Skulduggery Pleasant

She left the school, with its magnificent arches and grand staircases, and walked the wide streets. Plenty of time to double back and meet Skulduggery. There was a guy on the corner, barefoot and dressed in sackcloth, holding a sign that warned her that the end was nigh. To reinforce the point he was making, he shouted it at anyone who was passing.

“The end is nigh!” he screeched to Valkyrie, shaking the cardboard sign. “The end is nigh!”

“Isn’t it always?” she asked, and left him shaking the sign resentfully.

She made a note of the street names as she went by. Gorgon Street. Titan Street. Bellower Road. She crossed Meritorious Square and took the narrower streets now, away from the staring, whispering people. She walked down Blood-drenched Lane, took a right on to Decapitation Row. At least they were easy to remember.

She smelled food and her tummy rumbled, so she followed the smell and then abruptly lost it in a dead end that went by the charming name of Putrid Road. She turned, and stopped.

Three people stood there – two men and one woman – staring at her with a special kind of look in their eyes. Valkyrie had seen that look before. She was well used to that look.

That look meant that, at some point in the next few minutes, they were going to try to kill her.

10 (#ulink_72042dc8-00e8-54b2-ab56-dba3d36d4600)

Sebastian watched it all from the rooftop.

He watched the three of them follow her away from the crowds, away from anyone who might step in. He would have expected more from Valkyrie Cain. He would have expected her to be a lot more alert. But there she was, in jeans and a T-shirt instead of her usual black, walking like a zombie, just going where the streets took her, like she had a thousand different things on her mind and she didn’t want to think of a single one of them. He watched her reach the dead end and turn, and freeze.

He crouched low, and bit his lip beneath his mask. He had his mission. He shouldn’t be wasting his time on things like this.

Below him, Valkyrie waited for the three people to say something. When they didn’t, she spoke. “I’m not Darquesse.”

Sebastian’s ears were covered, but he heard her perfectly.

“You look like Darquesse,” said the woman. “You look the way she did when she killed my family. Except you’re not smiling. Darquesse was smiling.”

Valkyrie hesitated. “I’m not her.”

The man on the left was packing some extra weight, but he looked strong, like those clenched fists would hurt. “Darquesse killed my daughter,” he said. “Burned her to nothing. I doubt she even noticed she’d done it.”

“My brother tried to fight her,” the second man said. “I begged him not to, but he thought if he could sneak up behind her, while the Skeleton Detective and everyone was distracting her, he could snap her neck before she knew what was happening. My brother, who had never snapped a neck in his life. He never even got close.”

“I’m sorry for your pain,” Valkyrie said slowly. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, and for what your loved ones went through. But I’m not Darquesse.”

“We know,” the woman said. “We know you’re Valkyrie Cain. We know all about you. We know Darquesse was your true name, and we know she inhabited the body of your reflection. We know all this. Everyone does. Everyone knows that none of it would have happened if it weren’t for you.”

“Sensitives had dreams about her for years before she showed up,” the second guy said. “They warned you. All that time, you knew what would happen if you kept going. But you didn’t want to go back to a mortal life, did you? You wanted to be one of us. A sorcerer.”

“So you let it happen,” the first man said. “You allowed it to happen just like the Sensitives predicted it would, because you were having too good a time going off on all your adventures.”

“Nothing to say?” the woman asked, walking forward. Sebastian tensed. “For a girl with a reputation for being a smart-mouth, you’re awfully quiet.”

“Leave me alone,” Valkyrie said.

“You shouldn’t have come back.”

“Leave me alone. Please. I don’t want any trouble.”

The woman sneered. “Begging didn’t save my family. It’s not going to save you.”

The woman slapped her. Hard. Sebastian’s own cheek tingled in sympathy, but Valkyrie just stood there.

Obviously of the opinion that a simple slap wasn’t going to do the job, the first man stepped up and swung a punch that sent Valkyrie spinning to the ground. Sebastian readied himself to jump in the moment Valkyrie retaliated – but she just stayed down, propped on her elbow, holding a hand to her face. The woman kicked her in the shin, ended up hurting herself as much as she hurt Valkyrie.

Slowly, Valkyrie stood back up.

The first man looked at the second, who hesitated, then nodded and clenched his fists also. These were not warriors, Sebastian saw. These were just ordinary sorcerers. Ordinary, angry sorcerers.

The second man hit Valkyrie, a light punch to the shoulder.

“Come on!” said the first guy. “Harder!”

The second man stared at Valkyrie, his lips curling as he cultivated his anger, and he hit her again, this time in the face. Valkyrie took a few steps back before she regained her balance. Blood dripped from her bottom lip. Still she did nothing.

The punch was followed by another, and another, fists fuelled by pent-up rage, by loss and love and hate, all that pain finally finding an outlet in the infliction of pain on another. Valkyrie was doubled over by a shot to the belly and then sent to the ground again. A low, tortured moan escaped her as she struggled to breathe.

And, once more, she got to her feet.

The woman pushed her way to the front, clicking her fingers and summoning a ball of flame into her hand. This changed things. Valkyrie shifted her balance slightly as she watched the woman, waiting to see what she would do. Waiting to see if she’d cross the line.

For a moment, the woman seemed to reconsider. Sebastian had a good view of her face, and he saw the conflict there. The emotion. The flames dimmed, looked like they were about to go out.

But then something – a memory, an urge, a flash of ruthlessness – flared the flames in her hand and she moved her arm back, preparing to throw, and Valkyrie leaped at her, smacking her hand down and driving her elbow into the woman’s jaw. The woman crumpled and the fire went out.

The first man snapped his palm against the air and the space rippled, but Valkyrie was already lunging at the other guy. She rolled under his punch and grabbed him, twisted him, threw him over her leg and he went tumbling.

The first guy charged, too angry to use magic. Valkyrie met him head-on. She crashed into him, using her elbows as a battering ram. He staggered back, clutching his chest, trying to get his breath back. She let him fall to one knee, gasping, and turned to the smaller man as he rose. Again, she closed the space between them, refusing to give him a chance to throw a punch or use his magic. She slapped him so hard Sebastian winced, and wrapped her arm around his throat as he spun. She kicked out his leg and crouched with him, tightening her stranglehold. He struggled, tried to pull her hair, but she stayed calm and just kept squeezing.

The first guy was getting his breath back, and he was attempting to stand, clicking his fingers at the same time. Any moment now his hands would be filled with fire.

Sebastian leaped, crashing into him from above. The big guy went down as the other guy lost his battle to stay awake. Valkyrie laid him on his side, turned and observed Sebastian as he stood there.

For a long, long moment, nothing was said. Sebastian allowed himself to think that maybe Valkyrie was overawed. Maybe she was intimidated.

“You look so dumb,” she said.

“Do I?”

“Did you fly, or jump?”

“Oh,” he said. “I jumped. I was up there.” He pointed above him. “And now I’m, you know … down here.”

“That’s a good story,” Valkyrie said.

“I, uh, I feel like I haven’t made the best first impression.”

“How could you possibly think such a thing, wearing a mask as ridiculous as that? Do you have a name?”