“Keep going!” he shouted.
Stephanie fired again and again, keeping her angle shallow, to avoid destroying the contents of the boxes. Dust swirled in the narrow room, and behind the alarm, Stephanie could hear the frantic scrabbling outside the door.
“Got it!” Skulduggery called, pulling a thick, leatherbound tome from the crumbling dust. Stephanie turned so that he could slip it into the bag on her back, then fired at the wall opposite. Skulduggery went first and she came after, coughing, stumbling into a glass case displaying three curling, aged pages. Skulduggery took her wrist and they ran, up some steps, back into the gallery proper.
A snarl, from somewhere to their right. Stephanie was about to shout a warning when a gust of wind took her off her feet, sent her hurtling up over the balcony. She caught her foot on the edge and went tumbling, snatching a glimpse of Skulduggery turning to face the onrushing vampire. Then she hit the ground, badly, and cursed to herself as she rolled. She got to her feet. If the alarm were raised, if they were separated, the plan was for Stephanie to get to the roof.
Well, OK then. She just had to find the stairs leading up, and she’d be—
The hairs on the back her neck stood up. There was something behind her.
Stephanie broke into a run a moment before the vampire launched itself at her. She twisted as she ran, firing the Sceptre, but the vampire was moving too fast. It streaked through the shadows, knocking tables and chairs out of its way. Stephanie stopped trying to aim at it and instead fired ahead of her, black lightning turning a section of the wall to dust. She ran through, took a short cut through the next wall as well, and the next, and then she was running up stairs, disintegrating the steps behind her. She reached the top before the whole thing collapsed, and it was like the entire building was roaring at her. She glanced back, daring to hope that the falling debris had trapped the vampire, but it sprang from the billowing clouds of dust, caught sight of her again and snarled.
Stephanie ran on, found the door, burst out on to the roof. The vampire followed.
She backed away, missed with every shot she took, and the vampire jumped and she leaped backwards, fired at the section of roof she’d just been standing on. The vampire fell through, vanished from sight, and Stephanie collapsed on to her back, taking a moment to catch her breath and gather her strength.
She sat up, pushed herself to her feet and shook the dust from her hair. She looked at the hole in the roof and went cold. The vampire’s claws were clinging to the edge.
It shot up, out of the hole, and Stephanie spun and ran for the edge of the building. She leaped and fell towards a tree, steeling herself for the impact, but something slammed into her, hands clutching her, and she was lifted – twirling – into the sky and over the city, the streets becoming blurred streams of light beneath her. The arms that held her were warm and strong – flesh and blood arms, not bone. Not Skulduggery. She looked up into a bright smile.
“Hello, you,” said Darquesse, and threw her.
20
HOME DELIVERY
fter Gant and Jeremiah leave the store, Danny counts to sixty, then steps out into the cold air and looks up and down the street. He can’t see them. He returns to the warmth of the store, and stands behind the counter. He gives himself a half-hour of standing there, then fills two grocery bags. He hopes Stephanie won’t mind getting her delivery on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday. He decides she won’t, not when he tells her his real reason for being there.
He closes up early, puts the bags on the passenger seat of his car and pulls out into traffic. If anyone tries following him, they’ll find themselves lost in the school run. Hopefully. It starts to snow, and he realises how cold it is. He puts the heater on full blast and leaves town, heading north, part of a loose convoy of cars and pickups. One by one they turn off the narrowing roads, until there’s just Danny with one other car in his rear-view. It’s dark by this stage, and Danny swings smoothly round a bend and picks up speed on the straight, but when there are no headlights behind him he slows a little and drives on, the wipers sweeping the snowflakes into little triangles on his windshield.
He doesn’t know what he’d expected when he imagined someone actually asking about her. He’d expected journalists, maybe photographers, or cops. Maybe the FBI or the Marshals Service or someone. He hadn’t expected an old man and a fat man. He hadn’t expected the menace they brought with them. Not for the first time, he wonders about Stephanie, about who she is and what she’s done. Maybe today’s the day she’ll tell him. He hopes she won’t have to kill him afterwards.
Approaching the turn-off for her farm, Danny happens to glance in his wing mirror and catches a glint of something behind him in the snow, something polished and dark. He curses, once and loudly, and tugs at the wheel, fishtailing slightly before getting the car back under control. He passes the turn to Stephanie’s place, his palms sweaty, his throat dry. They had turned their headlights off. That’s all they’d done. They’d turned their headlights off and he’d almost led them straight to her. Almost.
Danny keeps driving, his mind a frozen blank. What happens now? Is he going to drive until he runs out of gas? Out of road? What will happen once they realise he’s been driving aimlessly? Will they pull him over? What will they do to him? What are they capable of? Will they hurt him?
He doesn’t know, he can’t know, but he feels it. He feels sure they’ll hurt him. An old man and a fat man. He’s young, in better condition than either of them, but he’s never been in a fight in his life. Not even at school. He isn’t built for physical confrontation. He has no idea what to do. He digs in his pocket, yanks out his phone. No signal. He curses again, but this one is quiet, like he doesn’t want them to hear.
Will they have weapons? The fat one, Jeremiah, he’d been asking about hunting knives and guns. I like guns. Danny doesn’t have a gun. There’s probably a tyre iron in the trunk, but as far as weapons go, that’s it. There’s nothing but maps in the glove box and an empty coffee container in the cup holder. In the grocery bags there are a few steaks, chicken breasts and some celery and soft drinks and a dozen other useless items. He could possibly throw the grocery bags at them when they run at him, but he doesn’t think it’ll do much good.
Then an idea occurs to him.
He drives on for another few minutes, slowing as he reaches a turn. He takes a smaller road left, trying to drive casual, the car jolting every time it hits a pothole. After a minute or two, he pulls up outside an old cabin, gets out and grabs the grocery bags from the passenger seat. He takes his time, waits until he sees, out of the corner of his eye, the black car crawling up through the swirling snow and patches of darkness. Once he feels sure they can see him, Danny walks up to the cabin door and knocks.
He knocks again.
Oh, God, please be home please be home please be—
The door opens. Eddie Sullivan peers up at him suspiciously. It takes a few moments for the old man to recognise Danny outside of the store.
“Hello, Mr Sullivan,” Danny says, smiling brightly. “I thought you might be having a little trouble getting into town with the snow and all, so I figured I’d come up here and deliver a few essentials.”
Eddie peers at the bags. “I didn’t order nothing.”
“I know,” says Danny. “Just being neighbourly.”
Eddie chews his lip. “I didn’t order it, so I ain’t paying for it.”
Danny nods. “Sounds reasonable. May I come in?”
Eddie grunts, but shuffles sideways and allows Danny to step in out of the snow. Danny puts the bags on the table and immediately goes to the window, makes sure not to disturb the curtains as he peers out. The black car crawls by, headlights still off. It’s an old model, a Cadillac by the look of it. He sees a flash of Jeremiah’s pale, fleshy face pressed up against the passenger window, staring at the cabin, before the Cadillac does a U-turn and goes back the way it came.
“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.
21
THE EVICTION
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.