Skulduggery Pleasant: Books 4 - 6

“You need better things to dream about.”

“Valkyrie Cain, welcome to death.”

“That is such a stupid thing to say.”

Scapegrace ran at her and Valkyrie threw the ball of fire she’d been holding for the past few minutes. Scapegrace was instantly enveloped in flame. He wheeled around, screaming.

“Master Scapegrace!” Thrasher yelled, horrified.

Valkyrie frowned. “I thought he couldn’t feel pain.”

Scapegrace immediately stopped screaming and running about. He just stood there and continued to burn.

“You’re burning quite easily,” she said. “Is that a zombie thing or something?”

“He has been using an awful lot of skin creams lately,” Thrasher mused. “Maybe the mixture is especially flammable.”

Valkyrie waved her hand and the fire went out.

“You haven’t seen the last of me,” Scapegrace said without enthusiasm, as he turned and walked out of the hotel, leaving a trail of smoke behind him. Thrasher gave her a parting growl and quickly followed the trail out of the door.

The aroma of charred flesh forced Valkyrie to go looking for Skulduggery. She found him in the back room, helping Shudder to his feet. The walls were decorated with bits of zombie.

“Shudder did this?” she said, stunned at the sheer violence of what she saw. “Alone? Without a weapon?”

“Technically,” Skulduggery said, “Anton is a weapon. Or at least his gist is.”

“What’s a gist?”

“It’s the bad part of me,” Shudder said, speaking like every word was painful. “When I need it, I let it come out. Every time I do, however, it takes me a little longer to recover.” He frowned. “Sanguine was here. He came in and…” He grasped his sleeve and yanked it up. There was a metal band on his forearm, and hanging from it was a short link of a cut chain. “He has the key.”

Valkyrie followed Skulduggery up the two flights of stairs. They got to the twenty-fourth room. The door was closed and the key was in the lock.

“He has it,” Skulduggery said.

“How do you know? He might still be in there.”

Skulduggery shook his head. “He didn’t set one foot inside that room. He opened the door less than a centimetre and the nearest Remnant was sucked into the Soul Catcher. If he’d stepped in, they’d have swarmed him and then they’d have swarmed the hotel. After that, they’d have gone on and swarmed the country. We failed.”

“So now what?”

“Now we find Scarab’s castle before Kenspeckle repairs the Desolation Engine. I know someone who might be able to help us – it’s a long shot, but what isn’t these days? We’ve run out of options.” Skulduggery turned the key until they heard the lock clicking into place, then he withdrew it. “And we kick the living daylights out of anyone who stands in our way.”

33 POSSESSED (#ulink_984c6daf-f702-5d24-bf56-650c8b81fa3e)

carab released the Remnant, then quickly stepped back and shut the door. He went to the next room, where Billy-Ray had set up the monitor, and watched Professor Grouse. He could see the anger in his face as the Remnant, little more than a sliver of shadow, flitted about from corner to corner. The Professor knew what was coming, but he didn’t cry out or start to plead. Scarab respected that.

Once it had satisfied its curiosity about its surroundings, the Remnant turned its attention to the old man chained to the wall. The Professor kept his eyes on the Remnant as it darted in and out of his line of sight. It came close and the Professor jerked away instinctively. It was playing with him.

It whipped by him again and the Professor cursed at it. Then it struck. It darted to his open mouth and the Professor’s eyes widened in panic as the Remnant forced its way down. His throat bulged, then the bulge moved and disappeared. Kenspeckle Grouse went limp.

Billy-Ray shook his head. “Hate those things,” he muttered.

Scarab walked back into the room and Professor Grouse looked up.

“You know why you’re here,” Scarab said. “We went to a whole lot of trouble to get you out of that room you were stuck in. If you do what we want, we’ll release you after. If you don’t, we’ll put you back where we found you and collect one of your brethren. I’m sure the next one we bring here will welcome a chance for freedom. What do you say?”

“I don’t trust you,” Grouse said in a voice that picked over the words like a carrion bird picking at meat. The Remnant inside him was unused to speaking aloud.

“Well,” said Scarab, “I don’t trust you either. But we are in a situation where we can help each other. As you know by now, we’re hoping that the old man you’re wearing like a bad suit has the all the knowledge and know-how we need. Does he?”

“Oh, he does,” Grouse said. “Oh, I do. And I have so much more.”

“Then do we have a deal?”

The old man looked at him and a smile drifted across his face like a seeping wound. “We have a deal, Mr Scarab.”

34 THE MEETING (#ulink_cef7c658-f18d-5b55-806f-fae702560c3d)

avina Marr went up to the counter and told the dim-looking boy what kind of sandwich she wanted, then repeated her order slowly, using smaller words. He finally nodded and went away, and she just knew he was going to get it wrong. That’s what she despised about mortals – their ineptitude. Their casual ignorance. Their downright stupidity.

She couldn’t say any of this out loud, however, not as an agent of the Sanctuary, and certainly not as its Prime Detective. It was part of her job to protect the mortals, to keep them safe from the dangers posed by the magical community. But was she still the Sanctuary’s Prime Detective now that Skulduggery Pleasant was back? Instead of doing her job, tracking down the vampire that had led the raid on the Sanctuary, Marr had been relegated to checking out castles as per the skeleton detective’s request. Such a task was so far beneath her it would have been almost laughable if it wasn’t so humiliating.

She became aware of the man standing beside her, but she didn’t look at him. “You’re late.”

“I had to make sure you weren’t leading me into a trap,” the man responded, his golden eyes scanning the menu above them. “Forgive me if I’m sceptical, but you have already turned us down twice. Why the change of heart?”

“I’m seeing things clearer.”

The dim-looking boy came back, checked her order and went away again.

“Guild isn’t fit to run the Sanctuary,” she said. “He’s making stupid mistakes. Shirking his responsibility.”

“We heard he demoted you.”

The heat rose in her face, but Marr kept her voice even. “Temporary reassignment,” she said. “Just one of his recent errors of judgement.”

“So you’ll help us then?”

“Yes.”

“We had Mr Bliss in line to take over,” the man told her. “His death has meant a drastic change in our plans. I hope you realise that.”

“How drastic?” she asked.

“We’re going to destroy the Sanctuary,” he said, “and take over what’s left.”

The dim-looking boy returned with her sandwich. It was completely wrong, but she wasn’t hungry anyway. She paid for it and collected her change, catching the man’s eye as she turned.