she whimpered, “make it stop. I’ve changed my mind about this. Please. I don’t want it any more.”
“I understand,” he said sadly. “I do. You’re scared because you don’t think you’re strong enough. But I know you’re strong enough. That’s why I picked you, out of everyone. I believe in you, Melancholia. I have faith in your strength.”
“I want to go home.”
“You are home.”
“Please …”
“Now now, my dear girl, there’s no need for begging. The Surge is a beautiful, wondrous thing, and it should be cherished. You’ve taken your next step. You’ve become who you were always meant to be. We all go through it. Every sorcerer goes through it.”
She gritted her teeth as a spasm of pain arched her spine, and then she gasped, “But it’s not supposed to last so long. You said I’d be the most powerful sorcerer in the world. You didn’t say anything about this.”
Craven made the effort to look her in the eyes. He despised people who sweated, and the perspiration was rolling off her in heavy rivulets. It turned his stomach to look at her wet, dripping, scarred face. “With the power I promised you, you’ve just had to suffer a little more than the rest of us,” he explained. “But all the work we’ve been doing, preparing you, it’s going to be worth it. Trust me. The symbols I’ve etched into you are seizing the power of the Surge and they’re keeping it, they’re looping it around, letting it build, letting it grow stronger.”
“Let me out.”
“Just another day or so.”
“Let me out!” she screeched, and shadows curled round her, rising and thrashing like tentacles.
He stepped forward quickly, gave her a smile. “But of course, my dear. You’re absolutely right – the time has come.”
Her eyes widened, and the shadows retreated. He doubted she was even aware of them. Strapped and bound as she was, she shouldn’t have been able to wield any kind of power. For once, Craven’s smile was genuine. This was a good sign.
“It’s done?” she asked, her voice meek. “You’re going to let me go?”
“Let you go?” he echoed, and gave a little laugh as he undid her straps. “You make it sound like I’ve been keeping you prisoner! Melancholia, I am your friend. I am your guide. I am the one person in the whole of the world that you can trust to always be honest with you.”
“I … I know that, Cleric Craven,” she said.
He took a handkerchief from his robes and used it to take hold of her wet, slippery arm in order to help her sit up. “We have to choose the right moment to tell the High Priest about you, but once we tell him what we’ve been doing down here for all this time, it’s all going to change. Word will get out that you are the Death Bringer, and there will be many people vying for your favour. Trust none of them.”
She nodded obediently.
“There will be some who won’t understand,” he continued, “even within the Necromancer Order itself. Whenever you feel unsure, or scared, or whenever you just want to talk – I’m here for you.”
“I’m scared now,” Melancholia said, her fingers closing around the skin of his wrist. It took all his self-control not to shiver with revulsion at her clammy touch.
He smiled reassuringly. “There’s nothing to fear, not while you’re with me. Rejoice, my dear. Very soon, you’re going to save the world.”
“Good and evil are so close as to be chained together in the soul.”
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941)
The car spluttered and coughed and retched, and Kenny’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “No,” he said. “Please.” The car belched and juddered in response, smoke filling his windscreen. Images flashed into his mind of the car suddenly exploding into a giant fireball, and he tore off his seatbelt and lunged out on to the sun-drenched street. Horns honked. Kenny jumped sideways to avoid a cursing cyclist who shot past him like a foul-tempered bullet. Dublin traffic on a Sunday morning wasn’t that bad at all. Dublin traffic on a Sunday morning with a big game on was terrible. Irate drivers with county flags stuck to their cars glared at him as they were forced to change lanes.
Kenny smiled apologetically, then looked back at his car. It was not exploding. He reached in, grabbed his bag and turned off the ignition. The car wheezed and slipped gratefully into an early death. Kenny left it there in the street and hailed a taxi.
He was late. He couldn’t believe he was late. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t learned his lesson, even after all these years of being late to things. How many interviews had he messed up because of his inability to arrive on time? Actors, rock stars, politicians, business people, citizens both rich and famous and poor and unknown – he had been late to meet all of them. It was not a good quality in a journalist, he had to admit, especially when every newspaper was cutting back on staff. Print was dead, they were saying. Not as dead as Kenny was going to be if he didn’t get the piece finished by the end of the month.
This story was juicy. It was glorious and bizarre and unique – the kind of thing that stood a chance of being picked up by other papers around the world, maybe even a few magazines. Whenever Kenny entertained that possibility, his mouth watered. A solid pay day. Food in the fridge, no worrying about rent for a while. Maybe even a half-decent car, if he got really lucky.
He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes late. He bit his lip and tapped his fingers on his bag, willing the road ahead to miraculously clear. He didn’t know how long his source would stick around, and if Kenny missed this chance, he doubted he’d get another. Tracking down Paul Lynch in the first place had not been easy, but then finding one homeless person in a city like Dublin was never going to be straightforward. And it wasn’t like Lynch had a phone or anything.
The taxi crawled along to another set of traffic lights and Kenny almost whimpered.
It was probably unhealthy to pin so much hope on one article that hadn’t even been commissioned, but there was really very little choice. Kenny needed a lucky break. He’d started off well, worked up to some high-profile interviews and articles, but then it all started to slide away from him. He could see it happening, but couldn’t do anything to stop it. Now he was freelance, thrown the occasional job, but his editors left it up to him to go out and find the stories himself. And that’s what he’d done.
When he’d first heard the rumours, years
