Necropolis

turned into flying battering rams. The few that remained were bending over, kissing the ground. The Tai Shan Temple was on the other side.
    Matt was surprised that it was still standing, but perhaps the wall that surrounded it had protected it from the worst of the weather.
    Lohan pointed. Scarlett nodded. There was no need for any of them to speak. They had made it. They had crossed Hong Kong in the middle of a typhoon, and they had survived.
    Moving faster now, they crossed what was left of the park and went in.
    SIGNAL EIGHT
    The chairman of the Nightrise Corporation was watching the final destruction of his necropolis. He was back in his office on the sixty-sixth floor of The Nail, and he could feel the whole building trembling as it was buffeted again and again by the storm. Every now and then there was a grinding sound followed by an explosion of breaking glass as another window burst out of its frame. The lights had long ago flickered and gone out. There was no power in the office. Nor were there any people. The staff had all evacuated, fighting and clawing their way down sixty-six flights of stairs. Some of them might have made it to the basement and would be huddled there now, but he suspected that many more of them would have been killed on the way down — pushed down the stairs or trampled in the general panic.
    The chairman certainly had no intention of joining them. He was safe here. The Nail could stand up to anything. And it was a spectacular view.
    It did trouble him that his plans had somehow gone wrong. The city had been meant to die. That had been the whole idea. But not like this. Indeed, the typhoon might well end up saving many more people than it actually killed because there had been a side effect: The poisonous gases put in place by the Old Ones had been dispersed. The pollution had been swept away. When the storm finally eased off, the people would be able to breathe again.
    He didn't know what had happened at Victoria Prison. All the telephone lines were down, and even his mobile didn't work. The whole network must have collapsed. But this devastation couldn't be a coincidence. The girl must have brought it. She was able to predict the weather, so at the very least she must have known it was coming. He had put the boy in with her to taunt her, to show her how completely defeated she had been. Perhaps, all in all, it had been a mistake.
    He was holding a bottle of cognac. It had a price tag that made it one of the most expensive in the world, and it had always amused him that there were people dying in some countries because they had no water while he could afford to spend five thousand dollars on a drink he didn't even enjoy. Over the years, most of the chairman's taste buds had died. Nothing he ate or drank had any flavor. If he was killed now, it would hardly matter. Most of him was dead anyway.
    But he wasn't going to die. Even if Matt and Scarlett had escaped, there was nowhere for them to go.
    The Tai Shan Temple was protected. They wouldn't be able to reach the door. And soon the typhoon would pass. He would begin the search through the wreckage immediately, turning it over brick by brick, and next time he would deal with them at once.
    He noticed something out of the corner of his eye. It was a speck in the window. At first he thought it was a bird. No. It was extraordinary. As the chairman watched, it grew larger and larger. It was heading toward him.
    It was a ship.
    Not a huge ship. A wooden sampan, one of the Chinese sailing boats that were kept moored up in the harbor, to be photographed by tourists. The wind had grabbed it and torn it free. Even as the chairman watched, it was getting closer, rapidly filling up the window frame. He stood there, transfixed by the sight. He thought about running. Perhaps he could still make it to safety. But what was the point? How could he escape something that had been predicted so many years ago?
    He would die in an accident that involved a ship.
    He died now.
    The sampan was thrown at The Nail as if it were a paper dart that had been deliberately aimed. It smashed through the window on the sixty-sixth floor and into the man who stood behind it. At the same time, the wind howled in, scooping up the contents of the room and throwing them out, the files and papers rattling with a sound that was very like applause. The broken body of the chairman went with them, spun once in the air, then plunged down to the pavement below.
    Bloodstains on the