The Dying of the Light (18 page)

“This gonna be a regular thing, then?” Eddie asks. “You running a delivery service?”

Danny turns, watches him root through the bags. “I’m just trying it out, seeing how it works. Think of it as a one-off kind of thing, then—”

“I’ll take it,” says Eddie. “The delivery service. But next time don’t bring so much damn celery or feminine hygiene products.”

“Right. Yeah.”

“Stay there. I’ll make out a list for you. Add more beers.”

It takes Eddie Sullivan ten minutes to scrawl out a messy list on the back of a crumpled receipt, and then Danny is back in his rapidly cooling car. He puts the heat on again, cruises slowly back towards civilisation, but this time he keeps his headlights off. No sign of the black Cadillac. He takes the turn for Stephanie’s farm, stops at the gate and jumps out, runs to the intercom. He presses it and waits, standing in clear view so that the camera, wherever it is, can see him. After a few moments, the gate opens, and he drives through.

Stephanie is waiting for him when he pulls up, standing in the warm light of her front door. She’s dressed in jeans, boots and a heavy, oversized sweater. Her hair is pulled back. Danny gets out of the car, jogs up to her.

“Hope you don’t mind your groceries coming a day early,” he says.

“I wouldn’t,” she responds, “if you’d brought them.”

He looks down at his empty arms. “Oh, yeah. I gave them away, actually. To Eddie Sullivan. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure he’ll enjoy the hygiene products. Come in out of the snow.”

He hurries in and she closes the door and Xena raises her head from where she lies by the crackling fire. When she sees it’s only Danny, she puts her head down and goes back to sleep. On the armchair beside her there’s a blanket tossed to one side, and an open paperback lying on a cushion.

“Everything OK?” Stephanie asks.

“Not really,” says Danny, turning to her. “Two men came into the store looking for you.”

No widening of eyes or dropping of jaw. Stephanie doesn’t go pale or stagger back. She just stands there and nods, waits a moment and then asks, “What did they say?”

“They came in, pretended they didn’t know each other. They had this, this … routine worked out. An overweight man with a ponytail, said his name was Jeremiah Wallow, and an old man who said his name was Gant.”

“Never heard of them,” says Stephanie. “Go on.”

“They came in, and Jeremiah started asking if I sell rat poison or hunting knives or guns. He said something about already having padlocks and chains. Then Gant came over and they started talking about where they were from, and their favourite accents, and they asked if I’d heard any Irish accents recently and if I knew any Irish women in town. I said no.”

“Thank you.”

“They seemed surprised. I waited a bit, then came up here, but they followed me.”

“That’s why you went to Sullivan,” Stephanie says. “You gave him my groceries to throw them off the scent. Clever.”

“If I was clever, I wouldn’t have led them up here in the first place.”

“You’re sure they didn’t follow you here?”

“Pretty sure.”

Stephanie looks away, considering the situation, then she turns and walks into another room. Danny hesitates, and follows slowly, clearing his throat to announce his presence. He finds her in a room lit up by a bank of security monitors that show images of entry points all around the property. Not only is there a camera at the gate, like he’s always known, but there’s also one at the turn on to the road. Both screens show lightly swirling snow, but no sign of Gant or Wallow.

“They were driving a black Cadillac,” says Danny.

Stephanie takes another moment to cast her eyes over the monitors. “Well, it looks like you lost them.”

“Who are they? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Don’t know,” says Stephanie. “I don’t recognise their names or their descriptions.”

“Why do they want you?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

“Are you in trouble? Maybe you should call the cops or something. Nothing these two did was threatening
exactly
, but … I kinda got the feeling they’d be dangerous if, you know …”

Stephanie smiles, showing her dimple. “I’ll be fine, really. I can take care of myself. And I have Xena here. She’ll protect me.”

Danny glances at the dog, who is whimpering softly in her sleep, her hind legs kicking out as she chases some poor unfortunate rabbit through her dreams.

“Yeah,” he says. “But listen, if I give you my number, would you call me if they turn up, or if you need help or you just get, I dunno, nervous out here on your own?”

“Sure,” says Stephanie. “Give me your number and I’ll call you if any of those things happen.”

He writes his number on a pad and she doesn’t even glance at it.

“Thank you for coming out,” she says. “I do appreciate it. If you see them again, just stick to your story that there are no Irish people living around here. They’re probably on their way to the next town already, using the same routine and asking the same questions.”

“You’re not worried that they’ll find you?”

Stephanie looks at him, and he sees something in her smile. “I can take care of myself,” she says.

urtling towards the wall of glass, Stephanie only had time to cover her head and close her eyes before she felt the impact and heard the world break around her. She landed amid the shards and rolled into darkness, eventually slowing into a sprawl. Her clothes had protected her body, but the backs of her hands were cut, sliced open. Blood ran freely, trickling around to her palms, dripping to the floor as she got to her knees.

She looked at her bloody hands, frowning, noticing how empty they seemed. It took another moment to realise she’d lost the Sceptre, but by then Darquesse was already floating in through the broken window.

“You get prettier every time I see you,” Darquesse said, touching down. Her body drank in the shadows around her, her pitch-black silhouette stark against the orange-tinged sky of the city at night.

Stephanie stood, the pain in her hands forgotten. They were in a store, a department store, surrounded by mannequins in frozen poses. No alarm sounded. She wasn’t surprised. Not many department store security systems expected people to crash through their top-floor windows.

“What were you doing in the Vault?” Darquesse asked, walking forward slowly. “Did Finbar have a vision? Did he know I was going after the
Hessian Grimoire
? Were you trying to foil my insidious plan?”

She chuckled. It was soft, and mocking, and filled with menace.

Stephanie backed away. She was sure she’d been holding the Sceptre when she hit the window. She was sure she’d brought it in with her. She thought. She hoped. So it was here. Somewhere around her, it was here. It was just lying on the floor, waiting for her to find it, to grab it and use it to turn Darquesse to dust.

“You won’t kill me,” Stephanie said. She stopped backing away. She stood her ground.

“Oh no?”

“If you kill me, it’ll destroy Mum and Dad. You don’t want to hurt them, right? That’s what you said? If you do
anything
to me, they’ll—”

“They’ll get over it,” said Darquesse. “In the grand scheme of things, my little reflection, what does one life matter? What do a million lives matter? A billion? Not much is the answer. We’re all just energy.”

Darquesse stood right in front of her now. Stephanie’s boots gave her a slight height advantage over Darquesse’s bare feet.

There. The Sceptre, on the ground right behind Darquesse’s heel.

“Fine,” said Stephanie. “You want to kill me? Kill me. But not before I break your nose.”

Darquesse laughed. “By all means. Give it your best shot.”

Stephanie grimaced. This was going to hurt.

She swung a punch and her fist connected. Darquesse’s nose smashed, but her head didn’t move back, and Stephanie’s knuckles crumpled under the impact. As Darquesse healed herself, Stephanie cried out, clutched her hand and fell to her knees.

“I hope you think it was worth it,” Darquesse said.

Stephanie grabbed the Sceptre with her left hand and Darquesse cursed and jerked back as black lightning streaked by her face, turning a mannequin to a cloud of dust.

Darquesse lunged sideways as Stephanie fired again, and Stephanie stood, trying to get a fix, but Darquesse was impossible to see in the dark, dodging between racks of suit jackets and disappearing behind partitions. Then Stephanie glimpsed movement, spun and fired and this time Darquesse dropped back, stumbled, turned to run and launched herself at the wall. She flew straight through it, leaving a gaping hole.

The Sceptre held in a hand slick with sweat and blood, Stephanie turned in a slow circle. Her right hand throbbed so badly it made her want to scream. Movement by the window outside and she jumped. Nothing there now. A glimpse out of the corner of her eye and she spun. Saw nothing.

She heard laughter.

There was a knock behind her, knuckles on glass, so loud and so sudden that Stephanie barked out a cry of surprise as she whirled.

Another knock on another window.

And another.

Knock after knock, Stephanie turning with each one, faster and faster, catching the briefest of glimpses of something blacker than night blurring by outside, and that laughter, that cruel, confident laughter. Stephanie raised the Sceptre, fired, again and again, trying to catch Darquesse as she passed, trying to anticipate, trying to match her speed, the black lightning disintegrating walls and windows and sections of floor and ceiling. A whole display cabinet full of ties went up in dust.

Stephanie spun one more time and stopped, her head buzzing, adrenaline snapping at her fingertips, fear biting at the corners of her mind. The window before her was in one piece. She saw her own reflection in the glass. She looked pale. She looked small and weak and terrified. She looked like a victim. Like prey.

Then she realised there was a face behind the face of her reflection, and it was smiling.

Darquesse burst through the window and her hand closed round Stephanie’s throat. Stephanie was lifted off her feet and she felt the fingers tighten and there was nothing she could do and she was going to die. Then the hand released her and she fell. She hit a display stand, scattering shoes as she rolled off. She rubbed her throat, gasping for breath, looked up as Skulduggery and Darquesse spun through the air and slammed into a wall.

Darquesse started to say something, managed to get out, “Now do you really think this was a good ide—” before Skulduggery headbutted her. Her head smashed back into the wall and Skulduggery headbutted her again and again, crunching bone, caving in her skull.

Not that a caved-in skull would stop Darquesse, of course. She ducked under Skulduggery’s arm and got behind him, wrapping her legs around his waist. She grabbed his head, went to twist it off, and Skulduggery flew backwards. Even before they hit the ground and separated, Darquesse’s face was already healed.

Skulduggery clicked his fingers.

“Stephanie,” he said. “
Run.
”

He raised his hands and twin streams of flame enveloped Darquesse, and her laughter filled the air as Stephanie ran for the stairs. She shouldered the door open and jumped, the steps hurtling beneath her. She landed heavily, grunted, slammed against the wall and rebounded. She ran to the next set of stairs and jumped again. She nearly twisted her ankle when she landed this time, but she sprang up, stumbling, and jumped the third set of stairs. Her foot hit the last step and she went sprawling. She bit her tongue and banged her head and dropped the Sceptre.

Stephanie lay there for a moment, stunned, before a
crash
from above kick-started her brain. She got up, stuck the Sceptre under her arm and took the stairs three at a time with her left hand firmly on the banister.

She reached ground level. Black lightning dissolved a fire door and she was out on the street. She jammed the Sceptre into her backpack with the grimoire and sprinted on, barging past late-night revellers. Suddenly realising she had no idea where she was going, she dug out her phone, opened up Maps to figure out the quickest route back to the gallery. She found it. Five minutes away, at a run. She stuffed the phone in her pocket, started to move, then stopped at the sound of screeching car brakes. She turned slowly.

A taxi driver had come to an emergency stop, his headlights catching Darquesse in full glare as she walked slowly across the road. He slammed his hand down on the horn and Darquesse turned her head to him.

Stephanie ran.

There was a crash and a shriek of metal and then the driver was screaming and Stephanie ran and she ran and she ran. She forgot about the pain in her broken hand. She forgot about her burnings lungs, her tired legs, her aching muscles, the cuts and the bruises and the blood. She ran, because to do anything else would get her killed. She ran until she was alone. She ran until she came to a blue door, and then she staggered to a stop. She sucked in air and looked behind her. No more screams. Sirens, though. More than one.