Darkness Falls

by Mia James

  ‘I’m sorry ladies, no school parties in here. This is for members only.’

  ‘Yes, we’re members,’ said April as confidently as she could, pulling out the card like it was an FBI badge.

  ‘Miss … Mueller?’ said the woman dubiously, reading the name on the card and looking them both up and down.

  ‘We’re here to visit the special collection, please,’ said April with what she hoped was a charming smile.

  ‘The special collection?’ said the woman, as if startled.

  ‘Yes, the special collection,’ said Caro, pointing to the pass.

  The woman glanced around and lowered her voice. ‘This is all very irregular. I’m going to have to make a telephone call.’

  She walked over to a desk and quickly dialled a number.

  ‘Hello, this is Mrs Franks, I’m sorry to disturb you … no, I am aware of that sir, but … I’m sorry, but I have two young ladies here who wish to visit the special collection.’ April noticed that she said the words ‘special collection’ in a hushed voice. ‘Yes, it all seems in order … I believe Philips is down there. Very well. Thank you, sir.’

  The woman put the phone down with some force, clearly unhappy, and walked back to April and Caro.

  ‘You’d better come with me,’ she said, moving towards the back of the room. She produced a bunch of keys and opened a door. ‘Through here.’

  They found themselves in a dark corridor. It looked as if it was being used to store old exhibits from the museum. As they followed Mrs Franks, they passed tables of fossils, a sculpture of a horse, and jars full of what looked like baby animals suspended in an unpleasant-looking green-tinged liquid. At the end of the corridor, the woman unlocked another door which opened onto a narrow staircase. They walked down two flights and, from the change in temperature, realised they were underground.

  ‘Along here,’ said Mrs Franks, indicating another dark corridor. As they turned the corner, there was a roar and both April and Caro leapt back. There was a huge black Alsatian dog rearing up at them, barking and snapping, white foam dripping from his jaws. Behind the dog, a squat man in a blue uniform was struggling to hold onto the beast’s lead.

  ‘Don’t worry, ladies,’ said the man, raising his voice to be heard over the barking. ‘He’s very friendly once he’s got used to you. Hold out your hands, let him have a sniff of yers.’

  April glanced over at Mrs Franks, but her expression hadn’t changed, as if this was a normal day in the library. Perhaps it was.

  Nervously, the two girls offered their hands to the dog, who immediately whined and sat down, wagging his tail. April and Caro exchanged a look; evidently they had passed the test.

  ‘Come along,’ said Mrs Franks, turning towards a large door and making a big show of choosing the correct key. She handed April some white cotton gloves. ‘These must be worn at all times,’ she said as she rattled the key in the lock and pushed the door inwards. ‘No eating or drinking. Strictly one book from the shelf at a time and’ – she fixed Caro with a glare – ‘no books are to be removed from the room at any time under any circumstances.’

  ‘Of course,’ said April politely.

  ‘When you have finished,’ said the librarian, indicating a buzzer by the door, ‘ring this bell. I will see you out.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said April. ‘We’ll be as quick as we can.’

  The woman made a humphing noise and disappeared, clicking the door closed behind her.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Caro. ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘I guess that was the anti-vamp alarm Jessica was talking about.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad Rover didn’t smell death on me. I’ve never seen teeth that big before.’ She turned her attention to the room they were in, a huge cellar brimming with books, animal skeletons, stuffed specimens and weird plaster models, all carefully preserved by the thrumming air-conditioning units along the walls.

  ‘Wow, look at this place!’ said Caro. ‘It’s amazing.’

  ‘In a creepy sort of way,’ said April walking over to examine the shelves. The books were all stored in cupboards with ornate wire fronts that didn’t look as though they’d been opened in years. Putting her gloves on, April pulled a cupboard door open and removed a large book with a leather binding. She put it on the wide table in the centre of the room and opened it. It made a cracking sound, incredibly loud in the quiet cellar, and she winced. ‘It’s like it’s brand-new.’

  ‘Maybe they are,’ said Caro. ‘Queen Victoria was pretty rich, maybe she bought every book published and no one ever got around to reading them all.’

  April shook her head.

  ‘You’d need a warehouse the size of a town for that. This is the special collection, remember? Someone chose these books for their importance.’

  ‘Just look at them!’ gushed Caro, going from case to case. ‘There’s something on every unexplained phenomenon in history. Ghosts, mind-reading, synchronicity … God! It could really be here, A! I mean, the British Empire covered about two thirds of the globe at the time, Victoria could have got any book from anywhere in the world.’

  April nodded.

  ‘It’s here somewhere, I can feel it.’

  ‘Yes, but where?’

  ‘Well don’t just stand there, get some dust on your gloves!’

  Over an hour later, though, April was beginning to despair. Caro was having the time of her life; she had found books on time travel, ghosts and even prehistoric monsters in the Thames, but April had only one purpose: to find the White Book. They’d searched half the cases already and while there were many, many books on witchcraft and creaky tomes filled with what looked like ancient spells, none of them were the book. Sighing, she opened another cabinet and began to run a gloved finger along the spines, determined not to go so fast that she missed the book, but also painfully aware that she might be wrong – perhaps the book wasn’t here and all this was a monstrous waste of time neither she nor Gabriel had. ‘Listen, we’re going to find this book,’ said Caro, giving April a hug, carefully keeping her dusty hands away from her back. ‘It’s going to be okay. Think positively.’

  ‘I’m trying … but there’s so much to worry about it’s crushing me. So we find the book, then what? If it works, Gabriel goes back to being a vampire … is that supposed to be a good thing?’

  ‘This is what you’re fighting for, honey. Yes he’ll be a vampire, but an alive vampire. If that’s possible. If he’s still kicking, then you’ve got a chance to fix it all, haven’t you? We’ve got a chance to find the Regent and get him completely cured.’

  ‘I guess so,’ said April, wearily turning back to the shelf. ‘It’s just … sometimes it seems he doesn’t want to, like I’m forcing him to do it.’

  ‘I’m sure that wasn’t what he meant,’ said Caro over her shoulder.

  ‘You should have heard him by the pond, Caro …’ she began, but her voice slowly trailed off. April was aware that she had stopped breathing.

  She was staring at a small book, the size of a slim notebook, although it was bound with thick leather, some sort of pale skin. When she slid it from the shelf she could see the pages were yellow and uneven, and it looked incredibly ancient and fragile.

  ‘Is that it?’ Caro’s voice had sunk to a whisper.

  April opened it, then gasped as she read the title page, hand-written in ink in an elaborate curly style.

  ‘I think it is.’

  ‘I sort of imagined it would be bigger.’

  ‘Paper was expensive when this was written,’ said April. ‘They’d have used as little of it as possible.’

  Carefully, she carried the small book over to the table and gently began leafing through it, not wanting to damage the pages. It was all beautifully hand-written, filled with symbols and diagrams she didn’t understand.

  ‘There it is!’ hissed Caro. The top of the page was titled:

  Below it was a list of ingredients along with their quantities: Lief Bark, Mandrake, Black Mos
sleaf and others.

  ‘We’ve got it! We’ve got it!’ cried Caro, grabbing April and jumping up and down. They were both laughing and squealing with delight.

  ‘But how are we going to get it out?’ said April suddenly. ‘We’re not allowed to take the books out.’

  Caro smiled.

  ‘The rules were made long before they invented this,’ she said, pulling out her mobile phone. ‘We can take photos on the highest resolution, then download and print them out.’

  ‘Brilliant!’

  Caro gave a little bow.

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘Come on then, quickly, before Miss Icy-Face comes back and turfs us out.’

  April held the book open while Caro took photos from every angle.

  ‘Right, let’s get out of here,’ said April. ‘This place is starting to creep me out. I swear some of the stuffed animals are watching me.’

  Caro looked around at the room longingly. ‘Can’t we stay just a little longer? The stuff in here, it would blow their minds on trueconspiracy.com.’

  April shook her head sadly. ‘Sorry, honey, I know this is your dream come true, but remember why we’re here. Gabriel’s barely hanging on by his fingernails. I’m worried that if we even delay by a minute, we might be too late.’

  Caro sighed and gave April a wan smile. ‘Okay, just let me take a few more snaps from the spell book,’ she said, turning over random pages and snapping away.

  ‘Hey, no!’ said April, ‘Jessica said to only take the Dragon’s Breath spell and nothing more.’

  ‘Sorry A,’ said Caro sheepishly. ‘It’s just that it’s a spellbook and maybe there’s something in here to make me gorgeous and famous and rich.’

  ‘You’re already gorgeous and clever, Caro.’

  ‘Well rich couldn’t hurt then, could it?’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘It’s funny,’ said Caro as she pressed the bell on the bus. ‘I’ve been past Queen’s Wood so many times, but I’ve never seen anything but trees.’

  ‘That’s all there is,’ said Gabriel as they stepped down and watched the bus pull away.

  ‘But they’re not “just trees”, are they?’ said Caro miserably. ‘It’s like a creepy enchanted forest where the trees start trying to kill people.’

  ‘Lovely thought, Caro, just what we need when we’re about to step into a spooky wood,’ said April. She was in a bad mood because, despite his promise to be strong for her, April had practically had to drag Gabriel along tonight. Still torn between being with her and accepting his so-called gift of death, no doubt. Added to which, the more real it became, the unhappier she felt about the idea of Gabriel becoming a vampire again. But as Caro said, at least he would be alive. That was something, wasn’t it?

  They waited until the bus had disappeared, then walked down a path and into the trees.

  ‘See?’ whispered Caro. ‘Can’t you just imagine these branches being fingers reaching out to you?’ She turned to April. ‘And what about your little speech about keeping me out of all this? Now would be the perfect time to put your foot down.’

  ‘It would, but I need your expertise again,’ said April.

  ‘What expertise?’

  ‘You study biology, don’t you?’

  ‘Biology, not botany. There’s a big difference.’

  Gabriel stopped, seeming to sniff the air.

  ‘What?’ said April.

  ‘It’s not safe here,’ he said quietly, his dark eyes darting around the woodland.

  ‘I was only joking about the trees …’ said Caro.

  ‘Quiet,’ hissed Gabriel. His body was tense, his head cocked, listening.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered April, but he didn’t answer.

  April strained her ears to hear what he was hearing, but there was nothing except a whisper of wind and the occasional rush as a car passed on the road.

  Then Gabriel shook his head, frowning. ‘Maybe it was nothing …’

  ‘You can’t freeze in your tracks like a bloodhound and then say it was nothing!’ said Caro, badly spooked.

  ‘I just thought I smelled …’

  ‘What?’ asked April softly. She could see what Caro hadn’t noticed: that Gabriel was scared. For a hundred years, he had been invincible, walking through the world like some kind of superman. But now, since her kiss, he was weak, vulnerable. Suddenly things he would normally brush aside made him jump, and he didn’t know how to process all this new information. He looked at her with wide eyes.

  ‘Death,’ he said, ‘I smelled death.’

  She squeezed his arm. ‘It’s okay,’ she said lamely. ‘I was reading up on this place. It used to be called Churchyard Bottom. During the Black Death it was used as a plague pit.’

  ‘Plague pit?’ said Caro, looking even more spooked.

  ‘So many people were dying, so they dug a mass grave and piled them in. That’s why nothing’s ever been built here and why it’s so overgrown. Maybe that’s what you’re picking up on,’ she said to Gabriel.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Gabriel. The look on his face – bleak, lost, so unsure – almost broke her heart. She wanted to hug him, he looked so lonely, but they had a job to do. And she was annoyed, she reminded herself.

  ‘Let’s keep going.’

  As Gabriel walked ahead, Caro pulled at April’s arm.

  ‘Look, if vampboy smells death then I’m not going anywhere. I’ve seen enough slasher movies to know this is exactly when someone gets decapitated.’

  ‘Look at him,’ April whispered urgently in Caro’s ear. ‘He’s not coping well.’

  ‘Him? I’m the one who’s not coping.’

  She paused as she saw April was genuinely worried. ‘All right, so what’s wrong with him?’

  ‘It’s like he still has all his vampire instincts, but his protective layer’s been stripped away. I think he’s still sensing everything way more than the rest of us. Smells are more stinky, noises are louder … but suddenly they’re all threatening. I don’t think he knows how to deal with it.’

  ‘Well what use is he to us, then? I thought he was here to protect us.’

  ‘Caro, he’s dying!’

  Her friend shrugged then sighed. ‘Okay, but if we all get sliced up like bagels, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  They walked on, following the path deeper into the trees. The light had been fading as they had stepped off the bus, and here, where the bare branches were reaching across the trail forming a tunnel, it was incredibly grey and gloomy.

  ‘What are we looking for, exactly?’ said Caro huffily. ‘And why have we come at night?’

  ‘According to the Albus, some of the plants have to be picked at night to be effective.’

  April pulled out a torch and her notebook. With Gabriel’s aid, plus a Latin dictionary, an online translator and a pile of books about native woodland plant life, she and Caro had assembled a shopping list of ingredients complete with diagrams and photographs so they could identify the correct plants. She had expected them to be super-rare, but many were listed as ‘common’ or ‘habitat: English woodland’. In the end, Mr Gill had provided her with an old Guide to British Flora which had listed them all.

  ‘First we need Spineroa nervosa or Blackfern,’ said April, finding a page marked by a fluorescent-pink sticky note. She flicked her torch on and showed Caro the picture.

  ‘Hmm … looks like a normal fern to me,’ said Caro, ‘only black.’

  ‘Apparently, it likes damp conditions and shade,’ April said.

  ‘It’ll be right at home here then,’ said Caro, skirting around a muddy patch and ducking under a branch. ‘What about this?’ she pulled up a plant.

  ‘That’s a dandelion, Caro,’ said April.

  ‘Well, how am I supposed to know?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m so glad I brought you along,’ said April sarcastically.

  ‘The feeling’s mutual, darling.’

  It was darker now as they walked deeper into the woods, the unde
rgrowth thicker, but that also meant there were more plants. With help from Gabriel’s sharp eyes and nose, they found three of the ingredients quickly.

  ‘And there!’ said Caro. ‘Black ferns!’ She was right. They waded through the waist-high plants growing a few yards from the path, selecting the healthiest-looking leaves.

  ‘Right,’ said April, ‘now all we need is …’

  Gabriel put his hand over her mouth and pulled both of the girls to the ground.

  ‘Be still,’ he murmured into their ears.

  The girls both froze. Slowly they heard footsteps approaching. They were light and nimble, more like a child’s than a man’s, but from where April was lying, she could see the white flash of trainers as they passed.

  ‘This way,’ said a low voice. ‘We can’t let them get away.’

  The feet paused for a moment, then moved off at speed, deeper into the woods. After waiting in silence for another tense minute Gabriel finally let them up.

  ‘Who the hell was that?’ hissed Caro.

  ‘Were they vamps? Looking for us?’ breathed April.

  Gabriel nodded gravely. ‘We don’t have much time. At the moment, they’ll probably assume we’re out having a little party, but if they find us with these leaves, they may make a guess in the right direction.’

  Caro raised her eyebrows meaningfully, but April shook her head.

  ‘No, we can’t leave until we have everything on the list. We haven’t come this far to let a few nosy vampires put us off.’

  ‘It’s all right for you, Ms Fury,’ said Caro. ‘All I’ve got to defend myself is a book on plants.’ She looked back and forth between April and Gabriel, then sighed. ‘Okay, what’s left?’

  April peered at her notebook.

  ‘Mandrake.’

  ‘I know that plant,’ said Gabriel. He closed his eyes, as if in concentration.

  They stood silently for a while.

  ‘Ahem, the Suckers?’ hissed Caro. ‘I don’t like to suggest they’re planning to bury us in the plague pits, but it’s a real possibility.’