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“Which means that we need to have something that each one of them wants.”
“And what do you think I’ve been doing these past few weeks? I’ve been collecting our incentives. Really, Billy-Ray, you’re just going to have to accept that I do know exactly what I’m doing.”
He laughed. “Oh I believe you, darlin’. You’ve been proving yourself to be quite the cunning little minx lately.” He shrugged. “I’m behind you all the way, and you know it. So Springheeled Jack is the first team member to be recruited, is he?”
“No, actually. We’re going to talk to an old friend of his first. Old friend of yours, too.”
Sanguine’s grin soured. “Aw, hell. Not him. You know he creeps me out.”
“Dusk is a harmless little puppy once you get to know him.”
“Dusk is a vampire. There ain’t nothing harmless, little or puppyish about him.”
Now it was Tanith’s turn to shrug. “Then he’ll be our rabid, bloodthirsty attack dog instead. Either way, he’s getting a cuddle. Does someone else want a cuddle? Someone who is in this room with me right now?”
“I hope you don’t think you can sway me from every argument with the promise of a cuddle.”
Tanith put on a sad face, and turned back to the window. “Shame,” she said.
A moment later she felt Sanguine’s arms wrap round her. “Just this once,” he said, and she laughed.
The vampires stood looking at the bones of the dinosaur and Dusk wondered what it would have been like to kill such a magnificent beast. Certainly it would have been more of a challenge than that posed by the mortals. He watched them hurry from exhibit to exhibit, either chasing after their squealing young or dragging them along behind, every sound they made amplified by the museum’s cavernous halls.
“The boy?” asked Isara.
“Dead,” said Dusk. “A year ago.”
Isara nodded. Apart from that, she didn’t move. No words slipped by her lips. No emotions slipped on to her face. Even her eyes were calm. But Dusk knew that inside her, twisting within her, were feelings alien to him. Love and loss and sorrow. The only feeling he could recognise was anger. And she had that, too.
“Did you kill him?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
The ghost of a smile. “Of course not,” she echoed. “You would not break the code, not even to punish one who had. How, then, did he die?”
“He had developed another unhealthy attachment to a girl,” said Dusk, “but this one proved too much for him. She drowned him in salt water.”
“Her name?”
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose not. The boy is dead, that’s all I really care about. In its way, justice has been served. You must feel some satisfaction also.”
He looked at her. “Must I?”
“Hrishi was your only friend in the world,” said Isara, “and when you involved him in business that was not his own, the boy broke the code and took his head. Surely you feel some sense of responsibility for what happened?”
“No,” said Dusk. “Hrishi knew the boy was young and impetuous and violent, and he still let his guard down. Hrishi paid for his foolishness.”
“Be careful how you speak about him,” Isara said, and looked at Dusk with fire and ice in her eyes. “It’s your fault he died. You should have killed the boy when you found him.”
“The code—”
“No one would have known. The boy was a danger to us all. He stalked and he tortured and he murdered every woman he became enamoured with. You should have killed him the instant you realised what he was. Hrishi’s blood is on your hands.”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you even care?”
Dusk didn’t see the point of stirring Isara’s anger any further, so he stayed quiet. After a moment she turned, walked away, left him alone.
He looked at the dinosaur bones for a while longer, and then he too left the museum. The sun was warm on his skin as he walked. He got back to the house and found Tanith Low sitting on the cage in the living room, Billy-Ray Sanguine standing beside her.
“Nice place,” Tanith said. “I have to admit, I didn’t see you as the suburbanite type. I figured you’d be at home in a nice crypt somewhere, surrounded by candles and tapestries. The cage is a nice touch, though. Homey.”
He’d heard what had happened, of course. He’d heard that a Remnant had taken up permanent residence inside Tanith’s mind and body. But that still didn’t mean he liked her.
“We’re here to make you a proposition,” said Sanguine.
“I’m not interested.”
“We’re putting a team together,” said Tanith.
“It’s been tried. It didn’t work.”
“We need your help.”
“You can kill people without me.”
“This isn’t about killing anyone,” Tanith said. “Quite the opposite, in fact. We want to save someone. We want to save Darquesse. A group of Elementals and Adepts has formed, a small team who are working on a way to stop her when she appears. Our aim is to stop them from stopping her.”
“Why would I want to stop that? When she comes, she’ll destroy the world.”
“Not all of it,” said Tanith. “Just the civilised part. And we’re going to help her. Won’t that be wonderful? She’ll kill sorcerers and mortals and burn cities to cinders and sink entire continents into the sea, and you’ll be free to hunt and kill the survivors. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“I don’t care about any of this.”
“We know you don’t,” Sanguine said, and nodded. “We know you’re looking out for number one. And hey, buddy, I get that. I do. But we need you on our side. It’s gonna be you, us, a few others... and Jack.”
“Then I cannot be on your team. The last time I saw Springheeled Jack I was abandoning him to the Sanctuary authorities in Ireland.”
“So you betrayed him,” Tanith said. “So what? A little betrayal never hurt anyone. Listen, I know I can convince Jack to play nice. I have something he wants, after all. Just like I have something you want.”
“And what is that?”
“Dusk, I look at you, and I see a soul without purpose. I mean, here you are, living in a very nice house with a time-locked cage where the couch should be. I don’t know how you came to own this place – I’m sure the story is suitably entertaining – but you don’t belong here. You’ve lost your focus.”
“You think you can provide that focus?” Dusk asked. “I don’t care about Darquesse. I don’t care about anything.”
“But that’s a little bit of a lie, isn’t it? See, Dusk, you do care about something. You care about one thing. You’ve always cared about this one thing, because you’re a vampire – and this one thing plagues all vampires who were not turned willingly.”
Dusk frowned.
“I know who turned you, Dusk.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not. I know your story. Out walking one night, you were attacked; a nearby farmer came to your aid − he frightened off the beast... You recovered at his cottage, under the watchful eye of the farmer and his wife. And on the third night, you tore off your skin and devoured them. By then, of course, the one who had turned you was long gone.”
“And how do you know who it was?”
“An Elemental was in the area around the time all of this was happening. He reported back to the Sanctuary like a good little operative, and in his report he mentioned the name of a vampire he had met. I know the name, Dusk. And I’ll tell you – providing you help us.”
“Tell me now.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“I try not to lie to vampires.”
“Tell me who it was.”
Tanith hopped down off the cage. “No. Here’s the deal. You help us. You get along with everyone else in the team, even Jack, and when it’s over, I give you the name, and you go off and do whatever you want to do. Vampires hold grudges, don’t they? I’d imagine you’ve been holding this grudge for a good long time.”
“This might be it,” said Sanguine. “This might be the one thing to make you break your precious little vampire code – never kill another one of your kind. What do you think, Dusk? Might this be what tips you over the edge?”
Dusk said nothing.
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ooftops and chimneys, that’s all there was to see from up here. The whole thing reminded Sanguine of that scene from Mary Poppins where Dick Van Dyke starts dancing about with all those chimney sweeps high over London town. He wondered if Springheeled Jack ever took the time to dance about with chimney sweeps, singing as they went. Probably not, if he were being honest. Still, it was something to wonder as he waited there, whistling ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’ and keeping watch for Cleavers.
Not even twenty minutes later, a long-fingered hand scuttled over the ledge like an unsettlingly ugly spider, followed by an arm and then a battered top hat with a lined, drawn, misshapen face beneath. Jack stayed down there, chin level with the roof, eyes on Sanguine.
“No one else here,” Sanguine told him.
Jack’s voice was high and strained. “’Cept for Cleavers,” he said. “Cleavers’re everywhere.”
“Not here. Not right now. I’ve been here a whole half-hour and I haven’t seen a single one.”
“They’re about.”
“That I know. This whole area’s one big search zone for them. But if you’ve got the skills, sneaking in and out isn’t much of a problem. Come on up. We have time for a chat, don’t we?”
Jack stayed put for a moment, and then with a grace so effortless it would have widened Sanguine’s eyes had he not scooped them out long ago, he pulled himself up and stood there on the edge. His feet were bare, his clothes – top hat and tails – worn and musty.
“How’d you know where to find me?” Jack asked.
“I didn’t,” said Sanguine. “I reckoned you’d be keeping an eye out, though. Figured you’d find me if I waited long enough.”
“What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“That so? You’re lookin’ pretty calm for someone who should be worried.”
“And why should I be worried? We’re two old friends, standing on a rooftop, chatting.”
“Last time I chatted to you, you had all these plans to set off the Desolation Engine, remember that? And then that sneaky vampire git turned and ran, left me to get pummelled and thrown in a cell.”
Sanguine shrugged. “And how is that my fault? You know full well never to give a vampire good reason for revenge, and yet you still stopped him from killing Valkyrie Cain on that beach, four years ago.”
“There were, what do you call them? Extenuatin’ circumstances. You’d all lied to me.”
“You can’t take any of this personally, Jack.”
“I can, and I do. It was because of Dusk, and because of you and your dear old dad, that I’ve been in a gaol cell for the last two years. I’d still be there right now if I hadn’t escaped.”
“Nonsense. We’d have come to get you out.”
A sneer crossed Jack’s face. “Not bloody likely.”
“I’m serious. We were all set to mount a daring rescue attempt when we heard you’d managed it all on your own.”
“And why would you want to get me out? Need my help, do you? Another dangerous little mission?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Yeah, knew it. Get lost.”
“Jack...”
“Not interested.” Jack turned, knees bending, ready to leap away.
Sanguine stepped forward. “Where are you going? Where is there to go? They’ve got the area sealed off, Jack, and they’re closing in. They’re going to get you, drag you back and throw you in a cell so deep you’ll never even breathe fresh air ever again.”
“And let me guess,” said Jack, turning his head slightly, “the alternative to all that is hookin’ up with you and your dad and the vampire again, is it?”
“Not my dad. They have him locked away and no one knows where. As for Dusk, though, yeah, he’s onboard.”
“Forget it.”
“Ask me who’s leading this little mission.”
“No.”
“Tanith Low.”
