The Maleficent Seven (From the World of Skulduggery Pleasant) (20 page)

He nodded, then made a face. “Half of ’em, yeah.”

She stared. “What?”

“I melted down the sword and the spear,” he said. “But I figured I might have to go back in there to rescue you, and having the bow and the dagger might not be a bad idea.”

“I told you to destroy
all
the weapons!”

“Hey, calm down, OK? I was just taking precautions.”

“I didn’t ask you to take precautions,” she said, walking past him, “I told you to melt them all down.”

He caught up to her. “Would you please relax? I kept the furnace going so that if I saw anything suspicious, I could just throw ’em in.”

Tanith ignored him. The furnace room blasted heat at her when she entered. There they were, the bow and the dagger, sitting out in plain view. She picked up the blade, felt its power, felt how even the tiniest of nicks would open Sanguine up and spread his insides across the floor.

Instead, she threw the dagger into the furnace, then pushed the bow in after it. She glared.

“OK,” Sanguine said, “you’re mad at me.”

“If they had followed you back here,” Tanith said, “they could have recovered these before you had a chance to destroy them. Then everything we’d done would have been for nothing, and when Darquesse appeared, they’d be ready for her.”

“It was a precaution,” he said. “That’s all. And look, all destroyed now. All melted down. Problem solved.”

“You risked everything for nothing.”

“I risked everything for
you
.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

He went to hug her but she slapped his hands away.

He sighed, scratched his jaw. “Listen to me. All you care about is Darquesse, right? But me? All I care about is you. You understand? You are my Darquesse. You’d do anything for her, and I’d do anything for you.”

“But I don’t matter. Only she matters.”

“You matter to me. We can argue about this all day if you want, and that’s OK. I can do that. But it ain’t gonna change the fact that I love you.”

“Billy-Ray... the only reason I’m with you is because of this Remnant inside me.”

“I know that.”

“You say you love me, but you’re a sociopath just like I am. You’re incapable of love.”

“That’s what they say. But I don’t believe it. This thing I’m feeling, I’m pretty sure that’s love. It makes me crazy, makes me stupid, makes me ornery as all hell, but now that I have it I never want to let it go.”

“Even though you know I can never return those feelings?”

He smiled. “Never say never, sword-lady. The power of love has allowed me to transcend my psychopathic nature. Maybe you can transcend whatever limitations people put on you as well.”

She couldn’t help it, she had to smile. “For a cold-blooded killer, you’re remarkably romantic.”

His arms wrapped round her. “You get the full Billy-Ray Sanguine experience, my darlin’.” He kissed her and she kissed him back. “So... had any thoughts on what we were talking about before?”

She looked at him blankly for a moment. His proposal. She’d forgotten all about it. Before she could answer, though, he tensed. She turned slowly.

“I was wondering where you’d got to,” she said.

Dusk looked at them both, but said nothing.

“Listen,” Tanith said, “if you’re going to gripe about how I left you to fend for yourself—”

“Not at all,” said Dusk. “We must each take responsibility for ourselves. Besides, there is nothing you could have done to contain me.”

“Well,” Tanith said, “I’m glad you see it like that. By the way, I’ve got some fresh wounds on my back courtesy of you.”

“Such is the price we pay for the things we do. Others have paid an even higher price, I have heard. You cut Wilhelm Scream’s hand off?”

“Just his finger.”

“I see. Annis is dead, of course. Sabine, too, I’d wager, after you betrayed her to that man Chabon. And Springheeled Jack? What happened to him?”

“I did,” said Tanith.

Dusk nodded. Out of the corner of her eye, Tanith saw Sanguine’s hand inch towards his pocket, where he kept the straight razor.

“You have betrayed almost half the members of your little team,” the vampire said. “And what, may I ask, of the rewards you promised them?”

Tanith shrugged. “I promised Annis a cure for her curse. I didn’t have one. I promised Jack information on what he was and where he came from. No one knows where he came from. There have been reports of creatures like him centuries ago, but that’s it. I promised Sabine a way to wipe her slate clean, to start a new life where she didn’t have to look over her shoulder every five minutes. I had no intention of doing any such thing.”

“And you promised me the name of the vampire who turned me,” said Dusk. “A name you do not possess, I take it?”

“Actually,” Tanith said, “I do. The survivors get their rewards, Dusk. Wilhelm gets his, and you get yours. Besides, I make it a rule never to give a vampire a reason to hold a grudge.”

“And this name?”

Tanith smiled at him. “Moloch.”

Dusk’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“I’ve known Moloch for centuries. We have never liked each other, but he has never given any indication that he was the one who ended my mortal life.”

“I doubt he even knows,” Tanith said. “Do
you
remember every single detail of what
you
do when you change? I’d say it gets quite confusing in that little head of yours. From what I read, he had only been a vampire for a few years himself before he came to that town. I’m telling you the truth, Dusk. What you do with it now is up to you.”

“If I find out you’re lying...”

She laughed. “Lying to you would be bad for my health.”

Dusk kept his eyes on her for a bit, and then left.

“Phew,” said Sanguine, visibly relaxing. “Thought that was gonna get nasty for a moment. That true, by the way? About Moloch?”

“That was the name in the report,” she said as she turned back to him. “You know something, Billy-Ray? You’re a very useful person to have by my side. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

His hands found her hips and he pulled her closer. “Does that mean you’ll marry me?”

“You know I can’t love you back, right?”

“Not yet you can’t. And I’m OK with that.”

“Then, yes. I’ll marry you.”

Sanguine gave her the widest smile she’d ever seen him give, and he kissed her and she kissed him.

t wasn’t easy, lying to Tanith.

He didn’t like doing it, that’s for sure. He loved her. He’d finally found someone to love, someone as mixed up and messed up as he was, and he wasn’t about to let her go. No, sir. He knew a good thing when he found it and he was no fool.

But Sanguine, well, above all else he was a pragmatic son of a gun, and he reckoned that there wasn’t a whole lot of point in helping someone you love bring about the end of the world if the end of the world meant you couldn’t be with the one you love. So he’d had Sabine use her mojo to charge up another set of dummy weapons. If they could fool the so-called experts for a few days, he saw no reason why they couldn’t fool Tanith for a few minutes as she watched them melt. He’d felt bad about it. The look on her face as she stood there, that smile that opened up, it was almost enough to make him confess, to make him tell her about the real weapons that he’d hidden away.

Almost. But not quite. Sanguine was in love. But that didn’t make him stupid. And now that he had access to some of the most powerful weapons in the world, well... that pretty much made him even more of a badass.

And, when you got down to it, pretty goddamn unstoppable.

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First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Children’s Books
2013

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