Dark Duets

by Christopher Golden

  “It is my honor to deliver to you your destiny,” that whisper said. “Emma, child of angels, you have been chosen. Rise, and receive that which you seek.”

  She couldn’t have refused even if she’d wished; there was so much strength and inevitability to what the angel Uriel was whispering. She stood, not even aware of the effort, of the muscles working, because the light that was blooming inside her was so warm, so sweet, so perfect that she felt utterly at peace.

  And then the pain took hold. She felt her life burning away, the dross of it disappearing in an excruciating blaze of power. The darkness was coming, close enough to touch.

  “Peace,” Uriel’s whisper said, and she caught her breath and felt tears break free to steam away from her cheeks. “I give you the kiss of peace. Your destiny is upon you, Emma.”

  She let out that held breath slowly, and as it trembled in the air, the beautiful, terrifying thing that had faced her was . . . gone. Just gone. Not a fading, not a slow withdrawal. Uriel was gone as thoroughly as if he’d stepped through a door and slammed it behind him.

  The only evidence that he’d been there was steam rising from the carpet like morning mist and the burned-out bulbs in the ceiling lights.

  Emma looked down at herself. She looked the same, though steam rose from her clothes, too. And even from her skin. The pain was gone, and so was the feeling of power.

  But she knew that she was different.

  She smiled and turned toward the altar, and said, softly, “Thank you.”

  Nothing. But she hadn’t expected anything this time.

  SHE WENT IN without knocking and found Tyler standing behind Laurel, holding her as a human shield. He’d expected Emma to come in shooting, she realized. She might have done that if she hadn’t understood it wouldn’t accomplish anything.

  But she didn’t need to. She knew that now.

  “Where is she?” Tyler asked. “The girl?”

  Emma said, “Outside. But I’m not bringing her in until you give me my daughter.”

  Tyler was smart, and he was powerful, and he was immortal—but he was not omniscient. He studied Emma, and he saw nothing except what she wanted him to see—the same tattered, ragged light trailing behind her like broken wings. The same beaten, degraded look in her eyes. “You’re a weak little bitch, aren’t you? Humans. No wonder the Apocalypse is coming for you. You deserve it.” He thrust Laurel at her.

  Emma held her daughter in her arms for one long, precious second, feeling the strength of desperation in Laurel’s embrace, and then whispered, “You have to go now, baby. Get in the car and drive away.”

  “Not without you,” Laurel whispered back. “Mom, please!”

  Emma kissed her temple—just a bare brush of her lips—and felt her child go still and quiet. “Hush,” she breathed. “Now go, baby. I love you.”

  That kiss had given Laurel more than words—it had given her knowledge. All the knowledge that Emma now possessed, of the Witnesses, of the angels, of what was past and what was to come. Not omniscience, but some portion of wisdom.

  And that gave Laurel the strength to push back from Emma, look straight into her eyes, and for the first time in their relationship, Laurel saw her. Saw her for the girl she’d been, the broken thing she’d become, the woman she’d tried to be for her child.

  Saw her for the bright-burning thing she was now.

  “I love you, Mom,” she said. “Thank you.”

  And then she took the keys from Emma’s hand and walked out the door with no hesitation. Emma didn’t turn to watch her go. She heard the car start, the tires hiss, and the engine roar as Laurel drove away.

  Silence fell.

  Tyler was still smiling. It looked less like a human expression now than a hole into darkness.

  “Well,” he said. “You owe me a girl. So let’s have it.”

  “You don’t think I really brought one, do you?” she asked. “Come on, Tyler. I wouldn’t give you an innocent victim, and you know it.”

  He shrugged. “Well, it was worth a shot. Sorry, Mom, but your usefulness is pretty much over now. You got any weapons you want to try? Knife? Gun? Ballistic missile? Break it out and let’s get it over with. I’m impatient. I want to start tracking Laurel, and your pain’s getting boring.”

  “Is it?” She stepped forward, empty-handed, eyes locked on his shining yellow ones. “Is it really? Are you sure?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “You’re my son,” she said. “Tyler, you’re my son. Maybe I didn’t want you. Maybe I should have killed you. But I didn’t. You’re here. Whatever else you are, I still love you for being my son.”

  He frowned slightly and took a step back. “I’m not your son. I’m wearing your son, bitch. A slight difference.”

  She kept moving toward him, moving slowly, quietly, and Tyler finally took another step backward. She saw him recognize it, that energy crackling in the air. A lightbulb popped in a lamp. Another one, with the sound of a gunshot crack. The stereo, playing softly in the corner, let out a distorted squall and a puff of smoke. But Emma moved closer.

  His next step put his heel into the blood of the body of his father, his last host. He had nowhere to go now.

  Emma stepped forward, her chest almost against his. As he froze in confusion, she kissed him.

  The kiss of peace.

  Time stopped, and universes paused in their spinning. Heaven and hell took in breaths.

  And then the Witness was cast out, screaming, into the abyss that was neither heaven nor hell, life nor death, but eternal darkness.

  She felt him being unmade in the merciless emptiness—ripped apart. Lost forever, all his schemes, all his ambition, all his destiny, gone.

  All his evil, cut off at the root.

  And it hurt.

  God, she was so glad it hurt.

  Her son collapsed in her arms, and his heart beat on in faltering thuds once, twice, three times. For an instant, his dark eyes focused on hers, and she saw the gratitude there. The love. The peace she had given him.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “For everything. Go to God, Tyler.”

  He did. Without pain.

  She lowered him back to the carpet, closed his eyes, and folded his hands neatly on his chest. What the coroner would make of this, Emma couldn’t guess—death by heart attack or stroke, maybe. Or some kind of family death pact.

  It no longer mattered to her.

  Human bodies were as fragile as lightbulbs, and as prone to shattering. The power that Uriel had poured into her—the power that had opened a window to darkness and unmade a demon—was gone now, poured out like starlight into that void, and it had burned away everything else inside her

  She was a dying bulb, and she felt the last flickers of light course through her veins. It felt sweet now, life. Sweet and clean and restored to the clarity it had possessed when she was a girl, full of promise and possibility.

  Emma walked out into the dark and stood there for a moment, soaking in the late September warmth. All around her, as if it was broad daylight, the night-soaked grass flared green, the flowers shouted colors, and the world spoke.

  She raised her face to the sky and laughed in delight.

  And then she was gone.

  JENNA SEARLES WALKED down a gray street in Portland. In the late fall chill, she wore layers of protection against the relentless drizzle. Despite the cold and rain, she had to admit she liked it here. Tall evergreens, mountains, coffee shops on every corner. And Portland liked her; she had friends who had come to her as if she’d always been meant to be here.

  From time to time, she thought about the woman in the van, that desperate, crazy woman. As she’d been packing in the early morning, the cops had come to her parents’ house to tell Jenna that they’d found her. The news reports had given Jenna the full story—the murdered dad, the dead son, the woman collapsed from a massive stroke on the front lawn. They’d never found the gun. But they’d found a fascinating file. The details were n
ever in the papers.

  For no good reason, Jenna had chosen to take the dead woman’s advice. To her parents’ consternation, she’d packed up and left for Oregon, which was as opposite to Texas as she could get. She liked the University of Portland and its funky students; she liked her new friends and her cool apartment. It felt like . . . destiny, somehow.

  She stopped to get a cup of hot chocolate and sipped it as she hiked up the hill toward the university grounds. Cars whizzed by, stirring fallen leaves; there was a sharp smell of burning wood in the air. People were starting to put out Christmas lights.

  She paused at the light to wait for the safe crossing, and a soft jingling of bells drew her attention a few yards down the side of the street, off her route. Normally, she wouldn’t have glanced that way.

  That was how she came to see the crosses. There were three of them clustered together—crude white-painted wood, black paint, faded silk flowers jammed in at the base. The jingling came from frayed ribbons with bells tied at the ends, tossed in the wind.

  She could see the names from where she stood. EMMA. TYLER. The third cross was blank.

  Jenna shivered, as if someone had just walked over her grave, and then the light changed, and she kept walking, and put it out of her mind.

  Replacing Max

  Stuart MacBride and Allan Guthrie

  “God, Wesley, you’re such a child.” Angelina thumps back into the passenger seat, arms folded across her chest. Bottom lip sticking out. Eleven years old, going on forty.

  Wesley tightens his grip on the steering wheel, skin tightening across his bruised knuckles as he peers through the windshield into the darkness. “I’m not the one sulking.” Thick globs of snow swirl through the BMW’s headlights. The road twists and turns, skeleton trees guarding either side, jagged branches a canopy of claws as the big four-by-four’s tires bite through the snow. Would be good to know where the hell he’s going. Bloody road isn’t even on the sat nav. But then the thing’s been sod-all use since two hours north of Oban. “And when did you get your hair cut? I liked it when it was long.”

  She runs a hand through the auburn pixie cut, then sticks on her headphones. “Supposed to be going out for pizza. Never think of anyone but yourself, do you?” She narrows her eyes: mean and green in the dashboard’s glow. Just like her mother’s. . . . “You know something? Hugh’s right, you’re—”

  “Stop it!” Wesley pulls the nearest wire from her ear. “Will you please just . . . stop, Angelina? How many times do we have to do this?”

  She leans forward, just enough to make slamming back into the seat look more dramatic. “It’s not even your weekend.”

  He tries for a smile. Softens his voice. Tries to take out the gravel and knots. “Come on, you’re too young to stay by yourself. You know that.”

  “Could have stayed at Susan’s house. She’s got a spare room.”

  “Well, Angel, you’re with me.”

  A road sign pokes out of the snow on the passenger side: Cladh Ciorag 5. Where the hell is Cladh Ciorag?

  “Why didn’t Mum want me with her?”

  Jesus Christ . . . “I don’t know. It was a last-minute thing. They didn’t tell me.”

  “She could have told me.” Angelina clenches her mobile, the display screen haloing her lime-green fingernails. When did she start wearing nail polish? “It’s so unfair.”

  “I’m not the bad guy here, okay?”

  Silence.

  She just crosses her arms again, jerks her chin up. “I need a piss.”

  “A piss? Is that how we brought you up? A piss?”

  “Gosh, Wesley, you’re right.” Her eyes go wide, one hand pressed against her cheek. “Swearing is horrible. Much worse than kidnapping someone.”

  “Picking someone up from orchestra practice isn’t kidnapping. For God’s sake, Angel, you can be such a . . .” Wesley works his hands around the steering wheel. Flexing his fingers. Taking deep breaths. “Look, it’s late. We’re both tired. We just need—I don’t know—to find somewhere to stay. Get something to eat. Then we’ll have a fun couple of days together. You’ll like that, won’t you?”

  “No. I hate you.”

  “Come on, a trip up north, like we used to when you were little. Remember? You and me, a nice fire going, marshmallows, hot chocolate, and ghost stories?”

  “Yeah, Wesley. Way to be desperate.” Her thumbs peck at the phone.

  “Stop calling me Wesley.”

  “Your name, isn’t it?” One more poke and the phone gives a two-tone chime. She holds the handset against her chest. “Anyway, Hugh lets me call him Hugh.”

  “I don’t care what Bloody Hugh lets you call him: I’m your father!” Bloody Hugh. Good old bastarding, vicious, devious, little, shitty Bloody Hugh. Bloody Hugh who destroyed everything.

  More silence.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I . . . I’m just tired. Been a long day.”

  A big wooden sign looms out of the gloom, fixed to the trunk of a crippled oak. The picture of an old-fashioned Scottish house, with a pond or something behind it, sits above the words LOINNREACH HOUSE B&B picked out in cheery letters. A rectangle of plastic hangs beneath it: VACANCIES

  Angelina turns in her seat to watch it go past. “What are you doing? I told you I need to pee!”

  The brake pedal judders beneath his foot as the BMW slithers to a halt.

  Angelina stares at him. “Jesus, Dad!”

  Dad, not Wesley. So that’s what it takes.

  He sticks the car in reverse and backs toward the turn, brake lights painting the snow blood red between the shadows.

  WESLEY REACHES BACK into the car and grabs Angelina’s bag. “Do you want your clarinet, too?” The words come out in a cloud of fog. The freezing air sandpapers his ears and cheeks. Every inward breath makes his fillings ache.

  “Yeah, because I’m totally going to trust some slack-jawed banjo-picking tosser who runs an ancient B&B in the middle of nowhere not to steal it. Leave it locked in the car.” She hauls on a big woolly hat, tucks her hair in out of the way, sticks her hands in her pockets, and stomps toward the front door. “God, you’re such a loser.”

  Bathed in the warm glow of half a dozen floodlights, Loinnreach House looks a lot grander than it did on the sign—a two-story slab of white with broad gable ends and a couple of dormer windows poking up from the white-covered roof: black eyes beneath startled eyebrows. The lights catch the falling snow, making it shine like flakes of gold. Over to one side, what looks like the edge of an agricultural building stretches away into the shadows, beyond the floodlights’ reach. No sign of the pond.

  The house door opens just as Angelina’s reaching for the knocker, and a frumpy-looking elderly woman wearing a red-spotted white apron smiles at them. She wipes her hands on a tartan tea towel, leaving smears of white flour on the fabric. “You must be freezing.”

  Angelina shrugs one shoulder. A mannered, too-cool-for-school gesture. Well, that’s what comes of private education. A very expensive private education, and who was paying for it? Bloody Hugh? Fat chance.

  “Yeah, we’re thinking of staying. You got an inside toilet?”

  “Angelina!” Wesley closes the car door and thumbs the remote. The locks clunk and the indicators flash, but he goes around and checks the handle on the boot anyway. Just in case. “I’m sorry, it’s been a long day. She didn’t mean to be rude.” Wesley hurries toward the house.

  “Beautiful place you’ve got.”

  Mrs. Apron’s smile grows wider, punching a couple of dimples into her cheeks. She squats down a couple of inches, until she’s eye to eye with Angelina. “We’ve got eight inside toilets, three bathrooms, a billiard room, six guest bedrooms, and broadband Wi-Fi. How does that sound, princess?”

  Angelina shifts from foot to foot, knees together. “I really need a pee.”

  “Down the hall, second door on the left.”

  Angelina pushes past, into the house, disappearing from view.

  Mrs. Apron t
urns, watching her go. “And don’t mind Buttons: he’s a big softy.” She faces Wesley again. Wrinkles pucker her lips. Loose skin puffs her eyes. She smells warm, though. Comforting, like fresh-baked bread. “Lovely girl. Pretty, too. You must be proud.”

  “Yeah. I am . . . usually.”

  “Honestly, don’t worry about it. Me and George have a teenager of our own. I know what they’re like.” She holds out a hand. “Jeanette Constable.”

  He takes his glove off and grips her hand in his. The skin’s dry to the touch, dusty from the flour. “Wesley. Wesley . . . Smith.”

  “Welcome to Loinnreach House, Wesley. And please, call me Jeanette.” She keeps hold of his hand, looking up at him. “I just know you’re going to be very happy here.”

  THE FLOORBOARDS CREAK beneath the dusty purple carpet as Wesley and Angelina follow Jeanette’s broad back along a corridor lined with heavy oak doors, each one with a brass plaque bearing a name like TABBY, TORTOISESHELL, or SMOKE. Baby portraits in gold frames cover the walls, black-and-white, color, and a couple of sepia prints too. Not a single adult to be seen.

  Wesley stops outside one of the rooms and runs his fingers across the metal rectangle screwed to the wood. “Mackerel? Cats and fish? Kind of a random naming system . . .”

  Stomping up ahead, Angelina puffs out an exaggerated sigh and shakes her head from side to side, making the bobble on her hat wobble. “Don’t you know anything? They’re all kinds of cat markings.”

  “Oh, you know your cats! I’m impressed.” Jeanette pulls out a long wooden fob and slips the attached key into the door at the end of the corridor. The one marked CLASSIC. She pushes the door open. “Angelina, you’re in here.” She steps back and ushers them into a small room with a single bed along one wall. A pine wardrobe in the corner. A small desk underneath a sash-and-case window. “We breed Maine Coons.”

  “Like Buttons? He’s huge.”

  “And that’s why he’s a grand champion.” She reaches an arm around Angelina’s shoulders and steers her to the window. “Look down there.”

  Angelina presses her nose against the glass. “Are those cages?”