The Dying of the Light (26 page)

Gant stands by the bookcase, fingernail scraping lightly from book to book, spine to spine. He slides an old paperback from the shelf, a book by an Irish horror writer Danny had once liked. Same last name as Stephanie. A small part of him wonders if they’re related. There couldn’t be too many Edgleys in Ireland. There couldn’t be too many Edgleys
anywhere
.

“How much do you know?” Gant asks, flicking through the pages.

Danny’s shoulder is most likely broken. That’s how it feels anyway. Every time he moves, he has to bite back a shriek. The rope around his neck is tight, but not tight enough to choke him, and it’s rough against his skin. The handcuffs are decorated with ornate symbols that Danny doesn’t understand, and even if he could get his feet free, he doubts his injured leg would carry his weight for more than a few steps. All this he thinks about while Gant waits for an answer, and then one more thought comes into his head. If he somehow manages to rid himself of the ropes and the cuffs, if he somehow manages to stand and put up a fight, he has Gant himself to deal with, and the old guy is tougher than he looks.

“I don’t know where she is,” Danny says.

Gant puts the book back on the shelf and turns to him. “Her boots are just inside the door,” he says. “I dare say she would not have left this house in simple shoes – not if she were merely going for a walk. Tell me, Danny, what kind of dog does she have? I saw a bowl, and some dog food. Is it a big one? It is, isn’t it?”

“Big enough to rip your throat out,” Danny says.

Gant laughs. “Quite! Yes, indeed! Big enough to rip my throat out! Provided I don’t kill it first. She didn’t take the dog for a walk. She didn’t even lock the house. Granted, she lives apart from the populace, undoubtedly assumes that those gates of hers would keep out any undesirables … but with the amount of security in place, it leads me to believe that she always locks up after herself, no matter what. Better to be safe than sorry, that’s her motto. But if she did leave quickly, then where are the tracks? Where are the footprints in the snow? Did you call her, Danny my boy? Did you warn her?”

“I don’t have her number.”

“I find that difficult to believe.”

“She has my number. I don’t have hers.”

“Ohh … and what does that tell you? That she doesn’t like you, or merely that she doesn’t trust you?”

“It tells me that she values her privacy.”

Gant smiles. “Indeed it does. But when I asked the question
how much do you know?
I was not asking whether or not you knew where Stephanie Edgley had got to. I was simply asking how much do you know?”

“About what?”

“About the world, and the world beneath it. The world alongside it. The people in the shadows, in the darkness. Magic, Danny. I’m talking about magic.”

Danny waits for him to break out into another one of his chuckles, but Gant stays distressingly straight-faced. Oh, hell. Danny isn’t just at the mercy of a killer – he’s at the mercy of a madman.

Gant raises an eyebrow. “Judging by your silence, you don’t have the first clue as to what I may be talking about. Very well. Try not to let it concern you overly. Forget I ever said anything. Pretend we’re just two people in a house, making conversation and passing the time.”

“What are you going to do with me?” asks Danny.

“Probably kill you.”

The admission hits Danny harder than any iron bar. His throat tightens. His stomach lurches. “Why?”

“Because you’ve been an obstruction,” says Gant. “You’ve been an annoyance. And you’ve seen my face, Danny my boy. You can identify me, describe me to the authorities and make my life very awkward.”

“I don’t even know your full name.”

“Cadaverous,” the old man says. “Cadaverous Gant. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” says Danny.

“We both know you’re lying. You shouldn’t lie, Danny. Lying is bad.”

“So why … why am I here? Why aren’t I dead yet?”

“You may yet prove useful. I have heard many things about the person you know as Stephanie Edgley – many contradictory things. Some say she is noble; others say she is evil incarnate. If she is noble, I can use you to lure her into the open. If she’s evil incarnate … well, a drastic rethink would be in order. I am, of course, hoping that she’ll be noble. Noble people are easier to predict, easier to provoke, and easier to kill.”

“What has she ever done to you?”

“To me?” asks Gant. “Nothing.”

“Then why do you want to kill her?”

“Because of what she is, and what I am.”

“And what are you?”

Cadaverous Gant just smiles.

alkyrie Cain looked at herself in the mirror. She slowly tapped a finger against the glass, touching her own reflection.

Her again. It was her again. No more looking through Darquesse’s eyes. No more fighting to hang on inside her mind. The person she saw in that mirror was the person she was. It was an odd feeling, but a welcome one.

Reverie Synecdoche walked in. “You’re dressed,” she said.

Valkyrie picked up her jacket, slipped it on. “I am. I need to go home. I haven’t been home for … a while. You can let me go, can’t you?”

Synecdoche hesitated. “Well … yes. If the Sensitives cleared you—”

“They did,” said Valkyrie. “They poked around my head all afternoon, making sure there was no trace of Darquesse left inside. Or that I wasn’t pulling a double bluff. They concluded that I’m me again.”

Synecdoche smiled. “Good. Your tests have come back, and you’ll be happy to learn that you are in unnaturally perfect health with no obvious side effects.”

“Darquesse liked to keep me running in tip-top condition,” Valkyrie said. “It’s all downhill from here, I suppose.”

Synecdoche smiled again, but it was a professional smile, the smile that quietly conveyed how busy she was and, really, if you had nothing further to ask, she should be getting back to patients who needed her help.

“I’ll see myself out,” said Valkyrie.

Synecdoche nodded, spun on the heel of her sensible shoe, and then she was gone.

Valkyrie left the Medical Wing. The doctor had been right – she was feeling great. Strong and energetic and well rested. Her body was a temple. Her mind, however, was a ramshackle old cabin in the middle of a forest. It leaked. There were draughts. The doors wouldn’t shut properly, there were noises from the attic and something had died under the porch.

Her mind needed help.

She found the others in the library in the North Tower. There were four libraries in the Sanctuary, but this was the smallest and the least used. Vex sat with his feet on the table opposite Saracen. Gracious and Donegan searched the shelves and, judging by their dismay, they were searching in vain for copies of books they had written. Stephanie and Fletcher sat together in the corner, talking quietly. No sign of Skulduggery or Dai Maybury.

Saracen was the first to see her. Everyone else looked round.

“Hi,” she said.

“Come on in,” said Vex. “Pull up a chair.”

Valkyrie took a few steps, but didn’t sit. “I want to thank you,” she said. “You saved me from … myself, and you stopped me from doing things that I’d never, ever be able to come back from. You risked your lives and I’m just so … grateful.”

“We look after our own,” said Vex.

“Once a Dead Man, always a Dead Man,” said Saracen.

Stephanie stood. “You should apologise to Dai,” she said. Fletcher got to his feet, reached for her, but she pulled away. “No. She has to apologise. Dai has no brothers left thanks to her.”

“Go easy,” Fletcher said softly.

“It’s OK,” Valkyrie said. “She’s right. Of course I have to apologise to Dai. I have to apologise to everyone. Including all of you. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to explain it, but … I don’t know. There was a movie I saw once. Dad made me watch it. It was a Western, and I don’t like Westerns.”

“What was it called?” Gracious asked.

“I don’t remember.”

“Who starred in it?” asked Donegan.

“That guy, you know. He’s tall and he looks at people like he’s going to shoot them all the time. He was the cop in that other movie, called that guy a punk and made him think about how many times he’d fired his gun because he’d lost track.”

“Clint Eastwood,” said Gracious.

“Yeah,” said Valkyrie. “Anyway, there’s a scene in it, in this Western he was in, and this other cowboy, dressed all in black, was told to go for a gun.”

“Lee Van Cleef,” said Gracious. “At the end of
For a Few Dollars More
.”

“Whatever,” Valkyrie said. “So he’s told to go for his gun and there’s this big long pause, because the guy who told him to go for it, the sheriff, is armed and he’s ready to fire.”

“Wait,” said Donegan. “It can’t be
For a Few Dollars More
. El Indio wasn’t the sheriff.”

“I’m pretty sure he was the sheriff,” Valkyrie said. “The other cowboy was in a jail cell. The sheriff was that guy from
Superman
, and the cowboy was from
Harry Potter
.”

Fletcher frowned. “Harry Potter was in a Western?”

“Oh my God,” said Stephanie. “It was
Unforgiven
, OK? Will you please let her get to whatever point she’s trying to make?”

Valkyrie continued. “So the sheriff makes this other guy, a third guy, I think he was in that film with Elvis and Tony Soprano and Brad Pitt lying on a couch, and he’s very nervous, but anyway the sheriff makes him give the cowboy a gun, and he tells the cowboy to pull the trigger, to shoot him and escape. So the cowboy reaches out for it, but he doesn’t know if it’s loaded or not, and the guy from
Superman
is standing there just waiting for him to grab it. But the
Harry Potter
guy can’t, so he sits back down. Then the sheriff, the
Superman
guy, he takes the gun and he opens it up and all these bullets fall out and the other guy’s like, ‘Aw, I could have shot him.’”

“My mistake,” said Stephanie. “There was no point.”

“It was that fear,” said Valkyrie. “The fear that if you make a move, the other person’s going to shoot you. Like they’re just waiting for you to do it, like they set the whole thing up to get you to make this mistake, and when you grab the gun, it’s going to be empty, and they’re going to open fire.

“That’s what I thought was going to happen. Darquesse pushed me to one side so … so completely that I was … I was nothing. I was tiny and insignificant and powerless, and it felt like I was barely hanging on, like if I stopped concentrating I’d stop existing. And it was as if she was watching me and giving me all these chances to peep my head out just so she could chop it off.”

“You should have been stronger,” said Stephanie.

“I should have been,” Valkyrie said. “But I wasn’t. I gave up. It was a huge, unimaginably huge, mistake, but I gave up. It was just too hard to deal with everything that was happening. I should have kept fighting. The moment I gave up, I was just shoved to one side, and all I could do was watch. Well, watch and … When Darquesse did those things, killed those people, it was me, even though it wasn’t. It’s … kind of hard to explain.”

“We understand,” said Gracious. “It’s Jean Grey and the Phoenix Force. We all understand.”

“I have no idea what that means,” said Vex, “but we get it, Valkyrie. We do. We’ve all seen what Darquesse was capable of. To have her living inside your head, as a part of you, that must have been … difficult.”

Stephanie barked out a laugh. “I’m sorry, is that it? Are we letting her off the hook now? She killed people.”

“You killed my cousin,” Valkyrie said.

“And no one is letting me forget it,” Stephanie responded. “But everyone here’s acting like they’re never going to bring up your little slide to the Dark Side ever again.”

“We’ve all made mistakes,” Skulduggery said from behind Valkyrie. She turned, saw him standing there with Dai Maybury.

“Some more than others,” Skulduggery continued. “Long life means more time to work for redemption. We all have a second chance now. Valkyrie is back with us, and Darquesse is a few angry thoughts on the horizon. No Darquesse means no apocalypse. The future we needed to avert has been averted. We won.”

Valkyrie looked at Dai. “I am so sorry for what I did.”

“Wasn’t you,” said Dai. “Deacon wasn’t much of a brother, but I’m still going to miss him. And when I do, I’ll lay the blame squarely at the feet of the person who killed him – Darquesse. Not you.”

Valkyrie gave a single nod, tears in her eyes.

Skulduggery clapped his hands once. “OK, speeches are over. Darquesse’s ghost, because I refuse to call it an untethered entity, is still out there. It’s up to Valkyrie and myself to track it until it dissipates. Fletcher, you take Stephanie home – she’s earned a rest from all this craziness. Then get back here. The search for the Remnants continues. If anyone finds themselves with a spare moment, as unlikely as that sounds, you can lend a hand in the hunt for Doctor Nye. It was broken out of prison early this morning by a person or persons unknown. Nye is not an immediate threat, though, so keep your priorities straight. Let’s get to it.”