Skulduggery Pleasant: Last Stand of Dead Men (54 page)

Just like with Darquesse. The moment she’d realised the truth, the moment she’d realised that she herself was the one all the Sensitives were having nightmares about, she should have quit. She should have walked away. She should never have done magic again, never spoken to Skulduggery again, never given the voice within her any more power. But of course she hadn’t quit.

You were having too much fun.

How many sorcerers had thanked her for saving the world? How many had called her a hero? The truth was she was too selfish to be a hero. She was too … what was that word?

Narcissistic.

That was it. She was too narcissistic. She’d lied to herself: she’d told herself she was doing good, she was saving lives. She’d told herself when the time came, when Darquesse tried to take over, she’d be strong enough to fight back, to retain control. Even after all these slip-ups, she was delusional enough to think she could emerge victorious when it really mattered.

Bless.

Valkyrie turned over, tucking the jacket under her chin. She made herself think about Ghastly, and felt that part of herself start to ache again. She thought about Shudder, felt guilty that she’d barely considered his death, but then her thoughts went back to Ghastly, and she cried.

She didn’t think she’d fall asleep, but she did, and she dreamed of her fingers being cut off and her eye being plucked out, and she dreamed of killing Carol. When she woke it was morning. She stood, shivering, and brushed the sand from her clothes. She pulled on the jacket and zipped it up, then left the beach, her arms wrapped round herself. Her belly rumbled. She got to a bus stop and stood beside people waiting to go to work and to school. She kept watch for cop cars. The bus trundled up and she let her fellow commuters get on ahead of her. She let her hair out of its ponytail, then climbed on and smiled at the driver.

“I don’t have any money,” she said.

“Do you have a ticket?” he asked.

“No. But I really need to get into the city.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.” He kept the doors open, waiting for her to disembark.

kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him

He looked at her. “You don’t appear to be getting off.”

“I know,” she said, “and I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before, but I just don’t have any money, I don’t have my phone, I need to get into town and …”

The driver sighed. “One free ride. Don’t try this again.”

“Thank you. Really. Thank you.”

She found an empty seat and slid into it. Thank God for cool bus drivers.

She got into town, gave the driver a peck on the cheek for his kindness, and hopped off. She crossed the Liffey, hurried down the Quays, and fought her way through the crowds of tourists in Temple Bar. Finbar Wrong’s tattoo parlour was tattooed itself, a mural-covered building that stood out beside its slightly more conservative neighbours. The ground floor was empty, as usual, but as she turned for the stairs a voice behind her said, “About time you got here.”

She spun as Skulduggery emerged from the backroom, and she ran to him, hugging him so tight she thought she might break his bones. Her tears soaked into his jacket. Dark blue today. It was good to see him out of his combat gear and back in a suit.

“Everyone else is upstairs,” he said. “Apart from Saracen and Fletcher. Saracen’s out getting lunch. Tanith and Donegan told us what you’ve been through. It’s going to be OK.”

She looked up at him. “Ghastly …”

“I know,” he said, his voice soft.

“But Cassandra’s vision … We saw him with Tanith, we saw them kiss …”

“We also saw Ravel on his knees, which is why we sent Ghastly and Anton with him in the first place. We changed the future, Valkyrie. But we’ll make Ravel pay for everything he’s done. You have my word. Come on. We have plans to make.” He started for the stairs.

“Wait. Skulduggery, my … The reflection. She tried to kill me.”

His head tilted. “What?”

“She’s calling herself Stephanie. She’s not … she’s different. She wants my family. My life. She has the Sceptre.”

“How?”

“I brought it with me, or Darquesse did, she brought it back with her, but I thought it had stayed in the alternate reality. But she has it. Stephanie has it. We have to go back.”

Skulduggery paused for a moment. “If you want to go, we’ll go. But I don’t think we should. Right now your family has a protector with your knowledge, your skills and your intelligence. The reflection mightn’t have your magic, but it has the Sceptre. Valkyrie … I know it sounds warped, but they couldn’t be safer right now.”

“But she’s malfunctioning.”

Skulduggery nodded. “Say the word and we’ll go.”

She stared at him, then sagged. “Yeah,” she muttered. “OK. She can wait.”

“We’ll get your family back, Valkyrie. I promise,” he said, and led the way upstairs.

Saracen arrived back with lunch, and Valkyrie ate ravenously and washed it down with scalding hot coffee. Tanith was sitting upside down and cross-legged on the ceiling. Below her, the Monster Hunters drank soft drinks while Saracen and Vex stood by the windows, keeping an eye on the street outside. Sanguine sat apart from everyone else, and Finbar waited patiently for the conversation to begin.

Skulduggery took his hat off, adjusted the brim, and put it back on again. His house was being watched, so he couldn’t get at the rest of his suits.

“The hat looks fine,” said Vex.

Skulduggery shook his head. “It’s out of shape. It’s ruined. May as well just throw it away. There’s nothing that can be done for it now.”

“Ghastly wasn’t the only tailor in town, you know.”

“But he was the best,” said Skulduggery. “How can I go back to an ordinary tailor now? I have standards.”

“You also have a room devoted entirely to hats that he made you. I think you’ll do OK.”

“I’m not so sure,” Skulduggery said, and everyone went quiet until he snapped his head up. “All right then, for the benefit of those who haven’t been around in the last few days, here’s what’s been happening. The shield is down. We don’t know how or why it came down, but it’s down. The Supreme Council has taken over Ireland. The only place not under their control is Roarhaven, which is protected by another shield that is, thankfully, still up. General Mantis has the place surrounded, of course, and it’s only a matter of time before they find a way in.

“Meanwhile, Sanctuaries within the Supreme Council have been turning against each other with delightful regularity. I’d like to think they were arguing among themselves because the injustice of the war had finally got to them, but I suspect there is something bigger going on.”

“What about Ravel?” asked Valkyrie.

Skulduggery looked at her. “He’s still in Roarhaven.”

“I mean, why did he do it? What does he want? He is our mystery man, right? He’s the one we’ve been hunting? He’s been with Mist from the start. All this time we thought it was him and Ghastly standing together and Mist isolated, when actually it was Ghastly who was standing alone. But for God’s sake … why?”

“You saw the footage,” Skulduggery responded. “You heard what Mist said. They want the Warlocks to attack Dublin, and all the sorcerers to team up to fight them. Once we’ve been made public, once we’ve been called heroes, we take over. The mortals will love us. Until they realise they’re no longer in control. By which time it’ll be too late to do anything to stop us.”

“Ravel’s a lot more cunning than I ever gave him credit for,” said Vex. “He went around with Corrival Deuce for all those years, talking to people like the Roarhaven mages, convincing them that our duty is to protect the mortals, not rule them. And at the end of it all? He had a list of sorcerers around the world who agreed with his point of view. Who knows what else he’s been up to?”

“Let’s make a list,” said Skulduggery. “Conspiring with the Torment and Madame Mist, Ravel was behind the destruction of the Sanctuary here in Dublin, in which dozens of lives were lost. The move to Roarhaven was his idea. I think we can safely assume that he murdered Corrival Deuce in order to replace him as Grand Mage, using the Remnant attacks to cover it up, and then orchestrated assassination attempts on himself in order to gain full control over the Cleavers. He released Sean Mackin, maybe hoping that Kitana and her friends would attack the mortals in full view of the world. When that didn’t happen, he returned to his Warlock plan, which had been set in motion five years ago, but which had probably been on his mind for the last century.”

“It’d almost make me admire him,” said Saracen, “if I didn’t hate him so much.”

“But the fact remains,” Skulduggery said, “that while we may have our issues with Erskine Ravel, we need Roarhaven to stay strong against the Supreme Council and others. Finbar?”

Finbar nodded and stood, cleared his throat. “Yeah, thanks, Skul-man. Well, as most of you know, the last two years haven’t exactly been easy for me. Someone, or something, who shall remain nameless but may very well be sitting upside down on my ceiling right now, got into my head during all that Remnant drama and forced me to push myself further than I’d have liked, psychically.”

“You say that like it wasn’t fun,” Tanith said.

Finbar looked at Skulduggery. “I’m not talking to her. Please tell her not to interrupt. I can’t handle talking to her.”

“Finbar,” said Tanith, sounding hurt, “why can’t we be friends? I used to
be
you. I know everything there is about you. All your secret thoughts, all your little desires …”

“Tanith, shut up,” said Skulduggery. “Finbar, please continue.”

Finbar cleared his throat again. “Right, yeah, OK. So anyway, I have to be careful about what I open myself up to these days. But this morning I had a vision. And it was a vision of, of me. I don’t … Sensitives don’t normally get visions of themselves, but there I was, here, in this very room, and I look out this window and … and there are these people, walking through the streets, some of them hovering in the air, and they’re shooting these beams of light and buildings are exploding and people are going bananas and vaporising when they’re hit and there are cops, there are loads of cops, shooting at them, having no effect. Then this place gets hit, and there’s all this noise and rubble, and I’m trapped and I look up and one of them, one of these people, passes by me, and then my vision goes deeper, because I kind of … I go into his head, y’know? And I see what he’s seen.

“And suddenly I know who he is, and that he’s a Warlock, and I see him in the Sanctuary, in this big machine, and from the sounds of it it’s this Accelerator you keep talking about, and there’s this guy and, I don’t know, maybe thirty or forty others. All getting jacked up on Accelerator juice. And leading the pack is this huge big bald fella, with more muscles than I’ve had hot dinners. And I’ve had a lot of hot dinners. Sharon makes a wicked curry.”

Valkyrie looked at Skulduggery. “What would the Warlocks be doing in the Sanctuary? They think Department X is real. Shouldn’t they be attacking mortal targets?”

“What the hell does it matter?” Sanguine asked. “The Roarhaven shield ain’t letting anybody through, Warlock or not.”

“That’s not what I saw,” Finbar said. “When I saw into this bloke’s head, I saw them kill all the sorcerers who went against them. They get in, they use the Accelerator, and after that there’s no one to stop them. Dublin … Dublin’s destroyed. And it’s probably only the start of what they’ll do.”

A city in ruins. Valkyrie had seen that before.

“It wasn’t just us who evaded capture in the valley,” said Skulduggery. “A few other groups got out, too. I’ve been in contact with some of them. They’ve heard that six experts in science-magic are scheduled to enter the country today in a small convoy. It’s safe to assume that Mantis will be using them to try to bring down the Roarhaven shield.”

“So we intercept?” asked Saracen.

“You do,” said Skulduggery. “If possible, subdue and detain. But it won’t be easy. Security will be very tight.”

“And what about you?” Sanguine said. “While we’re going up against overwhelming odds, what are you gonna be doing?”

“We change the future. In order to stop the Warlocks, and the Supreme Council for that matter, from getting to the Accelerator, we’ll need a way to get through the shield ourselves. So Valkyrie and I will be going after Fletcher.”

Donegan sat up a little straighter. “The woman my contact put us in touch with, Ajuoga – it turns out she might very well be a Bride of Blood Tears.”

Skulduggery looked at him. “This contact of yours, can he help us find her?”

“I’m afraid not. He was found dead two days ago. The Brides don’t leave loose ends.”

“Efficient but annoying. Very well – we have other ways of tracking them down.”

“I can come, if you want,” said Saracen.

“You’ll be needed to take down the convoy.”

“Ah, I’m sure Dexter has that covered.”

“No I don’t,” Vex said. “Sorry. If I don’t go hunting for Brides of Blood Tears, then you don’t go hunting for Brides of Blood Tears.”

Valkyrie frowned. “What’s so special about the Brides of Blood Tears?”

Saracen looked at her. “You’ll see,” he said. “If ever I had to be captured and shackled by anyone, I’d want to be captured and shackled by
them
. Oh, and take sunscreen.”

“Sunscreen?” Valkyrie echoed. “Why? Where are we going?”

Skulduggery looked at her. “Africa,” he said.