Dark Days

Fletcher came over and Valkyrie raised the lid slightly. The case was lined and cushioned, the skull sitting comfortably within. A huge smile suddenly broke across Valkyrie’s face.

They had it. They had it, and in a few hours they’d pass through the portal and get Skulduggery back. All her hard work would pay off and, by the end of the day, her life would be allowed to resume. She closed the case.

“I just want to make sure,” she said and hurried to the door. She stepped out and saw Chabon just as he turned the corner on to Grafton Street.

“Hey!” she roared, a furious look on her face.

Chabon turned. If the skull was the Murder Skull, he would have no need to panic. If it wasn’t … Chabon panicked and broke into a sprint.

“It’s a fake!” she shouted to the others and bolted after Chabon, with Tanith and Fletcher following.

Valkyrie barged into the crowd, fighting to keep Chabon in sight. She leaped over a busker’s coin tray and dodged around a man painted silver. Chabon turned right, into a long, bright lane, the duffel bag swinging wildly.

If the lane had been empty, Valkyrie would have wrapped a tendril of shadow around his ankles and pitched him forward on to his face. But there were maybe a dozen people wandering by shop windows, and a woman begging for spare change just ahead of her. Out of the corner of her eye, Valkyrie saw Tanith dart into an alcove and run up the side of the building. Valkyrie chased Chabon to the next street, where he glanced up and saw Tanith moving over rooftops to cut him off. He knocked over an old man and ran into the Powerscourt Centre. Valkyrie took the street adjacent, moving parallel to him. Through the windows she saw him crash through the lunch crowd at the restaurant, slowing him down.

She reached South William Street as Chabon staggered out of the Powerscourt Centre. He saw her, cursed and kept running, through Castle Market and straight into the old Victorian building that housed the George’s Street Arcade. She knew she had him. He didn’t have a hope of getting away now.

The stalls were set up down the middle of the arcade, funnelling the shoppers down paths on either side. There were clothes stalls and jewellery stalls and a fortune-teller behind a red curtain. Chabon chose the left path, knocking people out of his way. He stumbled over a box of old paperbacks and Valkyrie piled on the speed and jumped, her knees slamming into his back. He sprawled to the ground and she ignored the startled looks from the people around her. He reached for the fallen bag and she stomped on his hand. He shrieked, kicking, and her feet swept from beneath her. She landed just as he got up, the bag in his uninjured hand, but she grabbed one of the straps and wouldn’t let go, and Chabon remembered too late that she wasn’t alone.

Tanith came flying over Valkyrie and her boot-heel connected with Chabon’s sternum. There was a crack and he went down and rolled a few times before curling up. Valkyrie got to her feet as Fletcher joined them, puffing and panting like someone who hadn’t needed to run anywhere in quite a while.

“Here you go,” Valkyrie said as she pressed the duffel bag into Fletcher’s arms. She smiled at the crowd. “This poor boy got his bag snatched by that nasty man.”

Fletcher glared at her as the crowd applauded, and Tanith picked up Chabon and escorted him away. Valkyrie and Fletcher followed.

“That was unnecessary,” Fletcher seethed.

“If you’d been faster,” she said quietly, “maybe you could have been the hero – but you weren’t, so you’re the innocent victim. Get over it.”

Tanith took Chabon far enough away from passing pedestrians so that they could talk without being overheard. She pressed him back against the wall. He was holding his hand against his chest, obviously in a great deal of pain.

“Where’s the real Murder Skull?” Valkyrie asked, keeping her voice low.

“I gave it to you,” Chabon tried. She prodded his hands and he hissed. “OK! Stop! I had it, I swear I did. When I talked to you on the phone, I had it.”

“So what did you do with it?”

Chabon was looking quite pale. His injury was making him sweat. “There’s a … Look, there’s a rule, in what I do. If you find something that one person is willing to pay for, odds are there’s someone else who’s willing to pay more.”

“You advertised?”

“I didn’t know anyone would be that interested, so yeah, I mentioned it here and there, and someone came to me with a better offer.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Valkyrie made a fist and crunched it against Chabon’s hands. Tanith struggled to keep him standing upright.

“A woman,” he gasped. “I met with her an hour ago. She paid me triple. I didn’t think you’d ever know. It’s the Murder Skull. What’s so important about it?”

“What did this woman look like?” asked Tanith.

“Dark hair. Pretty enough. All business.”

“A name,” Valkyrie said. “A number, address, anything.”

“She called me. Kept her number private. We met in the arrivals area in the airport. She had the money so I gave her the skull. I brought a second one for you lot.”

“You’d better give us something we can use to find her,” Fletcher said, “or I’m teleporting you to the middle of the Sahara and I’m leaving you there.”

Chabon looked at him, like he was gauging whether or not the threat was serious. He obviously decided it was.

“She’s American – Boston by the accent. And she’s got that eye thing – one green eye, one blue.”

“Heterochromia,” Tanith said. “Davina Marr.”

Valkyrie’s stomach dropped. Davina Marr had been brought in by the Irish Sanctuary to assume the role of Prime Detective. Valkyrie had had a few run-ins with her already, and had found her to be ambitious, patronising and ruthless.

“If she bought the skull,” Valkyrie said grimly, “then Thurid Guild has it by now, and he’s going to lock it away to make sure Skulduggery never gets back.”

“So what do we do?” asked Fletcher.

“We steal it,” said Valkyrie.

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t was raining. Again.

Scarab didn’t like Ireland. Every great misfortune in his life had happened here. Every major defeat. Even though he had done his time in an American prison, he’d been arrested here in Ireland – and it had been raining then too.

The castle was cold and there were draughts everywhere. Most of the doors had recently been blocked off, sealing away the dungeons and various unsavoury places. They were still accessible through the many secret passages, but it was proving quite difficult to get around. Also the plumbing was terrible. The cell that had been his home for two centuries had kept him alive, kept him nourished, kept his body clean and his muscles from atrophying. For 200 years he had not even needed to visit a bathroom. Where did all the waste go? Was there any waste to begin with? He didn’t know and no one had come around to tell him.

And now, suddenly, he had to eat and wash and visit the bathroom at worryingly frequent intervals, and the toilet wouldn’t flush. He’d searched for another bathroom and had quickly got lost. He had stumbled around in the dark for half an hour before finding his way back to where he started.

“Where have you been?” Billy-Ray asked, hurrying by. “They’re here.” He disappeared into the next room.

Scarab shuffled to the door and heard Billy-Ray welcoming their guests. Scarab’s bladder was still full, and he wondered if he had time to find a potted plant or something. Not that a place like this would have a potted plant.

“You’re wonderin’ why I called you here,” he heard Billy-Ray say. “You’re lookin’ at the guy sittin’ next to you and you’re goin’, hey, don’t I hate that guy? Didn’t that guy try to kill me once? The fact is, yeah, we all probably tried to kill each other a few times over the years, but y’know what? So did plenty of other people.

“And that, gentlemen, is why we’re here. That is the bond we share. This is our common affliction and so it provides us with our common goal. I got someone I want to introduce. You may have heard of him. He’s the man who killed Esryn Vanguard. Boys, I’d like you to meet the man, the legend, Dreylan Scarab!”

Scarab straightened up and walked in, keeping his steps purposeful and strong.

Four men sat at a table, with Billy-Ray taking the fifth seat. Scarab strode forward but didn’t sit. He knew each of the men, though they’d never met. His son’s descriptions were more than adequate.

Remus Crux was the ex-Sanctuary Detective, now a raving lunatic who didn’t bother washing. He was a recent convert to the Faceless Ones, according to Billy-Ray, and he’d developed a murderous fixation on the girl called Valkyrie Cain after she’d killed a couple of his Dark Gods with the Sceptre of the Ancients. Scarab had always believed the Sceptre to be a fairytale, and he’d never had much time for the Faceless Ones. He’d agreed to Crux’s inclusion, however, because while having a madman on board was a risk, sometimes risk was all you had.