The Empty Grave (Lockwood & Co. #5)(40)

He will go into the dark …

I clamped my teeth together, forced the panic down. Holly was right. The theatre was a maze. There was no use just running around hoping to get lucky. Lockwood could be anywhere. It could be anywhere.

Or could it? Though the thing had manifested in many random locations around the building, there was a pattern when it came to its attempts at psychic enchainment. It had been leading me towards the stage. Charley Budd had been rescued walking towards the stage door too …

And Sid Morrison, the only one who had actually been on the stage?

Much good it had done him. He’d died there.

That was where she wanted us. Why not? It was where she’d died too.

I ran down to the railings, looked down from on high.

At first I saw no one, and when you considered how many of us there were wandering around the theatre that night, it made you realize how successful La Belle Dame’s diversionary tactics had been. She’d waited patiently until we were all away from the place where the action was. We were scattered, helpless: Holly and me up high; George in the basement; Kipps, heaven knew where. And Lockwood— There he was now, walking slowly down the aisle. His movements were smooth enough, but there was something placid about them, too unhurried. I thought I saw a wisp of shadow just ahead, moving at the same pace, leading him on.

I called his name. I screamed it. Holly, crashing down beside me, did too. But whereas the acoustics from the stage were so good, here the space just swallowed up the sound. Lockwood didn’t turn his head. Perhaps the shadow heard; it seemed to dance more avidly as it led him towards the steps.

‘Quick, Luce!’ Holly was dragging at my sleeve. She’d made the same deductions I had. ‘We’ve got to get down there!’

‘Yes—’ But even as I said it, I knew we had no time. Too many stairs, too many doors and passages to be negotiated. We had no time. ‘No, you go,’ I said. ‘Run as hard as you can.’

‘But what are you—?’

‘Run, Holly!’

She was gone, leaving only a waft of perfume in her wake. She was too good an agent to argue, though she must have been desperate to interrogate me, find out my plan.

I hardly knew what it was myself.

Or rather, my conscious brain didn’t. If it had, I’d have been crawling, cowering under the nearest seat. But the unconscious bit, that was way ahead. It had made the calculations. With Holly sent packing, I turned my attention to the railings on the balcony.

Far below, step by step, Lockwood was climbing onto the stage. His sword was at his belt, his hands hung limp beside his coat. If he was fighting the compulsion, there was no sign of it. How slim he was, how frail he looked from here. Under the lights, the haze of shadow that I knew was still ahead of him was harder than ever to see, but I wasn’t bothering about it now. I was clambering onto the rail, beside where the trapeze ropes hung. There were several of them, ends tied to a jutting metal frame. Each rope looped out and downwards across the awful space, before extending up towards the distant ceiling.

I seized the frame, steadying myself, refusing to look down at the stalls far below. The nearest rope looked the likeliest; its outward curve was very large. Tufnell had mentioned the way the trapeze artists started the show, so I knew the leap was possible.

That didn’t mean it particularly bore thinking about.

Far away, on the hard white stage, Lockwood had reached the centre. Something shimmered into existence a short way ahead of him: something in a long white dress with flowing hair. It was radiant and lovely; it cocked its head at him. A slim arm beckoned. I heard a husky voice whisper on the air.

‘Come to me.’

And Lockwood moved forward.

Know what? That made me angry. How dare he go with her? I picked up the rope with my left hand, pulling it towards me. It was heavy, rough and fibrous. I gripped it, winding it tight around my wrist and arm. Then, with my free hand, I slashed at the knot below; the rapier point cut it as easily as a flower stalk, and I had the rope’s weight pulling on my arm.

I leaned back and gave a little jump. Gravity did the rest.

Don’t make me tell you what it was like, looping down through the air. Down being the key word for that horrific descent. I was basically falling, leaving my stomach somewhere in the region of the balcony, with the stalls leaping up to receive me. Then I was passing over them at ferocious speed, so close I might have kicked the hats off people sitting there; rushing with my arm nearly pulled out of its socket and my fingers burning on the rope and my outstretched sword flashing under the lights. And now flying up again, with the stage opening in front of me, and the ghost-woman standing, swathed in other-light, and Lockwood walking towards her open arms.

‘Come …’

You know me. I love to obey an order. I swung over the stage, passing directly in between them, flashing through a zone of ice-cold air that burned my skin. And the tip of my rapier flashed through something too: namely the neck of that whispering, simpering woman, slicing through it neatly, from side to side. Then I was up and beyond her, flying over the crash mats, which was roughly the point where I thought it advisable to let go.

The next bit – landing painfully on my bottom and doing a super-fast reverse somersault with my ankles around my ears – I’m not going to dwell on. It wasn’t gainly and it wasn’t soft, but I broke nothing and it didn’t last long. Almost before I’d landed I was savagely tearing myself upright and leaping back down to the front of the stage, teeth clenched, breathing like a bull.