Читать книгу The Maleficent Seven - Derek Landy - Страница 9

he key to any successful heist was the team assembled to do the job. That was the first law of thievery. The second law, of course, was that thieves, by their very nature, were an untrustworthy lot – and if team members couldn’t trust each other, then what was the point of being a team?

Tanith felt she had the answer. Sanguine wasn’t so sure.

“This has been tried,” he said. He was sitting at the small table in the small kitchen. “Me and my daddy tried it, got together a group of like-minded individuals and did our level best to kill everyone, yourself included. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be alive and kicking despite our best efforts.”

Tanith stood by the window, mug of coffee in her hand. The safe house was drab and barely furnished, but at least they weren’t going to be surprised by an army of Cleavers any time soon. “Your little Revengers’ Club had a very basic flaw, though,” she told him. “You all wanted the same thing.”

“How was that a flaw? It brought everyone together, united for a common goal.”

“And how long did they stay together? By the end of it, everyone was betraying everyone else, because you all wanted to be the one to kill Valkyrie or Skulduggery or Thurid Guild... Your little club unravelled, Billy-Ray. Having a common goal is not always a good thing.”

“And you have the answer, I take it?”

She turned to him, smiling. He had his sunglasses off, and she looked into the dark holes where his eyes should have been. “Of course I do. The trick is to have everyone wanting something different – so that they’re all taking part for their own unique reasons.”

“Which means that we need to have something that each one of them wants.”

“And what do you think I’ve been doing these past few weeks? I’ve been collecting our incentives. Really, Billy-Ray, you’re just going to have to accept that I do know exactly what I’m doing.”

He laughed. “Oh I believe you, darlin’. You’ve been proving yourself to be quite the cunning little minx lately.” He shrugged. “I’m behind you all the way, and you know it. So Springheeled Jack is the first team member to be recruited, is he?”

“No, actually. We’re going to talk to an old friend of his first. Old friend of yours, too.”

Sanguine’s grin soured. “Aw, hell. Not him. You know he creeps me out.”

“Dusk is a harmless little puppy once you get to know him.”

“Dusk is a vampire. There ain’t nothing harmless, little or puppyish about him.”

Now it was Tanith’s turn to shrug. “Then he’ll be our rabid, bloodthirsty attack dog instead. Either way, he’s getting a cuddle. Does someone else want a cuddle? Someone who is in this room with me right now?”

“I hope you don’t think you can sway me from every argument with the promise of a cuddle.”

Tanith put on a sad face, and turned back to the window. “Shame,” she said.

A moment later she felt Sanguine’s arms wrap round her. “Just this once,” he said, and she laughed.

The vampires stood looking at the bones of the dinosaur and Dusk wondered what it would have been like to kill such a magnificent beast. Certainly it would have been more of a challenge than that posed by the mortals. He watched them hurry from exhibit to exhibit, either chasing after their squealing young or dragging them along behind, every sound they made amplified by the museum’s cavernous halls.

“The boy?” asked Isara.

“Dead,” said Dusk. “A year ago.”

Isara nodded. Apart from that, she didn’t move. No words slipped by her lips. No emotions slipped on to her face. Even her eyes were calm. But Dusk knew that inside her, twisting within her, were feelings alien to him. Love and loss and sorrow. The only feeling he could recognise was anger. And she had that, too.

“Did you kill him?” she asked.

“Of course not.”

The ghost of a smile. “Of course not,” she echoed. “You would not break the code, not even to punish one who had. How, then, did he die?”

“He had developed another unhealthy attachment to a girl,” said Dusk, “but this one proved too much for him. She drowned him in salt water.”

“Her name?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not. The boy is dead, that’s all I really care about. In its way, justice has been served. You must feel some satisfaction also.”

He looked at her. “Must I?”

“Hrishi was your only friend in the world,” said Isara, “and when you involved him in business that was not his own, the boy broke the code and took his head. Surely you feel some sense of responsibility for what happened?”

“No,” said Dusk. “Hrishi knew the boy was young and impetuous and violent, and he still let his guard down. Hrishi paid for his foolishness.”

“Be careful how you speak about him,” Isara said, and looked at Dusk with fire and ice in her eyes. “It’s your fault he died. You should have killed the boy when you found him.”

“The code—”

“No one would have known. The boy was a danger to us all. He stalked and he tortured and he murdered every woman he became enamoured with. You should have killed him the instant you realised what he was. Hrishi’s blood is on your hands.”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you even care?”

Dusk didn’t see the point of stirring Isara’s anger any further, so he stayed quiet. After a moment she turned, walked away, left him alone.

He looked at the dinosaur bones for a while longer, and then he too left the museum. The sun was warm on his skin as he walked. He got back to the house and found Tanith Low sitting on the cage in the living room, Billy-Ray Sanguine standing beside her.

“Nice place,” Tanith said. “I have to admit, I didn’t see you as the suburbanite type. I figured you’d be at home in a nice crypt somewhere, surrounded by candles and tapestries. The cage is a nice touch, though. Homey.”

He’d heard what had happened, of course. He’d heard that a Remnant had taken up permanent residence inside Tanith’s mind and body. But that still didn’t mean he liked her.

“We’re here to make you a proposition,” said Sanguine.

“I’m not interested.”

“We’re putting a team together,” said Tanith.

“It’s been tried. It didn’t work.”

“We need your help.”

“You can kill people without me.”

“This isn’t about killing anyone,” Tanith said. “Quite the opposite, in fact. We want to save someone. We want to save Darquesse. A group of Elementals and Adepts has formed, a small team who are working on a way to stop her when she appears. Our aim is to stop them from stopping her.”

“Why would I want to stop that? When she comes, she’ll destroy the world.”

“Not all of it,” said Tanith. “Just the civilised part. And we’re going to help her. Won’t that be wonderful? She’ll kill sorcerers and mortals and burn cities to cinders and sink entire continents into the sea, and you’ll be free to hunt and kill the survivors. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“I don’t care about any of this.”

“We know you don’t,” Sanguine said, and nodded. “We know you’re looking out for number one. And hey, buddy, I get that. I do. But we need you on our side. It’s gonna be you, us, a few others... and Jack.”

“Then I cannot be on your team. The last time I saw Springheeled Jack I was abandoning him to the Sanctuary authorities in Ireland.”

“So you betrayed him,” Tanith said. “So what? A little betrayal never hurt anyone. Listen, I know I can convince Jack to play nice. I have something he wants, after all. Just like I have something you want.”

“And what is that?”

“Dusk, I look at you, and I see a soul without purpose. I mean, here you are, living in a very nice house with a time-locked cage where the couch should be. I don’t know how you came to own this place – I’m sure the story is suitably entertaining – but you don’t belong here. You’ve lost your focus.”

“You think you can provide that focus?” Dusk asked. “I don’t care about Darquesse. I don’t care about anything.”

“But that’s a little bit of a lie, isn’t it? See, Dusk, you do care about something. You care about one thing. You’ve always cared about this one thing, because you’re a vampire – and this one thing plagues all vampires who were not turned willingly.”

Dusk frowned.

“I know who turned you, Dusk.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not. I know your story. Out walking one night, you were attacked; a nearby farmer came to your aid − he frightened off the beast... You recovered at his cottage, under the watchful eye of the farmer and his wife. And on the third night, you tore off your skin and devoured them. By then, of course, the one who had turned you was long gone.”

“And how do you know who it was?”

“An Elemental was in the area around the time all of this was happening. He reported back to the Sanctuary like a good little operative, and in his report he mentioned the name of a vampire he had met. I know the name, Dusk. And I’ll tell you – providing you help us.”

“Tell me now.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“I try not to lie to vampires.”

“Tell me who it was.”

Tanith hopped down off the cage. “No. Here’s the deal. You help us. You get along with everyone else in the team, even Jack, and when it’s over, I give you the name, and you go off and do whatever you want to do. Vampires hold grudges, don’t they? I’d imagine you’ve been holding this grudge for a good long time.”

“This might be it,” said Sanguine. “This might be the one thing to make you break your precious little vampire code – never kill another one of your kind. What do you think, Dusk? Might this be what tips you over the edge?”

Dusk said nothing.