Darius the lap-dancing vampire lifted his head and gave her a gore-covered grin. ‘Your plan worked great, didn’t it, Shaz?’ he said, pushing himself up on all fours and rising to his feet in an oddly inhuman move.
He unzipped his black leather coat and slipped out of it; underneath he wore just his sequinned Calvin Kleins—not even any boots. Didn’t he have any other clothes? He shook the coat, and blood and other heavier bits splattered to the concrete floor, then he shrugged it back on, zipped it back up and licked his lips. ‘Real great,’ he grinned again.
I looked down.
Joseph was lying there, his glasses askew on his mangled head, the white of his spine glistening in the bright red abstract of his neck, his legs at an odd angle. I was still puzzled by Joseph. He’d seemed ... well, nice, and strangely naïve when I’d first met him. But evil doesn’t always show its face as ugliness, or fangs, or strangeness. That would be much too easy.
And yeah, Moth-girl’s plan had worked real great! It might not have been pretty, but Joseph was gone, and I couldn’t feel anything other than satisfaction.
But now there was the rest of it to finish.
I looked over at my body, still lying on the sacrificial altar, wondering why Cosette hadn’t put in an appearance. Then I saw the reason for her absence: sticking out of my body’s chest was the handle of the soul-bonder knife, the oval amber of the dragon’s tear winking in the candlelight. Darius must’ve have attacked Joseph mid-ritual, so Cosette was trapped—
‘Genny,’ an anxious voice called from behind me, ‘is that you?’
I clutched anxiously at the ghost knife as I turned. Grace peered at me as she hurried through the archway, her pink-check jacket flapping over her blue doctor’s scrubs, her frizz of black curls flattened and tangled with cobwebs on one side, dust streaking the dark skin of her left cheek like a half-finished war stripe. She carried the open Fabergé egg in one hand and led the tearful florist’s lad with her other, her backpack slung over her shoulder. Heartfelt relief flooded into me. They were both still alive.
Bobby stalked behind Grace like some sort of übergoth warrior in his all-black Mr October outfit, his hair neatly pulled back in his trademark French plait. He carried Moth-girl’s body in his arms. ‘Hey, Sharon,’ he called, ‘are you getting back in here, or do you want me to keep carrying you around?’
Grace dropped the lad’s hand and rushed up to me—the ghost me—and flung her arm round me in a tight hug. ‘Thank the Goddess you’re okay, Genny. I’ve been so worried about you.’ The snakes flared, then settled, but she didn’t appear to notice them. She also appeared to find me very solid, and that meant it was close to midnight, when the dead could converse—and more, if they wanted—with the living.
I hugged her back just as hard, keeping the ghost knife safely pressed to my thigh, breathing in her comforting floral perfume with its faint underlay of antiseptic. ‘Thanks for coming to the rescue, Grace,’ I murmured, totally inadequately, ‘and I’m fine now—but what on earth happened to you?’
She trembled slightly, then sniffed and gave a nervous laugh. ‘That Souler chap, Neil, jumped out at me when I went to help the lad here. Stupid really, I should’ve checked for someone guarding him first.’ She gave another hiccoughing laugh and hitched up her backpack. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this action-rescue business. Although I did bring spells.’ She pulled away and looked back at Bobby, a slightly scared expression on her face. ‘But Bobby took care of him.’
Bobby had laid Moth-girl’s body down on a clear patch of floor and was now staring at Rosa where she lay on her stone slab.
‘Took care of him, how?’ I asked, frowning.
‘Oh, he didn’t bite him.’ Grace blinked, her pupils nearly eclipsing the dark brown of her irises. ‘He just threw him against the wall.’ She did that hiccoughing laugh-thing again and I realised she was suffering from mild shock ... but then, treating victims in a nice bright clinic like HOPE, even the violent ones, took a different type of courage to venturing underground with a couple of vamps and a sometimes ghost girl. ‘He’s dead—broken neck. I checked,’ Grace added with another blink.
Good riddance, he’d certainly got what was coming to him. But Grace didn’t need to hear that right now. I hugged her again and murmured, ‘Hey, it’s okay, you’re doing brilliantly, and the lad’s safe now, thanks to you.’ I looked at the boy in question, who was standing there shivering, hunched over—
Then a thought hit me like a sucker-punch to my stomach.
Grace had broken the circle to get the florist’s boy and the Fabergé egg out.
And that meant there would be no magic to contain the demon when it turned up. And without even the tenuous boundaries of a graveyard to hold it, it would be free to roam anywhere! And it would be free to take anyone—not just the dead!
I had to get everyone out.
And I had to get the circle closed again.
‘You need to get out of here, Grace,’ I cried, letting her go, ‘and take the lad with you. MOVE! Now!’
A rumble shivered the ground.
Grace froze, her eyes wide with shock and fright.
I pushed urgently at her, yelling, ‘You need to get out, all of you, get out now—!’
The rumble came again; this time dust and bits of brick fell from the ceiling and muted explosions like a hundred-gun salute reverberated through the tunnel.
‘What the bleedin’ ’ell is that?’ Moth-girl squealed.
‘Fireworks,’ Bobby shouted, looking warily up at the arched roof. ‘The trolls are having one of their Hallowe’en parties up on London Bridge.’
‘Run,’ I shouted again. ‘It’s midnight.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Midnight.
All Hallow’s Eve.
It’s the time of year when the veil between the living and the dead dissipates ...
... and demons come trick-or-treating.
This particular demon had dressed up for the occasion in a navy lounge suit, his pale blue shirt open at the throat and fastened at the cuffs with links of heart-shaped sapphires the size of thumbnails. His top pocket sported a silk handkerchief the same colour as his shirt. He exuded ‘relaxed man-about-town’ charisma, but as he surveyed the room, the azure of his eyes shone colder and sharper than the sapphires at his wrists. The demon had dressed up as the Earl, London’s ex-head big-cheese vamp, the vamp I’d killed, and the star of my nightmare after the bakery explosion.
I tried to see the irony in that, except my mind was still short-circuiting with fear.
‘Genevieve, my dear, how nice to see you again.’ The demon gave me the Earl’s charming smile. Centuries of practice meant he showed no hint of his fangs. ‘Well now, this is all terribly interesting.’
Interesting wasn’t quite the word I’d have chosen. Everyone apart from Moth-girl and me was frozen in place; she hovered next to Darius, scared, but with a defiant expression on her white-painted face. I frowned as my mind finally came up with a question. Demons aren’t usually the chatty sort, more the fast-food type. He was loose, there was no circle to contain him, and we were in an unconsecrated graveyard. Why hadn’t the demon just gobbled us all up?
Or maybe he really was the Earl, and all this demon stuff was new to him.
‘So did you turn into a demon when you died, or what?’ I asked, surprised my voice came out steady.
‘Oh no, my dear, this is just a guise—I found his soul wondering unclaimed in the pit and decided I liked the look of it.’ He adjusted his handkerchief. ‘I thought you might appreciate its appearance, as you are somewhat acquainted with each other.’ He grimaced slightly. ‘Although I have found his personality is a bit ingrained after all his time in the mortal world—I do keep getting this urge to talk at length about certain things, like the ongoing rights of vampires. It is mildly irritating.’