The Dying of the Light (6 page)

“What’s this about slippers?” Stephanie’s mum said, walking in.

“Dad’s just saying he could never lead the resistance against a robot army because he wears slippers.”

“This is very true,” her mum said.

“Then it’s decided,” Stephanie’s father said. “When the robot army makes itself known, I will be one of the first traitors to sell out the human race.”

“Wow,” said Stephanie.

“Now that’s an about-turn,” said her mum.

“It’s the only way,” said her dad. “I have to make sure my family survives. The two of you and that other one, the smaller one—”

“Alice.”

“That’s her. You’re all that matter to me. You’re all I care about. I will betray the human race so that the robot army spares you. And then later, I will betray you so that the robot army spares me. It’s a dangerous ploy, but someone has to be willing to take the big risks, and I’ll be damned if I’m about to let anyone else gamble with my family’s future.”

“You’re so brave,” Stephanie’s mum said.

“I know,” said her dad, and then, quieter, “I know.”

Stephanie grinned, left the memory stick on the side table and went to the couch, sank into it and curled her feet up under her. They all watched the rest of
Three Days of the Condor
and then Stephanie and her mum explained the plot to her dad. When he was satisfied, they said goodnight and Stephanie went up to bed. She climbed beneath the covers and closed her eyes, and a few seconds later her phone beeped. She read the text, sent back an answer and turned on her bedside lamp as she sat up, holding the covers close.

Fletcher Renn emerged from thin air in the middle of her room. “Hi,” he whispered.

“Hey.”

He sat on the bed. He looked good and strong and healthy. He looked tanned. His hair was awesome. He leaned in and they kissed.

“You taste yummy,” she said.

“I’ve just been in New Zealand, eating strawberries. Do you want some? We could pop over …?”

“I’m in bed,” Stephanie said, smiling. “It’s bedtime now. And Skulduggery’s picking me up early to drive over to Cassandra Pharos, so no quick jaunts for me.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Were you in New Zealand with the Monster Hunters or just for the strawberries?”

“Strawberries,” said Fletcher. “There’s a little shop in Wellington that I love. They always have the best strawberries, for some reason.”

She leaned back against the headboard. “So how is life as a big, bad Monster Hunter? Is it official yet?”

He grinned. “It is, and I’m actually enjoying it. Donegan and Gracious are pretty cool. Gracious is such an unbelievable geek, though. It’s like everything he’s ever loved is now on a T-shirt. They asked Dai Maybury to join, too, did you hear that? He said he couldn’t, he was too much of a lone wolf – those were his exact words – but he agreed to be an Emergency Monster Hunter, to be called on only when needed. And now he just won’t go away.”

Stephanie laughed softly. “Sounds like you’re all getting on well.”

“We are,” said Fletcher, nodding. “It’s nice to be a part of something that … changes things, you know? We go after the renegade sorcerers with all their supercharged powers, and we beat them, we shackle them, we throw them in a cell. We stop them from killing innocent people, we stop them from exposing magic, and we move on to the next one. It’s just … it’s a wonderful feeling. To be useful.”

“Look at that,” Stephanie said. “My boyfriend is taking pride in his work.”

“Boyfriend, am I?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

Her smile vanished. “Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to be?”

“Well … yes.”

He leaned closer. “OK. Then I suppose I’m your boyfriend. Are you my girlfriend?”

“That’s usually how these things go.”

He kissed her again. “Good.”

kulduggery was at the pier on time the next morning, because Skulduggery was always at the pier on time. Stephanie was always a few minutes late. Valkyrie had rarely been late, but then Valkyrie had enjoyed this stuff a lot more.

“Sorry,” Stephanie said, buckling her seatbelt. “Dad wouldn’t get out of the shower.”

Skulduggery nodded, didn’t answer, and they pulled out on to the road. Stephanie sat back in her seat. Great. Another one of those days.

Cassandra Pharos was ready for them when they arrived. The door to her cottage was open, and Skulduggery led the way inside. They went down into the cellar, where the coals beneath the floor grille were already glowing orange, filling the chamber with a close, muggy heat. Cassandra sat on the chair, umbrella open and held comfortably over her head. Her lined face, framed by a cascade of grey hair, broke into a smile when she saw them.

“Hello there,” she said brightly.

Stephanie liked Cassandra. She was one of the only people who didn’t treat her like a poor replacement for a real person.

“There have been a few changes to the last vision I showed you,” she said. “Skulduggery, be a dear and turn the water on, would you? Now, while it’s still fresh in my mind.”

Skulduggery turned the valve on the wall, and water sprinkled from the pipes in the ceiling. The coals hissed and steam billowed. Skulduggery waited until Cassandra was lost to sight, then turned the water off.

The first time Valkyrie had come down here, she’d witnessed Cassandra’s vision of the future. The second time had revealed greater detail, and yet there were some aspects that were different. Knowledge of the future changes the future, Cassandra had said. The second time, the vision had begun with Erskine Ravel in his Elder robes, his hands shackled, screaming in agony. That future had already come to pass with two tiny differences – Ravel hadn’t been wearing his robes, and the room in which it occurred wasn’t the room in the vision.

This time, with Stephanie down here instead of Valkyrie, the vision was different again. It didn’t start with Ghastly running by. It started with Tanith staggering through the fog, one hand at a wound in her belly, the other gripping her sword. It wasn’t a ruined city that materialised around her this time, but one of the Sanctuary corridors. She stumbled against a wall, waited there a moment to catch her breath.

“Suppose it’s fitting,” she said, looking up at someone just over Stephanie’s shoulder, “that it comes down to you and me, after all this time.”

A figure walked right through Stephanie and she jumped back, disrupting the steam.

Tanith did her best to stand upright. “Come and have a go …” she said, but her words faded along with her image, and the steam swirled and Stephanie saw herself standing in the city.

Because that’s who it was. It was
Stephanie
. When Valkyrie had seen this, she hadn’t been able to understand how there could be a Valkyrie Cain and a Darquesse in the vision at the same time. But of course there had never been a Valkyrie Cain. It had always been Stephanie and Darquesse. From the very beginning, that’s how it was meant to be.

The Stephanie in the vision wore a torn and bloody T-shirt, black like her trousers. No jacket. The Deathtouch Gauntlet was on her right forearm, and on her left arm she had a tattoo. There was a bag on her back, the strap slung across her chest, the same bag Stephanie was wearing now to carry the Sceptre.

“I’ve seen this,” her future self said, looking up to stare directly into Stephanie’s eyes. “I was watching from … there. Hi. This is where it happens, but then you know that, right? At least you think you do. You think this is where I let them die.”

“Stephanie!”

The voice was so real and so sharp that Stephanie forgot for a moment that it came from the vision, and instead looked around for her father, her heart lurching. The panic passed as suddenly as it had arrived – it wasn’t real, not yet – and she watched her parents, her mother carrying Alice, searching the ruins.

Her future self shook her head. “I don’t want to see this. Please. I don’t want this to happen. Let me stop it. Please let me stop it.” She took something from her pocket and looked at it, tears streaming. “Please work. Please let me save them.”

Stephanie’s future self was lost in a fresh swirl of billowing steam that rippled through the images of her parents, but failed to disperse them.

“Stephanie!” her father shouted. “We’re here! Steph!”

Darquesse landed behind them, cracking the pavement. Her shadowskin covered her from toe to jawline, and she smiled as Stephanie’s dad positioned himself in front of his wife and child.

“Give our daughter back to us,” he said.

Darquesse didn’t say anything. She just smiled.

“Give her back!” Desmond Edgley roared, and in the next instant he was enveloped in black flame.

Stephanie had known it was coming, but it still hit her like a fist. She sagged, made a sound like a wounded dog, and thankfully the steam billowed and took the image away. It was replaced with a new one, of a black hat lying on a cracked street. A breeze tried to play with it, tried to roll and flip it, but the hat proved resistant and eventually the breeze gave up. A gloved hand reached down, plucked the hat off the ground and brushed the dust from it. Skulduggery, dressed in black, returning the hat to his head, angling the brim and looking good while he did so.

They were coming to the end now, Stephanie knew. The only thing left was for Darquesse to …

… and here she was now.

Darquesse walked up behind Skulduggery and he turned, unhurried. He reloaded his gun.

“My favourite little toy,” said Darquesse, her voice echoing slightly in the chamber.

“Are you referring to my gun or to me?” Skulduggery asked.

Darquesse laughed. “You know you’re going to die now, don’t you? And still you make jokes.”

Skulduggery looked up slightly. “I made a promise.”

Darquesse nodded. “Until the end.”

“That’s right,” said Skulduggery. “Until the end.”

He walked forward, firing the gun. He’d taken three steps before the pistol fell to the ground, followed quickly by his glove. Stephanie glanced at the real Skulduggery, wishing he had a face she could read while he watched his future self come apart, limbs falling, bones scattering. The Skulduggery in the vision collapsed and Darquesse picked up his head.

She kissed his teeth, then dropped the skull, and as the steam billowed and the last dregs of the vision were swept away, she turned, looked straight into Stephanie’s eyes, and smiled.

e didn’t want to do it. There were a ton of things he’d have preferred to do right at that moment. Leave it alone, for one thing. Walk away, for another. Take a vacation, somewhere hot and lazy, and let other people sort this out. But he couldn’t just abandon everything. Not yet. Not until he knew for sure that there was someone out there who could stop her. So Sanguine put down the beer he’d barely touched, and went to investigate the scream.

He pushed open the door to the spare room. It hit something on the other side, something that rolled, then came to a lazy stop as the door swung wider. A head. Male. Sanguine didn’t recognise the face. Nor did he recognise the other faces he saw in the room, twisted as they were in frozen snapshots of terror. How many were in here was impossible to judge. Body parts were grouped in piles, with the heads in the near corner. The floorboards were red and sodden. Blood splattered the walls and dripped from the ceiling. In the centre of the room crouched Darquesse, her fingers digging into what remained of a torso. She’d woken up from her hibernation, and she’d woken up curious. She looked up at him, her face calm.

Sanguine had no problems with taking a human life. He didn’t even have a problem with taking an innocent life, provided he was paid for it or had sufficient personal reasons. He was a killer. When he slept, his victims didn’t haunt his dreams, and so he was a good killer. All these things he recognised and acknowledged when he said, with some horror, “What have you done?”

Darquesse dug her fingers in a little more. The blood didn’t show on her shadowskin. “I’m investigating,” she said.

Words, he felt, needed to be chosen with care. “Who were they?”

“I’m sorry?”