The Dark Side of the Road

  ‘Of course!’ said Khan.

  ‘Poor little rich girl,’ said Leilah, not looking round from lighting the last few candles, with a Zippo that was a match for her late husband’s. ‘Knows everything except for the things that really matter. Your fuse box is down in the kitchen. Though I don’t feel like going back down there at present …’

  ‘Hush!’ I said. ‘Listen …’

  We all stood very still, not one of us moving a muscle. Hardly breathing as we listened, concentrating. Outside the drawing room, at the very end of the long hall, we could all hear someone slowly descending the long curving staircase. One step at a time, deliberately drawing it out. Every footstep seemed to last forever, the gap between each new sound tearing at our nerves. And then the footsteps stopped, at the bottom of the stairs. For a long time there was just a slow and steady silence. We all stood tense as statues, straining our ears against the quiet. The footsteps went back up the stairs again, one slow step at a time, all the way to the top. And stopped again.

  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, ex
actly?’ 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.

  Her stench was almost overpowering now, up close: the smell of blood and slaughter about to happen.

  And then she turned and vaulted over the banisters, jumping all the way down to the hall below. I grabbed up the candle from where it had fallen out of its holder, sheltering the flame with my hand, and hurried over to the banister to look down. Sylvia was still falling, gentle as a leaf. She landed easily in the hallway, graceful as a cat. She didn’t make a sound. Just looked up at me, and smiled, and moved silently down the hall. I shouldn’t have been able to see her in the deep dark gloom, but she wanted me to.

  I ran back to the top of the stairs. Sylvia was still drifting down the hall, silent as any ghost. She stopped before the drawing room door. It was almost closed, just a thin slice of light falling out into the hall. For whatever reason, Leilah wasn’t there, watching. Sylvia considered the door carefully, and then knocked: three quick, and two hard and slow. She had been listening.

  There was the sound of furniture being dragged back, and then the door swung inwards and Leilah looked out, expecting to see me. Sylvia lunged forward and slammed the door open with one hand, and I heard the barricade beyond the door collapse and fall backwards. Leilah stepped forward and shot Sylvia repeatedly in the face. It didn’t even slow the vampire down. Sylvia grabbed Leilah’s head with both hands and ripped it off. I cried out, but Sylvia didn’t even look back. Leilah’s body slumped slowly, to sit on the floor, blood pumping and jetting from the ragged neck stump. Sylvia held the head right up before her rotting face and smiled happily into Leilah’s still rolling eyes. The mouth tried to say something, until Sylvia stopped it with a kiss.

  The vampire threw the head aside, and it bounced and rolled away down the dark hall and out of sight. Sylvia leant over the headless body, thrust her face into the still-spurting stump, and drank greedily. And then she stood up, wiped at her dripping mouth with the back of one hand, and strode forward into the drawing room.

  In the time it took for all this to happen, I jumped over the banisters and dropped heavily through the air. I braced myself as best I could. I seemed to hang on the air for ages, and then I slammed into the floor, hard enough to crack the wooden boards. The impact knocked the breath out of me for a moment, and I dropped my candle. The light had gone out anyway. But I still held on to my wooden stick. I ran down the hall and back into the drawing room.

  And all the way, I could hear Sylvia laughing.

  When I burst through the open door, Khan and Penny had retreated all the way across the room, to stand with their backs pressed against the far wall, facing Sylvia. Khan had smashed up a chair, with some last desperate strength, to make a wooden stake from one of the chair legs. Penny had one of the other legs, and she threw it at Sylvia with all her strength. The vampire slapped it easily aside.

  ‘You killed my daddy, and my mummy, you bitch!’ yelled Penny. ‘I’ll find a way to kill you!’

  ‘I never get tired of hearing that,’ said Sylvia. ‘Warms my old heart … But better than you have tried, Penny my sweet, and I’m still here, and they aren’t. Now, hush and hold still. It’s feeding time. You don’t want to leave an ugly corpse for whoever finds you, do you?’

  ‘Get behind me, Penny,’ Khan said roughly.

  ‘Oh, how lovely!’ said Sylvia, clapping her dead hands together. ‘A last minute hero! I love those …’

  Penny tore her gaze away from the bloody-faced vampire to look at Khan. He was looking steadily at Sylvia, the wooden chair leg shaking just a bit in his hand. Penny fell back a step, to stand behind Khan. The trust she placed in Khan seemed to encourage him, and the chair leg was suddenly steady. Sylvia moved slowly forward, taking her time, savouring the moment. I stayed where I was, in the doorway, trying desperately to come up with some plan that wouldn’t get the other two killed. I didn’t dare move. If I did anything to let Sylvia know I was there, she might kill the other two immediately, just to spite me.

  ‘Never thought to see you play the hero, Alex,’ said Sylvia. ‘Bit out of character for you, isn’t it? The man who only ever cared for himself?’

  ‘You make it easy,’ said Khan. It was clear he wanted to back away, but he wouldn’t let himself show weakness in front of the vampire. ‘You’re so corrupt, you make me look good. I have to be the hero, Sylvia, because I couldn’t bear to be like you.’

  ‘Now that’s not a very nice thing to say,’ said Sylvia. ‘Bad things happen to people who say bad things.’

  Khan’s face was grey with fear, but he stood his ground and glared at her defiantly, still holding his wooden stake out before him.

  ‘We talked,’ he said hoarsely. ‘You and me. We shared confidences. I thought I knew you …’

  ‘You don’t,’ said Sylvia. ‘No one does.’

  ‘So what’s it like?’ said Khan. ‘Being dead?’

  Sylvia surprised me then, by stopping her advance to consider the question carefully. ‘Undead, dear,’ she said finally. ‘It’s very … freeing. I love it! And any moment now, I’ll love you. For as long as you last.’

  ‘Do you remember anything, of what your life was like before this?’ Khan said desperately. ‘Don’t you miss it?’

  ‘It’s always so sweet,’ said Sylvia, ‘When the prey wants to talk. To beg or bargain with me … to try and understand the horrible thing that’s happening to them … To hold off the dreadful moment, with one last attempt at communication … To bridge the gap between us. Well, Alex dear, life was a nightmare from which I have woken up. Free, at last! No conscience, no mortality, no civilized chains to hold me down or hold me back. I can do whatever I want, now, and I do!’

  ‘You kill people!’ said Penny, from behind Khan. ‘That’s all you do! You destroy lives!’

  ‘That’s what they’re for,’ said Sylvia. ‘I feed and I kill; I butcher and I slaughter … and it’s all such fun! I’ll tell you what, Alex dear; give me the girl. Give me Penny … and I’ll let you go.’

  Penny glanced anxiously at Khan, but give the man his due, he didn’t flinch and he didn’t hesitate.

  ‘Never,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Sylvia. ‘Worth a try. I do so love it when they turn on each other to please me.’

  She darted forward impossibly quickly and slapped the wooden chair leg out of Khan’s hand with such force that it flew across the room and buried itself half its length in the wall. Sylvia jumped on Khan and sank her teeth into his neck, biting deep, worrying at the bloody flesh. Khan swayed
on his feet, but didn’t fall. Sylvia wouldn’t let him. He made a sick, horrified sound, and tried to push her away from him, but already there was no strength left in his arms. He was dying, and he knew it. Blood coursed down the front of him as Sylvia worried at his neck with her sharp teeth. Penny beat at Sylvia’s head and shoulders with her fists, trying to drive the vampire away, but Sylvia didn’t even notice her.

  Khan slowly raised one hand and dipped it into the blood running down his front. He put a fingertip to Sylvia’s forehead and drew a cross there. Her head snapped back, and she glared at him with foully shining eyes. And then she broke his neck, with a sudden spiteful move. The sound of bones breaking was very loud on the quiet. Sylvia threw the dead body aside and grabbed Penny by the arm. Penny fought the vampire fiercely, but couldn’t break free. Sylvia pulled her forward, so they were face to face, and Penny spat in Sylvia’s eye.

  The vampire spun Penny around, still holding on to her arm, and glared at me. I was still standing in the doorway; she’d known I was there all along. Everything had happened so quickly that I still hadn’t worked out what I was going to do. Sylvia was so much faster than me, stronger than me …

  The vampire hauled Penny forward, to stand her between the two of us. Penny cried out as dead fingers sank deep into her arm, and then she stopped abruptly as Sylvia put her face right beside hers, resting her rotting chin on Penny’s shoulder. Fresh blood dripped off Sylvia’s face, running down to stain the top of Penny’s dress. She stood very still and looked at me imploringly. I gave her my best reassuring smile.

  ‘Now, Ishmael,’ said Sylvia. ‘Throw away that nasty wooden stake.’

  I looked at the walking stick in my hand and let it drop to the floor. I kicked it away. It made a small, sad sound as it rolled across the floor.

  ‘Now,’ said Sylvia, ‘come forward, dear Ishmael, and surrender yourself to me.’

  ‘Why would I do a thing like that?’ I said.

  ‘Because if you do, I’ll let little Penny go.’