Read Necropolis for Free Online Page B

Father Janek was too good a man to lie. Instead, he told me not to ask any more questions. He quickened his pace and as he walked away, I saw that he was afraid.
    "From that day on, I was fascinated by the door. We had an extensive library here, Scarlett, with more than ten thousand books — although most of them have now moldered away. Some of them were centuries old. I searched through them. It took me many years. But slowly — a sentence here, a fragment there — a story began to emerge. But in the end, it was one book, a secret copy of a diary written by a Spanish monk in 1532 that told me everything I wanted to know."
    He stopped and ran his eyes over the girl as if she were the most precious thing he had ever seen.
    Scarlett was revolted and didn't try to hide it. She could see saliva on the old man's lips.
    "The Old Ones," he whispered, and although Scarlett had never heard those words before, they meant something to her, some memory from the far distant past. "The diary told me about the great battle that had taken place ten thousand years ago when the Old Ones ruled the world and mankind were their slaves. Pure evil. The Bible talks of devils… of Lucifer and Satan. But that's just storytelling. The Old Ones were real. They were here. And the one who ruled over them, Chaos, was more powerful than anything in the universe."
    "So what happened to them?" Scarlett asked. Her voice had almost dropped to a whisper. Apart from the flames, twisting in the hearth, everything in the room was still.
    "They were defeated and cast out. There were five children…" he spoke the word with contempt. "They came to be known as the Gatekeepers. Four boys and a girl." He leveled his eyes on Scarlett, and she knew what he was going to say next. "You are the girl."
    Scarlett shook her head. 'You're wrong. That's insane. I'm not anything. I'm just a schoolgirl. I go to school in London…"
    "How do you think you got here?" The monk pointed in the direction of the corridor with a single trembling finger. Some sort of liquid was leaking out of his damaged eye, a single tear. "You have seen the monastery and the snow. You know you are not in London now."
    "You drugged me."
    'You came through the door! It was all there in the diary. There were twenty-five doorways built all around the world. They were there for the Gatekeepers so that when the time came, they would be able to travel great distances in seconds. Only the Gatekeepers can use them. Nobody else. When I pass through the door, I find myself in a corridor, a dead end. But it's not the same for you. It brought you here."
    Scarlett shook her head. Nothing she had heard made any sense at all. She didn't even know where to begin. "I'm not ten thousand years old," she said. "Look at me! You can see for yourself. I'm fifteen!"
    'You have lived twice, at two different times." Father Gregory laughed delightedly. "It's beyond belief,"
    he said. "Finally to meet one of the Gatekeepers after all these years and to find that she has no idea who or what she is."
    'You mentioned there was an abbot here," Scarlett said. "I want to talk to him."
    "Father Janek is dead." He sighed. "I haven't told you the rest of my story. Maybe then you will understand." He nodded at her glass. 'You haven't drunk your tea."
    "I don't want it."
    "I would take what you are given while you still can, child. There is much pain for you ahead."
    Scarlett's tea was right in front of her. Briefly, she thought about picking it up and flinging it in his face.
    But it wouldn't do much good. It was probably lukewarm by now.
    "The discovery of the diary, along with all the other fragments, changed my life," Father Gregory continued. "I began to think about the reasons why I had come to the monastery in the first place. Did I really think that religion — prayer and fasting — would help me change the world? Or was I just using religion to hide from it? Suddenly I knew what had brought me here. Hatred. I hated the world. I