Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days (6 page)

10
BLOOD AND BULLETS

C
hina knew when someone was staring at her. It was a sense she’d honed over the last few hundred years, as precise as it was useless. People were
always
staring at her, after all.

She glanced around and Fletcher looked away, embarrassed.

“How long do you think she’ll be?” he asked.

China didn’t answer. She didn’t do small talk. He shrugged and nodded then stuffed his hands in his pockets. He all but started to whistle.

If she bothered with idle conversation, she would have told the poor boy that this thing with Valkyrie was never going to go anywhere, not when Skulduggery got back. Valkyrie’s life revolved around Skulduggery now – she was caught in his orbit, and someone like Fletcher didn’t stand a chance.

Skulduggery and Valkyrie were meant for each other. China could see that now. They were meant to find each other, to form this bond and to affect each other’s lives. The best the boy could hope for, the best
anyone
could hope for, would be to stand in the wings and look on.

A crescent tattoo faded up on China’s wrist and began to burn, signalling to her that someone had breached the perimeter alarms she’d installed.

“Stay here,” she ordered and strode off across the yard.

They came around the corner of the farmhouse – a Sanctuary agent she recognised as Pennant and four Cleavers. At a nod, the Cleavers ran at her and China tapped the symbols on her forearms and flung her arms wide. A wave of blue energy struck one of the Cleavers with full force and knocked him back. The other three were ready though, and they twisted into the wave, the magic rolling over their uniforms.

This was no mere arrest, she realised as she dodged the scythes. From the way they were attacking, the Cleavers had permission to use lethal force and they weren’t being shy about it. She knocked her fists together and the red tattoos on her knuckles became visible. She ducked a swipe and punched. On impact, the Cleaver’s head snapped around and he crumpled and didn’t get up. She caught the next one in the gut and he doubled over.

The last Cleaver cracked his scythe’s staff against her knee. China gasped in pain and barely managed to avoid the blade that followed it. His uniform was too well protected for this to be any kind of a fair fight.

She collided with him, grabbed his arm and yanked up his sleeve. Her right hand clenched, her fingertips pressing tightly into her palm, activating the symbol she had carved there so long ago. She closed her fingers around his bare wrist. He stiffened and she could have sworn she heard him scream beneath his helmet, and as he collapsed she turned to Pennant and he shot her.

The bullet caught China in the chest and she found herself walking backwards quickly, trying to regain her balance. She brought her hands to the wound, the dark blood gushing out between her fingers. Her legs buckled and she fell awkwardly. Her head hit the ground and she lay there, looking up at the clouds.

“Oh,” was all she said.

11
THE FACELESS ONES

B
atu’s old body stood up slowly. Its back was hunched and its thin arms were curled. From her hiding place, Valkyrie watched it shuffle deeper into the darkness, wondering why the Faceless One was bothering with such a damaged vessel.

The pressure in her ears was back to normal, and while her heart was beating fast, it was no longer threatening to break free of her chest. When she was sure she wasn’t going to throw up, she followed at a safe distance. There wasn’t a whole lot she could do against a Faceless One, except maybe distract it by dying loudly. If it started to torture Skulduggery again, she’d just have to watch. She didn’t much like that idea.

She was still clutching Skulduggery’s right arm. It was in one piece, fingers and all, and it clacked slightly as she moved.

The Faceless One dragged itself up the steps and Valkyrie crouched in case it happened to glance back. It didn’t of course. Faceless Ones were not the type to “glance”. For a start, they didn’t even have eyes. Valkyrie waited until it was gone from sight and crept forward. She had a niggling suspicion why Batu’s body was still being used – maybe torture was more satisfying when conducted in human form. She climbed the stairs slowly, peeking up to see Skulduggery backing away from the Faceless One as it neared.

“I knew she wasn’t real,” Skulduggery was saying. “It’s all part of some new trick, isn’t it?”

He grunted and rose into the air, and suddenly his body locked out straight. Valkyrie watched in horror as an unseen force began separating his bones from each other, centimetre by centimetre. The sounds of his pain started low, then twisted, and he threw his head back and screamed in abject agony as his jaw was slowly pulled from his skull.

Valkyrie bolted into the circle, her Necromancer ring grabbing the shadows and curling them around the Faceless One’s left ankle. She kept running and yanked the shadows with all her strength, but the shadows went taut and her legs flew from under her and she crashed to the ground. The Faceless One hadn’t budged. Its blank head turned, and it let Skulduggery drop to a groaning heap. Valkyrie threw his remaining arm to him as she got up.

The Faceless One observed her without moving. She’d experienced this reaction before, eleven months ago. It was China’s theory that the Faceless Ones could detect the blood in her veins, the blood of the Last of the Ancients. Valkyrie didn’t know if that was the genuine reason, but she took every advantage she could find. She snapped her palms and the air rippled and slammed into the ruined body before her. The rags it wore fluttered in the violent gust, but the body stayed still.

The ring was cold on her finger and it drank in the death this city had seen. She focused the shadows and hurled them at her enemy. A spear of darkness flew into the torso cavity and tore out through the back. The Faceless One staggered and looked down at itself.

Skulduggery sat there, flexing the fingers on both of his hands, and Valkyrie grabbed him and hauled him up. He was surprisingly heavy. They got to the steps, jumped down, and ran on towards the mouth of the cave.

“Faster!” she demanded.

“Why?” he asked. “I’m still not entirely sure you’re real.”

“I just picked you up back there!”

“That could have been a draught.”

They left the cave and Valkyrie grabbed her coat off the ground and looked back. The Faceless One hadn’t even reached the steps yet.

She looked at Skulduggery. “I’m not a draught!”

“You look like a draught…”

“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“My verbal sparring has been a tad one-sided of late. I should keep moving. You’re welcome to come along.”

“But this is where the portal opens.”

“If the Isthmus Anchor is linked to me, the portal will open near to wherever I am. Come along now, we don’t have much time.”

“How did it hunt you?” Valkyrie asked as they ran through the narrow alleyway. “It can barely move faster than a walk.”

“It has pets,” Skulduggery said. “And its pets have pets.” He pointed to the red sky. “And here they come now.”

She saw them, black against the red, beating their massive wings. Their bodies were the size of buses and their jagged tails were twice as long again. She saw what appeared to be straps, criss-crossing their underbellies, and she realised these beasts had a dozen riders or more saddled on top.

“You’ll know they’ve spotted us when they screech,” Skulduggery told her.

The creatures screeched.

Skulduggery and Valkyrie jumped a low wall and ducked through a doorway, moving through the ruined house and out of the window on the other side. The winged beasts swooped low over the streets and the riders dropped from them.

Two riders landed close by. They were skinny things, with primitive tattoos covering their yellow skin, dressed in leathers and furs and wielding thin, wicked blades. Their teeth were sharp and their eyes were dark, and their hair was spiked like porcupine needles.

Skulduggery went to meet them, blocking the first swipe of a dagger and snapping the arm at the elbow. He pulled the screaming rider into the path of his companion, using the momentary confusion to kick out the other rider’s knee. He left them and took Valkyrie’s hand again, steering them between two houses.

A rider dropped from the roof, but Skulduggery pushed at the air and he flew backwards. Valkyrie spun as another rider dropped behind her. The sword he swung was huge, too big for such a narrow space. She flung her coat into his face then pushed his sword hand down, grabbed his shoulder and kicked his ankle. He fell, smashing his head against the wall.

She snatched back her coat and they ran on, darting into another house as a trio of riders appeared ahead of them. They took the stairs up, ran to the window and jumped through it like they were hurdlers, landing on the roof of the neighbouring house. They jumped from rooftop to rooftop, sprinting to the sheer edge of the city, as all around them, riders clambered up to continue the hunt.

“Do you have a plan?” she called.

“Only rarely,” he answered then scooped her into his arms and jumped. There was nothing beneath them but a two-mile drop to the valley floor, and Valkyrie screamed.

“Why are you screaming?” Skulduggery asked in her ear as they tumbled through the air, and she turned her head to him and continued the scream right into his eye socket. He sighed. “Do try to hang on.”

Their angle changed abruptly and now they were moving sideways, out of range of the knives that were being hurled at them from the city.

They were flying.

12
DOWN THE BARREL

A
s China’s lifeblood drained away, Pennant walked over to where she lay and aimed his gun at her again. Then Fletcher Renn stepped out of nothing and swung a baseball bat down on Pennant’s arm. Pennant screamed and dropped his weapon and Fletcher caught him twice more before he disappeared. A moment later he was back and swung a weightlifter’s dumb-bell into Pennant’s jaw. Pennant pirouetted like a ballerina and fell to his knees. Fletcher let the dumb-bell fall and vanished, then reappeared with a taser gun. He jabbed it into Pennant’s back, electricity crackled and Pennant jerked and fell forward. The air closed in around Fletcher and he was gone, taking Pennant with him.

China touched the markings at the hinges of her jaw, and the heat started almost immediately, travelling the length of her body and then back again. It focused around the wound and she gritted her teeth. She felt the bullet move and twist, and tears came to her eyes. It worked itself back through the tunnel it had carved, and she cried out as it rose to the surface, now a misshapen lump of lead.

Fletcher reappeared beside her, but she waved him away with a hand slick with blood. The heat intensified and burned away the bacteria that had followed the bullet in. Slowly, far too slowly for her liking, the meat inside her began repairing itself.

13
NO THANKS

V
alkyrie clung on to Skulduggery and she wasn’t screaming any more. She was laughing. He was in a standing position and he moved them quickly through the air with an unnerving casualness. This was what he must have meant by the new tricks he’d taught himself. She looked down. All that empty space beneath them, added to the reality of what they were doing, took her breath away. Then she looked up, at the red sky, and saw the winged beasts swooping down.

Skulduggery altered course, avoiding the claws of the nearest beast. They spun in place then shifted left and a second beast missed them, screeching its displeasure. It was dangerous up here, even more so than in the city, and they flew back over the streets. They dodged another flying creature and passed over the riders, until Skulduggery found a suitable place to touch down. They landed and hurried through a door, into the quiet gloom.

“You can fly,” she whispered.

“I got bored walking everywhere,” he said.

“Can you teach
me
to fly?”

“You’ll need to master everything else about Elemental magic first, but yes. If we live through this, and if you continue your training, and if you’re real, then yes, I’ll teach you to fly. I’ll teach
every
Elemental to fly. It’s fun.”

“What else can you do?”

He looked at her and cocked his head. “Lots.”

A shape loomed in the doorway and Valkyrie’s smile vanished. They backed away as the Faceless One came through. Skulduggery clicked the fingers of both hands then thrust them out straight. Twin streams of flame hit the Faceless One, enveloping it completely. Valkyrie stared in amazement. The flame streams were continuous, like two flame-throwers. She’d never seen Elemental magic used like that before – she hadn’t even known it
could
be. But it wasn’t enough to stop the Faceless One or even slow it down.

Skulduggery cut off the fire and retreated. “It never works,” he muttered. “Nothing I do ever works.”

Something bright caught Valkyrie’s eye and she looked past the shambling form that had once been Batu, through the door it had come through, and saw the yellow portal.

“The gateway!” she said. “It’s open!”

“You better get going then,” Skulduggery said dully. His hands had dropped by his sides and he’d stopped walking backwards.

“Come on!” she yelled.

“The mind plays such cruel tricks,” he murmured.

Valkyrie ducked past the Faceless One. It turned its head to her then refocused on Skulduggery. She had a clear run to the portal. “Skulduggery!”

“You’re not real.”

“Please!”

The Faceless One held up its hand and Skulduggery moaned a little. His legs buckled and he dropped to his knees, his bones shaking.

“I have done terrible things,” he managed to say.

The riders were running through the streets towards them. The ones out in front had almost reached the portal. She couldn’t let them go through. Fletcher would shut it all down if they started coming through.

Valkyrie put on her coat and ran into the sun. She pushed at the air, throwing two riders off their feet. A third slashed at her with his dagger, but she blocked with her sleeve and fed him a faceful of fire. She kicked him back and whipped the shadows at another, catching him across the chest and sending him to the ground. A rider fell on her from behind and got her in a headlock. She kneed the muscle of his thigh and brought her fists crashing against his kidney and groin, then flipped him over her leg and stood on his throat.

She turned and a fist smashed into her cheek. She staggered, overbalanced and fell. The rider came in to kick her, but she jammed her left foot against his shin and swung her right foot over and back so that her heel connected with the back of his knee. She twisted and he yelped as he fell forward, his leg caught in a lock. She rolled over him and heard his leg crack. He screamed.

She threw a fireball that ignited the furs of a rider who was about to touch the portal. He shrieked and danced away, but now there were riders everywhere, coming in from all sides, and Valkyrie turned and turned again, fists raised.

“Skulduggery!” she shouted. “Help!”

And then China Sorrows appeared through the portal.

Tattoos glowed as she flung a wave of blue energy into the riders before they had a chance to even react. She hurled daggers of red light and dodged a rider who came at her with a sword. She slammed her forehead into his face and then went to work on his friends.

Valkyrie launched herself at the rider who tried to sneak up on China from behind. She snatched the knife from his hand and pushed at the air to shoot it straight into the leg of another.

“Skulduggery?” China demanded, breaking a rider’s wrist and jabbing her fingers into his eyes.

A rider yanked Valkyrie’s hair and she stepped back and rammed her elbow into his nose. “In there,” she panted. “With a Faceless One.”

“Skulduggery Pleasant!” China roared. “Get out here at once!”

Valkyrie covered her head as two riders leaped at her, but when they didn’t land she looked up. They hung in the air, quizzical expressions on their faces, and then hurtled back as Skulduggery stumbled from the doorway, his arm outstretched.

“Two of you,” he said, sounding surprised. “But my hallucinations
never
travel in pairs…”

Valkyrie grabbed his hand and pulled him from the door as the Faceless One reached out to drag him back. China kept the riders away then she took hold of Skulduggery’s other hand and all three of them jumped into the portal.

Yellow flashed bright and was gone, and something tangled with Valkyrie’s legs and she fell. Instead of falling on to hard ground and sand though, she fell on to grass, still wet from hours-old rain.

She blinked her sight back, realising she had tripped over Skulduggery’s feet and that they had both fallen. China had stayed upright of course, and she was commanding Fletcher to close the gateway. Valkyrie watched the portal shrink down almost instantly, then vanish.

They stood up and Fletcher stepped out of the circle. They all watched Skulduggery as he looked around at Aranmore Farm.

“Good God,” he said softly. “I’m home.”

“How are you?” China asked. For the first time Valkyrie noticed the blood on China’s clothes and how pale she was.

Skulduggery’s head tilted and he paused a while before answering. “I’m fine,” he said. “You’ve been shot.”

“I’m OK now.”

Fletcher walked up and handed over the Murder Skull. “I think this is yours.”

Skulduggery took the skull in one hand and looked at it. “Handsome devil,” he murmured. And then, “Why are there unconscious people lying around the place?”

“Guild sent some of his agents to stop us,” China said. “There are probably more on the way.”

“Then let’s not be here when they arrive.” He looked at Valkyrie and took a moment. “You saved me,” he said.

“I did,” she said.

She was expecting a hug. She didn’t get one.

“Good job,” said Skulduggery and started walking.