Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days (24 page)
Read Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days Online
Authors: Derek Landy
A
little over thirty-two hours later, Valkyrie climbed through her bedroom window. The reflection stepped into the mirror and she absorbed its memories. She got dressed in the clothes it had been wearing and went downstairs. She made her mother a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table and watched her father demonstrate the new baby seat he’d bought for the car. She did her best to smile at his antics.
The Sanctuary was gone. Destroyed. Twenty-nine sorcerers and twenty-one Cleavers had been killed. Davina Marr was missing and every surviving agent was hunting for her.
They’d questioned Scarab in his prison cell and he denied all knowledge. He claimed he had never been in contact with Marr. She was not part of his plan. He enjoyed the fact that such destruction was brought down by one of the Sanctuary’s own agents.
Skulduggery didn’t know
why
Marr had done what she did, but he knew
how.
The Desolation Engine that had been recovered at the castle had never been handed over to be deactivated. Marr had kept it and then given it to Myron Stray. She had made sure his name was on the list so that he could enter the Sanctuary without incident, and she had done her best to make sure that Skulduggery and Valkyrie were there also. Using Stray’s true name, she had commanded him to burst his own eardrums so that he couldn’t hear orders that would conflict with hers. Skulduggery theorised that she would have instructed him to keep his mouth shut and warn nobody of what he was about to do. She ordered him to do everything but be unafraid, and so Myron Stray had walked into the Sanctuary fully aware of what he was about to do, but completely unable to prevent it.
As far as the rest of the country knew, the old Waxworks Museum had collapsed all by itself, and it was a miracle that nobody was hurt. The truth had no place in the newspapers. The dead were mourned privately and quietly, the rubble was cleared and the giant hole was filled in. In a few more days, Skulduggery had told her, there would be no sign that the Sanctuary had ever existed there.
Valkyrie went upstairs, pulled on shorts and a vest and went to bed early with the rain gently tapping the window. Within five minutes she was asleep.
T
he nightmare woke her.
She sat up and slowly swung her legs out of bed. It was cold and her room was dark. The house was quiet. It was the middle of the night. Her nightmare clung to her with its smoky tendrils, clouding her mind, and she became aware of a low whispering in the room.
The dream whisperer Cassandra had given her lay on the shelf where she’d left it, and it was talking to Valkyrie in hushed tones that seemed to reach right inside her mind, bringing the nightmare back to her as a headache began to pound against her temples.
And now, finally, she could see it. At last, she could remember what had been plaguing her ever since she heard the name two days ago.
The whisperer kept whispering and Valkyrie saw her nightmare again in her mind. She saw Serpine and his glittering emerald eyes. She saw the fight in the Repository three years earlier, when he’d gone up against Skulduggery. The Book of Names had fallen and she’d glanced at it. She’d seen her own given name of Stephanie Edgley and her taken name of Valkyrie Cain. And, in the last column, the final thing she’d glimpsed that she was only now remembering…
She shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. She had felt it within her, even before she knew of magic, that part of her that was descended from the god-killer. The Last of the Ancients had been powerful and mighty, and he had hurled the Sceptre deep into the earth – but there was no forgetting the fact that he was also a murderer. After he had killed his gods, he had murdered his brethren.
For now Valkyrie remembered where she had seen that name before. In the Book of Names, in that final column. Next to Stephanie Edgley, next to Valkyrie Cain. Her true name. The only name that ever really mattered.
Darquesse.
Oh hello, fancy meeting you here. You’re looking well, I have to say. Really? Oh, you’re making me blush. Well, I have been working out, it’s true. Ah, you’re too kind.
What am I doing back here? I’m here to announce something, but I’m not quite sure how to go about it. It is good news, yes. At least, I think so.
You see, the Skulduggery Pleasant series has always had an April publication date, but now we’re moving the next hardback to September. Now hold on, don’t start throwing things just—
OW!
Who threw that? Who was it? Was it you?
I’m keeping an eye on you…
As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, this doesn’t mean you’re going to have to wait until September 2011 for Book Five. What it does mean is that, for one time only, you’re going to get two Skulduggery books in the same year…
Skulduggery Pleasant: Book Five.
Coming September, 2010.
Derek
Somewhere in Ireland
First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Children’s Books
2010
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FIRST EDITION
Copyright © Derek Landy 2010
Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Illuminated letters © Tom Percival 2010
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