Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days (5 page)

Valkyrie unlocked the second door and Tanith came out, just as Cleavers appeared around the corner.

“Get Fletcher,” Tanith said in Valkyrie’s ear, “then get Skulduggery back,” and she launched herself at the Cleavers.

Valkyrie unlocked the last cell and hauled Fletcher out.

“Stop them!” Marr screeched. Already the Cleavers had Ghastly and Tanith on the ground, arms locked behind them.

“Guild’s office,” Valkyrie said to Fletcher. He nodded and closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm down and picture their destination.

Then they were outside Guild’s door. Valkyrie barged through. The office was empty. The shelves groaned with heavy books and artefacts, and the desk was made out of what appeared to be solid gold. Beside the desk was a cabinet. Skulduggery’s skull lay inside.

Shadows curled around her fist and she punched through the glass and grabbed the skull. She felt Fletcher’s hand on her shoulder and she blinked.

They were now standing in the maze of bookcases in China’s library.

Fletcher looked at her. “Are you OK?”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. She could feel the side of her face burning from where Marr had repeatedly slapped her. “We have to get to Aranmore Farm.”

“We’re opening the portal?” Fletcher asked, concerned.

“Just you, me and China? So who goes in with you?”

“No one. I go in alone.”

“No.” He shook his head. “It’s way too dangerous.”

“We don’t have time to waste!” Valkyrie said, suddenly angry. “We have to do it now before they find us again and lock us away! This is my only chance to get him back!”

“
Our
only chance,” he said.

“Yes. Yes, that’s what I…Fletcher, listen, China has to stay with you, on the farm. She has to make sure that you’re able to reopen the portal for Skulduggery and me to get back. I’m going in alone and that’s all there is to it.”

Fletcher looked at her, his jaw clenched. “Fine,” he snapped and led the way through the maze.

Valkyrie didn’t know any of the sorcerers they passed among the stacks, and none of them raised their eyes from their open books. The library was considered to be a neutral place, where privacy was paramount.

China Sorrows was waiting for them, dressed in black trousers and a simple blue shirt. As usual, her unnatural beauty elevated her outfit to something beyond the ordinary. A delicate chain hung around her left wrist. Her hair, black as deepest sin, framed her face while her eyes, as pale a blue as her brother’s had been, watched them approach.

Valkyrie fought down the feelings that were stirring within her. Fletcher wasn’t quite so successful.

“I love you,” he whispered and was ignored.

“The plan didn’t work,” Valkyrie told her. “In fact, it probably made things worse. Ghastly and Tanith are under arrest, and agents are coming here to take you in.”

China sighed. “And we’re going to rescue Skulduggery
now
, I take it? With the full might of the Sanctuary bearing down on us?”

“Yes. Sorry about that.”

China shrugged. “You make life interesting, Valkyrie. Just give me a moment, I have two annoying spies to deal with.”

Valkyrie looked behind her as a man and woman advanced, shackles in hand.

China tapped her forearms and glowing tattoos rose to the surface of her skin. She flung her arms wide and a wall of blue energy slammed into the agents, knocking them back. They were unconscious even before they stopped tumbling across the floor.

An elderly sorcerer peered round a bookcase and scowled.

“My apologies for the disturbance,” China said gracefully. “They wouldn’t pay their late fees.”

The elderly woman shrugged and went back to her reading.

China held out her hands and both Valkyrie and Fletcher took one. “These shoes will probably be ruined,” she said, “but I’m sure one of you will inform Skulduggery of the sacrifices I have made getting him back. Take us to the farm, Mr Renn.”

The library vanished and the afternoon sun was without heat. A cold wind blew in across the fields of Aranmore and howled softly through the ruined walls of the farmhouse.

“This boy is handy to have around,” China said, but for once Fletcher didn’t seem to be taking notice of her. His eyes were on Valkyrie as they walked.

“Have you said goodbye to your parents?” he asked.

“Shut up, Fletcher.”

“I just thought you might like to, that’s all. One last goodbye before you get yourself killed.”

“The only way it would be a last goodbye is if you don’t have that portal open for me to get back.”

He laughed bitterly. “You’re walking into a world run by a race of evil gods. And for what? If Skulduggery isn’t dead, he’s insane. One glance at a Faceless One is enough to drive you nuts. He’s been there for almost a year, Val. How many glances do you think he’s had?”

“You don’t know him. He’s alive and he’s waiting for me.”

“We’re taking a big risk here, aren’t we? Like, a major risk? We’re opening a door to a universe of unspeakable evils and hoping they don’t notice. Is Skulduggery worth it if this goes wrong?”

“If you’re not going to help,” Valkyrie said, “I can’t make you. But if you are, then shut up. None of us would be here if it wasn’t for him, and he wouldn’t leave any of
us
over there. Not even you.”

They reached the farmhouse and froze. A Sanctuary agent ambled by inside, sipping a mug of tea. He frowned, and turned, and seemed surprised to find three people staring in at him through the gaping hole in the wall.

“Um,” he said.

Valkyrie snapped her palm. The air rippled and the sorcerer went skidding across the floor. She stepped inside, using her ring to gather the shadows in the house and bring them crashing down on his head. He didn’t get up.

China and Fletcher joined her, and they moved to the hole in the opposite wall, the one that opened up to the yard beyond. Across the yard, standing amid the rusted farm machinery, was the second sorcerer. He saw them and his hand dug into his jacket for his phone.

Fletcher vanished and reappeared instantly next to the mage. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder and then they were both gone. A moment later Fletcher was back, standing right in front of Valkyrie. She was about to ask where he had put the Sanctuary agent when she heard a terrified yell, and the agent dropped from the sky and hit the ground hard. He moaned, then stopped moving.

Fletcher pulled Valkyrie towards him, and before she could protest he kissed her. She stiffened in his arms, but as his right thumb brushed her cheek, she relaxed into him. Her belly did flips. And then the kiss was over.

“If we’re going to go through with this,” he said gruffly, “then hurry it up. It’s not everyday I send someone into hell.”

China made a circle on the ground and Fletcher knelt in it, holding the skull in both hands. She carved protective symbols around him. If something
did
come out of the portal uninvited, she explained, these symbols would at least give Fletcher enough time to close it before he died. He didn’t look comforted, but he didn’t say anything.

She activated the symbols and red smoke drifted from them, swirling with the black smoke that rose from the circle. The smoke formed a column that grew more violent as it twisted into the sky.

Fletcher knew what to do this time. Eleven months ago, forced to open the portal, he had to learn as he went. He had to use the Isthmus Anchor – back then it was the Grotesquery, today it was the skull – without sufficient preparation and he said it was like tearing open his insides. Today, from the glimpses Valkyrie caught through the smoke, he had everything under control. He looked determined. Angry, but determined.

A yellow light appeared, like a flattened sun, the edges boiling with flame. It grew wider.

China took Valkyrie’s arm, leaning in close to be heard over the roar of the column of smoke.
“You have one hour,”
she shouted.
“In exactly one hour that gate will open again. You’d better be ready – with or without him.”

“I’m not leaving him there,”
Valkyrie shouted back.
“You just make sure Fletcher’s still here when it’s time for us to come home.”

China looked at her, her blue eyes bright, and she hugged Valkyrie. “Thank you for doing this,” China said into Valkyrie’s ear.

China stepped away and Valkyrie turned to the portal. It was taller than she was now. She licked her lips and walked forward. The wind whipped her hair and she could feel the gravitational pull, eager to welcome her. Valkyrie hesitated and then ran, straight into the yellow.

8
CALLING DIBS

S
pringheeled Jack missed London. He missed its rooftops and its towers and its parapets. He missed the way he could dance, high above it all, watching the people pass below him. He missed the way Londoners sounded as he killed them – like they were offended that anyone would even
dare.

Jack hadn’t been home in over a year. They were hunting him there. He’d tried Paris, he’d tried Berlin, and he’d liked them well enough, but he knew he was homesick when he realised the only people he was killing were English tourists. That had sent him into a spiral of depression that lasted months. Finally, in an effort to confront this problem, he had made a list of everyone
he viewed as being responsible for his exile, and he marvelled at the way the depression quickly turned to anger. Every name on that list worked for various Sanctuaries around the world, and suddenly Jack’s mission was clear.

Destroy the Sanctuaries.

And now here he was, serendipity be praised, back in Dublin, working with two men he had never expected to share the same space with again, Billy-Ray Sanguine and Dusk. But since Sanguine was no longer palling around with those Faceless Ones nutters, and since his fight with Dusk hadn’t been personal to begin with, Jack was willing to forgive and forget. They were all working towards the same goal after all – revenge on those who had wronged them.

“I want Tanith Low,” he said to that other bloke, Scapegrace, while they were lounging about in the castle.

Scapegrace looked up, startled that anyone was talking to him. “I’m sorry?”

“Tanith Low,” Jack repeated. “Her of the brown leather and the singing sword. I want to be the one to get her.”

“Oh,” Scapegrace said.

“In a way, you know, she’s responsible for me bein’ hunted. She arrested me – put me in that cell where Sanguine found me. If I hadn’t agreed to help him in return for freedom, I’d never have been hunted in the first place.”

“Right,” Scapegrace said.

“What about you then?”

“Me?”

“Who do you want revenge on?”

“Oh, uh, Valkyrie Cain.”

“She’s a popular one to get revenge on. What age is she, fifteen? Fifteen years old and already four people want to kill her.”

“Well,” Scapegrace said, leaning forward, like he was confiding, “she’s responsible for foiling my plans, you see.”

“That so?”

“Oh, yes. I’m an artist. I make murder into art. That’s kind of what I do – that’s my whole thing. And she has repeatedly stopped me from doing that. Also, one time, she beat me up when I was already really badly injured.”

“A fifteen-year-old girl beat you up?”

“When I was badly injured, yes. And she was fourteen at the time.”

“Well, I suppose in the right environment, Elemental magic is hard to defend against.”

“Oh, she didn’t use any magic.”

“So she just…beat you up then?”

“When I was injured, yes.”

“How injured were you?”

“Very.”

“You were very injured?”

“Yes, I was. Have you ever been beaten up by a fourteen-year-old girl?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“It’s not very nice.”

“I wouldn’t say it is.”

“So that’s why I want revenge.”

“Listen, mate, I don’t mean to pick a fight or nothin’, but you call yourself the Killer Supreme, right? Have you ever actually
killed
anyone?”

Scapegrace erupted into horribly forced laughter, desperate and panicky, and Jack could have sworn he started to blush.

Jack didn’t much care of course. They were here to make up the numbers, to sit here while Scarab and Sanguine called the shots. And then, when it was time, they would strike.

Jack was looking forward to that bit.

9
DEAD NEW WORLD

T
he sky was red.

The sun, directly above her, was a ball of fire. It was big and hot, and closer than the sun back home.

Once the city would have been impressive. Its inhabitants would have lived in the towering cliff, using the caves as homes, carving doors and windows from the rock, before extending outwards. The stone houses that they built, on top of each other, jutted from the cliff face and reminded Valkyrie of pictures she’d seen of mountain towns in Brazil. She imagined that it had been a city teeming with life, energy and noise, with hundreds of thousands of people packed in together and forced to get along.

It was quiet now though. Quiet and dead.

The portal closed behind her and Valkyrie was in a narrow alley of white, sun-bleached stone that hurt her eyes. She followed the alley down, her footsteps crunching on the cracked ground. She peered into half-crumbled houses as she passed, but every room was empty, stripped bare by the elements and whatever else was around here.

The alley plateaued and opened into a square, and she walked to the middle and turned in a slow circle, scanning her surroundings. She looked up at the cliff face, the sheer size of it finally becoming clear. It wouldn’t have been hundreds of thousands of people living here, she realised – it would have been
millions.
A thought struck her. She was standing on an alien world.

Despite herself, Valkyrie grinned.

She shook her head. She had a job to do and a limited amount of time to do it in. She walked through a street that led to her right. The street curved and she was walking on sand that had blown in from the vast expanses of the dry valley around the city. The sand was a deep gold.

She walked for a few minutes, careful to move in a relatively straight line so she could be sure of finding her way back. Ghastly had claimed that her clothes would regulate her temperature no matter what, but something wasn’t working. She was perspiring. A trickle of sweat rolled down her face. She took off her coat and left it at a corner as a marker, and felt the sun on her bare shoulders. She opened her top to let the air in, but whatever breeze there may have been was being blocked by the labyrinth of streets. Then she turned another corner and saw the body.

It sat on the ground, propped up against the wall. Its chest was a gaping hole, the insides long since dried up. The head was smooth and featureless. This had been the body of the man called Batu, a body that had been commandeered by the last Faceless One to come through the portal. There was no sign of life in it now though. To the Faceless Ones, human bodies were mere vessels to be used and discarded. Batu’s body was nothing more than a leaky old boat or a rusted car. So much for his masterplan to become a god.

The body was holding something in its right hand, a bone, most of it covered by rags. Valkyrie didn’t want to imagine that it might be one of Skulduggery’s. She was desperate to call out his name, but the idea of breaking this eerie silence repelled her. She didn’t know what else to do though. She could spend months checking this city without finding him. No. No, the portal would have opened somewhere in Skulduggery’s vicinity. He was nearby. He had to be.

Valkyrie headed back the way she’d come, scooping up her coat and walking fast. She got back to the alley where the portal had delivered her. She followed it as far as she could, until the alley led into a cave. She dropped her coat again and summoned a flame into her hand. Then she stepped out of the sun into pitch-black.

As she walked, she saw shelves carved from the walls and a table that had once been a boulder. There were large areas of the cave where she didn’t even need the flame – the windows had been constructed to drink in the sunlight and spread it around. The cave ended at a wall. As Valkyrie turned to go back, she saw a bone in the dirt and beside it stone steps, leading up. She climbed them.

The sun came in through the three windows along the far wall and Valkyrie let the fire in her hand go out. She stood beside the steps and didn’t move. In the centre of the room a skeleton lay. Its clothes were shredded and hung off the frame that had been constructed to give the illusion of mass. From what she could see, the trouser-legs were empty and the skeleton’s right arm was missing. It lay on its back, its exposed ribcage dirty and covered in dust, and it didn’t move.

Something clutched at Valkyrie’s heart and wouldn’t let go. She made a sound, like a whimper, but when she tried to say his name, she couldn’t. Her first step was uncertain because her legs felt weak. She walked slowly, so very slowly, to the middle of the room.

“Hello?” she whispered. The skeleton lay on the ground and didn’t move.

“It’s me. I’ve come to take you back. Can you hear me? I found you.”

Not even a breeze stirred the ragged clothing.

She knelt by the skeleton. “Please say something. Please. I’ve missed you so much and I’ve worked so hard to find you. Please.”

She reached out to touch him, and Skulduggery Pleasant whipped his head to her and roared, “
Boo!
”

Valkyrie shrieked and scrambled back, and Skulduggery laughed hysterically, like it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. He was still laughing when she got to her feet, and when she glared at him, he laughed even harder. Eventually, with bouts of laughter still rattling his bones, Skulduggery propped himself up on the only elbow he had left.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “Now I’m deriving amusement from scaring my hallucinations. This can’t be good for me, psychologically speaking.”

“I’m not a hallucination.”

He looked up at her. “Yes, you are, my dear, but I wouldn’t worry about it. Being a hallucination is a state of mind, I always say.”

“Skulduggery, I’m real.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“No, I mean I’m really real, and I’ve come to take you home.”

“You’re an odd one. Usually my hallucinations do a lot more singing and dancing.”

“It’s me. It’s Valkyrie.”

“You’d be surprised how many figments of my imagination say that. You don’t happen to have an imaginary chessboard with you, do you? I’ve had a hankering to play for a while now, and since you’re an aspect of my personality, you’d probably be a worthy opponent.”

“How do I prove to you that I’m real?”

This made him pause. “Intriguing. It’s not as if you can tell me something only we would know because if I know it, my hallucination would know it. But, in the theoretical extension of that approach, if you were to tell me something only
you
would know, then that would prove to me that I’m not conjuring you up in my mind.”

“So…what will I tell you? My deepest, darkest secret? My earliest memory? My ultimate fear?”

“How about what you had for breakfast this morning?”

“Honey Loops.”

“Well, there you go.”

“So now you believe I’m real?”

“Not in the slightest. I may have just made that up.”

“I found your skull – the one the goblins took. Fletcher used it as an Isthmus Anchor to open the portal and I came through to take you back.”

“My skull?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s possible, right?”

“It’s…very possible actually.”

“Did you think of it? Did you imagine your skull could be used as an Anchor?”

“I didn’t, but then I
have
been preoccupied by the torture and the lack of good conversation.”

“So if this is something that you hadn’t thought of yet, how could I come up with it if I were just a figment of your imagination?”

“Well,” Skulduggery said slowly, “you could be a figment of my
subconscious.
”

“I’m not your subconscious. I’m Valkyrie. I’m real. And I’m here to rescue you.”

“If you can get me my limbs back, I’ll believe you.”

“Fine,” Valkyrie said, looking around the cave.

He spoke to her as she searched. “To be honest, I’ve given up hope of ever being rescued, so this entire scenario is kind of redundant. No offence meant. At first, I thought some of the survivors might come for me, but I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that they’re all dead by now.”

“Survivors?” Valkyrie echoed. She picked up a leg, fully intact, and brushed off the dust before handing it to him.

“There were survivors when I arrived,” he told her, fixing the femur to his hip in that convenient, yet obviously painful, way of his. “This was the last world the Faceless Ones reached and they took their time with it. I got to know a couple of people before they were killed and I was captured. It took me a while to learn their language, but from what they told me, this was once a world full of magic. Then, 300 years ago, the Faceless Ones appeared.”

“But the Faceless Ones were expelled from our reality
thousands
of years ago.” Valkyrie went down the stone steps to the bone she’d glimpsed earlier. This was his other leg, and she scooped up a handful of what appeared to be toes.

“Ah, but this isn’t where the Faceless Ones were exiled to,” Skulduggery said as she came back up. “The Ancients expelled them from our world and forced them into a barren dimension. But the Faceless Ones escaped and tore through the walls of reality to a universe teeming with life. Over time, they decimated that universe, killing everyone, destroying suns, laying waste to whole galaxies. And when they were finished, they moved on.”

She gave him the pieces of his leg. “To another reality?”

“One after another, snuffing each one out as they searched for their way back home. 300 years ago they arrived here, and could go no further. They’ve been looking for a way off ever since.”

“Oh my God…”

“And all this time we thought the Ancients had exiled them to where they could do no harm. Countless trillions of beings, Valkyrie, killed because of us.”

She didn’t respond.

“If you’re real,” he said, “I know what you’re feeling. Guilt, yes? A tremendous sense of awful responsibility for something you had no part of. That was my reaction when I first heard the story. I didn’t know what to do. Maybe send each reality a card, with a little apology? Then, when the Faceless Ones found us and killed the others and took me, I finally realised that nothing good could come from pointless remorse and I got over it. The constant torture proved to be a good distraction.”

“Are you…OK?”

“Not even remotely.” He paused, halfway through putting his leg back together. “They haven’t killed me, and they haven’t taken my magic away, because every day they hunt me. They take turns, I think, in inhabiting Batu’s body. They track me down, I fight back, they win easily and they tear me apart. Yesterday, for instance, they pulled off my legs and wandered off with one of my arms. They leave me overnight to put myself back together, so that they can hunt me down again with their pets the next day. It is, as you can imagine, oodles of fun.”

“Well, all that’s over now. We have half an hour before the portal opens again and we’re going through. Come on.”

He looked up at her. “I’m missing an arm.”

“So?”

“You wouldn’t say that if it were
your
arm. I’m not going anywhere without my arm. Fetch me my limb and I’ll go through the imaginary portal with you.”

“Well, you can help me look for it,” Valkyrie said and reached for him. Her hand hit an invisible wall. “What is
this
?”

“Something I’ve been working on,” he replied smugly. “I’ve had a lot of time with nothing to concentrate on but magic. The Faceless Ones have no problems getting through this little wall of air, but for figments of my imagination like yourself, it’s quite tough. I’ve also taught myself a couple of other new tricks.”

“So you’re going to sit here while I do all the work?”

“Indeed I am. If I were you, I’d find the body that used to be Batu’s. If the arm is anywhere, it’s there.”

“Yes, I saw it. It’s outside, down a couple of streets. We could
walk
there and still be back in plenty of time for the portal.”

“And if you
run
, you’ll get it to me sooner.”

Valkyrie sighed and left him while he finished putting his leg back together, and a muttered rendition of ‘Dry Bones’ followed her down the steps. She hurried out to the red sky and retraced her path, guided by her footsteps in the sand. She wished she had a pair of sunglasses to offset the glare. Her arms were rapidly turning red under the sun, and she wondered how she’d explain sunburn in September to her parents.

The body sat where she had left it, head down and lifeless. She ran her tongue over her lower lip while she debated the best way to go about this, and then she kicked it in the head. When it didn’t try and grab her, she bent down, pulled Skulduggery’s arm from its clutches and then her ears popped. She staggered, feeling the goosebumps ripple. The inside of her mouth was tight, dry skin and her beating heart was the drum it was stretched across. She stumbled over the body and fell, and now she was crawling. Her head was filled with deafening whispers.

The Faceless Ones were coming.