The Dying of the Light by Derek Landy Read Free Book Online Page A

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.

8
CURIOSITY
    e didn’t want to do it. There were a ton of things he’d have preferred to do right at that moment. Leave it alone, for one thing. Walk away, for another. Take a vacation, somewhere hot and lazy, and let other people sort this out. But he couldn’t just abandon everything. Not yet. Not until he knew for sure that there was someone out there who could stop her. So Sanguine put down the beer he’d barely touched, and went to investigate the scream.
    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