In Evil Star, Matt and Pedro failed to close the second gate that they had found in the Nazca Desert, and the Old Ones – ancient forces of evil – finally entered the world.

Having lost this battle, Matt learnt that his only hope was to find the three other Gatekeepers: two boys and a girl. By coming together, they would finally have the strength to defeat the Old Ones and save the world from chaos and destruction.

Nightrise, the third book in the series, begins in June, a few weeks before the end of Evil Star. The Old Ones know the power of the Five – and their servants are already searching for them, determined to keep them apart.

There are three worlds in this book. The world now. The world as it was before the Dark Ages, approximately ten thousand years ago. And a strange dream world that connects the two.

The two men in the black limousine had already circled the theatre once. Now they pulled in on the other side of the road, opposite the main door. Outside, the temperature was well into the eighties. But they had turned the air-conditioning on full and the car was like a refrigerator. They sat in silence. The two of them had worked together for many years and despised each other. They had nothing to say.

The theatre was at the northern end of Reno, Nevada. It was a square red-brick building with a single door and no windows and could have been a bank or possibly a chapel but for the neon sign over the front door. It was supposed to read THE RENO PLAYHOUSE, but half the letters had fused so that, as the two men watched it from where they were parked in Virginia Street, just two words flashed at them through the fading light: HERE LOSE.

It wasn’t exactly the most attractive invitation in a city that was dedicated to gambling, where every other building seemed to be a casino and where the hotels, the bars, even the launderettes, were stuffed with slot machines.