Skulduggery Pleasant: Last Stand of Dead Men (23 page)

“It’s not an accident if you beat someone to death.”

“Then it was manslaughter. Grim didn’t mean to go that far. He made a terrible mistake, and he’s been arrested and charged. But the moment your Elders decided to retaliate with Sult’s execution they lost any hope they had of resolving this peacefully.”

“I haven’t seen the broadcast,” said Dexter, “so I couldn’t possibly comment on anything you’ve just said. But ordering an execution doesn’t sound like something Erskine would do.”

“Dexter, you were one of the Dead Men. You’re just as respected as Ravel or Bespoke and you’re liked a whole lot more than Skulduggery Pleasant. People will listen to you. If you appealed for calm, if we broadcast a short message where you asked your fellow sorcerers to lay down their arms and come to the table, talk to us, you could help put an end to this conflict before more blood is spilled.”

“You want me to tell them to surrender?”

“Surrender? No, not at all. Talk. Ask them to take a moment, to think about what they’re doing and the ramifications of their actions, and then come and talk to us.”

“So you can arrest them?”

Zafira’s eyes were sad. “Dexter, you’re not seeing what I’m trying to do here. This is possibly the last chance anyone has of saving lives. You and me, here, we can do that. Renato Bisahalani won’t. Cothernus Ode or Dedrich Wahrheit won’t. Erskine Ravel isn’t likely to back down any time soon, is he? That leaves us. We have to be the reasonable people here, Dexter. There’s no one else left.”

“You know what I was doing here, Zafira? Before your Cleavers hauled me in and I was accused of being a spy? Do you know what I was doing here?”

“Dexter, we don’t have time for—”

“Three mortals were murdered two weeks ago. Do you watch the news? You probably heard about it. Their bodies were dumped on the front lawn of the Presbyterian church where they worshipped every Sunday. The skin had been stripped from their faces. Their hair had been torn out. Not cut. Torn. In clumps. Their eyes had been taken. Their noses and lips sliced off.”

“I’ve seen the reports,” Zafira said. “It’s horrible the things mortals do to one another.”

“Well, that’s just it. Mortals didn’t do this. I traced it back to a few members of the Church of the Faceless. Did you know those people were back in business around here? They’re enjoying something of a resurgence, it would seem. All underground, of course. No sorcerer would openly admit to worshipping the Faceless Ones, not in Bisahalani’s America. This was a religious hate crime, and more than that, it was a sorcerer-on-mortal hate crime. These kinds of things have a tendency to spill over if not checked carefully. If the killers aren’t stopped, they’ll do it again, and they’ll do it bigger, and sooner or later a cop is going to catch a lucky break and suddenly we have magic splashed across the evening news. So that’s what I was doing before I was put in handcuffs.”

“Well, if you give me all the details, I’ll pass it on to our own detectives and they can pick up where you left off.”

“I hope they do, Zafira. Because while Bisahalani and Ode and Wahrheit and Mandat and, let’s not forget,
you
are putting all of your energy into this war in a transparent attempt to finally get your hands on a Cradle of Magic and all the power that comes with it, the Church of the Faceless are killing mortals, the Warlocks are stirring all over the world, and Darquesse is still coming. But please, don’t let any of that distract you from this power grab. Stumbling into a war you don’t need to fight is the only thing that’s worthy of your time and attention.”

All the warmth had left Zafira’s eyes. “I’ll send someone to talk to you. You can tell them about your suspicions regarding the Church of the Faceless.”

“I’ll do that.”

“But you won’t be doing it here. You’re going to be taken to a high-security prison this afternoon, where you will be held in solitary confinement until the war is over.”

“Again, without charge.”

“You’re an enemy agent, Dexter, and you clearly have no interest in helping me avert further bloodshed.”

“What you’re doing is wrong and you know it.”

“We’re doing what needs to be done. I’m sorry you can’t see that.”

He sat on the bunk, watching the female Cleaver through the bars. Like the two male Cleavers beside her, she stood perfectly straight, the scythe strapped to her back and her arms by her sides. The coat was long, tight at the chest and waist, but loose down the legs, and her face was lost behind that visored helmet.

It was relatively rare to find a female Cleaver. As part of their training, Cleavers needed to undergo Behavioural Indoctrination from a young age, a lengthy process often likened to voluntary brainwashing. During the process, certain personality traits were dampened, curtailed or otherwise repressed, rewarding the Cleaver with, among other things, the ability to follow orders without hesitation. Debates had raged for hundreds of years over the moral implications of Behavioural Indoctrination. There had even been a disastrous attempt to remove it from Cleaver training and replace it with a new approach. This attempt led to a generation of failed Cleavers – the first of the so-called Rippers. Physically, they were as impressive as their grey-coated counterparts, but psychologically they were damaged. Flawed. Behavioural Indoctrination was reintroduced soon after, and it embedded itself as a necessary step in creating the perfect soldier.

There were more male Cleavers in active service simply because males responded better to the process. Females were less susceptible, and therefore harder to control. Every so often, however, came a female of the right mindset, and she’d go through the years of training and emerge on the other side, as another nameless, visored soldier. Vex never looked at male Cleavers and thought about this stuff, but whenever he saw a woman in that uniform, he found himself wondering what had driven her to choose this path. She stood there now, strong and healthy, bubbling with physical potential. But what about later? There were no old Cleavers, after all. Once they’d served their fifteen years of active duty, they had a choice – re-emerge into the world as their old selves, or continue to shun their individuality and become a Ripper. Most became a Ripper.

“Transport’s here,” Swain said. “Let’s go.”

Vex sighed and got to his feet. The door was opened and off he marched, Swain leading the way with a Cleaver directly in front of Vex and the other two behind. They climbed the stairs, walked along the corridor, and Swain pushed open the door. The sunlight on the other side was intense – Vex had to squint to watch the truck approach. He felt a sharp pressure, over in an instant, and he turned his head, frowned at the female Cleaver.

Had she just pinched his bum?

The truck stopped and Swain nodded. “OK, load him in.”

The female whirled, her scythe taking the head off the Cleaver in front. The second Cleaver rushed her and she flipped backwards, her boot catching him, smacking his helmet. She landed, not giving him a moment to recover before her blade slashed through his knee and slashed again even as he was falling.

Swain stared at her in the sudden silence that followed. Then his hand started glowing.

Vex moved first, stepping between them, slamming his head into Swain’s face. He dropped, unconscious, and Vex turned as the Cleaver twirled her scythe one-handed. She rammed the staff into the ground and it stayed there, swaying. Her hands went to her coat and popped it open, took it off. She wore a light cotton vest beneath. Her arms were strong. She took off her helmet, and gave him a smile.

“All right, Dexter?” said Tanith Low.

ight descended on Roarhaven like a woolly blanket of blackness with holes in it that were the stars. Scapegrace looked out over the rooftops, feminine hands on his feminine hips, a mask on his beautiful face while the breeze played with his luxurious hair, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that somewhere out there, evil was happening. He also knew that he had no way down from this roof.

From below, there came a rattling, and a clanking, and then a voice that was rich and deep but edged with uncertainty fluttered up to him like an anxious moth. “Master? Are you there? Master?”

Scapegrace peered over the edge. Thrasher gazed up at him from the shadows, his big, strong hands gripping the ladder. He, too, wore a mask, but instead of hiding his ridiculously handsome features – his jawline, his cheekbones – it instead accentuated them, made him even better-looking than before. Scapegrace resisted the urge to drop a brick on that face and instead got down on his hands and knees and moved backwards until he hung off the edge. His foot searched below him for the ladder and he found the first rung. He started his descent, but the sound of voices made him freeze.

He waved at Thrasher to hide, then clung to the ladder and focused on becoming one with the shadows, just like Grandmaster Ping had taught him. The voices got nearer. Three people. No, four. Three male, one female. Innocent citizens out for a late-night stroll, or something more sinister? Muggers, maybe? Or maybe they were in league with Silas Nadir. Maybe they’d been sent to kill him.

A new fear, razor-sharp and raw, gripped his heart. His magic hadn’t returned yet, and he was no longer a zombie. He could be killed. If someone cut off his head now, there’d be no coming back. Death would snatch him away and never let him go, and he’d never get to do the things he’d always planned on doing, like making a list of things to do before he died.

Scapegrace leaped upwards, grabbed the edge of the roof, tried pulling himself up in one fluid motion.

Instead, he just hung there, his eyes widening in alarm, swaying slightly in the breeze. Pulling himself up in one fluid motion was not as easy as it sounded.

He glanced down. They rounded the corner. They were going to pass directly beneath him. His fingers were already burning.

“—lead by example,” one of the men was saying, “and he will. He’s taken us this far.”

“Plans are one thing,” said the woman, “deeds are another.”

“You doubt him? You doubt Madame Mist?”

“All I know is that we’ve sacrificed so much already. It’s their turn now.”

Scapegrace whimpered and lost his grip and fell, and one of the men collapsed beneath his weight.

The others jumped back, shouting out in alarm, and Scapegrace scrambled to his feet and swung a punch that hit the woman. Then the air struck him like a gigantic fist and he hurtled backwards, landed awkwardly and sprawled. He looked up in time to see Thrasher charging out from hiding, his muscular arms wrapping round the Elemental who had attacked. But Thrasher was an idiot who didn’t know how to fight, and wrapping his arms round his opponent was the full extent of his battle plan.

Scapegrace got up, swept his long hair away from his face, and yelled out a war cry before running away. Someone gave chase. He dodged left, squeezing between two buildings, the tangled weeds clutching at his feet. He burst out the other end like toothpaste from a tube, and someone crashed into him. He went down, cursing, scrambled up, sprinted on. Behind him, someone running. Gaining.

No. This wasn’t how things were any more. He wasn’t the old Scapegrace, the deluded loser, the butt of all jokes. He was the new Scapegrace, fit and healthy, student of Grandmaster Ping, warrior-in-training. And the new Scapegrace did not run from a fight.

He stopped suddenly and turned and Thrasher’s eyes widened right before he ran into him. They went sprawling, finally coming to a stop on their backs, looking up at the stars.

“You idiot,” Scapegrace panted.

“Sorry,” said Thrasher.

They got up. They weren’t being pursued, but Scapegrace couldn’t take the chance that someone might follow them home. They stole into the shadows, taking the long way back to the pub. Halfway there, they removed their masks.

“Act normal,” Scapegrace whispered as they stepped on to a well-lit street. Thrasher nodded, started walking like he hadn’t a care in the world. “What are you doing?”

“I’m, uh, acting normal.”

“No you’re not. You’re acting like someone pretending to be normal. Stop pretending and start acting, but don’t act like you’re not pretending, that’ll make it worse.”