Walking Shadow (The Darkworld Series Book 2) (21 page)

And if it
had
been her, why had she left me alone? She’d torn apart Mr Priestley over nothing…

Too many questions. My head hurt. I took another drink from my bottle of cider, even though I wasn’t thirsty.

We stayed there until long after the GameSoc people had left. Finally, Claudia said, “It was too easy.”

“Huh?” I said. My voice was hoarse from lack of use.

“Those creatures were pathetic, even more so than general shadow-beasts. They certainly weren’t capable of killing anyone, or of doing any real damage.”

“But they killed the harpy,” I said, trying to block out the image of the bloody feathery mess hanging from the tree. I wondered if it was still there―and the skeletons, come to that―or if the Venantium had cleared the evidence away. For the sake of the next poor soul to go for a walk in the woods, I hoped they had.

“Harpies are stupid,” said Claudia, with unconvincing bravado. “They’re instinct creatures, essentially. It wouldn’t occur to them that trying to attack a skeleton is pointless. Not to mention they were attacking one of their own.”

“Technically,” slurred Leo, “The harpies’ first loyalty is to the Venantium, not the Darkworld.”

“True,” said Claudia, frowning. She downed the last dregs of her glass of cider. “I don’t get it. The Venantium’s protection around campus is supposed to be faultless. Nothing’s
ever
gotten past it, as far as I know.”

“What would happen if you tried to summon something from the Darkworld here?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said. “Demons can speak to you here, but they can’t come close to the edge of the Barrier. That’s why the only dark spaces are the ones spirits use for communication, and the only ones I’ve seen are by Madame Persephone’s tent.”

“We need to talk to her,” I said, wondering why I hadn’t thought about that before. “This has gone beyond weird.”

“Tell me about it,” said Claudia. “I’m off to get another drink.”

I took the opportunity to shift to a more comfortable position. Leo leaned on my shoulder, and my arm started to go numb.

“It’s them,” he said, so softly I barely heard him. “They’re the Skele-Ghoul grave-robbers. The Ghouls.”

So that’s why they dug up graves.
Though what they hoped to achieve by setting demons to possess skeletons, I couldn’t imagine. I thought of the shape-shifting ghoul, wondering what vital clue I was missing.

“How’d they do it?” I said. “I thought the person had to be alive to be possessed…”

I broke off. Leo had begun to snore softly again.

I sighed. I didn’t understand any of it, and I was scared. If someone had summoned demons on this side of the Barrier, did it mean that the Venantium weren’t as all-powerful as they claimed to be?
Had
someone summoned them? I struggled to make sense of what the demon had said to me.
Now you see what they can do to us…
Who were
they?

What had happened to make the demons keep trying to get me on their side? My mind whirled. Maybe I should just drink myself into oblivion, like Leo…

I’d half-risen out of my seat to join Claudia at the bar when I saw someone approaching me. My heart sank.

“Hey, Ash,” said Conrad.

“Conrad.”
Well, this is awkward.
“Sorry we left you outside; I didn’t know where you lived.”

“Never mind that. I’m so sorry I attacked you!”

“Don’t worry about it. You didn’t know what you were doing.”

“I mean it!” he insisted. I practically expected him to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness.

I got up. I didn’t particularly want Leo to wake up and witness this. Steering Conrad to the other side of the room, I whispered. “Look, it’s fine. Do you… I mean, do you have any idea who could have summoned those… things here? I thought the Venantium’s Barrier was supposed to be impenetrable.”

“It is,” he said. “I dunno what’s happening. I’m so scared. I think they’re gonna kill me.”

“I don’t see why they would. You don’t have any enemies, do you?”

He shook his head.

“Then you’re fine!” I said, with more conviction than I was capable of letting myself feel. Everything I’d taken for granted was in free-fall, even in my admittedly already tenuous re-construction of my world-view after learning about the Darkworld. “Seriously. The Venantium will sort it out.”

“If they haven’t been betrayed,” said Claudia from behind me.

“Huh?” I said. “Why would you think that?”

“The only way for a demon to get to this area is if someone lets it through from outside―someone with knowledge of how the Barrier works. In other words, someone who either is or was a member of the Venantium.”

Conrad’s already pale face went the colour of off-milk. “Can that happen?” he said, his voice high-pitched with terror.

“I really don’t know, Conrad,” she said, returning to her spot on the sofa.

I couldn’t get another word on the matter out of her, and I ended up leaving, tired of Conrad’s anxious questions. I had enough questions of my own.

And there was, once again, only one person I could think of who might be able to give me some answers.

ou what?” I said to Leo, at the next meeting. “She’s gone?”

Leo looked up from Mr Melmoth’s journal. “Yeah. Madame Persephone’s buggered off.”

“Picked a fine time to ditch us,” snarled Howard, who gripped the Xbox controller so hard I was surprised it didn’t break. “Like any of us know what crazy shit’s going on!”

We’d updated Cyrus, Howard, and Berenice on recent events at the start of the meeting. It hadn’t gone down well.

“We know someone thought making demonic skeletons was a good idea,” said Berenice scornfully. “I could have taken a hundred of them with my eyes closed. They’ll have to do better than that.”

“Believe it or not, Berenice, the world doesn’t revolve around you,” said Leo, from behind the journal.

Berenice tossed her hair. “Whatever. It was a stupid idea, anyway.”

“I think there’s more to it than what we saw,” said Claudia. “What were they doing at the uni? They can’t have been looking for us.”

“Unless that little rat really did sell us out,” said Berenice. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“I told you, it was just a theory,” said Claudia. “He was terrified himself, anyway. I don’t think he was faking.”

“And now Madame Persephone’s decided to go on holiday,” said Howard. “Well, I for one don’t plan on dying because the only sorcerer who’s actually on our side has decided to desert us. I say we strike first.”

“You’re overreacting again, Howard,” said Cyrus. “But I do think there’s something the Venantium aren’t telling us. Not that that’s anything new. I’ll go and hang about the Headquarters, see what I can find out. No,” he said, as both Leo and Howard attempted to cut in. “You two are in enough trouble with the
venators
as it is. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

Cyrus turned back to the Xbox and started punching Howard’s onscreen character in the head.

“Hey, I thought you said no fighting!” yelped Howard.

“I didn’t say it applied in the gaming world,” said Cyrus.

That was how the guys dealt with a crisis. Punching the crap out of virtual characters. Never mind the ghoul walking around wearing my face, and dead harpies, and walking skeletons. Rolling my eyes, I turned to look at Leo.

“Found anything?” I said.

“Only that even in his diaries Melmoth’s as cryptic as hell. Man, he won’t
say
what any of his experiments actually were!”

At the word
experiment,
I thought of the Skele-Ghouls.

“You don’t think he might have known what was going on? With those creatures?”

“Maybe,” said Leo.

“How could a demon possess a corpse?” I said. “I thought it was the life-force of a person they fed on.”

“Magic energy,” Leo corrected me. “And I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t think the person has to be alive to still have magical energy. Usually a demon stops possessing someone after they die to find a better host, but sometimes they stay. Really twisted sorcerers sometimes sic them on an enemy’s family. Imagine being slaughtered by someone you think is your own mother or sister, or―”

I shuddered.

“Anyway, magical energy must linger after death. It’s the only way those things could exist.”

“So someone’s digging up graves to collect corpses to make a demon army?” said Howard sceptically. Then he paused. “Shit. That might actually be true.”

“We don’t know anything yet, really,” said Cyrus. “Like how those vampire killings come into it.”

“It’s all one big conspiracy!” exclaimed Howard. “The Venantium want to distract us so they’ve come up with this bullshit story about vampires being killed, when they’re really planning on raising an army of―”

“Might I remind you that my own guardian was murdered the other day?” said Leo quietly. “You think that was bullshit?”

There was a very awkward silence.

“Nah,” said Howard. “But the
venators
are up to something.”

“I agree,” said Berenice, to no one’s surprise.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s probably an accident we got dragged into it,” said Cyrus. “Look, we’re just a group of nonconformist undergraduates hanging out in a Games Room. What would anyone want with us?”

“They sure seem interested in
her
,” said Berenice, pointing to me.

Here we go again.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, meeting her glare evenly. I’d had enough encounters with bullies and general hostility when I was at school to be pretty much impervious to it now.

“Well, two vampires have attacked you now, and that Conrad guy won’t stop following you around.”

I sighed. “Yeah, it’s the pheromones in my blood. It sends vampires crazy, didn’t you know?”

Berenice blinked. I don’t think she got the sarcasm instantly. Leo, on the other hand, was hiding a grin behind the journal. For some reason, this riled me up even more.

“Fine, I won’t hang about here if you think I’m going to get you all attacked.” I stood up. “In case you’ve forgotten, there’s a monster out there who looks exactly like me, and she
killed
someone the other day. I have bigger problems than your petty mind-games.”

“Berenice, stop trying to pin the blame on Ash!” said Claudia. “I think those Skele-Ghouls were there to leave a warning for the Venantium, actually.”

“What gives you that idea?” said Berenice.

“Think about it, they want to be known. Assuming they’re the same people as those grave-robbers, of course. That graffiti’s pretty ostentatious.”

She had a point. The sight of one of their fearsome birds dismembered would definitely send warning bells ringing for the Venantium.

“Yeah, but… one of them
died
the other day. Aren’t they distracted enough already?”

Mr Priestley. I’d only met him once, and he’d creeped me out slightly, but I couldn’t process that he was
dead.

And it had happened right in front of me.

“That’s why I don’t think the two things are related,” said Cyrus. “It’s horrible what you saw, but I really think that ghoul―whatever it is―was acting alone. Melmoth was preoccupied with her when whoever killed the vampires came along. The same person hates the Venantium. It doesn’t
seem
like there’s a connection, but there has to be one somewhere.”