Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 4 - 6

“Why did he help you? Vampires aren’t known for being nice.”

“He hates Dusk. He won’t tell me why, but he hates him. He helped us because we put Dusk in prison. Dusk’s stay didn’t last too long, but Caelan still appreciated it.”

The door of the facility opened and Caelan stepped out. For a moment Valkyrie didn’t make a sound. She hadn’t realised he was so good-looking. His new skin was so fresh it practically glowed with health and his black hair shone. She watched him walk to a car parked nearby, then stop. He turned his head and looked directly at her. Skulduggery got out and she followed.

“Be nice,” she muttered as they walked over.

“I’m always nice,” Skulduggery responded.

“Don’t point your gun at his head.”

“Oh,” he said, “that kind of nice.”

Caelan greeted them with a nod. He didn’t waste time mentioning the obvious – that she had got Skulduggery back. Neither did he waste time looking for an introduction. He just stood there and waited for them to start speaking.

“I don’t like you,” Skulduggery said.

“OK,” Caelan said with a single nod.

“I don’t like vampires as a rule,” Skulduggery continued. “I don’t trust them. I don’t trust you.”

Valkyrie sighed. “I told you to be nice.”

“Well, I haven’t shot him yet.”

She rolled her eyes and said to Caelan, “We need your help finding Dusk.”

“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know where to find him even if I wanted to.”

“But you’d know people who would know, yes?” Skulduggery asked. “Other vampires, like the ones who stormed the Sanctuary last night and slaughtered twenty-nine people. I wonder, were you locked up in your cage the entire night, Caelan? Or did you slip out for a snack?”

Caelan looked at him slowly. “My cage is time-locked, programmed to open only at dawn.”

“You’re a vampire with a conscience, is that it?”

“No, sir,” Caelan said. “I’m a monster, just like you say I am. I lock myself up at night because if I don’t, someone like you will come and hunt me down. And someone like you will eventually find a way to kill me.”

Valkyrie stepped between them and Caelan’s eyes came back to her. They were as dark as her own. Maybe darker. “Caelan, I know you helped me out with Ghabon, and I know you don’t owe me anything, but we need to find Dusk and stop him.”

“I keep to myself.”

“I know.”

His eyes flickered away, to her shoulder. “I can ask Moloch. But I can’t go alone.”

“We’ll come with you.”

He nodded. “I can’t promise that he’ll have anything useful for you, or even that he’ll agree to see us. But really, he’s the only one who might talk to me.”

“The other vampires don’t like you?” Skulduggery asked. “Why is that?”

Caelan hesitated. “In our culture it’s forbidden for one vampire to kill another.”

“You killed another vampire?”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

“Why?

Caelan shrugged. “He had it coming.”

25 LAST VAMPIRE STANDING (#ulink_2ebc6ad8-48ae-58e3-8a82-1bdfab0b91d9)

he tower blocks rose from the cement like dreary canyon walls, oppressive in stature and depressing in structure. Built in the 1960s, most of the towers had been demolished decades later in an attempt to get rid of the drugs and crime that had seeped through, permeating everything. Six of the seven Ballymun Flats had been flattened, the Sheriff Street Flats had been torn down, the Flats at Fatima Mansions redeveloped and replaced. By the time Dublin City Council got round to the Faircourt Flats, however, they had run out of money.

Towers, thirteen stories high, of tiny apartments stacked side by side. No grass. No trees. One little shop, defaced by graffiti. Rusted shopping trolleys and old mattresses.

The gleaming Bentley parked beside a burnt-out husk of a car and Skulduggery, Valkyrie and Caelan got out. Skulduggery clicked on the car alarm and they followed Caelan through a rubbish-strewn tunnel, as grey as the sky it was blocking. They emerged on the other side and walked across a concrete square to a stairwell that stank of human waste. They passed no one.

The elevator was broken and the climb to the top burned the muscles of Valkyrie’s legs. Skulduggery and Caelan didn’t even notice it.

Still they passed no one.

They reached the top, where every second door was paint-flecked steel, with the locks and the bolts on the outside. Heavy bars criss-crossed the windows.

Caelan hammered his fist against one of the steel doors and they waited. There was the click of a lock being undone on the other side and the door cracked open. A young woman looked out. She was pale and sweating, her eyes red-rimmed and jittery.

“We’re here to see Moloch,” Caelan said and the woman licked her lips, glanced behind her and slipped out. Valkyrie watched her hurry away, arms wrapped around herself.

Valkyrie followed the others into the apartment. It was unfurnished. There were grooves in the walls, long and deep, and more scratches on the back of the steel door. This was where a vampire lived – where a vampire raged and fought to leave. There was another steel door in the living room, leading into the next apartment. In much the same way as China had knocked down the walls in her building to accommodate her library, the vampire Moloch had expanded his living space to accommodate both sides of his nature.

In this furnished apartment they found Moloch. He may have been handsome once, but the years had turned his sharp features cruel. His hair was thinning and his eyes burned with intelligence. He wore tracksuit bottoms and a white T-shirt, despite the cold, and he sat on the couch, hands laced behind his head, master of his domain.

“You scared away my breakfast,” he said in a thick Dublin accent. His eyes drank in Valkyrie. “But it looks like you’ve come with a healthier option. There’s a syringe on the table beside you, love. One pint of your blood is all I’ll be needing.”

“It’s an interesting set-up you’ve got here,” Skulduggery said, ignoring his comment. “Let me guess. The other tenants provide you and your brethren with nourishment, while you protect them from the drug dealers and petty criminals. Am I about right?”

“You sound like you disapprove,” Moloch said. “But isn’t it better than vampires going around killing mortals? This way we don’t have to be the hunters and they don’t have to be afraid.”

“Someone should have probably told that to the girl who ran out of here.”

“The first time is daunting,” Moloch shrugged. “But enough about our situation. I’d heard you were gone. The story I heard, you were pulled into hell and you were gone for good.”

“I was,” Skulduggery said. “I’m not any more.”

Moloch cracked a smile. “The skeleton detective, standing here in my own home. Imagine that. All this time we’ve managed to keep a non-existent profile. You didn’t even know we were here, did you? So what’s next I wonder? You send the Cleavers in?”

“They’re looking for Dusk,” Caelan said.