Death Bringer (9 page)

“I would never hurt you.”

“Aw, that's sweet, but, really, you'd never get that chance. Caelan, you're not my protector, you're not my guardian angel and you're not my boyfriend.”

His perfect jaw tightened. “But I love you.”

“Here we go.”

“When will you admit that you're in love with me too?”

“I swear, talking to you is like talking to a really good-looking and mildly stupid brick wall. Look, I like you, OK? I do. I know I shouldn't, I know it's a cliché to fall for the bad boy…”

Caelan frowned. “I'm a bad boy?”

“But it happened,” she continued, ignoring him, “and that's it. I think you're cute. You could probably ease up on the brooding and self-loathing, though – that stopped being attractive a while ago. But I mean, on the whole, I like you, and you like me—”

“I love you.”

“Yeah, well…”

“You make my heart want to beat.”

“That's nice and creepy. But I'm with Fletcher.”

“You've been with him for a while now. It doesn't stop you coming to me.”

“Yeah, and that makes me feel so much better about it all. I'm cheating on my boyfriend, who is really nice and sweet and hot, and I'm cheating on him because, let's face it, I'm really not a good person. I'm a cheating girlfriend.”

“Then never see him again and your conscience will be clear,” he said, taking her hand in his.

She frowned at him. “But I
want
to see him again.”

“If you wanted him, you wouldn't be with me.”

“It is possible to want more than one person at the same time, you know.”

“I only want you.”

“And you should really get out more.” Valkyrie disentangled herself from him. “Also, all these proclamations of your undying love for me are getting kind of… It's a bit much, to be honest. Just hold back a little.”

“But my love for you is eternal.”

“That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.”

“I need you. I need to be around you. I'm dead, Valkyrie. I'm dead, but when you're here, I feel alive. Memories are stirred of a pulse, of breath in my lungs, of life in my heart. The more I'm with you, the more I need. My passion burns…”

She made a face. “I don't need to know about your burning passion.”

“It burns for you, Valkyrie. I'm on fire. My mind is in flames.”

“Couldn't we just be each other's bit on the side?”

“You love me. I see it in your eyes.”

“I think you're mistaking confusion for love.”

“I love you with everything that is me.”

“Remember when you were the strong, silent type? Could we go back to that?”

“It's too late to go back. You've reawakened the old Caelan. Because of you, I remember who I used to be. Because of you, I can push the monster down.”

“And that is very much appreciated.”

“Before you, my life was in darkness. It was hollow and empty and cold. But you shone a light through the darkness. You led me home.”

“Yeah, I'm great. Could we stop talking now?”

“But I want to talk. I want to talk for ever.”

“I think you
are
…”

“You, Valkyrie, are my sweet agony.”

She held up a hand. “OK, I'm really going to have to stop you there. You say one more thing that sounds like it's ripped from the pages of a really bad gothic romance and I'm out of here, are we clear? You'll have talked yourself out of ten minutes with me. Is that what you want?”

Caelan shook his head.

“Good doggy. And never call me your sweet agony ever again.”

Chapter 11
Alone at Last

elancholia listened patiently while the woman explained what all the charts meant. Two other Necromancers stood by the door, and Cleric Craven hovered nearby, as was his new habit. He seemed reluctant to let Melancholia out of his sight for more than a few minutes at a time.

“The good news,” the woman said, “is that we have established a pattern. If our calculations are correct, you should start to feel strong again sometime in the next twenty minutes, and this strength should stay with you for anywhere between three and four hours.”

The woman had an annoying tendency to wait for some indication that Melancholia had heard and understood, so Melancholia gave her a nod. “Four hours,” she echoed.

“You may experience some dizziness and some fatigue during those four hours, and if you do, don't worry about it. It should pass within moments.” The woman's name was Adrienna Shade. She was powerful, and intelligent, and had risen quickly through the Necromancer ranks. There had been rumours that she was to be made a Cleric, a virtually unheard of promotion for one so young. Melancholia used to admire her. But that was before Craven's experiment, before the Surge. Now Adrienna Shade meant nothing to her. Melancholia glanced around the room. None of these people meant anything to her.

“But in four hours' time,” Shade continued, “you'll grow weak again. Very weak. We'll have IV drips and oxygen standing by in case you sink to dangerous levels. Whatever happens, we'll be ready for it.”

Melancholia doubted that very much, but she smiled and thanked her nonetheless, and Shade put away her charts and instruments, and left the chamber.

“Cleric Craven,” Melancholia said, “is it OK for me to be alone for the next few hours?”

He frowned. “We need to conduct more tests, Melancholia.”

“But this is a lot to take in, and I think it would really help me if I had the night to myself. I'll submit to all the tests in the morning, I promise.”

Craven sighed irritably. He had a tendency to get irritated very easily. “Yes, very well. The night, then. Tomorrow, tests.”

“Thank you, Cleric,” Melancholia said, and bowed her head. She knew Craven responded well to things like that.

The Cleric walked from the room, ushering the guards out before him. The door closed, and Melancholia allowed herself a smile. Twenty minutes, and she'd feel that power again. Twenty minutes, and she could have herself a little fun.

Chapter 12
Bump in the Night

lice woke at a little before midnight, and Valkyrie muted the TV before scooping her out of her bed. Her parents were out. Valkyrie didn't mind. It had been a long day and all she wanted to do was relax at home with her little sister.

“Hello,” Valkyrie said. “You're awake, then. Did you have a good sleep? Are you rested?”

The baby looked at her and said nothing. Valkyrie took one of the bottles from the side table, teased it down to Alice's mouth until she started feeding. Her phone rang.

It was Fletcher. “Are your folks still out?”

“Yep. Me and the kid are downstairs. Want to come over?”

“Be right there,” he said, and hung up.

She looked at Alice. “Your sister is a bad person,” she whispered. “Two-timing is not an admirable quality in anyone.”

Fletcher appeared beside her. He peered at the baby.

“Can it do any tricks yet?” he asked.

“I'm still working on it. Want to hold her?”

“God, no,” Fletcher said, laughing. “I'd drop it.”

“It's not an it, it's my sister. Go on, hold her. You won't make a mess of it, I swear. Only an idiot could drop a baby.”

“You always say I
am
an idiot.”

“But you're a special
kind
of idiot. Here.”

She passed Alice into his arms, and he stood there, rigid, a look of intense concentration on his face.

“I've got to support the head, right?” he asked. “And the rest of the body, obviously, but mostly the head. The head's the important bit. Am I doing it right?”

“You're doing fine.”

“Do you think it likes me?”

“Honestly, I think she has more taste than that. The baby's like me – she tolerates you.” She gave him the bottle, waited until Alice was feeding again, then stepped back. “Want a cup of coffee?”

“I'd better not, I'm holding a baby.”

“Suit yourself.” Valkyrie went to the kitchen, dumped a spoonful of coffee into a mug while she waited for the water to boil. She looked up at the window, tried to peer through the blackness on the other side, but all she could see was her own face staring back at her.

Fletcher walked in on stiff legs. “Haven't dropped it yet.”

“You're a natural,” Valkyrie said, smiling and turning away from the window.

“Do you think so?”

“Oh, yeah. All you need is to wipe that petrified look off your face and you'll be inundated with babysitting jobs.”

“In that case, I think I'll
keep
this petrified look, thank you very much.”

She poured the boiling water into the mug and gave it a few quick stirs, but just as she was about to take a sip, they heard a noise coming from upstairs.

They froze. Fletcher looked at her.

“I thought we were alone,” he said softly.

“We were,” Valkyrie replied. She put down the mug. “Stay here.”

Fletcher shook his head, holding Alice out to her. “
You
stay here. I can teleport up and back again before whoever it is even blinks.”

“It's my house. I'm in charge. I'm going up. If it's trouble, take the baby to the twins, then get back here immediately and help.”

“Valkyrie, for God's sake—”

“We're not arguing about this.”

She walked past him, out of the kitchen and into the hall. The lights were on upstairs. It was brightly lit and warm and welcoming. She climbed the stairs. Shadows curled around her right hand.

Another sound, coming from her room. The first thought that entered her mind was that Tanith had lied when she'd said she'd leave Valkyrie's family alone. Valkyrie hesitated, then shouldered the door open and barged in.

The reflection turned to her.

Relief flooded through Valkyrie's veins, followed by puzzlement, and then anger. “What are you doing out?”

“I'm sorry?” the reflection said. “You're out of the mirror. How the hell are you out of the mirror?”

“You didn't put me back in.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No. You didn't. You told me to get into the mirror, but you didn't touch the glass.”

Valkyrie frowned. “I did. I did touch it.”

The reflection shook its head. “You must have forgotten.”

“I didn't
forget
, for God's sake. It was two hours ago. I climbed through the window, you got in the mirror, I touched the glass and absorbed your memories. I remember everything you did today.”

Now it was the reflection's turn to frown, a perfect simulation of a puzzled expression. “I'm afraid you're mistaken.”

“Oh for God's sake… I let you out of the mirror this morning, you went downstairs and Alice was crying—”

“That was yesterday.”

Valkyrie stopped. “What?”

“You're remembering yesterday. Alice was fine this morning. You came back two hours ago, I got in the mirror but you left the room before you touched the glass, that's all. You just forgot.”

“But I
remember
touching the…”

“Do you? Do you
actually
remember? Or do you just assume you did it because it's what you
always
do?”

Downstairs, the baby started crying.

“She probably needs her bottle,” the reflection said, and walked past Valkyrie, out of the room. Valkyrie watched it go, still frowning. She looked at the mirror, piecing together the events of the last two hours. She'd climbed through the window and the reflection had been doing their homework for school the next day. Valkyrie had told it to step into the mirror, and she'd changed her clothes, fixed her hair and… and…

She was
sure
that she'd touched the mirror. She was
sure
that the reflection's memories had flooded her mind. She was almost certain of it. It was possible, of course it was, that she was getting mixed up. It was an easy mistake to make, after all. It was like locking the front door before bed, then lying in bed minutes later and wondering if you'd
actually
locked the door or you'd just thought about it.

Valkyrie went downstairs. Keeping track of two sets of memories had been tricky at first, but she was an expert at it by now – two parallel tracks of experiences, happening at the same time, sometimes even in the same space. It had taken the longest time to get used to sorting through conversations that she'd had with herself. Viewing a conversation from both sides had been brain-meltingly unsettling. And even though there were some flaws in the process, some gaps in the reflection's memories that she couldn't access, she had always felt that she had a handle on it all. Until just now.

Valkyrie walked into the living room. The reflection had Alice in its arms, and it was smiling gently as the baby guzzled from the bottle. Fletcher stood nearby.

“Sorry,” he said. “She kept batting the bottle away and then started crying.”

“Don't worry about it,” Valkyrie said, keeping her eyes on the reflection. “So you've been in the mirror for the past few hours?”

“Yes,” the reflection said.

“And then what? You got bored? Decided to go for a walk?”

“I don't get bored. There was homework that needed to be finished. I finished it.”

“Right. But, see, I'm sure I touched that mirror.”

“You didn't. I'm sorry if I startled you. Fletcher, could you hand me a tissue?”

Fletcher snagged a tissue from the box on the mantelpiece and gave it to the reflection. The reflection used it to wipe milk from the baby's chin, and then went back to feeding. “You can continue your conversation, if you like. Forget I'm even here.”

Fletcher started grinning, and Valkyrie turned her frown on him. “What's so amusing?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing. Well… OK, I was just thinking… And don't get mad, because this is just a thought that entered my head, so it's not my fault, it's the thought's fault, but… If you found me with your reflection one day, would that technically be cheating?”

Valkyrie's frown turned to a glare, and Fletcher backed away, laughing. “It was a thought! It was a question I had to ask! I mean, come on, you've thought about it yourself, haven't you?”

“No,” she said coldly, “I haven't.”

“Yes, she has,” the reflection said, and Fletcher burst out laughing. The reflection laughed along with him.

“I knew it!” Fletcher cried. “I knew it!”

Valkyrie narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing?”

The reflection smiled at her. “I'm simulating appropriate human responses. Fletcher found the truth amusing and I joined him in laughing at your embarrassment.”

“I'm not embarrassed.”

“Yes, you are.”

“It's fine,” Fletcher said, “forget I ever said anything. I have the real Valkyrie anyway – why would I ever need a substitute?”

Fletcher went to wrap an arm around Valkyrie, but she moved away from him, keeping her eyes on the reflection. “Give me my sister.” The reflection walked over, did as Valkyrie ordered. “Now go upstairs. Get into the mirror. Stay there.”

“Of course,” the reflection said, and its gaze dropped to the baby for a split-second. As it walked out, it smiled at Fletcher. “Goodnight,” it said.

Fletcher waved, then frowned. “Goodnight,” he said, unsure. They listened to it climb the stairs. “It's never done that before. It's never said goodnight.”

“What the hell were you doing? You were encouraging it. You were playing with it.”

“I was just having a laugh…”

“And
it
was having a laugh too. It was laughing at
me
. You don't find anything about that slightly weird? It's not supposed to do that.”

“Well, I don't know, it's not supposed to do a lot of things, is it? The programming is a little off. There's a malfunction somewhere. So what? It does its job. It imitates you to perfection. And it got Alice to stop crying the moment it took her. So it acts weird every now and then, so you forget to touch the glass every once in a while, so what? It's not the end of the world, and you've got other things to worry about. Like the end of the world.”

Valkyrie sighed. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Here. We have an evening to ourselves. An ordinary, average evening, where we can be a normal boyfriend and girlfriend, babysitting and snuggling on the couch. I can pop over to Milan for a pizza from that great place under the arch, I can get that ice cream you love from that place in San Francisco… It'll be a nice, quiet night in. That sound good to you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it sounds nice. I'm starving, actually. Get the pizza.”

“And the ice cream?”

“And the ice cream.”

He smiled, and vanished. Valkyrie laid Alice in her cot, made sure she was comfortable, and went upstairs to her bedroom. The reflection was in the mirror. Valkyrie tapped the glass firmly, and the memories transferred as the girl in the mirror changed to reflect her own image. The memories settled as she stood there. The reflection had been right. She had simply forgotten to touch the glass earlier on. She saw herself change her clothes, fix her hair and then just walk out of the room. She replayed the memory again, while it was still fresh in her mind, before the details faded and it was just another mix of sensations. She watched herself change her clothes, fix her hair and…

She was
sure
she had approached the mirror. She was
sure
she had touched the glass. But the reflection's memory made it clear that she had just turned and walked out. She hadn't even
glanced
at the mirror.

That was that. Mystery solved. She'd made a mistake and that's all there was to it.

The reflection had kept things from her before – there had been gaps, moments that were missing. There was nothing missing here, though. There was no sign of tampering – nothing obvious anyway. Unless the reflection had discovered a new way of editing its memories, a new way to seamlessly cover over the gaps, then it had been telling the truth. Valkyrie tapped the glass again. “It looks like I owe you an apology.”

The reflection leaned forward till its head passed through the mirror. “No need. I am incapable of being offended.”

Valkyrie frowned. “Yeah. Yeah, I knew that. I know that.”

“Then why did you apologise?”

“I'm… not sure.”

“Do you want me to finish your homework?”

“Yeah. Good. You do that.”

The reflection nodded, stepped out of the mirror and sat at the desk. Unsettled, with no clear reason why, Valkyrie went back downstairs. Halfway down, someone knocked on the front door. Valkyrie crossed the hall, opened the door, looked out into darkness.

Melancholia stood where the garden path met the pavement. Her hood was down, the breeze playing with her hair, a smile playing on her lips.

“Hello, Valkyrie,” she said, then held her arms out to either side and said, “Surprise.”