The Dying of the Light (66 page)

Clouds of dust rolled up the street and Valkyrie ducked into a doorway, covering Alice’s head with her blanket. The dust followed them and Valkyrie kept moving, running through two connecting rooms and out through a ruined wall into the next street over.

She bent double, coughing, and made sure Alice was OK before straightening up.

“Stephanie!” she heard her father shout from somewhere nearby. “We’re here! Steph!”

She climbed another pile of debris, saw her folks dusting themselves off. She went to wave, to shout back, when Darquesse landed behind them.

Valkyrie ducked down. This was it. This was the moment in the vision. She placed Alice between two pieces of rubble and took the bag off her back – an empty bag with a jagged hole in the bottom.

Her eyes widened.

She stumbled, retracing her steps. The Sceptre had fallen out when she was running. She would have noticed otherwise.

And there it was, lying on the floor in the building she’d just come through.

She ran to it and grabbed it, sprinted back, passed Alice and got to the top of the pile of rubble just as Darquesse waved her hand and Valkyrie’s parents exploded into nothing.

“No!” she screamed.

Darquesse looked at her, the surprise on her face quickly replaced by a smile, and the smile quickly replaced by a frown when she saw the Sceptre being raised as Valkyrie ran at her.

Black lightning flashed, turning the wall behind Darquesse to dust.

Darquesse darted sideways, but Valkyrie fired again, sending her reeling. Everywhere she moved, every direction, Valkyrie cut off with a streak of lightning, until Darquesse was scrambling backwards and Valkyrie was standing over her, breathing hard, the black crystal pointed right into her face.

The Sceptre trembled. Inconsolable, unknowable rage scraped its fingers through Valkyrie’s mind.

“Bring them back,” she said.

Darquesse looked up at her, licking her lips to wet them. Valkyrie recognised the mannerism. She did that sometimes. When she was nervous. Even Darquesse was scared of the Sceptre.

“Bring them back.”

“They’re energy,” said Darquesse. “Don’t think of them as dead, think of them—”

“I will kill you,” Valkyrie told her, “if you do not bring them back to me right now. I know you can do it.”

Darquesse shook her head. “Before, maybe. When I was whole. When we were together. But I’m not as strong as I was. If you join with me, if you let me absorb your energy, I’ll be able—”

“I will kill you,” Valkyrie said dully. “Bring them back. You have three seconds.”

“Valkyrie, come on.”

“Three.”

“I’m not strong enough any more!”

“Two.”

“Please! I’ll bring them back when I have more—”

“One.”

“OK!” Darquesse said. “OK! I’ll do it.”

Valkyrie didn’t lower the Sceptre.

Darquesse raised her hand, very slowly, to the space where Valkyrie’s mum and dad had been standing. She narrowed her eyes, bit her lip …

… and then, with a soft
whump
, Valkyrie’s parents were standing there, blinking.

“What the hell just happened?” her dad said.

Valkyrie looked round, made sure they were all in one piece, and a vice closed round her throat and the Sceptre was ripped from her grasp.

“You stupid girl,” Darquesse said, lifting her off her feet. She kicked uselessly as her parents ran to help. “You had a chance to kill me. You had the
only
chance to kill me. And you wasted it.”

With a flick of the wrist, Darquesse threw Valkyrie into her parents. They went down in a heap.

Darquesse examined the Sceptre. “This was your one remaining weapon. I am disappointed. I thought you were smarter than that. You take your chance when you can, Valkyrie. Haven’t you learned anything from Skulduggery? You have to be ruthless. You just have to be. Because what have you achieved here? You made me return your parents to you at the expense of controlling the situation.”

She cocked her hand back and hurled the Sceptre into the air. In an instant, it was a speck in the distance. Then it was gone. “And I’m just going to kill them again. Along with you. And everyone else. So congratulations, Valkyrie. You’ve doomed the world.”

Valkyrie got up slowly, painfully, and her dad tried to pull her back down. No, not pull. He was tugging at her shirt. She glanced at him, saw he was looking behind Darquesse. She followed his gaze, saw Fletcher standing in a doorway across the street. He was holding up his hand, five fingers splayed. He started counting down.

Four fingers.

Three fingers.

He vanished, and Valkyrie turned her attention back to Darquesse, continuing the countdown in her own head—

Two.

One.

She lunged, energy erupting from her hand, blasting Darquesse right in the face. Darquesse screeched, staggered, managed to grab Valkyrie as she went and she twisted, hurling Valkyrie off her feet. Before she hit the wall, the impact snapping her bones like they were dry twigs, Valkyrie glimpsed Fletcher again, teleporting in right behind Darquesse. And he wasn’t alone.

They were all around Darquesse before she knew what was happening. Fletcher’s work. So that’s why they’d been keeping him out of the fight until now. Sneaky. She saw hazy outlines, heard voices, felt hands on her. Valkyrie’s blast – whatever it had been – had disorientated her for a moment.

But just for a moment.

Darquesse healed her eyes first so she could see what the hell was happening. She was on her knees. Four people formed a circle around her. Cassandra Pharos stood in front with her eyes closed, one hand on Darquesse’s head. Finbar Wrong and Geoffrey Scrutinous were on either side, a hand each on Cassandra’s shoulders. They held hands with Philomena Random, standing behind Darquesse and closing off the circle.

Darquesse didn’t know what the hell these crazy old hippies were trying to do. Probably kill her with love, or something.

As the rest of her face healed, she reached up, wrapping her fingers round Cassandra’s wrist. That hand on her head was annoying her. She crushed the wrist as she stood and Cassandra’s eyes popped open in astonishment, like she hadn’t expected something so pedestrian as pain to interrupt her meditations. Darquesse’s own eyes lit up and she let Cassandra have it full blast. The old woman’s head blew apart.

Geoffrey tried to run, but Darquesse grabbed him, twisted his head round, let his lifeless body crumple. Finbar, fair play to him, at least tried to attack. In his last few moments, he realised that a pacifist’s life was not for him, and he launched himself at Darquesse with a war cry. She killed him easily, of course, and wondered if Sharon would mourn the loss.

Philomena shot her point blank in the head. Darquesse gave her a smile, took the gun from her trembling hand and used it to cave in her skull.

Fletcher was kneeling by Valkyrie’s side, next to Desmond and Melissa. They hadn’t even noticed that the circle of love had spectacularly failed. Melissa was sobbing. Valkyrie wasn’t moving.

“Fletcher,” Darquesse said.

Teleporters were the most dangerous of sorcerers, she had decided. Fletcher’s was not a power designed to hurt or kill, but all it would take was one sinister motivation and no one could stand against him. She had figured that out a while ago, and she’d made a decision to kill Fletcher without warning the first chance she got.

True, calling his name didn’t exactly qualify as ‘without warning’, but he deserved to at least see her face as she killed him.

He turned his head to her. In that moment, she examined his power, poked and prodded at it, saw how it worked. Then she flicked her fingers and his heart burst inside his chest. He made a small sound and keeled over, and Desmond and Melissa both jumped to their feet.

“Mum,” Darquesse said. “Dad. It’s time for our tearful farewell.”

Desmond stood in front of his wife, protecting her. Darquesse had expected no less.

“You’re not our daughter,” Desmond said. Tears ran down his face. “You
killed
our daughter.”

“We’re all just …” Darquesse began, then laughed, and shook her head. “I was going to say we’re all just energy. I was going to say there is no death. This, what I’m doing? In the grand scheme of things, it means nothing. Only … only if I really and truly didn’t get some little bit of pleasure from doing this, then why take the physical approach? Why blast Cassandra’s head off? Why get my hands dirty?”

“Because you’re sick,” Melissa said, hatred ablaze in her eyes.

“I think you might be right,” Darquesse responded. “I think I’m sick. I reckon I’m evil. I must be, right? To have fun doing this?”

She laughed again. The wind carried her laugh who knows where.

“What a relief,” she said, “to admit that. Not just to you, either, but to myself. To admit that I like doing this. Fighting. Killing. Destroying. It’s just … it’s just so satisfying, you know? I must be evil. That’s the only explanation I can find. But then … but then I came from your daughter. So does that mean your daughter was evil?”

“She’s a hero,” said Desmond.

“Was,” Darquesse corrected. “Better get used to referring to her in the past tense. Or, hey, forget it. You don’t have to get used to anything. You’ll be dead soon, too, right? But that’s interesting, isn’t it? All this time I thought I was doing something nice for the universe and actually … actually no, I just wanted to tear it all down.

“Do you think we’re all like that, maybe? People, I mean. Behind all their ideas about themselves and who they are, do you think they’re all just … bad? Hmm. Not in the mood for a philosophical debate, eh? Yeah, I get that. That’s OK. I think … I think Valkyrie, though, because I knew her so well, much better than either of you ever did, I think Valkyrie would agree with me on this one. She had a dark heart, deep down. Dark and twisted. I just thought you ought to know that about your own daughter before you died.”

Darquesse brought her hands together and then splayed them out to either side, and Desmond and Melissa Edgley came apart in such an outrageous display of blood and innards that it actually made Darquesse queasy. She laughed at the absurdity of her reaction, and walked over to Valkyrie, careful not to step in the puddles of her parents.

The body of Valkyrie Cain lay broken and battered at her feet, and the energy inside her was gone. Darquesse could taste it in the air, it lingered faintly, but her essence had dissipated in the moments after her death. That energy was now lost, flowing as it had back into the stream of existence. She hadn’t meant to kill her like that. She hadn’t meant to throw her so hard. She’d thought that after everyone else was dead it would just be her and Valkyrie, exchanging words at the end of the world. Then Valkyrie would finally surrender and Darquesse could become whole again.

But life, being life, had a funny way of disappointing you.

Darquesse brushed her hair back, trying to get rid of that awful feeling of Cassandra’s hand on her scalp. She tucked a few strands behind her ear, looking up as she did so. At the end of the street there was a black hat, blowing along in the wind. It tumbled behind a corner, out of sight, and Darquesse allowed herself a sad smile.

“Is it working? Tell me it’s working.”

She took what she had learned from Fletcher’s magic, and teleported to the corner. She watched the hat blow into the middle of the street and then settle like a slowly spinning coin. Skulduggery emerged from a side alley. He stood over the hat for a moment, then reached down, picked it up and brushed it off. He returned it to his head, angling the brim.

He’d seen the vision. He knew what was coming.

Darquesse walked up behind him. He turned to her slowly, dumping spent shells from his revolver. She watched him take bullets from his waistcoat pocket and slip them into the empty chambers. One by one. One to six. Enjoying the ritual of it.

“My favourite little toy,” said Darquesse.

“Are you referring to my gun or to me?” Skulduggery was supposed to say. But of course he didn’t. He stood there in silence and she waited for him to speak.

He finished loading the gun, and he clicked it shut, held it down by his leg.

“She’s dead,” Darquesse told him, breaking the silence. “I didn’t mean to kill her so soon, but … well.”

He stayed quiet.

“Anything you want to know before you die?” she asked. “Any last questions? Ask me anything about Valkyrie and I’ll answer, as honestly as I’m able. Anything you’ve always wondered?”

Not a sound.

She smiled. “You’re an impressive man, Skulduggery. There will never be another like you. And if you don’t want to talk, I understand that. You want to get to it, I suppose. I’m … I’m going to miss you. Please know that.” She took a breath, and gave him a sad smile. “I know you made a promise,” she said. “Until the—”

He was so fast she never even saw him raise the gun. The first bullet hit her throat, the second burrowed through her cheek, and the third blew the back of her head open. They didn’t worry her, of course. The entry wounds were already healing before the exit wounds had even formed. The fourth and fifth bullets caused her a little concern, however, smashing through her brain the way they did, and the sixth tore through her breastbone and punctured her heart. That one was probably symbolic.

Six bullets, though. He’d got off six bullets. In the vision, he’d only fired three.

She reached out to him with her magic, started plucking at the energy holding him together. His fingers went first, and the gun and the glove fell, the finger bones rattling on the street. She kept pushing, skewering his magic, and she watched his arm fall, his sleeve flapping in the wind.

His other arm now. And then she went low, to stop him from getting any closer. She sliced at the magic around his feet and then his ankles fell apart and he dropped to his knees and his hips went and he toppled backwards and now he was just a skeleton in a suit that was quickly deflating around him.

He tried to sit up, tried to raise his head, but she finished him off and his bones clattered. The only magic remained in his skull, and she plucked it from his spine and held it up, made sure he could see her, and then she kissed him, with all the love she could muster. She kissed him goodbye, and when she let the skull fall the last of who he was disappeared into the ether, and the skull broke and the jawbone spun away.