Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked (60 page)

She let him fall, then pulled the spear from her side and snapped it. She looked at the God-Killer. Swords, apparently, just weren’t her thing. She hurled it through the window, took a moment to heal herself, then stepped through the hole in the wall that Mevolent had made. Just in time to see him ripping the Sceptre from China’s hands.

His metal mask turned to Darquesse. The crystal flashed and black lightning streaked by her head as she dived to one side.

China, being China, used this opportunity to run from the room.

Darquesse wheeled, barely avoiding another arc of lightning that turned the wall to dust behind her. Mevolent fired again and she felt the lightning sizzle by her face as she jerked back. She launched herself upwards, breaking through the ceiling, Mevolent right behind her. Open sky lay ahead. She didn’t know how fast he flew, but she was sure she was faster. Only out here, all he had to do was aim. Down there, there were things to duck behind.

She changed course abruptly and he overshot. She needed people, people to distract him, people to hide behind. She needed walls and doors and cover.

They flew to the battle, where Cleaver fought against Redhood and the Resistance fought the whatever. Kingdom? Empire? Whatever Mevolent was in charge of. Darquesse didn’t know. She had more pressing matters.

Lightning sought her out and she flipped in mid-air so that Mevolent shot beneath her. She grabbed him, was pulled along with him, and he tried turning the Sceptre but she knocked it from his hand. They hit the ground and tumbled, people screaming all around them.

She got to her hands and knees and all of a sudden he was standing over her with a concrete block in his hands. She didn’t even have time to wonder where he’d picked it up before it came crunching down on her head. Her face hit the road. She’d bitten her tongue. She hated that.

He grabbed her, lifted her, threw her. She bounced off a house and fell back to the street, looked up in time to see him lob a cart. She punched through it but splintered wood opened a deep cut on her forehead, and then he was beside her, stomping on her knee and then trying to pull her head off. Wow, this guy was violent.

She flung herself backwards, trying to dislodge him, but he held on, kept pulling. She could feel the tendons in her neck start to break. The brown-clothed mortals ran in terror as she struggled. This was not how she was meant to go out, not with her head pulled off in a dimension that wasn’t even her own. She propelled him back against a wall and bit down on his wrist, but his sleeve protected him. Still, at least he wasn’t dragging her around any more. She could get her feet underneath her and—

Mevolent twisted and she kicked uselessly, but couldn’t do anything to prevent him from dragging her away from the wall again. The sound of her cartilage popping filled her ears, and her muscles tore and her skin split, and Mevolent held her in his hands. She didn’t understand it at first, and then she was raised to meet his metal mask and her sight was failing, greying, closing in, and he dropped her and the world bounced around her. She spun, toppled, came to a slowly rocking rest, and Mevolent walked away, past a headless body lying in the middle of the road.

Her headless body.

Oh, hell.

even seconds until brain death.

She could feel it. Everything was slowing. The only sound she heard, bizarrely, was the sea. Like there was a conch shell held to her ear. She blinked. She was seeing things in black and white. She wondered if Scapegrace had seen things in black and white when he was a head in a jar. She wondered if she’d ever get a chance to ask him.

First things first. That body over there. So slim and strong. And the shoulders – impressive. The T-shirt was ripped and torn. The trousers were tight, just how she liked them. The boots were fantastic. She wanted those boots again. She wanted feet to fit in those boots. She wanted feet.

Five seconds to brain death.

Mevolent was still walking away. He’d been tougher than she’d expected. He’d practically killed her, after all. Practically. Almost. Almost, but not quite. Pull the head off, the brain still has time. That was a mistake.

She reached out with her magic and pulled her body towards her. It slithered over the ground. Brown-clothed mortals opened their mouths to cry in shock but all she heard was the sea, like the sea back in Haggard, where she’d been young and safe and happy. Where she’d been Valkyrie Cain, and before that, Stephanie Edgley. Where she’d had her parents and her sister. Where she’d been loved.

But that was Valkyrie, facing her own mortality, grasping the things that meant the most to her. And Valkyrie had no place here. Not now. Darquesse needed to stay in control. Only Darquesse could do what needed to be done.

Three seconds to brain death.

The body nudged against her and she tipped herself back, lining up her ruined neck. Tendrils of meat latched on to each other, finding their mate, pulling the head and body together. Vertebrae clicked and cartilage clacked and muscles reached and re-formed and strengthened. Veins and arteries, nerves and skin, becoming whole.

Blood surged. Oxygen rushed. Brain death averted.

Darquesse propped herself up on to her elbows and looked at Mevolent, who was striding back towards her. “Wow,” she said. “That was something.”

He flew at her and she kicked, both legs catching him in the stomach and sending him crashing into the road behind her. He sprang up and so did she, but she swayed, the world tilting.

“Dammit,” she muttered.

Mevolent’s fist crunched into her cheek and she reeled back, knocking against a heavy wooden fence post. He came at her again and she grabbed the post, swung it with all her strength. It broke on impact but at least Mevolent was driven to his knees.

Darquesse reached for another post, tore it from the ground and threw it as Mevolent stood. He stumbled back a few steps. Darquesse threw another, and another, plucking them from the earth, throwing them like darts. Mevolent tried to get up. He got to one knee, shook his head beneath that helmet, and stood. He looked around, and that’s when Darquesse hit him with the horse.

She found the Sceptre in a side street just as China Sorrows was picking it up off the ground.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Darquesse said, landing gently behind her.

China raised the Sceptre. “Did you kill Mevolent?”

“If I did, then that Sceptre is now yours to control. So you can use it to kill me. Of course, if he isn’t dead, and you try to use it, then I’ll just take it from you and beat you to death.”

“An interesting dilemma,” China said.

“Isn’t it just?”

“How long do we have?”

“Before I return home? A few seconds. I can feel them ticking down. I’m starting to feel the pull already.”

“So we only have moments to resolve this.”

Darquesse smiled, and didn’t say anything.

China bit her lip thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose running would do me any good.”

Darquesse shook her head, started walking towards her.

China backed away. “Take the sword. The God-Killer. You can kill your enemy with that.”

“Don’t like swords any more,” Darquesse replied.

“There are others weapons. I’ve heard of them.”

“I want the Sceptre.”

“The Sceptre belongs here.”

“I’m taking it with me.”

“There must be something I can do to make you—”

Darquesse held out her hand. “Give it to me.”

The black crystal sparkled in a shaft of sunlight. China tightened her grip. “I think Mevolent’s dead. If you didn’t kill him, he’d be here by now. I think he’s dead and this thing will kill you if I fire.”

“That’s your decision to make,” said Darquesse. Her fingers neared the Sceptre.

China’s jaw set. Her muscles tensed. Darquesse smiled.

She took the Sceptre, and China’s hand dropped to her side.

It felt good in her grip. Darquesse searched through the magic inside her, found the reverberating energy that Silas Nadir had passed into her system. There was only a small amount left but she grabbed it, spun it, strengthened it, and within moments her arm was starting to throb. She looked back at China. “If I were you, I’d run,” she said. “Mevolent’s forces are closing in.”

“You didn’t kill him?”

“Didn’t have time.”

“So if I’d tried to fire...”

“I’d be wearing your beauty all over my fist by now.” The world flickered. “My time here is up. Good luck with your war.”

“Good luck with yours,” China said, stepping back into a doorway. But there was someone there, someone waiting for her, and a skinless hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder. China stiffened, those beautiful blue eyes widening, and red energy crackled round her body and brought her to her toes before she could even scream. Pain blossomed from within her and snapped her body from Serpine’s grip, and she fell to the ground, as perfect and lifeless as a doll.

Serpine smiled at Darquesse, and she smiled back. The world flickered again, and in that moment Serpine brought up his hand and energy exploded out at her. She hurtled back, head over heels through the air, and the world changed and she slammed into a parked truck. She dropped to her knees, back in her own reality, kneeling in dirt in some quarry, surrounded by trucks and pallets and equipment. She took a moment to laugh at Serpine’s audacity and rub her chest where he’d hit her, and then she realised her hands were empty. She’d dropped the Sceptre.

“No!” she roared, springing to her feet. “NO!”

She whipped her head round. Maybe it was here. Maybe it had come through with her. Maybe it was—

She kicked the truck and sent it sideways. “
NO!
”

She flung herself into the air, into the sunshine, screaming her curses, twisting and flying for the Sanctuary, her speed drawing tears from her eyes. And still she screamed. Serpine. Serpine, that murderous, treacherous little toerag. He was beyond her reach now but Kitana wasn’t, or Sean, or Doran. She was going to kill them all. Going to rip them apart. Going to obliterate them.

She flew faster than she’d ever flown before. It might have been fun if she hadn’t been feeling so murderous.

Roarhaven approached. Her eyes narrowed as she neared the Sanctuary, seeing in her mind’s eye where Kitana was standing, three levels below the surface, down there in the maze of corridors, in the Accelerator Room. She saw Doran and Sean, too, and Vile on the floor, trying to get up.

She flew at the roof, punching through and crashing through this floor and then the next, swerving now, crashing through a wall, sensing the alarm as Kitana turned. Then she was bursting through, barrelling past Doran and Sean, her fists colliding with Kitana’s pretty face. She hit Kitana with the speed of a bullet and the poor girl’s head came apart. Her momentum took Darquesse through into the next room, and she touched down, laughing. Back in a good mood. She stepped back through the hole in the wall. Doran and Sean were on their knees, staring at what was left of Kitana.

“Oops,” said Darquesse.

Magic writhed around Doran’s arm, and his hand glowed and spat forward a stream of energy that burrowed through Darquesse’s belly. He still hadn’t figured it out.

Even as she healed herself, Darquesse diverted some of her power down through her veins to bundle around her hand. She released it and it burned through Doran and he toppled over, a smoking crater where his face used to be.

“The brain,” she said to Sean as he backed away. “Destroy the brain, and how can we heal ourselves? Do you see? It’s simple.”

Sean licked his lips. His magic thrashed, waiting to be unleashed. She watched it, and when she saw how he was going to use it, she moved, batted his arm down even as it was rising. One hand gripped him under the chin and she spun behind him, her other arm braced against his shoulder blades, and she pulled his head off with all the effort of popping open a can of Coke.

A sorcerer who had earned his power could have used the last few moments until brain death to try something, to try to heal himself, but Sean didn’t know the first thing about anything. Darquesse dropped the head and kicked it out into the corridor. She wished Mevolent could have seen that.