Simon Green - The Dark Side of the Road

I hadn’t realized how intent I was until I made myself relax.

‘She’s here,’ I said. ‘She wants us to know she’s here.’

‘Why?’ said Penny. ‘It’s not like she’s scared of us! It doesn’t make any sense!’

We stood close together, talking with lowered voices, as though Sylvia might be listening. And perhaps she was.

‘Maybe she wants to be with her victims?’ said Khan. ‘They’re still upstairs.’

Leilah sniffed dismissively. ‘She wants us to go up after her. Leave the one safe place we have to go upstairs. And be picked off, one by one. Yeah, right; like that’s going to happen. I’m not going anywhere.’

‘She’s taunting us,’ said Khan. ‘Playing games … because she can. We should push that barricade back into place. Stay here. Safety in numbers.’

Leilah sniffed again. ‘You’re just saying that because you’re scared to be left on your own.’

‘Of course,’ said Khan. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I just want my best shot at killing her!’ said Leilah.

‘We can’t just stand around here, waiting for her to do something!’ said Penny. ‘We have to come up with our own plan!’

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We can’t let her take the advantage. We have to take the fight to her.’

‘In theory, yes,’ said Leilah. ‘In practice, how?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking.’

Leilah looked hard at Khan. ‘You worked for Black Heir …’

‘I was an accountant!’ said Khan. He glared at me. ‘You were the field agent, Ishmael! Do something!’

‘I’ll go after Sylvia,’ I said. ‘Barricade the door behind me.’

‘What?’ said Penny. ‘No! You can’t, Ishmael! You already tried once, with Jeeves. And she killed Jeeves!’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But someone’s got to do it.’

‘Why does it always have to be you?’ said Penny.

‘Because I’m here,’ I said. ‘And because Jeeves isn’t.’

I looked at Leilah, and she looked back at me. I could tell she understood. That I felt responsible for not bringing Jeeves back alive. She nodded, quickly. She hadn’t forgiven me for coming back alive instead of him. But she understood why I was ready to go out again, and that would do.

I picked up a single lit candle, in a bulky silver candlestick. ‘I can see better than most people,’ I said. ‘Even in reduced light. Sylvia doesn’t know that. Should give me an edge.’

‘You don’t have to go on your own,’ said Penny. ‘I’ll go with you. Watch your back.’

Her gaze was steady, her voice less so. But she meant it.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I can’t protect myself if I have to worry about protecting someone else,’ I said.

Penny bit her lower lip hard, and then nodded, reluctantly. And then she turned away so she wouldn’t have to watch me leave.

I looked at Leilah. ‘Leave the door open a crack. Stand guard, keep a watch. If you see anyone coming down the hallway that doesn’t look like me, shoot it. Jeeves had a good idea, though he never got the chance to try it out: aim for the knees and the eyes. That might be enough to slow her down. I’m going to need a wooden stake … Where’s the other half of Walter’s walking stick?’

Leilah nodded to a side table, where the short length of splintered wood had been laid out, ready for use. I picked it up and hefted it. Such a small and fragile thing, to set against a monster. But it wasn’t as if I had anything else. I’d just have to hope this part of the legend was accurate. I went back to the door, holding the stake in one hand and the candlestick in the other. I eased the door open and peered cautiously out into the hall. Nothing moved. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly to settle myself, and went out into the hall.

I heard the barricade scraping back into place on the other side of the door. Light falling out into the hall slowly died away as they pushed the door almost closed. I looked into the crack they’d left open, and Leilah looked back at me. Her face and her gaze were utterly cold. I turned away and set off down the long dark hall, to the great curving staircase at the end. I held my candle out before me, moving cautiously forward in its pool of sane, normal, yellow light. There wasn’t a breath of air moving in the hallway to disturb the candle flame.

Not a sound anywhere, apart from my footsteps. They sounded a lot heavier, realer, than Sylvia’s had. But I was worried they also sounded just a bit tentative. I didn’t want Sylvia to think of me as weak, as prey. I sniffed the air. I could smell faint traces of blood and decay on the air, ghostly traces from a disturbed grave.

I stopped at the foot of the long sweeping staircase. I held the candle high, and its light showed almost half the stairs clearly enough. No sign of Sylvia anywhere, which left me no choice but to go up and look for her. I started up the stairs, maintaining a steady pace, in the hope that would make me sound confident. Like I had a plan, instead of just a broken walking stick in a sweaty hand. I had faced some scary things in my time, in my various hidden pasts, but never anything like this. As Jeeves said, it wasn’t the thought of being killed that was so bad. It was the not staying dead. Of coming back as a walking corpse, with a never-ending need for blood and horror.

There were still faint traces of blood and decay hanging on the air ahead of me, from where Sylvia had walked up and down these steps before, taunting us. I clung to the thought that if I could smell her presence now, when I hadn’t been able to before, that had to mean she wasn’t influencing my mind.

When I finally got to the top of the stairs, I was breathing hard and my legs were trembling. I still held the candle steadily. I stepped out on to the landing, and Sylvia was immediately right there before me. No warning, no movement; just standing in front of me. Smiling her awful smile, her eyes shining horribly brightly in her rotting face. I almost jumped out of my skin. It had been a long time since anyone had been able to catch me by surprise. Sylvia hovered at the very edge of the candlelight. One step back and she would have been hidden in the dark. She wanted me to see her. So I just looked her over, quite calmly.

She smiled, her mouth stretching impossibly wide, her discoloured skin splitting apart, to show me even more teeth. Her lips still had Jeeves’ blood smeared across them. But there were too many old bloodstains sunk into her ragged burial clothes for me to tell what was fresh. What was his. Up close, the vampire stank of slaughter and the grave.

‘My, what bright eyes you have, Sylvia,’ I said. ‘Why couldn’t I see them before, in the dark?’

‘Because it is my nature to go unnoticed, until I want to be seen,’ said Sylvia. Her dead voice still had the power to make me squirm and shudder inside. ‘Unlike you, dear Ishmael, I am always in control of myself.’

‘You’re nothing like me,’ I said. ‘If you were really in control, I wouldn’t be able to see you at all.’

‘What are you, exactly?’ said Sylvia. ‘I can’t seem to … grasp you. You look human, but you aren’t. You’re different.’

‘You have no idea,’ I said.

‘So what are you?’

I shrugged easily. ‘Not from around here.’

‘You’re scared,’ said Sylvia. ‘I can smell the sweat on you. But you don’t need to be scared, Ishmael; not yet. I promised you … I’ll kill all the others first. I’m saving you for last. For dessert.’

‘Not going to happen,’ I said. ‘You have to get past me, to get to them.’

‘You think I can’t?’ Sylvia laughed softly; a slow, satisfied sound.

And then she lunged straight at me, just as she had at Jeeves. But I was prepared, and I leapt straight at her. I thrust the candle into her face, catching her by surprise. She paused a moment to slap the candlestick away. It hit the wall and fell to the floor, still somehow miraculously burning, giving me just enough light to see by. I punched Sylvia in the head with all my strength and felt, as much as heard, her skull crack and break and cave in. Sylvia rocked back on her feet, half her face collapsed in on itself. She struck out at me with a clawed hand, and I ducked under it. I could feel the disturbance in the air just above my head. I brought the wooden stick up, to drive it through her chest, but she sprang back immediately, out of my reach, almost disappearing out of the light and into the dark. She stood her ground, hissing at me like a cat. And I could hear the broken bones in her head creaking and rasping as they put themselves back together again.