Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days (17 page)

37
CHINA’S DARK SECRET

O
ver the bed there was a sigil painted on to the ceiling and it glowed gently, its power drifting down into China’s body. She lay with her eyes closed, hands folded on her stomach, her mind attuned to the sigil, manipulating its properties. The ebb and flow of magic raged like a storm-tossed sea, and yet none of that was evident from outward appearances. Instead of a storm-tossed sea there seemed to be a still lake, not even a ripple on the water’s surface, exactly the way China preferred it to be.

The sigil stopped glowing and her eyes opened. She sat up smoothly, without hurry. As she dressed, she observed herself in the mirror. She looked pale and weak. Her body was still tired, her magic still exhausted. She wasn’t strong enough to do what she needed to do, but it had to be done.

China left the bedroom, took the gun from her desk drawer and put it in her purse. She couldn’t risk taking one of her own cars, so she called a taxi and endured forty-five minutes of the taxi driver telling her how much he loved her before they arrived at their destination. The driver wept as he drove away.

China stepped off the cracked pavement and followed a thin trail between a tall rotten fence and a high crumbling wall. The trail was overgrown with weeds and grasses, and it led to a small house, tucked away from prying eyes and passing cars. She knocked on the door and a small man in a three-piece suit answered. His face was a catalogue of disappointments, of cohesion attempted but never achieved. His name was Prave, and his bulbous eyes grew so wide they practically erupted from their sockets and rolled down his cheeks.

“China Sorrows,” he said in a hushed tone. She had forgotten how nasal his voice was. “I knew this day would come. I knew it. You’ve come to kill me, haven’t you?”

“Now why would I want to do something like that?” China asked. She didn’t smile at him. He wasn’t worthy of her smile. “May I come in?”

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” he said quickly.

“That must make a nice change. Stand aside, please.”

Prave did as he was told and China walked in. The house was a hundred years old and she knew it well, for upon completion it had been converted into a church for the followers of the Faceless Ones. Its existence was one of the best-kept secrets in the city, mainly because the man who ran it, Prave himself, was an ineffectual fool who posed no serious threat to anyone. The walls were decorated with the paintings and iconography of the Dark Gods, and the main room contained an altar and a well-worn carpet, where a handful of desperate disciples had kneeled and worshipped and prayed for the end of humanity.

“Where is he?” China asked, flicking through the book on the altar. It was a particularly battered edition of the Gospel of the Faceless, a moronic book written by a moron in an attempt to rationalise the behaviour of his ilk.

Prave shook his head. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You are a traitor and a blasphemer and a heretic.”

“I seem to be a lot of things. I’m looking for Remus Crux.”

Prave adopted a look he probably thought was aloof. “I don’t know who that is. A lot has changed since you started your blaspheming ways, Miss Sorrows. We are a respectable religion now, and should be treated as such. We are tired of this persecution we have been subjected to. We have our rights, you know.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Well, we
should.
We’re not hurting anyone, nor do we condone the use of violence
towards
anyone.”

“So eleven months ago, when the Faceless Ones stopped by for a visit and all those people were killed…”

“That’s different,” Prave said. “Those people were asking for it.”

“You’re annoying me now, Prave, so you’d better answer. Where is Remus Crux?”

Prave remained defiant for two or three seconds then wilted. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s been here a few times, but not with any regularity. He likes to sit around and talk in clichés about how the Faceless Ones are going to smite humanity and turn the world to ash, that kind of thing. He doesn’t understand the beauty of what they do – he’s just interested in the end result. I thought talking to him would be a revelation – his mind has been touched by the Dark Gods, after all. But no. He holds no insights, no startling truths. He’s just…insane.”

“I need to find him.”

“I can’t help you. I don’t know where he’s living. I don’t even know the people he knows. From what I can see, I’m the only one he talks to, and even then, most of what he says is gibberish.”

“It must make you question your religion.”

Prave glared. “Our gods will reward our faith when they return and wipe the heretics from the face of the world.”

He didn’t know anything of use, and even if he did, she didn’t have the strength to get it out of him. China left him standing by the altar and let herself out. She started back down the trail, and noticed a man walking in off the street. His head was down and his hands were in his pockets. He walked quickly. He was ten steps away from her when he looked up.

“Hello, Remus,” said China.

He didn’t bolt as she had expected. He just stood there and looked at her, a deer caught in the headlights, a thief caught in the act.

“You’ve been a very naughty boy,” she said. “You tried to kill Valkyrie Cain, and I actually
like
Valkyrie. You got yourself caught up with Scarab and his plans to change the way things are and I
like
the way things are. I don’t like change – not when I’m not prepared for it.”

“I know about you,” Crux said, his voice tight.

“You shouldn’t have got involved in this. You should have stayed hidden and as far away from me as possible.”

“I know your secret,” he said quickly. “And now you’re scared. Scared of what he’ll do to you when he finds out.”

“Did you tell my secret to anyone else, Remus?”

“Everyone.”

China smiled. “Now that’s a lie. I don’t think you told a soul.”

He shook his head. “I did. I did. You don’t know.”

Her hand slipped into her purse. “The last eleven months have been hard on you, haven’t they? You’ve had nowhere to go to for help. No friends. No colleagues. Just you and your scrambled little mind. All you needed was to have one lucid moment…but you didn’t get it, did you?”

Crux licked his lips. “Everyone knows what you did. I told them. They’re all talking about you. They’re all whispering.
China Sorrows, China Sorrows, she’s the one,
they’re saying.
She’s the one. Nefarian Serpine killed Skulduggery Pleasant, but China Sorrows led his family into the trap.
”

She stepped towards him. Crux clicked his fingers and fire flared in his hands. China pulled the trigger. The bullet ruined a perfectly good purse and then made a mess of Remus Crux’s chest. He fell backwards, fire extinguished, and was already dead when China stepped over his body and walked away.

38
THE CASTLE

T
he last time Valkyrie had seen this castle she had been running from it. They had just rescued Skulduggery and Serpine’s Hollow Men had been closing in from all sides.

“I rescue you a lot,” she muttered.

“Sorry?” Skulduggery said, looking back.

“Nothing.”

Every ground floor entrance had been bricked up, so they got in through a window on the first floor and worked their way down. It was quiet and cold. Skulduggery went first down the stone stairs, then Fletcher and Anton Shudder. Valkyrie and Ghastly brought up the rear.

The stairs to the basement level were cemented over.

“Spread out,” said Skulduggery. “We’re looking for any sign of recent activity.”

They split up. Valkyrie went to the back of the castle. Here and there were items of old furniture, dust-covered, standing alone in otherwise empty rooms. She stepped into a drawing room with an ornate fireplace, turned to go, then stopped. She looked at the way the light caught the grooves that had been scraped into the floor in front of the fireplace. She knelt by them, running her fingers along the worn edges. Valkyrie was no expert, but she reckoned that these shallow grooves that curved in a uniform pattern had been here for about as long as the castle had been standing. Something heavy had been repeatedly moved across this area over the years – but had it happened recently?

Valkyrie stepped on to the fireplace’s base and ran her hands along the mantle. The right corner was the only spot free of dust and her fingers drifted lightly over the stone. She felt something give and the fireplace rotated silently, swinging her around and through the wall into a cold corridor. The fireplace completed its rotation with a soft
click.
Valkyrie didn’t move. The corridor was dark and made of stone, lit by torches in brackets along the walls. To her left was a thick chain, trundling up from a large gap in the floor through a big hole in the ceiling, like it was part of some huge pulley system.

And no more than two metres away, standing with its back to her, was a Hollow Man.

The torchlight flickered off its papery skin, catching the stitches and the strains where its arms were pulled down by its heavy fists.

Valkyrie tried activating the switch again, but the mechanism was locked. The Hollow Man twitched its head as if it had heard something. Valkyrie reached out to the thick chain and gripped it with both hands. It carried her off her feet and up through the gap in the ceiling. As she looked down, the Hollow Man turned, too late to catch sight of her.

She passed up through the gap and checked around quickly before letting go of the chain. She took out her phone and checked the bars. The signal was blocked. She’d pretty much expected that. She hurried down to the end of the corridor, keeping tight to the wall, doing her best to make sure that her shadow wasn’t going to give her away. She reached an intersection and peeked out and saw Springheeled Jack.

Valkyrie dropped back and hunkered down. Three strides took him abreast of her, but he passed without glancing down. Once she started thinking again she counted to ten then added another five before getting up. She peeked out, but he was gone, moving along some other corridor. She crept in the opposite direction, putting as much distance between them as possible. If she had to run from Hollow Men, she figured she could do it, but running from him? She wouldn’t get three steps.

She heard a man talking. There was a laugh and it wasn’t nice. The further she crept, the clearer the voice became. She still couldn’t make out the words. The voice reached its clearest as she passed a door, but when she put her ear to it, she couldn’t hear any better. Valkyrie frowned and stepped back, following the sound, her eyes dropping. On the ground beside the door was an opening. A ventilation shaft. She heard Kenspeckle’s voice, but still couldn’t hear what was being said.

Valkyrie got to her hands and knees and peered in. It was dark. Very dark. She flattened herself to the floor and crawled into the shaft. She let her eyes adjust, feeling the thick layer of dust under her hands. She moved forward on her elbows, banging her head against the roof of the shaft and gritting her teeth against the pain. She could hear the words now.

“…nice of them to give me a plaything, don’t you think? So thoughtful. They don’t want me getting bored, you see.”

Valkyrie moved on, feeling a cobweb break against her face. With a controlled franticness she cleared it away, trying to dam her mind against the images of spiders scuttling in her hair. Ahead of her was a junction, a break in the darkness, where the ventilation shaft opened into the room where the voice was coming from. Valkyrie squirmed up, laid her face against the cold stone and peered in.

Tanith wasn’t chained up or shackled to a wall, as Valkyrie had expected. Instead she was sitting in an armchair, hands flat on the armrests, legs crossed. An old man sat opposite in an identical armchair. His white hair stood out in clumps and he had dark rings under his eyes. It took her a moment to recognise Kenspeckle.

Beside both chairs was a small table. On Tanith’s table were a cup and saucer, and on the table beside Kenspeckle was a teapot and a bowl of sugar cubes. The room was stone, but the armchairs were on a rug and there was a frayed tapestry hanging on the wall. There was a lamp, minus a lampshade, in the far corner of the room. The bulb was broken. It was a feeble attempt at introducing warmth and normality to the stark and bizarre, and it was even more unsettling for it.

Kenspeckle drank his tea and returned the cup to its saucer with a delicate
plink.

Tanith’s face was strained and wet with sweat. Her eyes were unfocused and her body rigid. Valkyrie searched for a shackle or a sign that Tanith’s powers were being bound, but she couldn’t see anything.

There was a small pool of dried blood beside the armrest closest to the ventilation shaft. Valkyrie followed the course the blood would have had to have taken, and noticed for the first time Tanith’s hands. On first glance nothing was out of the ordinary, but it was as if someone had taken a cloth to them and wiped them quickly and without care, not bothering to clean away all the blood.

Valkyrie saw the way the light hit something metal on the back of Tanith’s hand, and she realised with a lurch in her stomach that Tanith’s hands had been nailed to the armrests.

She wanted to cry out and tears came to her eyes. She saw two more nails. They were thick and looked long and old, and had been hammered through Tanith’s collarbones to keep her upright in the chair. A fifth nail entered Tanith’s right leg just above the knee and drove down and through her left, pinning them together.

Kenspeckle was talking again, but Valkyrie wasn’t listening to the words. She stared at her friend. She couldn’t breathe. She was suddenly too hot in the ventilation shaft and it was tight, far too tight, and close. She had to get out. She had to back out the way she had come, and she had to smash down that door and rip that Remnant out of Kenspeckle’s body. It was the only thing to do. It was the only thing that mattered.

Valkyrie tried moving backwards, the anger churning. It was bubbling, boiling, rising in her throat. She wasn’t moving. She couldn’t move backwards. Panic mixed with anger and fuelled it, and a small voice somewhere in Valkyrie’s mind told her to calm down, but she wasn’t listening.

She moved on, crawling, moving quickly, grunting, not caring if that thing that was not Kenspeckle Grouse could hear her or not. And then there was no more ground and Valkyrie was suddenly sliding downwards. She cursed as she went, trying to snag an intersecting crawlspace, but only succeeded in taking a rat’s nest with her. The rats squealed beneath and beside her and she lashed out, trying to throw them off. Her head struck stone. Her body twisted.

Below her, brightness and heat.

She tumbled through the gap and fell about a metre. There was another gap directly below it and she reached out instinctively, spreading her arms and legs and jamming herself over the opening, stopping herself from falling through to the room below.

Valkyrie looked down on to a large wooden table, and the partially inflated skin of the Hollow Man that lay upon it.

Another Hollow Man lumbered into view, carrying a bucket of slop and what looked like entrails. It didn’t look up and Valkyrie didn’t make a sound. It went to the furnace built into the wall, the only source of light in the room, and opened the metal grille above the flames. Spilling some and not caring, the Hollow Man poured the slop into the furnace. Valkyrie’s muscles were beginning to ache.

The Hollow Man picked up a large pair of bellows, its heavy hands clumsy and awkward, and poked the tip through the hole at the top of the furnace. It pulled the handles apart, sucking in the foul gases, and Valkyrie watched it shuffle over to the table. It jammed the tip into the skin and the bellows wheezed, and the skin inflated a little more. The Hollow Man picked up a large needle and sewed, making sure the gases wouldn’t escape.

Valkyrie’s arms were trembling. Her legs wouldn’t betray her, but her arms were about to go. She looked back down at the Hollow Man as it picked up the bellows and returned to the furnace. She felt something heavy move in her hair and she flinched, her arms giving way. She fell through the opening and hit the table.

She heard the bellows drop and lay flat on her back, holding her breath. The partially inflated Hollow Man lay beside her, blocking her from view. She didn’t know how good a Hollow Man’s eyesight was, but in this gloom she hoped it wasn’t any better than hers.

Valkyrie gritted her teeth when she felt the rat in her hair again. Every ounce of her wanted to tear it away, but she stayed still, even when it crawled out on to her chest. It sat for a moment and then leaped on to the Hollow Man’s skin. She heard it jump to the ground and scamper away. A second later she heard the bellows being picked up. She let out her breath and raised herself up a bit, just enough to make sure that she wasn’t being tricked.

And then the Hollow Man skin turned its half-inflated head to her.