‘Can play you the message, if you like.’ Lucy held her mobile up to the phone and hit the button.
The geode’s heavy in her hand — so heavy she can barely raise the thing high enough to smash it down on—
Lucy scrambled out of bed, pyjamas sticking to her back, face: cold and clammy. Chest heaving as she dragged in urgent wheezing gasps. Trembling. The bedside rug cool beneath her bare feet. The only thing that broke the darkness was the alarm clock, glowing ‘03:02’ at her in blurry red digits.
Jesus.
She slumped forward and grabbed her knees, closed both eyes, and tried to calm her breathing down. Going through the exercises they’d given her. In and out. In and out. In and out.
Hadn’t had a nightmare like that for months and months.
Thank you, Dr Sodding McNaughton, for stirring everything up again.
Eventually, her breathing slowed to something more like normal and Lucy straightened up. Wiped a hand across her damp face.
Why did psychologists always have to make things worse? Surely the whole point of therapy was to...
What was that?
She padded her way to the bedroom door and eased it open.
The landing was shrouded in gloom; what little light there was seeped in through the window at the end. Cold grey slivers of moonlight traced the top of the trees opposite.
Maybe she’d imagined it? Still jittery after the dream. It wasn’t as if—
A noise downstairs: scratching, scraping.
She absolutely didn’t imagine that.
Lucy inched out to the balustrade and peered down into the dark.
Why was it that the first thing anyone did in books and films, when they heard some weird noise in the night, was shout, ‘Hello?’ Instantly letting the axe-murdering psychopath know exactly where they were. Presumably because all fictional people were idiots.
She crept along the landing to the stairs.
Maybe it was mice? Old house like this, middle of nowhere, bound to get the odd mouse or six. Gnawing on the wiring, breeding in the gaps...
The top step creaked beneath her bare foot. Not loud enough to stop the scrabbling noise, though. She eased her way down the stairs, slow and steady.
It was even darker down here, the air scented with tendrils of mildew and dust.
That sound was coming from the front door. A shadow covered the stained-glass panel set into the wood. There was someone outside.
Lucy stayed close to the wall as she snuck forward. Eyes on the door handle. Did that just move? Because she’d made sure all the doors and windows were locked before going to bed. Hadn’t she?
It did. It definitely moved.
This was it. The bastard in the corduroy jacket had finally come to finish the job. Following her, slashing her tyres: it had all been building up to this moment.
Should’ve bought that bloody baseball bat.
Well, just have to improvise, wouldn’t she?
Lucy slipped one of Dad’s old walking sticks from the umbrella stand. A nice hefty metal stick with a Bakelite handle, the rubber tip long since crumbled to dust. Old, but perfect for caving someone’s head in.
The door handle twisted.
Time to give them a helping hand.
She reached for the handle, but it snapped back into place before her fingers touched it. Then the whole door rattled as a fist slammed against it on the other side, the booming sound nearly deafening in the silence.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
She flinched back.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
OK.
Didn’t matter.
She had the walking stick.
Yes, but what if they had a knife? Or a shotgun?
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Her hands tightened on the cold metal.
What if there were two of them?
Yeah...
Wouldn’t hurt to have some backup.
Lucy grabbed her keys from the bowl on the sideboard — jammed the front-door one in the lock and twisted it all the way over. Leaving it in there, so they couldn’t pick it from the outside, before sprinting into the living room.
She snatched up the house phone and pressed the green button. Nothing. No dialling tone. It was dead. They’d done something to the line.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Lucy edged over to the bay window and eased one side of the curtains open an inch. Just enough to see out.
A red-and-white Mini sat on the drive, next to Dad’s old van, engine idling a curl of exhaust into the night, running lights glowing blood-scarlet. He’d reverse parked, ready for a quick getaway, which gave her a blurred view of the number plate. Squinting didn’t make it any clearer, nor did rubbing her eyes. Should’ve put on her glasses, but the stupid things were still lying on the bedside cabinet, upstairs.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
She shifted around another couple of inches, till the front door came into view. It was her stalker — the bastard who’d slashed her tyres. And he was alone. Didn’t look as if he had a shotgun, either. Hammering on the door with both gloved fists.
Right.
Lucy marched back into the hall, raising the walking stick on the way, ready to batter it down. Grabbed the key, unlocked the front door and threw it open. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’ Swinging as she lunged over the threshold.
But he wasn’t there — he was scrambling in behind the Mini’s wheel. Engine roaring as he put his foot down.
Got to put it in gear first, idiot.
She leaped after him — gravel cold and sharp beneath her feet — swinging the heavy metal walking stick in a slashing arc. It smashed down into the Mini’s roof, making a long puckered dent in the bodywork, sending a network of jagged cracks curling across the rear windscreen.
Sharp little stones flew from beneath the wheels and the car shot forward, accelerating out onto the road before she could get another swing in.
‘YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT: RUN AWAY!’ Lucy staggered after the Mini, across the painful gravel, waving her dad’s walking stick like a sword at the disappearing tail-lights. ‘AGAIN!’
She stood there, in the middle of the road, feet frozen and aching. Breath whoomping out in thick grey lungfuls.
Turning up here, in the dead of night, to hammer on her door like something out of a horror film. Well, if the plan had been to terrify and intimidate her, it hadn’t sodding worked. All it did was make her even more pissed off. And if Sarah Black thought she was winning this one, she was in for a nasty surprise.
Lucy limped back into the house. She had some calls to make.
— a song of blood and darkness —
26
Lucy finished up her tea and toast, then yawned her way towards the living room. One eye screwed shut against the headache pounding away behind it. Waiting for the pills to kick in.
She shambled across the hall and unlocked the living-room door. Hadn’t been easy, keeping everyone out of there last night, but if she hadn’t it’d be halfway around O Division by now: Detective Sergeant McVeigh’s been nicking case files from Operation Maypole! Her walls are plastered with them! DI Tudor would’ve had her suspended, signed off on the sick, and probably fired as well.
She dumped the key back in the bowl on the sideboard as the doorbell chimed out its two miserable notes.
Urgh...
Probably one of the OAPs from the farm cottages across the road, wanting to know what all the excitement had been about last night, with the patrol cars and SEB Transit van. Normally, the old buggers only communicated via passive-aggressive notes, pushed through her letterbox. ‘YOUR FATHER ALWAYS PUT HIS BINS OUT ON THE MONDAY MORNING’; ‘YOUR FATHER ALWAYS KEPT THE FRONT LAWN SO TIDY’; ‘YOUR FATHER ALWAYS CLEARED UP THE GRASS VERGE OUTSIDE HIS HOUSE...’