hairs on the back of his neck twitch, Quaint side-stepped just in time as Renard’s iron metal fist hand almost took his head off. Missing his target, the Frenchman span out of control and the brittle outer shell of the tunnel wall shattered as his punch made contact with it. The conjuror took full advantage, hammering punches into Renard’s ribs, and with his fisted metal hand embedded in the wall, there was nothing he could do to defend himself. He screamed as he wrenched at his metal hand – finding that it would not budge. The metal had fused to the boiling hot rocks upon impact.

  ‘Help me, Cornelius! I cannot get free!’

  Quaint allowed himself a pleasing smile. ‘Oh, really? What a shame.’

  ‘Damn you! Are you just going to leave me here to rot?’

  ‘No, I’m going to leave you here to burn.,’ Quaint grinned. ‘And I hope you’ll have the decency to die properly this time.’

  Renard spat at him. ‘Au revoir, Cornelius.’

  ‘Don’t say au revoir, Antoine,’ said Quaint. ‘Say goodbye.’

  Chapter XXXV

  The Fall

  Cornelius Quaint knew that his time was running out, which was never ideal when his life was hanging by a thread. He crawled back through the gap in the fallen rocks, but by this time the lava was flowing freely above the lip of the tunnel. He would be a cinder were it not for the rocks giving him safe haven. Renard had kept him busy too long. As he leapt from one boulder to the next, the heat spat and bit at the soles of his boots.

  He stared up at the chain and muttered a silent prayer before launching himself into the air. There would be nothing, no one, to delay him this time. As his hands made contact he was rather glad that he’d had the forethought to bind the material around his hands as the chain was a great deal hotter than before. As he wrapped his thighs around it he felt the metal scorch his skin. This only fuelled his climb, pushing him on, higher and higher up the chain. It swayed around violently the faster that he climbed, but he had no choice.

  The monster below him roared angrily and spat fire that sprayed all around the walls of the pit. This was going to be close. Through the acrid smoke, Quaint’s eyes wept constantly, but even half-blind still he kept on climbing, feeling the boiling hot chain burning his hands, his thighs, any part of his body that touched it.

  He made it to the top of the structure without getting burnt burned to a crisp and flopped down onto the wood, catching his breath. Rolling onto his stomach he looked down into the churning volcano below, keen to see how close to death he had been. He couldn’t see much through the smoke, just the ever-rising lava that clung to the walls of the pit. The volcano growled, irate that he had slipped through its fingers. But he had. He had done it again, survived against the odds. He had to get up, had to get keep moving, had to get out of the Hive before the volcano claimed it. But his body was too numb to move. It had taken such punishment these past few days that Quaint could hardly blame it – the problem was that this was the moment when he needed it the most.

  ‘Get to your feet, damn you!’ he ordered himself. ‘You’re almost there. All you have to do is get up.’ He tried, but his legs were like jelly, his muscles as weak as a baby’s, his bones as fragile as glass. Again and again he tried to move, blackmailing his limbs. ‘If you just do this one last thing for me, I swear I’ll go back home and sit in a bath for a month. No more poking my nose in where it’s not wanted, no more death-defying adventures, no more tricky escapes… and definitely no more chasing ghosts halfway around the world. So what do you say? Have we got a deal?’

  Gradually his legs found solidity, his muscles strength and his bones rigidity. He got shakily onto his knees, peering over the edge of the structure and into the agitated volcano. He scowled, seeing movement below him. It was probably just the rocks shifting at the bottom of the pit, swept up in the river of rising lava. Or at least, that was his best guess. But then something else caught his eye.

  The chain attached to the structure was moving.

  ‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ groaned Quaint, as Renard’s scarred face came into view through the smoke – looking a bit more worse for wear than before – not unlike the rest of the Frenchman. Most of his hair was gone, burned down to the scalp. His metal hand was now just a bloodied stump, and the arm attached to it was scorched almost down to the bone.

  ‘Did you think I’d just let you walk away?’ he said, his voice choked by the smoke. ‘We were just getting warmed up… so to speak.’

  Quaint tensed, ready to lash out – but Renard was faster. His hand darted towards the conjuror and snatched hold of his wrist. Quaint tried to twist it from Renard’s grip, just as he felt an incredible sense of weightlessness. A column of smoke blasted into his eyes, down his throat. His cheeks were taut to his skull, his stomach turned over itself and an onrushing breeze smacked him in the face and he felt his teeth jangle in his gums. Quaint frowned, wondering why he was experiencing all the tell-tale signs of being in flight.

  … Until he realised that he wasn’t flying.

  He was falling.

  Down.

  Down into the pit.

  Dragged to his death by the devil himself…

  ‘Interesting,’ Quaint said. ‘Of
all the ways that I thought I’d go… this is new.’

  TO BE CONTINUED

  in:

  ‘THE MONARCH KEY’

  2013

  A Word from the Author

  This book is an ending of sorts, in that it marks the conclusion of my contract with The Friday Project/HarperCollins as publishers of this series. Primarily, I would like to thank Scott Pack for his support over the many years. If he hadn’t had such faith, I wouldn’t be writing this and you wouldn’t be reading it.

  Cutting a long story into perhaps an only marginally shorter one, Scott always understood what I was trying to achieve with the chronicles of Cornelius Quaint’s immortal life; only a small part of which culminates within the pages of this very book. Scott also understood that this series isn’t about being historically accurate, nor is it a discussion point about whether refrigerators were around in 1853 (they were, actually). Distilling it into its purest form, it is my version of mythology: a man who is given a great gift by the gods, but is then forced to do battle with monsters as punishment.

  Now, in The Romulus Equation, Quaint has finally found the answers to the questions that have haunted him throughout his entire life, but as you can see from the last page, his troubles don’t end there – in many ways, they have only just begun.

  And so whereas this book marks an ending, it is also a new beginning and the start of things to come.

  The Cornelius Quaint Chronicles will continue in 2013 with The Monarch Key, where you will get to find out what is so special about that key that Queen Victoria gave Quaint in The Lazarus Curse, and how it might help him find the whereabouts of his daughter, Constance. The conjuror will be going to some very dangerous places, and into conflict with some very dangerous people. Everything will be exactly the same but completely different.

  I do hope you will join the journey with me, as it wouldn’t be the same without you.

  If you would like to find out the latest news on the further chronicles of Cornelius Quaint, please drop me a line via one of the avenues below. I would love to hear from you. There is nothing more gratifying for me as an author to hear from folk who have read (and with any luck) enjoyed my books.

  Facebook: Darren Craske Books

  Twitter: @DarrenCraske

  Blog: http://darrencraskeblog.wordpress.com

  email: [email protected]

  About the Author

  Darren Craske began his career writing and illustrating comic books before his first published work, The Equivoque Principle in 2008. Since then he has written 3 more volumes of The Cornelius Quaint Chronicles, plus 2 short stories featuring the enigmatic conjuror, with the 5th book in the series, The Monarch Key, due later in 2013. He has also written several other books for adults and younger readers. Craske lives in Hampshire with his wife and two children.

  Also by Darren Craske

  The Equivoque Principle

  The Eleventh Plague

  The Lazarus Curse

  The Quaint Christmas

  The Enthusiastic Amateur

  Above His Station

  Before His Time

  The Lantern Menace

  The Argonaut’s Almanac Vol 1: Mythbound (released mid-2013)

  Copyright

  The Friday Project

  An imprint of

  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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  Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2013

  Copyright © Darren Craske 2013

  Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013

  Darren Craske asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007492008

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  Version 1

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

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