The Dying of the Light. Derek Landy
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wall cracked, a thousand little fissures opening up and spreading downwards.
“Now then,” Skulduggery muttered, “this is either going to be very cool or very stupid …” He pushed one hand into the wall, and kept going until he was in up to his elbow.
“Well?” Stephanie asked.
He looked back at her. “I’m still in one piece. Grab on.”
Stephanie’s left eyebrow arched all on its own. “Uh, no, I don’t think so.”
“We don’t have time to argue.”
“Who’s arguing? I’m asking relevant questions. Is this your first time doing this?”
“I’ve actually been developing this aspect of the Elemental discipline for a while now. Sanguine’s ability is merely a focus on earth magic, after all, so I thought to myself, why couldn’t I achieve the same results with a little bit of work?”
“Yeah, that’s all very interesting, but is this the first time you’ve tried to move through a wall?”
He hesitated. “No, actually.”
“You’ve tried it before?”
“Yes.”
“Did you succeed?”
“Strictly speaking?” Another hesitation. “No. I kind of got stuck.”
“You got stuck in a wall?” she said. “For how long?”
“A few minutes. Half an hour. An hour at the most. Maybe two. Or a day. Remember that day I called Valkyrie and told her to take the afternoon off? Yeah, I was stuck in a wall. But I got out of it, and I’ve been working on it ever since. So grab on, Stephanie.”
“I’ll wait out here, thank you very much.”
“He who dares wins.”
“Fools rush in.”
“Valkyrie would trust me.”
She glared as he held out his free hand, then sighed. “If you get me stuck in a wall, I will be seriously annoyed with you.”
“Duly noted.”
She took his hand and he pulled her close. She screwed her eyes shut and then she was passing through something cold, something jagged. Sharp corners prodded her all over at once. The pain was bearable. The rumbling was loud, like great slabs of rock scraping against each other.
And then she was out, stumbling into empty space. Her eyes opened to the dim surroundings of the gallery after closing time.
“There,” Skulduggery whispered, “told you I could do it.”
“You sound surprised,” she whispered back.
“Actually, I’m astonished,” he said, and moved on.
They passed through a room of paintings, Skulduggery manipulating the air so as to mute their footsteps. When they got to the corner, he peeked out first, then turned to her and raised a finger to his lips. She nodded.
He peeked again, and motioned her to join him. She inched forward. There was movement in the darkness at the far end of the wide room that adjoined this one. She glimpsed alabaster skin. A person, a thing, almost on all fours. Bald. Naked. Big black eyes. A mouth that couldn’t close properly due to the mass of jutting, irregular fangs contained within.
Skulduggery’s hand closed round Stephanie’s wrist, and she saw another vampire, and another. The place was crawling with them. She and Skulduggery backed away, out of earshot.
“Looks like they’ve hired more security since we were here last,” he said softly. “This might be a tad trickier than I’d anticipated.”
They chose another route and moved up a set of stairs silently, Skulduggery taking the lead, reading the air around them. They got to the dark café, passed chairs stacked upon tables in the gloom. To the left of the tables was the balcony overlooking the exhibits in the room below.
They looked over. The Vault was down a narrow corridor marked Staff Only. Stephanie could see the sign from where they stood. Skulduggery nodded to her and she threw one leg over the balcony, then the other, and perched there, ready to jump. Skulduggery merely rose into the air, floated over the balcony, and descended until Stephanie could wrap her arms round his neck. Then they drifted low, skimming over the exhibits, and landed gently by the Staff Only sign.
Down this corridor was a wooden door criss-crossed by metal. Skulduggery picked the lock while Stephanie kept watch. No vampires passed. She sneaked back to Skulduggery when the last tumbler fell, and they passed through. Skulduggery closed the door behind them, as gently as he could, and clicked his fingers. Guided by his light, she followed him down the steps. It was cold down here. Cold and creepy. They passed half a dozen doors, each etched with a unique shield.
“Are you ever going to reclaim your family crest?” she asked, keeping her voice down.
“Now is not the time, Stephanie.”
“I think you should. Reclaim it, I mean. You’ve saved the world, for God’s sake. That has to make up for all the bad stuff you’ve done.”
“That’s the thing about redemption,” said Skulduggery. “If you’re looking for it, the chances are you’ll never find it.”
“Well, I think your family would be proud of you, and I think they’d be even prouder if you took back your crest.”
“This is the one we’re looking for,” Skulduggery said. The crest on this door was a tree and a lightning strike.
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Imagine that,” he said, and held up both hands. Air moved down narrow spaces she couldn’t see, but she heard tiny sounds, like mice skittering behind skirting boards. There was a click, and the door opened.
They hurried in, Skulduggery closing the door behind them, and the light flickered on. It was a narrow room, with two walls, floor to ceiling, of safety-deposit boxes, each one with a sigil over the lock. Skulduggery didn’t say anything for a few moments. When he finally did, it wasn’t very encouraging.
“Dammit.”
Stephanie walked forward. “There are a lot of boxes here. Ten down and, how many is that, fifty across? Five hundred boxes on each side at least. Do we have time to open them all?”
“The time it’d take is suddenly irrelevant,” Skulduggery said. “These locks can’t be picked. Even if they could, each box has an alarm that’d alert the vampires the moment we tried to tamper with it. I have to be honest here. I did not expect this.”
Stephanie said, “They hired more vampire security guards after the last time you broke in. Kind of makes sense that the security inside the Vault would be heightened, too. Every action has a consequence, right? Stuff you did when you first met Valkyrie is coming back at you now, six years later. Kind of makes you wonder what repercussions our actions today will have, six years down the line.”
“If we don’t get the grimoire, I doubt we’ll need to worry about that.” Skulduggery rapped his knuckles against one of the boxes. “OK then. We wanted to do this quietly so that no one would notice. That’s no longer an option. So we go loud.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I suggest,” said Skulduggery, “that you point the Sceptre at the boxes and blow them open. As many and as quickly as you can.”
Stephanie grinned, and took the Sceptre from its bag.
“Just don’t aim right at them,” said Skulduggery. “Aim at an angle. A point-blank shot would probably fry everything inside the boxes, not just the surface.”
Stephanie nodded. “I’ll try my best.”
“The alarms will draw in the