The Dying of the Light
“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.
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?”
“The people … the bodies.”
Darquesse stood. “Their names, you mean? I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I think that one’s name is Daisy, because it says Daisy on her badge. She works in a supermarket.”
“I see. And why did you kill Daisy?”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t kill her? Then who did all this?”
Darquesse looked around, then back at him. “I did.”
“Then you did kill her.”
“No. Well, I stopped her heart beating and her brain functioning, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“But I didn’t kill her. She’s still here. They’re all still here, Billy-Ray. I wouldn’t just kill them. How cruel would that be?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’d be pretty cruel, all right. So when you say they’re still here, what exactly are you talking about?”
Darquesse fluttered her fingers. “They’re still here. Around us.”
“You mean like ghosts?”
“In a way,” Darquesse said, smiling. “I mean their energy. Can’t you feel it?”
“Have to be honest with you, Darquesse, I cannot feel that. That must be one of your special abilities, because to me, it looks like you just killed a whole bunch of people for no reason.”
“Oh,” said Darquesse. “That’s so sad.”
“It’s a little depressing, yeah. So is that what you’re investigating, this energy?”
“I’m seeing how it works.”
“Found out much?”
“A fair bit. I might need to talk to some experts, though. Maybe scientists. I need to know how things work before I can play with them, you know?”
“That makes sense,” said Sanguine carefully.
“You know what’d be handy? Remnants. Lots of them. They take over the experts, the experts tell me what I want to know. Doesn’t that sound handy?”
“Uh, it sounds more trouble than it’s worth …”
“Nonsense,” said Darquesse. “The Remnants are lovely. Aren’t you engaged to one, after all?”
“Tanith’s a special case, though. And how are you even gonna find them? The Receptacle has been hidden away—”
“No it hasn’t,” Darquesse said happily. “There were plans to relocate it. Great plans. Plans that got sidetracked. Forgotten about. Quietly abandoned. The Receptacle is still in the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks, guarded by a few sorcerers and a squad of Cleavers. No problem.”
“You really think this is a good idea? Last time those Remnants were loose, you killed a whole bunch of them. Remnants have long memories.”
“You don’t think they’ll like me?” Darquesse asked, and frowned. “Maybe we should ask Tanith.”
She walked out and Sanguine hesitated, then followed. They found Tanith in the kitchen, sipping from a mug of coffee.
“I’m going to set the Remnants free,” Darquesse said. “What do you think about that?”
Tanith paused, then took another sip and shrugged. “Don’t really care one way or the other, to be honest. Some of them will be happy to see you. Some won’t.”
“Want to come with me? Say hi?”
“Sure,” said Tanith. “Let me drink this and I’ll meet you on the roof.”
Darquesse grinned, went to the window and flew out.
Tanith watched Sanguine for a moment. “You look like you have something to say.”
He kept his voice low. “You know she killed some people just to look at their energy, whatever the hell that means? She’s killing people, but not seeing it like killing people. Tanith, that ain’t safe. She’s tipping over the edge.”
“Of what? Sanity? Billy-Ray, what does sanity mean to someone like her? How does it apply?”
“She could kill us just as easily as anyone else.”
“No,” Tanith said. “She won’t kill us. Not till right before the end.”
“She can do no wrong in your eyes, can she?”
“Actually,” said Tanith, “she’s doing plenty wrong. She’s wasting time, for a start. I mean, what’s the problem? She has enough power to turn the world into a blackened, charred husk.”
“Is that what you want?”
“You know that’s what I want.”
“I know that’s what you wanted,” said Sanguine. “But that was before you talked to that guy who’d learned to control the Remnant inside him.”
“His name is Moribund. And he doesn’t control the Remnant, OK? How many times do I have to say it? After a few days, the Remnant stops being a separate entity.”
“OK, sorry, but my point remains. He said you didn’t have to be this way. He said you could rebuild your conscience if you worked at it.”
“Why would I want to?” said Tanith. “I’m happy being me.”
“No you’re not.”
Tanith laughed, put the coffee down. “Oh, really? You’re the expert on how I feel and what I think, are you?”
“I saw you working alongside Valkyrie and the Monster Hunters and the Dead Men. You were having fun, sure, but it was more than that. You were where you belonged.”
“Why don’t you just admit it? You don’t want Darquesse to destroy the world, do you?”
Now it was Sanguine’s turn to laugh. “Of course I don’t.”
“Then why are you helping us?”
“Because I love you and I wanna be there when you realise you’re wrong, because on that day you’ll need someone to have your back.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Love makes a fool of us all.”
“Will you please stop saying that word?”
“Why? It making you uncomfortable? Maybe the more you hear it, the more you’ll remember it. Maybe that’s the problem here.”
“There is no problem,” said Tanith. “I just want Darquesse to hurry up and kill everything.”
“You want the world to end now because the longer it takes, the more time you have to think, and doubt, and question yourself. See, you’re coming off a wonderful certainty, where you knew for sure that you wanted the world to end. But you don’t have that certainty any more, and that scares you.”
Tanith shot him a glare, and walked to the window. Right before she climbed out she looked back and said, “You don’t know me half as well as you think you do.”
“That’s right,” said Sanguine, “I don’t. But hell, Tanith, you don’t know yourself, either.”
They drove by the elderly sorcerer whose job it was to turn back any mortal who strayed too close. He nodded to them, and a few moments later the road narrowed and they passed through the illusion of emptiness that protected Roarhaven from mortal eyes. The city loomed, its huge gates open. The Bentley slid through the streets, parked below ground. Stephanie followed Skulduggery into the Sanctuary corridors and they went deeper. They walked without speaking. Stephanie wondered if Skulduggery even remembered she was there.
They got to the cells. Skulduggery spoke with the man in charge, told him what he needed. Moments later, they were in the interview room. Skulduggery sat at the table. Stephanie walked slowly from one wall to the other and back again, her hands in her pockets. She looked round when the door opened, and a small, neat man stepped in. Creyfon Signate was dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, and his hands were shackled before him.
“Finally!” he said, once he saw who had summoned him. He walked forward, dropping into the empty chair.
Skulduggery tilted his head. “I’m sorry?”
“I’ve been asking to speak to someone in charge ever since I was arrested,” said Signate. “I’ve been locked up here for weeks!”
“Erskine Ravel orchestrated a war in which hundreds of sorcerers were killed,” said Stephanie, “and you played a huge part in that. Of course you were locked up. You’re lucky we kept you here instead of shipping you out to an actual gaol.”
Signate shook his head. “I had nothing whatsoever to do with the war. I was brought in to do a job, to oversee the construction of a city in a hospitable dimension and then to shunt the people and the city itself back to this one. The city we built had to overlay the town of Roarhaven exactly. It took pinpoint planning, an absurd attention to detail, and it required my full attention. Do you really think I had time to plot and conspire with Ravel and the Children of the Spider, even if I’d wanted to?”
“So you’re entirely innocent?” Skulduggery said. “You were just doing your job?”
“I believed in what Ravel tried to do. I believed in his vision. But having an unpopular ideology is not a crime, and yet here I sit. In shackles.”
“You’re not in shackles for the ideology part,” said Stephanie. “You’re in shackles for everything else you did.”
“But I didn’t do anything! I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t even lie to anyone. All I did was obey the Grand Mage.”
“Construction on the city started long before Ravel became Grand Mage,” said Skulduggery. “You can’t use that as an excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse, Detective. I was just doing my job, and breaking no laws while I did it. Bring in your Sensitives, have them read my mind. They’ll tell you I’m innocent.”
“They’ll tell us you believe you’re innocent,” Skulduggery said. “That’s not the same thing.”
“Then allow me a trial. We can still have one of those, can’t we? They haven’t been rendered completely obsolete? Allow me to be judged by my peers, based on evidence and testimony. Let them weigh up the facts and deliver their verdict.”
“No,” said Skulduggery.
“This is preposterous! You cannot keep me in prison! I deserve a chance to prove my innocence!”
“Mr Signate,” Skulduggery said, his voice calm, “you won’t require a trial because we’re here to offer you a deal.”
Signate’s fury vanished. “You are?”
“Darquesse poses a threat like virtually nothing we’ve ever seen. While we do have a way of fighting her, we don’t have a way of finding her. She could be anywhere. That’s why we need you.”
“I don’t understand how I could be of use.”
“You’re one of the best Shunters alive, Mr Signate. We’re going to require someone of your skill to do what needs to be done.”
“I … I still don’t see what—”
“If you’re interested,” Skulduggery said, interrupting him, “and you agree to help us, then you walk free this very afternoon. You’ll be working with the Sanctuary and all your previous misdeeds will be forgotten. Are you interested?”
“I … I am,” Signate said. “What do you need me to do?”
“Before she vanished, Darquesse punished Erskine Ravel for everything he’d done. In particular, the murder of Ghastly Bespoke. She took that personally. You may have heard that Ravel is allowed one hour free of agony every day. The other twenty-three hours are spent screaming. No sedatives or painkillers can help him, no Sensitive can calm him. On his hour off, he has taken to begging. He wants to die. He wants the pain to end. Obviously, I won’t let that happen. I took Ghastly’s murder personally, too.”
“I didn’t know Ravel was planning to … to kill Elder Bespoke,” Signate said, fear in his eyes for the first time. Stephanie believed him.
“The human body adapts,” Skulduggery said, ignoring Signate’s distress. “If constant pain is inflicted, it raises its threshold. Ravel has been denied this luxury. Every time he gets used to the pain, the pain intensifies. The only way this is possible, we think, is if Darquesse has formed a direct link to Ravel. She’s turning the dial on his agony herself.”
Signate looked at Skulduggery for a few moments. “You want me to shunt Ravel into another dimension,” he said.
Skulduggery nodded. “Doing so should sever the link between them, catching Darquesse’s attention. Then, when you bring Ravel back, she should come for him.”
“And you’ll be waiting.”
“Yes. You’ll take a team of Cleavers with you when you shunt to keep Ravel in check.”
“It’s a good plan,” said Signate. “But there’s a problem. I have access to four dimensions. Three of them are inhospitable at this time of year. The fourth is where we built the city.”
“So that’s where you’ll be shunting.”
“I’m afraid not. There are creatures in that reality that we barely managed to hold back with the city’s walls. Some of these creatures are as big as elephants. Some are the size of large dogs. They’re all predators, and now that there are no walls to keep them at bay, we would be shunting straight into a feeding frenzy.”
“So you need a new dimension to shunt into,” Skulduggery said, and went silent for a moment. “Tell me, Mr Signate, do you know Silas Nadir?”
Signate’s lip curled in distaste. “I know him. Haven’t spoken to him in over sixty years. If you’re hoping I know where to find him, I’m afraid I can’t help you. I try not to associate with serial killers.”
“We don’t need you to find him. We’ve come close to it in the past, and one of these days we’ll catch him and make sure he never kills again. But you’re aware of the dimension he found?”
“I am, of course,” said Signate. “A reality where Mevolent rules the world. Not somewhere I’d ever be interested in visiting, mind you, but … oh.”
“Do you think you can find it? I’m aware that every dimension has its own frequency and there’s an infinite number of realities, but—”
“Once a frequency has been found,” said Signate, seizing his own opportunity to interrupt, “it’s out there, open, waiting. It becomes noticeable, if you’re of a particular skill level. And of course I am. It would help me greatly if there was something I could draw a reading from, though. Did you happen to bring back any souvenirs?”
“We have this,” said Stephanie, taking the Sceptre from her backpack.
Signate’s eyes widened. “Oh, my … That’s the Sceptre of the Ancients, isn’t it? That’s a piece of history. It’s … magnificent.”
“It’s not ours,” Stephanie said. “Our Sceptre was destroyed. This one belongs in the other dimension. We kind of liberated it.”
“Can I … Can I touch it?” Signate asked. “It won’t go off, will it?”
“It’s Deadlocked,” she told him. “It’s bonded to me, so I’m the only one it’ll work for. Can you get a reading from it?”
With slightly trembling hands, Signate reached out, fingertips brushing the Sceptre. He closed his eyes and bit his lip. His fingertips tapped lightly. Then he withdrew his hands, and looked up. “That is tremendously helpful. It would have taken me months to find the proper frequency – now it will only take weeks.”
“You have days,” said Skulduggery. “Do you think you can do it?”
Signate smiled for the first time. “I have always appreciated a challenge.”
Skulduggery stood. “You’ll be out in an hour. Report directly to Administrator Tipstaff. You’re working with us now, Creyfon. Do not disappoint me.”
They left him there and walked back. The silence was beginning to get to Stephanie. It was a peculiar sort of silence. It was sharp. It had angles. It jostled between them, its edges cutting into her. But she kept her mouth shut. Attempting to start a conversation, trying for small talk, would be a defeat. If Skulduggery didn’t want to talk to her, then she didn’t want to talk to Skulduggery.
Even though she did. Badly.
