Page 83 of Skullduggery
I gave him an approving nod and he grinned, then we gave our full attention to Athair who was striding towards us.
‘For the record, can I just say that is the worst idea anyone has ever had in the history of all ideas ever?’ Hester muttered.
Gladys buzzed loudly by my side in disagreement. She was hungry for Athair’s blood – and so was I.
‘Hand over Daisy,’ Athair called, ‘and I will consider letting you go.’
Yeah, yeah. If he truly thought we’d believe that, he was a complete idiot. He still didn’t appear to have made the final connection and worked out who I was to him, although he surely had to have his suspicions by now. Still, it was a big fat tick on our list of things that we needed to survive this encounter.
I called back with a counter-demand. ‘Come any closer and we will kill her!’ Athair burst out laughing and my blood turned to ice. Dread that he’d already deciphered our plans filled every inch of my soul.
Then Hugo nudged me; Athair had slowed his steps. When he stopped and stretched his arms out wide, my tension eased. Maybe we had him.
‘Kill a baby?’ He laughed even harder. ‘You honestly think you’re capable of that? How do you plan to do it? Cut her throat and watch her blood spill out while the life drains from her innocent eyes? Perhaps you’ll smother her, or break her neck.I’vedone all those things to other children in the past and it was easy – enjoyable, in fact. I doubt you could say the same.’
The thought that Athair might have actually killed babies with his bare hands sickened me, but I couldn’t pretend to be surprised. ‘Better that she’s dead,’ I answered, ‘than that she becomes a fiend.’
‘Really?’ he asked sardonically. ‘You don’t believe in free will, then? You don’t believe she’s capable of making up herown mind as to what her future holds? I can’t force anyone, not even my own progeny, into becoming one of the most powerful beings this world has ever seen because that decision has to come from them. But if you harm her, that will be wholly on you. You will have to live with what you’ve done.’
Then he added, ‘Not that you will live for very long if you hurt her. It’s taken me far too long to find a woman capable of bearing my child and far too long to bring that child into existence. I won’t walk away, no matter how much you shake your fists or how many empty threats you throw out. That baby belongs with me.’
With that, he started to stride towards us once again. ‘There’s no way out of this for you. You’re already trapped and your fate is already drawn.’
That’s what he thought, but there was more than one reason why we’d chosen this tunnel as the venue for our showdown. It was damp, with a lot of moisture clinging to both the walls and the air, and that made it easier to pull on water magic and create the effect we required.
With Hugo still at my shoulder and the plastic doll and my phone in my arms, I yanked on every aspect of water magic that I could find. It was extraordinary how much easier it was to control my powers now; if I hadn’t killed Vargas, I’d have owed him a big favour.
I pulled my mouth into a smile and jerked my head at the brownies to move behind us, then muttered to Hugo. ‘Three,’ I said, ‘Two…’
He flicked his wrists. ‘One.’
The resulting cascade of rushing water was phenomenal.
The conjuration started in front of us, then we pushed it out, slamming our tsunami-like creation towards Athair. I didn’t waste time watching Athair being knocked off his feetand sent tumbling back towards the entrance of the tunnel; instead, I grabbed Gladys.
While she buzzed an alarmed protest, I twisted her blade and cut through my own skin. I winced at the pain, but I needed plenty of fresh blood for this to work. I thrust the doll at Hugo and he held it up while I smeared blood across her cold, plastic body and the blanket. Then I sucked in a breath and threw the doll after the gushing torrent.
The doll joined the swirl of water and the debris that had been caught up in the flood. As soon as it was sucked away, Hugo and I ran – heading towards Athair rather than away from him.
There was only so much water we could magick up in one go. By the time we started sprinting towards him, Athair had recovered enough to regain his footing, although he’d been forced back to the tunnel’s entrance.
He roared with fury, somehow managing to make more racket than the water had achieved. I answered him with a high-pitched scream, timing it to the very moment that the doll tumbled past his feet into the crowd of watching vampires.
Athair’s head jerked as he spotted it, but it was already too late. Although the water would have washed away most of my smeared blood, there was enough on the blanket to send the bloodsuckers into a frenzy. Athair had great control over them – but in the end their bloodlust was greater.
As if they were one amorphous group, they descended on the doll, screaming and chomping their teeth. Athair bellowed a command, but the vampires had been waiting for too long and they were starving.
My fiendish father spun and plunged towards the vampires, using his magic to send them flying in all directions. I could hear the delighted screams of the vampires at the other end of the tunnel as they whooped and raced after us.
I bit my lip, concentrated hard and threw a jet of hot fire over my shoulder in their direction. I didn’t check to see if I’d hit my targets.
While he blasted awaythe last of the crazed vampires and bent down to reach for whatever remained of the doll, we reached the end of the tunnel. I couldn’t allow a second’s delay; it wouldn’t take Athair long to discover our trick.
When his body jerked with belated comprehension that he was desperately trying to save a doll, I thrust Gladys at him, swiping her blade at his exposed back. She hummed loudly in anticipation as I slashed at his flesh. His skin was tougher than I’d expected, but she still managed to slice an inch deep into his body.
Hugo followed up my heavy swipe with a burst of air magic. Athair let out a strangled cry and pitched forward face first. I leapt forward, more than prepared to finish him off with a single killing blow, but my father wasn’t done yet. Without so much as a twitch, power rocketed out of him, and Hugo, both brownies and I were sent crashing backwards. Cumbubbling bollocks.
I tried to get to my feet, but my brain wasn’t sending the right messages to my body and my limbs wouldn’t obey. Gulping for air sent scalding pain through my chest. I hadn’t lost my grip on Gladys, but when I tried to lift her blade towards me for close defence I couldn’t manage it. Athair had sent no more than a single flare of air magic towards us and it had almost destroyed us.
