The Maleficent Seven (From the World of Skulduggery Pleasant) (18 page)

He looked at her. “Will you marry me?”

“What?”

“This might not be the best time—”

“You think?”

“But I’m asking you to be my wife. Will you do me the honour?”

“I... Listen, you get that sword out of here, and when I meet up with you again, I’ll give you my answer, OK?”

“OK,” he said. “OK. I love you.”

The ground crumbled as he sank down into it, and a moment later, Vex and Saracen came sprinting down the corridor – the vampire right behind them.

“Aw, hell,” breathed Tanith.

Vex and Saracen ran by. Tanith jumped to the ceiling and sprinted along with them. They rounded a corner, kept going.

“Either of you have a plan?” she asked from above.

Saracen was too busy panting for breath to answer. He used to be so much fitter. Vex, on the other hand, didn’t seem bothered by how fast he was moving.

“Let’s split up,” he said, raising his eyes to look at her. “We’ll keep running this way, you stop running completely. It’s the last thing it’ll expect. Hopefully, the shock will lead to a heart attack or something.”

“Or,” Saracen gasped, “we can run into a room and... Tanith can... seal the door behind us.”

“The simpler option,” Vex conceded. “OK, let’s do that, then.”

Tanith flipped to the ground as Vex and Saracen burst into some kind of conference room. She darted in after them, turned as they slammed the double doors shut. She pressed her hand to the wood, but the vampire collided with the doors from the other side, throwing them open, knocking Tanith to the ground. The vampire dived for her, but a blast of energy sent it spinning away.

Tanith scrambled up, lunged out into the corridor, tried shutting the doors to lock Vex and Saracen in there with the vampire, but Vex got his hand in the gap.

“Ow,” he growled, opening the doors wide enough so that he and Saracen could slip out.

“Oh, good,” Tanith said. “You made it...”

The doors closed and she pressed her hand to the wood and a sheen spread. The vampire hit the doors from the other side, but they didn’t even rattle.

“What do you know?” she said. “We actually make a good team.”

Saracen went low and Vex went high, and they brought her down and pinned her to the ground. She tried to push them off, but Vex grabbed her wrist and twisted. She struggled until she felt the cold steel of a handcuff and heard it click behind her. Immediately her strength faded and her magic dimmed. Vex pulled her right arm back, cuffing it to the left. Saracen took her sword away before he stood, and Vex took hold of her arm and helped her to her feet.

“Tanith Low,” he said, “you’re under arrest.”

“You’re really putting a dampener on the high spirits here, Dexter.”

“Sorry about that.” With Tanith between them, they walked back the way they’d come. The alarms, she realised, had been shut off. There were no sounds of fighting. She didn’t care about that. The only thing she cared about was that Sanguine had managed to get away with the God-Killer. The only thing that mattered was destroying those weapons.

“If you’re lucky,” said Vex, “they’ll agree to let you serve your time in Ireland. I know Ghastly wants to do everything he can to help you.”

“I’m beyond help,” she said. “The sooner he accepts that, the better off he’ll be.”

“You found her,” Graves said, walking towards them with a squad of Cleavers behind him. “Excellent.”

Two Cleavers came forward, gripped her arms and moved her away from Vex.

“She needs medical attention,” Saracen said. “And we’d like to request at this point that she be allowed to serve her sentence in an Irish gaol, where our doctors can work at separating her from the Remnant.”

“She’s an English sorcerer arrested on English soil,” Graves said. “She’ll spend the rest of her life rotting in an English cell, thank you very much. And speaking of rotting in cells...”

The Cleavers seized Vex and Saracen.

Saracen twisted, tried to pull away. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We broke in here,” Vex reminded him.

“Oh,” said Saracen, “yeah,” and allowed himself to be shackled.

Tanith looked at the pair of them. “Happy?” she asked. “Now we’re all in chains. We could have all run, but no. You had to be the good guys.”

“It’s what we are,” said Vex.

“You’re idiots.”

“That’s what we are, too,” said Saracen, a little sadly.

he cell door opened and a Cleaver beckoned. Vex stood up stiffly. They’d taken his pouch of leaves away from him, and his leg was hurting like hell. He was led, limping, to the Great Chamber. The others were already here, standing before three empty podiums. Saracen and Frightening looked none the worse for wear, but Gracious and Donegan were sporting spectacular bruises and Aurora was holding her side, in obvious pain.

The podiums slid open and thrones rose up. Flashy. Seated in those thrones were Elders Palaver Graves and Illori Reticent, a pretty woman who wore a permanently bored expression on her face. Occupying the middle throne was Grand Mage Cothernus Ode. He was handsome but lined, the years having long since taken their toll on his skin. His white hair was cut tight to his scalp and he wore his Elder’s robes like an afterthought. He was as fierce as he was intelligent, and he was not a man to be underestimated.

Ode was reading from a piece of paper as the thrones settled into place with a click. He took another few moments before finally raising his eyes.

“Grand Mage Ravel is insisting you be released,” he said, sounding amused. “I’ve explained to him, repeatedly, that you entered this Sanctuary illegally, assaulting a member of my staff as you did so, with the intention of stealing a valuable and dangerous weapon. We would be quite within our rights to throw you in the nearest gaol and forget about you.”

Vex stood there with the others, said nothing.

“The fact, however, that you were breaking our laws in order to stop Tanith Low and her cohorts does show you in a slightly more favourable light. Only slightly, mind you. But enough to possibly get you a reduced sentence... if we were feeling lenient.” Ode paused, long enough to glance at Graves with disapproval. “But on viewing the footage that was recorded during this incident, and after speaking to various witnesses, this Council is ready to admit that your actions saved some lives – not least of which Elder Graves’s. You could have used the chaos to make your escape, but you didn’t. You stayed and helped and... we appreciate that.”

“You’re welcome,” said Saracen. Vex saw Aurora kick his ankle to shut him up.

“And so,” said Ode, “you are to be released without charge. If, however, you are seen in England any time over the next three years without written permission from this Council, you will be rearrested. Do I make myself clear?”

“What about Tanith?” Vex asked.

Ode looked at him coolly. “What about her, Mr Vex?”

“The Irish Sanctuary has Dr Nye ready and waiting to help her. If anyone can separate her from the Remnant, Nye is the creature to do it.”

“Nye,” said Ode. “Nye... where have I heard that name? Oh, yes, I remember. On the lips of all the prisoners it tortured to death, that’s where. The Irish Sanctuary is harbouring a war criminal responsible for the deaths of—”

“They’re harbouring no one,” Frightening cut in. “The terms of the Treaty afforded an amnesty to Nye as much as it did to anyone else who fought on Mevolent’s side.”

“You’re defending a war criminal?”

“I’m defending the Irish Sanctuary.”

“Be careful where you place your allegiances, Mr Jones,” said Ode. “And the same can be said for your fellow sorcerers in the African Sanctuaries. It might not be a good idea to side with a volatile Sanctuary that is so increasingly isolated.”

“That sounds vaguely like a threat,” said Frightening.

“Excuse me,” Gracious said, offering up a smile, “if it might be possible to just go back to the bit where you’re offering us a grudging thanks and letting us get away with breaking in here, that’d be absolutely wonderful.”

Ode grunted. “Yes, well, perhaps it would be best if we cut this conversation short. Mr Vex, Tanith Low is staying here as our prisoner, as is Wilhelm Scream. The body of Black Annis will be cremated and her ashes buried in an unmarked grave. As for the vampire...”

A man came forward and spoke into Ode’s ear. Ode grunted again, and waved him away. “The vampire has so far eluded us.”

“Eluded you?” Aurora echoed. “But it’s morning. The sun is up. Dusk would have regrown his skin by now.”

“I understand that.”

“Grand Mage Ode, you’re looking for a naked man running around the Sanctuary. How can he go unnoticed?”

“I have my top people working on it right now.”

“Who?”

He glared at her. “Top. People. You should all take a leaf from Mr O’Callahan’s book, by the way. He sees the sense in not antagonising the person who is showing him mercy.”

“Also, I have to pee,” said Gracious.

“Out,” Ode said, sighing. “All of you. Out. Do not darken my doorstep again.”

All of which left only one more thing to do – and it was not something Vex was looking forward to.

He said his farewells to the others, thanking them for their help in what had turned out to be a complete disaster of a mission, and then he returned to Ireland. There was a car waiting for him at the airport to take him straight to Roarhaven. He knocked on Ghastly Bespoke’s door and entered.

Ghastly was hurling fists into the punchbag in the corner of his office. With the ferocity he was putting into the shots, Vex was pretty sure he knew who he was thinking about.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ghastly asked without even looking at him. His scarred face was covered in a light sheen of sweat.

“Because you’d have wanted to come along with us,” said Vex, “and you can’t do that any more. You’re an Elder. You have to stay behind.”

Ghastly moved round the bag, tapping out a succession of jabs. “This is Tanith we’re talking about.”

“Exactly.” Vex perched on the edge of the desk to take the weight off his injured leg. “It’s personal. You can’t afford to let things get personal. Sorry, Ghastly, there was no way I was telling you.”

“That was a mistake. That was a huge...” Ghastly hit the bag with a right hook and the whole frame shuddered. Now he looked at Vex as he took off his gloves. “We’d have been able to organise back-up. You’d have had all the resources you’d need. We could have got this done quick and clean and we’d have the God-Killers
and
we’d have Tanith.”

“No. It wouldn’t have worked. Tanith’s involvement meant that it never had a
chance
of working. Because of her, we were discovered by both the German and the English Sanctuaries. The only reason we’re not at war right now is because you had no idea what I was planning.”

Ghastly grabbed a towel, wiped himself down. “Where is she now? Is she still in London? We can get her transferred over—”

“I tried. Ode isn’t having it.”

“Well, he can at least have his doctors try and get the Remnant out of her.”

“He’s not interested in saving her – just punishing her. And, by extension, you. Listen, Ghastly, when all this is over, when both sides have calmed down and things are back to normal, he’ll transfer her. You know he will. Until then, she’s in a prison cell.”

Ghastly let out a long, slow breath. “Yeah. At least she’s safe, I suppose. She can’t hurt anyone. No one can hurt her. What about the God-Killers?”

“From what we can gather, they’re in the possession of Billy-Ray Sanguine, who apparently has strict orders to destroy them. For Tanith, this was all about preventing their use against Darquesse – she never had any plans to use them herself.”

“But now that she’s been captured, Sanguine might hold on to them,” said Ghastly. “We should concentrate on tracking him down.”

“With the primary goal being the recovery of the God-Killers,” said Vex, “or the beating up of Billy-Ray?”

Ghastly shrugged. “We can’t do both?”

Vex let himself smile for a moment. “Darquesse is being forgotten about,” he said. “The attention of every Council around the world is focused here. All anyone is talking about are the rising tensions and this war that everyone’s assuming is an inevitability. We’ve taken our eye off the ball, Ghastly. When Darquesse comes, she’s going to take us by surprise, no matter how much warning we’ve been given.”

“Then it’s a good thing we have people like you and Skulduggery and Valkyrie, isn’t it?” Ghastly said. “People who can ignore orders and protocol and just do what needs to be done.”

Vex raised an eyebrow. “Is that your way of giving me permission to keep doing what I’m doing?”

“Since when do you need permission? Just try not to actually
start
this war, OK? We’re in enough trouble as it is. How’s Saracen, by the way?”

“Same as ever. He says hi. Told me to tell you if the Council of Elders needs him, just call.”

“We were planning on it. You found out what his power is yet?”

Vex scowled. “No, I didn’t. But I will.”